It's not.

Cyllian's orders were to destroy anyone who trespassed without leave from his master, and he is very, very good at killing things. His weapons of choice, this time, are a pair of rapiers, one in each hand, long and sharp, which he wields with the perfected ease and proficiency of decades of training. He picked them because clearly he was going to need to be agile and quick to deal with her, and with them, he dances. He may not be able to teleport, but he can become invisible, and he can float so he doesn't actually need to use his feet to move; the end result is that of a terrifying, almost liquid apparition, someone who moves and flows like water, like air, like a hallucination you can't quite know or see except for how it's very, very much capable of slicing you open.

Most opponents would not and did not really stand a chance. The very few who could overcome his near-undetectability tended to underestimate his skill on the assumption that he'd be a one-trick pony, and of the remaining ones fewer still could actually match him on skill and experience. He's been in enough battles and seen enough different ways people can be tricky that he has an answer ready to almost everything he's had thrown at him. He doesn't rely exclusively on sight, his senses are all preternaturally acute, so the mist isn't that impairing; he is very, very good at reading his foes' tells, so he can often know the vampire's intentions from watching her, which means that he often knows whether when she's about to teleport and that she can very seldom hit him with her magic bolts and ensnarements; he is a proficient enchanter, so even when he is hit by something it does not take him very long to break out of the spell, when he doesn't just do it near-instantly. And through all of that his goal is always to cut, kill, and destroy: every move, every dodge and parry, every step is in service of that goal.

He doesn't have an answer to her teleportation, though, and the vampire has a high enough concentration of tricks up her sleeve—higher than anyone he's fought before—that he still has a lot of trouble catching her. If he had his choice of battlefield, if he could leave this damnable place, he's confident he could've done it; and, most importantly, if he were trying to prevent her from reaching her goal he is confident that he would succeed at that no matter what.

But he's not. Cyllian's orders were to destroy anyone who trespassed without leave from his master but he was not ordered to prevent access to his heart; if nothing else, that would've required him to know where his heart was, which he didn't. If the Soultaker were smart (like the General was), he'd have given Cyllian a much more expansive and airtight set of orders, to take Cyllian's best guess of his master's goals as his own, and then he would have no space for choice at all. The Soultaker is not smart like the General was, though, and so Cyllian does not, actually, need to do anything other than try to destroy the vampire, and his movements and dodges and parries and steps are not in service of preventing her from getting anywhere she might want to get and fetching anything she might want to fetch from there.

It's easily the most fun she's had since she awoke. Possibly the most since before then, too, but that's harder to tell, and much of her emotions weren't her own. That makes it quite difficult to tell where her enjoyment ended and the mind control began. Either way, this game of cat and mouse is quite enjoyable, and it's such fun to keep him on his toes as he tries to catch her. She draws it out longer than necessary, even. If he were miserably acting out his master's orders, it'd be different, but he's clearly enjoying himself, too. Poor man's been cooped up in here, bored, without anything interesting to do, for who knows how long. She hasn't had an opponent of his caliber before, and he clearly hasn't had one in a very long time. Iovetra's happy to spend longer than necessary playing with him; it's even instructive, and she's already beginning to think about ways to expand her proverbial bag of tricks.

But he's clearly not trying to protect his heart properly, and so there was really only one way this was going to end.

She's rather sad, when she rips through the appropriate floorboards and retrieves his heart.

"I release you from your bindings," she says, softly, as she claims it as hers. Her smile's turned sad. Yes, released from all his bindings, except this new one that she just made. That she can't release him from.

Cyllian freezes, as soon as that happens, and the feeling of exultation that rises within him is responsible for at least 80% of that reaction. He's not sure where that came from, and he doesn't much care. Now, he has a new master. Or, well...

"Yes, mistress."

Iovetra meanwhile is having a much less pleasant reaction to the situation. Mistress. No, no, absolutely not, ew.

"... Let's go with 'lady,' please," she says, wincing. "Like a, a patron or. Something." It seems crass to make him pretend that she doesn't now kind of... own him, just. Ick. Mistress. No.

"Yes, lady," he agrees, easily. And this time he doesn't have to pretend anyone is being possessed by the ghosts of any animals whatsoever.

He absolutely doesn't! There isn't any hint of any severed animal heads whatsoever!

