The Ash Village. Once the abode of my proud son Dumah and his Clan, after their demise converted into a human settlement, it now housed a Hylden army under the command of Perun – the last of the triumvirate of generals whom Maat’ash’Eirene had prophesied to be my fall.
But even if no prophecy had set us against each other, the Hylden and I would meet. For Perun stood in my way to Nosgoth; as I stood in his.

He studied the snow-covered courtyard through the gap in the wall. Less than a full day and night had passed since he had sworn to himself to return to this place. Then, he had only just come to this land; ignorant of his enemies’ forces, nearly drained of his powers by the corrupt Pillars, with the Soul Reaver as his only asset.
But much had changed in this day and night. Now, five Pillars were healed; and now, he had names to follow: Eirene, daughter of Maat, and Perun, his quarry in the Village; and he even had some tentative allies –
Allies. He tasted the word: as always, it had for him only the sour, sharp tang of betrayal.

The Ash Village under the reign of the Dumahim had been a residence of steel and sandstone; over the century when it had been occupied by human settlers, they had restructured many hallways of this place, putting up partitions to divide them into smaller rooms – perhaps in an effort to bring them down to a shape and size which their puny minds would find bearable; in the process, they had torn off much of the precious metal and replaced it with the cheaper brick and glass. The Hylden warriors had not been in the Village long, but they, too, had already left their mark on this place: some of the walls – both the original walls and the human-put partitions – had holes blasted into them, to make the place more accessible, and less of a labyrinth; pieces of brick, stone and glass at times still littered the floor around such openings. Here and there stood contraptions and devices alien to him in shape and purpose; white cables run up and down all over the walls and ceiling, as if they were the veins of some giant organism.
The end result was a haphazard mix, a bastard of architecture, atrocious to behold by any but the most vulgar eyes; it fit perfectly in Nosgoth.

A large, grey wolf trotted down the corridors of the Village. The bulk of the Hylden contingent must have been tied in fight with the human attackers in the western part of the settlement; it was in this direction – in the direction of the battle-screams and the dispatches of gunfire – that the wolf was now heading. The wolf left behind a trail of dead Hylden guards; most with torn throats, but some with wounds which could not have been possibly caused by any wolf’s claws or fangs.
The world held only shades of grey for the wolf – not that it mattered much, as there was very little in this world which was not grey; but the smells caught by the wolf’s sensitive nose were very much amplified in intensity next to what a human – perhaps even next to what a vampire in his usual state – would feel. Smells had grain and texture and undertones for the wolf; due to some odd synaesthesia, he also saw them at times as coloured mist painted on top of the achromatic world; and sometimes heard them as sounds; each smell a different colour or note. Currently, the wolf was following the trail of emerald mist (curious how, whatever his form, he would always associate the colour with the Hylden) up its gradient of intensity as much as he was following the ever-louder sounds of battle.
At last, the wolf came to a place where there was a newly-created opening in the floor. The emerald mist was much thicker, fresher here, and with hints of the incarnadine colour-smell of blood; down there, there would be five or six enemies all in one place. The wolf leapt down into the darkness –
This place was clearly some sort of infirmary for the Hylden soldiers wounded in the battle. There were several of them, just as he had smelled from the above. Each lay, bathed in his personal aura of green-and-red scent, on a makeshift cot made of tattered rags – probably garnered from the human dwellings about the Village; each was attached to another of those strange, pure-white contraptions, so bizarrely incongruous in this place.
They offered little resistance as he finished them off, one by one.

