When the barrier on the door dissipated, it immediately burst open. Ajatar flew into the room, both of her short blades drawn and in each hand. Behind her were Ansu with his axe held up and Apep with his own sword drawn back as if he was going to leap into violence at any moment. A dozen more Serioli were behind them, weapons in their hands.
It was only the scream of utterly irrepressible pain from Tiamatu that caused them to slow and then come to a stop. Ajatar spread her wings out wide to bar their ways, her large golden eyes fixed on the spectacle before them. Her expression was one of stunned and incredulous awe at the sight before her.
In the moment of immobility that followed, Janos Audron let out a deep groan of groggy awakening and with one motion hoisted himself up to a sitting position in the bed. He rubbed one hand against his head, his lips drawn back over his fangs in a hiss as he moved very stiff limbs. Then he opened his eyes. They were unfocused and clearly he did not see everything at first. The Ancient Vampire blinked a few times and then looked about himself in dazed confusion, clearly not comprehending his situation.
When his eyes fell on Tiamatu, he stopped and simply stared.
The leader of the House of Knowledge kept on screaming and screaming, her back arching in her agony. All stunned eyes in the room were now on her so there was no mistaking what happened next. The bony spurs growingout of her back began to elongate, pushing out and expanding. There was the audible sound of bones snapping and then clicking back into new configurations. Under her rippling skin, muscle was beginning to develop thickly around the changing spurs. New, powerful muscle pushed up and around itself as it knitted into place and her back looked as if a dozen writhing snakes were trapped under her skin. A thick, transparent liquid was leaking out of the wounds on her back now, filling the air with a pungent stench that smelt of a concentrated musk.
The spurs were stretching on and on, pushing up until they projected a few feet out from her back. As they grew, they seemed to segment themselves into separate pieces all joined together by new ligaments and joints.
Tiamatu’s screaming was cut off by another induced vomit, and with a sharp jerk, the spur on the left-hand side of her back began to twitch and pull away. It was twisting up at a sharp angle, pulling at the skin that held it in place. It seemed to stretch obscenely. Then with a sudden flourish and a spray of bloody gore, the spur seemed to unfold itself like a paper fan and spread wide.
Everyone stared at the unmistakable structure of a massive wing. It was beautifully proportioned, with long, elegant fingers that arched. Spread out wide it had a span of about ten feet. That was a larger wingspan than even the wings of the Ancient Vampires in the room watching.
Tiamatu collapsed almost onto her face and this partly muffled her last scream as the spur on the right began to push up and out, twisting and unfolding until it too spread itself out. The two wing structures held themselves up high, almost touching the ceiling, dripping with blood and worse. Tiamatu herself was struggling for breath and trembling violently, trying her best to rise from the floor but did not seem to have the strength.
But no one paid any attention to her. All eyes were on the wings as they began to change yet again. Between the fingers and support, a thick membrane was very quickly beginning to fill in. Watching it spread was like watching a fungus consume across spoiled food in rapid time. The membrane was faintly coloured a pale green and gave the wings a very alien look, like those of some giant, unearthly bat.
The Seer looked down at her kinswoman and a slow, knowing smile parted her lips. Tiamatu had done it right. The wings had been formed; the muscle mass to support them encouraged to grow and the rest of her body had not withered as Marduk’s had. Unlike his wings, though, these were even larger and had much more physical support across their joints and the membrane was much tougher. In fact, it looked almost as if it were made of scales rather than stretched skin.
Slowly, Tiamatu began to rise but she swayed back and forth unsteadily, finding that the extra weight had affected her centre of balance. She got to her knees and breathing hard, both in exhaustion and trepidation, she turned her head to look back over her shoulder and her eyes widened in fearful joy. As if testing to see whether she could, she moved her wings until they circled her like a protective tent. Her breath came out in a hoarse, almost rapturous whine as she ran the tips of her shaking fingers over the wing membrane. Tears rolled down her face, not of pain this time, but rather of an exultant joy at her success.
A shadow fell over her and she glanced up. Standing over her was Ajatar-Cadre, staring down at her with a strangely unreadable expression. As the silence endured, the Serioli warriors stood there in awkward and stunned immobility. They did not know what to do now. The bizarre transformation had drained them of their anger and zeal.
