Avernus gained its name – the birdless place – when the humans who had settled in the ancient ruins noticed that no bird would enter them of its own volition; and that all the birds taken into the city perforce soon died of a variety of gruesome maladies. The people whispered that there was something in the city’s air, some invisible agent of disease of which the human colonists were blissfully unaware, but which the delicate lungs of birds detected with fatal accuracy.
The people whispered that in Avernus was the entrance to hell.
The people were right.

Even when he had not yet known what Avernus had been – even in the time when the Hylden had not yet existed for him, and Maat, the Seer, had been nothing but an old acquaintance of Vorador’s who, he claimed, had been indebted to him and who, she claimed, had been gravely wronged by him – even in that time, he had sensed some oddness in the place, some incongruity, some aberration which had set Avernus apart even in the aberrant land. This sensation, this wrongness in the air had been, in fact, one of the reasons – if not the reason – why, at the birth of the Empire, he had set aside Avernus for his own use: in the millennia to come, he would attempt to decipher the riddle; always in vain.
Now, that he did know what Avernus had once been, and now that his symbiotic link with the Pillars was stronger than it could have ever been before, he finally understood that which had previously escaped him. The wrongness was in the thinness – the barrier between realms was thinner here, almost nonexistent; Avernus was an open wound on the tissue of Nosgoth, one only barely, provisionally patched by the Pillars.
And so, it was in here, in Avernus, that he would search for his way back into the demon realm.
He was almost certain that he would not be able to use the portal through which he had returned to Nosgoth the previous time. Even if it had been a permanent passage – and he could not be even sure of that – it had been located deep in the catacombs of the great cathedral; and the cathedral, like the rest of the city, had been long gone. For the major part, it had been destroyed in the fire which had been ravaging Avernus as Raziel and he had fought Fate and one another; what little had remained had been cleared by the slaves in preparation for the setting of the foundations of his retreat.
That was a massive, six-tiered ziggurat; so large, it was easily visible to the sharp vampire eyes even from the Lake of the Dead and the Abyss; and, on a day when the smoke in Nosgoth’s air thinned a bit (something which always used to make fledglings run about frantically in the search for cover, he remembered with a smirk), even from as far as the lands of the Melchiahim. It loomed on the eastern horizon, a dark tower of granite which had taken the slaves two centuries to complete – but, of all things, time he had then had in abundance.
At the foot of the ziggurat, there used to be a village – a small town, really, which had served him as pantry. In the time of the Empire’s decay, the hamlet had been, of course, abandoned; its inhabitants had left to join the other humans in the Citadel.

A solitary figure passed through the Glyph Shield raised to protect the two uppermost tiers of the citadel, and settled noiselessly on the floor in front of the entrance to the chamber which occupied the topmost floor. Its arrival went unnoticed – apparently, no Hylden guard was watching the sky –

The Hylden deemed themselves secure in the fortress of my home; I must endeavour to divest them of that false impression.
Yet, their presence here confirmed my earlier presentiment: it was in Avernus that my enemies had crossed the barrier between the realms; thus, it was in Avernus that I would find passage to Avici, where Janos Audron was held prisoner.

