[PROMPT] A character is kidnapped. Who kidnapped them and why? What happens to them?
Petra was tired.
There had been a rash of jobs that had needed taken care of urgently, not to mention peacekeeping issues within the city. Brandon was all for vampires having their fun, but there was a line, and she was tasked ages ago with helping to maintain that line. She had been fighting practically non-stop from dusk until dawn for the past month, often feeding from those she was punishing in order to replenish her own reserves and keep her going. Physically, she could keep going. Mentally? She was exhausted. Even during the Crusades the fighting had not been this constant, and tonight, she needed a respite. Part of her debated a self-imposed torpor, but she couldn’t bring herself to do that. She was needed, and she had sworn an oath.
During her patrol that night, there was continued fighting. She flit from one bout to the next, aiding packs when and where she could, but she was only one woman. She had recently beheaded a foul target that had targeted a promising young pack, then sent them on their way to aid others as she climbed up to a roof to gain a better vantage point.
That would prove to be a mistake.
Perched on one of the edges, gauging how likely she was to break herself over something inanimate below before jumping into the fray, she was grabbed from above by a pair of gargoyles. As they lifted her up, they dug into her left wrist and twisted, back and forth until they forced her to drop her sword. She tried breaking free, but it was of little use and, after a relatively short amount of time, she refrained, as the fall could do quite a bit of damage to her from the height they were at.
Continuing to fly, they headed for the outskirts of the city, eventually changing their flight pitch when they got deep into mining territory, hovering over top of an unused shaft before dropping down into the pitch black before leading her through labyrinthine corridors to a place that was set up as what she could only think to describe as something akin to a black mass. In a large circle on the floor stoof a circle of candles. When her eyes adjusted, she could tell that the candles were handmade, not bought. Inhaling deeply, she could smell earth and mildew; distantly, water. The candles were the only illumination in the room, and in the center of the circle there were thick, heavy metal plates, with bolts driven deep into the earth. Each plate had a loop, and attached to each loop was a chained manacle – there were three in total.
The gargoyles forced her to her knees, with her head down. One kept his heavy weight pressed down on her as the other locked a large manacle with a chain of only a few feet around her neck – it was enough to let her lookup, but that was all. Next, one wrist, and then the other were pulled out to her sides just enough to be problematic, and then manacled – the combination of the three leaving her little room to maneuver. She heard them move away, watched as candles in her field of vision were snuffed, and then there was nothing – not for many a long while.
She’d lost count of the nights that passed after the fourth or fifth one. Being chained in this cavern was not far off from sensory deprivation, and it was beginning to wear on her. Were it not for the pull of sleep every vampire felt when the sun rose, she felt, she would not have even been able to keep time for as long as she had. Those first several nights, she struggled to break free. But the bolts dug deep, and budged little, if at all. The chains were thick and sturdy, and she had little room to work with. When she lost count of days, she stopped trying to break free.
Petra had faith that she would set free, but that faith began to waver, when she began to get hungry. She wagered that she had spent a decent amount of blood the night she had been taken, and she was always a little low when she woke for the evening. She could fairly assume then, she reasoned, that she had been there quite a while to be feeling outright hunger and not just her normal peckish.
It was when she began subconsciously gnawing her lower lip that she heard the first noise other than the sounds of the cavern itself in who knew how long. Gradually, she got the sense that the room was filling with a handful of figures. The candles were re-lit in order to provide illumination, and it burned her eyes slightly, and she made sure to give her eyes time to adjust to light again. A figure moved in front of her and stopped to look at her. Petra couldn’t determine much from this angle, but she studied what she could.
Based on what she could see of the figure, which at this point was mainly legs, she felt assured that she was dealing with a woman, based on the lithe build and heeled boots. Her guess was proved accurate when a hand grabbed hold of her hair and jerked her head back roughly.
“This is her?” said the woman. There came a gruff, but unintelligible response. “Are you sure?” again, that gruff, unintelligible voice. She turned her attention to Petra then and studied her, as Petra studied her back. The woman was hard to describe, if she were to be honest. She looked both familiar and not, and her beauty was unlike Petra had every witnessed. Finally, the other woman scoffed.
“Usually people are fawning or having a religious experience. Why not you?” she asked, it seemed more out of curiosity than anything else.
