URBAN NOSGOTHIC 2 : CALL TO ARMS

Disclaimer: Legacy of Kain created by Eidos Interactive and belongs to them.

This is the last chapter. I hope it's a satisfactory ending.I wrote this in a storm, one late night, and I hope it makes some sort of sense. Thankyou, all of you, for reading this story. Your comments and support mean so much to me. Plus, Syvia? nods You were right. :P

"This is what it is for…this…is what I am for."

Raziel, behind me, sounds in at least as much pain as I am. I try to move, very slightly.

Agony lances through the torn muscles in my arm. Instantly my body locks, frozen in place. Nuh-uh. No more moving for me. If I stand completely, utterly still, the pain is almost bearable. I do have to stand on tiptoe, or the weight of my body drags the blade further through my arm.

Strange…I should be more frightened…

Kain looks as if he would like to wrench me off the blade sideways if it would allow him to get to Raziel. He reaches out, his huge talons trembling just a little, and I feel Raziel's thin arm reach out across me to meet them.

His claws close on my bloodied clothes, just for a second. A last squeeze, not for comfort, simply letting me know that he's there.

Then he touches Kain, and Kain's eyes close in pain for a brief second. 

All these years…all this conflict…and this is what it comes down to at last? After all the pain, a single look of regret.

A what have I been doing, all this time? look.

I wish I could see Raziel. Because I think he's going to turn out to be right. Very soon, I will be dead.

I just wanted him to know that he was right, after all.

Raziel sighs behind me, and the look in Kain's eyes suddenly changes to a mixture of panic and wonder. My back is warm, and as I look down at the gory puncture in my shoulder I see…

…oh, what is that..?

Through my body, through the clean edges of the wound, little motes of light are filtering like tiny stars.

I can see light through my shoulder. Oh, God, I can see light. I must've been skewered as neatly as a kebab.

My arm hangs useless at my side, the nerves still sending occasional twinges of protest as Kain shifts his weight and the Reaver moves in his grasp. I moan, a low, keening, animal sound that would have embarrassed me back in the old days.

But when you're this close to death, who really cares anymore?

The light intensifies. Kain's eyes reflect it, glowing yellow like a cat's. Light punches out through my wound, curls, sparking, up the curving blade, and begins to settle in the hollow eye-sockets of that scowling, fang-toothed hilt.

And for one second, as the light swarms around me and the blade in a glowing nimbus, I am not me anymore.

I am Raziel.

I can feel every ache in his body as it dissolves through me. Never before, not even in my Gary days, have I felt such exhaustion. I can't help it: I sag against the blade, head down, heedless of the pain.

So tired.

Oh, how did he keep going for so long?

What he has done is almost so selfless it is selfish: giving up something as valuable as his life for two reasons. One, because it is simply the way it must be: and two, because continued existence would be unbearable.

This is what I am for…

Tears prick at my eyes: hopeless tears, frustrated tears.

But what am I for?

I could never do anything like this. I have nothing to give. Worthless, worthless…

As quickly as the feeling came, it passes. Raziel is gone. The emptiness that replaces the sense of his presence is so intense it hurts like hunger in my gut. 

I hear Kain, above me, snap: "What in hell…?"

The blade is withdrawn abruptly, and with no finesse. I sag to my bandaged knees, eyes blurred with tears, cradling my useless arm, which is rapidly going numb as the nerves begin to starve of blood.

Oh, Raziel…

The tarmac feels slick beneath me. I wonder how long it takes to bleed to death? Always seems to be quite a quick process when you see it in the movies. Like the cowboys who get shot in the stomach. They always seem to die almost instantly from a wound that should probably take hours to be fatal.

I can't believe Raziel is gone.

Like he said, he's died so many times…but he always came back before…that's a movie thing, too. The good guy may get shot, but he survives, is resurrected, is saved.

No-one saved him. And me, what chance do I have? If this was a movie, I'd be the comedy sidekick. I don't even have the relative security of being the love interest to hang onto.

The pain is starting to recede, which I am taking as a bad sign. My arm is most likely paralysed, the nerves severed neatly at the shoulder.

"False god," Kain spits out.

I open my eyes and tremblingly wipe my tears on my good arm.

The octopus had coalesced out of the dark, dark water like smoke. Again, an optical trick. It had always been there. The plaque by the tank had told me that an octopus can change the colour of its skin to disguise itself. But I saw it, well enough, when my eyes had adjusted to the darkness…

And it is in this way that this looming, tentacled horror wreathed itself in godhood and disguised its true intention. I know by the way that Kain is staring that he sees it now, now that his eyes have adjusted, and that it is anathema to him. He hates like no man or vampire on this earth or any other has hated before.

I look around myself.

We are still beneath the London Eye…I think. Of all the things I have seen during the last few hours, this is the weirdest of all. Because now I think I can see, really see….

I used to think of London as here, and of Nosgoth as there. But now, watching Kain as he starts to hack his way towards the Eye of the God, I think I finally get it.

It's not a matter of here and there. It's not even a matter of me and them. It's never been separate. It's been all about this, all along, this fight, this realisation.

There are none so blind as those who will not see…

Years ago, I stared into that aquarium and I saw my future.

Dark, grasping…and unchangeable.

And as Raziel looked up in disbelief so long ago after several lifetimes of pain, so I look up at the Eye now.

"Raziel…you are worthy…"

Worthy.

Kain hacks vast chunks of rubbery tentacle, which are thrown flying around him as he moves. The London skyline is still here, but it seems pale in comparison with the massive, writhing bulk of the Elder God. Its howls of disbelief and vows of retribution are ringing in my ears, coursing through my brain. It is being beaten. Kain is unstoppable, a whirling knot of muscle and fury, the Reaver glowing as it swings in his hands.