The bare walls of the next room – like those of the provisional sickbay – were made of brick: human-built. There was a small window here, next to a large piece of dirty, tattered cloth hanging in the door opening; through the window entered into the room streams of the dim, dirty light of the Village; and also the sounds of a battle in progress – in stark contrast with the muted light, now unbelievably, almost unbearably loud to the wolf’s ears.
He shifted into his true form – the racket abruptly decreased to an almost manageable level – and came up to the window to look at the street outside.
It was as if he found himself at the bottom of a deep well, an artificial couloir: the place was dark, and narrow; not ten steps from him were the wall and the door and the windows of another human-built, ramshackle brick building. There was a crowd of Hylden soldiers in the brief narrow space in between the houses, some entering the building on the other side of the street; some leaving it; some passing beside it.
He retraced in his mind the path he had taken through the Village, and compared it to what he had remembered of the Village of long ago –
He had last seen this place when he had come to warn Dumah of the impending strike of the human forces: a strike to which he had consented when the Priestess of the time had informed him that the toll of supporting that many Clans had been simply too heavy on the population of the Citadel; a strike which he had foreseen many times before in the Chronoplast portals. Then, his son had cast him out, of course; such had been Dumah’s fate, to think himself greater than his father; to become the fool and the laugh of Nosgoth; to fall at humans’ hands, and to be released only to fall again.
– There had been two courtyards on the western side of the abode at that time. He should be near the inner one now, the one which used to lead to Dumah’s own throne room –
He tore off the curtain in the door and walked out into the light of the street outside.

The Hylden soldiers, of course, attacked him as soon as they noticed him; as soon as they saw that he was not one of their own accursed kindred.
He unsheathed the Reaver and, reversing the grip, drove it forcefully between the broken stone tiles on the floor –
The arcane magic of the blade generated a powerful earthquake, a shock wave which knocked the enemy warriors off their feet, and sent them reeling into the air; and then, given the narrow space, into the walls of the buildings and on top of one another. Some of the soldiers were still shooting as they were carried through the air; the dispatches from their Glyph rifles were suddenly travelling at odd angles, sometimes, often enough, hitting the other Hylden soldiers. Some bolts were headed his way; to protect himself – and add to the pandemonium – he activated his Energy shield. What wounds he received still stung, but not too much.
But this, he did instinctively, automatically; his attention was occupied elsewhere. To the left of the house from which he had emerged, the narrow street widened into a small square; the original stone walls were still visible there – the original walls of the inner western courtyard of the Village; for this was where he now found himself. There, on the steps which led to an odd, tall building with heavy double door – which he did not remember, and which, his memories told him, was standing precisely where Dumah’s audience chamber, the chamber where his son had rejected his warning, used to be – there was a great mass of Hylden soldiers, milling about like the insects they resembled; and among them, one was much different from all the others: taller and much more deformed and with an aura of authority and power; the one in command.
And that one: Perun – was now looking straight at him; then, there was a brief moment of recognition, when neither of them would first avert his eyes –
He nearly paid a dear price for his momentary lack of concentration. It was only pain which brought him back from his reverie: his shield extinguished itself, and his right wing was hit from the behind with the full power of a Glyph bolt. And just in time: some Hylden warrior was apparently about to try and impale him on his lance. He snarled in the creature’s face: the Hylden suddenly changed his mind, and ran away, heading right, for the far end of the narrow street – the place where, by the sound of it, was the bottleneck for whose control the Hylden and human troops now fought.
He paid the coward no heed; he snapped back his head to the Hylden mass to his left.
Perun was gone.

The Earth spell proved its value again. Once more, masses of Hylden soldiers were sent hurling through the air, to the left and to the right, leaving a clear path for him in the middle. This time, he did not even stop to finish them all off. They were inconsequential; for all he cared, the humans could have them. And for all he knew, they would: there was a somewhat different quality to the sounds coming from behind him: as if the stalemate had been broken, and either party – the humans, most probably, given that the Hylden commander had abandoned his post – was in attack.
He had no rational reason not to consider the option that Perun had escaped the Village altogether, teleporting out to some distant Hylden camp; but his instinct told him that it was not so. No; somehow, the alternative seemed more probable –
He closed the heavy double door behind himself – they were metal, he noticed: a rarity in this place of scraps and leftovers. He did not really believe that any of the foot soldiers would dare come after him – after them – into this place; still, there was no need to invite them. He was likely to encounter some resistance anyway.
After all, if escape were not Perun’s plan, the Hylden commander would most likely try to lead him into a trap.

There was another set of heavy doors at the end of the short, dark corridor; and then –

Of all the sights in this fallen land, this one was perhaps the most disheartening: an illusion of Eden, wrought by the artificer’s cunning scheme.
For in a land where Nature herself is corrupt, only a falsehood can yield the semblance of natural design.

