The southern coast of the eastern lands was a strange stretch of shoreline. It was an entangled quagmire of pods, marsh, rabid rainforest, and jagged cliffs. The river that fed down from the Lake of Fallen Bones had a delta several leagues wide, and the saltwater marsh generated strange weather of ever-present rain, fog, and frequent thunderstorms. Jagged and sharp rocks jutted out of the sea offshore frequently almost like teeth, giving the coastline the appearance of the colossal jaw of some terrible monster. Only the bravest, or most foolhardy, ship captain would ever attempt to bring his vessel close to such a coast.
It was on the rock of such a coast that Zwergstadar had been built. Standing atop a rocky crag Vorador watched the city from a short distance away with narrowed eyes. Outwardly he appeared determined but within, his mind was awash with doubt. The strange confrontation with the being that called itself the 'Keeper' had left him shaky and unsure of himself. Whatever that thing had been, it clearly had great power. Power enough to make him see things and experience events that tested his mental reserve.
Never before had he seen or heard anything that would even hint at the real presence of such godlike things. It defied his rational view of the world and left him questioning long held perceptions. Quite firmly, though, he shook that from his mind. No, he would not start believing in the existence of Gods, beings whose very nature was beyond the scope of understanding. Many religions claimed it was impossible to understand the true nature of God, but Vorador had always suspected that was merely a roundabout way of saying "It’s gibberish and we can't explain it to you."
Whatever it and its ilk were, the Keeper hardly matched the traditional view of a deity. Perhaps its kind was merely more advanced than other creatures which he had seen before, like comparing a person to an ant. That did not make the person a divine entity. It was all a matter of perception and perhaps of dogged scholarship. Just because you did not understand something did not mean that you started worshipping it.
Quite firmly he pushed the intellectual struggle out of his mind. Whatever eldritch entity it was, god of the Hylden or not, he would not let the implications of its existence deter him from his task. Gods or devils, he would do anything to complete this quest and get his promised reward.
He had been to Zwergstadar once before, during his younger days when he had not yet grown into the power of a fully matured Vampire. It had been a simple outpost fortress then with a Human village surrounding its walls, a dock jutting out from the only navigable beach for miles. Its main source of trading wealth had come from the lumber turned out by a mill.
All that was gone. The city had greatly expanded, now rivalling Willendorf or even Meridian itself in size with a colossal wall made of basalt rock surrounding it. There was only one approach to the city now, a bridged causeway with guard towers protecting each end. Its colossal main gate was made of pitted iron and was barred shut. Large, burning oil lamps hung from an overhang atop the wall at regular intervals, ringing the city with tall pillars of fire.
It was hard to see the buildings beyond the walls from this distance, but what could only be a palace reared up high with many spires and parapets and a curving, pointed rooftop crowned with a central spike. In fact, everything that could have a spike had one. The walls were ringed with spikes, the bridge was lined with them, and even the main gate looked hazardous with spikes that jutted up and out from around the entrance.
Vorador's frown deepened in disgust. Such additions were all for show. Such spikes would do little to hinder a besieging military force and merely make it more difficult for the defenders to find places to fire arrows from. Perhaps the five mind-forged princes who called themselves the Mandarins thought the city looked intimidating. Vorador himself found the barbaric design infantile and thought that it made the city look like a frightened hedgehog.
Despite the Mandarins’ taste in architecture, or lack thereof, Vorador knew that somewhere in that city was the artefact Bane needed to unlock the way to the Lost City. A shield made of the rare mineral Eclipse-Ka, a substance native to the Demon Realm. William had called the shield the Shield of the Lance Lord. Neither he, nor the shield's creator Ajatar-Cadre had told him what the artefact itself actually looked like. But that did not matter. He knew what Eclipse-Ka itself looked and felt like.
If the shield was indeed in the Mandarins’ possession then logic suggested that it would be kept in their palace along with any other treasures.
Despite William's attempt to manipulate him into attacking the Mandarins for the shield, Vorador had no real desire to kill them. It would be far better for him to simply slip in unnoticed, take the shield and be gone. Within a moment his form flickered until he had sprouted feathers and was a raven once more.
Beating his wings he flew through the air towards the city, rising high and keeping himself against a bank of black clouds rolling in from offshore. With such covering against his black feathers he was all but invisible.
The walls of Zwergstadar were thick enough to allow three men to walk abreast and were patrolled regularly by small groups all armed with crossbows. Some had their attention fixed on land, watchful for any hint of danger, but the others just looked bored with one taking a moment to swig from a canteen while the others were not looking.
Beyond the walls of the city, the buildings within had been fortified and fitted together by dozens of brick, stone, and wooden concealed walkways. Every exposed section of roof was made of nailed down blackened slate, an impervious shield against fire arrows. While this made more practical sense than the palace’s collection of ridiculous spikes, it gave the city the general look of being an overgrown, cancerous organ; blackened, swollen, and bloated.
