Raziel, being now a being that maintained his physical presence only at a cost, was far more adapted to the spectral realm and was able to cover much more ground in this dark and warped reality. He knew of course that he should not take this speed and familiar for granted as the longer he might spend in this place the more he would loose himself until he was little more sentient than a ravenous Sluagh.
As it was, it was not long before he cleared the limits of his former clan territory and struck out south heading towards the jagged cliffs that lined the horizon. So far he had encountered none of the entities that usually inhabited this place; no vampire wraiths, archons or sluagh. That disturbed him for some reason and he grew a little edgy as he carried on.
Eventually he came to the top of a large rocky crevice and from there the vista before him carried all the way to the distant horizon. What view there might have been however was deeply obscured by a thick blanket of clinging smog that had been all too common with the use of the smoke stacks.
What made Raziel frown however was the gaping maw in the ground below the cliff and the churning water that, even in the Spectral realm, cycled down over the stones to fall into the utter darkness beneath.
-
“And so once more I beheld the burning spiral that was the Abyss. It was into this very whirlpool that Kain had cast me so long ago now, allowing for my rebirth as the Reaver of Souls.”
-
Raziel stared at it for a long while and found himself looking at it in a strangely detached manner. Always before the sight of it had given him a deep feeling of dread and anxiety, even before his execution had earned the fear. Now that emotion seemed lost and he regarded the whirlpool with distaste, but not agitation.
As such, he was able to note differences from his last sighting of it that made his frown deepen.
-
“This vortex however was not entirely as I remembered it. Clearly the yawning chasm had doubled in size and the far side was only a distant suggestion through the stagnant air.”
-
The gaping maw of the abyss was like a wound in the land itself, the rivers that fed the whirlpool falling down from many carved valleys and crevices into the deep puncture and fall endlessly down and down into the dark. The edge where he had last stood as a full vampire was almost gone completely, its top fallen over and lying to one side, blocking the path of a water fall and forcing it to divert to either side.
-
“If this was some omen of the late hour to which I awoke it was not lost on me.”
-
More than this however, there was a pulsing feeling coming from that ruined cliff. This sensation was familiar to him now as the call of empty flesh. Taking hold of his ruined wings, he leapt forward and slowly moved through the still air towards it. As he glided near, he could the ethereal gasses rising from the near broken corpse of a Dumahim vampire. It was lying on top of a rock outcrop and was stuck there by a long metal spear, stabbed directly through its heart.
Raziel recognised its make as one of those used by human Vampire hunters.
He landed nearby and perched over the body, examining it for a moment. It was suitable.
He closed his eyes and began to project himself. Slowly this spectral form disappeared, fading away to a faint blue glow that shifted down to feed into the body before it. The shift back to the physical world using this method always filled him with disgust, as he could feel the dead flesh he now occupied and its touch revolted him.
Raziel concentrated hard as the body rose up at his command, transforming as it began to scramble back to its feet.
With a surge the flesh almost dropped away into the blue skeleton wraith as it changed into his regular form.
Embarrassingly however, he found that he had forgotten the spear still jabbed through the chest of his new body. He tugged it free with little more than a grunt of discomfort and he tossed the weapon away indifferently.
The Sanctuary of the Clans and the Pillars themselves lay to the south and Raziel could already see the canyon that led to them from here.
He was about to turn and head in that direction when suddenly, a deep, familiar and wholly unwelcome voice echoed out at him from the depths of the abyss.
“Hold Raziel! Go no further!” The command of the Elder, the oracle god of the ancient vampires halted him in his tracks. He stiffened, shoulders hunching together as he turned to look down into the darkness.
“You…” He began with appropriate venom.
Raziel could almost see within those deep shadows, some undulating thing lurking down there. A deep, squirming mass of tentacles writhing like a pitcher full of earthworms, each limb covered with blue staring eyes.
“As impossible as it seems...” The elder began, meeting Raziel’s own contempt with a wealth of his own. “You stand here within my sight, freed of the captivity you so foolishly flung yourself into on Kain’s behalf.”
A momentary shudder travelled involuntarily down Raziel’s body as he recalled that moment of impalement he had allowed to happen so that he might purify Kain’s sight. It had been necessary of course but that knowledge had hardly made the act any more pleasant.
“I am not so arrogant that I refuse to admit that I am suitably impressed by your stamina.” The deep dweller added, reluctantly all the same. “You withstood eons within the sword and yet somehow you retain both your body and mind.”
Raziel had no desire to talk to this being, even to be complimented and said nothing in reply but when the Elder declared;
“Even through your arrogant despite of me you remain forever my most enduring and incorruptible of servants.”
He had had enough.
“We have been through this before, old one.” He spat with a suitable amount of contempt. “I have never been nor will I ever be your servant.”
The Elder laughed at him long and deeply, the sound a deep rumbling tenor of debased and perverted amusement.
“That, Raziel, is where you are wrong.” The old being stated still sounding somewhat smug. “You can not know, in your present state, the service which you have dedicated to me; the acts you committed for me and the souls you have sent to me to be cleansed in the Wheel of Fate.”
Raziel scrambled at the rock and hoisted himself up to a more stable ledge. Angrily from this vantage point he glared down into the chasm in absolute defiance.
“Hold your gelatinous tongue!” He said.
“You dare speak so to me?”