“You look familiar…” was all Petra could think to say. The other woman spoke, and gestured for the one holding Petra’s head up. Abruptly, her head dropped, though she turned to look back at her captor.
“The name is Val.” she said, then paused to kick some dirt from the cavern floor into Petra’s face. “Don’t forget it.”
“Is that supposed to mean something to me?” she said, after a minor coughing bout to rid her mouth of the dirt.
“I suppose not.” she said, reaching behind her to remove an ornate dagger from its sheath. She placed a finger on the tip of the blade before speaking again. “Brother dearest hasn’t wanted to acknowledge me for some time.”
“Do I know your brother?” Petra asked, trying to scan her mind for all the people she had dealt with over the years to try and come up with a similar face, but struggled.
She snorted. “You should – you’re fucking him, aren’t you?”
Vince – it had to be. She hadn’t slept with anyone else. “So what do you want with me?”
“I want your suffering.” she said, moving the dagger from her hand, moving it under Petra’s chin and dug the tip in deep. As it did so, Petra could have sworn she heard dark whispers fill her mind. “Vince is not a man to fall for a woman for long, and yet there is you…you who he has carried a torch for, for centuries. So what is it about you, hmmm? What drives him to seek you, again and again? I’m curious.” she said, digging the blade in deeper before repping it away with a slicing motion. “I want answers. I’m hoping your suffering will give them to me. And when I tire of toying with you, I’ll consume your soul.” she stopped, looked at Petra, and resumed her speech. “With you out of the picture, it will just be casual hookup after casual hookup. Eventually, hopefully, he’ll come back to me.”
“You’re doing this because you’re jealous?” Petra asked incredulously. She couldn’t help but laugh a little. This earned her a backhand slap with a slicing followthrough, and it stung more than she would have liked to admit.
“My brother and I had something that cannot be duplicated!” she snapped, then regained her composure. “Did you like the party I arranged for you?” she asked, smiling sweetly. “You’d been away from real war for so long, I thought you might have missed it. Her smile turned from sweet to mischievous then, and from there she became difficult to read. After a lingering moment or two, she leaned in and whispered, “I’m going to have some fun.”
It was like playtime with some of the darker Malkavians she’d met over the years. She wasn’t sure how, but first Val would be on one side, then another, then across the room. She was just playing games, but it seemed as though with each playful laugh or whisper, Petra felt her anxiety grow, until it bloomed into outright, frantic paranoia. This caused her to laugh with delight.
“Oh, I knew this would be easy! You can’t hold a candle to me, Princess.”
Petra growled, but didn’t react – she didn’t want to give Val the satisfaction of winning. When her mood shifted, so did the sense of paranoia – this time, to a sense of overwhelming dread. Petra did her best not to let on, but that became much harder as time went on. Eventually, Val tired of waffling Petra between paranoia and dread, and changed things up a little. A little bit of different magic, and now, any time she went near Petra, she suffered agonizing pain. It was truly a delight for her to watch, though for Petra it tested her mettle. Over the course of the next few days, Val performed her sickening playtime, picking right up from where she had left off the previous night. On that second night, she kept with the pain as she moved near, then ramped it right up to making Petra’s blood shred her insides. She had thought Petra’s muttering to herself when the night was nearly over to be funny.
Petra was trying, and largely failing again, to get any of her disciplines to respond properly. She couldn’t focus long enough to get anything done, either due to the waves of intense emotion, or to the pain. She was muttering to herself, trying to summon the will and energy to bring forth the Abyss, when Val got bored enough to step things up a notch yet again. It wasn’t enough to truly hurt Petra – but it was enough to keep her from focusing. In this instance, hundreds of cuts all across her being, constantly healing and new ones forming. This went on all of the second night. Val didn’t leave until just before sunrise, and when she was gone completely, Petra tried still to not give sign of her suffering.
On the third night, she heard the footsteps coming. She resolved to be strong again. That resolve faltered when the figure that came into view was not Val – it was Vince.
“Vince?” she whispered.
“I’ll get you out of here soon, then we can hunt down whoever did this.” he said, pulling at the chains.