It was a garden.
The air was much warmer here than it was outside, where snow would still lay if it had not been trampled with dirt into a kind of unsavoury sludge by the feet of the many Hylden who had walked over it. The light was much different, too: neither dim nor weak, it was the soft, diffused, slightly yellow light of late summer of Nosgoth. There were some trees nearby, just to his right: they were only small, misshapen pine-trees, and their needles were not even green, but somewhat rusty in colour; and they were shorter than what he had remembered pine-needles to be. But they were trees, something which he had not expected to find in this land where all plants were black as tar; and he saw that there were more, and other kinds of trees in the distance, across the small lake.
In front of him, sloping gently down towards the lake, there was a small meadow: a bit of grass, with patches of flowers interspersed throughout it. There were some insects flying around the flowers.
There was a waterfall; and a thin film of mist where the falling water hit the surface of the pond. The sound of water and the buzzing of insects was all that he could hear; what battle still took place outside, all its noises were drowned out by the silence.
The absurdity of this place was simply astounding.
It was a garden under a roof, in the middle of a city, lit by artificial light – although not only artificial, he corrected himself when he finally comprehended what the mirrors were intended for – and artificially heated. In its own way, it was as perverse as the rest of Nosgoth.
It was a mute accusation shouted out at him at top voice; one even worse for being completely unintentional.

The mirrors were everywhere: large and small, flat, convex and concave; set up in some abstract constellation unfathomable to the uninitiated, they gathered, reflected and dispersed light around the garden. As he passed by them, following the single trail which led from the entrance to the garden towards the lake, each one in turn showed his reflection, some faithful and other, deformed; he wondered if they would show also the reflections of his Mind effigies. If so, they could serve him even better in the coming fight.

At last, when it became obvious to him that this time, his Hylden enemy would not speak out to him first, he called out into the almost-silence of the warm summer afternoon:
“I am here, Perun, as Eirene foretold! You knew this day would come, yet it seems you are still afraid. Do you seek to escape your destiny? Come, Hylden, fight me – or would you rather I came and dug you out of the hole you cower in?"
For a moment, there was no response; but then, a ripple moved through the surface of water, and then up the waterfall; the mists around the waterfall started to coalesce rapidly into a humanoid shape. A rather unsettling development: he had never witnessed such power of the States manifest in one who had not been vampire; and, beside Kain himself, a vampire of Vorador’s stock, at that –
Even fully incarnate, it was as though Perun were missing a certain peculiar aspect of solidity – firmness – from his armour and body: they seemed liquid and mutable, as though borne of nothing more substantial than emerald light, thin mist and the cascade’s iridescent water. When the Hylden spoke out, his voice too had an eerie, fluctuating quality, now louder, and then growing weaker again:
“To escape destiny – as your slayer and successor? Even if I wished to, we both know I cannot. One does not cheat his fate in Nosgoth; it was perhaps your kindred’s first and greatest crime to ensure this. It is fitting punishment, cursed ones, that now, however you will it, you cannot unmake your own!”
Kain smirked, and, taking the Reaver off his back, countered, “I already have defied my stars, Hylden. It is you who will die here today; and before you do, know this and suffer in this knowledge: whilst you must still obey the curse of my kindred, my kin is free of yours. Your game is forfeit; a cure was found to the incurable; the madness to which you have condemned us afflicts vampires no more.”
The Hylden replied incredulously, “Only a vampire could have tasted immortality and then endeavour to seek cure for it; what a glorious brand of madness of its own! And if you have found the cure, it is unsurprising that we have encountered so few of you here –”
Perun was still speaking; yet Kain heard him no more.
A part of his mind wondered briefly if it was possible that the Hylden was lying, either because he had been himself misled, or in an attempt to mislead Kain. But he soon recalled what little he had learnt about his vampire ancestors from his journey into Nosgoth’s past; about them, and about the creature which they had worshipped, and what it claimed to be and do –
No, he decided; Perun was not lying; on the contrary, the Hylden had unwittingly supplied him with an important piece of truth; of the magnificent, awful puzzle that was Nosgoth.
Another part wondered how he could himself possibly overlook so important an implication; and how many more such revelations were still to come; how much more he did not yet know, and how much more of that which he should already know he had overlooked. He closed off this train of thought quickly; it was futile to think of these things, for now.
A small, nagging part wanted to know if Raziel had known this truth – but he must; he must. Another part concentrated on what the repercussions for him could be: what of his status as the Scion of Balance; what of his symbiotic link with the Pillars? He did not know.
But it was something far simpler than all these questions that occupied the majority of his thoughts; a cognitive dissonance far more instinctive – far more visceral – in origin.
Vampires were immortal. They simply were; it was one of their defining features. The bloodlust – he had learnt long ago, perhaps in Meridian, or perhaps before – was the result of a curse which they had suffered, as a species, at the hands of their ancient enemies. But their immortality –
Their immortality was –
– was an effect of the same curse.
It was useless to fight the truth. He had learnt that lesson millennia ago.

