Water dripped from the cobblestone ceiling. One small bit after another, it fell into a puddle that formed inside the room an eternity ago, and had since transformed much of the ground into a slippery mess, covered with a layer of small algae. The puddle only grew on rainy days, when the ground water rose and prevented the constant dripping from seeping through the cracks.

The only thing illuminating the cell were the two iron-barred windows. One in the upper corner of the cell, up the slippery wall and even if reached, too narrow for people to fit through. The second, in the heavy wooden, metal reinforced door. Through those openings, limited amounts of torch and sunlight entered the room. The only furniture was a slab of stone with rough sleeping equipment and a bucket in the corner.

And inside this room, the worst cell they had for prisoners, Reysha was yawning. Her eyes closed for a moment as her mouth opened wide and lips pulled back. At the same time as her fangs were revealed, her scarlet red cat ears turned and went somewhat flat on her head, giving her a fierce, if bored, look. As her features relaxed again, she was reduced to just the bored part, staring at the person at the other side of the door. The slits of her pupils were wide, perfect to focus prey even at the low light level of the cell.

“I ask again, criminal,” the stern voice of the interrogator echoed, the steady scribbling from a protocol writer behind him. “How was Trebouran involved in your fleeing operation?”

“We had a sympathetic guy with us who threatened his wife in order to force him to smuggle us out,” Reysha answered in a beyond bored tone. “How many more times do you want to hear that?”

“Until you speak the actual truth.”

The redhead’s tone suddenly switched into a deliberately infuriating cuteness, “But what if it is the truth, officer?”

Of course, both she and him knew that it was utter horse manure. They also both knew that, unless he found some contradicting parts between her story and the one Trebby and his wife were telling, he had to work with what he got and let the smuggler run. The couple was unlikely to do anything that would rat the other out and they had years to decide on a story that was believable.

Therefore, the interrogator was pushing on the weakest link. “What did the guy look like?”

“I don’t really know, he was always keeping himself covered and we only met in the dark.”

“Why did he help you?”

“Not a fucking clue.”

“You don’t know what your helper looks like and why he helped you?”

“He had his own ass to cover, obviously successfully, given that you are too shit at your job to find him,” Reysha mocked openly, standing up from her seat on the bed. They had taken her armour from her, leaving her wearing clothes that either were made from or had the same quality as a potato sack. Same aesthetic as well.

As she walked, uncaring about the cold squishiness of the slimy ground between her naked toes, she swayed her hips in a mockingly sexual matter. That her hands were bound behind her back didn’t help.

“You can either believe me or stop bothering me with this shit,” Reysha growled quietly, once she was as face to face as the door allowed. “Seriously, you can go ride whatever guardsmen’s cock you want and leave me alone.”

The interrogator was quiet for a few moments, then apparently decided to play his trump card. “You’re going to be executed.”

This actually hit Reysha as somewhat of a shock. She had guessed a minimum level of detainment until Noir had faded and several years on top of that. After all, the sum total of her crimes was working with a smuggler and missing her loan payments. Everything else were things that society at large and the Church in particular didn’t like, but technically nothing illegal.

“What for?” was the therefore justified question.

“Beats me,” the interrogator shrugged, his guardsman armour, a full plate thing, clinking along with the motion. “The council decided and what they say is law around here. I don’t care why they want you killed, just that I’ll be able to lessen that sentence if you cooperate with me.”

“That so?” Reysha giggled and blinked fashionably a few times, lowering her head to show her cute side. “You should have led with that,” she said with genuine sweetness. Taking a step back from the door, so the interrogator could see her in her entirety, she added, “I’ll be open to give you whatever you want, in that case.”

She didn’t leave any doubt over her intentions when she turned around and pulled down her sorry excuse for pants as best as her bound hands could. Which barely revealed a bit of her naked ass, but even that invitation of brown, round flesh was enough to water the appetite of any grown man.

“Ah,” she moaned and suddenly snapped back. “We Regressians go into heat sometimes, you know… I really need it right now… can barely think… it makes me all mooooody.”

“Crazy bitch…” the interrogator mumbled, under the misconception that she couldn’t hear him if he spoke quietly. With less blood in his brain than in his lower half, he looked around once, to make sure none of his colleagues were around, then grabbed his keychain. The scribe that was with him sighed in a way that made clear this wasn’t the first time something like this happened.

“If she’s one of the really horny ones, call me when you’re done,” the second man said as he turned to leave.

