“The Celestial...what?” Ajatar asked, raising an eyebrow with a confused and partly stunned look of surprise and scepticism on her face.
“Arrow.” Vorador repeated with a wry grin of amusement at her surprise. He was standing off to one side in the chamber the Grandmaster of the Serioli had taken for herself, a smaller and more functional room than the suite Janos enjoyed. The chamber entrance had been marked with the double curving, fang-like symbol of the Zephonim, suggesting that perhaps this had been a room created for Zephon’s convenience during official state visits.
It was quite large enough to be considered spacey but it wasn’t as luxuriously furnished, with plainer decorations and a more threadbare carpet. This room, however, had the advantage of a natural refracted light, coming in through a vein of quartz crystal that ran through the rock of the ceiling directly up to the outside cliff. The subdued sunlight was filtered down through it and then suffused the chamber with a pale, natural illumination.
Ajatar had settled in well to this room, sitting on the edge of the chamber’s bed, which was more lengthy than wide. It was still large enough for her to have laid on it with her wings spread. Laid out across a table was another of the drapes holding Kain’s imperial symbol. It was still in the process of being stitched and customised so if it was intended for Ajatar herself, she wanted to wait until it was utilitarian before she wore it. Personally the idea of his teacher wearing Kain’s symbol made Vorador roll his eyes in disappointment for her choice.
Tiamatu was still busy with her work and her strange equipment and had flatly refused to explain to anyone who asked the science behind her tinkering. She had told them it was beyond their understanding and to mind their own business. This dismissive, cavalier attitude had not won her many admirers or friends amongst the Serioli, most of whom were already nervous and resentful at having any of her kind in their midst. Still, Ajatar had left very precise instructions on how their guests were to be treated. Her soldiers cared more about her command structure and good opinion, rather than the delicate politics of a ceasefire.
Upon being informed of the ceasefire, Warrior Ansu had immediately sent out scouts to keep an eye on the borders of the Hylden nation. While a ceasefire might be a coveted and desirable outcome of such a long conflict, he was not stupid enough to simply take the Hylden at their word. If the promise of an end to the conflict proved false, they would be ready and prepared for it. Vorador had been able to get him to agree to inform the Cabal Vampires of any military action.
With no other recourse but to wait the several days it would take to see Janos’ body and mind restored, Vorador found himself seeking the advice of his old teacher.
The Grandmaster of the Serioli sat there in perplexity, clearly left surprised and at a loss for words as to the request the Seer had made.
“And just what is that supposed to be?” Ajatar asked him after a long moment, with almost comical bewilderment at the conundrum. Vorador shrugged one shoulder and then folded his arms in the small of his back, turning around to face her.
“I haven’t the faintest idea.” He admitted dryly and with a half smile. “But I wasn’t about to admit that in front of her.”
It would have been the height of embarrassment for him to have confessed ignorance on the subject, yet it was entirely possible that the Seer had already known of his lack of knowledge and had purposely let his pride carry him through the motions of pretending to know. All so she could enjoy watching him squirm. That would have been like her.
Still, he wondered at her motives for such a request of him. While he wanted what she promised him quite intensely, he was not so foolish as to let himself be directed around a labyrinth of deceit, manipulated to no purpose. He had heard the story of the events Raziel had told him and throughout them all had been the clear trace of sinister misdirection by one party or another. Vorador was quite determined not to let himself be drawn into such a tangled web, regardless of any tantalising incentive. 
“So she wants you to find an artefact you have never heard of and in a place you’ve never been.” Ajatar more stated than asked, pushing out her left wing and stretching it wide to the edges of its full span before resettling it.
“Essentially.” Vorador replied with a sharp nod and then tilted his head to one side with a wry expression. “I was hoping you could enlighten me.” Ajatar slumped her shoulders with a partly exasperated sigh.
“I have never heard of such a thing.” She said tartly, almost resentfully. Vorador raised an eyebrow and adopted an expression of mock surprise.
