Chapter One: Endless Torment
When Ryo woke up, his body was dripping with sweat. Frantically, he looked around, trying to acclimate to his surroundings. Yet, like so many times before, there was nothing for him to see, only the dark void. He pinched his thigh roughly for some sense of control, and the resulting pain reminded him he was both alive, and that this was not a dream. Since being forced inside the coffin, it was hard to tell what was real and what wasn't. The nightmares just felt so alive to him, so vivid. Only pain could assure him he was not dreaming.
Wiping the tears from his eyes, he forced himself to take long steady breaths to calm his heart. Several minutes passed before he could finally get himself under control. Ryo wasn't sure how much longer he could keep doing this. His mind felt like it was slowly being pulled apart. Why had he fought so hard to stay alive, if this was to be his fate? Wouldn't it have been better if they had just killed him?
Ryo was sure when he first saw the box it meant his death would come soon. Something deep inside of him screamed not to allow that to happen. When he'd first awoken in the box, it was because someone was punching holes in the coffin's lid. They then put a small door right above his mouth. Which was only opened periodically to shove food inside before quickly being closed. He had tried to plead with whoever was doing this to let him escape, but they just ignored him.
From their actions, Ryo guessed that whoever had forced him into the box had no intentions of killing him, at least… not yet. There would be no reason for them to make air holes for him or feed him if that was their plan, surely. Yet, if they had no imminent plans to kill him, then what were they doing with him? Was there really any need to put him in the box? He was a slave with nowhere to go. Wouldn't it have been easier if they were to just put him in chains like they had before?
His stomach grumbled and let out a long gurgle of complaint, pulling him from his thoughts. The dull pain in his stomach was almost a constant now. They fed him, but it was not much, and it was not often. Before he had tried to bang against the wood and get someone's attention. In response to this whoever held him in the box would either ignore him, or pound on the box and tell him to shut up, so he had since stopped bothering. Between the restless sleep and the lack of food, he was wasting away. How much longer could this go on before he died?
Sometimes he wished that he would have already died. When he thought about it, there wasn't much for him to live for. There was no home to return to, no family that missed him. These people could bury him in a ditch somewhere, and no one would care. Would anyone even notice? Silently, he wished that the people who held him would do just that. If this was to be his life now, he would rather it not continue any longer.
As time went on, his thoughts began lucidly flowing in and out of his mind. Often these thoughts were about the cruel words or sadistic deeds of his master. Other times he remembered his home island, and how the elders had treated him. The last few years had felt like nothing but hell on Illia. It was because of these people that his life had been so miserable.
Ryo hated all of them, the master, the elders, the slavers, and the men who'd imprisoned him in that damn coffin. Every time he thought about one of them, he felt his blood boil. He swore to himself that one day, if he could, he would make them suffer. Gritting his teeth and clenching his fists, he felt a deep rage bubble up inside him.
His anger quickly subsided, as he again realized that this was all a pattern. Every time he woke up he would do the same thing, he would feel the same thing. It was like an endless cycle of torment, where he was both the victim and the torturer. Ryo thought this was far worse than most of the things his master had done to him. Why? That was the question he asked himself the most. Sometimes he would just repeatedly ask it of himself until he passed out.
Ever since his soul ceremony on the home island, everything had been falling apart. On that day he had displayed his soul to the elders, like all the other children. Yet, when they gazed into his soul, the elders called him a demon. He tried to tell them he wasn't a demon, but they never listened to him. Not long after the ceremony, the elders sold him to some passing dark elf merchants.
The merchants then brought him to a port city, where they had sold him to a slaver guild. At first, he'd been petrified of the outside world and its many races. The elders had always taught them that the outside world was a cruel place, filled with savage people, who only wished harm upon the Kitsune race. It was the reason they slaughtered any foreigners who set foot on their island.
Ryo also learned that he couldn't communicate with anyone. They all spoke some strange language he didn't understand. On several occasions they'd tried to communicate with him using hand gestures, but it'd never worked. After a few days of not eating, he finally broke down and devoured the food they gave him. The food had a strange, bland taste to it, lacking the spices he was used to. At that point, however, he was far too hungry to care about what they gave him.
The slavers that bought Ryo had taught him the Illian language, better known as 'common'. This was apparently the language most people in the world could speak. After learning the basics, the slavers put him up for auction. Because he was kitsune, the event had drawn the attention of thousands of people. His race never left the island, so for most just seeing one now was almost like seeing a dragon.