Ajatar looked down at her, unblinking and quiet, and then knelt slightly and offered Tiamatu a hand to rise. The newly fledged flying Hylden looked at that cloven hand for a long moment. That hand became symbolic somehow, an icon that represented a conciliation, coadjuvancy and in some way, a warm welcome. As if it was the collective hand of one flying species welcoming the arrival of another.
Tiamatu stared back at her and then reached up and took that hand. With Ajatar’s help she rose up to her feet, her new wings flexing back and forth randomly as new muscles and nerves twitched; misfiring from their sudden emergence.
Seeing the two of them standing there, each with wings and their hands clasped together, Vorador felt all the anger and bitterness for the deception leech out of him. Try as he might, he simply could not keep his fury.
 “You will need time to build up your strength.” Ajatar began and her voice was soft, more tender and gentle than Vorador had ever heard her speak before. Tiamatu shook her head once in denial.
 “No-no-” She breathed. “My people have waited long enough.” Grunting, she let her dewy wings spread out wide, flexing them back and forth. “And I must be sure!”
With a sudden lurch the Hylden woman turned and ran, bolting across the chamber and tucking her wings as close to her body as she could. Before anyone in the room could move, she hurled herself up and out through the stained glass window. The multi-coloured image of Kain’s victory over the Sarafan Lord shattered outward with a loud clatter and Tiamatu vanished.
A moment later Ajatar herself followed, running across the room and leaping out the window after her. Vorador quickly rushed to the opening and stared up outside. Ansu was right behind him, staring up over his shoulder at an incredible sight.
Tumbling, soaring, swooping and diving through the empty air were an Ancient winged Vampire and a Hylden. The two of them circled around one another like a pair of birds. Tiamatu showed her inexperience by flapping a great deal more than was necessary to stay aloft, her economy of strength and movement leaving much to be desired. When she fumbled, Ajatar flew underneath her to aid in her support.
Higher and higher and farther and farther, the two of them flew until they were reduced to distant specs against the cloud cover.
As one, Vorador and Ansu turned to regard one another. The looks they exchanged were ones of stunned incredulity and they read in each other’s faces a certainty that they had just borne witness to an event that transcended mere historical merit and passed into the realms of legend. It was an occurrence that had the potential to change everything in the relations between Vampires and Hylden and in ways neither of them could guess.
Suddenly Vorador turned and looked behind him. Standing there, his wings drooping in slack tiredness, was Janos Audron. Vorador felt his relief soar at the sight of his sire out of bed but then it quickly died away.
Janos’ face was pale and his golden eyes were wide with stunned shock, and yet at the same time were slightly unfocused. Vorador could see that despite his mobility, his sire was not fully aware yet. He had seemingly been so startled by what he had just witnessed that he didn’t even see either Vorador or Ansu as he stumbled up to the broken window and stared up out at the now distant flying pair.
 “Is this some lurid, disgusting fantasy concocted by my deepest inner voices?!” Audron demanded and seemed to be speaking to himself.  “A Vampire and a Hylden...flying together in the skies of Nosgoth!?” He shook his head and then held up his hands to cover his eyes, his wings dragging almost lifelessly on the floor. “Have I plunged into the depths of Hell to be rewarded with a vision of such utter blasphemy?”
He turned away from the sight sharply, keeping his face hidden behind his hands. Vorador quickly looked him over, judging his creator’s response to the event and his current state of wakefulness. True to her word, Tiamatu seemed to have roused Janos. The physical signs of his time within the demon realm seemed to have all but completely disappeared and he seemed more alert and responsive than he had been since his rescue from the Ziggurat.
 “No, Sire, you are not in Hell.” Vorador told him soothingly and gently placed a hand on his bare shoulder. “Not yet.”
Janos flinched from the contact and looked up. His gaze was slightly unfocused and he seemed to be looking through him, as if his first-born fledgling was not there. Then his eyes drew back to centre and his expression subtly changed, becoming less slackened and automatic and now full of real emotion. He was silent for a moment and then reached out and held his son’s arm.
 “Vorador?” He asked as if he could not quite believe he was there, his grip on Vorador’s arm unnecessarily strong. “Where am I?” Janos then began looking around himself, now finally taking an interest in his new location. The stirrings of alarm were clear in his expression.
 “You are in our stronghold, Audron.” Ansu said, coming to his left side while Vorador held him on the right. “We had you brought here for your protection.”