“I thought you didn’t take sloppy seconds,” the interrogator bantered. They had been together in this business for so long, this was just the usual job talk to them. From the official dirty things they had to do to the unofficial dirty things they did to make this job worth their time.

“Usually not, but I was there when they took her clothes. I don’t mind with her,” the scribe was heading for the stairs. “Anyway, I’ll have a quick beer. Later.”

“Later,” the interrogator waved off and pushed the key in. The heavy lock echoed when the iron in the mechanism snapped back. “No tricks!” he warned Reysha.

Horny or not, the interrogator wasn’t stupid enough to think this was guaranteed to go without incident just because the captive had her hands bound. As the overseer of the worst part of prison, he had to deal with a lot of scum over the years. A lot of which, like her, had offered some niceties in exchange for better treatment. If she was going to do anything stupid, the guard would just pull forward the execution date, so to speak.

Reysha seemed very perceptive and honest, however, her face flushing, biting her lips, eyes darting towards the groin piece of the armour. None of the usual telling signs that some irrational mass murdered was about to jump on him. In his plate armour, he would have just laughed at the punches anyhow.

Instead, she backed away, to the bed, where she laid limply and waited for him to come closer. Still a hand on the hilt of his sword, the interrogator followed. If she really was in heat, he wouldn’t even have to try and make her enjoy this. At least if the rumours about catgirls in general were true.

He took one more step towards her, begun bowing down to tug that sack off her curves and see that attractive body in all its glory. Suddenly all of that enticing sweetness dropped from her like ripped off bandage. Reysha’s eyes went wide, her body curled up, only to deliver a forceful kick to the interrogator’s legs, close to the ankles.

It didn’t hurt him in the slightest, the metal plating doing its job. However, what that sudden impact did do was throw him of balance. Torso bent forward, feet sliding over the slippery floor, he was dropping down. His forehead slammed against the edge of the stone slab that served as the bed.

For a moment everything when black in front of his eyes. Sounds became dull, but he could clearly make out a prolonged cackling as the tiger girl showed her true colours again. “By the roots, you’re a fucking idiot,” she called him out. “Who actually believes Regressians go into heat?”

The interrogator had no time to agree with his own foolishness. In his ten years in this post, none of the prisoners had showed this level of methodical vileness. Right now, he had to spend more energy on trying to grab his weapon though.

Something that Reysha let happen, just watching as the dazed guard unsheathed his sword. Even with that weapon in hand, she didn’t feel threatened by him. The impact still left him without proper orientation and she had no intention of letting him get back on his feet properly. The tiger girl launched a simple tackle that threw the half-raised man back off centre. This time he landed on his back and Reysha lost no time seizing the opportunity.

Leaping on top of him, her fangs sunk into his throat. ‘Should have worn a helmet, you ass,’ she mocked him mentally, no time to form actual words as her teeth viciously tore into him. Not just once, that wouldn’t have done it. Trained humanoids, men especially, had a lot of muscles that prevented bites like this from being necessarily lethal. To make sure she got the job done, she needed to maul at him over and over again, tearing out piece by piece and separating tendons and nerves.

Human blood tasted as foul to her as any other food. She had expected the iron, salty taste, but instead felt nausea and disgust as a flavour like five week old rotting compost filled her mouth. Just a tinge of what may have been the original fruit, before the composting, a hint of delicious sweetness, laid under all of that.

A deeply bothersome crunch came along with the tearing of the voicebox. The interrogator gargled and twitched, trying to raise his sword arm to stab her in the side, if only as a final act of vengeance, but Reysha had it fixed under a knee.

Eventually, she felt the twitching under her stopping. With a disgusted, “Bluargh,” she spat out the mouthful of human flesh. She had the desperate wish to clean her tongue. Well, her everything, tearing someone’s throat out was a pretty bloody business. ‘What now?’ she asked herself.

She hadn’t even done this to escape. She had just really wanted to murder someone involved with Apexus’ death. Only now that he was gone, did she realize that she had perhaps felt more for the slime than a simple friendship. She hesitated to call it love, at the very least it wasn’t anything close to the feelings of Aclysia, but for sure did she want to stab every last fucker that had done this to her.

However, she was way too weak for that right now.

‘Well, first step is getting out of here,’ she told herself and looked to the drawn sword. The question was if she could use that edge to cut open her bonds before the scribe, or anybody else, came down here.