Raziel did not precisely know what to do. Ever since his rebirth through the torment of the abyss he had had a purpose to keep him going. For the first time in a long while he was at a loss.
His old castle possessed several large towers and although most of them had fallen down, one remained and to the pinnacle of this he climbed to give himself a better view of Nosgoth.
From the stone edge he gazed out, seeing far in several directions. Once from this tower he had beheld the many cities states of Kain’s empire ruled by the clans but time had withered them to comparable stumps. The only monuments still of colossal size were the distant smoke stacks. They had still been bellowing smoke when he had hunted his former brethren but between now and then, someone had shut them off and the distant red haze of the sun shone through the cloud.
Briefly he pondered how long it would take for the air to clear enough from the pollution to allow for the sunlight to return in full force. Or if perhaps with the extent of Nosgoth’s corruption it might not.
-
“Although clearly I was back in the decayed future and the wrecked ruin of Kain’s empire I could not say how or why. The Seer has vanished before she could offer me further explanation and I knew not whether I was now in a time before I killed Kain’s lieutenants or after.”
-
He stared off towards the east and frowned. On the horizon there was a softer glow, green in colour and twinkling like stars in the night sky. There was an almost unearthly quality to the light, so sickly and poisonous looking. That had certainly not been there the last time. This strongly suggested that he had come back to this era after he had left it.
Unable to help himself, Raziel turned partly to look down at the cliffs below his clan territory. The canyons carved by mighty rivers flooded into the gapping wound in the land that was the swirling whirlpool of the Abyss. Even from here he could hear its roaring as the waters swirled down into the darkness.
He suppressed a shudder at the memory of the agonising descent through the water, just as much for the fact that he knew what awaited at the bottom then for the horrific fall.
Deliberately Raziel looked away and noticed from this high vantage point the curved dome some distance off to the south east. He knew at once he was staring at the remains of the once might Sanctuary of the Clans. The wraith stared at the distant building for a moment before he nodded sharply once.
-
“There was only one way to find out. I would go to the Pillars. Surely there I might learn the state of affairs as they stand in Nosgoth.”
-
There was little else he could do and little other place he could go in this era besides and he did not intend to wander the ruins of his clan’s castle in lonely melancholy.
Raziel was tensing his body to a long glide when there was a loud shout from somewhere down below.
That exclamation was followed by the hollow echoing clang of steel of steel, the sound of a good many people and other noises like a sizzling twang that came in rapid succession.
“Not far distant I heard the familiar and unmistakable of battle.”
Peering down off the edge of the tower, he could see some movement in the garrison that overlooked the edge of Melchiah’s necropolis. Flickering shadows and flashes of green light came from the tight narrow corners there and from the look of it, several dozen people were involved in close fighting.
Deciding to investigate, Raziel griped his ruined wings and leapt off the edge. Without their bony structure his wings would never be capable of powered flight again but they served well enough to allow for an elegant gliding motion.
The Wraith came down on the top of a ruined building and scrambled to the edge of peer down. What he saw made him blink several times.
Below him were dozens of beings he had seen only personified in Janos Audron’s person. They were all blue skinned and had long black feathery wings structuring out from their backs. They were dozens of them, men and women and warriors all armed with archaic axes and swords.
-
“This improbable scene before me was almost ludicrous. Winged ancients like Janos… all fighting for their lives against…”
-
Recently reminded of the anatomy of the enemy race by the Seer’s visit, there could be no mistaking their attackers. They were all thin and lean, with bony arms and legs. A frill of bone sprouted from their heads to curve back almost protectively over their short necks. Their eyes all blazed with a contaminating green fire and these inner flames were somehow being channelled down through strange weapons they held in their elongated hands to be projected in deadly form at the Vampires.
-
“… against what could only be Hylden.”
-
Unlike the Seer however these Hylden were hideously warped. The flesh around their faces was drawn up sharply against their skulls and their cheeks scared with severe stretch marks. While the Seer had been a bronze colour with chestnut hair, they were chalk white and bald completely.
