"Sleep", - Janos whispered, and a rich trader fell asleep at once. I took his clothes for the disguise, and went aboard the ship. Unfortunately, Janos could not disguise as a human. He could not hide his wings. He had to fly after the ship all the way it sailed to the Hylden city. I could see my younger self on the ship, and I tried not to loose him out of my sight. My younger self must not see himself in the future.
            The ship has arrived. All the passengers went down to the shipyards, and I followed my younger self, until I saw Janos, that revealed himself from behind the ship.
"Stop following him. He will do his job now: defeat the Hylden Lord and close the Hylden Gate. We must go to the Demonic Realm after the Nexus Stone is thrown through the gate", - said Janos.
"I know. Let's go. And do not draw much attention, Janos. Try not to fly", - I asnwered him.
            We were moving quitely through the Hylden City. I remembered the scene when a Hylden's disguise was exposed by a human, occasionly. For that, the human was punished by death. Well, looks like I had to see it again in a research station.
"Tell me, Janos. What relations had the Hylden with the Humans?", - I suddenly asked.
"What do you mean?", - he surprised.
"As I know, the humans were not very intelligent, comparing to your two races. They were living in caves before the Holy War, didn't they?", - I asked.
"Yes, they did. When the war started, both Vampires and Hylden started using humans for their own reasons. We trained them as magicians and  warrior. The Hylden used them as a working class",  - Janos explained.
"And how much did the humans influe on the result of the war?", - I asked.
"Not very much, but they did. Many of the humans did not like the Hylden agenda. The Hylden were considering them as apes, that coould only work, and do what they were told. They did not believe that humans could ever make desicions. We, the Vampires, were on the contrary, considering them as a backup to our armies. The humans were learning quickly, although they never got as high results in magic as we did. However it was enough to create the Order of Sarathan that eliminated almost all of us, many centuries later...", - Janos said.
"Than you must hate them", - I said.
"No. I do not hate them. They just fear what they do not understand, and destroy what they fear... And it is so ironic now... Raziel asked me the same question when he had met me first time",  - Janos answered.
"And what about Hylden?", - I asked.
"This is different subjest. Their race was as old as ours. Their civilization was progressing along with ours, but in a different direction. We never needed technology, because we were strenghtening our spirital side. We all lived in harmony, without the need of "progress for easy living". We were always having enough of what we had", - he started.
            "The Hylden", - Janos went on, - "on the contrary, were always looking for power, for progress. They developed the Glyph magic, for example, that was the basic element of all of their technologies. For their experiments, they were using humans, as they did not care for them. As I said, they were considering them as pets.
            Through centuries, millenias, they invented amazing things. They learned how to keep the knowledge of a person within a machine, when the person dies. When his soul left the body, they could track it down in the Spectral Realm using their machines. That made the soul to avoid the Wheel of Fate: the machine was summoning the souls almost immediately. The was not managing to enter the Wheel.
            Of course it made our God mad. That was why the war had started. Only religious motives. But the war lasted for many centuries. It changed not only the motives for the hatred, but the rules of the war itself. The Hylden, using their highly progressed technology, were harming the nature itself. Their actions were collapsing the world. And we were trying to save it...
            To the end of the war, both of our races had their ultimate weapons against each other. And we both used them, for what apparently everybody regret now. I understand how, how pathetic was all the conflict. How perfectly it was fabricated... just for one purpose - to feed the False God", - Janos finished.
"I'm glad that you understand it...", - I said. I felt bad for asking so many questions, when Janos did not like to talk about the past. He had suffered so much all long his life. But why did I care? I needed information. Why I felt like that? Perhaps it was that "conciense" once again. It had become really annoying. And when I started thinking of that, I remembered another thing I did. A few hours ago from that moment, my younger self had killed Umah. It was all because of that arrogance. Those blinded ambitions of absolute power and rule. The paranoic sense of conspiration everywhere, even beneath allies. And finally, the madness of Nupraptor, the curse that was corrupting me from my birth.

   My younger self has entered the Ward Generator, and we quietly followed him. Another scene had yet to be appeared there...
Younger version of Janos and Vorador sprung out of nowhere. We were hiding above the generator, so that we could hear the scene, and those who were down there could not see us.
"I will try to detect the location of the Hylden Gate", - said the younger Janos and started to meditate.
"Where is Umah, Kain. I cannot sense her", - Vorador asked my younger self.
"She will not be joining us", - my younger self answered.
"Umah is dead, is she not? Were you too late?", - Vorador was frightened.
"No.  She suffered the fate she deserved. She stole the Nexus Stone from me", - younger Kain said...
            The familiar scene went on. I saw from upstairs, how my younger self told Vorador that he had killed Umah for treachery. Then as Janos told that both of them should settle their affairs later. Then I saw as Lord Hylden appeared and shot a blast from the Soul Reaver directly to Vorador's chest. Vorador was mortally wounded. The next was the younger Janos. He was not shot that mortally, though.
"The round is mine, dark one", - Lord Hylden said. Then he teleported away. The younger Janos yold my younger self to chase him, while he would take care of Vorador. Janos teleported my younger self directly to the door near the Hylden Gate...

