The Citadel of the humans towering structure with high walls surrounded by thick and wide moats; it was a maze of waterways and canals designed to impede the progress of any attacking vampire force.
Great towers of metal and stone erected in the centre of the fortress, these provided the city with manufactured heat, light and steam with which they powered the machines that the humans seemed so found of.
From the cliffs of the abyss, Raziel watches the city from afar sceptically before he approached it. He had infiltrated it once before and the humans inside had had mixed reactions to his presence.
Some had bowed down before him in reverence, hailing him as their saviour from the vampire menace. Others had reached for their weapons to try and slay him.
-
“The human citadel had stood as the last free holding of mankind, largely because none of us could be bothered enough to swot such meaningless resistance aside. The hunters which ventured outside their walls had offered only competition for fledglings and easy sport.”
-
He approached the stronghold cautiously, taking note of every difference he saw from his previous visitation, not wanting to be surprised by any unfamiliar things.
-
“Now however, I saw that in Kain’s absence and the demise of the clan leaders, the humans had tried to expand their territory and had been largely successful.”
-
There were now dozens of outposts marking the perimeter of what the humans perceived to be their territory, small camps of hunters that were no doubt sent out to probe the land for vampires before settlers could be permitted to move outside the walls of the fortress.
Already banners of the citadel were hanging from various old buildings once used by the Melchiahim, Dumah and even the Zephonim.
What the humans desperately needed it seemed was land. Land gave them room to grow crops and food that they required to survive. While Nosgoth was near a lifeless husk, some plant life could be encouraged to grow in well watered places.
As Raziel came within sight of the massive city walls, practically given protection by a series of cliffs and water filled gullies, he stopped and frowned deeply at the sight he beheld.
-
“But as I has suspected, there were Hylden here as well. Many of them in fact, a near occupying force in and around the city.”
-
A Hylden army was quite a thing to see. Close to the walls of the city were dozens of encampments, stacked high with military supplies and tents. These hylden were not the lightly armed scouts he had seen before but there soldiers, all of them heavily armed and their positions well fortified.
What surprised Raziel even more where the beasts that the Hylden had around them, kept chained and cowed, forced to huddle still.
They were demons, beings native to the dimension to which the Hylden had been banished. They came in a wide variety of sizes and shapes, all of them utterly alien and even the least of them deadly in the extreme.
Most of these demons were the middle sized bone thin creatures that harnessed lightning as a weapon. Their arms which conducted the deadly electricity were fastened down to the ground by metal chains, their pincers forced apart as to keep them from connecting and sparking the energy.
The largest demon was a single titan about thirty feet high, covered in short black fur with huge bone spikes jutting out of the arms and shoulder blades. A pair of massive curving horns rammed his head, which was pinned down to the ground by an ugly uncomfortable looking metal collar.
If demons were here, that meant that the Hylden were keeping their connection to the other world open to bring forth their beasts. Mostly likely that would be the place were Janos Audron was being kept. The only question was, where would this opening be?
-
“While normally such a turn of events would be detrimental to my goals, this was actually quite pleasing. Here I hoped to find a Hylden that would prove more talkative than Ishtar and from them learn where Janos Audron was being held captive.”
-
The walls of the citadel were still patrolled by human warriors but they showed no alarm at the alien army encamped nearby. Raziel was sure however that if they saw him they would raise a general alarm. He did not wish to have to fight his way through this otherworldly multitude to get into the fortress.
The mere fact that the Hylden were encamped here spoke of several things. It meant that the invaders were dominant and the humans subservient, neither of them allies. Only an idiot would permit an armed force to remain outside the walls of your castle, even those of a supposed ally.
Raziel knew that the fortress had underwater pipes connecting it to the rivers that fed the abyss in order to keep the water in the moats flowing and avoid stagnation. However in order to get to those moats he would have to pick his way through the encamped army.
Glancing up he judged the walls and their general outlying build.  They were a series of battlements stretching between wide towers where artillery was emplaced to bombard any approaching hostile force. One side of the nearest tower however looked climbable.
Raziel paused only briefly to judge the week air currents before he took hold of the end of his ruined wings and leapt.
Gliding high over the heads of the otherworldly army Raziel had a better opportunity to guess their numbers. A good ten thousand foot soldiers with a battalion of enforced demon support. Such a force, while smaller than other armies, would be a terror on the battlefield if managed properly. Perhaps this was a spearhead force and the main bulk of the Hylden army was somewhere else, perhaps to the east.
Coming into contact with the wall, the blue wraith sank his talons into the stone and hung there waiting to see if he had been noticed.
Neither the Hylden below nor the humans above reacted and slowly he began to climb, moving higher and higher.
Reaching the precipice of the battlements, he peered over the top just enough so that he could observe.
The hunters patrolling the defences all had that blank look, emotionless and devoid of thought.
When the nearest had turned his back to look towards the south, Raziel vaulted over the edge and ran forward. He closed the gap between them quickly and before the humans could even turn back to notice him, Raziel had clamped a hand over his mouth and stabbed him through the back with his talons.
