I awoke. Tough it was hard to call it that since I was never truly asleep in the first place.
Even when all my memories of that time were fuzzy and distorted, I could recall how my father and I were chained down.
They had to use three of their flying vehicles to drag me here.
I did not move from my spot on the cold stone floor. I was in too much pain at the moment. I guess that fighting to stay awake when I should have passed out due to my sudden increase in strength led to this. Also getting shot probably did not work in my favour.
But even if I wanted to move. I wouldn't have had much freedom to do so anyways. I had thick metal chains around my arms legs and neck. my wings were tied to my torsos and even my tail did not escape the same fate. All the chains were reinforced with some holy material that I could not place at the moment. But the energy of it leaped into the room what made all of this truly uncomfortable.
"Gustave! Gustave can you hear me?"
As soon as I heard my father's voice, I immediately sprung up. A loud bang could be heard when I was pulled back by the chain on my neck.
"Dad? Dad, are you alright?"
He was locked up in a cell that was on the other side of the hallway. The path itself was at least three meters wide. I could only see the cell in which my father was kept and the two on the sides on that cell.
"I am, but please try not to move too much right now."
"Why… am I still in this world?"
My father looked at me in confusion. "What do you mean?"
"Why did they not kill me so that I would go back to hell?"
"I guess that they tough that it was interesting how one of their own soldiers was screaming that they must leave a certain demon alone. It might not have been my best move."
He stopped talking as soon as we heard two pairs of footsteps walk down the bath between the cells.
Soon two men and a woman entered my view. The woman was the one that was originally from the search party that my father participated in.
I did not recognise the man, but he was carrying Ruben. The man that I had practiced healing magic on.
"You're in luck demon. We managed to find your toy."
The woman spoke in a could tone and opened the cell. The man threw Ruben in the cell with me.
As soon as the man realised that I was here he screamed so loud that his vocal cords broke. Coughing on his own blood, he tried to get away from me as far as possible, but he could barely move his limbs due to my experiments.
"I am sorry that we had to kill your friend that was guarding him. But we currently don't posses the resources to trap two demons. I hope that you can amuse yourself with him until we decide what to do with you."
She turned around and accompanied by the unfamiliar man she walked away.
"Remember demon we will be back tomorrow."
My father stared in shock at the disgusting piece of flesh and bone that just so happened to have taken the form of a human.
"Is that…"
"That piece of shit that left the totem? Yes."
"Please, please tell me that you did not do this."
I did not respond and looked away. It was not that I felt guilty. Not at all. But I was scared that my father was disappointed in my actions.
"Gustave look at me and answer me! did you do this to him?"
"Yes! Is that what you wanted to hear? Yes, I trapped him in the ruins, broke is face, dislocated his joints and fused his flesh together in a way that would never allow him to properly move again. and guess what I was also planning to completely destroy is mind and rip out his soul. I just happened to run short on time."
"But why? How am I supposed to deal with this? I am really trying to tolerate this. I truly am. But now I just don't know what to do. I know that you can't help most of this. And I understand that you were angry. But… how many more people have you killed, tortured, or even eaten? Just… when did I raise a monster?"
I did not know what to say. I was confused, scared, sad and in pain. From the verry start there had been no one who was able to tell me what was going to happen to me. There was no one that could have prepared me for the way my mind body and soul would twist and change. I had been trying so hard to still remain good, or at least neutral. And I thought that I had succeeded. Was it still not enough?
"You're right I am a monster. I am not a human anymore, so please don't expect me to act like one. But know that I am trying. Tough that is probably just my own arrogance. I made human friends and try to cling to you because I try to preserve what is already lost. I don't gather an army of my own to take over one of the mortal worlds because of self-satisfaction. To live forth in the delusion that I am better than the other demons. But I think that is enough, and that's really all there is to it. there is no longer a point in despising me by human standards, because in the end I am a completely different species now."
I turned to the man that was squealing in the corner of my cell. In one swift motion, I sliced open his neck with my tail. He no longer had to suffer, and my father no longer had to bear witness to that.