There was the familiar sense of displacement –
And then, the even more familiar sense of being attacked. He snarled as he turned briefly to mist to dodge the massive fist of the animate suit of armour that assaulted him the very moment he came out of the Warp Gate –
Golems. How he abhorred them. Animate yet lifeless, possessed of neither blood nor soul; brought to existence by some arcane magic of States which had been forever lost to Nosgoth with Anarcrothe’s passing – one even he had never managed to master. The Reaver would fare little better than the least of vulgar swords against these statues.
Behind him, the portal inactivated itself in a small, yet – given the contained space of the cul-de-sac in which he now found himself – rather spectacular explosion, cutting off his only means of escape, were escape ever in his mind. The shattered pieces of the Warp Gate, thrust forward along the corridor by the force of the blast, narrowly missed him on their way to their destinations. Some shards actually did hit the two golems whose blows he was now busy trying to avoid; the statues did not appear to be particularly affected by this.
– strike, dodge –
He reverted to the now habitual tactic of spelling Mind effigies to gain time whilst he pounded his opponents. Golems had really only one advantage to vouch for them: their durability. The things were destructible – he had lost count of how many of them he had destroyed in the Vampire Citadel – but it took time to deal with them. Time and only time – there was little need for finesse of moves –
– dodge, strike, strike again –
Golems had no vital piece which, once hit, would immobilise them; he had to literally chip away piece after piece off of them. It pained him to see the Reaver relegated to a function well enough served by a common axe; the blade was far too noble for such a pedestrian assignment. Especially –
– dodge –
To his tastes, the fight had taken long enough already. He threw one golem into the far wall of the passage with a telekinetic blast – which would only momentarily delay it, but this would be enough. Then, he used the Dimension spell to get behind the other statue; and then, rammed the exploding Flay (his curiosity had led him to take it from the human when she had lain unconscious in the underground temple) into the gap between its helmet and chest-plate.
And then, he shoved the golem telekinetically into the first one, already recovered and heading his way in its slow, heavy gait.
He did not wait to see the results of his stratagem; and it was a good thing he did not – as the force of the second explosion rocked the corridor, its structural support already weakened by the previous blast, the passage started to crumble around him. With vampiric speed, he raced along the walkway, navigating between the falling blocks of dark stone –
The passage opened into another, wider hall; he arrived there mere fraction of a second before the side corridor finally collapsed into a pile of rubble. There was no going back that way – not that he could think of a reason to do so at the moment. But now, that he finally had the time, he stopped to get his bearings –

These bleak corridors were familiar to me... I had walked them many times in my past, in the epoch of my Empire; and for the first time, centuries before, whilst I had made my fledgling travels. For this was the wreck of Malek’s Bastion; and the lifeless wardens which had just attacked me, I had first encountered in the Paladin’s employ.
But in my recent journey into Nosgoth’s past, I had seen places and learnt truths which neither the fledgling nor the Emperor had known. I now recognised this architecture of red-veined obsidian from my venture into the ancient Citadel. The golems; the shrine from which I had arrived; the portal which had brought me here – all hinted in one direction: Malek had not so much constructed this place as merely occupied it after its original inhabitants – vampires – had been annihilated; perhaps it was even he and his Sarafan followers who had exterminated them all.
The ancient defence system had been inactive for millennia when I had last visited the fortress – indeed, I had thought it completely destroyed. But now, the golems had awakened again; at whose behest, I wondered.

Sickly green light poured into the dark hallways from the cracks in the ceiling where the lava-glass finally gave way after millennia of wear. It painted the same tint the occasional patch of snow accumulated underneath the fissures, transforming it into a mockery of the luxurious verdure he had seen in that other land that had been the past of Nosgoth; it also provided illumination for the scene of carnage which now stretched before his eyes: bodies, demon and Hylden, relatively fresh, but cruelly bent out of shape by the sustained wounds, scattered on the pitch-black floor amongst the masses of accrued snow and rubble.
He followed the trail of bodies in the direction which, he vaguely remembered, led into the heart of the fortress, dealing on his way with the golems which were patrolling the deserted castle; more than once stopping by a font of eldritch energy to recover his depleted strength and magic powers. At last, he turned into yet another long obsidian colonnade; green light entered it from its far end. The speck of light grew as he approached it; halfway through the corridor, it was revealed to be an opening; finally, as he drew close to it –
It was as if some powerful force had cut the Bastion in twain at this place, almost disintegrating one part of the building, whilst leaving the other part relatively untouched. And this was, after all, what had in fact happened.