The sixth-floor chamber was empty; and almost unaffected by time. There was the large emblem of his on the floor, and the smaller ones on the walls, as clear and untarnished as when he had last seen them, which had been a hundred years ago; there were the enchanted lights which sprung to life as soon as he crossed the threshold; and, finally, at the far end, there was the empty throne –
Avernus had been his private retreat; his court and the seat from which he had ruled Nosgoth had lain at the Sanctuary of the Clans, at the Pillars. Nevertheless, the topmost floor of the tower was dedicated exclusively to an audience chamber; for though from the Sanctuary he had issued orders as the Emperor of the people of Nosgoth, it had been to the pinnacle of Avernus that the people had sent prayers to their God.
It had been once a rumour amongst the people of Nosgoth that, if one were to brave the hostile lands and reach Avernus; and if one were to climb all the steps of the staircase which wound all the way up to the top of the tall tower; and if one were to be fortunate enough – one would perhaps have the privilege of looking into the face of God. Then, the pilgrim would be able to ask for a single favour; and the God would grant it, whether the petitioner were one of the Clan Lords, his own progeny, a fledgling vampire, or even a mere human.
It had been the construction of this chamber which had bred those rumours; he, on his part, had done nothing to dispel them. They had provided a loophole in the, otherwise carefully maintained, feudal structure of the Clans; an outlet for the resentment inevitably generated by the inherent inequity of the system. They had given the lower castes of the Empire hope, a dream on which to feed; and he had found it mildly amusing that even in their despair, in their dreams to rebel against the instated order, the people, vampire and human alike, had turned to him, its author.
Hope was, indeed, a terrible illusion.

He left the chamber, devoid of all but memories, and followed the winding helical stairway down and around the tower. He still encountered no Hylden, but halfway down, he came across an unmistakably Hylden artefact – the machine which generated the Shield; quite similar to the one he had destroyed in the ruins of Malek’s Bastion. He decided to leave the generator intact for the time being; although it appeared that the Hylden still had not noticed him, the loss of the Shield would certainly alert them that something was amiss; and he did not want that yet; not if there existed the possibility that they could reach Janos before he did.
There was a large gap in the staircase just outside of the entrance to the fifth-floor chambers. To get any further, he would have to fly; but he had no reason to do so, for now: the lower floors were not protected by a Glyph shield; if anywhere, the Hylden troops must be here. He opened the heavy cast-iron door which led into the chambers –
There was no one inside.
He entered the darkness.
The fifth-floor chambers were those he had used when he had felt the time of Change upon him. The evolution of a new physical feature had been always a taxing process to his body, and had usually exhausted nearly all of its powers. He would emerge from the state of Change weakened, and almost crazed with bloodlust, as though he had been a newborn fledgling; and so he would remain until he had fed. And much like a newborn’s, his eyes would hurt when in contact with even the weak light of Nosgoth’s sun; and so, the fifth-floor chambers were completely windowless, like a crypt.
The only light he would suffer while Changing came from torches; even now, some were still mounted in the holders on the walls. With casualness which belied the power invoked by his gestures, he lit them one by one as he made his way through the chambers. The dim, flickering light barely pierced the darkness, revealing very little; yet enough for him to remember. The stone slab on which he would lie unconscious whilst his body would undergo its peculiar metamorphosis, following the enigmatic instructions issued by his blood; the manacles and fetters for the humans who would have been left in this place with him, and would later serve him as his first meal after awakening (at this point, he remembered how, once, he had attacked Zephon when the fool had entered the main room instead of waiting in the antechamber, as had been the custom); the stains of blood which, in spite of all the slaves’ efforts, had never really managed to come off –
A shot of blinding light flashed in the nearly utter darkness, disappearing so quickly that he could almost think it was never there, if not for the afterimage burned deep in his retina –
He turned a corner –
Again.
He waited – for a while no longer than a heartbeat (his own lack of heart immaterial in this regard; things would come to an odd end, indeed, if he forgot how fast a heart beat) – and then, cast the spell and slowed the flow of time around himself.
And then, the flash repeated; but in the unhurried time, it was no longer merely a flash; but a portal.

