Raziel stared, unblinking up at the tremendous head before him. Its eyes fixed on him, each one blinking in random succession. The Keeper was watching him, evaluating his reaction to its stunning statement. 
“Do you suppose that I would simply allow Kain’s death?” It asked after Raziel said nothing in reply. “He has too important a role to play for me to just give him up.”
It opened its large mouth, showing a row of thin strips of baleen in something almost like a yawn. A faint luminescent glow escaped from deep inside the gigantic throat, a soft pulsing light that highlighted the lips before the mouth shut again.
“The Scion of Balance is alive and he waits your coming to retrieve him from the void.”
Raziel stood there, dumbfounded and shaking. It took a few moments for him to collect his thoughts, to organize his thinking into something coherent, but his mind swirled. None of this was fitting into place in his mind.
“Why should I believe what you say?” He asked eventually, his tone stubborn. “You give me no more reason to trust you than I would your opposite.” He found some mental stability in anger and clutched at that. “Less in fact. For you are a force unseen, even more recluse than my former master.”
The long snake like form of the Keeper writhed and in response the silt of the canyon floor trembled. As it moved Raziel could see that the keeper’s body was so long that it coiled around itself at least a dozen times, encircling the entire canyon. The movements were sluggish and clumsy. A shudder ran down the spine at times and Raziel wondered if the gigantic creature was suffering from extreme malnutrition and hunger.
“Is that not the best way I should be?” The massive being asked, shaking off the effects of its temporary weakness. Now that his attention was drawn to it Raziel could almost sense the creature’s weakness. It was starving.
“Do you not see in him the very worst those of my kind can be?” The Keeper continued. “Acting with no thought for the welfare of other beings, conscious of only his own place in the cosmology of the universe.”
The massive head looked up, tilted towards the surface of the water high above and the sky beyond that.
“He sits upon a self crafted throne devouring the souls of countless men, women, child of all races and I slumber here, peacefully in the mud of a lonely ocean. Tell me, which one of us would you be inclined to trust?”
Raziel’s reply was quick and heated.
“Neither.” He said and his anger flared anew, given vent now to a particular unpleasant topic. He stepped forward, clenching his talons into a fist. “Why should I concern myself with the dark prophecy anymore? Have I not given enough to it?”
The memory flared again and it flung fuel onto the fire of his rage.
“I let myself be consumed by the Reaver!” Suddenly he found that he could not stop himself. All of the frustration, all of the anguish and hurt came rushing out. The negative feelings poured out at the being that claimed responsibility.  “I was devoured and I let it happen, all for the sake of the prophecy!”
Strangely it felt better to get it all out, to scream out the rage he had carried inside for so long. As his voice echoed across the canyon he slumped down to the ground feeling like he had emptied himself.
And that emptiness was such an intense relief.
The Keeper remained quiet for along time, letting the silence drag on. All five eyes were staring, unblinking at the blue wraith.
Raziel lifted his head to look back at the creature defiantly, an ant in spite of a mountain. The Keeper’s face began to wrinkle again in its peculiar form of a smile.
“What is so funny?” The blue wraith asked in a quiet tone.
“That you speak of the Reaver in third person.” Arching, the long neck began to dip down, the movement ponderously slow. As the head drew closer, the ground beneath Raziel’s feet began to shake. The mere presence of such a tremendous and power entity, even so diminished, was enough to cause the earth to tremble in response.
“The Reaver of Souls; is that not what you are called Raziel?” The tusk ran along side head as the head moved to be level with him; its nose less than a foot away now.
The Keeper had been huge at a distance; close up it was impossibly large as if mountain were leaning down to get a closer look at him. Raziel stood his ground despite a sudden and very palpable urge to back off.  
“The power of the soul is not to be underestimated.” The Keeper did not speak audibly. The voice was right in Raziel’s own head and the close proximity amplified it into a telepathic shout that was deafening. “It can sustain, transform, destroy, create, nullify.”
“That is why it is so nourishing to us, the creatures men would call omniscient.”
And then did Raziel seem the Keeper’s plight and why he appeared so infrequently fed, he was that quite literally.
When he had recovered from his fall through the Abyss, the Elder had been there to greet him. The creature had told him about the stagnation of the Wheel of Fate, brought on by the souls of the vampires of Kain’s era never dying. Raziel had long since dismissed that story as a fabrication in light of the Elder’s true nature, but the fact remains that without souls to feed upon the Elder’s power had waned.