He jabbed a bony talon down towards the darkness.
 “You are not my master. I will have nothing to do with you.” There was an ominous silence broken only by the churning of the waterfalls all around the edges of the wound that was the abyss.
Then the Elder God spoke again, the voice low and ominous.
“Do you imagine that you can simply turn your back?” It asked flatly. “That you could just leave both me and our game behind you like some forgotten milestone? You should know better than that, Raziel.”
The wraith said nothing for a moment as he stared down but then swung his head away refusing to look.
“I am free from the confines of destiny.” He said, perhaps a tad petulantly. “You have no hold on me. Not anymore.”
That was the essential, the essential, point of his new life if he had indeed such a luxury. His ties to this thing had been cut and he would ensure that it stayed that way at any means necessary
“Your understanding of the situation is as poor as it is misguided.”  The elder rebuked him for the hopeful notion and then its tone turned wheedling. “It pains me to see the depths to which you, my greatest and most loyal of advocates has fallen.”
Disgusted by such pathetically weak coaxing, Raziel turned his back as if to go.
“And yet even if what you believed was true, and that there is really is nothing to tie you down anymore, what does that honestly get you?” The old creature added quickly.
“It gets me freedom.” Raziel replied in almost a whisper and without turning around again.
“It gets you nothing!” The Elder’s contradiction almost overrode his words before he had even said them. “You are lost and without purpose.” That almost sounded like an accusation. “Why are you even here? To defy me and confound me?”
Personally Raziel did not feel like committing to any sort of long term goal. In truth he merely wanted to find somewhere quiet and rest, perhaps for a century or two, but he knew the nature of Nosgoth better than that. He knew any enemies that would learn of his survival would never tolerate it and he would be constantly having to defend himself from endless attacks.
And then there was Kain, inconceivably gone and his great and utterly necessary work left unfinished.
 “The hour is far too late for that Raziel.” The Elder was carrying on, its tone changing to one of smug satisfaction. “Kain is gone, this time for good and despite your collective best efforts the fate of Nosgoth once again lies in the right hands. Mine.”
He rankled at this, one eye narrowing and twitching slightly in the effort to control his first response.
“I do not have to stand here exchanging insults.” He settled for saying instead, taking a step forward away from the abyss.
“And just where will you go?” The elder called after him. “What will you do? What is left for you out there?” Raziel kept walking but he was forced to the action, keeping himself fixed on his anger to not dwell on the fact that the false god had a point.
“There are no more prophecies left for you, no grandiose role of the saviour to play.” The elder added as if sensing his melancholy thoughts. Those made Raziel stop briefly in his tracks. If he was honest with himself, he would admit that he had enjoyed the feeling of uniqueness being the messiah of vampires had given him.
The attention and devotion of Janos Audron, Kain’s support and even the Machiavellian plots of his enemies to stop him had given him purpose and sense of being. But like all his previous indentifies the illusion had been ripped from him.
“Without me this world is cold and dark, lifeless and grey.” The elder said, intoning his words and lapsing into his boorish and repetitive sermon. “Come back to me Raziel. I will give you back your purpose.”
Raziel remained totally still for perhaps five heart beats, then he slowly turned to look down the throat of the abyss with his glowing eyes narrowed to silt.
“Have you not paid attention to all that we have already gone through?” He asked incredulously and his tone dipping to ever increasing amounts of venom. “Never, you vile undulating demon.” He swung his arm out wide in a cutting and dismissive gesture. “You hear me? Never!”
His words echoed out across the expanse of the whirlpool, ringing out to the distant misty horizon.
There was a long moment of hostile silence.
“Hold your defiance close to you then.” The elder said in a slow voice, each word drawn out and full of disgusted frustration. “It is all you have left now and soon even that will abandon you.”
This time when Raziel turned and walked away he did not look back. He kept on marching, a faint breeze blowing his ruined wings in front of him. Sensing an end to their conversation, the elder took the opportunity to deliver one last rebuke.
“I will see you broken for your crimes against my authority.” The threat echoed with a far deeper resonance than its usual bellowing voice. “And this time Kain is not here to save you.”
Raziel kept on walking, allowing some of his rage to dissipate itself in the fast pace that he set himself.
-
“The words of my former master echoed hollowly and his threats, which before had rung within me an ominous dread, now filled me only with contempt.”
-
What irritated and angered him the most was the fact that this conversation had solidified in his mind the futility of his own sacrifice.
He had thrown himself to the Reaver for Kain and when he awoke, he had found it to have been for nothing at all. Kain was gone and the false god stood poised to control Nosgoth’s fate for eternity.
He came to a short ridge and there he stopped. From here he could see the spire tops of the Sanctuary of the Clans. Now that he was closer he could perceive the damage that had been done to it that had not been evident from a distance.
Kain’s own crest was clearly visible and unmarked. Raziel stared at it for a moment and then nodded once, a private affirmative.
He did not believe that Kain was dead. No… some deep part of him, an inner instinct told him that somewhere he was still breathing. Somewhere even the Elder could not see him.
That was an amusing thought, to think that the Elder’s apparent omnipotent vision was flawed.
But if Raziel ever found Kain again, there would be no more of his ‘heroic sacrifice’, of that he was quite adamant. One bout of self obliteration was enough to show him that he was just not suited to being the martyr.
He would tread his new path and he would survive.