There was not much of the demon realm which he could see through the opening; only misshapen blobs of yellow and red, constantly in motion, spinning and twirling around one another in a miniature replica of the Abyss. He could not see where the path led on the other side – whether he would find himself in an open and deserted place, or in a closed room full of enemies. Still, he did not hesitate; moving before the opening closed and before time was returned to its usual pace, he stepped through –
– and saw a shadowy realm; but one filled with a clear, harsh, unforgiving glow of a yellow-reddish hue – the glow of a dying sun; but there was no sun in the sky, the glow was penetrating, omnipresent, without a single source; and he was suddenly sure that the harsh light never yielded to twilight or night; that there was no respite for the eyes in this realm of shadow –
– and heard naught but dead silence; but silence underscored with an incessant sound rather sensed than heard, an irregular, variable infrasonic vibration which, he somehow knew, drove one first to disquiet, then to despair, and eventually to suicide or madness –
– and smelled and tasted fire, and brimstone, and other, completely alien, substances in the scalding-hot fumes which suffused the air; the toxic vapours burned his lungs and coated his skin with filth and glued the feathers of his wings together – and he was again reminded of how Avernus had earned its name –
– and felt, lingering in the air, the wrongness of this realm; and however strong the feeling was in Avernus, here it was multiplied manifold –
– and was overcome by a terrible weakness; for the Pillars’ powers, tied to Nosgoth as they were, barely reached into this place.

It took a moment before he recovered control of his mind and body; and then, he finally saw the city at which he was looking.
Built on several layers of platforms protruding from the inner walls of the crater (because it was a volcano, he suddenly understood when the fumes parted for a moment and he saw the lava below – an enormous volcano: the whole tower of Avernus would fit inside it and ample place would still remain), it boasted a quintessentially Hylden architecture: cold, grey, alien to his vampire tastes. Enormous buildings rose from the platforms; every single one much like the next, without any superficial feature to distinguish between them; their constructors clearly considered aesthetical pleasure secondary to functionality. Translucent, glasslike tunnels ran between the buildings; buildings lying on different levels were joined by vertical piers which, he presumed, enclosed some manner of lifts. All traffic between the buildings must have gone via tunnels and lifts: the platforms themselves were empty of people. That was, perhaps, why no one had yet noticed his arrival, though he was standing in the open, on top of one of the massive edifices –
And it was then that he felt something brush his mind; a feather-light touch, and one not quite concentrated on him – rather, much like a beam of light from a lighthouse sweeping the horizon. Belatedly, he tried to cloak his mind, to make himself invisible – but that proved difficult: for he had been taken by surprise, and the seeker was old and powerful; and on familiar territory, whilst he was on hostile ground.
“Who goes there?” he heard an intrigued Whisper resound inside his skull. “What creature enters Avici, the Unrelenting? Wait! I know you – The Scion –?”
The presence in his mind withdrew abruptly; he grasped the thin thread of thought and made chase to it; he now recognised the speaker. “Why so surprised, prophetess? You said it yourself: we would meet again.”
“And so I did,” the Hylden Seer replied, oddly amused in the face of her evident inability to shake off Kain’s mental pursuit, “Well, Scion – shall I alert my people to your presence here?”
“If it pleases you to hear their death cries.” He decided to cut the banter short. “I seek Janos.”
He felt the presence – Eirene – flinch at the mention of the name. “Then you seek in vain. The Audron is not here.”
“Is that so? Perun appeared to think differently.”
“Perun knew no better,” the Hylden hissed out angrily. “Of course,” she continued, suddenly returning to her previous cool amusement, “you need not believe my word on that, Scion –
– Janos was kept in the palace, in the lower city. You will recognise the place when you see it: of that, I am sure.”
The Hylden’s last words were accompanied by a decisive snap as the mental connection between them was broken; for a moment, on a lark, he tried to search Eirene out in the mindscape of Avici – but could not find her. It was as if she had become invisible to him; it was clear to him that she had far more control over the mind connection that she had let him believe – and that their conversation was over until she decided otherwise.

‘Twas either cunning or madness which propelled the Hylden Seer into giving me the run of Avici; which of the two it was, but time could tell.
For now, one thing was clear: parted from the Pillars’ nurturing influence, I could not hope to win Avici by force. In its stead, I must employ guile and guise: however repulsive I found the idea, to enter the Hylden’s lair, I must first enter a Hylden’s skin.

