When we didn't speak, he sighed. "It has been quite some time, girls. Is this the welcome I get?"
What was he expecting, that we run into his arms with fucking smiles and gifts? To be honest, I was fucking terrified that he is here. He terrifies me and he knows it.
"We were not aware you would be visiting, Sire." Mira answered, shakily.
"Hmm," was all he said, as he ignored her and turned his attention to me. "How is my favorite girl doing?"
Favorite girl, my ass. If this is how he treats his favorites, I hate to see how he treats those he deemed useless.
"Oh, you know, just chilling. Waiting for the blessed day that you finally drop dead." I say with a shrug.
"Still snarky, I see." He folds his hands behind his back and begins to walk around me. "I believe you know why I'm here. You have not been a very good girl, Jay." It took everything in me to stop my instinctive reaction to shudder when he stops behind me, standing way too close for comfort. He's presence itself felt icky and oppressive. I did not like it one bit. "I hear you've not been very cooperative with your doctors in doing what I have told you."
Shit, shit, shit.
"I already told you and them. I don't know how to do what you asked."
Shit, I should have known that was why he was here.
~~
The first time it happened was when I was very much smaller than this, but slightly bigger than my five year old self. They had finally succeeded on making me heal super fast and they were testing it out back to back.
I had just finished fighting two goblins. My small body, already battered and broken, could not even hold myself up. I had thought that was it since back then, I only had to fight once a day. Until one of those steel doors opened again and a naga rushed out at me.
Nagas are monsters with a humanoid upper half and the lower body of a snake. Their fangs are filled with paralytic venom that had no antidote. If you were bitten by a naga, there was no way to get rid of the paralysis even if you somehow were not eaten. I fought hard, I really did, but I was already too weak and slow from the previous fight that the damn thing was able to latch onto my arm and bite me. I remember feeling my entire body going numb in that instant and my heart seizing in panic. I found myself giving up, thinking about how at least it wasn't going to hurt when it killed me. Just as its jaws opened wide to devour me, I blacked out.
It could not be more than thirty seconds when I suddenly came to.
I wasn't dead.
Instead, I was standing, elbows deep in blood, clutching something in my hand in front of a very dead naga with a hole in its chest. I had stared at my hand, holding its heart in pure shock and confusion. Not only was I not dead and was standing on my own two feet despite being poisoned, but I had somehow punched a hole through its chest and ripped out its heart.
I cannot emphasize enough how impossible that was. Nagas were covered with glittering scales that were impenetrable by anything except their own claws. How I had been able to reach into its chest, I had no idea.
The doctors had deemed me a success. They had ruled that my accelerated healing must have burned off the venom in my system, and their fucked up experiments had to be what made me strong enough to be able to crush a naga's chest.
That is, until it happened again.
This time, I had started to get a few inches taller than little Mike, and Sire had been there. He had been visiting just like this, and I had been brought into the Pit to fight. The moment I stepped foot into the Pit and locked eyes with Sire standing in Mira's cage entrance, I had blacked out. When I came back to, I was surrounded by what has to be more than twenty monsters all dead at my feet, with me drenched in blood and bits and pieces of body parts, but not a single scratch on me. I had looked up to see Sire watching me with delight in his soulless eyes and had immediately been collared and dragged back to my cell.
Sire himself had come by my cell later with a recording and showed me what happened while I thought I blacked out:
The recording had started with me walking into the Pit and seeing Sire in Mira's cage entrance, but I apparently didn't pass out because I had walked forward to the center of the Pit and waited for the monster I was supposed to fight to come out.
It had been a rabid adult wyvern. It flew above me and roared loudly, but I had just stood there staring calmly up at it. The moment it dived for me, I jumped higher than I was usually capable of and landed on its head. It had tried bucking me off while roaring furiously, but I held on tight, then drove back and punched a hole right through its skull, killing it in one blow. We plummeted to the ground with me landing on top of it, then I just got up and stood there motionlessly, with not a hint of emotion on my face.
I had watched in the recording as Sire had signaled for another monster to be let out, and I killed that as well with one blow. I had fought and killed in a stoic and controlled manner that I hadn't had days before. My movements were fluid and my blows were brutal. I had fought until I had mountains of monster corpses all around me and didn't stop until there were no more monsters coming out of the steel doors.
My jaw had dropped as I watched my body jerk. I had looked around me in confusion and shock, then I was collared and dragged out of the frame.
Sire had been so excited and demanded that I did that again the next fight, but I couldn't because I hadn't even known what I did. In fact, it had never happened again. Since then, I had been subjected to even worse experimentations and fights in order to bring out that side of me, but it never happened.
Before Sire had left, he had told me to make it happen, or I wasn't going to like what was going to happen when he comes back. And now he's back and I'm still nowhere closer to figuring it out myself.
~~
Fuck my life.
"I did tell you to make it happen, did I not?" His tone getting colder by the second.
"And I told you. I. Don't. Know. How." I knew it wasn't very smart of me to me so sharp-tongued with him but I couldn't help it. It was either this or I become a shivering, snivelling, fearful mess in his presence and I absolutely refuse to allow him see me like that.
He hummed and I could hear movements behind me, but I didn't know what he was doing until I hear Mira let out a pain-filled scream.
I wrenched around and my eyes widened in panic. "What are you doing?!"
He had his bare palm wrapped around Mira's nape.
"You care about this one." He drawled casually, shaking her slightly like she was some piece of filth stuck to his hand. "It is the only reason I hadn't gotten rid of her. Despite being older than you, she could not quite live up to your potential. But she is quite useful as leverage, no? Now, call her forth, will you?"
"I don't know how! Let her go!"
"You are not exactly in the position to be making demands, girl." His fingers flexed slightly on Mira's neck, and she let out another gut-wrenching scream as her legs crumpled underneath her in pain. Tears streaming down her face and blood pouring from her mouth. He glared at me, "Call. Her. Forth."
I fell to my knees with her, already crying. "I... I don't know how. Please! We will do more experiments. I-I will fight every hour. J-just let her go. Please." I pleaded desperately.
"I don't have the time, nor the patience for these theatrics, girl. You will call forth my champion, or I will kill her."
No no no no, please.
"I said I don't know how. Are you deaf?!" I screamed at him in frustration, tears streaming down my face. He wasn't listening to me! "Please. I really don't know how. I'll do whatever you want. Please."
He was quiet for a bit, while Mira continued to die beneath his touch, her veins bulging and turning black as she coughed out more blood, already too weak to even scream. Then he said, "Very well, then." He reaches forward and rips her throat out with his bare hands.
"No!" I watched almost in slow motion as the light left Mira's eyes and her lifeless body crumpled to the ground.
H-He killed her.
The world darkened.