Blood Omen Text Preview

[razielim]

I'll be posting this in larger chunks on Ao3 as I finish, but I wanted to see if people had any feedback or advice on style/Kain's narration voice while I'm still wrapping up writing the second half of Chapter 1 (which will cover all of Kain's journey up through talking to Ariel).

Note 1: I left the Ariel murder out of the prologue because I think it's confusing in two ways: a) too much stuff going on in the prologue when the reader doesn't yet know who anyone is, and b) it conflates the events, making them appear to happen around the same time (which frankly, I'm still not sure the best way to specify that without being really hamfisted about it.) TECHNICALLY, I'm not even sure why the Vorador massacre was IN the prologue, since the Ariel murder is more directly relevant to Kain, but I kept it in because it is pretty fun and at least explains Malek's, er... condition. ANYWAY, it's a whole soup of making narrative decisions, but I like the idea of Ariel telling the reader about her own murder to make things flow more smoothly.

Note 2: I left out a chunk of the story from this post about all of Kain's floundering about learning to vampire. Marked by [...]

Note 3: Neither proofread nor betad yet. Womp womp.

I'm pretty happy with what I've been doing so far, and I really hope that it's not too obvious which parts are quotes from the game and which are my own writing, or that the difference is at least not jarring. I've been trying to make the narration more palatable to the modern reader while still in the spirit of LoK's elevated grandiloquence. I was interested to hear if people think that some of the game's more obvious quotes should be toned down, or if I should perhaps ramp my prose up to suit the quotes better. Or any other thoughts from anyone that's interested in the project!

Without further delay...

Prologue

 

 There is a Magical operation of maximum importance; the Initiation of a New Aeon.

When it becomes necessary to utter a Word, the whole Planet must be bathed in blood...

 

 

Screams rang through the halls, all crying one name — "Malek!"

 

The vampire's onslaught was devastating.

The wizards who had been gathered there were both young and old, powerful and learned, but their strength and skill with magic could not withstand the brutality of a centuries-old vampire bent on vengeance. Vorador's first victim had been impaled from behind, taken by surprise, and he lay gasping his last breaths as his terrified eyes followed the green beast in their midst. Vorador easily dodged the elemental spells flung at him in retaliation, and quickly killed a witch with an energy blast. Pivoting to his next adversary, he cast a Flay spell with a casual competence, cowing the remaining wizards out of their senses at the unspeakable gore the powerful spells caused. "Malek!" they continued to scream in their mindless cowardice and Vorador started to laugh. How sweet their terror was!

 

"Call your dogs!" he cried. "They can feast on your corpses!"

 

Vorador's Blood Gout spell hit another guardian as the old man tried to shrink away and Vorador replenished his power on the lifeblood so forcefully torn from his still-beating heart. With another two swings of his sword, the deed was done.

 

All the present members of the Circle dead, Vorador moved to gaze upon the elevated scrying pool at the center of the room. The magic was slowly fading from its surface and the grisly picture it held had started to dim. This was what the wizards had been gazing upon when he had entered to have his revenge. Fields of spikes, a horizon of vampires impaled and left to rot in the sun. Pyres draped the sky with their smoke. What had that old fool said as he had gazed at this monstrosity?

 

"The plague infecting our land is finished!"

 

Plague. Vorador had a very different definition of that word. As far as he was concerned, the heart of Nosgoth's sickness was here, in the Sarafan Stronghold, and he had just cut it out.

 

Vorador turned to face the door as heavy footsteps approached.

 

A desperate-looking man in armor barreled into the chamber, narrowly avoiding slipping on the spreading pools of blood. This was, of course, Malek, the appointed protector of the circle, finally arrived but far too late. Eyes burning with insensate rage, Malek stepped forward to search the room, axe raised in case the monster who had done this deed still lurked in the heavy shadows. The tall figure of Vorador shimmered into place behind him, and with a half-hearted backhand, knocked the protector down.

Mortanius's Dungeon

Malek stirred, pained all over.

 

Struggling to move, he found himself undressed and bound to a wall in a dark chamber, his suit of armor propped upright on a stand before him.

 

"You are awake," came the necromancer Mortanius's voice from the shadows. "We can begin."

 

"Begin what?" Malek asked, struggling against his restraints as he took in the lit candles and the runes around the room. Strange markings ran across his skin. Horrible memories of the slaughtered Circle member crashed over him as he recalled the desperate fight that had heaved him into unconsciousness. 

 

Mortanius approached him and as he came into the light, flames sparked in his black eyes, reflecting the light of the sconces on either side of Malek but growing stronger, the flickering fire jumping to searing brightness until Malek could look upon Morticians no longer and turned away.

