Mistaken for a Returnee

An awful racket awoke the prisoner sleeping inside a pitch black cell.

Crimson eyes darted from one side of the room to the other, taking in everything inside the eighty square foot room and internalizing it with a single pass.

Finger thick metal bars formed four walls and a ceiling inside a musty cellar room. While the cage took up most of the room, there was a three foot wide gap between the front of the cage and the fourth wall of the rectangular room.

The cell had only two points of contact with the outside world: a reinforced wooden door that was out of the prisoner's reach, and a small square window set fifteen feet high on the rear wall.

The prisoner could feel the cold light of a violet moon as it shined down on them through the bars covering the small window- revealing a slender human with androgynous features and waist length purple hair.

The prisoner sprang off the cold metal floor of their cage, fleeing the light and pressing their back against the wall beneath the window. Where they found comfort in the cold embrace of the shadows.

Darkness was safety; Darkness wouldn't hurt you; And by placing the light between themselves and the door, they ensured they were nearly invisible to those on the other side of the light.

While their body was safe from exposure. Their mind was racing through the possible reasons for the noise.

Was the warden coming to torture them again? Unlikely. The warden hadn't paid any attention to them since they were marked as a failure.

Were the guards sent to retrieve one of the other prisoners? Again, unlikely. They were in the old ward: a place where only failures and rejects were sent. The people deemed unfit for the Baron's experiments.

Maybe some demons were sneaking in for a moonlit snack? Even more unlikely. The extensive genetic modification inflicted upon each of them had turned their flesh and blood toxic. Not even the hardiest of demons could take a bite out of them without paying the ultimate price.

So, that pretty much ruled out the demons coming to collect one of them. So then, what was with all the noise?

The prisoner slowly stood and moved around the cell until they could see the moon through the tiny window.

They could hear loud noises, yes, but something was missing. Something they'd grown so used to hearing that its absence made them feel a little sick.

"Maybe…" The prisoner got a running start before taking a bounded leap towards the window. Their bare feet pushing off the metal floor with surprising speed, to the point the prisoner became little more than a blur against the moonlight.

They couldn't touch the bars of their cell without a few thousand volts of electricity coursing through their body. But if they spaced it out just right-

Their hands wrapped around the smaller bars blocking the window, while their legs straddled one of the cage bars- giving them just enough leeway to hang without getting electrocuted off the wall.

With their feet placed to hold them away from the bar, the prisoner raised their chin and peered out the window.

What they saw made their long-still heart flutter with excitement.

The incubi who were normally patrolling the perimeter of the building; the ones whose steady footfalls the prisoner used to count the minutes since their imprisonment here. Those demons… Were missing.

For the first time in one million, one hundred fifty-seven thousand, two hundred and fifty-two minutes- the prisoner's cell wasn't being watched.

Was it a trap? A test? Some cruel game the warden was playing?

The prisoner didn't know, and in truth, they didn't care. They were presented with an opportunity to escape this life one way… Or another. Either way, they would die before returning to this place.

They braced their feet more firmly against the wall and removed their left hand from the window. Their pale lips parted, revealing two dagger-like canines- They flinched as their teeth sank into the palm of their hand: black blood bubbled up from beneath their skin as the scent of citrus filled the air.

The prisoner rubbed a generous amount of their blood on one of the bars covering the window and watched as the thin metal began to melt almost immediately.

The prisoner's crimson eyes widened beneath the veil of hair covering their face. "It works!"

They'd thought it would- Well, they'd hoped it would work. But they hadn't had the opportunity to test their idea until now.

They quickly slathered the other bars with their blood until less than half of them remained untouched. While they waited for the blood to do its job, they contemplated how they were going to squeeze through the electrified bars.

It would be an incredibly tight fit. The cage had been designed to hold much larger prisoners than they: each bar had a sixteen inch gap separating it from the bars on either side. The prisoner's thin form could probably squeeze through the bars. But if any part of them touched the bars… Well, it wouldn't be a pleasant experience-

Suddenly, the prisoner heard a loud bang coming from the other side of the reinforced door. Several pairs of heavy feet could be heard marching through the prison… And it sounded like they were heading straight to their cell.

A decision had to be made.

Leave through the window and risk being electrocuted by the bars of their cell. Or wait for the demons to arrive and face whatever 'judgement' they sought to inflict upon them.

The door to the cell rattled as a key was inserted into the lock and the prisoner made their decision.

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A hulking demonwolf and a small army of incubi entered the prison.

While the demonwolf was naked, as most of his kind preferred to be, the Incubi were wearing the uniform of the Baron's experimental division- which consisted of a white cloak with an oversized hood and a pitch black mask that hid all but their eyes from view.

It all started when a half-dead succubi staggered through the portal in the dead of night. It was she who revealed what was happening right outside their doors.

Thousands of demons dead, the Baron's prized machine destroyed, and the same monster who'd wiped out their first wave was responsible for it all.

Now the Crimson Fleet were rushing to prepare their world for an invasion force of unknown size and strength. However, before they could even start preparing for war, they needed to do something even more important to the war effort.

That was the relocation of the Baron's experiments.

The baron Irnal had already lost one of his most beloved weapons and he wasn't about to lose another. So, the demons were rushing to transport anything that could be passed between portals to a more defensible world… And anything that couldn't make the trip, the Baron would sooner see destroyed than land in the hands of those vile hunters.

The prisoners in the old ward were no exception.

