Had Raziel been travelling on foot, the journey would have taken him weeks. But with the gift of Marduk’s soul, the augmenting of his gliding ability, one leap from the battlements of Vorador’s castle carried him up out from the rocky island and over the chopping waves.
Soaring like a kite he was lifted up by the strong air currents. His wings caught the force of the wind and carried him on, flying higher and higher so that the curve of the world lay before him.
It was not like actual flying where he could control his direction, the wind carrying him only in the general direction he wished to go. But the sensation of being aloft again, of moving with the air with such speed and grace was invigorating. It almost reduced him to tears had he not been concentrating hard on not plummeting into the ocean.
From the air the extent of Nosgoth’s decay was more apparent than ever. The land was almost drab grey and the water a mere darkened shade. If Kain had intended to restore this wasteland to life eventually Raziel did not see how it was even possible.
He did not stop when he reached the coast, the wind coming in off of the sea blowing him along and further inside. Instead of fighting he let it carry him for a good many miles east.
Finally however he realised that the wind was also blowing him too far south and so he loosened his grip on his wings and let his muscles relax. This act allowed him to drop out of the air current and then down into a usually glide, spiralling until he landed in a cloud of dust on the ground.
The landscape was not immediately recognisable and so he had to a bit of scouting in order to give himself some bearings. When he climbed to the top of a hill he found himself looking down into a valley with a flooded bottom. A river ran through a collapsed flood gate to pool around the shattered remains of gothic buildings built of stone.
Raziel had been here before. It was the Drowned Abby, the deluged ruins of a religious community where he had confronted and killed his brother Rahab. It was also a nesting ground for fledgling Rahabim. It was still early in the day however and given their weakness to the faint rays of the sun, even the adult vampires would be staying well concealed.
The city of Avernus, or at least its ruins, lay far to the north east of here. 
As he travelled, Raziel’s mind began to filter through all the things he had learned on this new journey; Kain’s fate, the ancient sleeping Keeper, the cruelty of Janos and the origins of both Vampire and Hylden. It was all so many revelations, so many difficult concepts to understand and assimilate.
Raziel was, if he was forced to admit it, an idealist. He held himself to his own moral code as much as possible. But every step he took on his journey tore down his preconceptions and made him question everything he thought he knew.
What nothing constant? Was nothing ever what it seemed and not some elaborate façade to conceal the truth?
Or was he forever destined to hack his way through the lies that encircled reality, peeling back layer after layer of what was false until, perhaps centuries from now, he would arrive at the real, pure truth?
It was a possibility that he was not particularly fond of.
The sun was setting on the third day of his journey when he finally past through a set of large stone gates bearing the tattered banners of the Razielim.
.
“Here again were the ruins of my clan territory; a no mans land of crumbled walls and forgotten glory.”
.
He had not intentionally been making for this place but the sight of his old clan territory was a welcome break.
His new journey had begun here, awakening to the glee of being free from the curse of the Reaver. Before it came to the end with the planned raid to retrieve Janos Audron, it seemed psychologically fitting to revisit this place, to put the ghosts behind him once and for all.
He walked through the spires and archways, remembering what had once been here. When he had first emerged, awakened after being freed from the Reaver, the afterimage of the past had been superimposed on the present to that he saw what was and what had been at the same time.
Since then his experiences has anchored him back down to reality and the ghosts were shown for what they were, memories of dead. There were no lost souls trapped here in the stone, merely his thoughts of them.
And so he walked through these ruins, passing by the once familiar homes of his clan for the last time. He would not come back here again.
Coming into a courtyard, he discovered several rotting corpses lying on the ground putrefying. A few were still being pecked over by carrion birds, the only creatures to do well in this era.
He recognised them as the Hylden scouts he had killed, tipping the balance of power in their battle with the Serioli vampires. The Serioli had just left them to rot.
There was no sign of them here. Evidentially the Seer had kept her word and showed them some fortress where they could protect themselves from the hostile creatures that wandered the land.
He wondered briefly where that might be. What fortress could possibly offer them protection and sanctuary in this era?
Raziel blinked and then looked off towards the north, the horizon a haze of distant mountains.
Somewhere up in those peeks, Kain had indeed once had a fortress built. A Mountain retreat that looked out over all of Nosgoth far below.