The doors were all reinforced with metal, heavy bolts holding them steadfast and shut. All the windows were likewise shuttered and not a soul other than the guards was out in what passed for the streets. The entire city seemed to radiate unease and fear and Vorador perceived that it seemed to be from an intense anxiety of the outside. Somehow this seemed less a reflection of the people who lived here than a manifestation of the attitude of the would-be imperialist yoke under which the city was enthralled.
Swooping down into an alleyway behind what looked like a warehouse, Vorador settled back to the ground and blurred into his regular shape, quickly slipping back into the shadows once he was himself once more.
The pathways of the city were just as heavily protected as the walls with guards posted on every second corner and patrols going around in a regular circuit. Most were armed with short swords and axes but a few bringing up the rear of these patrols had the long-range crossbows. They all wore that strange leather and metal armour that in some peculiar way emulated the feel of the city itself.
Given the amount of patrols through the gaps in the now closely connected buildings, the city had to have a large garrison, but not enough to hold off a siege by an army the size of William's. Clearly the young king’s ploy to keep reinforcements from being summoned had worked and the city was unprepared for an assault.
The Vampire had come far to reach this point and logic would suggest, given the nature of his quest, that he was going to need all the reinforcement he could get. In the darkness he waited until a patrol of perhaps seven men began to approach through a narrow corridor between two buildings. Those in front carried large axes at their sides with swordsmen taking up the flanks. They only had one man in the rear with a crossbow and he seemed distracted, testing the tautness of the bowstring with his thumb.
Vorador patiently waited, one with the shadows. Then as the patrol passed by, he reached out quickly with one hand and grasped the crossbowman by the throat. His vice-like grip cut off the soldier’s windpipe, preventing him from crying out and alerting his comrades. Unaware that anything had happened, the others carried on oblivious as the man was dragged silently into the shadows. There he was in Vorador's complete power, unable to resist as a pair of fangs punctured his throat.
Vorador wasted no time and drained him quickly, using his blood to restore spent energies and strengths, bolstering his own reserves. Once he was done he dragged the carcass behind a corner where it would be lost in the gloom and hidden for a long time. Sated and refreshed, he turned to look up at the looming dark shape of the city palace.
The palace itself had its own district which was surrounded by an inner wall, and this one was even more covered with spikes than the outer. The main gate to the district was just as large as the main one to the city and the spikes all around curved inward, making it look like the gaping maw of some huge beast. The foolishness of that was just painful, Vorador thought, as such spikes gave a besieging force a natural ladder up to the ramparts.
Hanging from the battlements of the inner wall on either side of the gate were two banners, each perhaps a hundred feet long. They flapped in the wind coming off the sea, sometimes getting caught on the spikes, further proving the ineffectiveness of the design.
Upon them in black in relief against red were two long, serpentine forms of creatures of legend, twisting around each other several times. A pair of immense bat wings stretched out behind the depicted creatures and their heads were like those of snakes, wispy tendrils sprouting from around their snouts like whiskers. Long tails curled out behind them and in one clawed paw they each held a large pearl up and out as if presenting it.
From the relative safety of a darkened rooftop, Vorador contemplated the elaborate symbolism grimly.
-0-
“The monotheistic religions of the west had demonised the Dragon and for them it was an icon of evil, an adversary of God. But here in the East, it was a symbol of unchallenged authority and devastating power. I myself had taken such a symbol as my banner based on a few pieces of folklore that the Seer had told me when she had been recovering from her incarceration in the Eternal Prison. It was no surprise to find it as the symbol of choice for the Mandarins. Perhaps they compensate for something.”
-0-
Clinically he noted the presence of even more guards standing around the main gate and atop the inner wall. These guards were not like the common variety in the outer city. They seemed to take their duty more seriously, standing to rigid attention at their posts. They were clad in different armour as well, a strange kind of mail shirt that appeared to be made out of overlapping pieces of metal rather than rings. It gave them the appearance of wearing a snake's shed skin. Their helmets seemed to emphasise the comparison even more, as they were styled forward and shadowed the face almost like the snout of a reptile. A few of them had crossbows but most carried long, curved pikes which rattled with a set of brass rings run through a hole near the handle. Almost like automatons they stood or patrolled, never deviating from their duty of seeing that all approaches to the palace were observed at all times.
Vorador did not particularly desire combat with these men. They had the look of professional soldiers who knew their business and were utterly devoted to the defence of the palace. He had seen such rigid devotion many times before, in the mannerisms of the Sarafan Knights during their bloody crusade. Men utterly convinced of their righteousness to the point where all other considerations faded into the background. These guardsmen were not only professionals, they were fanatics.
Stealth would be the ideal means of gaining entry to the palace as he had originally thought, but just how to do so remained an unsolved question. There seemed to be no open windows to exploit, nor any access from the roof. The guards were stationed so that every inch of the palace was watched almost continually.