The massive thoracic muscles and the black-feathered wings shrivelled and shrunk, giving way to a much slighter build; the dark veins which criss-crossed his skin spilled their colour onto the lighter parts of his body, until it was in whole a uniform greyish-green; the white hair disappeared, leaving only a naked scalp behind – but in its place, the ridges at the sides of his head grew and joined to form a crown of bone –
The eyes lost their colour, becoming a dull grey; the sharp canines and talons retracted; the Reaver and the clothes melted into a shapeless mass – and then reformed into the sort of light, unobtrusive armour that the Hylden of this age appeared to prefer –
Vorador’s ring in his ear vanished; and the illusion was complete.

Nearby, he found a place where a judicious use of telekinesis (which, feeble as it was, still sent a spasm of pain cruising through his body) caused the grey mass from which the Hylden buildings were constructed to give in – only slightly; yet enough to allow him passage inside.
The Hylden, once he encountered them, paid him no heed; clearly, his disguise was more than adequate, and they all took him for one of their kindred. However, as he soon found out, Avici was a labyrinth; a labyrinth for which he had neither guide nor map. He slowly made his way through it – through the narrow corridors, lit by the eerie glow of the Glyph lamps (he was fortunate in that the Earth Pillars had bestowed on him immunity to Glyph energy: for its application was ubiquitous here, and all guards wore armours with Glyph insignia on them), and through the wide ones, usually located on the perimeters of the edifices; their walls constructed of large panes of glass to admit the red glow of the lava inside. The pathways in the larger corridors were moving, one lane for each direction of movement; the translucent passages between the buildings contained vehicles, much like those he had encountered in Meridian and in the nameless city across the sea he had once visited; the vertical shafts were, perhaps, the most peculiar concept of them all: for they contained Warp Gates; one simply stepped into them at one level, and emerged at the one to which the shaft led at the other side.
And, as it turned out in the end, there were murals adorning the streets and squares of the city: only that they were not murals, but bas-reliefs; and there were also sculptures, proper sculptures. They usually showed either one or all three of the Hylden commanders he had met in Nosgoth: Yarovit, with his sword and the Glyph shield raised around him; Perun, rising out of a giant wave of water; Sakhmet, with a ball of energy in one hand, the other one invoking some spell; at times, these effigies were faithful to reality; at times, they were stylised, showing them as – as he assumed – the Hylden must have looked before their banishment to this land. Several times, he encountered a likeness of the Hylden Lord who had led the previous invasion on Nosgoth –
Once, in a rather backward alley, he came across a most singular tableau. It featured the triumvirate of generals, in the rather ordinary triumphant pose; however, when he looked closer, he saw the outline of another figure, faintly, sketchily drawn in the background behind the three; but beyond that point, he could say nothing of it –
He walked about the massive buildings; up and down, now nearing the side of the buildings which skirted the lake of lava, now penetrating the streets carved in the rocky walls of the giant mountain; but, save for the Seer’s vague suggestion, he had no clue at all where to seek Janos Audron in this maze. And so, as he made his way through Avici, he found himself unconsciously descending from one level to another; without thinking seeking for a building that might be termed a palace; and, at last, he found it.
The shaft which took him to the lowest level of the city did not end inside a building, in the sort of room where all the previous shafts he had entered up to that time had began and ended; instead, as he found out when he stepped out of it, its outlet was outside, on the sort of grey platform which carried the gigantic structures. In front of him stood a, comparatively small, yet rather lavishly decorated, building – the first one he had seen in Avici with statues and relieves on the outer side of its walls –
Or rather, such a building’s ruins; for the whole part of the building right of the door was completely caved in. He set out to investigate this matter closer – but almost immediately, another issue captured his attention –
The air was much cooler here than it had been but a level above; and the light was much subdued instead of being the harsh, unremitting glare to which he was slowly getting used in this place; however, to his best estimate, the heat here should be such that most things should be set alight just by being in touch with the air; and he should be nearly blinded by the glow; for the platform he was now on should be very close to the magma surface –
In fact, it was closer: half-submerged in it, as Kain discovered when, risking complete blindness, he turned around to look at the lava lake. But between the lava and the grey mass of which the city was constructed – and rising into the air, up to the platform on the level above – was a uniform wall of green: incredibly condensed Glyph energy, he presumed, which filtered out most of the light and the heat coming from the outside. The energies needed to power such an installation must have been enormous; the Hylden must have somehow obtained them from the volcano itself –
He turned back to the palace (for it was now clear that it was what the building in front must have been before it had been destroyed; even if not for the statues posted outside of it, then for the immoderate squandering of resources required to set up this small oasis of calm), and began to walk towards it –
A Hylden guard in armour suddenly emerged from the ruins; Kain did not wait until the man approached and attacked, or asked whatever questions he could have; instead, he sent forth a part of his self, of his spirit –
– And took over the control of the Hylden warrior’s mind. This was a rather old skill of his, one he had not employed for centuries; while there were far faster ways of killing, he had never reached the level of refinement which would permit him to use the ability to extract information; his victims’ minds were almost completely destroyed by the possession; and, in any case, he had found he could never remain outside of his own body long. However, several times during his trek through Avici, he had been faced with the task of operating complicated machinery; and the gift returned to him, as if he had never stopped using it –
– He ordered the Hylden to walk to the edge of the platform – and jump; he left the hapless creature’s mind just as the guard struck the wall of Glyph energy below.

