Casting the Time spell which let him enter the portal took away nearly all of his strength; and so, when he emerged out of the heat and light into a cold, dim place, he was again forced to halt for a moment to adjust to his surroundings; as he had been forced to do when he had first entered the Unrelenting, Avici.
His powers recovered quickly; and as they did, he released the illusion which he had been keeping up until this point; the false visage slid off him like water slides off a water fowl’s back. He stretched and fluttered his wings, shaking off the greasy, noxious residue which clung to the black feathers and glued them together; then, he looked around –
The laws of space must have applied differently to Avici than they did to Nosgoth; for though there, his arduous trek through the city and the realm had taken him, in his estimate, quite a long way – here,to his incredulity, he found himself again in the bowels of the Avernus ziggurat –
– merely several tiers beneath his starting point.
The second and third floors of the tower were combined into one giant hall; the peculiar construction of the tower ensured that, in spite of the lack of any internal support structures, the building was stable and did not collapse. There was a central column, but it served only to support a winding helical staircase (which ran deasil, unlike the widdershins-headed external stairs); the staircase was connected to the several platforms which ran under the walls of the tower at different heights only by the narrowest of bridges. There were large windows in the walls here; even so, the weak light of Nosgoth certainly was not sufficient illumination for what he had needed of this place; and so, enchanted lights had been embedded every so often in the walls, floors and steps – everywhere where he had felt them necessary. They now lit up as he approached them, revealing the room’s contents.
There stood the six suits of armours of the six Sarafan warrior-priests whom he had made his sons and lieutenants. The armours should have rusted long before he had opened the coffins of their wearers; but the Time and States magic laid on them was very strong, indeed: for here they were, still intact millennia later – apart from, of course, the places where they had been pierced by the Reaver’s blade –
There was the altar of the cathedral which had stood in this place before he had ordered the ruins of Avernus to be levelled in the preparation for the construction of his fortress; and beside it, the text of the scripture which spoke of the cult of Hash’ak’Gik –
There were the odds and ends he had salvaged from the ruins of Janos Audron’s Aerie – apart from Vorador’s, some of the first known vampire artefacts he had come across –
There were Raziel’s wing-bones, still covered in blood, as they had been on the day he had ripped them off his firstborn’s back before he had ordered his execution –
There was the multitude of Hylden trinkets he had ordered brought here from Meridian for study –
There hung the (carefully preserved) standards of Willendorf and a hundred other human armies he had defeated in the course of his conquests of Nosgoth; both the first, failed one, when he had fought alongside Vorador; and the second, victorious one, wherein he had been assisted by his sons –
There was the guillotine which had once cut off the old vampire’s head; he had it fetched here from Moebius’ museum in the caves which hid the Chronoplast –
And there was the broken device which had provided him with the first taste of time-streaming; it had taken more than a century of intensive hunt throughout all Nosgoth to find it after he had won the realm the second time.
There was the goblet over which he and the Founder of the Citadel (an utterly insolent human, he smiled) had sworn their covenant of blood; there was the most peculiar sword which the Hylden Lord had borne when he had defeated Kain in the Battle of the Canyons; there was the coat of arms of his human House, taken from the family palace in Coorhagen; there was the chessboard – the board itself he had salvaged from the ruins of Vorador’s mansion in the Termogent Forest, but the figures he had specially made for himself: six Sarafan warriors carved in bone, under command of Moebius and Malek, faced six jet vampire Lieutenants led by a miniature version of himself. (There was no Dark Queen; in her place was only a shapeless lump of jet.) The game ended in a stalemate.
And there were what few things he had managed to recover of the arms he had wielded and the armours he had worn during his fledgling travels across Nosgoth. The non-enchanted mace and axes had long turned into rust; the armour of flesh had rotted; the armour of bone had crumbled into dust; the Chaos Armour had been simply lost. But the armour he had worn when his human life had ended, and the sword which had ended it were both there; and so was the ever-flaming sword he had found in a keep near Vorador’s mansion, and the Wraith Armour he had discovered during his first foray into the Avernus catacombs –
Except that they were not.

The armour and the sword were gone. Someone had passed this way before me; someone had armed himself against his enemies –
But if this someone had been Janos Audron, then who were his enemies?