Petra closed her eyes and felt grateful. The only problem was a nagging thought in the back of her mind. That little voice, that gut instinct that was so often right, told her something was wrong. She went over the moments since she heard the footsteps, and realized things didn’t sound right…not at all.”
She looked over again, but saw Vince. Her heart wanted so badly to believe it was him, but her instinct screamed at her to ignore what she saw. Noticing her look at him, he stopped, placing a hand on her cheek.
“It’ll be alright. You’re safe now.” with every stroke of his thumb against her cheek as he held his hand there, she felt her resolve weaken.
“Please don’t…” she whispered.
“Don’t what?” came his response.
“Don’t pretend to be him.” she whispered, the blood tears finally streaking down her face. “Don’t be him, don’t use him like that.”
“Shhh…” came his response. “Rest easy. You’re safe.”
“No!” she said, using what little was left of her will to push him away. He fell back slightly, but then got up. As he did so, the illusion faded, and Val looked annoyed. “Well you’re a stubborn bitch, aren’t you?” she said, delivering a vicious kick to the gut, then curb stomped her while she was recovering.
“Still….you don’t have the heart or the will to fight any more, do you?” she said, trying to goad Petra into doing something. When nothing happened, she picked Petra’s head up and looked at her. “I told you I’d make you suffer for making him love you.” she said. “And now…” she removed the dagger from its sheath behind her once more “I tire of these games. I have broken you down, and made you nothing. Now all that will be left of you is ash on the wind.”
She dragged the tip of the dagger along Petra’s jawline and on down, slowly. She was enjoying dragging this out, but tonight would be the end of it all, certainly. Petra tuned her out, however, and moved her lips, though sound fell no further than her own ears. It was her version of a final prayer: Ares, friend to those in direst need, grant me the nerve to face what must be faced, grant me the will to do what must be done, grant me the heart to forge ahead.
She whispered this three times, eyes closed before Val, in an annoyed state, decided to volley between fear and pain with Petra again. Val was not annoyed with Petra, so much as annoyance and not being able to decide if she wanted to take Petra’s soul with the dagger, or via diablerie. It was during this time that, in her broken state, Petra called for her lover. She called for her father. She called to her gods and begged for death. She called – and there was an answer.
There came a sound of clanking metal, and standing in the room, illuminated by a kind of inner light, stood a man who had come to aid his faithful. Ares, God of War appeared – a fearsome figure in armor of black and red, carrying a spear, he glared at Val.
“Who the hell are you?” she said, immediately on the defensive.
“I’ve come to collect what’s mine.” he said, his voice a stern tone, yet it gave an aura of fury and anger.
“Her?” Val sneered. “She isn’t yours.”
“Perhaps. But, she is one of my favorites.” he said, walking towards her. With a rapid motion, he thrust his spear forward, piercing her body as it glowed with a white hot intensity. “You are not.” he continued, twisting the spear and wrenching it through her body with ease before pushing her off with a boot.
Val collapsed onto the floor with a gasp of shock. The dagger she had been holding had fallen from her hand when the heated blade entered her, and it now lay on the cavern floor, inches from her. She tried desperately to reach it, but the man brought down a blood splattered shield onto it’s hilt, shattering the phylactery that houses the thousands of souls she had harvested over time. With a hideous screech she curled up on herself. No longer did she have the protection the souls in the dagger had offered, and what she had merely thought was a heated blade began to burn still through her, searing her with holy fire, until she was naught but ash.
The figure scattered the ashes with his boot, then walked over to Petra. As he did so, he rested the shield on his back, and with a flick of his wrist the spear disappeared so he could focus on the task at hand. In a few swift motions, he easily freed Petra from her bondage, and carefully lifted her.
“Forgive me, my dear. I meant not for you to suffer so.” he said. With a lingering look around the cavern, he phased out of that location, only to form in a hidden location near the home she shared with her site. Gingerly, he left her on the balcony.
“Rest, my warrior. If ever there was doubt, you have earned a good death. Tonight is not that night, however.” he reached over, about to give the glass patio doors a knock, when he gave pause. Of course he was there. He should be the one to find her. Carefully then, he eased the door open instead. Eventually, her scent would waft to him, and she would be found. He leaned over, pressing his lips against her forehead. “My brother will not have you this night.” he again promised her. Then, before anyone could notice him, he disappeared.