Janos turned to look at him and he took a sudden startled step backwards. Vorador perceived quickly that his sire was not alarmed but merely stunned by the presence of another of his species. Janos had not seen another of the Ancient Vampires for thousands of years.
 “Ansu!? Of the Serioli?!” He began in a hoarse voice, almost spluttering in his surprise. Evidentially he recalled his fledgling’s combat trainer, even after so long. Quickly Janos glanced around and his jaw dropped at the sight of the other Serioli warriors in the chamber as well. He blinked several times as if he thought his vision was obscured by a cruel illusion.
When he finally accepted that what he was seeing was real, his drooping wings snapped right back up again. But the look on his face was one of angry indignation rather than happy surprise as might have been expected.
“What is this?” Janos demanded and his voice almost broke in his outrage. “I had thought I was the last of the Originals to survive!” His tone was bitterly accusing and he turned to grasp Ansu by the front of his white toga. “Where have you Serioli been hiding all this time?!”
All the warriors in the room turned to look at him, for his raised voice and comment immediately caught their attention. Apep flared in furious indignation and for a moment he looked like he might go for his sword.
 “Serioli do not hide.” Ansu told him with tight-lipped reserve, his eyebrows perfectly level in a neutral expression as he quite firmly removed Janos’ hands from his toga. Janos was still weak from his recent ordeals and he was easily disengaged. “We were brought forward from the fall of the Citadel to this distant time by Lord Kain.”
Janos’ anger seemed to melt instantly and he frowned in perplexity. Vorador watched his sire most carefully, sensing that Janos was still emotionally unstable from his deprivations and mental strife, even if he were now somewhat cognitive. He also seemed to be in a state of flux and once his attention was diverted, seemed not to remember the sight of the flying Hylden.
 “Kain?” Janos repeated and then groaned, holding a hand to the side of his head. He staggered forward and almost lost his balance but Vorador caught him before he could fall.
“Not too quickly, Sire. You have only just recovered.” He warned his maker and guided him away from the window and back over to the bed. Janos did not resist and indeed seemed hardly aware of the manoeuvring.
 “Recovered?” He repeated in puzzlement and sat down on the edge of the bed, letting out a grateful sigh of relief. He took a few moments to collect his thoughts and then shook himself, as if to discharge any lingering grogginess. Vorador gently pushed his thoughts out to his maker, trying to sense his state of mind. It was usually very rude to force your own senses into another without permission, but Vorador was concerned for Janos’ wellbeing and did not think that in his maker’s current state he would notice.
Janos was a stew of mixed thoughts, feelings and memories. The pieces were sliding back into place very slowly, like a self-assembling jigsaw puzzle.
 “What happened to me?” He asked, more to himself than to them. He was shaking his head and frowning deeply. “I...I remember...” His frown deepened and he seemed to concentrate as hard as he could. After a moment he opened his eyes and the light of clear remembrance was in them, shadowed by a cloud of apprehension.
 “I remember fighting the Sarafan Lord... Kain needed time to reclaim the Reaver...” He mused with quiet breaths and Vorador knew of which time he was speaking. It had been the assault on the Hylden City to prevent the emergence of a Hylden army from the gate and to defeat the Sarafan Lord once and for all. Once Kain had brought down their method of keeping the city shielded from translocation spells, Janos had teleported himself and Vorador inside to aid in the assault. That had been the time when Vorador had learned of his adopted daughter’s murder. The bitter memory made him frown in discontent.
 “He threw me into the portal...” Janos was continuing, oblivious to Vorador’s own pique. “And then it shut behind me.” His frown deepened and he tried to remember what happened after that. Thankfully, to Vorador’s mind, his sire shook his head with a discontented expression. Seemingly he could not recall.
 “You have spent over two thousand years in the demon dimension, Sire.” Vorador told him in a very soft voice. “The high priest of the Hylden, Ishtar, held you captive. But we managed to retrieve you.” He would say no more about it than that. It would be better if Janos never recalled the specifics of his ordeal.
Janos gave a grimace but then his frown turned more confused and he glanced up at his son with a questioning expression.
“We?” He repeated.
“Myself, one of my offspring and that wretched cobalt corpse, Raziel.” Vorador replied and the sudden change in his sire was remarkable to see. Janos’ eyes widened to near ovals and his wings snapped out to either side with swift movements. His blue skin paled even more as he half rose off the edge of the bed.