“The Serioli...ignorant of lore?” He asked with affected surprise. “I had thought the Order preserved knowledge, regardless of its source or antiquity.”
Ajatar snorted through her nose and then leaned back against the large puffy pillows, tucking her wings to her shoulders so she could lie back without them being in the way.
“The ancient war with the Hylden lasted for a thousand years, an entire eon.” She told him exasperatedly. “The beginning of that conflict was long before I was even born. I grew up in a culture under constant threat of the next battle.”
Then she paused, her eyes going distant and hazy as if she were not entirely in the present at that moment, perhaps lost in her memories of that awful conflict. Vorador could only imagine, from the stories his sire had once told, the near apocalyptic struggle. The flicker of suppressed trauma came and went in a seeming flash and then she was back to her animated self, blinking to clear her mind of such thoughts.
“If such an artefact from before the war did exist, knowledge of it was lost in the misty, forgotten eons of the past.” She said quickly as if to cover up her lapse. “For all we know, she simply made this artefact up.”
Vorador grunted in distaste.
“I doubt it, or why ask me to find it at all?” He concluded. “She is not some errant prankster to send me on a goose chase.”
“She will have some ulterior motive.” The Grandmaster warned him seriously.
“Of course she does.” He replied. He didn’t really need warning on that score. Obviously the Seer had a far greater purpose in mind for him and finding this supposed Arrow for her was only a part of a larger whole.
“And simply wanting it found?” Ajatar continued, frowning deeply. “Why just found? Why not have it brought back to her?” Vorador had wondered about that himself. The Seer had been very careful in her use of words. She had said that all she wanted was the artefact found. She had said nothing about retrieving the item.
“Yet another question her request raises.” He concluded with a sour tone. “Even if we knew what it was she wanted in the first place.”
Ajatar pulled one leg up onto the bed and let the other dangle over the side in a lazy stance, her arms resting on her stomach.
“But perhaps we know this artefact she wants by another name?” She volunteered, looking up at the ceiling.
“Do you know of any lore from before the war that might point to a similar object?” Vorador asked, but she frowned and shook her head.
“Before the war started, our people’s spiritual identity was overtaken by the preponderance of the Wheel of Fate, spearheaded by the prophet Raziel-Divus.” She told him. “During that religious surge, much of the earlier culture was decreed heresy and an affront to the purity of our people’s spirituality.” Her expression became flat and decidedly unfriendly, her voice crisp with an undercurrent of indignation. The Serioli were the sole exception to the ancient Vampires’ total adherence to the tenants and doctrine of the Wheel of Fate. “Anything offensive to the Divus and their supposed Oracle God was almost all destroyed and cast away.”
Vorador tilted his head to one side in a half amused look.
“Except for the Serioli and the elemental forging lore they protect?” He asked rhetorically. Ajatar let out a short back of amused laughter and leaned her head back against her pillow.
“No, not us.” She side with mirth for the thought. “They didn’t quite have the militant conviction necessary to do away with our Order.”
She held up one talon and used her knowledge of the elemental control to call forth the principles of Conflict and Nature, merging them together over her open palm. Combined they burst forth into a glowing orb of summoned fire.
“Despite our adherence to the elemental studies of old which were in defiance of the Wheel of Fate’s religious monopoly, they needed our skills at forging and battle for the war. They couldn’t afford to renounce us.” She flipped the orb of fire between her talons as if she were playing with a discarded flower petal. She flicked it up with her thumb and then caught it again like a ball. “They had to tolerate the ‘Heretic Army’.” She said it with some amusement, for the Serioli had taken the label as a mark of distinction and now proudly referred to themselves as the Heretic Army.
The Grandmaster looked into the glowing orb in her hand for a long moment and then slowly her expression changed, her eyebrows coming together in a puzzled frown. Vorador could see the memories and thoughts coming together in her mind.
