No sign of any living vampires, not even the once common nomadic Dumahim. The only evidence for their passing was the occasional corpse Raziel came across, either blackened by fire or impaled on weapons. This was all proof of human activity. Clearly, with Kain gone and the clan leaders dead, the humans of the citadel had taken advantage of the weakened vampire domination and had staged several attacks to claim more territory.
The full extent of their excursions became clear when Raziel came over a rocky hill and saw the sanctuary of clans.
Its banners were torn down and its gate swung wide open, patrolled by human vampire hunters. There were a few workers clearing away debris to make it easier to get inside as a portion of the roof had collapsed.
-
“Kain has once ruled all of Nosgoth from this place. It had stood as a symbol of the indomitable armies he commanded and the eternal measure of his command. Now I beheld it once again in decay, collapsing into its own dust. From dust to dust, like any other faded dream of glory.”
-
For a fleeting moment, Raziel felt slightly indignant of this occupation. None but the highest vampires in the imperial order were allowed within those halls. The moment passed however and Raziel let it go as inconsequential as to who held some ruined castle.
Quietly he approached, making sure that he was in the shadows at all times and never once in the line of sight of any of the humans. They were a great number of them and he did not wish to provoke a fight when it could be avoided.
Eventually he managed to reach the side wall of the castle and there he waited, watching for the moment to move. Then, once the hunter who definitely would have noticed had walked off at a call from one of his fellows, Raziel latched onto the side of the stone and began to climb.
This ability, inherited from the drinking of Zephon’s soul, was perhaps one of the most useful of abilities that he had acquired.
Scaling the smooth surface required a great deal of physical force as his talons had to grip into the stone before he could move on. It was slow going at first but the he managed to grab a hold of a ledge and pull himself up and from there Raziel was able to climb more swiftly, leaping higher and higher until he scrambled his way to the top dome like spire.
The thick was thick above here with the rising dust of shattered brick and stone coming up through large gaps in the roof, a result of the construction work going on inside.
Going over to one of these, Raziel peered down through the gloom to observe the main vestibule of the sanctuary from above. There were a great many humans at work as he had expected, lifting and dislodging the crumbled masonry out of the way so that the main entrance might be usable once again.
But at the sight of other figures in amongst them, Raziel frowned and crouched low to observe.
Giving orders to the human workers were Hylden, a good dozen of them or more. They were dressed in the armour and loose robes that marked them as officers of rank and oversaw the human work efforts with quiet attention, never speaking to them but gesturing to where the work needed to be done.
-
“Humans allies with Hylden? …. No. As I beheld the faces of these humans, I saw no conscious thought in their eyes. They were not allied, but enthralled.”
-
The human’s expressions were completely blank, their eyes wide and unblinking. They carried out the instructions the Hylden were giving them but that was all. There wasn’t even any conversation going on between the workers, like puppets on a string they did their work and nothing more.
Raziel watched them work for a long moment in dissatisfaction and then carried on moving along the roof. The fate of mankind was of little to no concern of his, although the use of any living being as a mindless puppet lacked even the hint of honour and left a sour taste in his mouth.
Eventually he found a hole large enough of him to drop down into and he quiet entered the Sanctuary. The roof had fallen in and two the rubble made a steeply slanting ramp down to the floor.
He knew his way around this fortress as much as his own clan territory and it took him only a brief moment to determine his position in the building.
The throne room where the Pillars stood was just beyond the next corridor. It was from this room that Kain had dominated Nosgoth and had controlled ever strip of land from one shore to the next.
The clans down to the last vampire had been sworn to defend this castle above all others and to ensure that none other than the clan leaders and the Emperor himself were permitted into the throne room.
These things paled in insignificance when Raziel finally entered that main chamber.
He froze completely in his tracks, leg half lifted almost comically as he looked his fill at the nearly empty room.
-
“God…”
-
Where the nine shafts, the very foundations of Nosgoth itself, had once stood there was now only shattered remains and dust.
-
“The pillars…gone.
Not just corrupted or collapsed, but erased from existence completely. Any time when their state had been inconsequential to me retreated back into my mind and the true horror of their complete and utter devastation crashed down on me.”
-
He was almost brought down to his knees by the shock and staggered back against the side of a wall for support against his momentary weakness.  He blinked his eyes several times, as if to clear the terrible image from them like some unwelcome mirage.
How could this terrible thing be possible? It was beyond the scope of his mind to accept what was in front of him and almost desperately Raziel wanted to deny it. But the plain fact of the matter was like a smack in the face every time he looked.
This had been the outcome that, ultimately, both he and Kain had striven to prevent and how its whole horror was realised.
Raziel slowly shook his head, unwilling to react.
There was a flash from the eye of his sight and glancing up, he saw a faint silhouette of a female shape in the air.
-
“Briefly and only briefly... Ariel appeared before me eyes. Her skeletal face looked at the site where the pillars had once stood with augmented fear clear in her expression. Terror for the fate that had behalf her charge, the Balance pillar, and horror at returning to this place where she had been bound for eons.”
-
This was no illusion.
