I just gave my Soul Reaver 1 & 2 disks to a friend of mine, since she has never played them before. Unfortunately she lives in Mississippi, on the other side of the US. I'm a little sad I maynever see my beloved games again, but I've gotta spred the love, right?

In this omg BRAND NEW fanfic, that is currently untitled, two rebel vampires travel through an underground tunnel lead by a mysterious woman to meet with theirallies on the other side of Necropolis. This takes place not long after Raziel's execution, however is not connected with the events of my other SR fic with Remus. Maybe I'll try to connect them in the future. I don't know.

I would LOVE you if you would PLEASE SUGGEST A TITLE!

“Rotten, stinking hole. Stinking corpses. I think I’ll vomit.”

“Shut up. She can hear you.”

“Belle,” the Melchahim corrected. Strings of blonde-white hair sprung from her hideous bald head, her torch speckling decayed craters of flesh and slicking exposed molars and canine teeth. Her glazed yellow eyes rolled perilously toward the Razielim. “Complain if it suits you, I haven’t smelt anything in years. This isn’t even my real nose.” She touched the point lopsidedly stitched to her face. “Oh, I miss my nose. Such a pretty thing. I suppose it’s here still, in the dirt. Listen to me—rambling! You haven’t introduced yourselves yet.”

The two Razielim looked away uneasily. Fate threw them together, these two. If Kain had kept his pride to himself they would have gone out of their way to avoid one another.

Belle stopped and graced them with her pasty… ‘smile.’ “Come now, don’t be shy. What are your names?”

Hesitantly they answered.

“Faustus,” said the blue eyed Razielim, lying. Partially concealed under the stolen waist cloak of a Dumahim he carried a dragon helm sword, its markings filed down, his last souvenir from his beloved Keep. The axe, once embroidered with the seal of Dumah’s prestigious clan, had been stolen as well and strapped to his back. With this disguise Faustus wandered for three days collecting survivors of Kain’s genocide, forming a band of rebels to exact revenge on their leader and reclaim their birthright. After a month of raids and fighting to build their resources the group disbanded when an unstoppable Turelim force attacked their base. But they had not been stopped completely. In case their base was ever discovered, the Razielim had arranged to meet secretly at a long forgotten citadel north of Nupraptor’s Retreat.

Satisfied with that omission, Belle nodded to the heavy set Razielim beside Faustus. “And you?”

The stout vampire glanced at Faustus in search of help. He bore a nameless shoulder cloak and carried twin broad swords on his back. With one in each hand, Faustus had seen him decimate half a dozen enemies in seconds; he’d been the best choice to protect him on his journey.

They didn’t like each other. For what the brute possessed in strength he lacked in the ability to do simple tasks, like remember his own name.

“Caed,” he said, taking the false identity off the top of his head. It was not the name they’d agreed upon.

Faustus tried to put it out of mind. “You’ll have to forgive our mistrust. You’ve been leading us for some time and still refuse to tell us where we are going.”

“I saved your lives, that’s not enough?”

“Not when you may be leading us to our deaths. Explain, now.” Faustus squeezed the hilt of his sword. Caed stiffened on cue. Flames danced on their guide’s lifeless, wide eyes.

“I’m a simple Melchahim, less than a century turned, much of my body is still my own. I’m not interested in Kain’s frivolous campaigns.”

“So you know.” Through the opening in her cheek, Faustus heard Belle’s rubbery tendons creak, her jaw tightening.

“We are all brothers and sisters of the same blood,” she began. “Although… some of us have less than others. If I were going to kill you I wouldn’t have risked throwing myself into a battle when I could have been killed. I’m weaponless.” A puff of air exited her teeth. “These tunnels go all over Necropolis. Where ever you’re going I can lead you there, undetected. All I ask is that you accompany me for a while. I used to be so pretty. It’s lonely. And I don’t care for those wretched corpses above ground.”

“Other Melchahim know these tunnels?” Faustus knew the answer. Belle’s face, nearly unreadable in its grotesque, betrayed she did too. “Then they may have already deduced where we are. There could be an ambush waiting at any of the exits.”