At the auction, the competition had been fierce to purchase him, with the winning bid being nine-hundred and fifty gold pieces. Ryo wasn't sure how much that was worth, but by the commotion everyone made, it was obviously a tremendous amount. The person who had purchased him was a male dark elf, who at first had been very kind to him. He'd taken Ryo to his manor and given him a room and delicious food. The master had spent days teaching him to speak better common, while also learning more about Ryo.
From what he could see, the dark elf was probably similar to the elders on the island as whenever someone spoke to him, it was with the utmost respect. Everyone seemed to either fear the man or respect him. But when it came to how he treated Ryo, it was like the dark elf was a completely different person. The man treated Ryo with care and seemed to love listening to him talk about himself and his race.
The master had also told him more about the Illia, and the other races. It was through the master that he also learned more about what the other races thought about his own. The common folk doubted the very existence of his race, regarding talk of them as nothing more than a tall tale. Still some believe that they'd vanished along with other races, long ago. Other tales were so far-fetched, preposterous, or downright bizarre, that they made him wonder who could believe such things.
An entire month went by, in which Ryo had spent almost every day talking to his new master. He wanted to know everything about the Kitsune and the island. Several times Ryo couldn't give an answer to the man's questions. A lot of what he wanted to know, only the elders would be knowledgeable about. It was at this point, when he couldn't give the master any new information, that things changed.
The following week the man became colder and more distant. Soon he didn't even call on Ryo anymore and simply ignored his presence. For him, this wasn't necessarily a bad thing. He had a lot of time to explore the manor and read from its immense library. Life went on like this for a few weeks until the master called on him once more. Yet, instead of talking, the dark elf viciously strangled and beat him into unconsciousness.
Ryo had tried to resist the man but learned quickly that it wasn't a good idea. The more he struggled and resisted, the more excited the master would become. The dark elf would laugh and strike him even harder until he couldn't resist any longer. As the weeks dragged on, the man visited him more often. He could keep track of time by the frequency of the master's visits. Over time, he'd come to recognize the beatings he received, then would only serve as a warmup for what would later transpire.
The dark elf cut small pieces of skin from his body, for some reason unbeknownst to him. At the end of each visit, the master would use a white-hot poker to close up some of the bigger cuts he'd opened. If the cuts and burns were too much, though, the man always had a priest heal Ryo. A year of this treatment had left his body covered with ghastly looking scars and burn marks. Now, whenever he was unfortunate enough to see his own reflection, the sight filled him with disgust.
When the man wasn't tormenting him, he would call on him at night. It was because of these "love sessions", as the master referred to them, that Ryo grew to hate being touched by anyone. It had become so bad that whenever someone touched him, he would flinch in fear. Ryo often wished he could go his entire life without being touched by anyone again.
When he wasn't serving the master, or being tormented by him, Ryo often found himself outside in the small forest, near the manor. It was the only place he could escape and find solitude, pushing everything else aside. Often he would simply watch the birds fly around the trees, chirping to one another. Their wings could take them far away from here if they wanted.
Birds were truly free, not bound to anything, even the ground. Being a sparrow high in the sky, looking down on the world, traveling across Illia, with no one to bind or control you. Ryo wished he was born with wings, or that he could somehow gain them. That way he could fly far from here, where no one could see or touch him again.
Just when he thought things couldn't get any worse, the master took the very thing that made him a kitsune, his tail. To a kitsune, their tail was their pride, and an indicator of both age and strength. As they became older and stronger, a kitsune would grow additional tails, until they had nine. But getting to nine tails was an almost impossible task. Even the strongest elders on the island only had eight. Having nine tails was almost a legend now.
The dark elf had led him deep into the basement of the manor on that fateful day. Where Ryo was strapped to a wooden table, his tail and ears were removed with a butcher knife. The sheer pain of it had caused him to blackout, but not before he screamed until his throat became so hoarse that he could barely breathe. It had taken him almost a month to recover from those injuries. Without his tail, it was easy for him to trip or lose his balance. Even to this day, he had never fully gotten used to not having a tail.
While he had been passed out, the master had clipped his ears off, too. Ryo's hearing had become noticeably worse as a consequence of this barbarism, but it was still better than most of the humans and dark elves at the manor. With his tail and ears gone, he could almost pass as a human, if it was not for his eyes. Not long after that day, Ryo had tried to take his own life. His attempt failed though, which led the master to place a domination collar around his neck.