The main entrance to the palace was a large door engraved with more of the dragon symbols, the same icon as on the banners on the walls. This was barred shut and guarded but Vorador was quick to note that there was a smaller building off to one side which was joined to the palace by a catwalk. No doubt this was the servants’ entrance. Only two men, each armed with a lance, stood guard at the pedestrian entrance. This certainly seemed more promising.
While as large as a pony, the shape of the spider allowed him to move silently and stealthily despite its large size. Slipping himself into the arachnid form, he used that ability to scuttle quickly over the rooftops and right up to the inner wall. The guards atop the wall didn't even notice him as he slipped on his eight legs through the long, dark shadows.
The Vampire kept his spindly form as he crossed the various pavilions and courtyards that surrounded the palace. There were five such spaces around the palace arranged at the points of a pentagon and each one had in its centre a garish statue depicting one of the five Mandarins. Since the five would-be rulers of the East resembled each other so closely in body as well as mind, the statues were almost identical. This style of self-aggrandisement seemed to radiate an almost religious style of uniformity, an intolerance of anything other than a rigid ideal. The comparisons to the Sarafan which he had so casually made earlier suddenly seemed more acute.
The servants’ entrance was set away from these overly lush surroundings, out of sight behind a wall so as not to offend the privileged few with the sight of so common a building. When Vorador neared he saw that a man in plain leather clothes was approaching the door. He said something to the guards and after a moment one of them pushed the door open and allowed him to proceed inside. Once the man was gone, they firmly shut the door after him.
Vorador had used their momentary distraction to crawl up over them and position himself right over their post. Slowly he began to descend towards them, the two men completely unaware of the danger that was dropping down on them from above.
He needed them silenced before they could cry out and alert the other guards, so there were only a few ways he could have killed them. Enveloping them in spider silk would hide their bodies easy enough, but they could still easily raise the alarm. Instead once he was in the right place, he merely flowed back into his ordinary form and dropped. As he fell he tore Havoc and Malice from across his back and brought them down hard on the two unsuspecting guards.
Human skulls are simply not built to withstand that sort of a blow. Their heads burst open in a visceral explosion of bone fragments and squelching splatters of brain tissue mixed with a thick membrane. The impact caused their jaws to shoot off and crash into the ground before the rest of the gore and any cry that escaped either of them was a gargle lost in the wet splat. The bodies collapsed to the ground in their own wet, bloody insides, the only sound some dull thuds that failed to echo.
Vorador gave the two corpses a look. He needed time to conduct his search, and such mutilated bodies would be noticed at once and an alarm would be instantly raised. Holding up one talon he made a short commanding gesture, opening his mouth. The blood splattered everywhere obeyed that telekinetic order and lifted up into the air, becoming a steady stream of blood that flowed through the air right to his lips. It did not take him long to drain the corpses dry and with the blood of three men his strength and energies were fully restored with a surplus to spare.
With the bodies dry and bloodless, Vorador slipped back into his spider form. The corpses and their bits and pieces of broken flesh were easily bundled up and enwrapped in a thick cocoon of silk. This he attached to the palace wall in a dark crevice far above. With any luck the bodies would not be discovered until late tomorrow morning. The only sign left of their messy fate was a faint dull brown stain on the stone floor.
With the guards disposed of, Vorador reassumed his natural shape and slipped through the door and into the building.
The servants’ entrance to the palace was utilitarian, a set of spiral stairs rising up to the catwalk that allowed them to enter the main building. There were half a dozen adjacent rooms. Some were full of various types of cleaning equipment. Others were barrack-type chambers with bunks against one wall and closets full of clothes on the opposing. The man he had seen enter through the door was in one of these bunks, snoring loudly. Vorador left him unmolested.
There was one room that perhaps at one point had served another purpose, but now had been converted into some form of makeshift altar. He paused to study it, knowing from experience that an inspection of religious equipment could reveal a great deal of information about its users. The altar itself was a simple slab of polished marble with a red cloth draped across it lengthwise. But atop the altar was a set of five stone figurines which were instantly recognisable as the Mandarins. They were arranged in a circle with their arms outstretched towards each other. In between them was a large orb of stone which had been polished so much that its surface practically gleamed. Five divine figures standing in reverent solidarity in sharing such a wonderful treasure.
The entire vulgar and ostentatious display seemed to say all that was needed to be said about the situation. The Mandarins’ elevated sense of their own self-worth had not only prompted them to start a campaign of conquest, but also to begin their own religion, deify themselves, and enforce worship of their own persons amongst their servants. The only other person Vorador had ever seen with that awe-inspiring level of hubris had been Kain, and Vorador at the very least knew he had grown out of the arrogance required for such a delusion.
"William can have them and with my utter blessing." He muttered to himself in disgust and turned away.
A stout iron portcullis barred the door that lead into the palace itself. While this might have proven an impediment to an ordinary intruder, for a Vampire, especially one of Vorador's power and resource, the barrier was insubstantial. After pausing to sense there were no dangers beyond, he merely translocated himself past the obstruction.
