Varia Vulpes's Story

Guards were situated at a room to the entrance of the hallway that lead to the cells, wearing a gun on one hip loaded with silver rounds, and on the other, long knives that glowed with blessings from a priest. Their armor had high necks and were dotted with various silver charms. Some were rosaries, others were witch's knots. The variation was too large to list. Each guard had other personal touches to them, but they were minute. They were mostly uniform.

The bulbous pillars down the center of the hallway emitted a soft light that colored the cells blue. They sent out signals that tried to detect other functioning energies within the cells that were foreign to Hatyara's personnel, either that of technology used by a prisoner, or things closer to magic and ability power. If the signal detected a foreign energy, it bounced back to the detector, which sent out an energy wave in pursuit of scrambling and upsetting the prisoner's meddling. A second detector wave was then sent out to make sure it had succeeded. Should it have failed, an alarm would be triggered.

The energy walls that provided their cell gates were solid, and burned if one pressed their bodies against it for too long. Security cameras were set right into the walls of the cells, watching them.

So it was, then, that the energy detector honed in on Arien's blood magic workings, and delivered a violent pulse of scrambling energy to his mind. He gasped with the shock, the unexpected jolt upsetting the fine balance of will in his mind that served to keep the demonic influences of the magic at bay.

He was forced to let the magic go, the blood falling to the floor in a splatter, to avoid very bad consequences.

"So much for that." he muttered irritably. It was possible, knowing what was coming, that he might be able to withstand the disruptor. But it would likely alert their captors, since they obviously had some way of detecting magic. He'd bide his time further with the remaining vial, instead.

After pocketing the vial again, he looked up at the woman in the other cell. "Torture, huh? They just get more morally upstanding by the second." he muttered. "I thought most slayers at least tried to pretend they were the good guys."

She looked around, studying the cell. She hoped maybe a weakness was somewhere within the cell or its structure. She frowned, but figured to test the theory. She ripped a small shred of fabric from her shirt sleeve and tossed it at the doorway in a ball. After seeing the end result she knew better than to try anything more in that approach.

Her head darted up from the floor as she was examining it for weakness at the sound of a foreign voice. She heard the woman's comment clearly along with the raspy tone it had originally partaken before clearing up. She raised a brow curious of the woman. She walked close to the barrier that sealed them in to try to see the woman.

Her only response to the woman was in a calm almost cold tone, "Well they have made you quite the sweet Cheshire puss haven't they?"

She sighed and leaned back against the wall and said aloud in a emotionless tone, "Let me guess, stakes, crosses, holy water, acid, and the whole I hurt but keep you alive lame nine yards eh? Sounds like these boys have a serious lake of imagination."

"As much as I am not fond of Christian, Varia, now in this small cell, hot headedness will not...hmmm..." She narrowed her eyes in thought and curiosity.

"Arien, that thing honed onto your magic right?" She softened her voice to just above a whisper as she knelt beside him. "What about a kinesis of sorts. Think that will work?"

The person who'd walked down the hall wasn't one of the guards that were stationed at the entrance of the cell hallways, but a face that was very familiar to at least one of the vampires down there.

Sargas, the pastily white, unassuming being that had been up in the command room above when they'd been imprisoned. White wings stretched out behind him, tipped with purple. This seemed to be the trend with the rest of him- his lips, his hair, the horns atop his head that met in the back, creating a circular crown nestled within his hair. He donned a long, black coat that swept the ground. At his side, there was a rapier, the hilt artfully curving into the beak of a wyvern.

He had one hand outstretched, as if to skim his fingers across the walls of energy that separated him from countless dangerous criminals, but they were just a hair away from contact. A smug little smile danced across those pale lips. He stopped in front of Arien's cell, giving him a side glance.

"I never thought you would dance into here so easily. Tut, tut, little vampire. I'd so hoped we'd have another tango."

Arien smirked derisively at Sargas, "What, so I could send you running like a little girl a second time?" he mocked, eyes swirling with a familiar crimson as he met the pale being's eyes. For one previously affected by the vampire's blood magic, it was a chilling sight - threads of his dominance still leftover in the victim's subconscious.

"Just be glad there's a barrier between us. I won't give you the luxury of a retreat next time." he spat.

"If I'd had my way with you then, that encounter would have been much different," hissed Sargas. "Unfortunately we need to be more quiet about our endeavors. Too late now." A wash of disappointment washed over his face as he shrugged. "I'll just have to resume my search, I suppose. You'd of been a great toy."

"You can't hold us here," Varia spat, figuratively and literally. "We have rights."