“Indeed, between you and the Audron –”
Kain startled out of his reverie. “Audron? So – Janos is still alive.”
The Hylden laughed; it was a bitter, mirthless laugh. “Yes, he still lives. How could he not, without the cure you speak of? We certainly had no intention to let him rejoin your god.” The last word was nearly spat out; the Hylden evidently shared Kain’s own sentiment regarding the Wheel of Fate. “Of course, now that we have returned to Nosgoth, and without his aid –”
“Where do you keep him?”
A deceptively simple question; one that he did not expect even the Hylden fool to answer –
“Where? He is with the half-sister, secure in Avici, in the land of shadow. I see you already have two pieces of the sigil – having no doubt murdered my sister and brother. And here is the third fragment – catch!”

As the gem moved rapidly towards him, propelled by the force of the Hylden’s telekinetic powers, he saw that it was colourless and translucent, as though it had been nothing more special than a piece of carbon, an ordinary diamond; but he did not have the time to do anything save register its appearance, to react to whatever trap the Hylden was leading him into; because the trap was already sprung and already working. When the gem found itself in the presence of its brothers, the three pieces of the – seal, if the Hylden was not lying on that matter – began to move towards one another, pulled together by some unseen force; and when they finally touched –
He was left wondering why he had not felt anything at all.
When the pieces of the seal had finally touched, they had erupted with emerald light: pure Glyph magic, perhaps not concentrated enough to harm a Hylden or a human, but certainly enough to cause serious burns to a vampire –
He laughed as he finally understood; as he took to the air with a powerful stroke of his wings. For a moment, he hovered mid-air, presenting the Hylden with a clear view of the one gift which his race had irretrievably lost. “An old enemy of mine once told me that unless I mastered Time, it would master me –”
One more wing-stroke delivered him to the Hylden. “I have.”
But Perun had already moved – impossibly fast in his own manner, like a water strider he skimmed the surface of water, stopping just out of the Reaver’s reach. “My little trick has failed, I see; no matter. Your ancestors were correct in this one regard: Death is not of Earth, but of –”
“– Water.” The last word was nearly unintelligible: nearly lost in the noise of a massive wave of water which tore off the surface of the waterfall and now headed quickly towards Kain. He evaded it – barely – by flying up, where it could not touch him; it crashed the shore with a thunderous roar, flooding a small part of the terrain; the next moment, the water moved back, leaving behind a patch of mud and mutilated, uprooted grass. From his position high above, he watched the spectacle; as soon as the wave passed by, he dove at Perun like a bird of prey, a raptor, gaining momentum and speed as he fell –
And very nearly did not manage to stop; almost one-third of the Reaver was submerged in water, and a long streak of parted waters trailed in the blade’s wake, before Kain lost the momentum he had meant to spend on Perun, and could not: on seeing Kain approach, the Hylden had dissolved into mist –
Kain turned around – a thin spray of water droplets from the Reaver scattered around; some landed on his skin, and he hissed out in pain. The Hylden had apparently moved as far away from him as possible across the lake; the mists there were already coalescing into a more solid form –
Only to dissolve again as Kain sent in Perun’s direction a volley of telekinetic projectiles. The spheres of compressed air passed harmlessly through the Hylden’s gaseous body, and hit a tree on the other side of the lake, tearing it in half. The next moment, the mists thickened again –
Kain dodged effortlessly the water-bolt Perun sent towards him; but slowly, his unease was growing. It was clear that this first exchange had brought no resolve: he and his opponent could play this game of evading each other’s projectiles and blows for quite a time. It was time to use his other faculties.
The Dimension spell he dismissed outright: he could not yet control the power with the precision required to ensure that he would not end up half-submerged in water. The Energy shield was likewise useless if Perun were to continue casting water projectiles: water would not harm a Hylden, whilst he himself would still suffer. This left the Mind effigies and the Time spell as his only options –
This time, he barely managed to duck. Apparently, Perun reached the same conclusion as Kain regarding the use of their powers: a single ray of lightning, fast and deadly, shot in Kain’s direction. It hit the mirror behind Kain, and reflected off of it into the forest behind the waterfall; the tree it hit burst into flames. The next ray came soon after, unerringly homing on Kain –
He cast the Time spell. The lightning slowed down enough for him to move out of its way; he turned to Perun –
The Hylden had apparently already realised what was happening: however slowly, he had already started to assume his mist form. Kain sent towards him several telekinetic projectiles: from what he saw, one or two managed to hit their target before the Hylden’s body grew too dissolute. Apart from the insignificant damage he managed to inflict through them, the spell had been wasted.
Perun returned to his more solid form only after time regained its normal pace for him; and only for a brief enough moment to discharge two other lethal rays, one after another, at Kain. The vampire lord managed to evade the first bolt – it hit another mirror, which promptly exploded – but that put him squarely in the path of the other one. He tried to use his own Mist form –
The lightning hit him, trapping him in a shining, radiant cage of pain; sparks ran up and down the length of his body, overloading his pain receptors and at the same time turning his muscles numb and unresponsive. For a moment, there was no thought, no feel, no emotion; only the pain –
Then, the spell released him – though not before it took the larger part of his strength; but for a moment longer, his muscles would not yet obey his will; he started to fall. He recovered control over his body only just over the surface of water; just in time to see another lightning beam heading his way –
He slowed time instinctively, without conscious effort; that gave him the precious fraction of a second needed to get away from the path of the lightning; once relatively safe, he turned to his opponent again; but Perun was again already half-mist.
At that moment, the lightning bolt hit another mirror; this time, however, the mirror did not explode, but deflected the lightning back over the lake –