Abruptly, he turned away from the empty stacks he had been inspecting and looked upwards, to where the spiral staircase opened into the fourth-floor chambers –
Therein had once lain his treasure room. He had never come to find much use for precious metals and stones – he had never begun to share Vorador’s appetite in luxury and decadence; the only tribute that had ever been of interest to him had been that of fear and blood. Nevertheless, he had been the ruler of the land, and tribute had been paid: and it had been in the fourth-floor chambers of the Avernus tower where it had been stored.
Little by little, he ascended the steps of the winding staircase; and as he did this, he suddenly smelled a familiar odour: the stench of decomposing bodies. For a moment, he wondered why he hadn’t felt it before, outside; the wind must have been unfavourable –
He came out of the opening, and started to make his way in the direction where the stench was the strongest. To his left and right were the heaps of gold and jewels: royal rubies and amethysts, emeralds which looked like crystals of pure Glyph energy, sapphires, clear as the sky that now never was; white, black and rosy pearls from the seas of Meridian crunched under his feet –
He paused for a moment in the entrance to the main hall, taking in the scene of carnage within.
Some of the Hylden must have been killed by strikes of the Flame Sword; for their bodies were charred and scorched. Other corpses, however, bore rather different marks: they were completely drained of blood.
A vampire had fed here.

There was an inactive Gate near one of the walls, on a section of the floor cleared of jewels; and he knew that the reason it was inactive was because it lacked the most important part: the focusing gem, the Nexus Stone. Under the opposite wall stood a Shield generator – or rather, the remnants of one; Janos had treated it no more leniently than Kain himself had treated the one in the ruins of Malek’s Bastion –
There was the – already familiar – flicker of a conduit leading to Avici in one corner of the chamber; finally, opposite the entrance which had brought him here, there was the corridor which led to the antechamber; and beyond that, to Nosgoth. He wavered briefly, considering where he should go next –

Thus far, all evidence corroborated Eirene’s words: Janos Audron had, indeed, escaped Avici after the Hylden armies had invaded Nosgoth. In Avernus, he had found weapons; having slain the Hylden guards, taken the Nexus Stone and destroyed the Ward Shield, he had departed; whither, I was yet to discover.
And if all this was true, then perhaps so was this: that it was Janos who had commanded the demons which had attacked the Hylden armies, thus easing my passage through Nosgoth. Otherwise, his escape and the fiends’ mutiny had been... peculiarly coincident in time.
Indeed; so far, everything the Hylden Seer had told me proved either true or impossible to falsify –
Yet more interesting was that which she had neglected to mention.

He made his choice: he cast the spell which slowed the passage of time, and, smoothly assuming again the disguise of a Hylden, he stepped into the passage which led back to Avici.

Even aware of what would happen to him on the other side, he was nigh powerless to counteract the sudden weakening he suffered. It was, therefore, a good thing that he had altered his appearance before entering the portal: this bought him precious seconds as the Hylden guard who witnessed him materialise was unsure of what she should do. Before she finally decided that she would rather shoot than ask questions, Kain had already recovered and moved to dominate her mind; once there, he simply ordered the guard to shoot herself.
He looked at the corpse on the ground, and adjusted his disguise to match the insignia on the guard’s armour; then, he scanned his surroundings.
He was in a rather large, windowless room, lit by bright lamps set in the ceiling; save for him, the corpse and some crates on the floor, the hall was empty. He checked one of the crates: it was full of weapons. He checked another: likewise.
The room had only one exit, and that was directly in front of him. To the guard, who could not have seen the conduit, all must have looked as if he had emerged from the wall behind, or teleported in. (At this point, he began to wonder how precisely the Hylden armies had managed the passage in the other direction, into Nosgoth. There was no obvious gaudy vortex of a Gate this time; or, at least, he was yet to encounter one. Perhaps, he mused, the restoration of the Pillar of Dimension had something to do with the matter.)
He approached the door, which opened automatically in front of him –
Dazzling yellow-red light hit his sensitive eyes, blinding him for a moment; it appeared that the door led, of all places, to Avici’s outside –
But when his eyes accommodated to the light, he saw the multitude of Hylden milling about the large open area; and, to his left, a row of houses: not the giant buildings of Avici, the buildings which themselves contained buildings, but some rather ordinary two-or-three-story houses. (Ordinary, that is, when one took into account the fundamental alienness of Avici: the buildings were made of the same grey mass whereof everything here was composed; they had no windows, and the doors which led to them were unique to Hylden compounds: metallic, businesslike and singularly uninviting.)
And then, he suddenly noticed that, unlike the parts of Avici he had seen before, every Hylden here wore armour and was armed: he must have inadvertently infiltrated the Hylden’s military base.