 

"For failing the Circle, Malek of the Sarafan, you are hereby damned," spoke the necromancer in astonishingly powerful tones. "The pleasures of the flesh are no longer yours."

 

Blinding light exploded in Malek's eyes, and then a searing pain all over. He tried to close his eyes and no longer could. Screaming, confused, he lurched to one side and fell to the floor. Armor clattered loudly. Finally getting his feet under him, he looked wildly about the room. A skeleton hung bound to the wall, and Malek realized with a kind of spiritual nausea that mere moments ago, those bones had been his own. How hollow and cold it was in the armor that he now possessed...

 

"You have but one purpose, damned warrior," Mortanius said, the light fading from his eyes as he walked to the door and gestured for Malek to follow. "You will serve us for eternity." 

 

Fueled by Revenge

Ziegsturhl

 

“The tavern's closing – best be on your way, stranger,” ground out the barkeep, his eyes anxiously peering out of the front windows as if expecting trouble to roll into the quiet bar at any moment.

 

I’d already taken out my coin purse since walking in and had two fingers on a silver piece when I was so rebuffed.

 

“What, no mug of ale for a weary traveler from distant Coorhagen? I can reward you well, for I am of noble blood,” I asked, seeking the man’s eyes but the old pockmarked face turned away stubbornly as though my very presence insulted him.

 

“I stay open for no man in these dark times,” he muttered from the corner of his mouth by way of explanation. “Things come with the night that no sane man would welcome.”

 

And so I left – cold of heart and soul. Forced to the road, and the long, bitter night.

 

I was still lingering by the building, debating my options and listening to the sounds of the door being barred behind me, when one of the men sitting on the fence of a nearby cottage hopped off and walked straight for me.

 

“That’s him!” whispered his companion excitedly, following him closely.

 

My hand went to my sword, though I was not sure if I was being only paranoid, misunderstanding their interest. No sooner had I done this than the men approaching me drew their swords. I heard the ring of another blade being drawn to my left, and turning, saw three more brigands striding purposefully towards me.

 

There was no misinterpreting that.

 

I drew my own sword, backing into the door that had been cruelly shut behind me likely for this very purpose. Five against one, unlikely odds, and yet perhaps possible if I could only keep my back shielded from attack and prevent more than two being able to swing at me at one time.

 

They were all dressed identically, as though for this very purpose, and I wondered if they were an organized mercenary group or this town’s watch, too big for their britches and preying on outsiders.

 

I parried the first strike effortlessly, but could not follow the man for a counterattack without letting in another too close and had to immediately turn and meet another strike. I was doing well blocking their sword for the time being, but I knew my strength was finite. Finally, I was able to clevely disarm one, kick his leg out from under him and before the others could press me, slip along the wall to outside their circle. So flushed with success, I almost failed to block the strike that came from the direction I was fleeing in. Bringing my sword up to instinctively defend against the two new men that had joined the fight, I left my back exposed.

 

Hot agony blossomed across my side, and someone among my attackers yelled, “End it - now!”

 

As I turned, dazed, to retaliate against the vicious cut to my ribs, a sword point erupted from my chest. I stared at it, confused, my lungs on fire, and found that I had sunk to my knees. The dirt path pitched towards me, the world warping nauseatingly in my vision, and then, with one last painful breath, I perished.

 

In the Abyss

 

Vae victis – suffering to the conquered. Ironic that now I was the one suffering. Not anything as pedestrian as physical pain. Rather the cruel jab of impotent anger – the hunger for revenge.

 

I found myself bound in a fiery pit. The sword which had killed me protruded from my chest in eternal reminder that I would never be free from the unjust humiliation of my execution. Hands manacled to two posts, I could not extract this enraging memento from my chest, and I felt myself swell with indignity in every moment that passed in this eternal place. Perhaps all of this was a mere projection of my own soul’s rage and the Abyss only provided me with a stage to play out my suffering. Perhaps I really had been judged and, found lacking, cast down to be tormented by some higher power.

 

Even still, I didn't care if I was in Heaven or Hell or some purgatory of my own reflection – all I wanted was to kill my assassins. Sometimes you get what you wish for.

 

After some time, I felt a presence approach me from behind. Turning my head as best as I could to see this new torment, I found a skeleton grinning back at me through the flames. He approached and I realized that I was looking at a flesh-and-blood man, his face emaciated to a skull-like appearance, and his form seemingly unaffected by the flames through which he walked. He reached out and grasped the hilt of the sword buried in me, and I cried out in agony, cursing him as the blade shifted and cut me anew.