“Raziel!?” He blurted and his voice broke in his alarm, no, his anxiety. There was a powerful, overriding guilt in his eyes that was so naked that Vorador actually found himself growing uncomfortable. “No- No that cannot be.” Janos sank back down onto the bed. He was trembling again and his face was turned down to look at the talons on his feet. “They made me kill him.” He breathed and it almost came out as a sob. “I watched, powerless to stop them- as they raised my arms and channelled down their evil power.” His voice almost gave out in his evident and intense self-loathing. “Raziel lay broken at my feet.”
Vorador had heard of this event. After he and Raziel had defeated Marduk he had forced the blue skeleton to tell him everything that had happened. It had been a lengthy, convoluted tale that was so incredulous that Vorador wondered how much of it he could believe. Here, at least, he had found confirmation of some of those described events.
According to Raziel, Janos’ heart had been returned to his body and then shortly after, his essence overtaken by a Hylden possession. Raziel had been forced to do battle with him but, overcome by sentimentality, he had not been able to bring himself to strike the final blow. That had given the Hylden possessing Janos the opportunity to counterattack, seemingly obliterating the blue corpse. Vorador saw that, obviously, Janos had blamed himself for not being able to prevent it.
“I can assure you, Sire, he survived the experience and more besides.” He told his creator, keeping that calm, reassuring tone. Janos’ head snapped up and the expression on his face was one of desperate hope. He clutched at his son’s arm urgently.
 “Are you telling me he still lives?!” He asked with a piteous plea in his voice. “You are certain of this?” Then a flicker of doubt seemed to seep into his expression, the edges of the joyful smile that was beginning to form pulling down. “Vorador, do not tell me something you know I just want to hear-”
Ansu, who had come up to the edge of the bed after a brief word with Apep to organise the Serioli in Ajatar’s absence, scratched the back of his head absently with his talons.
“Short, blue skeleton-like fellow, with two flaps of skin trailing out behind him? Big, blank eyes and a drape around his shoulders?” He asked. Janos looked up at him with startled confusion but he managed the barest nod.
 “Yes, he was around, quite the ghastly-looking, ghoul of a creature.” The Serioli added in tactless confirmation. Janos drew in a deep, shuddering breath and then put his head in hands, although this time the emotion radiating from him was one of such relief that the Ancient Vampire looked as if a massive, backbreaking burden of guilt had suddenly been removed from his shoulders. He almost fell back onto the bed in his joy.
Vorador was actually a little surprised to see joyful tears in his sire’s eyes.
 “Praise be to God!” Janos almost wept, tilting his head up towards the ceiling and closing his eyes. “I didn’t murder him!”
For once, Vorador found something to be grateful to that emaciated blue creature for. If he had not found a way to survive and endure, then Janos would have had that terrible burden placed on him for eternity.
“What has happened? I must hear all.” Audron said quickly then, looking around with renewed and focused interest in his surroundings.
At that precise moment Vorador had a very dark premonition. A deep, cold, sinking feeling right in his gut. He sensed nothing but he did not need to. Every fibre of his being told him what was about to happen. Slowly he turned and glanced back over his shoulder.
Sure enough, she was standing there. Her body was hidden from Janos’ sight by his own and her expression was coldly adamant.
“Vorador, if you please.” She said to him in a quiet voice. “There is something I want to say to him that I have waited a very long time to say.” Janos heard her speak and was half rising up when, with a resigned sigh to the unpleasantness that was about to commence, Vorador stepped aside. This was an inevitable occurrence, a clash of two forces that had been fated to come together, he could palpably feel that.
When Janos saw her, his eyes bulged in startled recognition. He knew her for a Hylden but he also knew who and what she was.
 “YOU?!” He gasped and his voice reached a shout that echoed through the room. But by now most of the Serioli had already left to go up to the battlements to watch the two flying women. Only Apep remained by the broken window and he turned away from that to look up in surprise at the bellow. Janos was on his feet, wings snapping out wide, retracting and then snapping out again in his dismay. He had to be physically restrained by Ansu to prevent him from reaching over and grabbing the Seer.
 “No inmate has ever escaped the Eternal Prison!” Audron blurted out, shaking his head in stunned incredulity. The Seer’s face twisted into a disgusted and angry sneer and she looked him straight in the eye, her gaze unwavering.