He stepped back into the relative dimness of what he now assumed to be a storehouse – which was, objectively speaking, quite brightly lit; but anything was dim in comparison with the infernal glow of Avici. The outside, he suspected, was not really outside: rather, the ceiling and the walls were so far away – not to mention, most likely at least semi-transparent – that he simply couldn’t see them. Perhaps this place had been constructed precisely for the purpose of simulating an outside to the constantly confined Hylden soldiers, to prepare them for what awaited them in Nosgoth –
He quickly shut down the unproductive line of thought; after all, he had to prepare himself for a major confrontation –
“Eirene,” he called out at last into the mindscape of Avici, seeking the Hylden Seer’s mind; but there was no reply.
“Eirene,” he demanded again. The strain of the hunt made him drop the reins of the illusion; and perhaps for the better, he decided, and let the spell wholly disperse.
“I know you are there, Eirene. And you will answer me; for unless we talk now, we shall never talk again – and you would not want that, would you? After all,” he made a brief pause, “Janos’ was not the only prison within the prison.”
“You– are right,” he heard at last the Hylden’s uncertain reply. “How did you know?”
“Your brother Yarovit told me before he died,” Kain said dismissively – though inside, he was exuberant; the gamble had paid off. “This sigil – it was not made to open only Janos’ cage; but also yours. The Sight, if used properly, can be a powerful weapon; and none of the triumvirate would entrust the key to this weapon to any other. That is why, when the Nexus Stone went missing, and the contact with Yarovit was broken, Perun and Sakhmet had to fight through the human city to recover the third fragment–”
“Yes,” the Hylden Seer interrupted him, laughing delightedly, “Even as they parted, Yarovit did not want to give up his piece of the seal, so afraid was he that the key-keeper would betray the others and ally with me. Fool,” she finished contemptuously.
Kain smirked: much suddenly became clear to him. “He was a fool, indeed; because you, Seer, have betrayed them all, have you not? Tell me, Eirene: was there a prophecy?”
The Seer was indignant. “All I ever said was that, in the end, the Hylden royal blood would spell out its ruler. What matter of mine was that these usurpers of my mother’s throne – my throne – chose to misinterpret the words in their favour? They could have been my trusted servants; instead, like our father, they decided to rule in my stead. Then they should have killed me instead of keeping me imprisoned; yet even Sakhmet, however proficient in Time magic, had not the Sight which comes only with the blood!”
Kain smiled at the venom he now heard in the Hylden’s voice; in her fury, Eirene revealed things which she would be much better off keeping hidden. “And so you betrayed them,” he concluded calmly.
“And so I betrayed them,” she agreed.
“Then,” he nodded his head in acknowledgment, “you truly are your mother’s daughter. You have used me to destroy the competition for your throne.” It was odd how little he felt. Once, he would have been seething with fury after the revelation that once again, he had been another’s pawn; now, all his feelings amounted to a sort of vague amusement. Eirene did not have a long life before herself, of course; but his heart would not really be in the kill. She would be just another addition to the long line of his victims, as two of the Hylden commanders she had betrayed already were, and the third one would soon become. “Except that now, Seer, you are in a quandary: for now it is I who has the seal which binds you. That is why you wanted me to seek you out, is that not? And I will. You have that granted.”
To him, the conversation was over at this point; hence, it was to his no inconsiderable amazement that he heard the Hylden reply, seething with anger, “Do you really think this is about the throne, Kain? Take it if you wish, for all I care! For are you not the prophesised king of royal blood?”
“What did you say, Hylden?” he asked incredulously.
When Maat’ash’Eirene replied this time, she was noticeably calmer; still, her Whisper was such as if she had been speaking through gritted teeth, “My mother – she shared her blood with you from her own free will, did she not? In the time when the southern Gate was open; when my father was in Nosgoth; and the Binding was weak; then, she and I had words together. She did not tell me much; but this, she did: if you wish the throne, then, Scion” she paused, and this time, the impression of gritting teeth was even stronger, “the way is open,” she finished with fake calm.
“And I presume that in return for your generous proposal, you, Seer, would take the position of my second-in-command?”
“Of course.”
“And it will satisfy you?” he insisted. “You – the proud daughter of a Queen?”
“Scion,” the Hylden laughed bitterly, “it is better to serve in heaven than to reign in hell; and while it may be impossible to die in Avici, it is equally impossible to live here. Yes, it will.”
“But why should I agree to your proposal, Seer?”
“For two reasons. For justice: for, by now, you must know all of our original sin, our undue punishment and our final crime. I have heard you answer my unasked question: you harbour no better opinion of the vampires’ god than we do; thus, if we have sinned, in that sin you are an accomplice. Our crime is unpardonable – but I have seen you before you closed Avici from Nosgoth: you no longer share the curse we have cast on the vampires; and so, the effects of the crime are already expired. That leaves only the punishment which we have not merited – and yet which we still suffer.”
Kain laughed. “And the other reason? I suppose that, having made that utterly misguided appeal to my better nature, you will now attempt to entice my baser instincts? My avarice? My will to power?”
The Hylden snorted, “Perhaps I would; but from your words, I deduce that you have already appraised that part of the offer on your own. The civilians and the soldiers: all souls of Avici to claim as your own; in return for claiming all souls of Avici as your own... Are you not tired of chasing after vampire phantoms, Scion? And when at last you do not catch them, will you content yourself with human subjects?”
“You sound desperate, Seer.”
“In despair lies the one hope of the damned, Kain.”
To that, he found no reply.

