Legacy of Kain: Blood Brothers

<--Previous Chapter|Next Chapter-->

Chapter Three

The Last Hymn

Arrows rained down upon Dumah like hail. Some of them were lit with fire, and those he knocked out of the air with the back of his hand or pulled out of his armor before the fire could spread onto him.

“This is what I live for!” he roared, raising his blood-streaked sword high above his head. “Give me all you’ve got!”

High above him, perched at battlements along the top of the wall, human archers fired down at him and his clan members as they tried to storm the citadel, one of the last major human strongholds on all of Nosgoth. Nestled in between high cliffs and surrounded by a wide moat, the stronghold was well-defended. The citadel was in such a hard-to-reach location that Dumah couldn't bring catapults or other siege weapons to bear. For once, he gave the humans an ounce of credit. They had picked the perfect place for their last stand.

That’s what it was. A last stand. Some day soon, the stronghold would fall and the frail humans would be wiped out.

“Take the gate!” he shouted. “Break it down!” He raised his shield in front of his face an instant before a burning arrow reached him. Instead of hitting him directly in the face, it splintered off the metal shield as harmlessly as a toothpick.

Vampires clad in body armor, brandishing fierce weapons, charged from their stations and rushed the main gate in one seething mob. Burning arrows sailed down at them. Humans with crude flamethrowers positioned themselves in crevices near the gate and lashed out with blazing whips of fire, incinerating any vampires brave or stupid enough to get near. The huge drawbridge was down, having been disabled in a previous attack. Dumah himself had wielded the battleaxe that split the last chain, and now the drawbridge could no longer be raised. But the gate was so thick and imposing that even with the drawbridge permanently down, the vampires could not break their way inside.

His own archers launched arrows to the top of the wall, occasionally picking off humans, sending them off the wall and down to their death. Vampires with ladders and grappling hooks scaled the wall and tried to fight their way down to the gate controls, but none succeeded. They were either hurled from the top of the wall to the moat below, or killed while inside.

Dumah and twenty of his clan members heaved up a huge log with handholds carved into it. The front was capped with metal. They rushed forward and slammed the battering ram into the gate with so much force the entire wall shook. But the gate did not give way. Dust and crumbled rock fell from the corners and hinges, but the gate was too thick and wide. It would be easier to break down the entire wall.

An arrow struck Dumah in the shoulder. With a grunt, he yanked it out and tossed it aside. Why did the humans even bother? They might as well be throwing pillows. Unless they intended to shoot an arrow accurately enough to hit a vampire right in the heart, and powerfully enough to impale him, what was the use of using arrows at all?

As they backed up to strike the gate again, one of the flamethrowers splashed a wave of fire across the vampire holding the front of the ram. Immediately engulfed in flame, he shrieked wildly, flailing his arms, and let go. Immediately off balance, the front of the ram fell to the ground. Even Dumah’s incredible strength was not enough to hold it without someone in front. The burning vampire slumped to the ground, his whole body rippling with flame.

“Fool,” Dumah grumbled.

When more burning arrows assailed them, Dumah ordered his clan to back off and regroup. They retreated to the narrow canyon that led to the citadel, out of range of the archers.

“How many have we lost?” he asked.

Arkos answered. “Five, my Lord.” His silver armor was splattered with blood, both human and his own. Dumah looked at him and grunted. Evidence of his fighting was the only thing that kept Dumah from insulting him in front of the others. He knew Arkos’ opinion toward these attacks on the human stronghold, and like all other opinions in opposition to his own, he categorically ignored them.

So instead of insulting Arkos’ weak, pacifistic beliefs, Dumah chose to insult him in general. “And you not among them?”

Arkos did not smile. “Not yet, my Lord.”

Before Dumah could comment upon that, Rahab appeared. Like Dumah, he wore angular gold armor, albeit not quite as large as Dumah’s. His face was slick with sweat, and there was a conspicuous dent in the armor right above his heart.

