I seriously hated waking up for early morning training. I mean, there were plenty of other hours in the day, so why did it always have to be so early. I walked down the dim corridor to the training hall. Of course when I arrived nobody else was there because it was so obscenely early. I started running through my usual stretching routine while I waited for Cifer.
"You've gotten out of shape recently." I startled at Cifer's sudden voice from the corner of the room. "And it seems your observational skills have deteriorated."
The past few days Cifer had told me to just go about my training independently, but last night he'd announced he would attend my training session. That wasn't really out of the ordinary. Cifer would often leave me to train on my own for weeks or even months at a time. What he did during those periods was anyone's guess.
But something had felt off during this past week. I felt out of it for some reason. My flexibility, stamina, and strength all seemed to be substandard for me. But I couldn't figure out for the life of me why that was. It was like I'd just woken up weaker one day.
"My apologies." I bowed to him respectfully. He didn't acknowledge my apology.
"Come with me."
He strode out of the room without giving me a backward glance. I hurried to follow after him. We walked down familiar corridors and I suspected I knew where we were headed.
I smirked to myself. This would be fun. While we were traversing the dim hallways I got a strange sensation. A sort of tingling. And then I felt as if the space to my right was opening up. I felt an emptiness there, like if I reached out to touch the wall I would fall right through. Was I being summoned?
I of course knew that summonings happened occasionally, but it'd never happened to me before. If I chose to accept it, I could just sidestep my way into the Human Realm.
But I really had no interest in humans and their realm. From what I'd heard they were laughably weak. Of course many demons loved the chance to go beat up on humans, but I prefered more of a challenge.
Cifer, a few steps ahead, had paused to look back at why I'd stalled. There was something probing in his eyes as he assessed me.
"Just a stupid summoning." I told him before continuing on. He nodded and walked on wordlessly.
As I'd suspected, we arrived at the soul holding facility. Cifer nodded to Sazrin, the annoyingly arrogant prison keeper who was always trying to test my patience. Sazrin quickly opened the door, bowing low to Cifer as he passed. Of course he didn't forget to give me my welcome scowl as I walked in.
We walked past rows of cells, variations of groaning, screaming, and crying saturating the air with noise. We eventually stopped at cell 34. Inside sat a teenage boy with long dark hair and brown eyes.
"We have a new arrival here." Cifer said, gesturing to the boy. "Would you mind getting him acquainted with our brand of hospitality? I need him more malleable for something in the future and he hasn't been adjusting very well."
"It would be my pleasure."