   The younger Janos was looking at Vorador, who was nearby dead. He gave him his blood to drink, but it did not help. The wounds inflicted by the reaver could not be regenerated...
"Leave him. Go to the Hylden Lord. Help Kain", - the younger Janos heard a voice behind him. He looked back. The Seer was standing behind him.
"I must save him", - he said.
"You cannot. He is dead", - The Seer said coldly, - "Trust me. I know... And Kain still needs you. Go to him".The younger Janos teleported away. Me and Janos (the older one) went down.
"What are you doing?", - I asked The Seer.
"Now you will know how Vorador was alive after his execution. Do you remember the moment when Mobius ordered his execution, and Vorador's head was cut off?", - she asked.
"And..", - I was confused.
"I will swap the younger version of Vorador with this one. The Vorador you saw executed was this one", - she pointed on Vorador, who was dying, making his last breaths, - "I will now give him to Moebius, and take the younger version of Vorador a few days to the future, after the moment when you, Kain, refused to sacrifice. He will help you to lead your army of Vampires to conquer Nosgoth", - she said and teleported with the dying Vorador to the Sarathan Stronghold...
            Now I understood. Vorador did not survive the execution. It was just his future version who was executed. Vorador of that time was taken to the future. The Seer would go to the past, put the dying Vorador to his mansion, and take away the younger Vorador to the Sarathan Stronghold. She would activate the Chronoplast and take Vorador a few days to the future, after the collapse of the Pillars. There, my conquest began, along with Vorador... It was not a paradox, this was the true event of the history, of which I did not know until that moment.

   In the meantine, my younger self was fighting with the Hylden Lord.
"Do you still believe you can prevail?  While you posses the Nexus Stone, my sword cannot slay you.  But while you bear the stone to shield your life, you cannot use it to destroy the Gate.  Stalemate, Kain.  And mine is the waiting game.  As long as I have not lost, in time, I am sure to win", - Lord Hylden told him. Me and Janos were flying directly through the Hylden Gate. They did not notice us, as they were busy of fighting each other.
"But I have not yet made my choice - ", - my younger self threw the Nexus Stone to the hylden Gate.
"No – No – No –",  - Lord Hylden shouted. They resumed their fighting...
            Meanwhile, the portal was slowly closing down, and the stone had already fallen to the Demonic Realm. Me and Janos got inside, and found ourselves in the Demonic Realm... once again. And I started feeling that sense of displacement, when the world was swaying around me. That familiar feeling could make it harder to find the Nexus Stone.
            But suddenly, and unexpectably, the stone was found. It was floating on the air. This realm had a different gravity. Such small objest as the Nexus Stone could float. I grabbed the stone as quickly as possible, and then heard somebody falling down, screaming - "Nooooo!  Kain….!", - it was the younger version of Janos. The Hylden Lord had thrown him into the gate after their encounter...
            The older Janos grabbed me and flew up to the air. We struggled against the explosive waves of the closing gate, but eventually got back through to the Material Realm. There, my younger self had already killed the Hylden Lord. The Hylden Gate closed behind us, and all of the Hylden that had been present in Nosgoth - vanished. The Hylden City was liberated and purified of the hylden warriors and scientists.
           
            The Nexus Stone was on a necklace, so I wore it on my neck. It was not blocking the Balanse Reaver, it could be activated only on my command. I had the two strongest weapons known in the history of Nosgoth, but I had no idea how to use them. The Nexus Stone should charge the reaver... but how? I needed to talk to The Seer again, but where was she? I could not find her, but she could find me. I knew she was very powerful, and not only because of her knowledge of future. She could teleport to any spot in the world. She could be anywhere, and it was impossible to catch or surprise her. I must admit, I was surprised, when she suddenly appeared in front of me.
"Good work, Kain. Now you have all you need to defeat the Elder God", - she said.
"Then thank you for helping, Seer, I must go back to my timeline", - I said, - "But first...".
"...you have a question. I know Kain. Trust me, you will find out how to use it. But there is one thing you should do, Kain, before battling him. Have you ever thought how Raziel had survived the abyss?", - asked The Seer.
"The Elder God saved him, to make him his pawn", - I said.
"Raziel was the key to defeat him. The only mean to create a weapon that could harm the False God", - Selena said, - "Would he revive him risking his life, knowing that he was going to win anyway, regardless if you die or not?... Think about that!".
"What are you trying to say now?, - I said.
"The Elder God had just found him there, and started using him as his pawn. Raziel's saviour was you, Kain. You saved him from the abyss, after he was thrown into it", - said she.
"What do you mean? I do not remember myself doing that. I saw in my vision, as Raziel fell into the abyss, and reborn, obtaining the Free Will", - I said, being totally confused.
"Your visions were just fragment of the future. You did not see the whole of it. Looking from the right angle of view, you can see more details of the same picture. It was you, who saved Raziel from being totally consumed by the abyss", - said she, - "Actually, you have not done it yet. You will do it now".
"You want me to go to the time period when I cast Raziel into the abyss, and save him?", - I asked.
"Exactly. Refusing doing that, would create a fatal paradox, until there will be another reason that Raziel was saved. You know yourself, Kain, that history is irredeemable. This is your destiny", - said The Seer.
"I understand", - as I answered, The Seer teleported away, and left me alone with Janos.
"The fate plays a strange game, Kain, but we are the players, and have nothing to do about that. We do not possess the Free Will", - Janos said.
"Trust me, Janos, I know. I am just surprised of how many things I did not know yet. I was comparing myself to the God, considering myself knowing everything. But I was wrong... What else should I find out from the words of that woman?", - I said.
"Just do as she says. She is omnicient, just as Moebius and Elder God were, and she is on our side. Allies like her are most valuable", - Janos said to me.
"I know... I am just afraid of being somebody's pawn... again", - I finished, and took the Bats Cloud form. Then me and Janos headed directly to the Sarathan Stronghold.