He could sense he presence now and actually feel from her emotions in their confused mixture of dismay, fear and anger.
Before he had a chance to react however, Arial vanished and faded away once more as did the sense of her being.
“Magnificent isn’t it?” An unexpected rasping voice asked and Raziel whipped around, instinctively raising his talons as he adopted a fighting stance.
In his shock at seeing the destroyed Pillars he had not noticed that he was not alone. Standing in the centre of the Pillar’s base, staring at their dusty remains with some satisfaction was a Hylden.
He was thin, even by his species standards and looked quite frail yet held himself up with the strong stance of a disciplined body. He had a great deal of elaborate jewellery hanging from his bony frill, hanging down to his shoulders were a very loosely fitting red robe travelled down just past his waist.
“A true testament to the great eternal and genius strategy of Hash’Ak’Gik.”  He turned around and faced Raziel with apparently no surprise at the blue wraith’s presence. His eyes were alight with the same pulsing green glow of his kin and his lips were pressed together in a tight smile.
There was something ominous about him and Raziel felt strangely abstracted when he looked at him and repelled, as if they were different poles of the same magnet. Slowly he lowered his talons.
“He played the game with pawns scattered across time itself to bring about this opening and the salvation of our people.” The Hylden spoke softly with something of a mocking undertone and then bowed, sweeping his arms theatrically.
“Raziel…on behalf of the Hylden race, might I offer my most sincere and heartfelt thanks?”
Raziel stared him down for a long silent moment and then narrowed his own eyes sharply. The voice of this Hylden sounded somewhat familiar although he could not from whence he had heard it before.
“If it’s all the same to you, you can keep them.” He replied flatly instead.
The Hylden chuckled and straightened up.
“I am Ishtar, high priest of the faith of Speakers, the priesthood of the Keeper.” He declared with a long winded introduction. He spoke proudly and with a hint of arrogance that remained Raziel of Moebius.
“Ever since I heard tell of your return, I had hoped that perhaps we might let bygones by bygones.” Ishtar carried on, head tilted to one side. “We could work together to rescue this inert land from destruction.”
Without a mouth to properly frown, Raziel drew his brows down to knit over the top of his nose.
“I have not set eyes on you before and yet you speak as if we have met.” He said deliberately not answering the proposal.
“Oh but we have.” Ishtar insisted, beginning to take steps towards him. Raziel held his ground without flinching but his talons twitched back and forth, tensed and ready for use at a moment’s notice.
“You might not recall but I have spoken with you once before, alongside my two peers.” The Hylden said. “We were using the vampire you called ‘Turel’ as a host at the time.”
A flash of memory and Raziel knew him. That voice was now more the familiar. It had been the voice of one of three Hylden which had been using Turel as a puppet, putting him through the agony of their possession with each use.
That voice had been the one urging him to face Kain and kill him back in the catacombs of Avernus cathedral.
“You tortured my brother…” Raziel began in a low tone. “For how long?”
It was an absurd sentiment to take in retrospect. Turel, along with Dumah, had thrown him into the abyss in the first place and there had once been a time where Raziel had been prepared to hunt down and kill Turel and all his brothers for their abandonment of him.
But Turel had been punished enough by the time Raziel had found him, almost insane and delirious from the Hylden that been infesting him like worms.
“Time is a meaningless concept in this game.” Ishtar said clearly not that concerned but when he saw the expression on Raziel’s face he amended his tone.
“You see… in order to have the power base we needed in Avernus, our devoted servant Azimuth summoned him to her for us to use as a proxy god. It was in our best interests to use him sparingly so we were as… ‘humane’… as possible.”
Raziel was not placated.
“He was insane by the time I found him.” He said slowly but then he took a step forward. Ishtar did not recoil but one eye narrowed in concern.
“There was no malice behind it, you have my word.” He said briskly. Raziel waved one hand to his right dismissing that argument.
“Your word is useless to me.” The wraith began. “Vengeance on the other hand…”
Ishtar’s satisfied demeanour was now gone and he looked grave and drawn, looking down his nose at the blue figure before him. He was still calm and controlled but not he was aware of the danger to his person and displeased.
“Is that what you’ve been reduced to?” He asked, taking a slow step away from Raziel and well out of arms reach. “Elevated Messiah… now petty thug? Truly pitiful.”
Raziel came closer.
“I’m not in the mood to exchange insults.”
“Neither am I.” Ishtar’s face swung back to its triumphant grin but he kept his eyes fixed on Raziel, never diverting his gaze away. “In fact, I feel almost like I’m in euphoria. The grand work we began all those centuries ago has finally come to its end and after contributing so much I can finally rest.”
At this Raziel paused and narrowed one eye sceptically.
“Contributing?” He repeated.
“The curse of agony.” The Hylden said and spread his arms. “The ‘dark gift’ as the vampires somewhat ironically refer to it.”
Raziel straightened immediately and stared at Isthar as the Hylden carried on.
“A difficult creating process, welding science with sorcery… but the effort paid off.  It brought such joy to the suffering masses of my race to know that equal amounts of vampires were in purgatory as well.”