The interior of the palace was not what he had been expecting. He had been anticipating marble corridors, polished silverware, and other such luxuries. What he found instead were plain stone and simple tallow candles at regular intervals. The doors into the various rooms were all made of a type of rice paper and did not so much open as slide out of the way on wooden rails. From the outside the palace had looked quite impressive and grand but the interior was almost dull by comparison. The contrast was startling and given the arrogant displays thus far, this simple interior was somehow unusual and even unnerving.
Methodically he began to explore, traversing plain corridor after plain corridor. While the interior architectural design was simple, it wasn't entirely inartistic. Occasionally flagstones on the floor would be engraved in patterns that interwove like snakes, and it was only as he continued along that he saw they were not snakes but more dragons. Similar patterns had been dyed right onto the rice paper doors as well so that no matter where he turned inside these lower corridors he was faced with dragonish iconography.
Vorador kept his senses sharply on the alert, knowing that there were many ways that his presence could be noticed. Remarkably, however, he did not perceive the presence of guards in his immediate vicinity. In fact, these lower levels of the palace seemed all but deserted. The fresh burning tallow candles and clean, dust-free surfaces testified that this place was regularly cleaned and tended to, but there did not seem to be a single person down here. Perhaps it was merely because those who usually tended to the needs of the palace were asleep but even if that was indeed the case, Vorador could not bring himself to think that there would be no interior guards working in shifts.
Finally he came out into a large central hall with a vaulted ceiling. Stone pillars ran along either side in between doorways that branched off in different directions. The main focus of the chamber was a large stone statue. It was a larger version, made out of chiselled basalt, of the set of figurines he had seen on the servants’ altar. Only this time there was no large pearl for the five of them to surround and cherish. The figure depictions of the Mandarins each held on to the curving body of yet another dragon, this one biting its own tail to complete a circle in the classic ouroboros symbol.
At the far end of the chamber were two flights of stairs. One led up and the other down. Vorador's eyes were drawn to the flight of stairs going up. Barring the way to the higher levels was an undulating and nebulous wall of strange green light. He approached very slowly, never taking his eyes off of this strange wall. As he drew near he could sense the energies from it radiating outward. He knew instantly what it was. He had employed such barriers himself on more than one occasion.
They were an easy trick for any with some knowledge of the arcane to master and often the most irritating obstacle to navigate around for those who wished to get at an uncooperative sorcerer.
-0-
“The higher levels of this vulgar cesspool they liked to call a palace were shielded from me by layers of arcane barriers that I could not penetrate. No man protects an area where there is nothing valuable concealed. The artefact I needed must lie beyond. Perhaps there was another way to gain entry?”
-0-
Such barriers also prevented one from simply translocating themselves around it, so any easy solution to this problem was negated. Now Vorador understood why there were no guards inside the palace itself. With this barrier in the way to protect the more vital and valuable areas of the building from intruders, actual guards would be superfluous.
He glanced over at the flight of stairs going down. Unless the Mandarins dropped and re-established their arcane barrier each time a servant brought them food, an unlikely prospect as such barriers were difficult to maintain, then there had to be some secret, private way to gain entry. More exploration, especially of the lower levels, definitely seemed prudent.
The staircase going down twisted around itself as it descended. Occasionally it branched off into various rooms but they seemed mostly for storage. The spaces between the light cast by the tallow candles grew larger, resulting in deep patches of darkness in various corners. Soon the Vampire discovered a large door that blocked the end of an offshooting corridor. What set it apart was that it was made of solid wood rather than paper. The staircase continued down past it, probably for some distance, but Vorador took the time to explore anyway. The door swung open silently with a mere push, left unlocked and the hinges recently oiled.
The room beyond was a large kitchen, full of iron stoves, cooking pits, and tables where the food was prepared. Meat cleavers hung off racks on the walls and large plates, both metal and ceramic, were piled up in neat rows off to one side. The ashes of a large fire were left cold and untended in the pits and in one massive fireplace were greasy spits that had been left un-cleaned. Clearly quite recently there had been something on the order of a feast prepared as a great many pots, pans, and other utensils had been left in filthy piles. Vorador was unimpressed. No servant in his manor house had been allowed to be so lax.
Two men were inside the kitchen. One was a large, round man wearing a spotted leather apron and gloves with his long black hair tied back out of his face. The slanted shape of his eyes indentified him as a local. The other was one of the guards, the first the Vampire had seen inside the palace. The only weapon he had was an axe slung across his back.
"I can't start the ovens back up now." The fat man was saying exasperatedly as if repeating an argument he had made several times already. "All my assistants have gone to seek their beds in the city and I am alone here. If I try to do it myself, what I send up to the princes will be an inedible mess." The guard poked him in the shoulder hard.
"Perhaps you would like to be taken upstairs so that you can explain that you will not obey their commands to the divine ones in person?" He asked ominously. The fat man brushed his hand away contemptuously.
