The unexpected realisation of one’s free will provides for a fascinating, if excruciating, intellectual experience. Instead of contending with but a single source of manipulation – fate – the mind must suddenly take into consideration a whole gamut of them; not the least of which is the awareness of free will itself; and the awareness of the awareness; and thus on, until infinity.
The exercise was certainly enough to entertain me on my way to the human Citadel.

There was a multitude of reasons why Kain, the vampire, the Scion of Balance, the former Emperor of Nosgoth, should deign to deviate from his path to rescue a human. Some of them were good – the amusement to be derived from the act of denying a certain ancient parasite the same soul twice within two days, for instance; some were better – providing a convenient target for a certain Hylden’s ambition, a rival with whom to compete for their superior’s favour, instead of contesting said superior’s sovereignty–
However, all these incentives paled next to the fundamental cause: his caprice. He had decided that the human would be saved, and his will would be done; and that was all there was to it.
There were, however, certain aspects of the matter to be considered.
For instance, if – as – the Elder One had been the true architect of the elaborate trap set for Kain in Nosgoth’s past, the possibility must be taken into account that a creature capable of devising such a plan had not said too much during their last conversation at the Pillars. That, instead, another trap had been planted–
Having assumed this proposal, the valid inference could be made that the trap would be sprung either by Kain’s exercising his free will and rescuing the human, or by his exercising his free will and refusing to rescue her, after he decided that he was being manipulated into executing the rescue. There was also the possibility that in both these instances, some deleterious effect would be produced; in that case, however, it was almost certain that the damage perpetrated by one of these choices would be much graver than the damage brought about by the other choice–
The spike of a known trap willingly entered is weakened at least by half; but was he entering the correct trap?

Time, he sensed, was of essence. Unfortunately, he could not teleport to the Citadel: save for the underground chamber where he had talked with the matriarch of the city, he had retained in his memory no particular distinctive mark from his visit on the night before: the mist had obscured all. Fortunately, with the restoration of the two further Pillars, his spell-casting powers had improved again; hence, it had become feasible for him to repeatedly cast the time-slowing spell during his travel from the Pillars to the Citadel.
Onthis night, there was no mist; and so, as he was now flying noiselessly in the slowed time, seeking a place and a mind, he could clearly see the buildings and the streets, bathed in the sharp, bright electric light; most still bearing the traces of the fighting that had taken place there on the previous night–
There.
A bonfire built on a large open square, surrounded by a multitude of yelling humans: the citizens of the Citadel must have been celebrating their recent victory–

The stake had been prepared, he must grudgingly admit, with a measure of artistic skill: it was small enough that the human victim would actually burn, not merely asphyxiate–
A death by suffocation would have been almost instantaneous; a death by burning was not. Zosha was still alive – still conscious, in fact: he could hear her screams, oddly dilated by the slowed time – but not for long. Perhaps it was only a coincidence that he should appear here at the ultimate eligible moment; and then, perhaps not–
The time-slowing spell ended just as he alit at the top of the heap of wood; the flames instantly rose to greet him, enveloping him in a fiery aura – harmless, of course, now that the powers of Fire were at his command. It took a single stroke of the Reaver to cut through the bonds–
He caught the unconscious human as she was about to tumble down the pyre: the burnt legs could no longer support the weight of the body. Then, he carefully replaced the Reaver; and then, he picked up the body and began to descend down the pyre.
Flames jumped between the feathers of his outstretched wings; embers leapt off of them to the ground. From the sudden silence and the looks of fear on the faces of the closest humans, he deduced that his sudden incursion had produced quite the dramatic effect.
And very well, that: the humans had come there to be entertained. They had better feel entertained now.

He laid Zosha on the cold stones in front of the stake, and, without regard for the swarm of humanity in front, started to methodically remove the pieces of burnt cloth from the human’s calves and hands. The scorched area of the body did not extend beyond elbows and knees, and that was a good sign; the vampiric regeneration which the human seemed to have inherited with his blood would take care of the rest–
(For a brief moment, he wondered about the phenomenon: he had almost automatically assumed that the human would receive certain vampiric powers from him – and she had; but the same had not applied to Eirene. His blood had Changed them both, but differently. What was happening here?)
The stench of cooked meat filled the air, irritating his sensitised nostrils–
The humans in front began to stir, as if they had been suddenly awakened from a trance; a murmur rose above the mob–
A figure landed softly between him and the bloodthirsty crowd. Eirene spread her wings and put up her Glyph shield; in the blood-red light of the fire, the green glow which enveloped her appeared to be almost black.
Most of the humans, especially those standing in front, immediately backed off on seeing the second inhuman creature of their lives within minutes. Some, however – either particularly brave, or, more probable, particularly inebriated – fired rounds of shots at the Hylden; she caught them all on the shield, but did not move to counter the attack, did not let herself be provoked; immovable, wordless, the Seer stood proudly, providing protection for him and for Zosha.

