Flaying skin from flesh with such precision that light could pass through the layers, only a vampire could be so still with its fingers, and Valentine was no exception. Having captured one of the female sages, she'd trapped her in her room with her limbs tied to a chair. Her magic drained by sucking the blood through her wrist, she spat it out on her neck.

"Rancid and weak." The clicking of her scissors running across the skin of her arm echoed through the room alongside the muffled screams of the sage. Slicing through only the skin of her forearm with the region pressed flat on the chair still attached, Valentine opened the flayed skin like a box. Within it was the pulsing red flesh of the woman, clean as a model made of wax, with not an ounce of blood spilled from her flesh or the veins. "Hmm… I guess I haven't lost my edge after all."

Opening the skin on both of her arms, Valentine undid one side of her top to reveal a plethora of glass tubes being kept cold against her skin. Taking out one such glass, she quickly buttoned herself again and uncorked the small bottle.

"I will remove the gag now, but if you scream," smiling at the sage, she tilted the glass bottle until a single drop fell to the ground. Sizzling like acid, it burned through the tile until its potency thinned and turned into a small puddle of burnt rock. "That will be your tendons. One by one, I will burn them with such precision that you could feel yourself losing more and more of your fingers the longer this goes on, alright?"

As horrified as the sage was, all she could do was nod and try to hold back her screaming. Desperate to be set free, she kept looking at her bind and hoped that the vampire would set her free during or after the interrogation. Ignoring her attempt at pity, however, Valentine knelt by the woman's arm with the glass tube slightly tilted over her arm already.

"Then I will funnel it through your sphincter, then your vagina, your mouth, your ears, I won't do your eyes because I want you to watch how I torture the people you love, but they probably won't need theirs, so it evens out." Looking up at the sage with a big smile on her face, Valentine jerked the gag out of her mouth. The cloth was soaked in blood from all the screaming, and the pressure built up in the woman's gums, but no matter–Valentine wasn't the kind to mind a bit of blood on her fingers.

"I-I'll tell you everything! Please just–" Pressing a finger against her mouth, the vampiress scoffed.

"Not everything, I would've just fucked your mind if I wanted to know your life story. You will simply give answers to what I ask, nothing more and nothing less, understood?" Nodding, her mouth still covered, the woman agreed to Valentine's demands with bloodied tears rolling down her face.

"Who is the Saint Majora?" Dropping all facades, Valentine spoke plainly. "What is their plan with the girl we came with, Glyea? I want to know everything that you do, and if you try to lie, you already know what happens then."

Though she possessed the power to look through the sage's memory, Valentine preferred a more personal approach. One slice through with a razor to reveal the juicy details, dripping as blood and raw as liver. Consumed by fear, the sage spoke what she could, but even she had no idea as to what the ultimate goal was for the saint Majora. Control over the royal throne was only the start of what they had in mind; beyond that, what they would do with that control and power, she couldn't conjure even a guess.

"A-as for who he is…" Breathing heavily, the woman swallowed as Valentine ever so slightly kept tilting the small vial. "D-don't! I mean, I don't know! NOBODY HAS SEEN HIM! O-only Toma maybe, but I don't know!"

"Where does he live?" Getting up from her knees, Valentine corked the vial and slipped it into her jeans.

"The top! The top of the tower!" Now, please let me go!" Shaking the chair around desperately, the woman tried to free herself. In the meantime, Valentine simply watched her struggle, and when it was time, the blood in her veins coagulated into an arm. Tearing and splitting her apart, it gathered in her chest cavity and lifted her body off the ground with the imprint of the fingers visible through her broken chest.

It was instantly dead but with no injury inflicted on the outside. Thus extending her own psyche into the woman's dying head, the vampiress kept her soul from escaping and anchored it within the corpse. Slowly, as the chair went back down, Valentine undid the binds and handed over a steel wire and a needle for the woman to stitch her hands.

As a zombie, she would feel nothing at all, and yet, being conscious within her mind as a forever servant of her tormentor, there was little chance for her to know any rest.

"Tomorrow's meeting, I want you to clear us. I will go and handle the others too, and maybe if you all cooperate, I'll allow you to act freely as a reward. Same body, it won't rot like regular zombies, but I can make it worse, so don't you dare try to cross me."

Fully aware of what had happened to her, the woman hunched forward and stared at her hands. She was alive and dead at the same time; worse, she had no free will as the vampire's influence was gripping cold at her heart. Tears flowed yet again, but not a sound came out of her lips. As Valentine left the room, however, she was allowed the luxury to stitch in the skin on her arm and find a way to hide the crushed cavity in her chest.

Needless to say, stitching herself was painful even in death, but what hurt even more was the sight of her breasts dented into her chest from being crushed by her own entrails. Howling in sorrow like a wolf's low grumble, she wept to her reflection, but there was none to hear or help her. And for what crime was she punished? She had no idea.

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