Demonic Devourer's Development

When Aivena returned to her lab, she acted like her last experiment was no more odd than the one where she compared the red and the blue parts of my hair. She had to force me to pull a strand of each out with a threat of punishment first, of course.

I did the same. The flame of hope I had in me was for me alone. I held onto it and hid it from her eyes. That would've only made my imprisonment worse. That hope filled me where simmering anger burned out charred hollows inside my soul and helped me to bear my current state of existence. But for anyone's eye, I became only more tired and despaired, for which I had a lot of reasons.

I couldn't say what was worse—when Aivena was around or when she wasn't. Her presence meant more humiliation, torments, and looking in her bitch face. She didn't try anything sexual again, but he had plenty of imagination when it came to doing things to me I didn't like.

Without her, there was only boredom. It was not something I was accustomed to. This wasn't a boredom of an ambush, where your thoughts would focus only on the prey and on the time to strike. This was just boredom of having absolutely nothing new to do. There was no intellectual stimulation in my cage.

I never thought I would descend to just conversing with Pest for the sake of conversing, but… it was him or no one. Who knew that at some point, his opinions on things would actually bother me unless they were somehow useful?

We both agreed that being imprisoned sucked. Draining curses didn't suffer from boredom the same way humans did, but the lack of action on my side meant the lack of action for Pest, too, and he much more liked when I did things he could observe.

I still wasn't going to release Pest from his slavery, which also sucked in his opinion, but was only practical in mine. I didn't trust him to be free in my head and my body.

We both agreed that Aivena deserved a painful and slow death. Some of the best times we spent together with Pest were filled with trashing her for real and imaginary faults and imagining new ways to torment her after we got out.

Pest also had some interesting tales he remembered from his genetic memory (though, could it be called genetic if draining curses didn't even have genes, or bodies?). He told me tales of faraway places. The mortal realm was much bigger than the small bit of it where I wandered for the last few months, and one day, I was going to explore it and its pleasures.

On his side, Pest was very curious about Hell—like someone who knew he would never end there. I had plenty to tell him—about the monsters native to the place, about dead souls, demons, and the Nine Hells.

We spent many long hours on conversations like these, and on playing word games that I could remember or come up with. Days passed one by one after Aivena's perverted experiment, and the only thing that was keeping the flame of hope alive in me, besides my efforts, were the lines she left in her journal.

One day she wrote, "Devourer almost stopped snarling at me when I give him commands, though sometimes he still needs additional stimuli to follow them."

Another, she mentioned that, "Devourer seems to have accepted that he can't break my barrier, because I don't see him trying to anymore."

Then she had a gall to write, "At last, Devourer started to follow my commands without questions or insults. While bringing him to heel like a dog had been amusing and brought memories of the old times, this is much more convenient for the conduction of my experiments. If he continues, I might be done with him in a few more weeks and finally claim my reward."

That bitch! Like a dog? I wanted to break all the progress I made and throw some insults at her just for the hell of it. It was a genuine effort to keep them in and don't even snarl when Aivena came to see me again with that smug smile of hers and an empty wooden bowl in her hand.

"Hello, Devourer. How are you today?"

I gave her a practised tired look. "Fine. Why would you even worry?"

"I wouldn't want you to feel bad for my next experiment. I need a sample of your flesh for it, and a specific one." She lifted the bowl and then threw it to me through the bars of my cage and the barrier, which always ignored her or her tools, but not me. "I need you to cut off your finger and put into the bow. Any finger will do."

A finger now, huh? The audacity. I forced down my anger and hid the glare I wanted to send at her by bowing my head. "Fine. Whatever."

"I'm glad that you finally realised that compliance would improve your quality of life, Devourer."

'Keep thinking that way, bitch,' I thought to myself and lifted my lower-left, the least used, arm. With one quick, decisive movement, I severed the pinky finger with a claw and let it drop into the bowl, where it immediately turned into a puddle of flesh. Ignoring the pain in my hand, I pushed the bowl out of my space.

"Happy now?"

"Yes, I'm most pleased." Aivena didn't hurry to pick up the bowl. Instead, she pointed a finger at me, and I tensed on reflex, expecting an attack. But what she said instead was, "Regeneration."

A wave of energy washed over me, more revitalising than dunking in ice-cold water. I didn't need to look at my hand or on my HP counter to know that I was rapidly healing. My finger was growing out like I never had to cut it off.

Aivena's healing magic, when she ever used it on me, was pretty amazing. I had no gratitude, though. Only suspicion. What agenda she had this time?