In the privacy afforded them between Eirene and the pile of burning wood (where had they found wood in this wasteland?), the human was slowly coming round. First, there was a minuscule change in her presence, in her mind; then–
Then, the grey eyes snapped open; then, they narrowed as Zosha recognised him; then, a look of pure hatred filled them and the human’s mutilated face.
It was an expression with which Kain was intimately familiar: after all, he had seen it on the thousands of faces of his victims. He did not expect to find it, however, on the face of the one human whose life he had saved; and for the second time in as many days–
Zosha coughed, and then, attempted to speak; then, she coughed again, and then, attempted to speak again; this time, successfully – just as he was beginning to wonder why she hadn’t simply used the Whisper instead–
“You! What did you save me for this time?” The voice, weak as it was, was nonetheless full of venom; or, at least, it was attempting to be.
Perplexed by the lack of gratitude – and more than a little annoyed – he replied, “For myself; or for later; choose whatever answer you can convince yourself to believe. What happened here?”
“What happened here?” The human coughed again, and then continued, bitterly, “I followed your advice, that is what happened.” She seemed to be oblivious to the fact that her hands and legs were already half-healed.
“And that was–?” An idea slowly formed in his mind–
“To kill my brother...” she whispered; and then, suddenly, words started to pour out of her. “When I have returned from the Village, I was given to understand that he denounced me in front of the Council as a vampire and a traitor. I denied the accusations, of course–
And then, he proposed a God’s trial, an ordeal by fire, to solve the matter between us–”
“And you agreed?” Kain asked in disbelief.
“He did offer me the first try,” Zosha replied angrily; the resentment wiping out the last traces of weakness from her voice. “And I fired at him, and shot him dead. Except that–” Her voice faltered, as though she still could not believe what had happened.
“Except that he returned to life,” Kain finished for her. “And when he did, you learnt that he had a rather different vision of ordeal by fire...” He looked to the stake and the pile of burning wood–
“An ordeal fit for a vampire, he said,” Zosha’s voice reached him; but Kain was already somewhere else, lost in thoughts. What was the purpose of this whole pathetic spectacle?
“Excuse my imposition,” he suddenly heard Eirene’s voice, “However, there is someone here who would speak with you, Scion.”

The woman – Zroya, he recalled; Zosha’s mother and the matriarch of the Citadel – was not alone, but in the company of several other humans; some younger, some older; all self-important, indignant and attempting to hide their fear; none to any success.
“What is the meaning of this–” the woman asked, and then, as if suddenly remembering herself, added, “–my Lord? Why this interruption in the execution of a sovereign order?”
A sovereign order: that argument, of all, he had not expected.
The matriarch was, of course, correct. In the accord he had settled with the Founder, he had formally and factually enfeoffed her: invested her and her descendants with the lands on which the Citadel now stood. That is, in return for homage and service, he had agreed to hold no more than nominal power in the city; to let the humans govern themselves autonomously in matters that did not concern him firsthand. The homage was to be eternal; the service – the blood tithe for his sons – was to end at the moment of Raziel’s reappearance in Nosgoth–
At the moment the covenant had been accorded, these appeared to be rather favourable conditions. He no longer needed to consider the trivial matters of fodder for his sons whilst he awaited Raziel and the coming of his destiny; and, in any case, he had never held much interest in the matters of governing humans.
Right now, however, this presented a heretofore unexpected difficulty. Of course, it would be the easiest thing possible to simply break his word and the covenant, and deny the matriarch her autonomous rule–
“Sovereign order?” he asked in the end. “Hasn’t your daughter told you that she now belongs to me?”
“She has,” Zroya replied haughtily. “However, she has also told me that you had chosen to break her ties to you–” she made a pause – “my Lord.”
The woman clearly seemed bent on destroying her child, whether out of jealousy or misguided love for her male offspring–
He heard Zosha stir behind him. The daughter of the matriarch must have risen sometime during the conversation, and now, she probably wanted to do something pathetically heroic and stupid to mollify the situation–
A single shot resounded through the tense silence, and Zroya started to fall to the ground; and he knew that the woman was already dead–
“Mother!” he heard Zosha scream; but he paid the human no heed; already was he scanning the surroundings in the direction from which the shot had come. He did not even need to cast the Time spell to give himself more time: on a ledge above the scattering remains of the human crowd, he spotted a face – a face with a large hole in the middle of the forehead. I fired and shot him dead. Except that he returned.
The man jumped down from the ledge, and disappeared among the fleeing humans; Kain looked back to the tableau in the foreground. Zosha continued her indecent display, hugging the corpse of the woman who, moments ago, wanted her dead; Eirene was watching them both with a hungry look on her face; Zroya’s councillors had run away.
“Eirene,” he called out; the Hylden tore her eyes reluctantly off the human to look at him.
“I will follow the assassin; the shot was clearly intended as a challenge to me. You must not go with me; this is a matter only for the Reaver. Instead, stay here, and guard Zosha. Zosha–”
The human also looked up at him from the corpse; and, in the red gleam cast by the dying fire, he could see that her face was now blank, emotionless, and that her eyes were dry and cold and hard; she was not crying, as he had feared.
“The southwest quarter,” she said impassively, “Sava and his fedayeen have their residence somewhere there, I have seen him head there oft enough. I will gather the Council; when you have need for me, call for me.”
Somewhere between his earlier dismissal of her and the current events, Zosha had lost the careful image of docile obedience she had earlier projected; he was not sure if he should allow this transformation to proceed any further.

