Years dont’ mean much when you’re immortal, but that doesn’t make spending a thousand of them in a case not too much larger than you need to stand int standing any more tolerable. But it does give some perspective. Obviously could in fact, have an ending… steak in the heart, trapped in sunlight… but being raised with the perpsective sets the mind on a ceratin timescale. Patience — less a virtue, and more a basic tenet. If anything could be described as a 'virtue'. Since he's evil.
The capture had been inauspiciious, even though it woudl have mad ea better story if it had been. Like so many dumb accidents in life, it was a momentarly lapse in judgement, combined with terrible timing. was asleep when it started, so this is mostly pieced together from detials he'd inferred, or backed out (in the pnenty of time he had to think back on such things). Best he could tell, ^H^H he'd been making the trek from Romania to the "holy land", disguising his entourage as members of on of Pope 's cruisades in . War zones always proved ruitful for and his kind, and this one didnt' show any signs of letting up. His family encouraged him to travel the long way around and in an ironic moment of impatience (mabe we do a thing here where we discuss the dichotomoy of patience and impulsiveness here, like a little morality play!). he chose to tralve thorugh istanbul, and hte dnagerous isthmus crossing, where he'd need to be interred in soil of his own bringing in order to cross the water. There must have been a screwup during the crossing, , because instead of waking to his people. pain as the lid opened. the cruisaders who opened the lid knew immediately what they had found, and were careful to <blah blah blah some shit about setting up at midday, wakig him, blah blah blah. not meant to be about the capture.>
This group whisked him back to what he could only assume was the vatican. The cage, he was separated from the rest of teh room by a moat or some shit. groups would come by and interrogate him on occasion, or whatever. Over the years, not much changed… there were periods when priests appeared to take a strong interest in him and his physiology, and other times where he thought perhaps they’d forgotten him to the cobwebs. The most notable thign was how the teeth seemed to get better year after year – rotting, brown, and yellow slowly gave way to white and straight, at first he thought perhaps his bretheren had infiltrated the order, but then with disappointment figured they must have finally developed better health measures.
The interesting thing came [x] years into his captivity. The grups coming by began dousing him in holy water. Small splashes, whcih felt like fire on his skin. Like a fiery hot knife being plunged into him with each douse. This became a regular thing, week after week. Initally, he assumed it must be some new breed of torture the church had devised and were simply playing. The grim faces of the priests who did the work said otherwise, however. They also were taking notes on his reactions to each vial. This didn't make sense until partway throgh the third week's batch… a dose hit him, and instead of feeling like (use knife metaphor here)… it only felt… /wet/. Braced for the pain, almost started in surprise. Faces went from grim to aghast, and notes wer furiously scribbled in tomes.
<how do we get from here to him realizing that they are testing the water?>
Slowly, week after painful week -- he neve rhtought possible, his skin had actually begun to blister and crack from the continuous assault. It began to dawn on him. They were /testing/ something. And not him. He was simply a litmus paper for a larger experiment -- a being of pure evil, only impacted by holy water, /real/ holy water. They didn't trust some of these phials to have real holy water in them!
What could cause that? And how woudl they not know? If priests had fallen from grace, but no one knew… had a new way to pass the time. He began faking 'test' results — occasionally, when a wet splash hit him, he'd gasp and writhe in pain as if he'd been whipped… and, much much more challenging… he'd steel himself against the fire and act as if he'd felt nothing. He wasn't sure what was going on out there, or how long it would be going on, but as long as these fuckers were willing to keep him in here and do this to him, he was willing to ruin their results.