“Sorry, brother, but we can’t breach the western pass,” he said. “It’s too narrow to make a rush in force, and the humans have it too well guarded.”

“Blasted humans,” Dumah grunted. His eyes, once bright blue, now burned dark red. His face was hardly even human anymore, looking more bestial every passing year. Rahab noticed it with growing concern, but never said anything about it. He noticed it in the faces of Dumah’s children as well, but he never spoke to any of them anyway.

“So what should we do now?” he asked.

Dumah stood up straight and gazed over the outcropping of rock they were standing behind. “It’s either the western pass or the front gate. If we can’t make it through the pass, we’ll have to rush the gate again.”

“We’ve tried to break it down,” Arkos said. “It’s completely immovable. We may as well try the battering ram against the walls themselves.”

Rahab rarely, if ever, opposed Dumah, so when he did this time, the other vampires took immediate notice. “He’s right, Dumah. Going at the gate is a waste of time. We’ve been hitting them here for weeks and we still can’t breach it. Now, my clan couldn’t get through the western pass, but if both our clans made a charge, perhaps we could break their defense –”

“Cowards,” Dumah snarled, and Rahab froze in mid-sentence. “Make up your mind, brother. You said a moment ago the pass was too narrow for a rush in full force. Are you like Arkos here? Afraid of attacking them head on?”

Rahab struggled to find his voice. “I don’t see the point in attacking the gate again. We’ve been doing it for weeks now and we've met with only failure.”

“The gate can’t hold up forever,” Dumah said, and for all intents and purposes, that ended the discussion. When Dumah made up his mind on a course of action, it was always unwise to contradict him. He cast a sneering glance at Arkos and Rahab. “And since you two don’t like the idea, you can carry the front of the ram.”

“Me?” Rahab asked, stunned. “I can't lead the charge. I have to –”

“You have to do what I say!” Dumah roared, his eyes flaring bright red, almost knocking Rahab over backwards with the force of his voice.

Dumah and the other vampires ran back out to the battering ram, with Arkos and Rahab taking sides holding the front. At Dumah’s command, they charged forward and slammed the gate once more, rattling it like a bear rattling the bars of its cage. Arrows rained down at them, so many striking the top of the ram that it began to look like the back of a porcupine. Dumah bellowed another command and they rushed the gate once more, shaking it to its foundations. But it still stood, not even a dent showing on its solid surface.

On the next rush, a human armed with a flamethrower launched a spray of fire toward them. Arkos saw it coming but could do nothing to get out of the way, since the drawbridge was too narrow to step sideways and Dumah and the others were coming directly behind him. So instead, he let go of the ram and jumped forward. The wave of fire caught his arm and it burst into flame. The others were thrown off balance and the battering ram fell once more, crashing to the ground.

Arkos screamed and waved his arm frantically, his entire arm lit up like a torch. The others all backed away as he ran past them, screaming for help. The fire crept up to his shoulder and burned the side of his face, the flames whipping around as he ran.

There was nowhere to go, nothing he could do to smother the flames. He was not completely engulfed, but would be shortly. He had only one choice if he wanted to save his life.

He ran to the edge of the moat and fell onto the ground, crawling quickly to the very edge of the water. Clenching his teeth against the agonizing pain, he thrust his flaming arm into the running water, smothering the flames. However, the moving water hurt even worse, burning his arm like the most corrosive acid.

Arkos pulled his arm back out and collapsed onto the shore, barely able to remain conscious. His arm was now a withered, blackened chunk of smoking meat. The humans atop the wall, seeing him wounded and helpless, launched a volley of arrows down at him, striking him in the chest and stomach. Several flaming arrows came down as well and one caught him on his leg. He tried to pull it out but was too weak.

Suddenly, someone was above him, pulling out the burning arrow. He felt the individual grab his good arm and drag him away from the water’s edge, arrows thumping into the ground all around him. Arkos looked up and was surprised to see Rahab pulling him to safety. His head lolled to the side and he watched the other vampires, his own kin, running back to safety, none of them making an effort to save him or help Rahab.