I want to see. I want to see it die. Whether this is part of Raziel or me, I want to see my old nightmare go down and go down hard. This has to be the end, this has to put a stop to the cycle of pain. Who knows? It could even be a new beginning…

So I am almost rather cross when a large lump of severed tentacle connects with my forehead and knocks me out cold.

Ouch.

And when I wake, of course, it is all gone.

Ouch.

It was ALL a DREAM…

The refuge of all the best soap opera writers. However, most dreams don't leave you with an arm you could happily use to keep spare pins in…or maybe yours do? I don't know.

I sit up, supporting my dead arm (ouch), and take a look around me.

The sun is coming up over the Thames, and the yellowish glow in the sky is too bright for my tear-reddened eyes. I wince, and turn away, and it is then that I realise that it is not ALL gone, not ALL a dream…

Kain is standing in the shadows on South Bank, his arms folded as he watches the breaking dawn. The Reaver is sheathed across his back, the glowing eyes turned away from me. I am glad. I don't think I can look at it anymore, knowing what I know.

He turns his head to look at me, and he seems wearily calm.

"You should not have seen that," he says, eventually, and although he is speaking softly his voice resonates through me…as if I were a bell and if you tapped me, I would chime.

I don't chime. Instead, I weep. I have no idea if I'm weeping for Raziel, for my arm, for my own futile stupidity. And at last, when dehydration permits no further tears to be shed, I subside, and realise that he is knelt beside me.

Still watching. He does not touch me. The sunlight creeps up over the bridge, and Kain's eyes flick to the shrinking pool of shadow that we are crouched in.

"I…am the last," he says, still quiet. "All that remains. What else is there to be said? Only this: I am Kain, I am Balance. And I have made things right."

My throat makes a gurgling sound as I try to speak, and Kain leans in, listening with curious intent.

"But at what cost?" I manage at last, in a barely audible whisper. "At what cost?"

Kain meets my eyes, and for the first time since I met him I am not afraid of him. Perhaps it's the blood loss. Perhaps it's because I have seen the true enemy, and it isn't him after all.

"There was no cost that was not calculated centuries ago," he says. "Take heed, human child. Every drop of blood, every sacrifice – all is accounted for."

He unhooks the blade, then, and holds it out hilt-forward so that I have to look into those glowing, skull-set eyes. "Have hope," he concludes. "That is the best I can offer you. It was the best Raziel could offer me."

And it is looking into the skull-shape of the Reaver that I watch him fade, my blood thumping painfully in my head, until there is only me, and South Bank, and belatedly, I realise, a homeless guy asking me if I'm okay.

And that's it.

Well, no, not quite it.

Hospital. Of course. My arm is not lost to me after all. It is badly damaged, but after months of therapy (the nurses promise me, smiling their tight, casual kindness smiles) I may yet be able to use my fingers again. They give me a nice clean sling, a note to take to my own doctor, and let me out into the bright, stinging afternoon sunshine.

And I look about myself like a child going into school for the first time and I think…

…What now?

My looks, for the moment at least, are ruined and I don't think I could go back to prostitution anyway…my flat must be covered in blood from both myself and Kain, there's a dead man in my stairwell, and I don't even have enough money to get a bus or the Tube home.

So what should be my next move?

My first thought, first impulse, is to run again. Run back to Wales. Run back to the refuge near my old home, run anywhere. I glance across the road. A cash machine, a bank. Well, it's a start. Take the last of your money and run…

But where does that get you, really? my treacherous brain whispers. Look at Raziel. How long did he run for? It's your life. You can't escape it.

So I determine, instead, to go to the police.

I have no idea what they'll do with me. I'll tell them about my prostitution racket, about the guy who took half my money each time, about my debts and the drugs they sell next door, and the man in the stairwell (although I think I WILL have to gloss over some of the vampire bits…). I may go to prison.

It's not a sacrifice on the same scale as Raziel's, to be sure, but I think I get it, now. I have purpose. It may not be good, and it may not save me, but at least I have purpose again…

I can be worthy, too.
I cross to the bank to use the ATM anyway on my way to the police, and stab at the keypad with my one good hand. The machine bleeps, flashes up the message "Balance Overdrawn" – and without perhaps realising why at first I start to cry again.

Oh, God. I'll miss you, Raziel.

Because it won't be the same. I can replay the games, but in my heart I will be able to feel the memory of his soul filtering through my body, and I will know he is gone.

People are starting to stare, so I grab my card as the ATM rejects it, and hurry back to the kerb so I can cross the road again.

There will always be balance, and there will always be chaos. But in the end, if you go overdrawn, something, somewhere, has to give…

Oooh, look. A penny.

I step forward, stoop down and reach for the coin, which is lodged upright in a crack of the road. It gleams brightly.

See a penny, pick it up, all day long you'll have good….

The truck doesn't even bother blaring its horn, and so I don't think I'm really even aware of the impact. The coin is spun from my hand as I fall, and I can hear the scream of brakes loud in my ears. Am I falling? Feels like…I'm falling…must've been knocked into the air.

As if far-off, I can see the penny still gleaming as it tumbles through the air. Over and over, head, tails, heads, tails. The truck has come to a halt, although somehow it looks to me as if the wheels are still spinning, trying to move the vehicle's bulk forward, mow me flat. Something is very wrong with my…

…eyesight.

I look up.

Green, blue, grey. Twisted, and warped, the truck is still there, and there is something lying huddled and motionless at my feet that I feel I ought to recognise, what with the sling and the bruises and all…

I look up, and further up, into a vaulted stone cavern roof, where something hangs and watches with eternal patience.

"Rhianna," says the voice, with a kind of wistful glee, "you are not worthy…"