Now Ishtar’s intentions were made all too clear. The human’s cathedral styled weapon had had a limited range, making it practical only for the defence of a certain key area. The Ziggurat was by far taller and built to deliver blasts of sound to everything within its sight, which given its height was most of the mainland of Nosgoth. If used this spire had the potential to destroy most of the clan vampires, and many other species besides.
Obtaining entry into the spire was not difficult. The structure was covered in ventilation holes whose only construction was a flimsy metal grill. One kick was all that was required to dislodge one, letting Raziel slip inside.
Almost immediately upon entering the blue wraith felt, in both the ground beneath and in the air around him, a vibration. His ears more sensitive than any humans knew it was a sound wave immediately.
The Ziggurat was compartmentalised, made up of dozens of floors each one a labyrinth that curved around a central pillar. That same organic styled architecture of metal and stone made stepping within the spire a nightmare to navigate. What surprised him though was that the rooms he past through seemed to be completely deserted. He had not sighted any Hylden since he had stepped inside.
Vorador was not hard to find. He seemed to be waiting for him, standing to one side beside a large bolted door leading into the Ziggurat’s interior. Sally was with him, invisible in their chameleonic stealth, just visible in relief against the stone around her.
Vorador’s clothes were blood stained in a few places and the sword by his side was dripping onto the floor. Evidentially their passage inside had been more fought with danger than his own.
“Raziel.” The ancient vampire said with a nod of recognition as the blue wraith came towards them.
“He is close Vorador. I know it.” He replied, too anxious with being so close to his goal to waste time with small talk. “Can you sense him?”
Vorador’s expression became pensive.
“Yes I can.” He said but when Raziel looked at him expectantly hoping for more, he shook his head. “But I can not Whisper to him. I have been trying but his mind is too frayed, too jumbled for him to understand me.”
Raziel felt his heart begin to sink.
Before he could stop the thought, that one question came into his mind;
What if he was too late?
“But he IS alive?” He asked instead. Vorador nodded and there was a world of renewed hope in that one gesture.
“Yes.” He said and the expression on his face was like the rising sun. “Yes he is alive.”
It was a confirmation for them both. For Raziel it assured him that this was the right path to take. For Vorador it confirmed all that Raziel had told him and restored to him a family member he had given up for dead, twice.
“We should not linger.” Sally said, breaking the moment. Vorador cleared his throat and twitched his left ear.
“No we should not.” He turned to the door. “This way.”
He pushed it open and the three of them advanced inside, passing down through a stone stair case to enter the Ziggurat’s central pillar.
Inside were Hylden, hundreds of them.
The central core of the spire was hollow, all levels filled with galleries that ran through the outside walls with places to stand. In each of these stood red robed Hylden.
That rumble of sound which had so bothered Raziel was coming from them as they
stood in choir, singing a deep song of praise with such a low tone to it that the pipes that interwove the spire rattled in accompaniment.
The Hylden all were dressed in red robes like Ishtar had been, with that same cowl over their heads blocking their faces from view. Their arms were raised in supplication and their voices steady in their hymn.
Raziel’s frown deepened. This only confirmed what he had suspected. The humans who had built the silenced cathedral used focused the songs of their choirs into deadly sound waves during their monolith. Ishtar was clearly copying the invention, probably to the very same purpose.
The Ziggurat however seemed a lot better designed than the cathedral has been and with the weapon augmented by Hylden science, there was no telling of its destructive potential.
Up or down there were dozens of these chambers, all of them egg shaped and stacked one on top of the other going from the Ziggurat’s foundations to its very top and each one was filled with singing Hylden.
They paid no attention to them as they past by, travelling through the crapped stone passages that ran behind the alcoves in which they stood. With their eyes closed and their attention so occupied on their song they might not have even noticed.
Following Vorador’s lead up through each chamber, Raziel let him guide them on by his sense of how close his sire was.
The blue wraith felt a strange mix of anticipation and dread. Finally he was close to rescuing Janos but at the same time, he knew that Ishtar would surely be waiting for them.
With the Nexus Stone.
They ascended a flight of stairs suddenly and then came out into another chamber.