Dumah, however, did pause, but it was not to help pull Arkos to safety. Instead, he put his hands on his hips and laughed.

*****

Kain was nowhere to be found. Turel searched the Sanctuary of the Clans thoroughly but found no trace of him, found no trace of anyone. It had been several years since Turel had any reason to visit, and seeing the great building so empty surprised him.

He stopped at the Pillars and took a deep breath, the air smelling stale and cold. The Pillars were like dead, bleached trees. And in the center, Kain’s twisted throne, the Pillar of Balance. Once white like the others, it was now black and warped. Turel only knew some of the story, and that had come mostly from Kain.

The Guardian of Balance, what had her name been? Ariel? She was murdered by a dark power and Kain became the next Guardian. But with her death, the other Guardians became insane, and when Kain was resurrected as a vampire, he was told to hunt them down and kill them to restore the Pillars. Turel wasn’t sure how much of the story was true and how much was fabricated, if any was true at all.

Turel turned to walk away and felt something brush past him. He spun around swiftly, but saw nothing. No one was in the room with him, but he could swear that he felt something nearby, like a breeze. He had felt a presence. The hair on the back of his neck stood up.

Turel backed out of the room quickly, unnerved by the experience. As soon as he made it outside, he readjusted his cloak and shivered reflexively, turning to glance back at the building. As a vampire, he supposed there was nothing in the world capable of scaring him, but he had been scared nonetheless. Something had been in there, but it was not something he could see.

For months now, he had been perusing old records and histories, trying to learn about their origins and about Kain’s origins. It made no sense that Kain, the most influential ruler in the history of Nosgoth, and the founder of an entire empire, would have almost nothing written about his early life.

Kain’s name was not mentioned in history until his quest to kill the corrupted Guardians, and then the word “assassin” was usually used in reference to him. His life as a human was a total mystery. After his quest to kill the Guardians, Kain disappeared from history once more, until he founded the Empire hundreds of years later. Unbelievably, there was no physical record at all of Kain’s crucial role in the major turning point of Nosgoth’s entire history: his refusal of the sacrifice. Historians and scholars of the era apparently attributed the Pillars’ final destruction to the death of Ariel and the madness of the Guardians. As far as the historians were concerned, Kain’s role in the whole affair was minimal at best. He killed the Guardians, but was not responsible for the corruption of the Pillars.

Could it have been possible that they didn’t know the truth? Everyone involved would have been dead, except for Kain himself. And Kain had always been vague about what he did for the centuries immediately following the events at the Pillars. Had he simply disappeared from sight and let the historians come up with their own explanation for the corruption of the Pillars?

The next time Kain was mentioned in the historical record was hundreds of years later, when the Empire was founded. But even then, when you’d expect volumes of written material detailing the events that shaped history, there was almost nothing. Most of what Turel found was scanty at best.

How Kain gained control of Nosgoth in the first place? Nothing. The creation of his six lieutenants? Nothing. The beginning of the Empire? Nothing. Surely, there must be some permanent record of the beginning of Kain’s Empire. But Turel couldn't find one, despite his years of searching. He came to the Sanctuary to ask Kain directly.

But Kain wasn’t there, and Turel was no closer to knowing the truth about his own past. Frustrated, he started to walk –

– and was immediately knocked to the dirt when the ground shook fiercely underneath his feet. A dull roar echoed around him, and he scrambled to his feet, as if afraid that the world was about to collapse down on top of him. Behind him, the Sanctuary stood still, as if it had barely noticed the tremor.

In all his life, Turel had never felt an earthquake, and now he experienced one right in front of the Sanctuary? Warily, he looked around, if for no other reason than to see if anyone had witnessed his moment of fear. But as before, no one was around.

Turel pulled his cape tighter around his shoulders. Coming back to this place was a mistake, he decided. Kain was nowhere to be found, and deep down, Turel doubted he would get any straight answers from him even if he had been there. For all the questions that still lingered, Turel would have to learn the answers himself.