“I’m sorry.” He apologised, some remote ethic informing him that at the very least it was rude to stab someone in the back, whatever the circumstances. True that had not stopped him from doing it to Moebius’ soul, but the old man had had it coming. He recompensed for it by not devouring the man’s own spirit the moment it left his body.
The hunter fell to the ground with a sound the expressionless look replaced by one of mild surprise on his dead face. Raziel pulled him to one side just behind a stone parapet where he might go for longer without notice.
The interior of the city was a connecting maze of stone and metal pipe, the many nooks and crannies providing prefect cover for him to prowl the fortress unobserved.
-
“The faces of the humans here were again blank and emotionless. What kind of force was strong enough to dominate the minds of an entire city?”
-
Even the commoners went about their business woodenly, giving away without conscious thought to the many Hylden guards that occupied the place. The human militia and hunters backed up the Hylden’s own forces in their acquisition of the city. It was like a city of puppets, no talking, no touching, no social interaction whatsoever.
That disturbed Raziel a great deal and the way the humans stood there hardly even breathing he began to wonder if they would react at all if he just walked out in front of them.
Even Kain would not have simply turned off the minds of those who opposed him, even if he could have.
One or two demons were in the streets of the city as well, those of the green poison spitting variety small enough to the enclosed streets. These were used to knock down a few buildings with their burning spray, their demolition proceeding quickly to humans could move in with work crews to begin construction under the stern eye of Hylden architects. 
Raziel dropped down into a dark and dingy alleyway, filled with a thick steamy mist from a pipe nearby. At the far end, standing and watching the humans go by were a pair of Hylden who was oblivious as he slowly began to approach.
The Hylden on the right hand his left hand raised and he was counting the humans as they went by, his lips moving soundless as he mentally calculated their numbers. Then he frowned and let out a long annoyed sigh
“Too few cousin…” He was saying, drumming his fingers on the front of his chest as Raziel drew near. “I had not thought their numbers would dwindle this much.”
“It is Kain’s doing that the flock of mankind is so depleted.” The other said with a shrug, glancing up and down the outside street. “But do not despair; in time we can breed them back to full strength once more.”
Raziel lashed out quickly, grabbing each one of them across the shoulders with his talons and jerking them back into the alley.
One he smashed up across the wall, the impact so hard that the Hylden’s skull shattered into a bloody froth.
“By the Keeper!!” The other replied, struggling free and going for a strange green tinted sword at his waist. Raziel dropped the corpse and lunged, knocking the weapon away with one swipe and then pinning the struggling Hylden to the wall.
He held him there, the sharp tips of his talons digging into the soft flesh of the throat.
“Where is Janos Audron.?” He asked coldly and some recognition came into the Hylden’s eyes at both the voice and the face before him. “Talk Hylden; or I swear I’ll rip out your throat.”
There was a flash of conflicting emotions on the Hylden’s face, but then anger won out.
“I don’t know!” He spat. “And even if I did, I would never tell you.” Despite his circumstances he actually leered at Raziel. “Where were you when we needed you the most, saviour?” He jabbed his free hand into Raziel’s shoulder accusingly.
“Busy.” Raziel replied tartly, knowing better than to get sidetracked. “So who would know where Janos is?”
The Hylden struggled trying to break free but Raziel was too strong for him. To make him compliant Raziel lifted him up and then slammed him down again against the side of the wall. There was a loud cracking nose as several bones broke and the Hylden gritted his teeth against the pain, as if crying out was beneath his dignity.
“Only the heads of the three houses of war, knowledge and faith are privy to that kind of information.” He began in whisper, his voice made even more hoarse by the pain. He was breathing hard through his nose, blood leaking out the side of his mouth as he fixed Raziel with a hate filled glare.
“My master, Shamash, will see you punished for this!” He asserted. “The power of his mind dominates the city and its cattle and it will turn its wrath on you for this betrayal.”
Without warning he slammed a kick into Raziel’s chest, forcing him to let go. The dropped Hylden immediately scrambled for his sword and when he grasped the hilt of the dropped weapon he swung back to face the blue wraith.
Raziel was fast, moving in far too close for the Hylden soldier to defend himself. The blue wraith grasped the Hylden’s wrist and then clamped down hard, breaking the arm and then wrenching the entire hand off in a spray of blood and bone fragments.
With the sword now in his possession, still with the dismembered hand clutching the hilt, Raziel swung it around wide and decapitated the Hylden with a one swipe.
The head hit the floor with a loud ‘thunk’ and the body swayed on its feet for a moment before collapsing, the stump of the neck spurting blood.
Freed from the flesh, the soul of the Hylden began to lift forth seeking to fade into the spectral realm.
Raziel was there however and his trip here and the fight had made him hungry. Drawing down his cowl to expose the hideous gap left by his missing jaw Raziel drew in the soul and as he devoured it, he felt strength return to him.
-
“My goal now was clear. I would find this, Shamash… who I deduced to be the head of the Hylden house of war and beat what I wanted to know out of him. I hoped that Janos might be able to last just a bit longer in hostile grasp of their kind.”