"If you want to fulfil their wishes, then instead of threatening me, why don't you go round up my assistants so that I can..." At that precise moment he saw Vorador standing in the doorway. At the sight of a Vampire, his eyes bugged out and his face went pale.
The Vampire did not wait. Marrow came whistling out of its sheath at his side as he launched himself across the intervening distance. In response to the startled look on the other man's face, the guard began to turn around. Vorador caught him before he could even do that. The blade sliced through the torso, separating him from the hip right up to the far arm pit. The sheer force of that lightning fast impact threw both suddenly freed pieces of the man out in either direction. Blood sprayed out from the dismembered pieces to splatter across the walls and floor.
The fat man, probably a chef, opened his mouth to yell or scream but Vorador cut him off. Marrow cleaved through his fat neck and severed his head from his shoulders. The decapitated lump bounced off the ceiling and crashed down to the floor along with the bulbous body with a wet thump.
It had been utterly necessary of course. Vorador could not afford to have the alarm raised until he had at least located the artefact. Now, however, he was stuck with another problem. With sword in hand he looked down at the bloody, eviscerated corpses. All too soon these two men would be missed and someone would be sent to look for them.
He had to find a place to stash the bodies where it would be unlikely they would be found. Quickly he disposed of the telltale splatters of blood in the same manner as the last two guardsmen. By now he was so gorged on blood that any wound inflicted upon him would have healed around the weapon making it. Then he took the cleaved pieces of the corpses and began to drag them to a side door. As he suspected it was a storage room full of kegs, most of which were full of ale, mead, wine, or some other beverage. A few, however, were empty. Into these he stuffed the broken bodies. The relative cool of the room would keep the corpses from decaying for at least a day.
The Vampire was about to turn to leave when he felt the faint cool touch of moving air brush his skin. It was so unexpected that it made him flinch despite himself. He paused and then turned, looking around for the source of that draft. It did not take him long to find it. Behind a stack of barrels there was a crack in the stone wall, not very wide but enough for enough air to cause a draft to come wafting through.
Usually such things would not be worth his time and attention, but what drew his notice was that behind this crack he could sense a tunnel. It appeared to go on for some distance beyond the range of his senses. It seemed to be a natural fissure or cave system, but through this it could be the means to circumnavigate the arcane barrier. It wasn't much to go on but time was of the essence and some chances had to be taken.
The wall was only stone bricks and easily pried apart, knocking the debris into the tunnel beyond. Once Vorador had made a hole big enough to fit through, he slipped inside pulling a barrel over the crack behind him. This way if anyone happened to glance into the storage room they wouldn't see any telltale sign of damage unless they looked more closely.
The tunnel was pitch black as expected and with a flip of his hand, Vorador summoned an orb of arcane light to hover around him like a firefly. Its pale luminescence lit up the crag, revealing a very irregular passage that slipped back and forth around large rocks. Slowly and very carefully he followed it, squeezing through the gaps in the rocks. The moving air told him that this was not a closed in place and that it came out somewhere.
He seemed to be going upward but with the different, alternating angles of the rocks all around him it was a little hard to say for sure. He pressed on regardless but kept his hand close to Marrow's hilt at his side. He was not going to be caught unawares by any nasty surprises.
Suddenly the Vampire came right up to a wall and he feared that perhaps he had been mistaken. But cool moving air told him otherwise and glancing up, he saw that directly above him was a jagged ledge. It looked like a tunnel directly above this one and that its floor had fallen in to create the opening. The ledge was not too far and with one leap he caught it and hauled himself up and into the tunnel above.
Even as he did, pulling himself back up to his feet, Vorador knew instantly that what he had stumbled across was more than just some natural rock crevice. The surfaces here were smooth and circular, the only edges where it had broken and fallen away. Quickly he gestured again and the light from his spell increased.
The air in here was thick with water vapour, not enough to really do him any harm but it did leave him feeling decidedly uncomfortable. The tunnel he had entered was similar to the one he had discovered in the caverns just to the east of the Lake of Spirits, perfectly circular with the only seams those made by wear and tear over the centuries. Like the previous passage he had discovered, it was overly large, perhaps thirty feet or more and carried on into the darkness outside the range of his light in either direction.
-0-
“Once more I found myself venturing into the abandoned ruins of the race deliberately forgotten through the callousness of the Divus. This reoccurring exploration was becoming less coincidental and more the deliberate writing of some godly author. Was this really being arranged for me, or had I grown overly paranoid? Perhaps the better question might be which was the safer scenario to assume?”
-0-
Somehow, Vorador doubted that it was a coincidence that the Mandarins’ palace was directly over such ruins. Whether or not it had been intentional on the part of the Mandarins themselves, though, was quite another matter. With nothing behind him but an empty kitchen and increasing chances of being caught, the Vampire grimly decided that all he could do was push on and make the best of his current path. Besides, these ruins had offered him some interesting secrets and hints of other strange things when he had stumbled across them before. Somehow he felt that, in his peculiar set of circumstances he could not have enough information at hand. If for no other reason than to spite the Seer who must have been overjoyed to send him on his quest in total ignorance.