Two incubi broke off from the group at every cell they passed. Their disappearances were immediately followed by the sounds of blades rending flesh and heads hitting the floor.

There were twenty cells in the old ward. And the demonwolf commander's face relaxed slightly every time the sound of a head hitting the ground reached his ears.

He stood at the end of the long corridor with his eyes closed and his back against the wall. The only way in or out of the old ward was through this corridor, and it was rapidly filling with the Incubi who'd already completed their assigned cells… Yet the commander had the strangest feeling that something wasn't right.

His feeling was proven correct when the two incubi assigned to cell seventeen returned with clean daggers and fearful looks in their eyes.

"What is it?"

"The prisoner. It's… Uh… Escaped, sir."

The wolf's amber eyes snapped open and he glared at the two demons. "How?"

"It appears to have melted the bars over the ventilation window and somehow slipped between the bars-" The Incubus's voice was cut off as the wolf grabbed him by the throat and easily lifted the six-foot tall demon off the ground.

The wolf dragged the struggling demon into cell seventeen and slammed him against the bars- "AHHHHHH!" The incubus screamed as enough electricity to power a small town fried his body from the inside out.

The wolf ignored the screams and inspected the cell from top to bottom.

It looked no different than any other: no furniture to hide behind; no rugs to hide under; not even a candle to blow out. Just an empty cage illuminated by the light of the moon…

By the time the wolf was finished inspecting the cage, the incubus had already stopped screaming and the smell of his roasted tongue filled the air.

The wolf tossed him aside and grabbed the other incubus, who'd followed them back into the room.

"You're positive this cell was occupied? It didn't die and was already sent to the ogres?"

"I'm positive, sir. I saw it here this morning."

The wolf tossed the incubus aside and, in a fit of anger, smashed the reinforced door into the wall hard enough to break one of its hinges.

"Prisoner seventeen has escaped its cell. You're to spread out and find it before the morrow. Move!" He roared. The incubi soldiers rushed to fulfill his commands. They poured out of the old ward like ants and quickly spread out to search for the errant prisoner.

The wolf huffed irritatedly and stormed back into cell seventeen, only to see the incubus still picking himself up off the floor.

"Did you go inside the cage?"

"No- cough-No, sir. We saw the damaged bars before we could cough get the door open."

"Open it. I need to see the bars for myself."

The incubus nodded, took the key from the dead incubus's pocket, and unlocked the door- The instant the lock was disengaged, the other security measures also ceased to function.

The demonwolf shoved open the cage door and stepped inside- though he was forced to walk with his back hunched or risk hitting his head on the ceiling bars.

He marched over to the small window and inspected the bars; instantly noticing the sweet citrusy smell of the prisoner's blood… except the smell wasn't just coming from the bars.

The wolf sniffed the air a few times to locate the scent, only to realize a moment later the source of the smell was right in front of- A pair searing crimson eyes opened mere inches from the wolf's chest, piercing through the shadows as easily as a burning candle.

The dark silhouette suddenly leapt forward like a starving animal and sank its teeth into the demonwolf's throat; black blood poured into the prisoner's mouth, only to be gulped down time and time again.

The demonwolf grabbed the prisoner's body in a single hand and attempted to throw it away… Only he couldn't. His arms wouldn't move, neither would his legs or neck. His entire body was refusing to obey his commands, almost as if it was frozen in a block of ice.

The wolf could feel his life draining into the prisoner's mouth- The demonwolf felt a blow hit his right side as the incubus he'd entered with- stabbed the prisoner's side with his eight inch long dagger… But instead of releasing the wolf, the prisoner started to drain him even faster.

Eventually, the wolf could no longer support his own weight and collapsed to the floor- inadvertently taking the prisoner down with him.

The prisoner straddled his waist with its teeth still firmly in his throat.

The wolf's eyes fluttered and his mind drifted someplace far away. He was idly aware of the incubus's attempts to save him- feeble though they might be.

The demon was slamming his dagger into the small prisoner's back with so much force, the blade was piercing completely through its torso and sinking into the dying demonwolf's chest. But the prisoner ignored it all, its mind focused solely on the demon lying beneath it.

The warden of the prison.

The reason for it's pain.

Finally, after the longest two-minutes of their lives, the prisoner released the wolf's throat and turned its baleful eyes on the lone guard standing in its way… However, before it could move, the prisoner realized the incubus's dagger was missing- and quickly realized why.

It was still stuck in the prisoner's side.

The prisoner looked from the dagger to the incubus. Then, without breaking eye contact, slowly drew the dagger from its body: slick black blood coated the dagger from the tip of the blade to the finger guard.

Small droplets of blood fell from the tip of the blade to land on the dead wolf's chest- its fur dissolved instantly and the flesh beneath began to bubble away.

The prisoner looked at the unmelted blade in its hand and nodded, "Good blade," they said, their voice hoarse from years of disuse.

The incubus began to back away slowly, never once taking his eyes off the beast in front of him- Then the beast moved: the prisoner's hand landed on the incubus's mouth and the dagger found a new home in the demon's blackened heart…

A few minutes later, the prisoner stepped out of the cell wearing the incubus's oversized white cloak with the hood pulled up to hide their hair. The cloak covered almost ninety percent of their body, leaving only their bare feet and a few strands of hair visible.

"Away… Need to get… Far away..." The prisoner swayed into the wall, their atrophied muscles unable to support their own weight for long…

But the fire in their eyes remained bright. They stared unwaveringly into the darkness as they pushed their aching body towards freedom.

"The portal... Must find the portal."