“She directed me to a depression in the floor, a bath like hole with pipes leading into it from all four sides. The pit was hardly larger than a coffin and just like all examples of stonework I have seen from my ancestors it was delicately engraved with the many runes and symbols of their written language. I was no scholar and could only translate a few of them… Blood, Life, Circle… the rest were a mystery to me.”

“This pit was used by the first vampires… when their bloodline was in jeopardy, to revive those that had fallen.” Umah told him.
“Then why is the use of this pit not wide spread amongst my kind?” Kain asked, but keeping his eyes on the sarcophagus sceptically. This all seemed far too convenient to work as described. “And why did Vorador not use it to bring back those vampires he cherished?”
“I don’t know.” She admitted, but indifferently.
Kain’s inspection of this so called blood pit was interrupted when she started giving her commands to her followers.
“Place the master’s body in the sarcophagus.” She said and the robed humans did as they were told. Gently they carried Vorador’s corpse to the sunken pit and transferred him from their coffin of wood to this one of stone.
“Milady… the hunters press their attack even as we speak.” One of them said to Umah, casting worried glances back up the tunnel by which they had entered. “Is it wise to revive the master in the midst of such danger? To both ourselves and to him?”
She fixed him with a venomous look.
“No...We do this now while we have the opportunity.” Her tone was like ice. “If we  loose the mansion, we might never regain the blood pit.”
“Of course Milady.” Her underling said quickly and apologetically.

“The body of Vorador they carried with them, raised on their shoulders reverently and gently they laid him down into the pit as if putting him to rest. I observed as Umah took the head and with a great deal of ceremony, placed it back upon its severed neck.”

She stared down at the illusion of the restored Vorador, his head only placed where it should be, not reattached.
“We are ready to begin.” She said with a sharp nod of her head. Quickly she strode over to another curious indentation in the floor directly in front of the pit. There were ten of them spaced around the sarcophagus. They were like basins with a grate to stand on over the dip. The pipes led away from these basins and into the pit itself, almost like a drain.
The other worshipers assumed their positions on these basins as well, standing to attention and Kain wondered if perhaps this ceremony had been rehearsed.
“Thralls, our master demands a final service of you.” Umah said reverently, her arms rose in benediction over them. “He who sheltered us from an uncaring world and he who gave us safety and protection now calls upon you give that which he is owed. For your sacrifice, he gives thanks and praise.”
Then she clasped her hands together and began to mutter rapidly dark incantations. The worshipers in a circle began to do the same; all muttering in sync the low tones of some spell that must have been practised for some time to get so perfect.
The pit responded emitting a low moaning noise, like a low groan of some creature roused after a long hibernation. The noise was reverberating and it eventually made to make Kain’s teeth ache.
There was a sudden loud shout from back up the tunnel. Kain turned to look back. He could hear the sound of many boots on flagstones. He sniffed and then scowled. The hunters were outside. He could smell them even from here.
They must have broken into the mansion after Umah had taken so many worshippers down here for her ritual. There was the sound of smashing furniture and windows. It would not be long before they found the catacombs and this hidden chamber.
“I suggest you hurry Priestess.” He said turning back.
Then he blinked, watching in confusion. The vampire worshipers, including Umah herself were doubled over. At first he did not understand, but then the scent of freshly spilled blood reached his nostrils.

“Nothing could have surprised me more than the actions of these humans. Their ceremonial knives used to cut their own wrists, their own stomachs and finally even their own throats.
Blood spilled forth from their self sacrifices, pouring down into the basins beneath them and then carried along by the pipes to fill the Blood Pit. I watched in morbid fascination, unable to take my eyes off of the body swallowed up in the gathering blood.”

Vorador was submerged, his entire body covered in blood. To ‘bathe in the blood of others’ has been a sort of phrase bantered around by vampires over the years but to Kain’s knowledge no one had taken it so literally before.
The worshipers were dead; there was no doubt of that, their blood seeping down through the grills and into the pipes to flow into the pit itself.
Umah was the only one still alive. She had cut herself vertically down both arms, avoiding her vital arteries and allowing her to bleed without fatal injury. She was kneeling down and whimpering in pain.
If this had been a suicide pact then Kain had underestimated Umah’s manipulative abilities if she had talked them into killing themselves while she had no intention of joining them.
“Live master… please… live….” She said from between gritted teeth.
Kain watched the corpse and breathed in sharply. It seemed intensely improbably but there it was happening before his eyes. Vorador’s skin, turned brown so long after death, was changing. It was slowly but definitely being restored back to his normal healthy shade of green. Even his head was changing, rejuvenating itself and Kain could not believe his eyes for as he watched tendons, nerves and veins slithered out of the top of Vorador’s neck and began to feed into the bottom of his head. Once they were all connected, they dragged the head back into place.
Muscle, flesh and skin formed over the injury and Vorador’s head was restored to his body; although it still left a circling scar.
But while Vorador’s body was restored, he did not move and Kain could not detect any signs of life from him.

“It was not going to work. The pit could reattach the head to the body but still the vital animating force, the soul, was not present. This was why this pit was not more commonly used amongst my ancestors, it could heal even fatal wounds but it could not pull in the reanimating force to bring back those who had passed on. ”

Just as that thought occurred to him something strange began to happen. He felt a tingling sensation, like a ripple of electricity passing through the air in close proximity to him.