The remembrance of things long now past, this deep crater marked the place where the donjon housing Malek’s throne room had once stood. It had been during my first confrontation with the Paladin that the central tower had been destroyed, by the formidable wave of energy unleashed by my foe’s impotent wrath after he had failed to slay his chosen quarry.
The corpses I had encountered, both here and in Coorhagen’s ruins, spoke of a far more recent drama to have unfurled here. To uncover its details, and reveal its actors, I would need to investigate further; for now, I had little doubt that the lights to which the human witch had alluded had originated in this very place. Though in a roundabout way, I had arrived whither I had intended to reach; more – by luck, or fate, I had found the only path here now accessible to my kind. The protective cocoon of the active Ward Shield would have stood in my path if I had attempted to approach the Bastion by air.
As it was, the Shield blocked my egress from the plateau; and if Janos Audron was somewhere within these ruins, he was likewise trapped.

Green and black filled his field of vision – the green of the Glyph energy of the dome above him, reflected in the patches of snow on the ground underneath him; and the black of the towers, shooting high up from the snow and the mountain of rubble in the three other corners of the castle. The closest, northwest tower seemed as good a place as any to begin his search for the clues as to just what had occurred here – and for the machinery which he knew he would have to deactivate to be able to depart this place.
He even espied an inviting opening high up in the dark tower’s wall –

“And so, however tardy, arrives the vampire lord I have been promised: Kain. Eirene’s foresight proved true, as always... and just when I was beginning to doubt it.”
As it turned out, he did not have to search long. He had entered only the fourth or fifth equally nondescript hall – they were all tall, empty, black-on-black with the occasional spot of nauseant green where the light of the Shield enflamed the snow; deserted but for the occasional golem or two – when he heard the greeting, spoken in the raspy voice of a Hylden. Taking the Reaver off his back, searching the utter darkness of the room for the voice’s owner, he demanded:
“Eirene? A Seer – foretold my coming here?”
“Here – and to the Pillars: the only remnants of your accursed civilisation to still exist in Nosgoth; yes. And so we have rushed, my siblings and I, to give the coming lord a proper welcome... Only that he would not present himself.” Twin emerald lights appeared in the darkness not five paces from him as the voice continued, full of scorn, “If punctuality is the politeness of monarchs, it will not be difficult for me to –”
He spun around, setting the Reaver between himself and the Hylden, “I see little reason to pay courtesy to some anonymous upstart who pretends to my throne. I have met one of your brood at the Pillars: the coward died by her own hand on learning my identity. And perhaps of you two, she was the wiser.”
The twin lights flared up, but almost immediately dimmed back; the voice which answered was calm – perhaps too much so:
“If you think to upset me, Yarovit of the Royal House, into some foolishness born of anger – know that you have failed; as has failed that little demon rebellion that you have orchestrated. How ironic that it should be the creations of your kind which should aid us against our mutinied servants; how even more so that, in the absence of my troops, they should aid me against you, now.”
As the voice spoke, the lights were outshined by a fulgent emerald glow in which he easily recognised teleportation magic; as the spell took hold, they disappeared, and with them, his hidden interlocutor. But he would not be alone in the dark chamber for long; soon, true to Yarovit’s words, the echo of heavy footsteps reverberated through the darkness of the empty hall.
Golems.
He shot into the air, as far above as he sensed he could go; this promised to be a long, if uninspired, fight –