He and his clan were already moving north, away from the Sanctuary of the Clans and away from their cousins, the brethren of Turel’s brothers. With Kain gone, there was nothing to keep them loyal to each other. Whatever fragile connection they shared as brothers had all but completely melted away in the last few decades. The only two who remained friends, if that was even the word, were Dumah and Rahab, but Turel recently heard a rumor that even that might not last much longer.

How far they had fallen. Melchiah a diseased wreck, Zephon a six-limbed freak, and Dumah a hulking behemoth. And Turel himself, feeling the change. He felt fairly certain that the knobs on his forehead were the beginnings of horns, and his legs were twisting into something new and inhuman. The only one of them not to change was Rahab, in some cruel twist of fate.

Turel shook the thoughts from his head and began the long trek back home. At this point, there was no use even worrying about it. Rahab’s time would come, as would his own, and then they would all see what Kain’s legacy boiled down to.

Nothing.

*****

The cacophony was ear-splitting, a massive roar of sound emanating from the huge cathedral like waves of telepathic force. It was so deafening that it was hard to even make out individual notes, but Zephon knew what the cathedral’s monstrous organ was playing. It was undoubtedly some ancient human religious song, something the terrified, superstitious human dwellers still felt could somehow harm a vampire. One of their oldest beliefs regarding vampires was that faith in some specific religion would keep them away. The humans didn’t even know which religion it was anymore, after centuries of failed attempts at keeping the vampires back. So they just played the same simple tunes over and over again on their humongous organ, hoping their pointless faith would save them from the predators right outside their door.

It would not, Zephon knew. In the past few years, his clan had successfully invaded the river valley where the cathedral lay and butchered the human outposts defending it. Now all that remained was the cathedral itself, and that was only a matter of time. The blaring noise was a constant irritation, but nothing more. The only thing holding Zephon’s clan back was what always held them back against the humans: strong defenses, flame throwers, and a wide moat.

But the humans were not prepared for Zephon’s newest weapon.

“Are your men in position?” he croaked to one of his commanders, sitting awkwardly on an outcropping of rock beyond the human archers’ range. His two natural arms rested on his bony knees, and his two other arms rested on the long staff balanced on his legs. He wore a specially-designed golden breastplate and flowing red cloak, covering up his sickly white skin. His eyes, once brown, now glowed red.

His commander stood over seven feet tall, long limbs and hard skin instantly giving away his bloodline. Like all of Zephon’s children, he was well into the change. Any day now, Zephon knew that his clan would begin waking up with extra limbs, as he had almost a century and a half before. In those one-hundred-and-fifty or so years, he had almost become accustomed to the extra arms, and most of his children could now look at him without shuddering in horror. Given enough time, they could get used to anything, he supposed.

“We are ready, my Lord. Just give the word and we'll begin the final attack.”

Zephon nodded and looked out toward the cathedral. Momentarily, the deafening hymn stopped, giving him a few seconds of blissful silence. And then the earth-shaking noise continued.

“Go,” he said simply.

The commander hurried out into the open area surrounding the cathedral, ignoring the few poorly-aimed arrows that zipped by. He raised his sword and shouted loudly, his voice barely able to carry over the sound of the organ.

Zephon stood and walked to where he could get a better view as the events unfolded. Two hands held the staff, and two hands hung loosely, swinging with his steps. And from behind dozens of boulders and erected barricades, his clan stormed the cathedral, as they had done countless times before. There was only one door and it was behind a moat almost forty feet wide.

But Zephon’s soldiers did not head for the door. They headed directly for the moat, a surging line of them. Zephon set the base of his staff on the ground and leaned on it, watching intently. Instead of swords or axes, his clan all held staves as well, but they were longer than Zephon's. Almost ten feet long, they were far too long to be used as weapons.