“Tell me, Audron, have you ever seen the inside of that prison?” She asked him flatly and he stopped struggling, simply looking at her. “Have you seen what happens to the lost souls sent there?” The accusing tone in her voice actually made all those around her, even Janos, flinch. “Did you know what torments lay inside when you locked me in?”
The Hylden woman’s voice was almost savagely bitter by the end and she took a step forward, glaring directly into his face. She held his gaze for a moment and then drew back.
“No...I can see in your eyes you didn’t.” She said quietly. Then without warning and with great force, she drew her hand up and sharply slapped him across the face. The blow was ringing and it knocked Janos’ head sideways, his face startled that she had struck him. Vorador almost took an instinctive step forward to protect his sire from physical harm, a reaction that is so entrenched in the mind of a fledgling that it is near instinct, but he forcibly restrained himself. Some deep compulsion, even stronger than instinct, was telling him not to interfere.
 “And that is far worse than if you had known.” The Seer said and her voice was bitter. “You did it to me in ignorance!” She was supremely angry but a great deal of her immediate rage seemed to have been dissipated by the slap she delivered.
Janos glared back at her, one hand raised to the cheek where she had slapped him and his expression became one of imperious indignation.
“You were an enemy, flaunting your inappropriate liaison with Ba’al Zebur in front of all of us!” He argued, beginning to splutter. He drew himself up, shrugging free of Ansu’s grip. “I did what our faith required of me!” Then his eyes narrowed in suspicion. “Who let you out of that prison?”
There was a sudden silence and during that moment, Janos’ expression changed as he began to perceive that which was obvious. Only one person alive had known where he had cast the Hylden woman. Slowly he turned to look at his son and Vorador met his gaze flatly and without any attempt at a denial.

“I did.” He confirmed after he held that startled, disbelieving gaze for a moment. He would not lie, not to his sire. He had previously kept it a secret due to the fact that Janos had never known or suspected and thus never directly asked, but under that confused stare he could not dissemble.
“Vorador...” Janos breathed.
“I freed her eons ago, long before the Sarafan inquisitors stormed your Retreat.” Vorador continued on, deciding it was best just to get it all out in the open. “I needed an edge against the other Vampires who were encroaching upon my territory. I thought perhaps a modicum of Hylden enchantment would be sufficient.”
“Science, Vorador.” The Seer corrected him without turning, her eyes squarely on Janos. “We employ science, not sorcery.”
Audron was pale and his face twisted with disbelief.
“You... came to the aid of a Hylden? An Unspoken?” He asked in clear shock. The Seer snorted at his words and stepped closer to him, violating Janos’ personal space.
“And in your mind that’s an unforgivable crime isn’t it?” She asked him hotly and seemed almost ready to slap him again. This time Vorador did move in to hold out a restraining hand. “My people did absolutely nothing to yours and yet we are guilty of siring all evil in your eyes.” She almost seemed to chew on insubstantial anger. “And our only infraction was that we did not want to die.”
Vorador had an epiphany at that moment. The Seer had never been emotional by choice, preferring to keep her own feelings hidden behind a wall of neutrality. Here, she finally had the opportunity to let all that pent-up, churning emotion flow out. It must have been a deep well.
Conversely, he perceived, Janos was also being emotionally pushed. There was the usual religious conviction in his eyes from his adherence to the Wheel of Fate religion, but there were also flickers of doubt sprouting. Janos was not some simple militant zealot, blinded by the light of his own beliefs, but was a rational person with a great intellect and empathy. Despite his own faith and conviction he had flinched when the Seer had told him of the true horrific nature of the prison he had placed her in.
“My ancestors during the war acted in accordance with their beliefs.” Janos stated and his defence sounded a little desperate. “Ours was a holy calling, a mission given to us by God Himself through his divine messengers.”
The Seer laughed in response, tilting her head back to nearly cackle and there was no mirth in the sound.
“Ah...yes, the Divus.” She said with an ironic smile and her dark eyes glittered maliciously. “You weren’t around then, Audron... but I was.” The Hylden woman reached out and turned her hand over, palm upwards. There was a short shimmering in the air over her hand and a deep humming sound. At her command formed the image of several winged Vampires that Vorador had never seen before. One was short but stout, another was tall and heavily muscled and the third was thin and wiry, with a spidery black tattoo spreading across his face from around his left eye.
