’Huh? What’s that smell?’
Then.
Pain.
The boy curled up into a ball on the floor as pain gripped his entire being. It felt like someone was tearing him apart and stitching him back up.
’What’s happening?’
He grabbed his head and flinched when he found two horn-like protrusions sticking out of them. Out of confusion he grabbed and tugged at them to see if they were real.
’What... happened to my body?’
His eyes snapped open as he looked around the prison block lit by a lone flickering tubelight.
His eyes widened in shock and horror.
Death.
There was death all around.
Half a human head hung from its neck by a thin strand of flesh.
A beheaded body of a woman frozen in a permanent fixture of rejection to what had happened to a child split in half right in front of her.
Thick dried blood on the floors with slimy stains of pulverised flesh all around.
Walls turned into fleshy extensions of rot and death.
Grey worms visibly squirmed all around, spreading from body to body like a plague.
’...where am I!?’
"Wake up Nyechistyy! It’s time for your daily penance!"
His body flinched at the excited voice, as if by hardened instinct.
’Nyechistyy? Why did my body react to it?’
’Isn’t my name-’
’Wait, what was my name again?’
CLANG
CLANG
CLANG
A sudden noise called the boy’s attention to the demon approaching the cell door while striking the steel bars with his baton.
His foot stepped on a corpse near the cell door before sinking straight into it. But the demon didn’t mind. He lifted his leg, walked one more step and stopped in front of the cell door.
In one of his hands was a tray carrying sludge.
His other hand, holding the baton, raised as the nails extended to form a strange thick key that he stabbed into the cell door.
The lock opened with a gut wrenching click.
An instinctive fear gripped the Nyechistyy as he hurriedly pressed against the blood soaked stone walls of the cell.
’Why is this body so afraid of him?’
The prison door opened with a squelching groan as the Nyechistyy froze, his eyes automatically looking down at the red floor, not daring to meet the Warden’s gaze.
"Good... no eye contact today. It seems like you’ve finally understood your place in this world." the Warden said, walking up to the Nyechistyy, his feet equally red with dried blood.
"Just like the toy I’ve always wanted..." The Warden’s baton moved, gently at first as he caressed the Nyechistyy’s face with it before he stabbed it straight into his teeth.
"Do you need these teeth? I just realised they don’t suit you very much... How about I rip them from your mouth... one... by... one. Wouldn’t that just be so... wonderful?"
The Warden paused, then smirked as he spoke again, "I bet I can do it everyday..."
The Nyechistyy stared at the floor in silence, confused about what was going on entirely.
’Everyday? Would his teeth regrow?’
"Huh? What’s gotten into you today? Why aren’t you biting back?" The Warden asked as he twisted his baton until it was speared the Nyechistyy’s chin and forced him to look up.
He felt like the Nyechistyy was ruining their usual play, and along with it his mood for the day.
The Nyechistyy’s eyes flinched before shutting tight as he clenched his fist.
"Are you pretending to be afraid?" the Warden asked with a frown that reflected his disgust for the act, but the Nyechistyy didn’t respond.
WHAM!
So the Warden slammed the tray of sludge into the Nyechistyy’s face.
"OPEN YOUR MOUTH YOU FILTHY HALF BREED! I’M ASKING YOU A QUESTION! CAN’T YOU HEAR ME!?" The demon shouted as he forced the Nyechistyy’s head back and-
BANG!
The Nyechistyy’s scream echoed through the prison as his head was bashed against the wall.
Together with the pain came memories.
Memories of a new life, of a life he was sure he had never lived.
A life in which he was called Nyechistyy, a half blooded demon in demon tongue, by nearly everyone.
A life that was filled by pain, humiliation and suffering at the hands of the Warden.
The Nyechistyy’s eyes suddenly snapped open as he glared at the Warden with simmering anger and hatred.
The tray clattered to the floor as the Warden’s pale face split with a grin, his cheeks flushed as his breathing grew heavy.
"Yes..." the Warden hissed in glee.
"There’s that look on your face..." the Warden said, matching gazes with the obsidian pupils he had seen so often.
"That’s how you look at someone who has a finger over your life and death..."
The Warden raised his baton and then–
SLAM!
SLAM!
SLAM!
-thrashed the Nyechistyy, repeatedly on his head.
The Nyechistyy’s vision flashed as he got hit repeatedly, he threw his arms up to block them to no avail since the Warden grabbed them with his free hand and held them out of the way.
"HAHAHA~! It has only been a day, but how I’ve missed the feeling of seeing you squirm in pain~!" The Warden roared with joy as he began enjoying the daily beatdown once again.
As if this reward was bigger than any other reward he could get for feeding the Nyechistyy everyday.
The humans in the other cells howled with joy as well.
They seemed to have already lost their humanity.
"More! Beat that filthy half blood more!"
"Bash that bastard’s head in!"
"Get ’em! Smack his nuts! Grind it!"
"Spit on him! Piss on him! He’s worth nothing but his weight in shit!"
The Nyechistyy simply balled up and tried shielding his head between his knees.
His new memories told him exactly how this would end.
The beating would stop before he would have to crawl and gulp down the filthy sludge on the floor if he wanted to survive without starving.
Before his body would heal everything and then it would all repeat again the next day.
BANG!
Suddenly, the Nyechistyy heard a loud sound that sent his ears ringing as the dried blood, a frozen fixture of the prison cell, was sent flying everywhere.
The Warden stopped hitting him as well.
The Nyechistyy squinted while barely keeping his eyes open as he spotted sunlight streaming into the prison block for the first time in seventeen years.
He looked up and saw an expression he had never thought possible on the Warden’s face.
The Warden looked aghast.
He gulped audibly before whispering in the ensuing silence of the explosion, "Humans? But... how!?" the Warden exclaimed before sparing the Nyechistyy a short glance as he realised something terrible.
’’He’ is going to kill me if this piece of filth dies.’ The Warden thought.
The Nyechistyy craned his neck and looked in the direction of the light and to his surprise found an entire chunk of the wall missing, as if a cannon ball had ripped through it and destroyed everything, yet there was no sign of a projectile.
The Warden’s eyes suddenly widened as he noticed a dark hand climb into the hole in the wall.
"Get out of here you bastard!!!" The Warden shouted, running straight out of the Nyechistyy’s prison cell, kicking a corpse along the way and leaving the door wide open as he raised his baton to attack the intruding human.
The Nyechistyy’s mind whirled with possibilities.
Firstly he had transmigrated into this deathly place. And now he was presented with an opportunity.
’A coincidence?’
The Nyechistyy’s eyes tracked the Warden as he stepped close to the hole in the wall to smash his baton on the intruder’s hands to send him crashing back down.
But at the last second the intruder’s hands pushed up and grabbed the Warden’s ankles, intending to pull him along.
"Leave me alone you filthy bastard!!!"
The Warden pulled back and tried to free himself from the human’s grip but the human held on, even as the Warden used his baton to thrash his hand.
The Nyechistyy watched all this happen with cold eyes. He dropped his scared boy act. He let his hatred simmer as his fist clenched with force enough to dig his nails into his palms and draw blood.
’This is my chance...’ the Nyechistyy thought sharply as fresh blood painted the prison floor.