Humans crouched in crevices around the door watched in total surprise at what appeared to be a suicide rush toward the moat. The archers on the high turrets didn’t even bother to fire their arrows.

When the Zephonim reached the moat, they stuck their staves in the ground just in front of the water and pole-vaulted over it, leaping onto the wall. Spreading their arms and legs out, they hit the wall.

And stuck there.

And then, slowly, they began to climb directly up the sheer stone face of the cathedral. They had no grappling hooks, no climbing equipment, they simply climbed up the wall with their bare hands and feet. The humans with flame-throwers could do nothing, since they were all positioned around the door, which none of the Zephonim even got near. They could only stand and watch in horror as the vampires effortlessly scaled the wall. A few of the Zephonim lost their grip or missed the wall on their initial jump and fell screaming into the moat, but only a few.

It had been tried before, of course, but always with grappling hooks, and never more than a few at a time. The humans had no difficulty in cutting the ropes or otherwise knocking the vampires off before they reached the top. But this time, with the entire clan scaling the wall at once?

“Climb, climb my little spiders,” Zephon whispered, watching as his children went straight up and poured over the wall like a swarm, infesting the giant church in one fell swoop. He imagined that he could hear their screams over the noise of the organ, hear their cries of terror and disbelief as his children swept through the building like a plague, killing everything in their path.

The humans thought they had a perfect defense. And up until just recently, they had. But they could never have anticipated the advantages that evolution granted the Zephonim, the advantages that just now were becoming known.

After a time, the organ stopped. This time, it did not start back up again.

*****

Rahab was alone. His clan, the Rahabim, was the smallest vampire clan in Nosgoth, except for the long-gone Razelim, whose number equaled zero. Unlike his brothers, Rahab never felt the desire to create more vampires like himself, never saw the point in ruling a large clan. He was a follower more than a leader anyway. His older brother Dumah had the largest clan, numbering well over five hundred by now, while Rahab limited his children to a scant fifty. But while Dumah’s clan spread out to such an extent that Dumah could barely keep track of where all his children were, Rahab kept careful track of his clan, and while many of Dumah’s brethren had left the clan and went off for adventure on their own, Rahab’s children stayed with him at his citadel in the south, brazenly loyal and protective of their Lord. For the moment, however, they were gone from the main hall. Rahab needed time to think.

He knew full well what several of his brothers thought of him. A spineless coward who stayed around Dumah for protection. A fawning sycophant who flattered and fed Dumah’s ego in hopes of gaining power. The one without any real loyalties except to himself, the one who could not be trusted.

Maybe that had been true a century ago. In retrospect, Rahab was repulsed by his behavior in the past. But the situation had changed recently, in several ways. Maybe one at a time, Rahab would not have come to the conclusion he had, but it seemed like events were converging, leading toward an inevitable outcome. Turel and Melchiah, it seemed, had noticed the trend years before, but they had come to a completely different conclusion than the one Rahab came to.

They saw the changes as a sign of impending doom. The once-proud race of vampires degenerating into beasts, eventually being wiped out by the sick whims of their own evolutionary patterns. But both of them always had been pessimists, after all. They did not see things clearly enough, Rahab supposed. They saw the changes as some uncontrollable effect of nature, a sick joke played by fate. Rahab looked at the other side of the coin.

Their evolution was not random and unfocused, it was a direct result of their lives, it was their final purpose. Melchiah, always sickly and frail, became more so. Dumah, always brutish and strong, became more so as well. Zephon’s bizarre metamorphosis into a six-limbed creature was less easy to explain away, but Rahab felt certain that it was somehow directed by Zephon’s personality.

Rahab himself had not changed at all. Without any other reasonable explanation, he decided that it was because he had no debilitating inferiority complex like Melchiah, or violence-prone personality like Dumah. He was convinced that vampire evolution was a mirror of their self-image. And if that was true, their evolution could be controlled.

It could be directed. It could be guided. Instead of a weakness, it could be one of vampire kind’s greatest strengths.