“I was there when Raziel-Divus and his apostles, Metatron and Asmodeus appeared to your people in a contrived blaze of glory.” The Seer said and Vorador frowned and quickly stared with close attention at the winged Vampire in the centre. Incredibly, there was no doubt. The winged figure standing there had the same build and facial features as the blue skeleton.
Janos stared at the three figures and his eyes were wide in reverent amazement as he beheld the images of living saints.
“I was there when they dragged your once mighty culture, based on rational thought and scepticism, down into howling barbarism. Leaving only the level-headed Serioli as a testament to what had once been.” She flexed her hand and the image changed and refocused on a military horror. The projected scene was a massacre. The skies were filled with dozens of black winged Vampire warriors, swooping down one after another over a broken and burning Hylden city.
Many Hylden were running and screaming in all directions, only to be picked off and killed on the spot. The Vampires’ favourite method of killing seemed to be impalement, diving down with a spear and driving it into the chest of any Hylden they saw. Even children were not spared from their wrath, their broken and shattered bodies lying lifeless on the ground and riddled with arrows and skewers. A few Hylden were trying to fight back but they were quickly singled out and then ripped to pieces.
Ansu had to look away, his face contorted with disgust and a palpable shame. Janos kept watching for a moment longer but then even he began to turn.
The Seer lashed out with her free hand and grabbed him by the shoulder.
“Don’t you DARE look away!” She told him harshly. “You will see this!” The scene projected changed, moving away from the city to a raised hill just outside of it. Standing on that hill, surveying the carnage were the three figures she had projected earlier. Metatron and Asmodeus stood to either side of Raziel-Divus and each of them had a new mark upon their brow, the same eternity sigils that Vorador had seen on the forehead of Moebius the Time Streamer. Raziel-Divus had even taken to wearing a crown like some feudal king.
He raised his hand slowly towards the settlement.
“They do well in the name of our Lord.” He said and even though his voice rippled as if spoken underwater, Vorador instantly recognised it as the blue wraith’s. There could be no question now of an assured connection.
“They fight and die, my King.” Metatron replied. “To turn the Wheel. They honour the cause with their bravery and will be remembered, even when they expire and pass on to new lives.” Beside him, Asmodeus gave off a short laugh and leaned against his larger compatriot in a comradely fashion.
“Oh, Metatron, old boy. You can be quite the poetic bore.” He chortled with almost malicious mirth, ribbing the larger Ancient Vampire with his elbow. “Save the cliché propaganda for the plebs and the silly ones who spend their brief, fragile and vapid lives living in the dirt during the campaign.”
He pointed at the burning city with the dagger he was holding, a slice of meat dripping gravy skewered on its tip. A few bites had been taken out of it.
“See that? They attacked because we ordered them to and they did it without question or hint of reluctance, to a man.” His grin was jubilantly exultant. “Can you grasp the true extent of that influence, that power? They will do anything we say. Anything! We are Gods to these idiots!”
“A necessary evil.” Raziel-Divus said without turning to look at him. “So that the purpose of the Authority will be served.”
“Oh yes, that too, of course.” Asmodeus was quick to agree and took another large bite of his meat and chewed happily as the fires consumed the Hylden city. The Seer then dismissed the image and it flickered out of sight as her arm fell to her side.
“They manipulated your race through their enforced regiment of ignorance and made my kind the scapegoats.” She flatly told Janos, who was still staring at the spot the image had been. He had gone so pale now he was almost white rather than blue. He began to tremble again violently, his wings dropping across the bed lifelessly. His head began to shake, at first in horror, then in disbelief and finally in angry denial.
“Lies!” He finally spat, his wings snapping back up and out sharply. “All lies!” He rose to his full height quickly and jabbed an angry talon towards at the Hylden woman. “You deceiving witch! You dare misuse the image of the sainted Divus this way!? You make them out to be a troop of con-artists rather than the rightful spiritual saviours of my people that they were!” He spread his hands out wide in a reverent gesture. “For it was they who revealed the voice of God to us!” 
“God, eh?” The Seer asked with heavy contempt. “The Oracle whose voice echoed out of the deep, calling himself the hub of the Wheel?”
“You know of Him, and yet you reject His word?” Janos asked savagely.