In the end, the task was neither as hard nor as easy as he had expected at various points of the fight. It was pitifully easy to make the lightning rebound towards its author – Kain only had to cast several telekinetic projectiles, aiming them at carefully selected mirrors around the lake and garden. Perun, as it turned out, was not immune to the effects of the lightning, and water was, of course, an excellent conductor.
But some of the mirrors, unable to bear the terrible strain, shattered when the lightning touched them; and so, the lightning which hit Perun was nowhere near as strong as the lightning with which Perun would have hit him; and, of course, the Hylden was much more careful with aiming the bolts after the first time. After several failed attempts to lure him into hitting another mirror, and several equally fruitless exchanges of the mundane telekinetic projectiles on one side and water projectiles and waves on the other – Kain was forced to accept the simple truth: to harm the Hylden, he would have to let himself be harmed in return.
The next time Perun sent out the lightning at him, Kain did not dodge it, but cast the Energy shield instead –
Again, there was only pain: the brilliant, excruciating, mind-numbing pain of agony, of Death in life.

With hindsight, it was a good thing that he was over solid ground, and not water, when the lightning hit his shield. He was not able to regain control over his body before it struck earth this time; if he had hit water –
Frankly, he did not quite know what would precisely have happened if he had hit water; but the outcome would be certainly even more severe than what did in fact happen. He collapsed into a bloody, unseemly heap, every single cell of his body crying in pain as he felt life sapped from him and at the same time restored by his symbiotic link with the Pillars, only to be lost again the next moment with the blood he lost. His spell-casting powers were naught, having been drained out of him by the Hylden’s spell together with his life force; his disoriented mind begged for the mercy of oblivion.
He raised himself slowly, gradually, from the ground; absent-mindedly, he noticed that did not even have the strength to lift the Reaver with one hand. As he rose, he faced the lake: and, within the lake, the Hylden, still writhing in the throes of his own agony. Such an easy prey now – yet so far beyond his grasp! His wings would not listen to his mind’s commands.
He did not have the power to cast a single spell; he wondered if the same could be applied to the Hylden; if not –
He was left with only one option now; a dubious one, at best.