But none of the others realized this, unfortunately. Melchiah was no help, sulking in his own castle, letting himself waste away like the bloated corpse he now resembled. Turel was on some fruitless quest for the knowledge of their origins and probably would not help Rahab anyway, even if he could be convinced of the necessity of cooperation. The two of them had never really gotten along. Zephon had distanced himself from the others, for obvious reasons, and Rahab honestly did not want him involved.

That left Dumah. Rahab had tried to ignore reality for some time, but what happened during the last attack on the human stronghold convinced Rahab of the futility of expecting Dumah to join him. Finally, belatedly, Rahab realized that Dumah cared for no one but himself. He was content to engage in pointless war against the humans for his own amusement, and spend the rest of his time drinking and partying at his lavish castle in the north. He had no great plans, no noble goals, only the search for his next source of pleasure. Not helping when Arkos was nearly killed, openly laughing as one of his own kin was nearly burned alive, showed Dumah for what he was. Rahab did not want him involved either, not after such incontrovertible proof of his inner nature.

And so Rahab was forced to do it alone. He would shape his own evolution, will himself to grow into something greater than a simple vampire. Vampires, he was convinced, were destined to rule the world, using the incredible power of their own evolution to conquer whatever obstacles lie before them. If the others did not see the light, so be it.

Rahab would accomplish his destiny alone.

*****

Zephon walked casually through the destruction, carrying a single leather bag. He stepped gingerly over the scattered, blood-soaked bodies of the cathedral’s former inhabitants. Men, women, and children were strewn about everywhere, murdered where they stood. Some remained, since the vampires could not completely exterminate their only source of nourishment, but almost all of the church’s residents were now dead, butchered by Zephon’s brethren.

They were examining every inch of the cathedral now, every spire and every winding hallway in the maze-like upper levels. Once inside, Zephon knew he had made the right choice for his new home. The church was an architectural wonder, housing an entire village worth of homes on the bottom level, and a complex web of rooms and corridors in the highest levels, not to mention the massive organ itself, with pipes hundreds of feet long, reaching several stories up into the air. Not that their song would ever be heard again. The first order of business was to dismantle sections of pipe to silence the organ forever.

Zephon gradually made his way past the village and organ and up to the higher levels of the cathedral. He wanted to thank the humans for building such a perfect home for him and his clan. Over time, it would become his permanent home.

He had to get away from his brothers, away from the entire lot of them. It was not difficult, since they wanted him gone as well. He was a constant reminder of what may happen to them any day. None of the others, with the exception of their dead brother Raziel, had dealt with such a dramatic change. Growing two arms had been both Zephon’s curse and the key to his most devastating weapon. To put it lightly, it was a mixed blessing.

Finally, he reached the tallest tower in the cathedral, led there by one of his brethren. He dismissed the young vampire and closed the door behind him. The room was warmly lit with two oil lamps that cast flickering light upon the rows of books on the shelves. The room was dominated by a large wooden desk covered in sheets of manuscript and tied-up scrolls. Apparently, the room belonged to the leader of the human resistance there. The former human resistance.

Zephon guessed he was the man now lying in the middle of the floor, arms spread wide, his chest viciously ripped open, blood spread out around him in a pool four feet wide. The sight brought a rare smile to Zephon’s dry lips.

He stepped over the carcass and to the desk. With one swipe of his long arm, he knocked everything onto the floor, scattering the pages like leaves. They were probably part of some history of the church’s residents. It was a pity no human was left to read it.

Zephon carefully placed the leather case on the desk and opened it. From inside, dozens of spiders emerged, pouring out of it like black mist, spreading across the desk and down to the floor, skittering all over, investigating every corner of the room. The little black spiders searched everywhere.

They were Zephon’s pets, his other children. They were his brethren in a very different way. He watched them make the room their own, and tossed the bag aside. In time, he would make this room his own as well. But for now, it was enough that his spiders were comfortable.

Yes, this place would do quite nicely.

<--Previous Chapter|Next Chapter-->