The chamber was egg shaped like the others but empty, with some pipes curving along the walls towards the ceiling and others lancing directly up from the floor. There were stone alcoves set behind the pipes, running around the outside in a spiral going up in place of the galleries.
Glancing up from their position, Raziel could see through a large round gap in the ceiling that there was another room above this one. It seemed just as large and from his poor vantage point he could only just make out more galleries with many Hylden standing in them.
It was like the other chambers they had seen throughout the tower, meaning these rooms of singing cloaked Hylden must carry on up to the very top of the Ziggurat. A far greater resource of sound than the humans had thought to use with their original construction.   
“Sire!” Sally began, leaning over the stone railing and looking down, her black hair trailing past her face. “Down there!” Vorador came quickly down her side and follower her gaze. He breathed in sharply, his ears going erect in attention.
Raziel came over as well and looked down.
Halfway down the chamber in which they stood there was a figure, suspended in mid air by metal cables in the direct centre. They wrapped around arms and legs, causing whoever it was to be held there spread eagled with his limbs stretched out wide. Even from this distance Raziel could make out the blue skin and tattered black wings that were also bound.
Slowly his eyes began to widen as recognition dawned on him.
.
“Finally, after such a long search I had found Janos Audron. But seeing him now part of wished that I had not.”
.
The tenth guardian, the one chosen to safe guard the Reaver blade until the prophesised hero came to claim it was here. Given that duty, Janos had diligently stood his long watch, century after weary century as the world around him grew ever more hostile.
Finally, when he seemed like duty had come to an end, Raziel had unerringly delivered to his enemies an unimpeded path to his door.
And now here he was, revived only be left abandoned and forgotten by those he held dear, trapped and tortured at the hands of his enemies.
And it had been Raziel’s fault.
“Janos!” He called out, the echo of his voice lost in the hum of the Ziggurat. The ancient vampire lay there giving no sign that he had heard, head tilted back his long black hair hanging loose from his scalp. He hung there suspended, limp as a rag doll. It was hard to make out the details from this distance.
Raziel leaned over the side, looking down at Audron with growing horror etched into his face. The self loathing that he had felt upon discovering that it had been his past Sarafan self that had murdered Audron was nothing in comparison to what took him now, the realization that he had almost deliberately forced Janos to accept this fate of pain and torment.
With an expression on his face bordering on insane fury, Vorador darted down the stone stairs taking them two at a time towards the level from which his sire hung.
Sally was only a step behind him and Raziel a step behind her, the three of them making their way down towards the ancient as fast as they could.
The level from which Janos was suspended was framed with four large windows that looked out into the central drop. The cables holding his limbs in place were anchored just below each one.
“How do we get him down?” Sally asked when they came to one of them, the cable from which was wrapped around Janos’ left leg. “If we cut him loose from those cables he will simply fall into that abyss.”
Vorador, who had been on the verge of climbing out onto one of the cables, paused and reconsidered at her words.
Raziel looked the cables over and thought about it quickly, his mind racing to counter this problem to distract him from his turmoil of emotions. Sally was right. Janos was poised so that if they cut him loose from his bondage he would fall the length of the Ziggurat down to its foundations, a fatal drop even for a vampire.
“I will go out there and set him loose from the cables that bind his arms.” He told them, pointing with a talon. “If you stay here you can then pull him up by the cables that hold his legs.”
Vorador pursed his lips and cast another glance over his sire, seeming to appraise Raziel’s suggestion. After a moment he nodded in agreement and stood aside.
Raziel climbed up out of the stone window and onto the cables. Even through his feet he could feel the reverberation of the Ziggurat as the Hylden’s chorus reached a new crescendo, the cable trembling in response.
Quickly he made his way along the cable, his determination to get to Janos the only thing keeping him balanced. Had he been any less determined not to fall he probably might well have done so.
Close up, the truly pitiful state Janos was in was more than clear. His body was covered in cuts, deep and shallow. Dried blood ran un-cleaned down his torso to stain his black winds. Long gone were the priestly white robes Raziel had known him to wear. The only thing keeping him decent was the tattered remains of a pair of steel grey pants with a decorating loin cloth hanging loose.
By far the worse thing to see was his face, his skin stretched up into his cheeks. The affects were by no means as scaring at those on a Hylden’s face but the influence of imprisonment within the demon realm was unmistakable.
