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"More lessons! Is that all your kind do with their long lives, plot and think! What gives you the ******** right to lecture me!"

He was calming as the words she spoke had punctured through his brain yet he still did not want to speak about it. He could remember the warm nights with her, then the screams, the laughter, the fire and then the morning came and all he wanted was to see her again. His shoulder began to smoulder under his t-shirt, the jeans giving off the slight order of burning synthetic fibres.

"n..n..not at first."

He could feel the heat in his fingers and temples as he spoke, Dagoth's eyes begged Roan not to continue down this path. He did not want to go here, he did not need this and more than anything he feared it deeply.

The two may hear soon the sound of an engine; a motorcycle had pulled up near the garage. Of course, the bearing that had on their conversation was negligible; Nines, when he dismounted in the garage, had one and precisely one destination in mind: he was going to take a shower, to hell with everyone else involved.

"A-ha... and there's the truth, from the horses mouth. About time."

If she'd seemed the SLIGHTEST bit smug earlier... it was a million times more manifest now. Because now she truly was feeling smug. Anger was a great way to get people to tell you things they wouldn't normally, and despite stating he didn't discuss his past, he'd just said in plain english everything she'd wanted to hear.

"Vengeance. I approve of vengeance. So.. wanna set yourself free? You know what you need to. Everything you need to advance in skill is here. You need nothing but time and focus to refine your skills. You have that. But you aren't anywhere near free. Sounds to me you need a choice. The first of many. Interested?"

She heard the motorbike pull up, and idly pressed a button on her mobile as she pulled it briefly form a pocket, then replaced, eyes never leaving Dagoth.
The result? Nines would find vitae in his rooms for after his shower, as well as fresh towels. Jan was as useful as ever.

"Maybe an ally. Maybe a chance to find whatever passes for freedom for myself. Maybe a chance to stave off the same old pattern, the same old boredom."

She shrugged as she answered him, smiling as she watched his reactions. That he'd cooled himself off so quickly was a good sign he WAS learning while he was here. She'd put money on him having just gone berserk if she;d asked what she just had when they first met. Tonight, he studied her in turn, just as she studied him. Idly, she wondered how long it'd be until he started deliberately pushing HER buttons.

"Tainted blood my arse. Just because she was too weak to handle it, doesn't mean we all are. Besides. I have aces up my sleeves, remember?
If either of us is tainted, it's me."

Chuckling at the thought, she tossed her cigarette butt away and spontaneously slit her left wrist with the claws off her right hand. Holding the bleeding hand up, she watched her own vitae pool and flow down her arm, dripping from her elbow onto the grass.

"It's all a game. Just a game. Once you know the rules, its not so hard to play, and the temptations become part of the fun. Resist, don't resist, fall, rise, its even possible to enjoy the sensations without feeling the disease, the dependencies.
Just a game. With living pieces. But the Queen can't ever hold final check against a rival King. For that... one needs a King of one's own."

Her eyes shifted from her arm to Dagoth, and revealed them to be the same colour for once. Red.
What stared at him wasn't human, but nor was it the horror story of his past.

"Care to play the game? You can't win if you don't play."

Holding her hand out towards him, her blood flowed faster, while laughter rested on her lips.

"Still not ready..."

The voice which spoke, in the wake of the flames that had left an ungainly mark all across the lawn, was not that of the female, Roan. It was masculine, throaty and deep.

Of course, it was hard to tell what the figure Dagoth had burned with his outcry WAS, considering the skin was charred to black, lined with cracks and rents, the hair gone and only two eyes opening, whole and undamaged after the firestorm had passed.
The eyes were cobalt blue, piercing.... until they blinked and what reopened were the familiar mismatch of Roan's.

Cracking her neck to either side, she stepped forwards, with flakes of crispy skin falling off her like leaves from a tree, showing normal skin regenerating underneath.

"A temptress simply means an alluring woman. It has no connotation for good, or for bad. I'm not even a woman though, and you assume my end goals so eagerly, Atlantean...

No. You are not ready. Such a pity."

Picking the prone form up, she winced briefly as exposed raw flesh contacted with Dagoth's weight, then carried him inside, shedding all the way.
As her skin peeled on her chest, the burn marks underneath seemed... symmetrical... feathery almost... before healing faded them away.

"You wont be needing any of that, save the last bit."

As Corbin had opened the wardrobe, his room had been empty save for him. Once he closed it again however and sought smokes, Roan had appeared from somewhere, sat in the wicker chair the door had obscured.
She was side on to him, with her fingers steepled while her elbows rested on her knees, but her gaze and head shifted to the side to look at the young man full on, a dangerous smile hiding just behind her eyes.

"You may want to have several cigarettes, in fact, before we get started."

"Play?"

She snorted, while producing her lighter for him to take, recrossing her legs as she did so.

"I do many things, often ghastly, but I very rarely play, childe. Smoke em if you got em, we're going downstairs."

And thus, the way would be led through the marked doors all else had been warned away from, and down to the expected room at the very end of the passage - the holding cell.

"You really aren't, which is entirely the point."

Smoking one of her own, while he finished up his three, she was in no rush and would let him have this pleasure at least.

The cell was different from a day or so earlier when Corbin had finally awoken. For one thing, it now housed a table to one side of the room, covered with a sheet. Under this, indistinct shapes.
Next to it, a fresh bucket of steaming water, and another filled with ice and vitae packs.
And in the very corner of the room, propped against the wall, the over-sized sword Ferago, light playing over it unnaturally at irregular intervals.

The centre of the floor hosted a large drain set into the dip of the floor, and it was over this the anticipated chains hung. Yet despite the gesture made by Corbin for now, Roan made no use of them.

"You know what is about to happen, I assume?"