Leave it to Varia to snub her nose at the law, until it was actually of some benefit to herself. Within the TNG, vampires maintained all the legal protection that came with citizenship.

"Do you think you can get away with this? People know where we are," she threatened.

Little did Varia know that the hunters had already seen to Valentina and Viktor.

"I'm sorry. It doesn't feel like your rights are applicable at this moment," laughed Sargas, the sound high and pretentious. Just about anything he did was a direct taunt for the vampires around him. After all, the couldn't touch him. Even if they could, he was sure he'd come out on top. "Those people may come. And when they do, we'll throw them in here, too!"

There was a clump and clatter of boots down the hallway. A robust, blonde-headed man headed down the hall, a small girl in hand. As he passed Sargas, he passed the vampires a dark and brooding look, then threw Valentina in an open cell. After she was thrown in, the same wall of light that was holding in everyone else closed around her cell.

Minke and Aave stood at the entrance, watching after him. Aave's expression was hollow, where Minke seemed like she was trying to pretend they hadn't done what they'd just done.

Killing a man in front of a little girl like that...

Varia looked from Sargas to Valentina and then to the vampires lingering at the entrance. If Valentina was here... then that meant...

There was something almost feral in her eyes as she snarled and slammed her hands against the energy field to try and break it.

"Where's Viktor?" she demanded.

"That's not how I remember it," Arien hissed at Sargas, "You call attacking me in the middle of a street 'quiet'? I had you on your knees, hunter. But I chose to let you live. I could have killed you where you stood, but I didn't."

He grimaced. "But now I wish I had. You deserve it."

The younger vampire lapsed into silence as Varia spoke up, but when the other hunters came in with Valentina, his eyes snapped upwards again angrily. "Bastards!" he yelled, "How can you even pretend at the slightest semblance of morality when you're willing to attack a little girl!"

Crimson swirls gathered in his eyes again, and a deep sensation of dread and sickness would begin building in the pits of the hunters' stomachs. It would barely last a moment, however, as a spike of energy arced from the cage and Arien's magic was violently torn down, bringing him to his knees with a gasp of pain. "When I get out of here, none of you will survive!" he growled through gritted teeth.

Valentina had quickly tired herself out in her many attempts to escape and also because of how hard she had been sobbing thanks to the loss of the only individual that she had sort of gotten close to other than her now very dead Sire. Twice now, she had lost someone to Hunters and the child just didn’t know what to think about that. So, after it became obvious that she wasn’t getting free, the small Vampire cried until exhaustion overtook her. Her eyes didn’t even open when her captor made his way into where the others had been kept captive. In fact, it wasn’t until he tossed her into a cell that her lavender eyes snapped open in surprise. Squealing, she realized she wasn’t being held anymore and the child rushed for the opening, slamming into the wall of light with a loud yelp.

“No!” She just shouted and slumped back down, refusing to cry any longer. Instead she just clenched her hands down beside her in tight fists, her eyes narrowing towards the man that was closest to her. After a few seconds, she peered at the others, realizing that everything had been a trap. When Varia asked where Viktor was, the young female frowned, starting to tear up again.

“…they killed him…” She pointed towards the individuals standing in the doorway as well as the man that had tossed her into the cell. "They killed him and took me away from NomNom! Where is NomNom, you jerks?!" She felt her chest aching for her playmate. This was the first time she had been away from her kitten and she felt extremely lost.

"You sons of bitches," Varia snarled.

She struck the wall again, and again, until she finally drew one of her swords, slamming the hilt against the wall of light to no avail. She looked little more than a caged animal as the wall burned her skin and forced her back. She paced too and fro, agitation and hostility written all over her before rushing the wall and slamming both her hands against it again.

"Get this gods damn wall down," she growled. "I'm going to tear their fucking throats out."

Arien's anger peaked. Rage flared in his eyes and his face contorted in a snarl. Then as quickly as it had come, his fury seemed to subside. At a glance, anyway.

His expression darkened into a flat and hollow stare, with only his eyes betraying any emotion. Cold, unadulterated hatred. Slowly and deliberately, he pulled the knife from his jacket and held the point aimed towards his palm. He took a long breath as Varia brought her sword out and slammed it into the wall.

He closed his eyes as she charged it a second time, and plunged the knife into his flesh, drawing it across his hand and wrist in a single violent motion. The blood flowed from it like a fountain, and when he opened his eyes, they were pure crimson. The first pulse of the anti-magic system surged through his body and he shuddered, faltering for a moment, but not falling. The pulse was weaker than before, as though the system was directing power away from them to reinforce the walls against Varia's strikes. The blood began to smoke and trail up his arm, gathering around him.

