The Demon’s Savior

Chapter 3. The Enemy who Saved Me

Skaris

Strong confident arms took him in a cold embrace and moved him gently somewhere far away from the sun. In the dream, he was back at the ice palace in the underworld when everything was still right when he was still right. 

Somewhere in the actual world, someone touched him, yet he almost didn’t feel it. He was so used to the constant beatings and the sound of his own breaking bones which healed overnight just to be broken again with the coming of the scorching sun, that he no longer was able to distinguish the difference between a slap and a caress. 

He didn’t care, he had stopped caring years ago and there was nothing they could do to him that would ever make him fear them anymore. The numbness of his soul was his only haven and he was ready to submerge back in it the moment the new portion of pain came to life. There he was safe again; there he could dream of being free and proud, and someone else entirely.

But this time no pain followed the touch. His drifting mind registered the rattling of iron chains and the smell of fresh food - nothing heavy, just some steaming root soup, taking him back in his childhood when he had hated such breakfasts with all the passion of his youthful self.

He sighed silently, wishing of nothing more but to be back there, to be small and innocent again in a time when they were all innocent. 

Darkness, he needed his darkness the same way his physical body needed the air to survive. And there it was, a black fog clouding every rational thought, eating away the physical pain, swallowing the blinding light of the hateful sun and the burning kisses of the leather whip. He was finally back, submerging even deeper - to the darkest corners of his own mind where there were no memories, no thoughts, no shame, and guilt. There was only him, sleeping for eternity, not even praying to be dead anymore. For a sinner such as himself, an escape like death was too easy.

When he came back again to consciousness sometime later, a dull pain throbbed at the base of his skull. The pain was coming from the inside, however, opposed to the one on the surface with which he was so used to. It was odd to feel such pain, to feel anything at all, yet there it was – a deafening throbbing, a thump-thump-thump, which brought an entirely new kind of numbness.

With the headache came the tiredness. Suddenly, he was so tired he could barely breathe. It was such different tiredness from the constant exhaustion of the beatings and the burnings and humiliations. 

No, it was something else. His mind was scattered like dust in the air, no coherent thought able to make it through the veil of indifference and physical weakness, and yet he knew he felt something different.

“Shh…” He heard someone’s soft humming, and then another touch followed, as gentle as the first one. A change in the air currents and the smell of mountain fields and frozen lakes made him go back to the dreams he thought he had long lost, and he could think of nothing else before closing his unseeing eyes back to the dark.

“… and you know what, I think the poor woman was the victim of this story. Can you believe these crazy humans with their stupid anecdotes?” A male’s laughter reached his ears before a long pause and a sigh took its place; a change in the air again - the male walking away, speaking to himself in a lower voice, full of regret and despair. “Gods, what am I even doing here?” 

If he had the will to care, Skaris could have asked him the same thing. But the fog came back, uninvited this time, and he was long lost before he could utter a word.

When Skaris finally opened his eyes, gods only knew how long after this, he did so unwillingly, desperate that he was lured back in the reality of pain and humiliation, in the world where he was stripped of his free will and honor and even the basic dignity to be granted a swift ending was taken from him.

The first thing his tortured mind registered was that he no longer was chained to a wall in the cage he had spent his last years in. This place was bigger, cleaner, and most importantly, it did not have any windows. It was poorly furnished, however – a small cupboard, a wooden chair, the bed he was laying in, a nightstand where a single candle did not do a very good job at chasing the shadows.

Skaris was no fool – he was neither free nor safe. His hands and legs were tied to a bed now, opposed to the wall he had gotten so used to in the cell. His open wounds still hurt like hell, but a new kind of sensation was added to the hurt – the pain was dulled, the wounds itched as if they were… healing? Not caring about his physical condition, Skaris continued to observe the room from his unadvanced position.

The air smelled of root soup, cheap candles, and herbs. A man was standing near the cupboard, a large male with brown braided hair and dressed with old, worn-out clothes, his back facing Skaris. The male was one of physical strength, with a strong built, and if he was not as tall as he was, he would seem clumsy and stocked. This one here was lean, wiry even, not an easy opponent for someone as weak as Skaris.

The stranger was humming something, while he made whatever concoction they were going to use on Skaris in their desperate attempts to make him speak. Didn’t they know that would never happen? Did they really think that bringing him here and poorly patching up his wounds could change his resolve, that after everything he ever endured, he would speak now because of some new poison they’d feed him? 

Skaris tried to lift his hand but failed miserably. Pain and exhaust slid through every bone in his body at this pathetic attempt to move after so long.

Something more, he found it impossible to move at all and somehow the realization made him scared beyond any reason – it was not only the chains, attaching him to the bed, he was not able to even lift his finger. No, he couldn’t allow it to happen. They could torture him as much as they wanted, as long as he was not present, at least as long as his mind wasn’t there. When he was in the darkness, it was easy. He could just exist there, a soul detached from a body that was no longer his. But it only worked when he was so beaten up and weak that he was not able to think clearly. Awake was bad. Present was bad.