The flow of air told him that there was some sort of opening to allow the passage of a draft somewhere along the tunnel to his right, so that was the direction he moved off in. Unlike the last tunnel of this kind he had traversed, which had travelled for some distance, this one was relatively short. All too quickly he came to a large door, almost identical to the kind in those underground ruins he had seen before. It had large holes rusted right through it that allowed air to move back and forth freely, although this also meant that the lever that operated the mechanism was now a crusty, red, inoperable mess.
Even so rusted the massive door could not have been forced open. He simply was not strong enough for that. However, he did note that one of the holes was just large enough for him to slip through, albeit not in his current form. Holding the shape of the serpent in his mind he flowed himself into it, his body becoming slender and elongated. Once he was enwrapped in scales, he reared himself up to slowly slip through the jagged gap.
Sometime in the past the ceiling of the chamber beyond must have at least partly collapsed and allowed a concealed reservoir to run out. One side of the wall of the egg shaped cave had almost completely collapsed into mossy, overgrown rubble, thin trickles of water running down between the larger boulders. Down below the phosphorescence of a type of large fungus cast soft shadows, giving the long forgotten cave a strange, otherworldly quality, like he had ventured here into the den of something so foreign that Nosgoth itself was inimical to it.
In the form of a snake, Vorador slipped up and around the collapsed wall. It made a natural ramp up the cave to a raised dais that projected in the middle of the chamber. Every hidden ruin he had located thus far had been shaped this way. It would seem that the creators of these primordial places favoured a concave style of architecture. He already knew that they were not humanoid in shape but what manner of being would find such construction convenient?
Ascending the dais, the Vampire found it to be free of debris and quite stable. There he changed back into his regular form. Once he stood on his own two feet once more, he raised his hand and gestured, calling back the ball of arcane light to his side. As it banished the darkness it revealed the high ceiling of the chamber overhead.
As he had been half expecting, there were more of the strange embedded imagery sprawled across whatever parts of the wall were not damaged or lost beneath a mix of moss and fungus. Surprisingly, despite the rubble and cracks, a great deal was legible of the images. His head turned as he surveyed the beyond ancient panorama.
These images were by far the strangest he had seen so far and at the same time seemed to get right to the point. Viewing them all at once Vorador blinked and let his lips part in an expression of baffled curiosity, ears twitching slightly.
Before him was a scene of battle but the conflict bewildered him. Unlike the wars of Men or even that terrible ancient war between two rival species, this conflict was not fought on the ground but in the skies. Over the tops of drawn mountains, forests, and plains, hoards and vast flocks of the winged creatures came together in formations. Such a display, even when airborne, could only be called an army.
But the force this flying army faced was another of its own, two opposing hosts of winged monstrosities fighting for dominance of the skies. It didn't take Vorador long to interpret the image logically. What he was seeing was a war, perhaps even the first war ever to be fought over the land that was Nosgoth. A civil war predating the terrible clash of Hylden and Ancient Vampire.
-0-
“The images I discovered here told of a history that, if it were true, would have required a gargantuan effort by the Divus and their religion to remove all knowledge of from the world. Such events would also require a shift in historical conceptions and theological thought in modern times. This was madness.”
-0-
The scene expanded outward from the battle to reveal the consequences of such a war. Vorador's brow knitted at what he saw. As the combatants struggled with one another, they collectively called up terribly destructive forces. Fire and ice collided, the earth rose and fell, and the sea rolled in to drown what land there had been. It was as close to a religious description of Armageddon as any conflict that came afterward, even the thousand years of racial conflict.
As the war raged, the land was battered, shaped, and forged like a piece of metal on a blacksmith’s anvil. If what this seemed to imply was correct, then this war had shaped many of the physical landmarks of Nosgoth itself.
He had seen firsthand the devastating aftermath of the war with the Hylden, heard about villages, settlements, and even entire cities set ablaze or drowned in blood from warriors who had been there to see it, such as Ajatar or Ansu. But even such horror as that seemed to pale in comparison to a war that could call up mountains and drown coastlines with tsunamis.
Vorador wondered what those who had lived through even a part of the Hylden war, like all of the Serioli Order, would think if they were made aware of the fact that the war they decried and still had nightmares about had been only the second worst disaster in the history of the world. But besides that, just what sort of hold had the Divus and their religion had on the Vampires if they could erase such a colossal and earth forging event from their history virtually overnight?
Slowly the Vampire turned his head so that he could regard the rest of the image. The scene of war continued expansively and as it moved outward it showed more specific events that seemed to happen during the conflict. As the masses of winged beings fought in the skies, the land beneath them seemed to sicken and rot like decaying meat. This decay did not seem to be connected with the conflict itself nor was a consequence, but rather was a separate event. As the decay grew worse, the fighting creatures began to tumble out of the skies. As they fell they rotted away like the ground they were falling to meet, becoming mere collections of bones as they struck. A literal rain of bones covered the land which had become just as dead.