The alarm above wailed, and a second pulse hit him. He convulsed, doubling over, but he didn't drop. The blood wavered as though it were about to fall, but then reformed. Arien straightened, and with that same cold stare he looked straight into Sargas' eyes.

"You miscalculated." he hissed, gritting his teeth against the pain of the cell's energy surging through him. Even though his body and his mind cried out in protest, Arien maintained control. Pain was something he'd come to be able to deal with, thanks to his unholy magical art. Focus, too - staying the temptations of the voices whispering at the edges of his mind, beckoning him to darker and darker arts and deals with demons was something he always had to do.

The vampire raised his arms and gestured to the wall. The blood gathered around him spiralled towards it like a drill, impacting the energy with a crash of force. Wielding the snaking trails of blood like lashing whips, Arien struck out at the barrier again and again, joining Varia in battering at the defences. These cells were designed to contain one metahuman, not four.

'You're all as good as dead.'

Valentina trailed off, watching the others that had been captured intently. She moved closer to the front of the cell, inches away from the wall of light. The energy humming from it intrigued her and bothered her at the same time, but she knew better to touch it, especially after how badly it had hurt when she nailed it. Returning her gaze towards Varia as she rammed the hilt of her sword against the wall, Valentina could feel something humming in the air, something that wasn’t coming from the thing that was keeping them all from escaping. Gently resting two of her digits against the light, she hissed and drew her hand back, the burning sensation a quick reminder of what they were all against. Why she had been placed alone wasn’t clear to the child, but she wasn’t about to break, yet. Varia was frightening her a little, but Val knew the anger wasn’t directed towards her. Surely, they wouldn’t blame her for what happened to Viktor, right?

What if they did? Frowning, she tucked her legs up beneath her body and leaned towards the barrier once again. She kept from touching it as her eyes drifted back over towards where everyone was at. Her gaze fell upon Arien and she watched him closely, realizing that he was not all he seemed earlier when she first met him. Scrunching her nose up, she couldn’t help but gape when it appeared that blood was trailing up his arm. Was she seeing things? Valentina kept staring before she slid a hand up beneath her dress, grabbing a hold of the small throwing knife that had been held there by a band. It took her a few minutes to realize that the alarm sounding had something to do with what he was doing or perhaps due to what he and Varia was doing. Did that mean there was a chance to overpower things? Well, she didn’t have much she could do, but every little bit helped, right?

Right.

Despite the surprise she had when Arien also started to hit the barrier, Valentina took her knife, shrugged and started to slam it against the barrier, though after the first few times the energy pulsed out to hit her, she ended up dropping it and wincing in pain, her body curling up in a ball. Well, maybe they’d rescue her once they broke out… maybe.

Christian too joined the collection of individuals trying to breech the wall. He had nothing with which he could attack the wall directly with, given that his powers lay with the dead and the demonic, but he could tax the wards. A light smirk spread across his lips and sparks of mystical energy crackled at his finger tips as he tried to open a rift within their cell. The backlash was immediate, and the energies where severed before they could do little more than sputter and spark. As the wards lashed out against his mind like a barbed whip, the energy faltered momentarily before he grit his teeth and redoubled his efforts.

He lacked the functional nerve endings that would allow him to experience pain in the truest sense, but he could feel the damage it was enacting on his psyche, and the instability of the rift he was trying to open. It was like trying to weave a web, while someone was snipping each thread as it was formed. Eventually there would be too many threads meshed together to stop it.

The lights up and down the hall of cells flickered and dimmed as too much energy was being redirected to combat the growing breech within the single cell.

Her eyes went wide in alarm of the two escorts throwing Valentina into the cell.

"Valentina! Are you al...." Her words were cut off by the shrill reality of Viktor being murdered in his state.

She could feel the rage grown in bubble in her like magma roiling to a point near eruption. Seeing what everyone was doing, she stepped up and focused on anything that was not tied down in the room, beings included and started using her telekinetic abilities and using them to slam things against the wall. She was an accomplished telekinetic so lifting someone and throwing them wouldn't be too difficult. During her first attempt the energy arced into her ind causing her to stagger a moment. After a moment, she recovered and increased the amplitude of the ability and focused on Minke. If the energy didn't cut her off and Minke didn't have anti-magic armor of some sort Minke would be thrown into the outside of the barrier. She hoped her aim would succeed without getting knocked on her rear by the anti-magic energy defenses,