Page 38 of Captive
"We need to slow it down," Ochrehand urged. "If it tears free so close to his brain—"
"No." Boarstaff's grip remained steady even as Sebastian's hunger responded to the pulse in his wrist. "The transformation can't be stopped now. Fighting only speeds up the breaking." His other hand moved to the bindings at Sebastian's throat. "Feel how it responds, not just remembering, but choosing. The drip of metal from his body has almost stopped, but more still remains, maybe things that can't be transformed without causing permanent damage. Things even the chamber's magic can't change."
Sebastian struggled to focus on Boarstaff's face through vision that wavered between artificial precision and something wild. Something that recalled hunting before improvements, when predator's sight knew no bounds. "Choosing what? I thought your chamber was going to keep me alive."
With a deep sigh, Boarstaff closed his eyes before responding. "Choosing whether to destroy you in returning to its nature, or become something new. Something between what you were and what you could be. It looks to me like the chamber is trying to help you."
The word "destroy" struck deeper than pain. Sebastian had lost components before, his father's artificers regularly replaced failing or outdated pieces. But the chamber's transformation threatened not just his improvements, but his understanding of what he was.
His world exploded with colors he'd never been allowed to see, not the regulated spectrum of mechanical lenses, but something primal. Had the metal somehow tapped into his optic nerve where his eye improvements had left him hours...days...earlier?
"His eyes respond differently," Ochrehand said, her magic probing changes that set Sebastian's teeth on edge. "As if remembering being part of something living."
"Because they do remember." Boarstaff leaned closer, forcing Sebastian to meet his gaze despite instinctive resistance. "Mountain stone isn't dead. Ore isn't lifeless. Your kind made it that way, forced it to mirror your own artificial nature. But ask any dwarf and they'll tell you all about how ore is as alive as any tree, and you don't just mold ore to a shape you want, you listen to it and make it into something it wants to be."
Boarstaff's voice dropped to a whisper meant only for Sebastian. "I know what your improvements do, let you pretend the hunger isn't there, that you're something more civilized than pure predator. That metal can replace everything natural with something safer."
The contempt in that last word made the shivers shooting through Sebastian worse. A sound ripped from his throat, pure vampire, predator recognizing true threat. The guards' weapons snapped up, but Boarstaff didn't even blink.
"Choose," the warchief said, voice intimate as a blade. "Fight what you're becoming and let it destroy you. Or learn to be something other than your father's careful lies."
The world through Sebastian's changed eyes shifted again, showing him Boarstaff's face with terrifying clarity. Every detail his mechanical lenses had carefully filtered burned into his awareness. But what he saw with the transformed eyes was different, softer, more natural.
"The metal responds to his will," Ochrehand warned, her magic crackling. "If he fights it now—"
"Then he dies as his father made him." Boarstaff's grip remained steady. "If he survives, it will be as something your kind hasn't been since choosing metal over magic."
Pain ripped through Sebastian's sight, not from remembering, but from his own desperate resistance. His body seized as the metal fought his will to maintain control.
"Stop fighting," Boarstaff commanded, though Sebastian could no longer tell which of them was predator and which was prey. The warchief's pulse should have driven him mad with hunger, but even that certainty wavered as his vision revealed truths his improvements had hidden. "Your own will tears you apart."
"What would you know about my will?" Sebastian snarled, noblepretense stripped away by pain, hunger, and rage. "You trap me with ancient magic; you force choices that aren't choices at all—"
"I know it's the only thing keeping you alive." Boarstaff pressed harder against Sebastian's temple. "The council just finished discussing what to do about the hunting parties. I came down to question you about them, but this is more urgent. Your body accepts the change. Your components remember their nature. Only your mind fights, desperate to remain as artificial as your father made you."
His father's careful engineering had never prepared him for being stripped bare not just by pain or magic, but by prey that saw through every careful lie. The guards' fear painted the air in shades he shouldn't perceive, their hatred burning through all artificial constraints.
"He needs to choose now." Ochrehand's magic probed changes that set Sebastian's instincts screaming. "The brass tears at his brain. If he keeps fighting—"
"Then he chooses destruction, like every other vampire experiment." Boarstaff's grip shifted from gentle to implacable.
Rage surged past pain and hunger. "I am not," Sebastian snarled, fury fracturing his sight into impossible colors, "my father's experiment." The words came out between fangs fully extended from hunger, his control slipping further with each moment without blood.
"No?" Boarstaff's voice dropped lower, matching Sebastian's hostility with his own. "Then prove it. Show you're strong enough to become more than his mechanical puppet. More than another noble pretending metal makes you something other than pure predator."
The world shattered. Every certainty Sebastian'd been raised with stripped away by prey who dared name truths no vampire noble would speak. Worse, truths his transformation could no longer deny.
"So, choose." Boarstaff's words carried the weight of mountain stone. "Fight what you're becoming and let it destroy you. Or accept that your father's perfect regulation was just another cage."
Pain built behind Sebastian's eyes, not from transformation, but from his own resistance. His body strained against the bindings that turned his own components into conduits for his captivity. He watched the guards' contempt burn in colors his artificial constraints had never permitted him to see.
Ochrehand gasped. "He has to—"
A sound between laugh and snarl tore from Sebastian's throat, making the guards step back despite his restraints. "Has to what? Submit to what prey species think I should be? Let your magic strip away everything that makes us—"
"Makes you what?" Boarstaff forced Sebastian to face not just him but the watching guards, witnesses to his breaking. "Civilized? Controlled? A noble who processes his blood and pretends he's something more than predator?"
New colors blazed through Sebastian's sight as change ripped through his mind. But he saw the truth. His father's improvements had carefully filtered his vision, showing only what supported their mechanical worldview. Metal had replaced everything real with artificial precision. He'd been taught to see himself as something other than what he truly was.
