Far from sight off of Nosgoth’s southern shore was a long archipelago of rocky islands that jutted out of the choppy sea like teeth.
On the largest of these Marduk’s ship had come ashore. They had been forced to beach their vessel under constant attacks by a school of Ruhabim out in the open ocean. Now at last, the Hylden had barricaded themselves into a rocky crevice and withstood the attack. Without the advantage of the water to help them the Ruhabim’s advance on the Hylden slackened and the bodies began piling up on the gravel beach.
As night began to fall the vampires decided that whatever meal this prey might provide was not worth the effort of securing it. They cut their losses and retreated, falling back into the sea.
The Hylden waited some time before they were sure that the Ruhabim had given up and once they were assured of their victory, they returned to their ship. They buried their own dead and burned whatever bodies of the vampires they found.
A few corpses they left to rot on the beach and as dawn rose the next morning they pushed their ship out into the sea and set forth, heading for a cove on the other side of the island.
Their ship rounded a corner and past out of sight, the beach where they had done battle left quiet once more.
It did not stay that way. About two hours after the Hylden had left, one of the dead Ruhabim vampires they had left twitched. The corpse convulsed, suddenly writhing in fresh animation. It twisted back and forth, undergoing a metamorphosis as it did so. Its skin fell away, replaced by blue muscles and sinew. Claws were replaced by talons and the large crest dropped off along with the lower jaw, a clothe wrapping with the emblem of the Razielim forming over the gap.
Raziel snapped his neck to the side when the change was accomplished, letting his ruined wings unfurl again. He felt stiff using this body. Recently dead corpses were not as good for remoulding as older ones, the muscles cramping up in rigor mortis. He flexed, reworking the new muscles to respond to him.
It had been pure guess work determining which of the islands Marduk would come to and he had had no way of knowing until he got there, but finding so many dead Ruhabim was a good sign.
Raziel was concentrating on the task at hand rather than reflecting on the monumental conversation he had had with the Keeper. He could not afford to get distracted he had to stay on course and rescue Janos. Later, if there WAS a later, would be the time to think about doing something else.
Once his new physical form was quite flexible he looked around, noting the signs of battle everywhere on the beach. The Hylden had driven off the Ruhabim it seemed and then sailed out to sea again. Given how fresh the corpses were they could not have gotten far.
Above, the sky was turning steadily from grey to black and off in the distant was the low echo of thunder. A storm was due to hit very soon.
He did not know precisely what Marduk was setting out here to find but as he looked at the lay of this landmass, Raziel felt some small trace of recognition. He could not quite place it in his mind but this island was somehow familiar.
There was no easy way off of the beach, cliffs loomed high on either side and the sand was a mix of gravel and mud flats.
With no place else to go but up.
The cliff face was full of hand holds and the gift of Zephon’s soul allowed him to scale it with ease. It was still a long climb however, the stone cliff rising several hundred feet above the water. Alone on the cliff the winds tore at him with increasing harshness, empowered by the coming storm.
About half way up he disturbed a nest of roosting sea birds, which angrily flocked around him pecking and cawing in alarm. It was only after he’d swatted several of them aside that he was able to progress any further.
Finally he was able to pull himself up over the promontory, a few thin slabs of slate falling away under his feet. In the hard wind his hair and membranous wings bellowed out behind him, flapping back and forth.
The blue wraith stood high enough for the lay of the land to be revealed to him. The far side of the island was shrouded in a thick bank of black clouds that was advancing but he could still make out the island’s shape.
Outlined before him, the island finally fit itself into his recall.
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“And now I knew this place. This was the island where the Hylden had operated from during the era of the second Sarafan, the place where the gate between Nosgoth and the other world had been opened. I had been here only once before… but I could not pull the event out of my shattered memories.”
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He had been here once before he was certain of that. But when that had been was lost to him, or the reason for the previous visitation.
Slowly Raziel let his gaze wander towards the south. Sure enough, there as he had expected, were the ruins.