Could that be where they can gone? The fortress, now abandoned with Kain’s disappearance, would be ideal for them.
With a shrug he put such matters out of his mind and carried past the feasting carrion birds, focusing on the task ahead.
.
“Vorador and his Cabal bodyguard, Sally, would meet me there for our collaborating effort to rescue Janos Audron from the clutches of Ishtar, the leader of the Hylden house of Faith. If it came down to a confrontation with him however, I was far from certain. He still had the Nexus Stone and its deadly power to sap me of my very life.”
.
He hadn’t thought about the stone for a long time, quite purposefully. Death, utter oblivion, was a concept that he did not want to contemplate on for too long. Even the Reaver’s curse had not meant extinction.
But he had already promised himself that he would not be unmanned by fear again, that whatever fate had in store for him from this point on he would meet it head on with sturdy feet and an unbent back.
That conviction was put to the test far sooner than he had anticipated.
“We are through, Divus!” The sudden words echoed through the ruins and Raziel stopped abruptly.
The voice was feminine and its peculiar accent left him with no doubt that the speaker was the Seer. She was close; the echoes had not finished dying away before she’d finished her sentence.
“Through?” Another voice replied, this one strangely familiar.  “Through?! You foolish woman!”
Raziel deduced that the voices were coming from the next courtyard, the one where fledglings used to train under a drill sergeant. He began to make his way towards it, listening to the voices as they grew louder,
“If you turn your back on me, you turn your back on god.” The second, male speaker declared in a tone bordering of white hot rage. “Do you forget why you made the deal with us in the first place?”
.
“As I approached, a feeling of dread began to fill me and it grew stronger as I drew closer. It was a familiar dread, the same dread I had felt when I had encountered the Reaver in Janos’ retreat.”
.
The beginning of that familiar feeling of impending danger slowed his steps, far more profound this time.
He past by a crack in the wall and stopped there. Through it he could see the Seer, her face firm and cold as she spoke to someone. Raziel could not see who exactly from this angle but whoever it was had blue skin and black raven’s wings. Perhaps it was one of the Serioli.
“You delivered us Kain so that your people might survive and have a place in the new world to come.” The winged vampire said, disproving that theory instantly. Raziel tensed and crept along as quietly as possible.
“You turn away now and all of that is forfeit!” The speaker finished and with a seeming great effort was able to moderate his voice to a harsh whisper.
The Seer looked at her visitor for a moment with a blank expression and then, quite expectedly she tilted her head back and laughed a derisive and almost hysterical cackle.
“You foolish deluded zealot.” She laughed. “Your promises and the promises of your god are worthless and I have always known it to be so.” She turned and pointed a mocking finger at the vampire, wagging it back and forth. “I made a deal with you only to further my own plans and now I don’t need you.”
She was being so provoking that Raziel could not help but think that it was on purpose. She was goading her visitor for some reason but the blue wraith could think why.
He began to edge towards the gate entrance that led into the courtyard.
“No plan, no scheme, no agenda…” The winged vampire said in response, clearly fighting to keep his temper in check. “…will help you or anyone else when the Promised Day arrives.”
Raziel paused right by the turn of the corner, leaning out trying to get a better view. He still couldn’t see the vampire clearly.
“Make this decision and you and your entire race will not rapture to glory but remain here, to rot with the rest of Nosgoth.”
The Seer’s laughed died away and she turned grim.
“My kind can do without that glory.” She said with profound disapproval. “Unlike you, I know exactly what that ascension actually entails”
Raziel had had enough by now.
.
“I waited no longer. I strode out to confront the Seer and her visitor. For the rest of my existence I would wish that I had not.”
.
Seeing him, the Seer’s eyes told him that she was not surprised that he was here at all and not in the least concerned.
The other figure…
Raziel froze as he set eyes on himself.
For who else could it be staring back at him but himself?
“YOU?!”
The other him, the one whose face was unblemished and who had sprouting from his back wings of raven black feathers, staggered back recoiling in horror and revulsion. This version of him wore elaborate golden armour down his left arm where a strange triangular device strapped across the wrist.
Raziel’s mind went numb so that the painful truth of what he was seeing could not do him any more damage then it already had.
Suddenly it was all clear to him, an epiphany, an opening of his eyes as all the pieces of Kain’s fragmented memories came together in one terrifying whole.
Divus… the first incarnation.
“..no…”