The previous night’s fighting had not reached the south-west quarter of the city: there were no barricades here and the buildings were not scorched or chipped by dispatches from the Hylden rifles and the human guns, flamethrowers and assorted ordnance. Instead, the houses were covered with different, and, in many respects, more ominous, marks: figures-of-eight; primitive drawings of a Wheel and an Eye – signs which he had thought he had left for sure in Nosgoth’s past, with Moebius’ corpse and the ruins of another civilisation–
He drew the Reaver.
The attack started less than a minute later, with a single round of shots fired at him from a balcony above–
Instinctively, he turned into mist, and the bullets passed harmlessly through him; but already something else was heading his way: three of the self-guided Flays he had seen Zosha use.
They, too, passed right through him; but seconds afterwards, he could hear a screech in the air: the Flays altered their course and came after him again. He swerved sharply, and one of the Flays drove into the wall of a building, right under the balcony; but the other two continued their pursuit.
The Flay stuck in the wall exploded, bringing down the balcony together with the two humans inside it; they fell down to the street below, breaking their necks. Mid-flight, he raised his Energy shield; and then, hovered for several seconds in front of the wall on the other side of the street, waiting for the Flays to come–
Then, the second Flay was down; one more to go–
Another round of shots coming from a second balcony–
Something stirring on the ground below–
Another series of Flays from the roof of the building to the left–
The Flays scattering to follow his Mind effigies–
Shots coming from the ground–
An incendiary cocktail splashed against a wall–
The Flays following him again–
Caught in the crossfire, Kain cast the Time spell. He looked around: there were humans  everywhere: above – on the rooftops; below – on the ground; and in front – on the balcony; all shouting, shooting and throwing missiles at him; and no less than five Flays were now heading his way. He concentrated–
A sphere of fire issued from the Reaver, enveloping Kain, expanding in all directions, immolating all it encountered: the humans and the Flays alike. Further and further it went, dispersing only far above and away from Kain–
The time returned to its normal pace. The humans caught fire; their warlike shouts suddenly turned into screams of anguish, and then died out, one after another. But the Flays continued unimpeded towards him–
Kain landed on the ground, and called to the forces of Nature. And Nature replied: a wall of Nosgoth’s black plants, her razor-sharp vines, suddenly grew up all around him. The Flays hit it, one after another, and all became entangled in it; and then, one after another, they all exploded. One of the humans standing on the ground had been also caught in the vines; the explosion which killed him tore off one of his arms; the sharp scent of blood invigorated Kain’s senses.
The fedayee stirred. Kain looked at his companion, further down the way–
She, too, had already gotten to her feet, and was already aiming her weapon at Kain. Up, on the rooftop and the balcony, the humans’ war cries were rising in a crescendo–
In one swift move, the vampire impaled the nearest fedayee on the Soul Reaver. An anguished shriek pierced the night air; and the man’s body went limp again.

Waves after waves of humans, throwing themselves against him in a blind, suicidal rage – no doubt amplified somehow by the influence of the restored Pillar of Conflict... He hit their soft bodies with volleys of telekinetic projectiles; cut them with the Reaver; immolated them; throttled them with the vines that came to his calling; made them kill one another with the Hate spell of Conflict; as a wolf, he entered the cellars where some of them were hiding and tore their throats off–
And he killed; and killed; and killed; and each time he killed, he reaved the fedayeen’s souls; the shrieks of Raziel’s tormented soul imprisoned within the Reaver resounded time after time, time and again...
And then, all was silent; and he was alone.