“Janos, Janos can you hear me?” The blue wraith asked, coming towards him inch by inch until he was almost standing over the tenth guardian.
Gingerly, keeping a hand on the cable for balance, he reached out and shook Janos by the shoulder.
The ancient shivered and then pushed an eye half open. For a moment it was unfocused and distant; then it turned to look directly at him.
Both eyes snapped open and Janos stared at him, his expression quickly filling up with horror and dismay.
“No…NO… you can’t be here!” He said, his voice so hoarse it was almost a croak. He violently began to struggle, almost shaking Raziel off of the cable. “No more visions please make them stop!”
His head rolled from side to see and he avoided looking at Raziel as if he were the most hideous thing he’d ever seen.  He ground his teeth and tried to pull away with more strength then Raziel would have guessed he could have with such an abused body.
No wonder Vorador could not contact him with the whisper. His mind had been damaged by exposure to the demon realm after all.
Raziel felt a lump bob in his throat at the sight of him and guilt flooded through him afresh. It was short lived however as another stronger feeling overtook him. It had come over him suddenly, strong and dampening, that feeling of weakness; that same draining bundle of emotions that accompanied him when in close proximity to the Nexus Stone.
“Why am I not at all surprised that you came here?” The voice echoed suddenly out of the darkness of the chamber, resonating throughout the labyrinth of pipes. Vorador tensed, his ears perking up at the sound. Beside him Sally spun her head in all directions, trying to pick out where the voice was coming from.
It was impossible, it echoed too many times for the source to be known and the sound of the Ziggurat’s chorus was all encompassing.
The moment the voice had spoken Raziel had gone very still, not allowing himself the distraction of panic.
“Ishtar.” He replied back into the darkness, having recognised the voice instantly. Slowly he turned to look around scanning the curved walls and the hidden places were a figure might remain concealed.
Vorador pulled back his lips to expose his fangs in an animalistic snarl.
“Have you done this to my sire?” He demanded, eyes darting back and forth.
“He serves a purpose here.” Ishtar replied dismissively.  “To provide my court with a fool they can poke and prod whenever they get bored.”
Vorador’s ears twitched in severe aggravation but he knew better than to let simple jibes like these put him off his guard. Still it took visible effort for him to retain his composure.
“So Shamash and Marduk are dead are they?” Ishtar’s disembodied voice asked ignoring him now. “Fools, the both of them. They put their trust in weapons or science when it is only the grace and favour of the Keeper that we prevail.”
Raziel narrowed his eyes and looked down into the abyss below them. The Keeper? The Hylden worshiped that strange creature? Raziel had many misgivings about that being but there was one thing he was sure of and that the Keeper was not an advocate of mass genocide and destruction.
“I have met your god.” He said to the shadows.  “I doubt very much he favours you or your choice of action.”
 The silence that followed was filled with an appalled disgust.
“You speak in ignorant disdain of the faith that saw my people through hell itself.” Ishtar snapped, his voice echoing momentarily about the chorus of Hylden prayer. He seemed to take a moment to collect him. “But it doses not matter. Come here for Audron, come here to stop me. You’re too late for either.”
Suddenly the floor beneath them shook violently, a shuddering thud than seemed to go up and down through the tower. Raziel had to grab onto the cable beneath him to keep from being dislodged and even Vorador and Sally had to catch for support on whatever they could grab.
The Hylden that filled the many floors of the tower did not waver however from their song, and seemed to only intensity their singing.
Still clutching onto the cable, Raziel happened to be looking directly down. Out of the darkness below, a twisting writhing shape was slowly spiralling up; snaking its way through the series of pipes.
Whatever it was, it was rising and getting closer.
Scrambled up to a precarious balance, Raziel quickly darted to Janos’ side and began cutting through the cable with his right wrist. The ancient vampire, apparently not sensing the oncoming danger, struggled with the blue wraith and was only partially subdued when Raziel slapped him across the face.
After a moment of intense sawing, the strands of metal that made up the cable came free with a loud snapping sound. It whipped back and Janos arm dropped free.
Below Raziel could see that the thing rising up towards them was not a part of the Ziggurat itself but rather a living creature, an insect with thousands of spindly legs carrying it up through the pipes.