– He drove the Reaver down, putting himself briefly in an extremely precarious situation as he committed his whole impetus to the blow. The cut, however powerful, produced only a small dent in the animate suit of armour – but this was enough: the energy amassed within the statue started to seep out through the crack. Knowing what would follow, he returned up into the safety of air –
– The statue shattered, giving birth to myriad shards. One of the larger parts – perhaps the head, he neither knew nor cared – hit the wall, hard, weakening the already timeworn structure; green light started to seep through the crack, as only seconds before had seeped the white glow through the dent in the golem’s armour. He shot a telekinetic bolt at the damaged part of the wall – and the eldritch glow poured through the opening, as it was now pouring through so many others –
– The chamber was now quite well-lit, and thus he could see how many golems were still inside: but this calculation was, in the end, unnecessary; for he had just dealt the finishing blow. The tower, destabilized by the many subsequent explosions, tumbled down all around him, crushing the golems underneath the falling blocks –
– He left the collapsing building at almost the last moment, flying as high up as possible; only to grimace in pain as his left wing grazed the Ward Shield. In the air, he waited for the smoke and rubble to set down; whilst he waited, he had the time to recover his scattered strength and thoughts.

Janos Audron was not in this place; he had never visited it – not in this era, at least. The parlay with my enemy, brief as it was, told me that much: for it was me whom this Hylden princeling had awaited so eagerly, guided to the Bastion by the words of a Seer.
Maat’ash’Eirene, it appeared, had foretold this meeting; our own confrontation was now inevitable. Whatever else of my fate was known to the Hylden Seer, I would also learn.

When he smoke finally settled, he spotted an opening in the northeast tower’s wall: this would be his next target. He flew up to the ledge; then, he turned into mist to pass through the bars which stood in his way. Once inside, he proceeded cautiously through the maze of the desolate, uninviting corridors: many of those had been rendered impassable by time; some had turned into deadly traps – deadly, that is, for one less agile than he was: falling blocks of stone, moved from their proper places by the explosion of the northwest tower; unsound floor in places where the low ceiling made it impossible for him to fly –
He was now deep within this dark warren – to his best estimate, two or three levels beneath the topmost floor – in yet another dead-ended passage. This time, however, he would not need to retrace his steps, as he had to do the previous two or three times: the wall before him was critically compromised; it took but a single telekinetic bolt to destroy it completely. He entered the chamber through the narrow crack –

“So, the lord managed to destroy the golems... after all. That is well: I have almost begun to grow impatient again.”
This must have once been the heart of this tower: a large, square hall, bathed in a cruel, sterile radiance whose source he could not really determine. Rubble littered the floor – there were even several large boulders; one of those lay near the very centre of the room. The ceiling was surprisingly low – whether by luck or acumen, his opponent had chosen his battleground well: when the fight came, Kain would scarcely have the place to attack from air. Of course, given that the vampire lord had fought flat-footed for millennia, it was not that much of a disadvantage.
The commander himself was standing in one of the farther corners of the room, next to some intricate piece of machinery; he must have been tinkering with it when he had heard the loud crash of the breaking wall –
It was Kain’s first opportunity to see the creature in full. A dubious pleasure: Yarovit was nothing but a twisted mass of metal and bone, welded together by the sinister forces of the demon realm whence he hailed, only vaguely resembling in shape even his own malformed warriors. Appraising the creature – and taking note of the five golems, still inactive, scattered across the room – the vampire lord answered:
“Impatient – for your death, Hylden? Are you that keen to escape the prison where your kin belongs?”
The Hylden laughed; that is, if the raspy voice coming from the abomination could possibly be called laughter. “Impatient for my victory, vampire! It is unavoidable: Maat’ash’Eirene bespoke your fall at the hand of one of us. Sakhmet, as you spoke, is dead; without her, Perun cannot possibly hope to fell you. My win is certain, yes – not that it will make it any less sweet when –”
“– if it comes,” he interjected smoothly.
The small stones grated under his feet as Kain approached his opponent; he was now near the giant boulder which marked the centre of the room. The Hylden, to his credit, had not given ground; had not moved from his stand by the odd contraption. Now, haughty and arrogant as only one born to power can be, he replied –
“It will come. Only the Traitor of old could have possibly boasted a Sight acuter than Eirene’s. The Traitor: strange that this place should bring a remembrance of her... or mayhap not so.”
“The Traitor?” he demanded – he believed he knew to whom Yarovit was referring; and yet –
Given the Hylden’s angry answer, his question must have struck a chord.
“The Traitor: Maat, the Queen, the Prophetess, the greatest of our Seers; the one who forespoke the coming of the Champion and the one lost, taken prisoner by the Enemy... This whole city was burnt to ground when the rescue party came here in search of her; but their efforts proved fruitless: the deserter had already left with her new masters for the Citadel of Tears! And then –”
The voice broke for a moment, but then continued, regaining its initial composure, “And then, the thousand-year war was over, and the time for our banishment had come – but Maat remained behind; and so, at last, we learnt of her betrayal. The Traitor: yes. Eirene is her daughter, blood of her blood. For that, she both suffers and is exalted – for with the blood of the traitor came the gift of prophecy.”
It was Kain’s turn to laugh. “Then you have staked your miserable life on the gossamer prophecy of a traitor’s daughter? Very well: let us see if words should save you from the Reaver.” He unsheathed the blade: it hummed, as though Raziel’s soul within it also anticipated the fight and the kill.
But even now, there was no doubt in the Hylden’s voice as the commander answered calmly, drawing his own sword from its scabbard, “Yes. Let us see. My victory awaits.”

