Chapter 1: Prelude
Hell was here.
He used to be a man.
He used to be human.
But they turned into a beast.
There wasn't a man, nor beast, that was ever expecting to come out alive from these walls. He had been residing in this cauldron prison for the longest time he could remember.
He had been here ever since he came into this world. He was here from the very beginning. This was his world. This was the only world he knew up to this point.
"Time for lunch," the prison guard who took care of him most of the time said as she slowly approached his cage. The cage had bars made of orange bones. The prisoner was currently alone in his cell. This hadn't been the case in a long, long time, since it wasn't unheard that the manager of this hell prison would keep a dozen prisoners in only one cage. This was exactly how it was here up until a few days ago, right before the other inmates with the prisoner had been taken by the guards to be used as living ingredients for the next witch's brew made in the village surrounding the prison.
His turn was eventually going to come again. "Don't worry, it's going just as good as the last time," she told him, attempting to reassure him without truly trying to. Especially as she showed up with this half-cooked and decaying chicken in the dirty plate she had in her hands. The prison guard was a young woman. She was twenty-six years old, and she was seen wearing a rusted armor set that ended up being pretty revealing. She had the shoulder plates, the armored boots, the gauntlets, the helmet, but didn't wear anything else outside of a skimpy two-piece bikini set made of cloth. This was most likely the case, since she wasn't exactly prepared for any forms of battles on a daily basis. Only cruelty and hurting the already weak and poorly-fed prisoners.
The guard had sapphire blue eyes and long blonde hair that reached down to her big butt. The skimpy bikini top she wore did an awfully poor job at containing her tits, which continuously resulted in having them jiggle around whenever she moved.
Once again that evening, the guard tried seeing that one prisoner in the cell, coming closer to the bars made of bones, and she still couldn't see much. The interior of the cage was so dark she couldn't see the prisoner. The only thing she could make out was the vague shape of his shadow, of his silhouette in the darkness.
"There you are," she said, relieved to be able to find the shape of his body in the dark. There was a torch to her right in the corridor outside the cage, but it didn't do a decent enough job at lighting anything. "So, you don't want to speak to me tonight as well? How boring is that? Anyway, I'm leaving your meal here. Down on the ground. It's up to you to come to eat or not," then, as she was about to delicately placed his plate down on the ground right in front of the bars, she smirked, thinking of something a bit more amusing to do. She paused for a few seconds. Then, the next move she made was to deliberately throw his food in the cell, sending his meal flying everywhere, scattered all over the interior of the cage. The prisoner still didn't move. He didn't care.
"Oops," she said, smiling some more.
"..." the prisoner didn't say anything again.
"Still no reaction from you, huh? How impressive. I saw many other men cry and brought to despair when seeing their last meal scattered all over their cage the evening before their execution. I guess you are already dead inside. That's good. That means we broke you all this time you are here. Well, why I can't make out who you are in the dark and that I don't remember you, I have to believe that you have been here for a long time to be this calmed. Anyway," she slowly turned around, closing her eyes and preparing herself to leave the silent prisoner alone for that one last time, "I should probably go now. The others are going to wonder where I went," she added.
Suddenly feeling like the grim corridor of the prisoner was progressively turning darker and darker, she turned her head to the torch to her side, mounted on the wall, witnessed the flame weakening. "Uh, that would be a decent idea to come back later on and fix this. The servants can do it. Oh, and remember," she turned her attention back to the lone prisoner in the cell without turning her head around, "it's not because I'm not seeing you crying to death right now that you won't when I'm gone. You are a weak, fragile and pathetic piece of junk that is going to be dead tomorrow. I want you to remember this as you cry yourself to sleep, disgusting man," she told him right as she was about to move her right foot and moved forward, walking away from the cell.
However, at the last moment, before she could go, a big, massive, muscular, densely hairy arm reached for her right shoulder as she tried slowly and casually moving away from the cage. Without her knowing about it or suspecting what was coming her way, she was suddenly held back. Pulled back toward the orange bones that constituted the bars of the cell. She gasped as it all unfolded. Her back abruptly hit the bars. Hurting her.
"I won't deny the 'disgusting' part with you, but I can assure you one thing: I am not a man," the prisoner spoke for the first time. A deep and growling voice. A beast-sounding voice.
"What the fuck are you?" she asked him, her back still colliding with the bars. Unable to turn around to see what the prisoner looked like, unable to free herself, she began panicking.
"Originally, I was going to follow the instructions of your friends tomorrow and accept my fate to be turned into ingredients for potions or something like that, but you changed my mind."
"How so?"
"You've made me realize just how much I don't deserve to die here with low-life brats such as you."
"It's you, isn't it?" the woman said, panting.
"Uh?"
"There were rumors about one of our prisoners not being a mortal. Being a beast instead of a man. I thought it was all bullshit until now. So, is it true? You were born this way? As a creature?" the guard asked him.
"Apparently," he simply said to her in his deep and nightmarish voice.
"What are you going to do with me now?"
"I don't know yet. The earliest and only thing I remember from my life is inhabiting these walls. Living here. I don't care about anything. Seriously, between you and me, I'm tempted to break your skull.
"... Ugh..." she gasped as he made this revelation to her.
"That would be something I get to do before getting executed tomorrow," he added.
"Either that or I could unlock your cage and let you out. Allow you to escape. I have the key," she told him, horribly sweating and fearing for her life.
"You would do that?"
"I could. If you let me live," she bargained with him.
"But if you are right and that you do have the key on your person, wouldn't it be easier for me to end you now and then grab the key from your corpse right after?" he asked her.