Once alone on the platform, he walked up the ornate pathway towards the palace door again; and this time, he at last did manage to reach his goal. He did not bother to try to open the door, however; rather, he simply stepped onto and over a broken part of the wall –
The floor of the destroyed part of the palace was covered in a clutter of twisted metal, white cables, shards of glass and pebbles of the ubiquitous grey substance from which all Hylden constructions in Avici were made. A particularly large piece of an inner wall was still standing, with half of a massive door still embedded in it. There was the outline of a half of a lock in the half of the door; he found the triple seal of the Hylden princes in his belongings and put it in the slit; it fit perfectly.
“Curious, is it not?” he suddenly heard Eirene’s amused voice –
“The key fits the lock,” he replied. “But neither reveals what was hidden behind.”
“The invasion armies were already several days gone when the servants rebelled,” the Seer continued, undaunted by his disagreement, “They took the Audron with them as they escaped. The Audron – and the Stone.”
“The Stone?” It could not be –
“The Nexus Stone, Scion. I believe it is familiar to you?”
Apparently, it was. “Intimately.”
“It powered a portal which sent the armies to the Pillars and to Lanthanesthai –”
“– And there, to their oblivion,” he finished; he already knew this part of the tale, even if only now had he learnt Malek’s Bastion’s olden name. “And now, you say, the Stone has been commanded by Janos?”
He felt the Hylden hesitate. “He took it with him as he left Avici with his retinue of demons; demons whom he would not have the strength to bid himself. I fear –”
“Save your fears for those who find use for them, Hylden,” Kain retorted. “I need but one thing of you: your prophecy. What is it?”
At this, Maat’ash’Eirene seemed to regain her previous poise. “Nothing; and all,” she replied, and Kain bristled: for now, there was nothing he could do to force the answer out her; not here, not in Avici, not physically separated from her as he now was –
And the Seer was aware of it, of course – clearly amused by the vague irritation of his she must have sensed, she teased the vampire, “Seek me out, Scion, if you wish – and perhaps then you shall receive another answer. There is a ship which will ferry you through the fiery lake; descend into the inferno, and then we shall parley. Either that – or seek Janos; and wonder why, free, he hadn’t sought you out first.”
And with that, the Hylden’s presence disappeared from his mind again.

He searched through the ruins of the palace; through the part of it which was ruined, and the part of it which was intact; but there was little of interest to him; the Hylden princes, upon leaving Avici, must have destroyed all things of importance –
The one thing of interest he did find was the conduit which took him back to Nosgoth.