If these were indeed the Hylden now finally before him, they outnumbered these winged ancients five to one and they had them pinned up inside the garrison’s inner wall which was barely suitable for a siege.
One of these ancient warriors, a female armed with two short blades was struck across the shoulder by a fiery green projectile and sent sprawling to the ground trailing vapour.
“Ajatar!” A big male vampire cried out. He was armed with a golden, curved axe and was distinguishable from the rest of them by a raking scar across his face and nose. He rushed forward and shielded her from attack, sweeping his own wings forward as a shield. He paid for the heroism, the green projectiles searing his feathers as he dragged her back to the relative safety of a cluster of stone.
Raziel’s reaction was immediate. With an acrobatic twist he somersaulted over the side of the building he was crouched upon and flew directly in amongst the attacking Hylden.
-
“I did not know precisely what urged me to come to their aid. The act was almost instinctive and in the heat of battle I did not have the luxury of time to dwell upon it.”
-
One Hylden looked down and saw him crouching there ready to spring. He reared back in clear alarm.
“YOU!” He screamed in a guttural voice just before Raziel’s talons tore through his throat. Blood spurted through the slash and he stumbled back against the side of a wall before slumping down, the green in the eyes fizzling to a spark before going out.
The other Hylden were turning around at his shout and Raziel wasted no words, leaping at the nearest one and slamming his talons through the skull and into the brain.
Over and over he felt the near overriding compulsion to summon the wraith blade but he forced himself to the battle with his bare hands along, knowing that he could not afford the hesitation when he tried to call the sword and it would not come.
The remaining Hylden had recovered from their initial surprise and had backed off to a distant to raise their weapons against him.
Raziel grabbed the twitching body of the Hylden he had just killed and swung it forward, using it as a shield against the barrage. With a surge of his mind he threw he corpse forward using the heightened powers of telekinesis he had taken from Turel and in that confused instant when they fired at the incoming body, he leapt over it high into the air.
He rolled across the ground and with talons lanced forward he slashed at the Hylden before him with the Perforate Carcass technique. Adapting the fighting style for use without the Reaver threw him off balance at first but he was quick to adapt and landed a vicious series of strokes across the Hylden’s chest unless he wrenched the ribcage open in a cascading bloody spray.
Seeing their enemy engaged, the winged vampires being the skilled and experienced warriors they seemed to be, took immediate advantage of the distraction and charged. Meeting the surprised Hylden from the rear they cut into them with axes and swords, outdated and archaic weapons in this day and age but no less efficient.
Raziel stabbed his talons through the eye sockets of another enemy and as the life flowed from its body and its soul escaped into the ether, he drew down his cowl and the inner calling light from within drawing the soul in like water down a drain.
Its energy restored his spent strength and in response his eyes burned afresh with their white fire.
The Hylden were now baffled and confused, falling back and firing wildly in their quick retreat. They regrouped a little further off at the entrance to a large stone pavilion and the battered Vampire troops used the pause in the fighting to gather their own strength. Any of them were wounded badly and they showed signs of malnourishment.
The Wraith stood in between the two forces, a strikingly visual mixture of the two species it might seem to the casual observer. Shattered and sliced corpses lay at his feet, some of them his own victims but most fallen from the battle. Hylden lay fallen beside winged Vampire, their mixed blood flowing across the stones.
“Ansu, what is that beast?” One of them with gaunt cheeks asked, pointing a shaking talon in Raziel’s direction.
The large Vampire warrior armed with a battle axe looked up from his tending of the female, squinting at Raziel with a deeply skeptical expression on his face but said nothing.
Raziel stared back at him for a moment and then he turned his back to glare at the Hylden.
They had been greatly reduced in number and did not look overly keen to charge again now they had lost their advantages. Clearly these were not frontline troops but merely scouts who did not have a lot of discipline and thus their battle spirit was easily broken.
Their leader, a taller example of their species with long ridges of bone running down the sides of both arms to form offensive ridges was glancing back and forth between the vampires and Raziel was if did not quite understand the change in situation.
“This is impossible…” He eventually said in his rasping voice and slowly shaking his bald head. “You can not be here!”