Maat’ash’Eirene withdrew when she sensed that the conversation was over, and that he would have nothing of her for the time being. And it was then, as his consciousness of the Hylden’s presence faded, that he was suddenly struck by the incongruity between the lofty words which had been spoken in the place where he now was – and the place itself: an anonymous storehouse lost somewhere in the maze of Avici. It was strangely anticlimactic: to receive an offer of ruling a whole race in a place such as this –
On the unexpected proposal itself, he was in two minds: there were two major hurdles, as far as he was concerned. He did not know if the aspirant kingmaker was, indeed, as capable of putting him in power as she boasted; and he did not know if he managed to consolidate his influence among the Hylden before he would have to kill her. For just as it was obvious to him that he would need her in the beginning of his reign, it was equally clear that the betrayer would not take long before she betrayed again. Old habits, as they said, died hard.
On the other hand, he mused as he passed by the crates and stacks of weapons, parts of the giant cannons the likes of which he had seen in action in the human Citadel, and, above all, the crowds of Hylden warriors rambling about the open square on top of the massive building, the offer was rather interesting. Given an efficient leader, these troops –

In his disguise, and controlling the minds of the occasional less fortunate Hylden whom he needed to operate machinery, he moved through the Hylden base: through the barracks, storehouses, shooting ranges, weapon works and laboratories – without major difficulties; his only problem lay, as before in Avici, in finding his destination. All he knew was that he must find a ship – and that must be at the level of the lava surface; but he did not even know if he was in the correct part of the city.
He had already descended several levels – the heat here was such that he again found himself wondering why things did not simply spontaneously self-combust – when he stumbled upon the first golem.
The area where he found it had been, by far, curiously devoid of Hylden. (Afterwards, he decided that they probably simply did not come here, into this heat, if they could help it, instead leaving the maintenance to the golems.) On the other hand, it was full of tanks, vats, pipes and complicated mechanisms whose purposes he refrained from guessing.
The golem was an affair in fireproof clay: initially, it must have been completely white – the colour was still visible in parts of its bulk – but with time, it became dirty and smudged. It had six leg-like structures on which it moved, and four upper limbs, each of which ended differently. It reminded him slightly of the vampires of the Zephonim Clan shortly before Raziel’s return to Nosgoth.
He did not know if the golem was impervious to his illusion; if so, it must have lacked the intent or the intelligence to turn hostile, because it simply scrambled its way past him; as did all the golems he encountered henceforth. He walked among them, and, like their masters above, they paid him no attention, concerned solely with their own tasks. After the nearly constant fighting of the recent days – or has it been weeks, or months already: months scattered across millennia? He found it hard to tell – after this time, this walk was oddly refreshing in its simplicity.
In the end, he found it: a massive door with a lock in the shape of the sigil of the Hylden princes. It suddenly occurred to him that Perun and his siblings must have made this trip through the mechanic underbelly of Avici more than once –
The door opened, and again was he dazzled by the brightness and the heat; he was standing outside of the city – and this time, it was the real outside. There was a pier; and, next to it, there was a ship. A thin layer of Glyph energy shielded both; it did not, however, rise into the air to protect the space above the pier –
He cast the time-slowing spell and ran as fast as he could to the ship, swivelling between the lava jets suspended halfway in their motion in the air.