The city below him was ancient even by the standards of the ruins scattered throughout Nosgoth. It was so old it even pre-dated the pillars themselves. This Hylden metropolis was a gleaming symbiosis of metal and stone, set in defiance against the encroaching sea. The city was all odd angles and jutting metal spikes, but dark as if devoid of all life.
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“The ancient city, despite its advanced technology, was a decayed ruin now half submerged in the waters of a cove. Everything in this era it seemed was a ruin.”
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The technology of the Hylden surpassed anything even remotely dreamt of by even the most learned human society if their structures could withstand the elements in a place such as this. 
It had been here that Kain had put down the Hylden general, disguised as the Sarafan Lord, and ended two centuries of Sarafan rule in Nosgoth ushering in his empire. Raziel looked over the city, seeing that part of what could have been a levee or water break submerged by the high tide. Without that protection, the lower levels of the city were badly flooded.
And it was then that he spotted the faint metal glint, sailing into the gulf that the city faced.
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“From this vantage point I could see Marduk’s ship. I did not know what his purpose here was but I didn’t care.”
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The metallic vessel sailed up towards the ruins and was quickly tethered to a stone quay, anchoring it in place. Ropes and lines were cast out to secure the ship to whatever else was possible. Realizing that these were preparations for the oncoming storm, Raziel looked around. The sky was almost completely black now and the boom of thunder was growing even stronger. It wad darkest on the other side of the island and darkening quickly. The storm was minutes away now.
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“I would find the Hylden teacher again and this time I would extract from him the information I needed, even if I had to rip his wings off to get it.”
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But first he would have to get off of this ridge. Being out in the open during a storm would not do him any good.
Gripping the edges of his wings, he ran forward and leapt off the precipice gliding down towards the city.
The winds were stronger than he thought however and was he carried back and forth, tossed about by buffeting gales. They carried him away from the gulf however, further into the depths of the sprawling ruins and realising that he could not make any headway against such winds Raziel let them carry him down into the buildings themselves.
When he landed on a stone building overlooking a shattered courtyard it began to rain, a thick sheet of falling water marching across the land. The storm had the instant feel of the kind of weather that might last for days. Marduk was now trapped here. He could not fly or sail away. All Raziel had to do was corner him and it was all over.
Despite himself however Raziel found himself distracted by the city around him. It was unlike anything he had ever seen before. Everything was carved out of stone and forged from metal but not in any haphazard welding. The way they flowed together was the epiphany of poetic artistry.
Woven into this setting were many murals, covering whatever walls were possible. Some were simply elaborate decorative patterns, but others told stories.  One imagine, outlined in the flash of lightning from outside, was a Hylden standing proud with head raised towards the sky. In this image Raziel saw how the Hylden might once have looked like, the face unblemished and beautiful. If imprisonment in the demon dimension had robbed them of such beauty then he felt that he could understand their anger.
After all, had not he hated Kain for condemning him to existence as a walking corpse?
The briefest of surveys told Raziel that the old inhabitants of this city had been devoted to the furthering of science. As he progressed the murals showed Hylden studying humans and other creatures, exploring dissected specimens to learn about their anatomy.
Others showed progress in cosmology, the study of the heavenly bodies that circled the sun. Raziel paused by this diagram to study the markings that, if he interpreted them correctly showed Nosgoth to be the third planet from the far larger sun.
One particular mural had Raziel completely stumped as to its meaning. It showed three icons, ones that looked like visual representations of winged vampires, Humans and then Hylden. Above these icons were coloured circles arranged in a pattern of a twisted rope, a double helix that interwove several times. Each pattern was the same but the colours were different. Clear this was significant but as to why Raziel could not say.
If Marduk was the leader of the Hylden house of Knowledge then perhaps he had come here to salvage what he could of this once mighty centre of learning. That was a goal Raziel could respect at least.