“Hurry!” Vorador called out frantically, looking down to gauge the rate of the monsters speed.
With speed born of panic, Raziel attacked the other cable binding Janos left arm. This cable took longer to cut through than the first being thick with more strands and only with determined effort did the wraith finally managed to severe it.
He was not a moment too soon for as he and Janos began to swing away, free from the bindings, the creature drove past them with a large mouth full of many rows of serrated teeth snapping at their passage.
Raziel wrapped his body around Janos and so when they slammed into the side wall of the pit the blue wraith was able to cushion the ancient vampire from the blow. They had not swung that far so Raziel did not deplete his energy reverses by any large amount by the act.
The centipede like demon kept on climbing a short distance and then curved around it, looping until its massive head came up to glare down at them. It was a hideous creature, dull green on the underside and a steel grey on top. Many small green eyes looked out from positions all over its head. Its body was segmented all the way down its length and each segment had dozen legs to it. All the hundreds of legs down its side wiggled in unison giving the whole body a fan like appearance as it moved.
Its jaws were a mass of slicing pincers and spread out wide around wide mouth full of those curved teeth
Out of the gaps in its exoskeleton there pulsed a bright green fire that burned from within, emerald flames bursting out when it moved.
Standing on top its head with crossed arms was Ishtar. His red cowl was draw partly up over his face but that did not hide the triumphant smile that curved his lips.
Raziel looked for it and sure enough, there it was, latched onto his chest like before; the dreaded Nexus Stone.
“Soon the Ziggurat will crescendo with the voices of all my kinsmen in prayer!” He declared, tilting his head to gesture up to the chamber above where the singing carried on, purposely oblivious to what transpired here. “A hymn to the glory of the Keeper.”
He spread his arms wide, still smiling that smile of victory.
 “These pipes will channel that sound and send it forth in all directions, a wave of destruction that will destroy the minds of every filthy vampiric creature in Nosgoth.”
Raziel looked up again, realising that they had come on the cusp of the Hylden’s finally solution to the vampires. The Ziggurat was building its sound waves, sending them echoing back and forth through the pipes. Once the sound had reached its peek, the unleashed blast of sound wound destroy any vampiric creature within Nosgoth, and probably a large amount of other species as well.
“I will purify this world in the sound of rejoicing!” Ishtar cried. Raziel could see the eyes under his cowl from this angle and he could see that there was no hint of hysterical madness or delirium. On this face was the firm and solid confidence that he had seen before during their confrontation at the Sanctuary of the clans, altered only by his satisfied smile.
So far Raziel had see the madness of the demon realm affect individual Hylden in different ways. Some were driven to kill indiscriminately, others to plot and scheme for murder and destruction. In Ishtar’s case its affects had been subtle, taking his already well fixed religious believes and altering them so that he saw it as his heavenly duty to purge the world first of Vampires and then of anything but his own kind.
Raziel could not allow this.
“Tell me.” He asked. “Marduk and Shamash have enlightened me already to what they contributed to the curse. Blood thirst, weakness of the elements… what did you add?”
He knew the answer the moment a superior grin parted the Hylden ecclesiasts’ face.
“The one thing, about all else, that would make them suffer.” He said without so much as a moment’s hesitation. “Immorality and sterility! No reincarnation through their despicable Wheel of Fate to give them comfort.” He crouched low on his beasts head glaring at them maliciously. “It is the best joke in the world! The vampires, who were so zealous and god fearing had their deity spit in their eye when they became undying!”
Vorador’s face contorted into a scowl but Raziel held up a hand to stop him.
“Vorador, Sally.” The blue wraith said, narrowing his eyes and latching onto the cables that they hung from.
Sally looked down to him, but Vorador’s eyes were still locked on the monstrous insect before them.
“Retrieve Janos… he is mine.”
Ishtar raised an eyebrow, looking down at Raziel from his vantage point his expression quizzically.
“I’m yours?” He asked and then laughed again, holding up a hand almost claw like in font of him.
“Have you so easily forgotten?” He asked, laying his hand down onto his chest the tips of his fingers touching the Nexus Stone. “You can not even touch me so long as I have this!”