 

Then, with a strange pulling sensation, the sword was drawn from me as from a hilt and the pain retreated. My bonds shattered and I stood free in the flames, unscathed by the heat.

 

Turning, I found the man holding the sword by the blade, its hilt offered to me. There was a questioning look about his stretched features and a knowing smile on his lips.

 

A choice.

 

I seized it and the sword, jumping at his offer without considering the cost.

 

Nothing is free, not even revenge.

 

My Mausoleum

 

I awoke to the pain of a new existence, in a dank womb of darkness and decay.

 

Struggling immediately, I threw off the lid of what turned out to be a coffin and sat up, bewildered and somehow enraged at this indignity.

 

The man who had plucked me from the abyss stood leaning against a wall, his face looking more alive down here in the shadows and among the dead. He was laughing as he watched me regain my feet.

 

“Who are you?” I demanded, finding that I was clutching in my fist the damned sword which had followed me to hell and back.

 

The man’s grin grew wider, increasing his resemblance to a skull. “I am Mortanius, and your fate is of great interest to me, young man. Your revenge was within my ability and so I have handed it to you. Rather than raging in the Abyss, you will have the blood you hunger for. Now, go, feed. I will watch.”

 

Mortanius shimmered out of sight, and I was left baffled, sitting on the edge of my coffin with a hateful sword in my hand, indeed with a peculiar hunger piqued by the mention of blood.

 

Vampire, I realized. That was my new nature.

 

I stood, stepped from the coffin, and made my way for the hall, restless to be on my way, use the sword the way had been fantasizing all my time in the Abyss, and finally find true peace in the afterlife.
 

[...]

[...]

It was quite unexpectedly that, turning a bend in the road, I found a group of men in startlingly familiar uniforms. I was so thrown that for a moment even my thirst for revenge disappeared and I stood there, gazing upon these fools who were so merrily strolling towards me, laughing as one of them counted gold into a purse.

 

One of these brigands stopped short, and he stared at me with his eyes bulging, having recognized me despite my transformed unholy appearance.

 

“What trickery is this?” he quietly asked no one in particular, my newly heightened hearing just barely catching his voice on the wind.

 

The now-familiar rage exploded within me, and I drew my sword, snarling and advancing. At the ring of steel, the others in the group finally noticed me, and after a wave of alarm traveled over them, they pulled their weapons in answer.

 

“I thought we killed you, bastard!” yelled one.

 

“Have at ye, cur! If we put you down once, we can do it again!” said another, the one who had let the attack on that fateful night.

 

Their sneering faces were forever etched upon my memory. I had crossed death for this moment. My mind was empty save for one thought — I would kill.

 

They fell like dolls before me. The sword did my bidding with weightless surrender, cutting through its former masters like butter. There were perhaps even more men in this group than on the day I died, but I cut them all down. Guilty by association. No longer did I worry about guarding my back, I moved easily, dodging, parrying, turning to face an opponent in the nick of time, to his surprise and horror. Each one that fell fueled me with his blood, and by the time I had cut the last man down, I no longer felt my feet touching the ground, such was my exultation.

 

There is no greater release than that from vengeance sated. With my assassins dead, my quest was over.

 

I collapsed to my knees, panting and grinning.

 

A cool wind stirred in the foliage of the forest and a familiar voice echoed harshly in my ears.

 

“'Tis not over, Kain,” spoke Mortanius, and though I immediately leaped to my feet and looked in all directions, I saw no sign of the scheming necromancer anywhere. “These fools were merely the instruments of your murder, not the cause. Look to their masters. Look to the Pillars and gain way to the Fortress of the Mind…”

 

Without thinking, I found myself turning in the direction of the pillars, pale lines that stretched from the horizon straight up into the infinite sky. On a clear day, there was not a single town in all of Nosgoth that could not see at least a faint trace of their location.

 

“Speak plainly,” I said, contemplating the graceful monument. “If you know who was behind my murder, tell me.”

 

But my mysterious benefactor said nothing further, and though I was certain that he was still somehow watching me, I realized that he would speak to me no more than he himself desired to. Irritated but curious, I gazed one last time upon the satisfying gore I had wreaked upon the road, and with an unsatisfying lack of preamble, began traveling east as Mortanius had suggested.

 

The necromancer had offered me no warning as to what my resurrection would entail, and I must confess, in my haste for the revenge I had so long dreamed of, I had not sought one. Was his gift a curse? Regardless of whatever scheme Mortanius was playing at, I would seek the Pillars for an answer.