“All but one.”

“Will it take us north? Past the ruins of Nupraptor’s Retreat?”

“Yes, if we hurry. It will take them longer to reach that exit but they may.” Belle started down the tunnel. They’d just started out when Belle stumbled, turned and glared at Faustus and Caed. She cast the torch over their eyes. “You’ll both promise to trust me now? You’ll do as I say?”

Nosgoth had been cruel to Faustus. He’d watched brothers and sisters fall, stuck like pigs with swords thrust between their ribs, cleaved heads rolled in blood, fledglings—the children of the clan hurled sobbing into day’s hell, ash and cooked tears, smoke. Turel, Dumah, Rahab. Total betrayal. “Yes,” he hissed, because they had no choice.

Caed frowned scornfully at his leader’s pledge, but when interrogated by the torch he too grudgingly nodded. “Yes.”

Brittle bones snapped beneath their feet. Noxious gas penetrated the wooden lids of the coffins piled on the walls. Faustus nudged an insect shell after almost stepping on it and went on his way, cobwebs mingled at the highest shelves, many of the lower coffins had been evicted. The dust smelt more fresh than stale and willingly shook loose in their passing. “Their fledglings probably use this place to enter the state of change,” said Caed, eyeing a partially open coffin with suspicion.

Faustus hummed in agreement. “Keep an eye out for mounds.”

“You’re wasting your time,” Belle chuckled dustily. “These tunnels are perfectly safe. There are no Melchahim this far down.”

“I trust your judgment.” He waited until Belle looked away and shook his head at Caed. Caed nodded and glanced sharply at another coffin, then turned his eyes to Belle again.

“How much farther?” asked Caed.

“It’s just around this bend. There. One of you get behind that sarcophagus. There’s a handle on the other side, pull it back and head down the tunnel.” The sarcophagus she spoke of was one of four centered in a large tomb with smaller boxes stacked against the walls. Pillars supported a network of rotting beams against a crumbling ceiling of rocks and fine soil. Not even tree roots could reach this deep. Faustus gave the okay and mentally groaned as Caed cracked his shoulders and stomped up to the granite sarcophagus as if the block would scurry off its foundation in terror at his meager show of force. “Would you get on with it?”

“Oh please don’t discourage him.”

“Don’t tell me you’re impressed by this,” said Faustus.

She glanced at him with dry eyes too rotted to show emotion. An ant crawled out of her ear. “It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a real man work.”

The stone groaned against the earth as Caed dragged the sarcophagus away from its hidden passage; a dark hole accessed by a ladder and no more than two feet across. Faustus peered into the hole and glared at Belle. “We can’t fit down there.”

Belle dropped her torch down the hole defiantly. Lit using the highly flammable sap of a tree, the flame endured the fall to send shadows dancing up, beckoning them to follow. Before Belle could descend to the first wrung the adjacent coffin, one of many stacked upon the walls of the crypt, shuffled off its coat of dust and opened with two red squinting eyes. The Melchahim coughed, scratched flakes of dead skin clinging to his cheek bone, and grumbled, “Who’s making that damnable racket? I say, I don’t think you chaps should be down here!”

The vampire’s head departed his shoulders like cheese cut with a hot knife and landed with a wet splat. Faustus had only just begun to cringe at the horrible stink when more coffins started to rattle, flinging dust and cobwebs airborne and scattering cockroaches from their nests. “You said this tomb was unpopulated!” Faustus cried as Belle slid down the latter.

“Throw me your weapons,” her voice echoed from the shaft. “You’ll never fit with those strapped to your back. Hurry!”

“Not bloody likely, princess!” Caed declared, cutting down a Melchahim with his twin blades.

Countless lids smacked the dust. The crypt swelled with multitudes of shifting hungry bodies, voices moaning, eyes snapping wide.

“We don’t have an abundance of choices. This crypt is packed.” Faustus hurled his axe at a flock of Melchah’s undead children. The axe popped through the skull of the first vampire and felled three others in a line, exploding the putrid fluids of decay washing inside the vampires’ brain cavity. Cupping his nose, Faustus cut loose the shoulder strap that held the Dumahim’s axe. He wouldn’t be retrieving that. “There’s a reason Melchahim can’t smell!”