“And while I know of no ‘Arrow’...” She began slowly, clenching her talons so that the fire went out with a small puff of smoke. “Now that my mind has been stirred, there was something...” Then she was silent again.
“What?” Vorador prompted her as the silence dragged on. Ajatar remained silent despite this, as if she were collecting all she could from her memories on whatever she was going to say before she voiced it.
“Just after the end of the war and the casting of the Dark Gift curse, many of our people despaired at such a fate.” She began after that moment had passed. “Many destroyed themselves in their mental agony.”
Vorador knew this, of course. He had been there in the Citadel itself for some time and had seen firsthand when the devout began killing themselves one after the other, often in large groups in order to all ascend to the Wheel and be ‘released’ to the blessed realm together.
“But there was a self-appointed prophet who declared that he had been given a vision by one of the Divus and that in this vision a strange place had been revealed to him.” Ajatar went on and Vorador’s ears flicked up, his attention drawn. This was new to him.
“In this special blessed location, this supposed prophet claimed, there existed a cleansing Cistern and that the water poured through this mechanism could remove the curse from anyone who drank from it.” Vorador blinked at this intelligence. A Vampire who tried to drink water of any kind would have been dissolved from the inside out. Ajatar caught the look and nodded in agreement, smiling at the stupidity.
“It was obvious hysterical fantasy to me but many a desperate Vampire believed him.” She said and then looked at him directly. “Including your sire.”
“Janos?” Vorador asked incredulously. He knew his sire to be as much a religious enthusiast as many others of his kind, but he had never been so much a fanatic that he would let his beliefs override his basic commonsense.
“He was the most adamant about trying to find a ‘cure’ rather than just committing suicide.” Ajatar explained. “This so-called vision fired his imagination, so much so that he assisted the grubby prophet in organising an expedition into the distant east, where the vision supposedly told them to search.”
Vorador frowned and uncrossed his arms, reaching up to rub a talon against the underside of his chin in thought.
“My sire never told me of this.” He admitted perplexedly.
“Did he need to tell you?” Ajatar asked him with a raised eyebrow. “I would have thought you knew of that expedition already.” Vorador looked at her with an openly confused expression.
“Why would you say that?” He asked her.
“Janos accompanied the expedition to the east.” The Grandmaster went on. “But he had to return to the Citadel when he found a human boy starving to death on the shores of a sulphur lake. The others went on without him.” Their eyes met. “You were that boy, Vorador.” She told him.
Vorador stood there with his lips parted slightly in his surprise. He turned his head slowly from side to side as he tried to dig deep in his memory, rummaging around for any sort of detail that would either confirm or deny her claim.
“I remember nothing of that.” He admitted grimly after he found the attempt inconclusive in either direction.
-0-
“My recall of the past several centuries and even eons was quite acute. I could recall with precision the rise of Kain’s empire, the resistance struggle against the Sarafan Order, the butchery of Moebius’ genocidal crusade, my vengeance on the Circle of Nine for their support of the old genocide and the murder of my sire, the fall of the ancient Citadel... and only then does my memory start to become clouded. My earliest memory is of a training exercise in the halls of the old Serioli fort, learning the art of elemental control in the forge. Anything before that was an impenetrable mist.”
-0-
How exactly he had first met Janos, in the depths of his human childhood, was so faded by time that he could literally remember nothing of it. As far as he had known he had always been a ward in Janos’ service in one form or another. Janos had been his father figure for so long that the mere idea of a time in his life where this was not so was an alien concept.
He tried to imagine it. So he had been discovered by a sulphur lake, a hostile environment with white-hot geysers spewing up all around. What had he, as a young human boy, supposedly been doing in such a place?
“I recall the event now because the Vampire who commissioned the shield, forged from the Eclipse-ka, also left on that expedition.” Ajatar continued, referring to that strange lunar metal native to the demon realm, the mineral that Enlil’s terrible spear, Gáe Bolga, had been forged from. Vorador recalled briefly she had said she had made a shield from the rare ore. “But only Janos ever returned. The others were never heard from again. No one went after them and the prophet was denounced as a heretic and a loon and his predictions discarded.”