“Birth, death and rebirth.” The Seer quoted. “You are born, you live and then you die. Repeating the cycle over and over, for eternity. Never an end in sight. No one is a new person in their own right, merely a rewriting of something that has come before.” She looked at him gravely. “You call that laudable, or even possible?” She shook her head in something like exasperation. “Janos Audron, despite how much I despise you I know that you are not stupid. We Hylden discovered the truth and that is why we denied that Wheel.”
“What truth?” Janos asked tartly.
“That it is all a lie.” She told him bluntly. “No soul is reincarnated. It holds too much of its owner’s identity and personality to simply be put back into the body of an infant.” She made a circling motion with one hand. “A soul is created upon the birth of a person and it is unique to them and them alone. As a person goes through their lifespan, the soul accumulates energy and when they die that energy is discharged back into the world to be reused and the soul itself wanders for a time, before it too fades to become one with the universe.” Then she smiled ironically.
“Or at least, that is what should happen. But there is a parasite, a cancerous being that sucks the souls dry of their energy and then locks their essence away inside itself. It calls itself righteous and commands the Divus ensure the conviction of the faithful, to supply it with a never-ending stream of spirits to sate its hunger.”
“Now you insult my very GOD?!” Janos was almost beside himself with rage. He suddenly made to lunge at her, his talons outstretched. Once more Ansu restrained him by grabbing him around the midsection.
“Kain showed me the truth, Audron.”  The Seer told him without retreating either physically or mentally from his wrath. She smiled at him with deliberate insult and Vorador instantly saw that she was intentionally goading him. “He showed me what your God looks like. Yes, I’ve actually seen him! No mere disembodied voice but a real being! A disgusting mass of writhing tentacles! A deformed octopus!”
Janos struggled violently against Ansu and had the Serioli warrior not been so strong, Janos might have broken his grip and lunged at the Seer with his bare talons. His wings were flapping hard like those of a grounded and frantic bird. He was even losing feathers.
“You...all your kind must and will be shut back in the demon dimension where you will rot for the rest of time!” Janos was so enraged that he was spitting in his fury. Vorador stared at his maker and then, finally, stepped forward.
“Sire, that’s enough!” He spoke before he even knew he was going to. Janos snapped his head around to look at him. “No one deserves to be bound up in eternal torment, subjected to the agonies of an unearned punishment. I thought you would have understood that.” Vorador spoke calmly but with flat authority. It was a tone he had never used with Janos before and it reached his sire. His anger seemed to drop away at the sight of the disapproval in the eyes of his first-born.
“I would never seek to cause you anguish, Sire.” Vorador told him but kept all reverent gentleness out of his voice. Janos visibly drooped at the tone like a flower gone to seed. Seeing that reaction in his maker from words he had spoken caused Vorador a great deal of anguish, but he pushed on regardless. This had to be said. “But I have seen enough to know that you are wrong. The Hylden do not deserve one tenth of the punishment inflicted upon them and if your religion says they do, then it is wrong. You ought to have the empathy in you to see that.”
He turned away, unable to look his sire in the face.
“Janos, don’t make me ashamed of you.” He said, finally giving Audron the ultimatum that needed to be given. He felt sick for making it but it was necessary. There was a long silence and then suddenly the air pulsed as a white glow illuminated the room. Startled, Vorador spun around to see Ansu backing off in surprise. Janos was fading away, his face distraught and shamed, into the midst of a translocation spell. Before Vorador could stop him he had gone.
Quickly he reached out with his mind, trying to sense where his sire had moved himself to. But he could find nothing. Janos had left no trace for him to follow.
“Let him go.” The Seer said, her voice nearly a sigh of relief now that the emotional moment she had geared herself for had passed.
“But...” Vorador began.
“If he chooses to fly off like a scolded hatchling then that’s his own affair.” She told him tartly and wagged a finger at him. “You’re not his nursemaid, Vorador.”
He glared at her savagely.
“You planned all of that, didn’t you?” He accused. She gave him a level sort of look that neither confirmed nor denied such contrivance.
“Immaterial.” She said and locked him in place with a steady, commanding and imperious look. “And now that that is done, it’s time you fulfilled some of your end of the bargain.” She began to step away from the bed, walking past him. “Janos is restored to his prejudiced, bigoted self.” The Hylden woman looked back over her shoulder. “And if you want the same for your daughter, you will come with me now. It’s time for the Arrow to be found.”