The collar forced him to follow every order his master gave him. Now that the slave collar was on him, he had no choice but to live. At this point, he wished death would come and greet him every day. What was the point of living anymore? What did he have to look forward to? Any reason to live had been drained from him. His life had become so wretched, so pitiful, that he felt that he wasn't even living anymore, just going through the motions. Waiting in agony for the time when it would all end.
The day he was placed inside the coffin was after one of the master's "love sessions". Ryo had been called to one of the room's the master frequently used to nap in. Not long after he arrived the master had left the room, leaving him behind on the cold stone floor, bruised and bleeding. Then a large human lumbered in and took him out of the room.
He knew every servant, slave, worker, and knight that worked for the man, but he had never seen this man before. To his knowledge, no one aside from Ryo was permitted in that room. Sadly, he couldn't resist, he was too weak and still recovering from his earlier beating. It wasn't until he was outside of the manor, did he put up a fight. That's when the man had tied a noose around Ryo's neck and dragged him. He swore to never forget the faces of the two men who had put him in the coffin.
Yet, why did he still struggle and fight to live? If this was the end, then wouldn't it have been better for him to accept it? Wasn't this the escape he wanted? Though for whatever reason, he had struggled and fought to live. Was he just too scared to die? Or perhaps this was simply another one of his master's sick games. The dark elf took great pleasure in not only tormenting him but the other slaves. Over the few years, Ryo had spent with the dark elf he had learned a lot, but if he knew one thing for sure about the master, it was how demonic he was.
The elders had often spoken of the demons and the hellion plane, which they called home. From what they'd told Ryo, he'd gathered it was a place of horror and utter depravity. Those who'd made pacts with demons or had hellion blood running through their veins, would spend eternity there in endless torment. The elders said demons could take the skin of mortals and walk amongst them in disguise. If that was the case, then the dark elf was probably a demon. At least that's what he thought.
What if this wasn't all a game or trick by the master? What if he was being sent to someone even worse? Ryo wasn't sure how anyone could be worse than the dark elf. Then again, what if? The thought that this was a possibility filled him with dread. He hoped that he would die from starvation or something else before they reached their destination. It was better to slowly waste away in the box, he concluded, than to endure a life like that.
The wagon came to an abrupt stop, which forced his mind back to the present. Ryo could hear muffled voices close by, but couldn't make out what was being said. Putting his head closer to the side of the box, he silently listened. Yet, no matter what he did, Ryo still couldn't hear anything clearly.
The wagon moved again and, not long after, he could hear several things at once. Hundreds of people seemed to be surrounding the wagon, talking, shouting, and laughing. The rhythmic clicking of the horse's feet on hard stone remained a constant, as it dutifully pulled the wagon. After nothing but deafening silence for so long, a series of fresh sounds overwhelmed him. The sounds were a welcome relief from the void, but they also made him feel sick.
Judging from all the sounds, Ryo guessed that he was probably now in some sort of town or city. After the wagon had traveled for several more minutes, the sound of people became harder to hear. He then noticed a familiar scent, the sea! Where were they planning on taking me? Would they take me all the way here just to toss me into the sea?
The master had drowned him to within an inch of his life several times before; he did not want to experience such a thing again. Just thinking about it made his chest tighten in fear and his breathing become erratic. Then, a grim thought popped into his mind. If this were indeed the end, would it be so bad? Ryo would only struggle for a few minutes more before letting it all end.
He could hear muffled shouting beside the wagon and then, after a brief second, the wagon wobbled violently from side to side. The coffin moved, being dragged toward the back of the wagon. The voices grunted and complained as they hoisted it into the air and unloaded it from the wagon. Rays of light shone through the small holes near his head, blinding him.
After that, Ryo felt the box move for a few minutes before they dropped it. When the box hit the ground, his head bounced off the wooden lid. THUD! The impact caused a sharp pain to form near the back of his skull. Multiple stars exploded into his field of vision, as he felt the world spin around him, making the bile rise in his throat.
Bam! Bam! Bam!
Something hit the side of the box repeatedly. Looking towards the impact, he could see a metal spike near the lid. The spike moved back and forth, splintering the wood. The box creaked and groaned as the spike was driven into it. It wasn't long until they pried the lid off, and the oppressive darkness was replaced by the blinding light of the sun.