Then she threw both legs over the side of the bed, sitting up sharply.
“I don’t know if what they sought was indeed this ‘Arrow’ that the Seer desires you to find or whether the two are completely unrelated, but perhaps it may be.” She said, but Vorador did not think this would be likely. It would have been too much of a coincidence, even if it weren’t the only clue at his disposal.
“Although if this is indeed the case, I have no idea where you should start your search.” Ajatar warned him and Vorador concluded that he was not going to have any more luck with her store of knowledge.
-0-
“I was no fool to stupidly think that all the Seer wanted from me was the retrieval of some forgotten artefact. I had known her too long to be so easily led around. There was more to this than she was going to say. I was also quite firmly convinced that I was not the only one she was attempting to manipulate. Both Raziel and Kain had encountered her and no doubt were somewhere out there even now, doing her bidding without realising it. I was loath to join them.”
-0-
He hadn’t known exactly where the blue skeletal ghoul who called himself Raziel had gone after they had retrieved Janos from the Ziggurat, but he had noticed that the Nexus Stone they had also recovered had disappeared at the same time. He had been sure that was no coincidence and he had also been sure that the Seer had been involved in some way. Only when Ajatar announced the potential for Kain’s return did he understand finally that Raziel had gone to fetch Kain from ‘beyond the rim of time’, whatever that meant.
Were those two not enough for her schemes? Surely Kain, the fabled and grandiosely self-proclaimed Scion of Balance and Raziel, a saviour to all and none, were sufficient to handle any task she might need fulfilled. What use was he to her now?
If he were wise, he knew he should simply turn about and go back to his castle on the distant archipelago. The Cabal would have need of him, even if he was loath to stand over them like an ever-present, doting parent to tend to their every hurt. They would never grow into an independent culture and people in their own right with him there to be constantly relied upon. Even when he had gone to enforced slumber for centuries they had opted to sleep as well, leaving only one of them to stay on watch like a sentry.
Perhaps, then, he could find some purpose for himself amongst the Serioli. He had, after all, once been a member of their order, although so long ago that the kinship had lost its meaning for him. If he were to remain here with them he would very easily find himself lost in ancient nostalgia. Already the Serioli were attempting to create a large elemental forge in the main hall of this stronghold. Their diligent efforts were being rewarded as the main furnace took form, fashioned by a large metallic drum they had beaten into shape.
There were any number of things Vorador could be doing and probably should as he knew better of himself, the Seer and the world itself.
-0-
“And yet, her promise to restore my loved ones was a dagger twisting inside my heart. If the Hylden succeeded, Janos would be raised from his mental captivity and the first half of her promise would be fulfilled. But did I think she was even capable of performing the other half, restoring life to Umah who had been long dead for eons? I didn’t know, but temptation gnawed at me.”
-0-
Vorador found himself wandering somewhat aimlessly through the corridors of Kain’s stronghold, his mind on other things and hardly even noticing those around him. So much had happened already in such a short time and so many questions had been raised. That strange creature and its bones of elemental power, that Tiamatu had claimed to be the source of the Dark Gift curse, raised many questions on their own that intrigued him despite his own attempt at maintaining a professional, dispassionate reserve. What was it and where had it come from? What was this Celestial Arrow that the Seer seemed to think was so vital to her long-term plans, what did it do, where in Nosgoth was it hidden and why was she so vehement about its uncovering?
Too many questions and not enough answers. He supposed that he was going to have to swallow his pride and simply ask the Seer what she was talking about. As embarrassing as it was it might just be the only option available to him.
As much as he detested himself for acknowledging it, even to himself, the Seer was right. To see Umah and Janos, his father and daughter restored he would do anything. Admitting that left him feeling depressed and disgusted with himself.
