To Sleep

 

Disclaimer: Legacy of Kain belongs people who are not me. I am making £0.00 out of this fic, it is written purely because I have a burning need to create. Although I would like to own Kain . . . then he’d be mine.

 

Rating: PG-13

 

Set: During Defiance.

 

Authoress note: I really, really, really needed a break from revision.

 

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[Kain]

 

I have been chasing Raziel now for what feels like an eternity.

 

Although if asked I would not be able to say the exact length of time I had been following him, slipping through the time stream at almost every available opportunity had somewhat confused my sense of how much time had passed. But be that as it may I still can’t remember the last time, I sat down and rested, when was the last time I had slept? I couldn’t remember, granted I did not need much sleep but despite this I was feeling the pinch of exhaustion now more keenly than I had in a long time.

 

And so I was resting, resting in this half collapsed building housing the ‘oracle’ of my ancestors, an oracle that I distrusted on principle more than anything else, I have a dislike of oracles. The portal in-front of me swirled in an ominous fashion and I half wondered if it had been made purposely to look foreboding or if I was so exhausted that I was simply making this rubbish up. Raziel would probably tell me so, accuse me of being to cynical, or at least he used to tell me such things, he would snap at me in his youth that it wouldn’t hurt to be optimistic once in a while; now though, whenever I had the fortune to speak with him his only words for me were harsh, accusing and half mindless.

 

I have known his fate for some time now, I knew it long before that last evolution took him, I knew it before I raised him, although I must admit I did not know the details then. It is a frustrating and fragmented knowledge; Raziel is shrouded from all of us, myself and Moebius, so trying to see his path is next to impossible. I have tried for centuries to unravel his fate and I have finally decided that it was simply too hard, too time consuming. So I have tried a different angle, if Raziel’s fate was so entwined with mine then learning my own fate would surely enlighten me to his; and so I came here, to the citadel of my ancestors, at the urging of Moebius I came.

 

Odd, that I have come to this place at the urging of my enemy, but I have been grasping at straws lately. My own planning and knowledge has run dry and now I must act without forethought, without anything other than a vague understanding that what I am doing is right. I had thought that when I pulled the reaver from Raziel that something more would happen, something to change everything, but all that occurred was me being granted the knowledge that I had once again been the pawn. I had been lead through the motions that would bring my own downfall.

 

The Hylden had wanted something; I’m now sure that something was Janos. Janos Audron the greatest of us all, or so the legend had said; I myself was not overly impressed with the creature I had encountered in my youth, it seemed somewhat withdrawn and to gentle to be the creature of legend; but I must remind myself that his life had been hard, maybe he was starting to give up when I arrived all those years ago, I smirked to myself, it had happened to me years ago, yet at this moment in time those events had not yet occurred; sometimes I can understand how Raziel is always so confused.

 

The hylden had used Janos to feed the mass, but I had killed the mass and it hadn’t been overly difficult, finding the wretched thing had been harder than killing it, mindless creature that it was, finding the damned blood to poison it had been even harder. The defences around the mass had been pathetic, admittedly there had not been a great deal of hylden in Nosgoth to protect it but there could have been other measures taken that were not.

 

So I had concluded that maybe the mass was not the sole reason from the hylden wanting Janos, true they had needed his blood, but I doubt their plans rested on wiping out one city with a creature so frail that a fledgling vampire can wander in and destroy it without much of a trial. However Janos had fallen into the hylden dimension. I had seen what happens to those who fall in there, they are torn asunder and remade into something monstrous.

 

I sighed loudly and rested my head back against the stone, paint chipping off around me from the mural above me. All this was based on my assumptions, for all I knew Janos had died the moment he fell into the gate. But I couldn’t understand why the hylden would go to this much trouble to get him, then use him to keep a creature alive that was so poorly protected, there had to be more to it. But what I couldn’t fathom.

 

I shook myself slightly turning away from such thoughts; if I succeeded in stopping Raziel from finding the heart then I wouldn’t have to worry about any of this. I smirked, it was ironic really, I had been leading him around Nosgoth for so long that it felt strange to me to be the one chasing him now. I closed my eyes, listening instead to the slow movement of water in the pool in front of me, the portal that would bring me to the time in which Raziel was to be found, at least that was what this ‘oracle’ had promised. I found myself wondering about this ‘oracle’, it had taken work on my part to get into this chamber and I was wondering again was the lock to keep people out, to protect the ‘oracle’ or was it instead to keep it imprisoned in here.

 

It mattered little to me now, with my options so few.

 

The balance embalm was complete now, the reaver capable of some small fragment of its original power. The blade rested in my lap, it was cold metal now, a simple shell, empty of itself. I hated to admit it but I missed the vibration of life that used to rest in this blade, I missed its constant warmth, the strange sound it made when I used it. I did not by any means want Raziel back inside this blade, I had been fighting for what felt like forever to prevent that from happening, but I did miss it. I looked again to the cold steel resting across my legs, I had lifted this from the serefan stronghold when I had pulled it from Raziel, I had tried to warn him then also of the danger Janos posed but he had faded to quickly to have heard me.

 

I would go soon; I would travel to the time of my first journey into Nosgoth’s destruction and hopeful remaking. I would find him and I would speak with him, no doubt I would suffer harsh words from him yet again, but in all honesty I couldn’t really blame him. Once we had spoken I would figure out my next move, preferably with his co-operation but I doubted it. But despite that I would go, soon.

 

But first I will sleep.

 

End Fic

 

Authoress note: short, sweet and utterly pointless, hopefully with summer break coming up I will find time to write something more than just a one off.

 

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