Every few minutes, a small bell was chiming somewhere. The sun was shining on his face. It did not burn.

Not moving overly much, Aldred cracked an eye, then both eyes, to see what he could find out about his current status.

The next thing he noticed after the sun and chiming bell, was a small, open window directly next to the bed at about waist height. Out of it, he saw a lush forest down below that was verdant and thriving. The type of green things growing in just the small section he could see had not been able to be grown on the continent he had last been on in an eon-- not since the monsters in the cave exploded in a magic blast that poisoned the surrounding lands, destroying the vessel for the voice of the gods and making most established civilizations fall into a dark age.

Sweet breezes blew against his face and bird calls were floating on the breeze.

Only when he slowly, silently, sat up in his bed, did he notice he was painlessly bound by a cuff. His one, slender wrist restraint was tethered by a single, thin chain that was attached to a ring in the wall, made with a metal he was unfamiliar with. It was quiet when it moved and sounded unlike regular metals. It was as light as most fabrics he had worn, which was why he didn't immediately notice that he was leashed. He slowly scooted his body up the bed to lean his back against the bed's headboard.

He was in a room that was clearly separated into two separate spaces, right down the middle. The first side, his side, was a very stereotypically structured, but unstereotypically clean, prison cell. It had several open but small windows high up on the wall and smaller windows lower down, a small but well-made mattress that he was lying on -- which was in excellent shape-- a clean sink, and a clean toilet. He could smell the water in the bowl and in the pipes, and it was fresh and non-polluted and not at all fouled. The sheets on his bed were soft and didn't have lingering smells of previous occupants or the scurrying legs of lice or mites. Overall, the space was breezy and at a good temperature. Small smells of the hands that touched items in the room, to make the bed and stock the soap on the sink, were there, but they were faded and light. The floor, covered in a bland tile, was clean and hygienic. All the walls were a light creamy inoffensive color that did not incite panic for the imagined tortures to come.

It was, so far, the best imprisonment he had endured in his long life. Almost comfortable. As far as he could tell, his body hadn't even been brutalized in his unconsciousness and he was still fully clothed. All the items he had in his pockets were still there.

He didn't have to subconsciously wade through overwhelming stenches.

There weren't even any rats.

Cut in half by what he was assuming was a ward, the other side of the room had another few windows, a comfortable-looking chair, and a workbench of some sort, with papers strewn over the top and tools and materials scattered about it. The only lighting came from all the sunlight that poured inside.

After a thorough inspection, he observed there wasn't a door leading out. Just the windows. He noticed belatedly that they were all equidistant from each other, and all at cardinal points. The even smaller windows at waist height were staggered between the larger ones higher up the walls. It made the room unable to have shadows.

Standing at the bench, with her back to him, was a woman. From his vantage point, he could see she had clear and pale skin, long brown hair that ran the length of her back contained in a braid, and bony shoulders with wiry muscles that were visible from the sides of her tank top. Pointed ears were sticking out of her hair. Her white tank top was worn with serviceable brown linen or woolen trousers, a heavy black apron tied around her neck and waist, and she had bare feet with tiny little claws that matched the ones on her hands. She was a few inches shorter than him and was softly talking to someone he couldn't see-- as if she was being considerate of his sleep-- while leaning over the bench, drawing on a piece of paper. Every few minutes she would stop drawing, and with a long, tapered finger, she flicked a small bell that was mounted on the wall. It was where the chiming noise came from.

She used the same pointer finger to drag up a line on the page, tracing a drawn line he could only imagine was there. "If we can find a way to concurrently, seamlessly spiral the runes around the lace's circuitry, and they are both simultaneously powered with the internal stones, I think we'd see an overall output of an additional one percent. I don't like how it's one or the other. Why have both if it's not concurrent?" She said softly. After her silent conversation partner replied, she softly said, "I know we can do it that way, but if we can merge this part with that one and wind them tighter together, we can manage the flows..." She titled her head, rang the bell, and answered her conversation partner, "...I mean, I'm not against atomic weaponry, but I'm kind of against accidental atomic weaponry, you know? We don't want him to flip an unintentional switch and accidentally turn himself into a suicide bomber with a dirty payload. And I'm not sure he's emotionally stable enough to be trusted with that capability even on purpose yet."

She turned Aldred's way and gave him a pointed look. She noticed he was awake and was watching her. Her expression cleared. "Right. He's awake. Blue scenario B. We can pick this up later."

