If Raziel had still possessed lungs he would have sighed. As it was, he just walked over to a likely looking crate and began to drag it towards a likely looking hole. It was a comparatively simple puzzle. Insert the blocks so that the pipes running through them faced to holes in the wall. It involved much pulling and pushing of boxes with the occasional spontaneous appearance and swift demise of Zephomin vampires to alleviate the boredom.

Even after such a long time of it, manual labor still chafed a creature who had once been the second most powerful vampire in all of Nosgoth. Raziel set about his task with a stoic dignity, but the tattered remains of his soul burned with resentment.

On top of the indignity with which he’d yet to come to terms there was an irritating melody coming from somewhere.

Doop, doop, doop, dee doop, dee doop. Do doop, dee do doop, doop doop, dee do doop…

It infringed on his own background music.

The box with the two openings opposite each other went into the right crevice, but the other one was turned the wrong way, which meant more flipping and shoving and pulling of boxes. And how the hells was he supposed to get to the one up on that platform? Maybe if he stacked these two on top of each other and pulled them over there… 

He heard a sucking noise that sounded as if it had been recorded and revamped to sound completely unlike a normal sucking sound and somewhat techno as well. A voice behind Raziel cursed in Italian. Raziel twirled around and brandished the Soul Reaver ^TM.

A squat, pudgy, mustached human was lying half in and half out of one of the pipes. He was dressed in blue suspenders, a red shirt, and a small hat with an M on it. He was holding a red mushroom with a face and a large green turtle shell. As he spotted Raziel his eyes widened. He whispered “Mama mia” in a tone that was obviously meant to be quiet, but wasn’t.

“Hello?” he ventured.

Utterly at a loss as to how to react to this enigmatic human who neither bowed down to him nor ran screaming from him, Raziel responded with “Greetings?”

“Could you…uh…” The human pointed at a crate and motioned to the pipe crevice he was poking out into.

“Very well.” Still somewhat confused Raziel walked over to the proper box, viciously speared it with his hands, and dragged it over and into the hole in the wall. There was a muffled “Thanks!” from inside and another techno remix sucking sound.

Raziel leaned against a cube and watched the section of pipes for a while.

“I’ve been at this far too long.” He concluded and went out to get some fresh air and kill some vampire fledglings.