Apep, one of the Serioli’s best warriors and a disciple in the elemental control of Air, came out of a side corridor. He was a tall individual with wings that were missing large patches of feathers. He had a curving sword strapped to one side. When he saw Vorador coming, he stopped to wait, his expression flat and disapproving.
Vorador frowned. Even when he had been an official member of their Order he had never gotten along well with Apep. He had been distrustful of humans and scornful of the newly created hybrids that Janos Audron had passed on the Dark Gift to. He had some notions of racial superiority that put him at odds with the newer Vampiric generations. This one had often, during the training of the new generation, made insulting, derogatory remarks about the wholesomeness, cleanliness and general nature of those hybrids.
“And here he is! The great patriarch, who took after the role of his sire and fathered a new race of Vampire hybrids.” He announced harshly and mockingly as Vorador drew near. “So, has being lord and master of some rocky crag in the middle of the sea become tiresome? You need to come back and pester us?”
“Petty insults do you no credit.” Vorador replied tartly and made to barge past him, but Apep reached out and caught his shoulder in one hand. His grip was unnecessarily tight.
“Not one step further, Vorador.” He said and his voice was fierce. “Not until you answer a few questions.”
Vorador half turned to look back over his shoulder, his eyes frosty.
“Just where were you and the other cowardly hybrids when our fort was under attack?” Apep demanded in a low voice that was almost a growl. “We had to fight off that upstart Moebius’ stinking human army on our own. You’d all run off to save your own skins, hadn’t you?”
Vorador did not dignify that implied insult and accusation with a response. The second generation Vampires, turned by Janos in an effort to preserve their bloodline, had been ordered to leave the fort before it had come under direct attack. Vorador himself had been under orders from Ajatar herself to conceal one of the four tablets of Dark Fable. He had done so and then escaped with whatever he could salvage before the main attack. But he was not going to try to explain that to anyone who thought him a coward, especially not this illiberal fool.
“Take your hand off of me.” He told Apep deliberately slowly and with an undercurrent of ice to his voice. Vorador did not need to physically threaten violence in order to seem intimidating. His manner and tone had been perfected over centuries so that when he wanted, he could unnerve even a fledgling Vampire in a blood rage with a mere glance.
There was a very tense, silent moment between them and then with a snort Apep released his grip and took a few steps backward, glaring as if to cover his own unease. “And don’t ever accuse me of pusillanimity again.” Vorador said as a final parting remark and then carried on, leaving Apep standing there balefully glaring after him. Probably trying to figure out what ‘pusillanimity’ actually meant.
Now even more irritated that such a backwards attitude had survived into this far slung future as well as the worthiness of Serioli scepticism, Vorador sought for himself some privacy so that he could think without interruption or distraction and take some time to gather himself. Eventually he found a room that none of the Serioli were presently using, probably because it had no real practical purpose and the Serioli were very practical-minded.
The chamber seemed to be a meeting hall for any visiting clan leaders with large, golden throne-like chairs placed around a round metallic table. At the head of the table was a larger throne, carved and sculpted to resemble the imperial bat icon. Each of the clan symbols was carved into the table where the other seats were placed, in order of their overall importance and prestige. The Razielim clan symbol was near the head of the table and the Melchahim was near the end. A few drapes with the clan banners hung from spots high on the walls, dulled by neglect so that the icons were barely visible anymore.
The Serioli had not even bothered to renovate this room as they had many others to choose from which were far more useful to them. As such the room had remained as the imperial upper class had left it, preserved from the time of its last official usage.
Somewhat whimsically, Vorador strode up the table and sat in the throne intended for the so-called ruler of Nosgoth. For an indulgent moment he contemplated what it would be like to be in such a position of supreme authority. Even the fantasy had an admittedly pleasant glow to it. No wonder a materialistic and dominating soul like Kain’s had been so enwrapped with this concept.