The woman put down her paper. After seeing that she garnered no reaction from him when she moved, other than his eyes following her, she sat in the chair after unhooking the bell and bringing it with her. She sat facing him and gave him an assessing once-over. She looked over his face, pausing on his mouth--possibly looking for fangs-- then down his neck, over his shoulders, and down his clothed torso. The rest of him was still under the bland-colored -- but supremely comfortable and kindly provided-- bedsheet and light throw blanket. She allowed him the time to do the same to her.

Aldred could tell she was a Shining One, but also a mix of something else. Elvish. That's right. I was following an elf. He looked her over as she had looked at him. His interest was not only in the way a man looks at a woman, but honestly, he was mostly imagining how her blood tasted and gauging how she would fare in a physical fight.

He only noticed after spending a few moments staring at her throat that she had the same look on her face that was, he was sure, on his own.

Like a king sees gold for the taking.

Like a cat assesess a fly.

He decided, purely physically, that she posed no immediate threat and probably tasted delightful, and was intrigued with where she would take his sure-to-fail imprisonment.

They spent a few minutes gauging each other, measuring each other, and making assumptions, all while she rang the bell exactly every two minutes and twenty seconds. She rang it four times after sitting down before she checked her pocket watch and then spoke.

"Green effluvia." She said. "So, then. That's settled." She crossed her legs, discarded the watch and the bell on the bench, and relaxed back into the chair, resting her arms on the armrests. The skin on his unbound wrist began to burn. She smiled a smile of victory and it made his deadened heart beat faster. "As per the laws of your Conclave, established during the initial founding [Bargain] made with the first seated and only declared Sidhe King, let me be the first to welcome you to your new home."

A startled laugh exploded out of Aldred's throat.

---

 

All day long, Max was almost sure everything was going to go wrong. This many moving parts in a plan that was enacted after the first step had already been triggered usually ended up as a catastrophic mess.

Her problem-- well, one of them, anyway -- was that she had well-thought-out plans for even the farthest-fetched scenarios but hardly ever followed one all the way through to completion. Like, say, having her transport trees set to capture trespassers, which was a great idea. Wonderful, even. Instead of locking them all out, or scrambling the transportation magic to explode the ones who tried, they had the ones who were powerful enough to bypass aversion spells and wards transported directly into a stasis pod after a heavy-handed and fast-acting sedating gas was administered. They wouldn't have to do detective work after a breach attempt and instead of cleaning up bloody remnants and meat chunks of those who tried, she could gather them all for questioning at her leisure.

A great idea, until it comes time to use it and there's no prisoner storage that has been made so far. Sure, she had plans. But none that she had followed through on.

Miles had spent the better part of the day ringing the annoying fucking [Bargain] bell, while she juggled people and geomancy and entrapment runes. Miles kept the stasis up and ran the binding spell tied to her little bell, and once she was confident she had conjured a vampire cage that was equally off-putting to all the blood-drinking stereotypes and flooded with sunlight enough to make him piss himself in fear, she took over bell ringing while they trucked this fucker up into a princess tower inside of her prison demesne inside a demesne.

She got the bright idea to Russian-doll her fairylands (she could say that word, dammit... or at least think it in the privacy of her own mind, anyway) the second she realized that they were basically system storages on a larger scale. If Miles could have his system storage while inside of her system storage, it all would work, right?

It did. So she was running with it. Fuck it.

She built an unbreakable-by-her tower in a forest with geomancy, inside of a demesne with an anchor tied to a closet door in the unused and vacant apartment, behind null steel and adamantium doors that only opened for her or Miles or Puppy, which were inside of her demesne tied to the front door of her closed, warded, trapped, and locked potion shop.

Even if this shit-sucking fang-face made it out of the unbreakable tower after breaking containment wards meant to trap a higher demon or an archmage, he'd have to traverse a miles-wide forest that was soon to be filled with beasts, get lucky if he headed in the right direction, find an unremarkable and hidden hole in an unremarkable rockfall on an unremarkable cliff, and then work his way through an anchor that didn't accept him, pass through a shop full of magic-wielding, angry elves with grudges, out of another anchor that didn't accept him.

To be clear in this case, "did not accept him" means the anchors, unlike the transport trees, were set to scramble his bits and blow him into hamburger meat, grind it into a liquid, and spread that meaty spray all over a square mile in a fine mist.

Good luck, bucko. Let's see just what vampires are capable of regenerating from. For science.

All of her worries about the plans of capturing and confining an elder vampire exploding in her face were for naught when the shit sucker himself didn't wake up immediately after they removed the stasis spell. Fuckface kept sleeping like he hadn't violated the borders of her land and panicked her family. Like he hadn't caused a defeated people (who were ready to passively and quietly ride off into the sunset of extinction) to raise up their heads and scream for militantism with a fervor not usually seen outside of a holy war.

Which this totally wasn't one. Just, you know.