He backed toward the hole. Holding his breath while Caed chopped through vampires, Faustus untied his sheath with his sword and dropped it down the shaft. “Got it!” said Belle. Faustus mounted the ladder.

“Caed! Caed, let it go!” It did no good. The Melchahim had surrounded Caed and Faustus couldn’t wait until he was spotted, too. He let go of the ladder and rode down gravity. At the bottom, chased by echoes of howls and battle cries, Faustus grabbed his sword and reached for the switch on the wall when Belle suddenly blocked his way.

“No!” Her banshee eyes leant an orange glow from the torch. “Give him a chance!”

“He had his chance!”

Spider strand hairs flung from her shaking head and floated down. “I won’t let you betray him.”

“Caed is as good as dead! There’s nothing but chaos up there!”

Wild animal sounds. Dogs tarring at a carcass that still lived to scream and thrash. Sword, flesh; teeth, bone. Faustus lunged at Belle, attempted to throw her aside, and narrowly avoided the path of an angry torch. “It stays!”

Faustus sneered. “Then we go. Let him catch up with us later.”

Belle hesitated, but the chorus of the feeding frenzy coaxed her to agree. They sped down the weaving tunnel. Moisture ate deep into the earth, cleansing the passage of dust and substituting a faithful dripping for the scurries of vermin. Here there were no coffins, no dead, only flimsy support beams eaten by moss and an over-powering sensation of dread trickling down Faustus’ spine. A massive chamber with a low ceiling penetrated by shimmering stalactites erupted at the end of the passage. Over the cliff’s edge distant tinder bowls mounted upon the walls raged with fire that cast the cavern in contrasting blacks and golds, and reflected on the inky surface of an underground sea. “Water?”

“Naturally. We’re under Nupraptor’s lake. This way.” They pounded down a gangplank and stairs tucked against the cliff face to a wharf at the bottom. Four long boats were tied to port. Belle hopped the first one and wedged the torch into the shaft on the bow. Faustus paced the canoe in dismay. “Are you sure this boat will hold all of us? With Caed’s extra weight, assuming he gets down….”

“Up to ten of Melchah’s brood can easily fit, we shouldn’t have any problems.” She hiked up her dress as she stalked across the planks. Her legs were grey, where once firm they now sagged. “Why are you so anxious to get away from him? For friends you two act like enemies.”

Faustus sighed and devoted a serious, painstaking stare to Belle’s atrophied face. “Caed was a good protector, if he didn’t need to go out of his way. He only listens to orders when they suit his liking. If it were me up there he wouldn’t have given a second thought to my fate.”

“Unlike me.”

“Right.” He stifled a grim chuckle.

Belle scowled. Then again, she always seemed to be. “You’re hardly virtuous yourself. If you expect your clan to survive you should learn to be more gracious.”

“I never asked for your opinion.” Faustus craned his head, wondering. Somewhere, in the dark, something moved. His hand touched his sword and Faustus stepped toward the wharf.
“Caed!”

If they weren’t surrounded by water, Faustus would have pounced on Belle and strangled her until her head fell off.

He searched the cliff. There was only one set of footsteps he could identify. Caed, injured and carrying his swords under his arm, was lumbering down the stairs at a slow pace. Faustus relaxed. The stench Caed brought with him should have sunk the boat. They’d taken a chunk from his arm and devoured every shred of his cloak along with part of his pants, but Caed came back smeared from head to toe in their blood. That crypt must have looked like Hell by the time he escaped. Faustus laughed in spite of Caed’s gut turning stink. “You bastard! I had it all wrong; I thought they were eating you. How many of them did you kill?”

The boat rocked with the addition of Caed’s weight. His swords dropped into the hull with a noisy clang. He licked the blood from his arm and spat into the water, giving Faustus the eyes of death. “Some of it’s mine. I didn’t count.” He sat down.