–and then, the world shifted around him, and he found himself in an unfamiliar place, an unfamiliar, alien landscape, painted in tones of blue and green; laments and moans filled the air, if, indeed, there was an air here; odd, malformed creatures wandered on the floor in some distance–
“At last you have awakened! I was wondering how much longer it would take you,” he heard someone speak above his head; following the sound of the voice, he looked up–
A whirling mass of white, seething, agitated water completely filled his field of vision–
I must be at the bottom of the Abyss again, he thought; but why couldn’t he hear anything? The water ought to make a deafening noise. For that matter, why didn’t he feel that he were in water?
He looked around again: yes, these were the same carved steles he had noticed during the fight– but they looked different, skewed somehow–
“What is this place?” he growled out, annoyed.
“The Spectral Underworld,” his as of yet unseen interlocutor replied matter-of-factly, “The abode of the dead; and, until some time ago, the self-proclaimed Hub of the Wheel of Fate.”
“I– see.” That was all he could think of, at the moment.
“Yes.” A shape leapt down from the highest stele into a crouch; then, it drew itself up. “Wings become you, Kain.”
“Raziel,” he said carefully, in as neutral a tone as he could muster; and then, he asked the one question that he knew must be asked, “How did you escape the Reaver?”
Raziel shrugged. “Strange things happen at the threshold of aeons, Kain,” he said nonchalantly, “The sword had been shattered long ago. The Reaver was not needed anymore.”
“Not needed anymore?” Kain said calmly; he was far beyond heated wrath, and had long ascended into ice-cold fury. “Do you not realise, Raziel, what you have done? In this one move, this one masterful stroke of pure egoism, you have introduced a massive paradox, unravelled the entire stream of Nosgoth’s history, and undone all our efforts – all my efforts – to set things on their correct path. How dared you– how dared you interfere–” His voice suddenly broke. His hand automatically went to his back for the Reaver; but, of course, the sword was not there.
Raziel only watched him calmly.
Kain mentally replayed his speech, and groaned. He had a sudden sense of déjá vu; except that, for some reason, his and Raziel’s roles were reversed–
“I have left in the sword,” Raziel started to speak quietly, but his voice grew stronger and louder with every word, “the centuries of torment I had suffered in the Abyss, and the five centuries which I had spent cowardly trying to escape my fate. It turned out to be enough to satisfy the spell which imprisoned me; is it not enough for you, Kain? Is nothing ever enough for you?”
“Or is it that,” Raziel’s voice suddenly took on a very different quality, “you still cannot make yourself believe, even now, at the end of all time; now that you have surmounted the insurmountable, and defeated the invincible – that, for once, Fate may be on our side; that, at last, you may have reached a place of serenity? The game is over, Kain. And you have won.”
For a moment, they watched each other in silence.
Kain was the first to break it. “So, I have won,” he said, “And this, I suppose, is to be my prize?” He gestured to the desolate, blue-green landscape.
Raziel raised an eyebrow. “Yes,” he said, “Although this is just the middle ground.”
“The middle ground? What is further on?”
“This,” Raziel wavered for a moment, as though he could not quite translate his thoughts into words, “depends.”
Kain only looked at him. He was slowly getting annoyed again, this time at his son’s inability to express himself.
“You see, there are three possible avenues to pursue,” Raziel said at last. “The first is to be reborn–”
Kain started. “Reborn? I have destroyed the Wheel.”
Raziel looked at him, mildly surprised. “Destroyed? The Wheel? No. You have only destroyed the parasite that fed on the Wheel; and that is a world of a difference. Look there–”
Kain looked to where Raziel was pointing. There was nothing there, except for a few of those miserable, misshapen creatures–
“These are the sluagh. In a sense, they are the Wheel. You see, when a soul arrives in the Underworld, it resides here, meandering, until it can find its way to a new body. The sluagh speed up the whole process: in exchange for a small part of the soul’s essence, they direct the soul–”
“And so, the soul enters the new body, but this time slightly more... aware of what it had been; what it was; and what it was to be; and with each subsequent life, this knowledge, this awareness, accumulates more and more–”
“And the parasite, I take it, devoured it all?” Kain asked, intrigued against his own volition.
“Yes. Each life started as a clean, blank slate, each subsequent time, every next turn of the Wheel,” Raziel shuddered. “Except mine. He needed me.”
For a moment, he was silent; then, as Kain was about to urge him on, he returned to his explanation.
“We could allow the sluagh to devour the most of us; all, perhaps. And so, we would return to Nosgoth as entirely different people. Perhaps,” he mused, “from time to time, we would have dreams of our previous lives; or not even that.”
“The second option,” he continued, met with nothing but silence on Kain’s part, “is to return as devourers of souls. I could teach you how to use your mind to animate matter. Of course, as we are not material creatures anymore, we would constantly need to replenish our forces with other people’s spiritual energy. You would find it,” a grimace twisted his face, “not too unlike being a vampire – a cursed vampire, that is.” He looked straight into Kain’s eyes, with an amused expression. “Less dirty, perhaps.”
Kain considered for a moment. “This means that I – we – could reign–”
“Forever.”
Kain laughed, entertaining the thought, “Forever and ever; in all the eternal glory of the omnipotent King that once was and was now returned; and of his son, the Messiah of Nosgoth–”
“Yes,” Raziel laughed as well, sharing in the joke, “And do we not deserve this? It will be even more plausible because we will probably surface in Nosgoth centuries after you have last been seen–”
Kain’s utter lack of comprehension must have reflected on his face, because Raziel hurried with an explanation–
“Time flows differently in the Underworld; it is really impossible to determine how much time has passed in the material world until you leave it. An instant can last a millennium; a century can pass in a moment–”
“I– see,” Kain said. “You still have not mentioned the third option,” he added, after a moment of silence.
Raziel smiled. “Turn around, Kain.”
He did so–
It looked like a gate – a portal–
Except that these were, of course, completely the wrong words to describe it.
“What is that thing?” he asked, awed and incredulous.
“I don’t know,” Raziel admitted. “I think that no one knows. I think that this is what the parasite had been concealing for millennia. The final egress: visible only to those who already know who they are. But to what Heaven or Hell it leads–” He did not finish, and only shrugged.
There was another moment of silence. Then, Raziel suddenly broke it again.
“Kain,” he said, “You know that I will follow you wherever you go. Whatever you choose.”
Kain looked at his firstborn; two pairs of yellow eyes met.
“I know, Raziel,” he replied, “I know.”
He made his choice.