His stupid action of stalking Cyrus into a place where he shouldn't have gone and absolutely wasn't welcome had awoken their rage.

And yet, here he was, just sleeping, like he hadn't caused her twenty hours of juggling egos and dreaming up ways to release a nerve gas into his cell that was so potent that all that was left once the screaming was done was a puddle of human-shaped gristle and the echoing sounds of unheard and unheeded cries for mercy that would never come.

She was sure that one would work on vamps, too. It was nasty.

So, while he slept the day away like a pretty pretty princess up in his tower, she moved a workbench into the tower and kept working until he had acquired enough beauty sleep and was ready to finish what he started. She and Miles were going through the last of the inner workings of Hugo's arm when she noticed said shit-heel was awake and eavesdropping.

A muttered, "Blue scenario B," primed the nerve gas. He didn't wake up as a howling, slavering, godsdamned monster, so that was good. She'd keep it primed, just in case that changed. She continued to ring the binding bell. They had roughly ten minutes until the curse was set, and then she'd have her very first prisoner of war on this planet. Just like old times.

After she sat down on the cushy chair that she had placed across from his bed, she looked him over.

He hadn't said anything. Asked no questions. That was good. He was just looking at her expectantly while combing his eyes over her like he owned her.

In all of the pop-culture bullshit she had ever paid attention to, it always mentioned how pretty vampires were so they could all the better lure in prey. She guessed it was true, but after spending a month looking at all the elves, she concluded he was just passable. He had a face like an innocent painting of an angel, with dark almond eyes and a well-defined jaw. His cheeks were round but not too round. He had curly medium-length, reddish-brown hair. He was pale, but not too pale. He was tall, but not too tall.

All in all, a solid 8/10.

No slavering fangs. No bite scar on his neck.

His shoulders were wide, but not muscular. A classic swimmer's build. Compact and powerful.

He was pretty in an "I'm in a nightclub for my first time and want to get railed like a good boy" way. An indescribable, sensual lie of innocence. His face made her think of rumbled sheets, pretty whispered promises, and morning-after laughs and gasped sighs.

His [Charisma] stat was working hard for him. It had to be high.

Honestly, it would have been like catnip to her if he had caught her a few hundred lives ago -- when she had lost her self-preservation but hadn't yet gotten so trigger-happy with death. She would have put her neck in his mouth herself and probably thanked him for eating her. She would have done her absolute best to try to eat him back.

As of right now, she wasn't all that impressed. She had good, pretty boys and girls at home that she could rail and debauch at any time if she were so inclined. She had a still-dead libido after thousands of suicides. She wasn't railing anyone any time soon.

There was also the fact that he was staring at her neck and his only movement was a finger tapping to the beat of her heart.

Four minutes by her mental math. Four minutes and I'm gonna fuck up this dude's whole damned day.

---

Max: What do you think? Is he gonna fight, or is he gonna be a little bitch and whine?

Miles: I think he's deciding if he can take you or not and coming up with the wrong conclusion.

Max: Probably. Is everything in place?

Miles: The binding circle is completed outside the tower. Even if the [Bargain] doesn't take effect, he's still stuck there. Unlawfully, but still. He's not going anywhere.

Max: Puppy? Are you good?

Merrick: Just tell me if you need me. I'm right outside. I've never eaten a vampire before, but I'll try anything once. I'm excited!

Max: I'll let you know if that's needed. Tonight's the night we're taking off the masks completely. I bet it's gonna feel like taking off a bra.

Merrick: Hey, I know this isn't the right time, but before I forget, Thom wanted to watch you cast the runes you've been working on for Hugo's thingy. He said it was cool and he wanted to learn.

Max: Alright. Once I'm done here, I'm going to the forge and working on it. I'll let him know.

---

 

Once her mental timer had kicked all the way down and she confirmed with a watch, she deactivated the unneeded nerve gas and informed this beautiful liar of his fate. She was not expecting laughter.

He was giggling both like a child and an idiot. But she wasn't going to let him harsh her victory buzz. I didn't even have to melt him with the nerve gas. Still locked in for a pacifist run.

"What do you mean, by Conclave law, little one?" He asked it through giggles.

Ooh, his voice turns him from an 8 to a 9/10. Bassy and resonant. Unexpectedly deep. That's nice. Maybe I'll hear it break later when and if I decide to make him scream. Max paused at the unexpectantly bloodthirsty thought. It wasn't usual. Kind of novel. She never relished in the cries of the conquered before. What was new?

Doesn't matter right now.

