Isca returned to the fortress in the hours before dawn feeling eminently satisfied. He even went so far as to hum an old tune whose words, if he remembered them correctly, told the story of a bold knight returning from conquest abroad to find his childhood sweetheart still holding a torch for him.  He thought the song to be quite apt, given the circumstances.  A smile that was obstinately refusing to fade made his vampiric features seem almost cheerful as he walked, one hand absently swinging his belt-knife around on its leather thong.   As he drew level with the room that was currently serving as the P'ramma's quarters, a thundering crash sounded from the upstairs chamber where he knew his Lord was meeting with his brother.  A concerned frown furrowing his brow, Isca rushed to investigate.  He dashed up the wide stone stairs three at a time, barging open the door to his master's audience chamber with little thought for the consequences.  The sight that met his eyes left him statue-still at the entrance, his face locked in a rigor of unadulterated surprise.

Raziel had grown wings.

"Yes, fledge, your master has metamorphosed. . ."

Conflicting emotions vied with one another as Isca's brain strove to assimilate the information his eyes were witnessing: pride at the thought of his Lord having attained his next stage of evolution met head-to-head with the concern that there had been no warning, no stage of pupation; these ideas were soon superseded by a profound sense of envy, then a tenuous feeling of unease.  Not even Lord Kain had wings.  He would probably have continued to stare at Raziel in mute amazement for a good while longer, had it not been for Turel's terse interruption.

"Go.  Tell your compatriots!"

The fledge began to twitch uncomfortably, his claws clenching and releasing as the final, pivotal event drew ever closer. 

Again.

Dawn found Isca still aiding his comrades in the righting and restoration of the furniture in the Mess Hall.  The air was filled with lively hammering and sawing sounds that would have been more at home in a carpenter's workshop than in the gloomy confines of a Vampire stronghold.  It was onto this scene of industry that Raziel strode, finally confident enough to face his troops now that his balance had adjusted so he walked once again in a manner befitting a Vampire Lord. His early attempts at locomotion had reminded him of the gait of a particular species of wildfowl, and he had made certain that he overcame that potentially embarrassing affliction before descending into the presence of his men.  As his altered shadow breached the threshold of the hall, the noises issuing from the industrious fledglings faded to awed silence while the Clan ceased work to bear witness to their leader's new Gift.

The hush was broken by several metallic clunking sounds as the fledglings dropped their tools to surge forward and crowd about their Lord, who, for once, appeared unconcerned at the dereliction of their duties.  He smiled in a rather bemused, but pleased manner before addressing a few of the older fledges who held nominal stewardships.  His gaze took in Isca along with these others, causing the youth to straighten proudly.

"I am leaving shortly for the Sanctuary of the Clans. Be sure that this room is returned to normal by the time I return."

There was a murmur of assent from the fledglings he had addressed, partially drowned out by the low babble of awed conjecture and outright admiration that emanated from the excited crowd.

The Clan leader nodded once, trying and failing to hide his pride at his fledglings' reactions before turning to leave.  As Isca watched the Lieutenant's majestic stride carry him from the room, he knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that Raziel represented the pinnacle of his boyish aspirations.

"Strutting peacock."

All too soon, the fledge found himself diving from the rocky ledge that marked the entrance to his Lord's Clanlands, hell-bent on reaching the scene of travesty that was unravelling on the precipice above the Abyss.  He was never completely sure why he had locked an arm about the P'ramma's waist before he jumped: he supposed that in some sense he had considered any help better than none at all.  The attempt was meaningless: as the pair rose in harmony to try to avert the fast-approaching tragedy, Isca became aware of Rahab's looming presence, and of the formidable form of the Master Vampire as the damning words left his mouth.

Again.

Rahab's fist hit like a piledriver, the solidity of the punch only slightly less unyielding than that of the jagged rock into which the fledgling crashed a moment later.  Although unconscious, for some incomprehensible reason, Isca found he could still perceive the tragedy in livid detail as it unfolded: Raziel struggling impotently against his brothers; the dark red of lifeblood that contrasted obscenely with the pale dun of the wing vanes; Turel's flapping cloak, greener than dewy sward on a spring day; the look of satisfaction on the second Lieutenant's face. 

How he would love to scratch it off.

"Such a shame."

Isca's eyes, lost in far-away events, focussed reluctantly on the dark shape hovering above him. 

" . . .shame . . .?"

"Had your feet been swifter . . ."

The fledge turned his head and closed his eyes tightly, as though in an effort to shut out the possibilities the suggestion conveyed.