"Right, so. Uh. I'm inclined to just take you home with me? Unless there's somewhere else you'd like to go?"

"I shall go wherever my lady has use of me."

Ohhhh dear. She reminds herself that it is better than where he was, and that's the thing that matters the most, even if she is. Definitely going to be having some kind of time.

"Home with me it is, then, at least for now. Uh, what do you need to set up a new forge, and how much of, this," and she motions vaguely around them, "do you want to take with you?"

He frowns thoughtfully, and... doesn't answer, yet. Instead he starts walking around, peering at each of the piles he has and making slight humming sounds, looking like he's weighing a lot of things in his head.

She'll patiently wait for an answer. ... And also grab the sword she'd left abandoned, because if she's taking the smith she might as well also take whatever weapons she'd like, while she's at it.

When she comes back he says, "How much storage space does my lady have? Are there any ore mines nearby, and if so, which ores? What would my lady's goals be with the weapons I would provide her?"

"I have a living castle," she informs him, which are about as extinct as vampires themselves are. Their problem was not quite the same problem as vampires, but they've suffered with them all the same. They have no particular weakness to holy magic, but they are very noticeable, and quite immobile. Add those on top of 'associated with vampires,' and therefore 'hated by humans' and, well. They're easy to spot, easy to siege, and often not worth the trouble, even if one can craft wonders with them. It's just more efficient for the aspiring dark lord to instead raise hordes of skeletal undead to do it instead. They can more subtly complete all of the tedious tasks someone might want to have done, and if precision is necessary, well. The Shadow Priestess has figured out how to make spectral servants, now hasn't she. Cyllian is more mobile than a castle.

"Uh - ore mines, not that I've found so far, but that doesn't mean there aren't any veins that could be tapped. Goals, er. I'd like to get better at fighting and experiment with melee weapons to figure out what works best with me? And ask you to please make me a better crossbow. The one I made isn't awful, just. It's not a work of art."

He hums thoughtfully again. "Then I believe it would be in my lady's interests to prioritise the ores first and foremost. Would I be permitted the use of my heart in the forge?"

??? That's a thing??

"If it wouldn't harm your heart or anything, then as you'd like," she says, blinking. Bright side: he basically stated a preference! Directly to her! Hooray!!

"It would not; it permits me to better control and refine both the physical and the magical processes of creating weapons, at the cost of making it easier for someone to find it and steal it." Him? Bitter? Certainly not. "That would also make it possible—or, perhaps the better word is not prohibitive—to alter and strengthen already-existing enchantments, which would make bringing at least some of these weapons a more attractive option. Given my lady's stated goals I believe a selection of different weapons and enchantments would be most useful. I can provide a priority list, if it please her."

"Certainly, but I think that should wait until after we've moved everything. Er. Are you physically capable of touching and moving your heart, if I let you? Because if so, then I could let you use it in your forge or hide it at your discretion." This does of course open her up to him assisting someone else in stealing it, rather like he just did for Foulrot. Really, though, if he wants to leave her service she doesn't see why she'd stop him.

"As far as I am aware there is nothing to prevent me from doing so." Beyond it being an absolutely bonkers idea, like, it'd make it super easy for him to just let anyone steal him if he wanted?? Why would she even want to run this risk????

"Well, then do you mind if we try it?"

"If it would serve my lady." Why would it serve her, though.

She seems to be pretty sure it'll serve her! Here he goes, can he in fact hold his very own heart?

He gingerly accepts it and... nothing in particular happens. No light show, no being struck dead on the spot, and most certainly no relinquishing her ownership to him; she can still feel that she very much owns him.

Alas. She can't get out of having a sapient slave that easily. Oh well.

Iovetra nonetheless nods with satisfaction, and then will in fact take the heart back, because he seems kind of uncomfortable holding it. "Oh, good! Then we'll do both, and you can move between hiding it and using it in your forge depending on the situation."

"Understood."

"Uh... Let's prioritize weapons you think would be very good for me to test out, ones you're particularly proud of, and then we can grab ores? We'll be able to make trips back here if I leave a beacon, and the weapons seem like they're more likely to be stolen. Though I guess visitors here are, er. Rare." Nonexistent, really. Though the beacon might change that.