"I'm glad you asked," Max grinned. She pulled out the papers that listed the laws that bound the Shining Ones and the Conclave and slid them over the tiled floor, through the ward, and to the leg of the bed. "Sidhe bylaws --as agreed to by the Conclave-- say that if anyone, regardless of species, violates the borders of an established and declared mound during a time of declared war or an undeclared but active shadow war, that person automatically, upon capture and imprisonment, has the passing of time it takes to cast a [Bitter Bargain] to contest to their Conclave representative or escape before they become a lawful prisoner of war and agree to the responsibilities of a mound as such. [Bitter Bargain] is usually cast with the continuously timed ringing of a bell for the span of twelve hours so the target knows to object. It just so happens that we declared a shadow war, subclassed economic, on the College thirteen hours ago. You didn't object to the ringing of the bell or it wouldn't have worked to bind you to the tower." She was still grinning. She couldn't stop. She pointed at his wrist which was magically branded with a [Bargain] rune, with a stylized elvish flourish. "I didn't write the laws. I can only uphold them. Do you not know your own laws, sir?"

For some reason, this shit fuck stopped giggling and was full-on laughing. "Yes, I know the laws." He gasped for air, "I've just never seen this side of them in action." He wiped a tear away. "I contest to myself, as Conclave head."

"Well, that sucks for you. Didn't get your complaint heard in time." She dramatically frowned and pointed at his wrist again. "No takesies-backsies. Maybe one such as your august and esteemed self, especially as a Conclave head, should leave polite little elves, who are minding their own businesses and not hurting or hindering anyone, alone in the future."

The laughs slowed. He said, "He was suspiciously polite. It made him stand out." The Caged Beast used his sleeve to wipe away a tear.

Max nodded as if that wasn't a stupid fucking answer. "I'll let him know he should be more of an asshole next time he's out to catch me a critter."

The laughs stopped and he gave her the humoring smile of someone who was condescending to a child. "The fox was for you?"

Max shrugged. "Cyrus likes to bring me presents. And I like getting presents. It's a thing we have. We're bonding as a family." She stopped talking and glared at him. "Are we bargaining question for a question now?"

He waved both hands in the air. "Oh gods no. I've had enough bargains from you for today."

"Wonderful." She nodded and acted as if she was going to stand to leave. She turned her back to him to gather her materials off the workbench.

The condescension was still thick as he said, "I will issue you a bargain, though. If you remove the rune and unchain me now, without me even having to break the shackle, I won't eat and then kill your Sidhe King and the rest of your court. I might not even kill you, but I'm undecided. You're going to get eaten, definitely eaten, yes... but the cell is the best I've ever seen and you've been remarkably pleasant and polite. But if others got it in their heads that I'm easy to capture, all the lessons I've taught people for the past several millennia will be forgotten."

He explained her and her court's demise as if it was a foregone conclusion '... so sorry, couldn't do anything, better luck next time.'

"No can do." Max's grin took a mad and feral angle and she turned in his direction and leaned in as if to whisper. She trailed a finger down the ward. "You know, I was happy for the pacifist run, but holy fuck am I looking forward to this fight. I think I've needed a good one for a while."

She stood up straight slowly and removed her apron. Put it on her bench. She cracked her neck and started shaking out her arms.

She turned back to him, still lying prone in bed. "If you can even break through the binding, which I don't think you can, I'll make you a new deal. Here's hoping you're not all bluster." She started holding a hand up to the ward and it was burning her skin. "Show me what you have. If you get past the wards and out of the tower, I'll let you decide. Escapee's choice, if you will." Her grin was maniacal. She could tell she had taken him aback, but she could not stop the burbling, percolating rage and overwhelming excitement in her. "Do you want to try to take only me on first solo, or did you want to take me, the war golem, and the devourer on, all at the same time? Because if you get past the wards, out of the tower, and out into my inner demesne, you're gonna be fighting all three of us. And if you have the luck all your lost gods gave out before they left or died and you kill us and get past my first anchor, while the three of us are resurrecting and running back to not kill you, but return you back to this exact room, you'll have to fight the half-dozen elves with newly kindled mana wells and access to otherworldly technology, who all want a shot to kill a creature whose kind ate their friends and family." His face was slowly paling as he absorbed all the implications of her truths. "Surprise me, and I'll let you decide the lineup."

The beautiful liar's face went blank. He was still lying in the bed, but he went deathly still and was completely pale. He swallowed.

His voice broke — just like she’d hoped for, and as beautiful as a choir— when he finally asked, "How long has your court been in Central City, fae queen?"

"Ah. It seems as if he's putting it all together, Miles. No fun. He's not as dumb as his fuckboy face would lead you to believe. Such a shame. I was looking forward to the explosive reveal and getting to pound the piss out of him."