The fear was so irrational, it almost overwhelmed him, and the low squeaky sound he made, made his heart stutter in horror. He had more terrible things done to him, and he never wavered, because he knew he would take his truths to the grave. Yet, being here, for the first time in ages not knowing what was about to happen, brought him back to the edge of the abyss – a place he believed he was no longer vulnerable to. 

“Oh, so opening your eyes is a thing now, huh?” The deep male voice brought his attention back to the stranger, who was looking at him with his sad grey eyes from across the room. “Still no words?”

The male approached him, his big strong frame playing with Skaris’ resolve. Who was he? What did he want? He... Skaris felt his breath not able to escape his throat, his eyes widening with the realization that something awful was about to happen. Then he finally wrapped his mind around what was actually wrong in the picture. This male was not like him. His golden-brown skin and sun-kissed cheeks could never belong to a demon, who due to the blue in their blood and the fact that they lived mostly at night, were always so pale and allergic to the sun.

This one here was an elf. Kabirian maybe, judging by the way the air moved around him as if it was liquid, a nature’s whisperer no doubt. Skaris had met only one of their kind a long time ago, just before his existence turned into hell, but he remembered how the world seemed as if it was existing because of him, how air danced in invisible currents around him and the moon and stars looked as if they all pointed at him in adoration. Something about the male here was so similar to the other one.  

The Kabirian elf finally approached him with his bowl of poison and a spoon. Oblivious to Skaris’ internal fight, he tried to feed him some of it. Skaris, who was not able to move, who had forgotten how to speak, knew he could not fight him. He was terrified, feeling like an animal trapped and waiting to be slaughtered for the amusement of his captors, but remained helpless to fight back. So broken, so tired. He knew it was not right, it was not possible… yet…

“Listen, you cannot refuse me” the Kabirian whispered close to his ear using his native tongue, the one of the Euphyr demons, letting the words flow like a river out of his mouth. How did he manage to come so close to his face without Skaris realizing it? “I can’t help you if you don’t help me, alright? So, please, don’t fight me anymore. You need your strength back if you want any chance of escaping”. 

Escape? What kind of new torture was this? Skaris could not escape. He was cursed to stay forever in this one tower, bound to the Sefth family forever, paying for his sins with pieces of his own skin and soul. If he ever tried to escape, his soul would be scattered to ashes. All dreams of redemption would be gone with it.

There was no hope for him, no way out. Thus, there was no need to fight. Why fight it when all he could do was lie helplessly on the bed, while somebody else was in control of everything that he was? Skaris gave in once again. He stopped fighting. He stopped trying to move, even stopped breathing. Oblivious to the male pinning him back to the bed, forcing the watery substance down his throat, all he really aimed at was to fall back again into his sweet darkness and forever forget he existed. So, he waited.

Numbness did not come back.

When Skaris opened his eyes again, it was day, he knew it by instinct, even though he didn’t see the light. It was odd not to feel the sizzling pain of the sunbeams tearing through his skin, turning it into ashes. Even odder, the physical pain had almost completely faded away. He was still in the bed, his limbs still tied to it, but he sensed them stronger if still not feeling them as his own. 

The Kabirian male was nowhere to be found and the room suddenly felt empty without him, which was stupid of course – Skaris did not need this traitor of his own kind for any reason whatsoever. To his amusement, he found out he was finally able to move his fingers, he even managed to clench his fists and lift his elbows. 

The effort made him dizzy, small drops of sweat falling on his forehead, his limbs trembling. Of course, there was no way out of the chains, but when he looked at himself, he could not believe what he was seeing, and not feeling. On his wrists, under the iron shackles, some leather straps covered the white bandages as if to prevent the freshly grown skin from breaking under the chains again. Why were they doing this? Why were they letting him heal if they were going to break him later? 

Skaris laid his head back on the soft pillow, soaked with the smell of lavender and some other clean herbs, trying to gather his thoughts before the fear could grip him in its fists again. It was still there, of course, that lingering sense that the pain and humiliation would start any minute, that this time he would break, that they would make him stay awake through it all. Yet somehow, beyond any chance, Skaris tried to push it back, to shove it in the corners of his mind. His heart was still beating so fast it would break his chest, his nostrils were so wide open, but barely able to pump enough air to his lungs, his whole being was starting to shake uncontrollably and it was so f*****g hard to focus through the sheer physical horror of all this.

He closed his eyes and tried to remember. Now he was in a room on a bed and in this very moment, in the now, no one was hurting him. The memories were shoved back behind a door in his mind, a thin, shattered door, but it held for a second. Maybe he could work with it. He had to, the gods knew he had to. 

He needed to look clearly at his situation, as a new opportunity might never come again. He was alone for the first time in what felt like decades and he felt being stronger with every second, his demon ability to heal faster, of course when allowed to heal, was still intact even after so much suffering. Maybe there was a way out this time, not out of the tower of course, but… if he played it smart, if he made the stupid elf believe he was willing to cooperate, the male would trust him enough to remove the restraints. And if that happened, Skaris would finally be free to take his own life and end this pathetic existence once and for all.