Vorador's frown deepened, his brow knitting until it became a full blown scowl. His vague suspicion of something strange besides the obvious going on was now confirmed. With a deep clarity he recalled the strange skeleton of the massive creature that he had been shown by Tiamatu back in the Hylden-controlled Avernus. The creature's remains, even so long dead, had radiated a strange but powerful elemental energy.
Now he knew the source of those bones. One of these creatures had fallen to the earth and been buried by centuries of sedimentary buildup. Buried for eons, it had lain waiting, forgotten in the ground, before finally the Hylden House of Knowledge had excavated its fossilized remains.
Given that, there was no way that the Seer did not know about this before she had sent him into the past and on this journey. It was in fact entirely possible that she knew ahead of time exactly what was going to happen, that he would discover these ruins and that they would help him learn what he needed to in order to unlock the strangeness and mystery of the Lost City. Was that what the Celestial Arrow was? Some treasure left behind by these beings? He didn't think so. It had to be something more important than that. Was it connected to this 'Thanatos' that the Keeper had told him to ward against and if so, how?
But the biggest shock was yet to come. As he turned to survey what else there was of the imagery, he discovered a side piece that seemed less a depicted scene from history and more like a detailed scientific diagram. He had seen this style before in the first cavern he had come across. That time it had shown some sort of progression from creature to creature, a chart of evolutionary progression, or at least it had seemed so.
The diagram here was similar. Arranged in a circular pattern were several images that showed a growth or progression of some sort.
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“Here at last I finally beheld some clue as to the real identity of this mysterious first race."
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At the bottom of the circle was a simple round object, like a ball or a pearl. Wavering tendrils were drawn around it, giving it an important halo almost like the sun. Somehow this seemed important, as if it were a focal point. Given its place in the image it seemed not merely the start of the progression but the point to which one returned after completing it.
Going clockwise up along the circle from there was the image of a serpent-like creature, its lower body coiled around itself and the rest of it rearing up. It did not appear entirely like a snake, however. From the back of its head a crest was sprouting, along which what looked at first glance like a short mane of feathers. Vorador could not place the creature, having never seen the like before.
At the top of the image was another creature. It seemed a larger version of the snake before it, but now it had sprouted fore and hind legs and was more overly muscled. The mane of feathers had spread and even started growing on its forelegs in places. Its neck was longer from the shoulder and the tail lashed out behind it, ending in a feathered quiff. Vorador then, with a sudden insight, realised exactly what he was looking at.
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“This was a life cycle, like that of an insect, where the form undergoes metamorphosis over the life of the creature. What manner of beast was subject so weird and unusual a progression?"
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Then he turned his attention to the seeming end of the metamorphic change and froze. The scowl he had been holding disappeared instantly and he stood there, simply staring. The image had been encroached upon somewhat by the moss and fungus but the mushrooms’ phosphorescence also allowed him to see the image much more clearly.
The shape of the creature there was now fully revealed. Before, when he had seen it in the various other ruins and forgotten locations he had stumbled across, perspective had concealed its true extent from him. Now it was on full display and it was even more ludicrous because of it. He had seen this creature before. There was not one person in all of Nosgoth who was not familiar with its shape and form. It was a near universal constant throughout both culture and time.
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"What I saw, or at least what I thought I saw, was too ludicrous to be believed. I was only just beginning to think rationally about the existence of beings which called themselves Gods. To allow my scientific rationality to accept this was a giant step too far.”

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Vorador raised a hand to run it over his face in a weary gesture. Despite himself he found that he was trembling. This was simply too much. Clearly, someone, somewhere, was having a joke at his expense. This was like the poor efforts of some creator of fiction, trying to force him into a situation so absurd that no rational person would think it plausible.
Whether or not this was some perverse jest on the part of the Seer was debatable but either way, the Vampire felt his interest in these ruins and their story dry up. Perhaps he had been taking these things too literally. It was the only explanation he could rake together.
Besides which, while he stood here wasting time looking at an ancient cave scrawling, he had yet to secure the artefact that he needed. Deliberately he turned his back on the image and forced any and all consideration of it out of his mind. Images of folklore be damned. He was here to find the Celestial Arrow so that the Seer would fulfil her promise and return Umah to the world of the living.
At once he saw the way out of the chamber. A second large doorway was set into the wall behind him and this one had not suffered as badly from the rust as the first had. Its opening mechanism was still mostly intact. Although again it took a great deal of strength to move the meter long lever. Particles of red rust sprayed out from various holes in the wall as the hidden gears turned after so long a disuse, and the door only grudgingly moved aside with a great deal of screechy complaining.
The chamber beyond seemed an adapted natural cave. It was shaped like a dome with a perfectly smooth floor but the ceiling was naturally jagged with protruding rocks. Inside this room the fungus was so thick around the walls that the Vampire did not even need the arcane light to see with. The phosphorescence was more than enough all by itself.