"Had you anticipated Rahab's move . . ."

Isca's claws dug repeatedly at the wooden surface on which he lay in a display of regret and frustration, his restraints allowing little room to add impetus to the movement.

"Had you spoken to your master about your misgivings . . ."

The Razielim tilted his head back and gave voice to a low moan of anguish, a single, bloody tear winding its way across one sunken cheek as his tormentor added the insinuation he knew only too well would follow.

"Raziel might still be alive."

A tsunami of guilt crashed over the tormented fledgling, its potency threatening to send him tumbling back into the black gulf that had held him in its blissfully empty embrace for most of the day.

"No, no, little fledgling," a metallic scraping sound that Isca recognised all too well set his nerves on edge.

"Stay with me.  I crave your company."

*

Turel's maniacal laugh assaulted the fledge's raw senses – as did the beam of light that shot through the opened shutter in the roof, its focussed beam eating into the dead flesh of his chest a few inches below his collar-bone.  Isca writhed beneath the searing caress, biting down on the scream his throat needed to vent: although experience had taught him that evidence of the victim's continued self-control only inspired darker treatment from the twisted Lieutenant, he refused to allow Turel the satisfaction of knowing he had driven him to voice an outcry.

Turel raised an eyebrow, impressed despite himself at the fledgling's presence of mind.  A tug on the ingeniously-arranged chain in his hand altered the angle of the sun's ray, bringing its focus lower to more sensitive flesh.  He observed as the fledgling's emaciated form began to shudder from the strain, the burning beam causing the skin to smoke as it wormed its insidious way through epidermis, muscle and flesh, only snapping the shutter closed when he was certain the ray had hit bone. 

The insolent wretch secured to the wooden rack had suffered much over the last couple of months, mused the Lieutenant.  He had administered almost every traditional method of torture he knew in an effort to get the fledge to renounce his late master; nothing had worked.   The inventive vampire had tortured the boy with both water and sunlight in copious amounts and in ingenious manners, before resorting to his old favourites: the caged rodent, goaded by the application of hot coals to burrow its way to freedom through the captive's chest; the breaking of the victim's limbs on the Wheel; the insertion of various pointed metal objects into the skin, which, when vampiric flesh quickly healed over, caused excruciating pain whenever the youth moved. 

Turel had, since his earliest days, found the torture of his own kind more satisfying than the meagre and short-lived pleasure to be derived from punishing humans.  In the abuse of undead flesh, one could inflict a great number of individual torments – in place of just one, which would mean the end of the average mortal.  Vampires were far more resilient, and usually recovered within a matter of days from whichever brutal ordeal they suffered at his hands: there were, therefore, endless and diverse possibilities to be explored.

Despite this fact, and much to Turel's disgust, the Razielim was stubbornly refusing to accede to his demands: he imagined by now it was probably a matter of principle with the boy – if he had withstood this much, he was unlikely to crack under any persuasion.  He did, however, have another long-term method up his sleeve.  The fledgling had not fed in over a month now, and his body had long ago begun to turn on itself – as had his mind. The Thirst, in its more virulent forms, constituted a marvellous tool for any tormentor of Vampires.  Today, this was Turel's preferred means of persecution.  He had sliced deep into his own arm before allowing the liquid to splatter wastefully on the fledgling's chest and stomach.  The starving vampire had undergone a series of contortions - which were of great amusement to the callous Lieutenant – in his desperation to reach the potent feast that lay in plain sight, but infuriatingly beyond his reach.  Eventually, he relapsed into a state of impotent unrest, his wasted muscles straining at the metal bands that separated him from his salvation. 

Isca closed his eyes as he realised that Turel's actions represented a hideous parody of the method his own mentor had used to awaken the killer in him.  In the next instant, his eyelids jerked back open against his will in a mechanical response to the maddening scent of fresh-spilled blood, as his tormentor waved his bleeding arm before his face.  Isca's stomach gave a betraying growl, and his blue-tinged skin crawled visibly from the influence of Turel's temptation.

His captor sighed heavily.  "Renounce him, fledge, and spare yourself the pain."

Abruptly, Isca laughed.  It was a pale shadow of the hearty, deep-chested bellow for which he was renowned, but still it was enough to incense Turel, finally convincing the Lieutenant to enlighten his captive on a fact that he had kept hidden up until now.  His voice became soothing, almost deferential: the voice of an indulgent parent who must tell his offspring to put away the trappings of childhood.