Vorador supposed that he himself might have been obsessed with power in his younger days as well, although he had kept his ambition to ruling his own private domain hidden in the depths of the Termagant forest. That had been more than sufficient to satisfy his desire for a kingdom. Kain had taken the idea entirely too far. A world ruled by Vampires? He might as well have advocated a world of sheep under the command of a wolf.
Sighing, Vorador leaned back in the chair and as he did so, his talons curled around the underside of the armrest. There he felt a strange protruding switch that was just hidden from view in between the decorative carvings. Frowning, the Vampire felt around it experimentally. It was set into the chair itself and seemed to be connected to a mechanism hidden within.
Puzzled by this, Vorador purposely flipped the small switch. There was a dull ‘thunk’ from within the chair and the vibrating sensation of gears beginning to turn. Vorador looked about him in surprise as with regular precision, hidden compartments in the walls began opening one by one. Behind each one was a mesh of clockwork and gears that began churning, spewing out dust from between their neglected gaps. The entire room seemed to have been artfully built to conceal this complex mechanism.
Then there was the loud grating of stone on stone from directly behind him. Vorador sprang up from the chair and spun about in surprise, watching as a section of the wall began to slide backward. Then it parted in the middle and became the entranceway to a dark passageway.
Vorador stared at it a moment in silent stillness and then began to approach. As he neared, orbs set in the walls just inside began to glow with a pale light, revealing that a short distance into the exposed tunnel was a flight of smooth steps leading up.
“Well, well, Kain.” Vorador muttered to himself with a raised eyebrow, tapping the end of his chin with a talon. “Just what have you decided to hide in here?” This intrigued Vorador quite a bit. Kain was not the sort of person to conceal things lightly, not without a good reason. He usually preferred to have his achievements out in full display for all to see.
Pleased to have a pleasant distraction, Vorador began inside the passage and then up the stairs. There were more orbs set in the walls that began to glow as he approached, lighting the way for him as he progressed. The stairs went on for quite some distance, twisting and turning around natural fissures and ore deposits in the rock the fortress was hollowed out from. He more than once had to step over a crack that had appeared in the stairs, a clear indication that this place had not seen maintenance for at least a century.
After quite some time he came to a large metal door set at the end of the stairs. By now he had been so twisted around that he had mostly lost his sense of direction and location. This position could be anywhere in relation to the rest of the stronghold. The door before him was bolted with three bars across the top, middle and bottom and there was a large lock off to one side.
Vorador unbolted each of the bars one after the other, sliding them back despite the stiffness of each mechanism. As for the lock, the Vampire simply drew himself back and then thrust out his hand. The unleashed burst of force shattered the lock into a dozen metallic pieces and the door crashed open.
The chamber beyond was cavernous and pitch black. But he could see much better in the dark then an average human or even an average Vampire and stepped inside, looking around and smelling the stale air. This place had not been disturbed in some time. The room seemed rather plain and utilitarian when compared to the rest of the fortress and seemed to lack even a single clan symbol to mark it as had been the custom elsewhere.
Then as he continued further into the room, another orb began to glow. This one was set in the vaulted ceiling overhead and was far larger, emitting much more light. Gradually the light increased and Vorador found himself looking around at a very strange collection.
The chamber was full of stands and display cases, dozens of them all perfectly lined up in neat rows and all hidden beneath a thick layer of concealing dust. He walked over to one of the stands and brushed away the dust with the back of one hand. Beneath the glass, laid out on a soft cushion was a single one-handed sword.
Vorador lifted the glass lid and reached inside, lifting out the blade and holding it close to consider it with the eye of a professional blacksmith. The weapon was clearly of human make and forged from commonplace iron but there were traces of elemental control over it, albeit with a clearly reduced skill. This sword could very likely have been made by the eventual successors of the Ancient Serioli arts, a few chosen humans who had tried to keep the art alive.