The world turned into shades of grey – though there was a large incarnadine cloud all around him: his own blood; and another one far in front, where the Hylden was. The wolf stepped several steps back from the water to gain place for a running start. Then, he ran; and then, he leapt –
Then, there was only a snap as the wolf’s jaws closed on empty air; and then, there was only –

– Darkness; and within the darkness, voices.
“Is he dead?” Female, somehow – familiar?
“Not yet.” Male, but young and weak; childlike almost. “But it can easily be amended. Help me.”
“What are you doing, Sava? Leave that sword!” Brief scuffle; then, at last:
“You have no power to command me, sister.”
Exasperation – and yet concern, “None, save the one granted to me by Mother and the Council. But I will not help you kill an ally.”
Incredulity. “Ally? Is that what you think he is? What have you become – what has he made you be – if you would consider him and his any allies of ours?”
“He has made me nothing that I was not before. Look around! Think of the battle which must have taken place here. Do you really think either of us could have fought alone and win against such power?”
“Not you, perhaps. But I am never alone: my God walks with me. He would aid me in my victory.” Calm assurance.
“Your – God?” Disbelief.
“I have looked into the Abyss, sister. And it has looked into me; and I have found my God.” Brief pause. “But perhaps I have spoken too much, too early; Mother must learn of our illustrious victory here, and my troops need healing even if yours do not. With your permission, sister, I will leave you here to deal with your – ally.”
Another pause.
“And while you wait for him to awaken, consider this – how possible it is that the predator should wish to strike alliance with the cattle?”

“It did happen once. The circumstances were similar.”
Zosha was standing on the bank of the lake, turned away from Kain. On hearing him speak, she startled a bit, but when she turned to him, her face was again set into the emotionless mask she preferred to take on in his presence. She did not say anything.
He picked up the Soul Reaver; he must have dropped the blade when he hit the ground. “You should have killed him. He will turn on you and on those who share your blood.”
Her eyes narrowed briefly; and then she laughed a mirthless laugh. “He would have me help him kill you. And when I refused, he gave me the same warning.”
“I know,” he replied noncommittally. The garden still stretched all around him; but it looked much different now than it had before the fight. Large parts of the meadow near the shore had been destroyed by Perun’s tidal waves; the uprooted grass and flowers were floating on the surface of the lake. Some of the trees were charred; others, still smouldering. Most of the mirrors which used to circulate and spread light were shattered; the garden now drowned in a gloom not unlike that which awaited him outside. The insects had hidden somewhere, and those which had not were probably dead; their incessant song had come to an end –
The garden now fit in with the rest of the village; with the rest of Nosgoth.
“What is this sword? He insisted that we use it.”
He looked at the blade; then, he sheathed it. “The sword is the key to a lock; a lock that some are afraid to close; and others, to open. But that is my concern, not yours. Your debt is paid; you may consider all ties between us dissolved.”
She protested, “Dissolved? But what of the –” she hesitated – “Hylden? And what of the –” she hesitated again; this time, it was obvious that she had a rather different word in mind – “vampires?”
“The Hylden will not trouble you anymore. As for the vampires –”
And then, suddenly, he recalled the very first Hylden scouts whom he had seen in this land, just after he had come out of the Chronoplast caves: even those simpletons had been evidently surprised by the sight of a vampire –
Was there – save him; and, apparently, Janos Audron – a single vampire still living in Nosgoth? Between Raziel’s quest to avenge his ills and a century of human rule of the land; and the ongoing Hylden invasion –
The human watched him, clearly waiting for him to finish his speech; he did.
“In the end, what good is a predator who lets himself be defeated by cattle?”

Zosha left; and he was alone in the silent garden. He looked at the triple sigil of the Hylden princes: it was a curious matter, shapeless and constantly morphing – it reminded him of Perun in that regard – and constantly glowing with the intense, vibrant emerald of pure Glyph energy –

Perun escaped; yet I knew that we would meet again – apparently, there did, indeed, exist a prophecy which bound us to each other.
I would not seek the Hylden, however; I knew that, if destiny willed it, we would meet again, regardless of our choices. Instead, I resolved to head for Avici, the place where Janos Audron was kept imprisoned within the realm of shadow.
I knew of only two places in Nosgoth where the boundaries between the two realms blurred and permitted passage. The first was artificial – a Gate, deep in the southern seas, which I had closed myself millennia ago.
The second was the birdless place.
Avernus.
My home.