There was a loud, dissonant sound as the statues around them awakened. Kain cast the Mind effigies to occupy the golems –
And the split second it took him to do so nearly cost him much: for whilst he cast the spell, the Hylden commander raised a Glyph shield not unlike that of his sister, one which, until dispelled or expired, would render him nearly impervious to the hits of the Reaver.
But it was clear that, unlike Sakhmet, her brother was as much a consummate fighter as he was a sorcerer. As soon as he was safe behind his shield, he unleashed a furious volley of attacks at Kain, nearly unerringly homing on any opening he espied in the vampire lord’s defence. His attacks, Kain swiftly dodged and more than matched with his own – but Yarovit did not even bother to block the incoming strikes: they were all caught on the Hylden’s shield.
The vampire lord had just dodged a diagonal cut which otherwise would have surely severed his left wing from his torso; and then parried immediately the cut at his waist; but then, warned by his instinct, faster than conscious thought, immediately moved again. Forward and to the right – with a backhand strike at neck level, caught by the shield, as all his attacks had been caught; but that was now of secondary importance.
Had he not followed his impulse, he would have been nearly cut in twain. In the precious seconds he had spent defending himself from the Hylden’s initial onslaught, the golems had dealt with the Mind effigies – and now they arrived to help their master.

There were no cries of the dying in this fight; no sweet scent of his enemies’ fear and spilt blood; there was only the flurry of the Hylden’s attacks on one side and the slow, but steady, press of the golems on the other; and in the middle, he – fighting the losing fight.
Because he was losing this fight. For the meantime, he could not break Yarovit’s Glyph shield, though he constantly tested it, with magic, telekinesis, and his sword; and as for the golems –
When it happened, it took him by surprise; although perhaps it should not have. It took only several well-timed, well-aimed cuts to damage severely enough the first of the golems: the one that had first attacked him. The statue exploded, as it should have (he immediately used the opportunity to attack the Hylden, but his opponent’s shield was as strong as ever in spite of the thousand fragments hitting it). But the energy which powered the statue did not dissipate, as it should have. Instead, it flowed to the towering contraption in the corner; a deafening shriek was heard, and a moment later (a moment which, nevertheless, accommodated a whole series of cuts and parries) a new golem, twin to the one he had just destroyed, appeared to join the fray. And he suspected – and his suspicion was soon confirmed – that whatever other golems he destroyed would be likewise replaced –
The Hylden had managed to repair one of Malek’s devices (a distant part of his mind amended: not Malek’s; the Paladin must have purloined the golem generators with the rest of the Bastion). This was how they had awakened the golems which had defeated the demons. To eliminate the golems from this fight, to win this fight, he would have to destroy this contraption; or, at the very least, its energy source –
And he would have to do it fast: the understanding came late, almost too late: his strength was leaving him, seeping out of him as surely as it would seep out of a damaged golem. The entire mêlée had not yet lasted ten minutes, but already he had sustained many wounds; some of them, deep. His immortal flesh had closed them almost instantly, of course – but that had taken much of his strength; strength which his tenuous link with the Pillars simply could not replace fast enough –
He leapt on top of the boulder which lay at the centre of the room, expecting his Hylden enemy to go after him, to try to push him back amidst the vicious statues, as had already happened once or twice before –
– Except that Yarovit did not follow. Instead, the Hylden – laughed.
“Well met and well fought, Kain! I go now: my spell is almost over, and I would rather not meet your blade without it... But I do wonder, vampire – whence will you draw the blood you need before the third round comes?”
The Hylden’s Glyph shield was, indeed, disappearing – but Kain did not leave his current stand: already did he catch sight of the dazzlingly bright green of the teleportation spell. Even he would not have managed to get to Yarovit in time...
The creature’s parting words were correct: there would be a third round to this fight.