In the next stand was another weapon, although this one made out of proper steel. It was a large spiked mace about the length of his forearm, which had clearly seen some frequent use as some of its spikes were dented and dulled.
Directly opposite was a tall glass cabinet with a leather mannequin inside, stuffed to stay upright and in a clear battle stance. Draped over it was a very strange set of black armour and when he saw it, Vorador knew it immediately. Kain himself had worn that very armour when he had first come to him in a quest to find a means of besting the Circle of Nine. Now Vorador understood what this chamber actually was.
-0-
“This sealed room I saw was a secret display chamber. An armoury, where Kain had lovingly kept all the artefacts, weapons and armour he had claimed over the centuries. While his growing powers had made relying on such trinkets unnecessary, he had preserved the items for their service in this museum to his own vanity.”
-0-
This place was little more than Kain’s private collection, his trophy room and treasure cave. As Vorador went on he found more and more of Kain’s collected trinkets. There were artefacts from across Nosgoth’s history kept here, all of them laid out on display. Many of them Vorador recognised. There were full sets of Sarafan armour from their fascist rule, along with their cruel weapons. There were sets of armour from earlier periods, such as the pure marble white armour that had once adorned the militia of the kingdom of Willendorf.
Various artefacts were also laid out in abundance, small magical trinkets that might have proven useful to a novice Vampire. Especially a curving, bladed throwing weapon placed out in rows of six, a vicious little weapon called a Flay. Vorador picked one up to examine it, holding it gingerly between his talons. Its four edges were as sharp as razorblades and if the weapon were thrown just right, it could cleave meat from bones.
Glancing to one side, Vorador blinked and then smiled, seeing an old friend. Set up on a mannequin was a set of plated red armour, riveted with many steel spikes and styled to look like many open demonic maws. He knew this armour well for he had forged it himself in his first elemental forge, in the old workshop at the ancient Citadel. It was the Chaos armour, a raiment of some power, enchanted so that any wound inflicted on its wearer would also be dealt to the attacker. He had wondered where this armour had been displaced, but with events in Nosgoth as they had been at the time, he had had more pressing concerns to deal with. He was glad someone had found use for the armour, even if it had been Kain.
Coming to the next set of displayed trinkets, Vorador pulled his lips back in a sneer of disgust. He had no idea where in all of Nosgoth Kain had come across such an item, but the armour on display here was formed of flesh. It was a disgusting combination of muscle, veins and sinew magically held together in the most hideous way. While it was abstractly a work of genius to create such a thing, it was also the product of a clearly disturbed mind. Whatever magic had created it still had to be very strong for the flesh not to have decayed even after all these centuries.
Vorador turned resolutely away from it. As he did so he turned to face another cabinet and saw what lay inside. Two weapons, both of them totally identical so that they appeared to be mirror images of one another. They were double bladed war axes, each with a long handle to give the weapons a wide range.
Once again Vorador recognised a trinket in Kain’s little treasure vault.
-0-
“Ah yes, I remembered these two well enough. Havoc and Malice, twin axe blades forged by my own hand in the elemental style of Earth. I had given them to a favoured disciple of my siring, but he had been killed by the Sarafan and the axes were taken as trophies by Malek himself.”
-0-
The axes were made from ordinary steel but reinforced with Serioli arts and had been two of his best forging achievements while he had taken up residence in the Forest. Even eons later, the twin axes were free of any sort of blemish and looked as new as the day they had been formed. Vorador looked down at the weapons for a long moment, lost in the memories of long ago that they invoked, the nostalgia like a gaping vortex that had opened up before him.
Then, on a sudden surge of impulsive decision, he pulled their case open and took them out, hefting them high and testing their weight and balance. Malek may have stolen these weapons, but fate had delivered them back to their rightful owner.
Clearly that was a sign. A sign of what, Vorador did not know, but it was a sign nonetheless.
-0-
“I doubt Kain would mind if I took them. They were, after all, mine to begin with.”
-0-