'The arrogance of these people.' Inta thought while he was left alone. 'Even if I weren't hiding my vampiric nature, leaving a prisoner to themselves is just reckless.' Inta snorted. 'At least they played into my hands, all we have to do is wait, they'll send someone to investigate the safe house after they're done interrogating us and when Entoma breaks out, we'll follow them.' He sight and relaxed, his hands roaming over the chains.
His fingers tingled as he felt the touch of magic. 'Enchanted, very expensive too…'
His ears pricked up, the voices were muffled, but he recognized the voice of his interrogator. Even for his ears, exactly what was said was an uncertain thing. The heavy clang of a door opening, closing… silence. Inta couldn't shrug as things were, he waited, 'If she wants to escape, she can at any time, so I'll just wait… even if this part is dull.'
The heavy clang of the opening and closing echoed outside again, the muffled, half squeak voice of the ratman was all he heard.
At first.
Then he heard a noise he'd never heard before. A sticky 'pulling' sound followed by a chattering, almost like somebody had fallen into a frozen lake and now their teeth were tapping against each other while they shivered.
Chains.
Rattling chains, Inta sucked in his breath. It wasn't a casual sound on the other side of the wall.
It was as if they were being blown wild in a storm, a gale force wind smashing and crashing metal against stone, the chattering continued…
Another noise, sticky…
Wet.
Pulling free.
The rattle stopped.
The rattle picked up.
The rattle stopped.
The ratman's muffled voice.
'What is going on in there…?' Inta wondered, a sinking feeling coming up from within his gut.
'If they were… no, she would just escape, break her chains and… wait, would she?' He asked himself. Entoma's fixation on and fear of failure was thicker than pea soup, if it came down to it, she would no doubt go to any lengths.
"Spray."
The word was in the ratman's voice, and the chattering went up again, the chains rattled as if they were being thrashed about, and he heard it.
A gurgling noise.
'No!' Inta's mind blanked out.
His mind was gone.
Everything was blank and empty, a spaceless, endless white storm swept away his conscious mind and blood flew out of his pores and ran within the lock, filling the outline of the keyhole, he unlocked himself.
The clarity of the once muffled voice was dialed up to near perfect hearing in his altered state…
"Torture isn't to gain information, it's to confirm or falsify information we already have. Your comrade told us things, talk to us, the pain will stop, do you think we haven't got poisons that will hurt you worse? You should speak now, save yourself some pain, or I'll shell you entirely and do so much worse."
'Not again!' A tugging threat tore through Inta's mind, like a forgotten memory begging to be recalled, his door clanged open and he caught sight of the Anakore creatures just as they rushed in.
Inta's left hand came up. "Blood control." He hissed the spell and yanked his hand back, blood ripped through their scales, torn out of their very bodies and gathered into a ball which hovered over his open hand.
They fell dead on the floor. "Iron ball." He hardened the ball of whorling liquid, and the iron in the blood was ready for use. He gestured toward the wall between himself and his charge, and the ball of iron crashed through the wall, sending stone shrapnel against the far wall and barely missing the ratman.
Inta jumped through, instinct compelled him, propelled him, drove him like a wild beast, the guards outside the door rushed within, his thinking mind knew that the alarm would be raised in minutes, if not seconds.
The ratman was fleeing toward the exit just as the guards outside rushed in.
"Out of my way, you fools!" The ratman squealed as he wiggled between the two and took off out of view down the hall.
Inta hurtled the ball of iron into the left guard, the metal smashed the head into pulp before embedding itself in the far wall, and Inta jumped on the guard to the right. Claws lashed out to rake over Inta's flesh, but he felt nothing, the claws might as well have been raking over adamantite. He grabbed the claw, and snapped it.
It cracked and broke in the strength of Inta's right hand, his left came up and grabbed the thick gray front of the anakor throat and squeezed. Even if this one was smaller than their champion, he was still taller than Inta.
All that meant however, as his vampire grip held the creature fast while it thrashed in his hand, was that Inta's stab with the broken claw went up into its throat instead of down into its brain.
The claw pierced the flesh, which tore and ripped, and blood gushed out to wash over the vampire, the body of his victim spasmed, shook, the fight was gone, the body was dying, it just hadn't come to terms with its own death, not yet.
When it had, when the twitching and spasming stopped, Inta released his grip and let the anakore guard fall in a crumpled heap at his feet.
Far out of view, the squealing of the ratman went up, it reached Inta's ears, the memory of a lost memory… the teasing, taunting of the forgotten, forgotten, forgotten, things from age after age pounded like a drum in his empty, mindless state.
He held out his hand over the corpses. "Blood armor." He uttered, and the tendrils of blood rose from the corpses, they flowed like rivers through the air and then wrapped themselves like ribbons of dark crimson around his body.
Starting from the ankles and rising up toward his face, he removed the mask he wore and set it down, it skittered away as if fearing it would be a victim too, and rushed to its mistress.
Inta's eyes followed the skittering bug mask as he turned around to face his charge.
The bug was nuzzling against her like a puppy would its wounded owner.
At her feet, bits of her broken shell wobbled back and forth, the legs and arms at thighs and biceps had the pink flesh exposed to the air, yellow blood dripped and other fluids ran in little rivers down over the unshelled areas, and small chunks had clearly been torn free.
A hooked crowbar lay on the stone floor beside her, even without touching it, the fragment of conscious mind that rebelled against his instincts knew it was enchanted for this specific purpose.
Entoma's head shook as she tried to raise her eyes to look at her Inta. "I… didn't… scream." She rasped out.
Inta rushed over to her, summoning blood to undo her lock, he uttered in response, "They will." And then he went about setting her free.