“At the same time, a peculiar double surge of sensation occurred. It came from both the Reaver and the left side of my head.”

Kain unsheathed the Reaver blade with one hand and with the other, removed the ear ring he had always worn. Vorador’s ring had been a sort of trophy he had paraded around and worn for fashion for after the ancient vampire’s death, its purpose of summoning Vorador had been rendered inert.

“The Reaver and the Ring both hummed, vibrating in my grip. The Reaver was aroused, Raziel’s spirit within reacting to the ceremony in the pit. The ring however was pulsing regularly, like that of a heart beating.”

To Kain’s surprise, the Reaver suddenly lurched forward pulling him off balance. It dragged him forward, edging him closer and closer towards the pit.
Umah glanced up weakly, seeing him come near.
“Wha…what are you doing?” She asked but when she tried to stand up, the loss of blood she had suffered made her collapse onto her knees again.

“The Reaver directed itself without the need of my assistance, laying its serpentine tip directly under Vorador’s chin. The ring I held pulsed even harder in my hand, almost too where I feared it might jump out of my grip.
This ring was Vorador’s, made for the sole purpose of summoning him to aid those he chose worthy of allying himself with. Suddenly, I understood.”

Clutching the ring tightly in his fist, Kain called out;
“Vorador, I summon you.”
The Reaver blade screeched and in a moment of clairvoyance, Kain saw that the blade was creating a sort of vacuum within the space of Vorador’s body; a vacuum that drew in a soul and trapped it there. At the same time the ring called out and acted like a beacon for one soul in particular.
There was a sudden lurch and the Reaver swung back away. Kain stumbled before regaining his footing. The peculiar sensation was gone but Vorador’s body still lay there, submerged in the blood and gently floating.
The sound of smashing stone broke the ominous silence, followed by running footsteps.
Kain swung around, Reaver in hand to face at least half a dozen hunters come charging in down the tunnel. They had finally broken through.
One of them had a flame thrower.
“My god, what hideous dark rite is this?” One of them demanded, staring in utter disgust at the bodies on the floor.
“One that is none of your concern human.” Kain replied coldly. “Leave here or die where you stand.”
The human with the flamethrower barged past the others, the light of fanatic zeal in his eyes.
“Burn! Burn them all!” Ge raved and specs of foam flew from his mouth.
Kain swung the Reaver to adapt to his fighting stance but as he did, the hunters drew back, a look of startled alarm on their face. From behind Kain there was the sound of movement, of scraping talon on stone and a low primal, savage growl.
Kain glanced back over his shoulder and saw.

“In a gesture worthy of legend, Vorador rose from his grave… blood running from his body and murder in his eyes.”

There he stood knee deep in blood with much of it draining from him. His tall ears quivered with rage and his fangs were bared. Baptised in the death of his worshipers, Vorador had risen again.
“You! It… it’s not possible!!!” One of the hunters began all the while making strangled noises, clearly recognising their imfamous last kill.
Vorador, grim faced and snorting with rage, strode out of the sarcophagus trailing blood. He strode past both Kain and Umah, almost oblivious to the both of them.  Then with a burst of speed he shot forward and grabbed the human with the flame thrower so fast he blurred.
His hand closed tightly around the humans head, tightening into a fist and crushing the skull between his talons. Brain matter and skull fragments rained down to splatter on the floor.  
“Get out…” The ancient vampire snarled in a chilling voice, throwing the body out of his way. He advanced on the hunters, a truly nightmarish demon arisen from blood to kill them it might seem from their perspective.
Kain had always known Vorador to be a reserved character, collected and controlled. Unleashed before him now was the inner fire that Vorador had only shown twice that Kain knew of. The first time had been against six members of the Circle of Nine and the second had been in Dark Eden when he finally put down Malek of the Sarafan.
Watching Vorador lay into these hunters and pretend Sarafan made Kain realise that the calm Vorador, the sophisticated Vorador… was but an elaborate façade for the savage Vorador underneath; a whirlwind of intense emotion.
He sheathed the Reaver across his back and watched as the ancient vampire dispatched the humans, laying into their number with his talons alone. His bare hands sent flesh and bone flying and soon Vorador stood surrounded by rendered corpses, blood and worse dripping from his hands.
Then he turned to face them. His eyes fell on Kain but then immediately he looked at Umah.
“M…master…” She started through bloodied lips.
“Umah?” He blinked his eyes and squinted as if trying to clear foggy vision. Then his expression turned from distant confusion to one of horror. “Umah!” He raced to her side, catching her body and looking at the wounds she had self inflicted down her arms. “What have you done…?”

“Affection? From Vorador? And for a human? Such a thing was so out of character for him I was instantly suspicious.”

Kain edged closer to them both as Umah looked up at Vorador with small sparks of tears standing in her eyes.
“I had to …” She said weakly. “I couldn’t endure this miserable world without the only father I have ever known.”
Kain stopped sharply in his tracks.

“Father?! Umah... Vorador’s… daughter? All at once all the pieces fit into place within my mind and I understood perfectly well. This was why Vorador had been so distraught that I had killed Umah for stealing the Nexus stone. I had killed the only person close to his distant heart.”

He stared at them both in something akin to true horror.

“All the doubts and guilt I had buried within me came rushing to the surface, unbidden. Heartless I was but I am not entirely without empathy. But that was something I had to learn the hard way, by destroying my own beloved son.”