Once the Hylden abandoned the battle ground, the rest of the fight became absurdly easy; from the boulder, he had a clear shot at the globe of energy powering the contraption which spawned the golems –
Then, it was a matter of chipping off pieces.

He surveyed the grim green-and-black landscape of the outside of what for him was still Malek’s Bastion – for although he had learnt much in this place: not all of what he had intended to learn, and a lot of what he had no intention to learn, but certainly much – he did not yet have a different name for it...

Maat’ash’Eirene, it appeared, was the daughter of the Hylden Seer whom I first met far away from these frozen lands; near Meridian, in the south of Nosgoth. The Hylden commander declared her a traitor to her race; and though, in the end, she may have turned out to be one, it was certainly not through the deeds for which he condemned her.
At the time when the Pillars were raised, and the Hylden banished, the Seer – Maat – was suffering her own punishment, secluded from nearly all in the Eternal Prison, a construct of her own kindred, but at that time already in vampires’ hands. From that place, she was rescued by the fledgling Vorador, at no small price: for he demanded that she depose the greater part of her powers in his hands. And thus, Vorador, one of the very few amongst vampires – at least before the coming of the brood of my son Rahab – became immune to the destructive power of that which my kind has always feared the most: water. But for that – and for his stolen mastery of Earth magic – Vorador paid a dire price: Maat’s blood twisted his visage into one akin to her own kind; the mark of his avarice, out for all vampire and human to see.
All this, I have learnt from the Seer herself during our last palaver. And more: for before she died, Maat granted me the promise of one more gift of knowledge which her blood carried: a promise proven true when I sought out and defeated Vorador. By that time, the old fool had rebelled against my will, refusing me that for which I had restored him from beyond the grave: army, loyal to none but me. Yet that which he denied me in life, he gladly supplied in death –
And thus were my Lieutenants, Raziel the foremost of them, born.

He sheathed the Reaver – not quite aware that he had drawn it in the first place – with a single, decisive move. He had lingered in this ancient ruin long enough; it was time for him to end his matters here, and return to the sublunar world.
The Hylden would probably await him in the southeast tower. But he would think him to arrive weak and half-crazed owing to the lack of warm blood, the lack of prey in these parts –
How he would be mistaken. He laughed dryly; it took only a short, brusque move of his hand to set fire to the several wooden boards which barred his way to the last still-standing tower of the Bastion.