I annihilated the cult, but its head remained at large. Sava was not among the dead; and I knew I would find him in some temple he erected for his gruesome master.
To found such a shrine, the priest needed an easily reached subterranean chamber filled in part with water. In the Citadel, that could mean only one sort of place.

After a brief search, he located an entrance to one of the many old waterways crisscrossing the Citadel; once a defence system against the vampires, now, as he was about to learn, they served mainly as sewers.
He descended slowly down the manhole. There was a small platform at the bottom, slightly raised above the surface of the dirty water; he settled down on it–
Outside, above, it may have been dark; the bright electric light illuminated only patches of the Citadel’s streets. It was, however, a darkness familiar to Kain; an old friend which had accompanied him ever since his revival as a vampire; his finely tuned eyes penetrated far into it. But down here, in the sewer, the darkness was absolute: even he, even in the light of the Reaver, could see no further than to the nearest corner–
He changed his shape into that of a wolf – and regretted it almost immediately: the stench of refuse, however strong it had appeared to him in his usual form, was now a thousand times stronger. It hovered in the air; and, to the wolf, it had taken the appearance of a very bright orange colour, overshadowing everything else.
Or nearly everything else: for, in the distance, there was a wisp of blood-red, still strong, though already dispersing–
He followed.

He made his way through the sewer, leaping as a wolf from platform to platform: the ceiling in the corridor was so low that flying would constitute a hazard rather than an advantage. There were several turns; and then, the corridor opened into another, much wider passage.
The brick ceiling was also much higher here; and the current of the sewage water was much slower: the water was dense and murky, resembling mud in texture. (For a moment, he wondered if it would still burn him if he touched it; in the end, he decided not to make the test.) He shifted back into his vampire form, and flew downstream, in the direction where the blood-red trail led.
The main sewer, as he soon learnt, discharged the refuse into an underground river – one of the branches of the river on which the Citadel stood. At the conflux of the two, there was a large natural cave, and a small natural beach. The walls of the cave were almost completely hidden behind a mass of writhing tentacles springing from the water below; the beach was empty, save for a solitary figure, kneeling with its back to Kain at the edge of the confluence’s water.
The vampire landed soundlessly behind the human’s back and folded his wings.

“I knew that I would find you here, with the rest of the filth.”
The human started angrily to his feet, turning around to face Kain. “You–”
Here, up close, the vampire could at least have a good look at the fedayee. The family resemblance was definitely there: like all of his clan, Sava was short, pale, with dark hair and grey eyes – it was as though all colour had faded from him; or as if it had never existed in him in the first place; as though humans, like plants, needed sun to acquire colour, and etiolated in the sunless world. Sava’s face looked, in short, very much like his sister’s; and even the manner in which he was now defensively clutching his weapon, Kain noticed with amusement, was exactly the same as Zosha’s when the vampire had accused her of being a Hylden spy.
A large hole marred the human’s forehead – and now, Kain could see that the hole did not lie exactly in its middle; it was slightly off-centre, slightly to the right. Zosha’s hand must have trembled slightly when she had shot her younger brother.
For, as it turned out, Kain’s first impressions of Sava from the Garden of Mirrors: that the fedayee’s voice was weak, almost childlike – reflected the truth: Sava was young. Very young, in fact, even for a human, and much younger than Zosha: only just past his childhood–
Of course, he was old enough to be a killer.

“Silence, child,” the vampire chided, “I spoke not to you, but to your master.”
“My master?” Sava laughed. “My master has nothing to say to you, heretic!”
“Heretic?” This actually caught Kain’s attention. “How odd to hear this epithet in the lips of one who boasts of your heritage, child.”
The boy backed off a step under Kain’s scrutinising gaze, and was now standing almost within the slow flow of the river. “My heritage?” he cried out desperately. “My heritage consists of centuries of humiliations sustained by generations of my family at your hand, vampire! My master offered me a way to atone for my heritage–”
“You were not the first one to be offered this,” Kain replied suddenly. He looked around the cave – to the mass of tentacles invisible to the human – and added, more evenly, “Your ancestors served me well, and for that, I had them well rewarded. Your master has you played for a fool; and what is your reward for your devotion, child? To be an exile, a friendless matricide, until the end of your days – however soon it comes?”
A grimace crossed Sava’s face; but he said nothing.
Kain went on, “For your ancestors’ sake, I will now make you a proposal; the same proposal that I had made your sister – and, if your memory stretched back further than a mere several centuries, perhaps then you could begin to appreciate the rarity of this offer. You need not die; serve me, as your ancestors did.”
The fedayee’s face twisted with rage. “I would rather die than serve you!”
Kain laughed. “As you wish, child.”
And the Reaver shrieked again as it devoured another soul.

