[Xerxes food court]
[Underground room]
[A day later]
"W-what."
Rachel mumbled softly as her eyes blinked open slowly, when she finally regained her sense of sight she found herself in a very dark room with only one light bulb fixated in the middle of the ceiling. Her hands were stretched and chained sideways to each wall to prevent an unnecessary escape.
Her legs were clamped to the ground to prevent any movements. "Someone, anyone help me!." She cried for help desperately not knowing where she was.
"Your attempts at escaping is futile, no one can hear you down here."
She kept mute as she heard a voice speaking from the dark corner of the room to her right, it sounded familiar, it was the same dark tone she heard before she lost consciousness, it belonged to Xerxes.
He walked into the light the single light bulb provided and Rachel's body was shaken. As she gazed upon him memories of his unholy aura from earlier was the headline of her thoughts. You could say it left a scar in her mental state.
"X-xer-rxes."
Rachel stammered, he walked forward and stood right front of her. She struggled to break free from the chains but it was pointless.
"You've regained consciousness at an unfortunate time I see. Well can't say I'm surprised I am the one who awakened your will after all."
The evil aura that emanated from his body was not present anymore, the beast Sage magic was responsible for that but as he has no use for it currently the aura has dissipated.
"Why..."
Rachel questioned Xerxes, she wanted to understand his reason for doing this, the reason why he suddenly turned into something he's not at least in her perspective.
"Why you say?"
Xerxes chuckled softly and turned around heading back into the corner of the room he emerged from earlier and dragged a chair out of it. Placing it in the middle of the room which was where the light was focused on he sat down and sighed softly.
"I suppose my actions do require some answers, I am the Beast Sage Xerxes Advent but you already knew that. What you don't know is a Beast Sage is not of this realm. We come from a place known as the dark society, a community inhabited by the most unimaginable creatures and evil. I'm not going to go into details of what it's like but I will tell you this."
He relaxed his back into the chair and alligned his fingers together before talking to Rachel in a straight face.
"You are aware that I am 300+ years old, but what you don't know is I am a survivor of the dark society, humans cannot survive in the dark society as the air reeks of dark magic essence itself, it's instability kills instantly."
The Beast Sage magic which comprised of that dark essence was what Xerxes used to capture Rachel and render her unconscious, a bit of it was enough to cause that much damage, rendering all olfactory receptors unstable leading to instant loss of consciousness. If he used more than he was supposed to she would have died.
"I was exiled to the dark society two centuries ago, I tried saving humanity from the imminent destruction they caused on their own, but they shunned me and considered my ideals inhumane. A sacrifice was necessary for my plans but they exiled me for it."
Rachel's facial expression entailed disbelief on hearing his history, was this truly the man she admired all this years?
"As I said before, only the strong can survive and I, I did just that by absorbing the essence of the dark society and became more powerful than I already am."
A pure hearted individual cannot survive the atmosphere of the dark society, but a truly evil and wicked hearted one can as the dark essence in the atmosphere strengthens their will and grants them even more power.
"So what do you want from us!?"
She yelled in a fit of rage, she didn't expected this. Once again she trusted someone she shouldn't have.
"Like I said, no human can survive the dark society, those who survived did so temporarily, they might have successfully absorbed the dark essence but there's only so much the mortal body can take. So to survive we needed hosts, my previous hosts couldn't handle the dark essence after some years. But then I found you, a nearly perfect vessel."
Although unable to see them, the room Rachel was in had skeletons at it's corners. Those skeletons belonged to the previous hosts whose body dissipated after it reached its limit leaving behind the skeletal framework.
"Before I found Xavier you were the closest to a compatible host because of your magic. The moment I found him, the perfect vessel at that. You became useless to me."
Tears slowly rolled down the cheeks of Rachel who was held captive, it was disheartening. It happened again, much like Delkon she thought Xerxes took her in because he felt like she needed a home and they valued human life but no. They simply toyed with them.
Yet again she was used and not for a good purpose either.
"So why keep me here, why don't you just kill me?"
She wept bitterly at this discovery, it wasn't something she could get used to a second time.
Xerxes stood up and approached the entrance of the prison, he had nothing more to say to her as it was about time he proceeded to the next phase of the plan.
"I won't let you have your way Xerxes!."
She exclaimed as Xerxes walked out on her. He laughed looking at her predicament.
"What can you do in that state of yours? Once I attain Xavier's body no one will be able to stop me, not even the elf king himself."
He laughed wickedly and his voice echoed through the room as he made his way out of the prison. Rachel struggled greatly to break free after Xerxes had already revealed his plan. Another thing Xerxes purposely did not mention was that dark magic severely weakens normal magic so in this case Rachel magical prowess was temporarily weakened as she breathed in it's essence earlier on.