Another labyrinth painted in red-veined obsidian and venomous green. Again the piles of bodies; again the golems patrolling the ruins –
This time, he had entered the tower almost at ground level and moved upwards through the dark galleries and staircases; as before – as always before – destroying all that stood in his way. The last obstacle took the form of a simple, unadorned door. He opened it casually –
And then immediately cast his Dimension spell to move near his enemy. As before, Yarovit’s reflexes were very nearly perfect, very nearly vampiric in quality: with one hand, he was already moving to cast some arcane spell – perhaps that irksome Glyph shield; with the other, he had already half-drawn his sword from its scabbard. But nearly was in this case not nearly enough: the next moment, both of the Hylden’s hands were lying on the ground, and blood rushed copiously from the creature’s stumps into a large puddle under Kain’s feet.
“It appears that the third round is over,” he remarked casually, scanning the room. It wasn’t large, and lit only by the green glow of the Ward Shield coming through the narrow lancet windows. The majority of the floor was taken by another strange contraption; this time, of unmistakably Hylden origin. Its angular shapes and antiseptic white stood in stark contrast against the ruined, black walls of the Bastion; small green sparks shoot from it once in a while. He assumed that this was the Shield generator he needed to deactivate to leave this place.
“You have – survived?” There was now no trace of arrogance, only pure, unadulterated fear, in Yarovit’s voice as the Hylden added, “Without – without blood? How?”
“You will not live long enough to possibly avail yourself of this knowledge,” Kain answered, savouring the scent of terror in the cold, northern air. “Suffice it to say that you were in possession of – outdated – information. On more than one subject.”
The creature moved in alarm. “What? What do you mean?”
“The survivors from the fight that you sent away from this place were hunted down and destroyed to a man. Not by me,” he laughed, “but by the demons you had thought vanquished. Your siblings’ armies have been likewise decimated by the Pillars; even now, your brother tries in vain to reach you at this place. Why? Surely not to aid a fool who would fight me alone –”
There was a sudden understanding in Yarovit’s eyes. “Eirene...”
“Eirene,” Kain repeated, disgusted. “Yes, I thought this would be your answer. You speak of little else, after all –”
“Eirene,” he repeated again, this time more to himself than to the Hylden, “She foresaw my defeat, did she not? But not at your hand, princeling.”
There was a movement, so brief that it was almost only a notion of itself –
Yarovit was now on his knees before him; the Reaver was buried up to the hilt in the creature’s throat.
“Vae victis!” Kain laughed; the Reaver screamed accord as it devoured the Hylden prince’s soul.

There was an odd, chatoyant gem on Yarovit’s body, resembling that which he had garnered in the Razielim abode. He added it to his previous trophy, and then turned to the Hylden Shield generator. Now, that he could examine it in detail, he saw that it was a complex arrangement of several batteries and control panels; he remembered having seen similar designs many times before, in the Hylden City, far across the sea.
After several attempts, he managed to find the combination of controls which turned the Shield off; the room grew immediately much darker without the green radiance. Then, he destroyed the control panel: he’d rather no one could activate the Shield again – at least, not without difficulty. He did not expect to be forced to return to the ruins of the Bastion; but he preferred to keep all his options open.
There was a part of the ceiling which almost pulverised after he cast a telekinetic bolt at it. Through the opening, he flew back out into the cold air; once outside, he settled on the tower’s roof –
“Zosha,” he called out into the night.
The reply came quickly, strong and sure, “My Lord?”
“Report.”
“We have regained control of the Citadel and captured the enemy camp east of the city. The troops are now heading towards the Ash Village.”
“Contact me immediately once you destroy the Ward Shield.”
“My Lord.” He could almost hear in her voice that small bow of obedience with which she had previously acknowledged his orders.
He came up to the battlement which crowned the tower, and looked at the horizon through one of the crenellations –
The Nosgoth which came to his view was bathed in blood: dawn was breaking out in the eastern sky, and it painted the world below him, hidden from his eyes as it was by the thick smoke cover, the deepest shade of incarnadine red.

The night of remembrances was over; a new day was come. My first step throughout it seemed obvious: I would confront Perun, the last Hylden prince with pretences to my throne, as soon as Zosha’s humans broke through the Ward Shield which protected the Hylden encampment.
But I was forced to alter my plans sooner than I expected – for it was at that very moment, even as I stood amidst the ruins of Malek’s Bastion, that I suddenly felt a sentiment I had not experienced for millennia –
Dread: the Pillars of Nosgoth were in peril.