Following the long hallway, Raziel found himself in a strange room at the far end. It was rectangular with a rusted metal grill covering a floor that curved as much as the ceiling above. A central metal pillar stood directly in the centre and three claw like appendages lanced out from it, joined in the middle to curve backwards towards the centre.
Off to one side from the device was small set of levers set into a round raised pedestal, perhaps the controls for this machine.
The chamber was dark and had the feeling of having not been used for centuries.
“So then, what do you do?” Raziel asked himself, walking over to the levers. Above them in the pedestal was a panel of some kind made of a glass like substance and blank. He wiped the dust away from it and at his touch, the small screen lit up with green light.
The blue wraith recoiled slightly as it flashed brightly, showing strange alien patterns within the light. But then the illumination quickly died and the panel went blank once more, whatever life remaining in it drained away by the activation.
Raziel tried touching it again but this time there was no response. Feeling curious he reached for a lever.
Before he could pull one however, he froze in place with his hand outstretched. His senses told him that he was not alone and that danger approached.
There was a scratching noise from above and turning to look, Raziel saw them coming.
They were spiders, each one about the size of a dog. They were all chalk white and the large spinnerets behind them were lined with deep ridges. The worst thing where their heads, skull like with two large staring black eyes and long mandibles coming out of an almost human like mouth.
There were perhaps about six of them, scuttling down the machinery and the walls and closing on him.
One of them leapt at him, propelling itself off of the ceiling to drop down on what it thought was prey.
Raziel punched through its body with a single swipe, his talons rending through the small body and ripping it in half.
Another two leapt at him from the side of the machine, one slashing at his leg with its razor sharp front legs and the other leaping up to try to grab him around the waist.
Raziel sent that one flying with a telekinetic bolt that tore off its spinneret. It landed in a squirming heap some distance away.
The spider on his leg bit and clawed but the blue wraith kicked it away before bringing his talons down to grasp its head. With a sudden lurch he tore it off, trailing blood, skin and the remains of a spinal cord.
These spiders he saw, holding the skull, were a mix between vertebrates and invertebrates. They were not just a large species of insect but were mutants.
The remaining three circled him and then came at him all at once, attempting to overcome the blue wraith with sheer force of numbers.
Anticipating this, Raziel leapt up out of their way. He twisted in the air so that his talons came down, spinning and tearing through flesh and exoskeleton. One was torn asunder almost immediately, another was crushed by a fist and its inside began leaking out through the holes in the floor grill.
The final spider, seeing finally that it was completely outclassed, backed off and then tried to scuttle away.
Raziel however was not in the mood to have it return later with more and quickly grasped it in the bind of telekinetic shackles. Once his grip on the squirming bug was secure he swung the creature as hard as he could into the side of the wall. The insect burst on impact, collapsing into a mess of blood, bone and puss.
When the attack routed, Raziel remained perfectly still however; his nose twitching beneath his cowl.
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“The scent was what alerted me to the fact that this was no random attack, that these spiders had been set on me. A very distinct odour of a vampire, but I could not link the smell to any of those I knew belonged to the clans.”
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His nose led him to the watcher and turning, he saw it. Or… he imagined he might have seen it. It was a vague outline of a figure but so completely melded with its surroundings that if Raziel hadn’t had the gift of a vampires sense of smell or had been specifically looking for it, the being would have been invisible.
When it realised that its cover had been blown, the figure detached itself from the wall and began to back away.
“You’re not welcome here.” A voice said and Raziel narrowed his eyes at the distinctively feminine tone. “Take your kind with you and be gone!”
With that the figure darted back through the open doorway and was gone. Raziel went after her but by the time he reached the outside corridor the vampire had fled.
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“She was definitely a vampire and appeared almost human far unlike the devolved wretches on the mainland.”
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The only way he had of telling she had been there at all was the tell tale smell, a trail of scent that led out through a doorway. She had aroused his curiosity. If she was intend a vampire unaffected by the devolution of the clans then that meant she was not of Kain’s direct line.
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“Presented with this mystery, I felt compelled to follow.”