Apparently the same was true of the Keeper.
“The longer a being lives, the more power its soul can contain.” The entity was explaining. “It is a bountiful feast and a terrible weapon. The Elder has gorged himself and now is strong, far stronger than me.”
That got the blue wraith’s attention and he looked up out of his musings, directly into the house size eye directly above him.
“He prepares for something terrible. His endgame.”
Raziel stared up at the eye with his anger and resentment draining away at those words, replaced by a grim sense of foreboding.
“Can you not see what it is?” He asked quietly, in so quiet a voice in fact he barely heard himself.
The Keeper’s eye blinked; the sound a slopping wet slap. The eye had no iris or pupil; it was just a deep yellow orb that had its own deep glow.
“No, and that is why I needed to retrieve you from the sword.” The creature explained but did not sound that pleased. “You are the countermeasure, but the Scion must still rise again.”
The head began to wing away, leaning back from the side of the canyon wall. The valley was only just large enough for the head to move without the tusks scraping the rock.
“You are his partner. The two of you are intertwined so closely you may as well be called one being.  Only you can retrieve him and only he can hold back the coming evil.”
Raziel stood there for a long time, thinking about what to do.  At the core of all of this, he came to realise, was the argument and game played between these two god-like entities and all others were pawns on a chessboard. Even the Hylden were pieces in this cosmic game.
It was a contest that must have been taking place for uncounted numbers of years and the sacrifices it had demanded from Nosgoth, from people who were completely ignorant of it was staggering.
The Elder has his Wheel to ensnare the dead and the Keeper had his game to ensnare the living.
There seemed to be no escape.
“Let Kain find his own way back.” He said, disgusted with it all. “He’s resourceful enough to manage it.” With finality he turned his back as if to walk away. “I have concerns of my own.”
Raziel began putting one foot in front of the other, determined now that he would not be distracted from his purpose. He would find Janos Audron and set right the wrongs he had done.
The Keeper watched him go and slowly the mammoth snake raised his colossal head up. It remained silent for a time before it began to shift, churning its body beneath the sand.
“You will go to him.” It said, sounding quite confident. Raziel did not look back.
“And what makes you think that?” The blue wraith asked, continuing to talk away.
The Keeper was descending, slowly begin to submerge itself beneath the silt again. Its neck was retracting back, the sand moving to cover its body as it sank.
“Because I know you, Raziel.” It said. “In any past life you have led you have been a figure of perceived high moral conduct.”
At this Raziel did stop, his figure going rigid.
“Sometimes that code of honour was warped by others but you held it fast all the same. Your own sense of decency and compassion is what will compel you to do as I ask.”
Those words stung, even if they had been intended as a compliment of sorts.
.
“Hearing myself described so was almost a joke. It was romantically idealistic nonsense. And yet I could not deny that it was an accurate description of how I had always tried to hold myself. That perhaps was the biggest irony of all.”
.
Raziel looked back, watching the blunt snout and tusks slide underneath the sand and silt.
“Do what you will for the moment. There is time yet.” The Keeper added, its voice taking on a tired note as if weary of the conversation.
“But Raziel, as you work your way through your self imposed quest keep one thing in mind.”
Now, the only part of it that could be see were the five large eyes that looked up at him from their concealment in the silt. They fixed on him, harsh and glaring as if to convey in a look the importance of its words.
“You have come far already and overcome many obstacles that would have destroyed lesser beings.” One by one those five eyes began to close, the silt coming in to cover them. “Do not let all you have accomplished be undone by that which has already come to pass.”
With this final advice the last, fifth eye closed and the Keeper was gone, returned to its submerged slumber.
The blue wrath stood still for a long time, watching the bottom of the ravine for any signs of movement or any evidence of the presence of such a monster. There was nothing, the floor of the massive crevice was completely smooth and undisturbed.
For an illogical moment Raziel wondered if what he had seen and heard had indeed been real or if it was possible that he had imagined the whole thing? He had not, after all, woken up in this era entirely rational. Perhaps some slither of madness persisted?
Raziel concluded that he was not that lucky.
“Another fool’s quest.” He muttered to himself, turning back away from the ravine. Kain’s prediction of ‘fate promising more twists’ was coming to pass in ways that even the Scion of Balance had not expected it seemed.
The question was who was the bigger fool in this quest? Was it Raziel, for contemplating going to Kain’s aid, or Kain for needing rescue in the first place?