"Your Clan is failing, boy - fractioning - why hold on to an ideal whose basis no longer exists?  In a very short time, this world will see a new order, and your brethren will be absorbed by the remaining Clans."

The fledgling forced a hoarse reply from between withered lips.  "You already tried that, Turel.  The day the Razielim pay homage to you . . ."

The Lieutenant interrupted with a brusque comment.  "I fail to see why you insist on remaining faithful to people who abandoned and betrayed you."

"They have not abandoned me."

Turel glanced pointedly about the chamber, a glib smile revealing the tips of razor-sharp fangs. 

"I see no rescue party."

"They don't even know I'm here," came the stolid reply.

The tormentor laughed and nodded knowingly, his self-satisfied leer implying that Isca was mistaken.

"You're lying." Commented the fledge, wearily.  This latest was a feeble untruth at best – the Vampire Lieutenant was normally more inventive in his perjury.

Turel leaned in close to the youth, his narrow features alight with the pleasure of his hidden secret.  He was practically beside himself as he delivered his coup de grace.

"Who do you think led my men to you?"

The refutation died on the Razielim's lips as the truth in Turel's words was borne out.  The Vampire Lord radiated honesty.  For once.

"I will leave you to contemplate this-" he glanced at the door where a messenger stood awaiting his attention.  He nodded curtly at the emissary, then glanced back at the restrained fledgling, whose blood-starved body was starting to convulse with its proximity to such a ready source of the life-giving substance it so craved.

"I doubt you have much time left, boy.  Maybe you should use it to reconsider your future."

Turel perversely dropped a dark globule of cool, thick blood on the fledgling's cheek, just out of reach of the vampire's desperately searching tongue, before turning and striding from the room with a spring in his step.

Isca closed his eyes and resigned himself to his fate.   

The fledgling was not alone in the dungeon. He had known this from the earliest times - the daylight hours were filled with the low groans of Turel's other victims.  Often, at evenfall, the Lieutenant would descend into his dungeon and take his pick of victims to torment that particular night.  The young vampire knew that several of his fellow inmates were female, and was glad that his position on the wooden board, which served both as bed and rack, did not allow him to witness the horrendous acts his ears informed him were being carried out by the sadistic Lord.  Daylight ever saw those who survived praying aloud to their Gods for release, salvation or death.  Isca doubted their prayers would be heard from these depraved depths.  The presence of females in the room disturbed him for other reasons: it continually reminded him of his night with Maeve.  Though these thoughts were often pleasant, Isca was aware that under the pressure of Turel's manipulations, he was wont to ramble about the events of his life.  Turel encouraged this, doubtless in an effort to discover some secret that might give him leverage over the boy.  In his lucid moments, Isca was terrified that sometime, during the course of his mindless digressions, he might inadvertently mention the girl, and give Turel the incentive he sought. 

As nightfall wrapped the echoing dungeon in its starlit cloak, Isca joined his fellow captives in a fervent prayer for death.

Author's Note.

Aww.  Don't you just want to go rescue him?  I do. *starts plotting an alternate universe self- insert fic where Isca gets rescued by – *  Oh.  Hold on.  We could send in the Black Leather Wearing Women from Earth! *crumples up previous plan and starts on a new one*

Sorry for the delay in getting this chapter up – I got sidetracked. *looks shiftily to the right and left, then points at AmuseMe*  It's all her fault!

Besides, I had to do some research (purely theory, I hasten to add), on torture methodology.  I have to say, the Spanish Inquisition were pure EVIL!

Review Response:

Shumina: Thanks very much.  Wow.  You really read between the lines!

Vladimir's Angel: Thanks for all the reviews – glad you liked, and I'm glad the wibble review got through OK.  You were really mean to poor Raz the other night, though – has he come out from beneath the pizza box yet?  Yeah, I know he was nasty in that chapter, but I've definitely had a change of heart recently: I like my Raziels evil. : [

Shadowrayne: Erm . . . thanks *blushes*  There.  I've added now.  Are you happy?  And how long are we gonna have to wait for Paradox? *starts pacing*

Silmuen:  Stop jumping, woman – you're making the screen shake! And I'm afraid I haven't had time to be bored recently – the shipment must have got delayed somewhere . . . hope the exams are going well. ; )

AmuseMe: Thankyou very much.  Yeah, I think I'm starting to get to grips with this whole sadistic vampire thingie . . .  And I think I know what happened to your reviews – all those submitted on the 4th were lost due to 'human error' . . .