He cleaned the blade from the child’s blood and innards–
“I see that you do know the value of silence, after all,” he remarked.
The booming voice of the Elder One replied smugly, “Why should I speak if you argue my case well enough, Kain?”
“Good. I am tired of your voice already,” the vampire replied curtly. Then, he added, as if in an afterthought, “You should treasure this soul, demon – and those of the other human fools; you will receive no more fodder from me.”
If possible, the voice sounded even more self-satisfied than before. “On the contrary, Kain; I will yet receive much more from you. And I will cherish those souls even more for the fact that, knowing that you serve me, you will still want to give me my due–”
“Your due?” Kain snarled, “I will deliver you your due where and when I so choose, demon. For now, I give you only this–”
Under the touch of the Fire spell, the tentacles above the water surface charred and withered; the water began to hiss and seethe, and Kain started to feel the pricks of hot steam on his skin; the place, he realised, may well explode any moment, like an overloaded steam boiler–

Almost at the last moment, he teleported out of the cave to the square where the foiled execution had taken place. The place was deserted now; someone had taken away Zroya’s corpse, and the fire at the stake had died out. The only islets in this darkness were the patches of light under the electric lamps–
“Eirene, Zosha,” he called out into the night,“To me.”
To his immediate surprise, both of the women teleported in: another sign of the Change the human must have been undergoing–
Zosha had changed her clothes, and was now clad again in full camouflage garb, with her weapon by her side; next to her, Eirene glittered and glimmered in the cool electric light–
“Your brother is dead,” he said bluntly to the human, and watched her face close in on itself; apparently, despite her earlier poise, she must have still harboured some lingering sentiment for her younger sibling. “If it consoles you,” he added, “in the end, he chose his own fate.”
“At least to the extent that he could choose it,” she replied, without much anger.
Kain started; he had not expected such depth of insight from the woman. He looked at Eirene; the Hylden withstood his glance.
“I see, Eirene,” he said slowly, “that you have made your choice.”
The Hylden said nothing; but she nodded acquiescence: one brief move of her elegant head. Kain turned back to the human–
“After your mother’s death, the rule of the city falls by default to you, Zosha,” he said. In the corner of his eye, he saw a grimace cross Eirene’s alien face.
The human, on her part, seemed nonplussed. “Provided that the Council agrees, that is.”
He could not believe that the human dared raise such a minor issue. “Make them agree,” he growled. “And after you do, your first order as the new leader is to be as follows: that every single human in the Citadel share your blood and the blood of your followers, under pain of death for those who do not conform. Where are your troops?”
Although clearly surprised by the sudden change of topic, Zosha replied matter-of-factly, “I left them behind, in the Village, with the captives.”
Eirene interjected suddenly, “Captives?”
“Yes,” Zosha looked at her curiously, “the Hylden captives; and for protection against–” the inquiring gaze shifted to Kain – “the vampires, of course.”
Kain flinched, surprised. “Vampires? What vampires would these be?”
“Those of the Second Clan, from the north-east,” the human replied. “We thought them exterminated with the rest, because they had not been spotted for some eighty years; however, just before–” hey eyes shifted back to Eirene – “the Hylden came, several victims were found in the Village, drained of blood; and as my previous detachment’s orders were to–” Zosha paused, clearly unsure why her simple words attracted so much attention from both the vampire and the Hylden.
In the silence which fell, Kain’s next word rang out loudly. “Eirene.”
The Hylden’s head crests stood upright; she was fully alert. “I will guard her.”
With a note of reproach in his voice – although the Hylden’s enthusiasm was laudable, she definitely should not have spoken out of turn – Kain continued, “Do; then, once Zosha’s succession is secured, move to Avernus and fetch your own people.” He watched, amusedly, how the Hylden’s face changed with his words; her crests twitched, and even her wings moved of their own accord. “Make haste: we shall all meet at dawn at the Abyss.”

His lieutenants – for that was what in the end they were, was it not? – scurried away to their tasks. (He heard them discussing the matter of the prisoners before they disappeared completely in the dark streets of the Citadel: Eirene maintained that the captives would be critical to the success of her mission.)
He looked to the northeast. The high buildings of the Citadel obstructed his line of sight, of course; but somewhere beyond them, he knew, lay the Turelim lands; and within them, perhaps, he would find Janos Audron at last.