The walls of the ship were transparent; and, as the vessel submerged into the lava, following some course imprinted into it long ago, he was treated to the vaguely disquieting panorama of liquid fire surrounding him on all sides. All that protected him now from death in flames was a thin layer of Glyph energy, and, more metaphorically speaking, the power of Hylden technology; this realisation did nothing to improve his mood.
There were three seats in the ship’s cabin; he, however, decided against sitting down. He had let go of the illusion of Hylden appearance as soon as he had boarded; now, he was standing with hands crossed on his chest, looking calmly in the direction where the ship was heading.
“Seer?” he called into the fiery void; after their previous conversation, Maat’ash’Eirene no longer hid her presence from him; and now, he decided, was the time for them to talk again.
“Yes, Kain?” This time, the reply to his call came quickly; almost instantly.
“I believe that we agree in that there is only one way for the Hylden to remain in Nosgoth after the Pillars are restored.”
“The one discovered by the Serioli,” the Seer agreed.
“The Pillars,” Kain continued, “must take the Hylden for vampires; and for that to happen, vampire blood – my blood – must be shed for you and for your kind.”
He made a short pause to let the Hylden understand the full import of his words; then, he continued, “That was how Maat could and must continue to dwell in Nosgoth: Vorador’s blood in her veins shielded her from the Pillars. However, Vorador demanded a payment.”
“She traded her powers for her freedom.” He could already tell from her tone that Eirene knew what he would say next; and that she did not like it.
“Exactly. I want a payment from you, Eirene.”
“In my blood?” she asked slowly.
“No; I would not that you became completely useless to me. Only a simple prophecy: I have an enemy; how shall I defeat him?”
There was no hesitation now. “I cannot meet your terms, Kain.”
“You refuse? At this point, you dare refuse me?” For some reason, this point-blank refusal made him feel the anger which even the discovery of the Hylden’s previous machinations had not awakened.
“No, I do not,” the Seer replied hurriedly. “I simply – cannot provide what you demand.”
There was something in the Seer’s voice which told him that she was telling the truth; she simply would not lie if she could help it, he reasoned. And she had said something about ‘closing off Avici from Nosgoth’...
“Because of the restored Pillars? The matter can wait until we are in Nosgoth,” he replied.
“No, not because of that. Not even in Nosgoth, not even if I had the Nexus Stone, could I give you a different reply, Kain, however I might wish this.” She laughed bitterly. “If the Audron had taken the Stone with him for this reason, of all, he will be sorely disappointed. It will not be of much aid to him: he is now, as we all are, reduced to seeing only the present.”
“And why should that be?” he asked; though already he was guessing the answer: he remembered how the Chronoplast portals would not show him the future –
“Because, Scion, something has happened which I had never seen before: the time-stream is uncertain around you; futures come and go, constantly changing at your whim... Even now, I cannot see if I survive our meeting or not; and this ambiguity terrifies me. You are a free-willed creature, Kain. That was why I could give my siblings no prophecy, even if I had wished it; it was a gamble sending them to the places where you met them. As it was a gamble putting myself in that human... Tell me,” Eirene’s tone suddenly became inquisitive, “did she die soon after we had our little conversation?”
The abrupt change of topic surprised him. “No. She was alive when I last saw her. Why should you ask?”
“The same now applies to her. She has... disappeared.”

There was a clink as the automated ship touched something; a series of clanks as the bolts slid out, locked into their sockets, and turned; finally, a hiss as a door opened and the pressure levels between the two compartments evened out.
The room on the other side of the door had an austere decor identical to that of the ship; though, an act of mercy he would never have suspected from the Hylden, the walls of this chamber were almost dark, and only little of the blinding light passed through them. Someone was standing at the centre of the room: a thin wisp of green enclosed in a silver armour.
“Greetings, Eirene,” the vampire smiled; or, at least, he bared his teeth.