What he saw there made him grunt with annoyance. There were eight pedestals standing in a circular pattern around the chamber. Each one had an opposite opposing it around the circle. As he approached he saw that each pedestal had a design on it in the same style as the images in the other chamber. They were all depictions of easily recognisable animals. He saw a fox, an owl, a seal, a deer, a wolf, a mouse, a rabbit or hare, and even an orca, an aquatic animal which had become extinct by the time of Kain's Empire.
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“Once more a logical test had to be passed in order to proceed. What prize awaited me this time upon completion? And did I really have the time to waste with games?”
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In actuality this puzzle was not that hard to fathom and Vorador saw its goal instantly. Half of these animals were prey for the others. If the puzzle were to be solved then prey would have to be matched up with predator. This could be accomplished as the pedestals were on a rotating mechanism beneath the floor which allowed them to be turned around.
Completing the puzzle, however, was not so easy as the Vampire soon discovered. As he turned one pedestal, the fox to face the rabbit, the wolf pedestal turned by itself to face that of the orca. His frown turned right back into a scowl again. So it was going to be one of 'those' puzzles, was it?
Grimly he set about his task, turning pedestal after pedestal. Each time he did the mechanism underneath did its best to turn others as well, keeping him from completing the task. If he moved the wolf the eagle turned away, if he moved the orca the mouse moved by itself, and so on. As irritated as this mechanism was, however, there was an observable pattern. Vorador kept turning the pedestals for a while until he was certain how it played out. Once he was sure of that, he set to work properly. When he turned the owl, the rabbit changed its position and he immediately went to turn the fox to face it. This in turn moved the orca to face the seal.
Methodically he persisted, keeping the pattern he had perceived tightly in mind. Then, finally, he turned the wolf to face the deer and none of the other pedestals moved in response. The puzzle was complete. Beneath him in the floor there was a loud clunking sound, as if some ancient device had finally been given the instruction to move. Vorador felt the ground tremble slightly in response to that movement.
Suddenly a set of rubble off to one side which he had ignored until now began to shift, pieces of it running off in different directions. Then a hidden trapdoor which had been concealed by the debris opened, pushing it all aside. With a loud metallic groaning, up out of its hidden place rose a large, towering blue-black obelisk. It rose up a good twenty feet before coming to a stop, a knife of obsidian darkness in the light cast by the fungus all around.
Vorador recognised its type immediately, not just by sight but also by the sense of trapped energy within. He had seen its kind before and each time he had, the energies within had granted to him a new form. This time he was not startled by its appearance. He had been partly expecting it. Rising to his full height, he took a moment to consider the monolith before him. Whoever had trapped the essence of animals in stone to await release such as this had had powers which greatly trumped his own.
The energy he sensed within this obelisk was similar to the last two but also very different at the same time. There had been a patient calling with the others, an invitation to accept their gift and free their essence. This stone was all but roaring, demanding to be freed. He could feel its urgent persistence and savagery lashing against him like the tide against a shoreline.
He debated with himself whether or not he ought to even take whatever form this stone had for him. Was such savagery controllable? Or perhaps, he thought to himself, a better question might be what use he could put such brutishness to? Perhaps, given his situation and the odds against him, uncontrolled brutality was just what was required.
After only a moment to make up his mind, he firmly nodded once and crossed the distance to the stone and reached out with his right hand. As he laid his palm on the surface, the jolt that struck him as the connection was made rocked him straight down to his knees. The energy, seemingly enraged from being encapsulated for so long, rocketed out of its prison and into his body. It was like being struck with a war hammer right in the chest.
Gasping, he found that he could not move. The energy had him totally paralyzed and he could feel all the power and knowledge that went with it pouring down into his body. Images, concepts, and ideas flashed in his mind, all overshadowed by a powerful rage.
That anger, however, was perfectly compatible with his own personality. He had his own rage, built up over centuries of injustice, rage he had barely kept in check and only recently learned to master. This new anger flowed in and merged with it, becoming his own and under that same rigid control. After a moment he found that the anger was now his to command, a tool like any other.
Finally the boiling energies settled and the new form was crystal clear in his mind.
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“The other forms I had assumed and obtained were subtle and designed to overcome obstacles through wit and skill. Such was not the case with this.”
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Almost automatically and without thought he began to change. He swelled out, doubling his own bulk. Muscles knitted and bulged and his face pushed out into a short muzzle full of teeth. Over his body, a thick black fur spread and became an armour against anything that would intend to inflict harm upon him. His hands became paws that ended in thick black claws and the strength in them was awe inspiring.
Wrapped up in such power he rose up and towered, a mighty colossus of strength.
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“The shape of the bear was suitable for only one thing: brutal and savage destruction. In this form, my physical strength and endurance were vastly increased. My thick hide made me all but impervious to injury. This form was the peak of a raw physical ideal.”
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