“Can I not?” Raziel asked with a whimsical air, one eyebrow raised. The improbability of his return to Nosgoth was causing others even more dismay than it did himself, he was satisfied to see.
“Destiny will not permit it!” The Hylden said in reply, his expression incredulously and confused. Raziel beheld their dismay with profound amusement. They were far more taken aback by his return than he himself had been as well they might have been. He was after all something of a mythical figure to the Hylden even if they had viewed him as little more than a tool to be used.
“And yet…” He said, spreading his arms wide and clicking his talons menacingly. “… here I am.” He took a step forward, his movement boarding on the dramatic and the Hylden withdrew a step in response, fear written into their faces.
“Are you afraid of me?” Raziel asked narrowing his eyes and slowly reaching up and playing a hand on the edge of his cowl.  He ran the edge of a talon across it as if contemplating pulling it down to feed. “You awaited my coming as a means to release your kind from the binding and yet you fear me? How curious.”
Their leader held up his projectile weapon, holding it with a shaking head in Raziel’s direction as the wraith slowly moved towards him.
“Do not come any closer!”
Raziel stopped and glared at them, contemptuous of the utterly useless gesture. Even if such weapons could cause harm to his physical body such injury would be fleeting in the long run. In reply to it he simply raise a talon and pointed it back.
“You will leave this place.” He said in a low tone. “You will leave the ruins of my clan and never return.”
The Hylden scouts stared at him with wide, frightened eyes. They looked ready to bolt at any moment. To tip them over the edge he stopped and glared at them with his eyes burning with their white inner fire.
“Be gone.” He told them, his voice low and threatening and as cold as ice. The Hylden turned and fled, almost to a man, some of them even dropping their weapons in their haste to flee. Their leader remained rigid for a moment; face fixed in terror before finally he to turned and ran.
Raziel stared after them a moment watching them go. He could chase them down and kill them all but for some reason he did not feel like expending the effort. He knew that they would most likely carry news of his return back to their kind but he did not think that overly important now.
“Who…what are you?” A voice asked.
Raziel looked back over his shoulder to see that one of the winged ancients had come forward. It was the large one with the scar across his face. His hand rested prudently on the hilt of his large axe but not in a threatening fashion, as if he meant to swing it at any moment. The others had remained behind but watched from their safe distances, their own weapons held at the ready.
“I might ask you the same question.” Raziel replied flatly, not in the mood to banter. He turned fully around and the ancient blinked and stared in morbid fashion at the ruined wraith before him. Raziel glared savagely at him so he looked back up to his face. “You’re supposed to be extinct.”
He did not mean that in the immediate sense and the warrior did not take it that way.
“Is that a fact?” He asked with a frown. “Well as you can see, we are not.”
Raziel looked them all over sceptically. He refused to believe that ancients other than Janos had survived all the way to this time period unnoticed.
Then he took a closer look at the warriors face and suddenly out of nowhere, a name came to him.
“Ansu.” He said and the ancient frowned.
“How did you know my name?” He asked, now the one suspicious. Raziel did not immediately answer as he did not know himself.
When he looked over at the other vampires he seemed to know them as well. The wounded female was Ajatar… and by her side was the younger Kralek. Was this more of the memories from Kain that he had inherited.
“I know not what you are creature.” The warrior Ansu said, interrupting his confused thoughts. “But we have battled across time itself to get to this place and we have found no respite thus far. So I will be frank. Are you friend or foe?”
Raziel shook is head, not to deny either role but to clear his own thoughts.
“Lost.” He said faintly. “And until I find myself again, I can not answer your question.” Without waiting to hear what reply Ansu might care to give, Raziel abandoned the flesh of his physical body; allowing it to dissolve as he shifted back into the spirit world.
Just before Ansu vanished, he was wearing as astonished look on his face that was almost comical.
The world around him green tinted blue and green, physical forms shifting to elongated parodies of the physical world.  The shift from one realm to another felt like flowing from solid to liquid, the sensation like a melting and quite familiar to him.
The world of the dead was a cold place but it never changed, frozen static forms and unchanging for all eternity.
Much like himself.