BFT | Chapter 23

1.

Darkness pooled thickly in every corner. A fireplace cast a faint red glow. The smell of rusted iron drifted from the bars.

On the bed, the beast slept soundly. For the day it had spent on the road to Abaddon Prison, the swaying carriage had left it almost unable to sleep at all. Before setting out for Abaddon Prison, it had not had a moment to rest while dealing with the holy knights.

Now that it had finally fallen asleep after so long, it felt as if its whole body had turned translucent. Even in deep sleep, the beast could feel hot sweat streaming over its skin. This slick, feverish sweat, enough to make its one-piece dress cling to its body, was proof that magic power was slowly regenerating.

At some point, footsteps sounded. The beast jerked awake, but kept its eyes closed and listened.

Several people. Roughly... forty?

Even though it had slept a fair amount, its mind was still hazy. Its thoughts were sluggish, and its senses were far duller than usual.

The footsteps stopped in front of the solitary cell bars.

"This is the beast that was transferred to Abaddon last night."

An old voice said. Then came the murmur of startled human men. The beast cracked one eye open and looked toward the bars.

Young, sturdy men were standing outside, staring in and whispering among themselves. They looked dazed at the sight of Baphomet, with its goat horns, for the first time. There were about fifty of them. At the front of the group of young men stood a white-haired old man who seemed to be the head of Abaddon Prison.

Did they come to climb on top of me?

Unexpectedly, no gang rape happened. The old man calmly explained things to the men. Thanks to having slept soundly for several hours after such a long time, the beast could take in the old man's words with a relatively clear mind.

To summarize his explanation, starting tomorrow the beast would have to deal with more than two hundred prisoners every day. On top of that, the humans had decided the beast's intelligence was low. The beast found it strange that they had reached such a conclusion, but it decided to play dumb.

I have to show them what they want to see.

The old man's group left the solitary cell. The beast drifted back into sleep. In the cold cell, like a corpse floating in a coffin, the only sounds were the crackling fire in the fireplace and the beast's own soft breathing.

Just before consciousness slipped away, the beast suddenly remembered a story about a princess who had pricked her finger on a spinning wheel needle and fallen into a long, endless sleep in a forest castle. Had it been that a prince from a neighboring kingdom found her and woke her a hundred years later? But if the princess had slept in this cold, dark prison, the prince would never have found her.

The world had gone quiet. This excessive stillness, beyond all reason, made the small underground cell feel like a vast ocean. A wide, distant sea where not even seaweed drifted, where only absolute silence existed.

Then, all at once, the beast slowly opened its eyes. Heavy footsteps were thudding through the darkness. Especially deep, especially regular...

There was no way to tell time in this cell. Still, its body felt better than it had when the old man's group had come earlier. While it slept, it had sweated so much that the one-piece dress now clung damply to its body.

The heavy footsteps drew closer. The beast immediately recognized who they belonged to. It was the man who had greeted it when it first arrived at Abaddon Prison. He had laid the beast on the bed, lit the fire in the fireplace, and then left the cell. Why had he come back? Rape?

It heard a key turning in the lock to open the bars. The beast closed its eyes again. Its mind was a little clearer now, but it still had no strength.

The sound of footsteps circled the cell once, then stopped in front of the bed. In the following silence, the beast slowly opened its eyes. The man was standing there, silently looking down at it. It was only because of the firelight from the nearby fireplace that the beast finally recognized the color of his hair and was startled. Ash blond, unusually so.

Like the fur of a silver-gray wolf. Rough, cool features. A sharp gaze that seemed to see far into the distance. A solid build no less imposing than the demon king's half-human, half-demon form. Above all, a terrifying presence that was not human...

His impression was overwhelming, like a blade finally completed after being forged in a blazing furnace and tempered for a long time. A white vapor-like aura, the kind that bursts in all directions from a steel blade just pulled from icy water, seemed to cling to him too. The man looked like the incarnation of Fenrir[[1]].

His appearance pulled an old memory out of the beast's mind.

One night, moonlight had spread like a lantern. Wolves wandering along the riverbank...

The man's gaze, which had remained on the beast's face, soon shifted. He slowly swept his eyes over it, then gently brushed the beast's neck with his fingertips. It was a situation right before rape, yet the beast kept staring at him without wavering.

The man withdrew his hand from the beast's neck and looked down. Moisture glimmered on his rough fingertips. Soon after, he pushed the bed away so it sat about two meters from the fireplace. The beast realized that he had mistaken the fire's heat for the reason it had been sweating so much.

The man turned away from the beast and went to the metal table. Something was stacked neatly there, and it seemed he had brought sheets and towels again. He dampened a towel with water from the pump and then looked down at the beast after a brief pause. This time too, the beast met his gaze in silence without looking away.

At last, the man placed the towel on the bed, gripped the beast by the shoulder, and carefully helped it sit up on the mattress. His large hand dragged the one-piece dress down to the waist. But the purpose of this undressing was not rape. He started wiping the beast's neck with the towel. Every movement of his hands as he tended to the beast was careful, almost respectful.

While the man wiped the beast's upper body with the towel, the beast only looked down at the floor. He did not speak. Perhaps because of that solid silence, another old memory crept up in the beast's head.

A huge black eagle.

Powerful flapping wings.

Silence from which no thoughts could be read.

Cold wind brushing over the whole body.

The recollection stopped almost immediately. The beast felt its breath growing short.

By then, the man had finished wiping its upper body and was now pulling up the skirt of the dress to the thighs. Because of that, the beast was left with only its waist and lower body barely covered by the dress.

The man knelt on one knee on the floor and began wiping the beast's ankles with the towel. His hands and expression showed no sign of impatience, but the beast could tell he was extremely tense.

Outwardly the man seemed calm, but he could not fool the beast's wicked powers of observation. He was only desperately hiding it, but just like the holy knights, he was strongly sexually aroused by the beast. Fine beads of sweat had gathered on the thick forearm exposed beneath his rolled-up sleeve. For a man with such a massive build, his helpless embarrassment was so plainly visible that the beast found it a little amusing.

The man wiped the beast's calves with the towel without ever lifting his head. He was clearly avoiding looking at the beast.

With its gaze lowered, the beast caught sight of the man's sturdy shoulders. Though he possessed a strong body that could subdue anyone easily, he had made no move to pounce on the beast. His appearance was unusual, but more than that, his temperament was quite different from the humans the beast had encountered so far. At first glance, that man from the rough underclass actually seemed more rigid in morality and ethics than the holy knights.

At some point, the beast's eyes had come to rest on the man's hair. His ash blond was exactly the same color as the fur of the giant wolf that had once been the beast's friend in the demon realm. Perhaps because the man's face resembled that wolf too, a feeling of longing kept surging up.

The beast's consciousness grew murky again. It had slept soundly, but it still seemed its magic power had not regenerated enough. While it blankly stared at the floor, the man pulled the beast's dress down to its ankles. Even in its dazed state, the beast could tell he was greatly shaken by its nakedness.

So in the end, would he rape me?

But the man put new clothes on the beast instead. They were human women's clothes, and the fabric felt rather nice. Looking down at the black pleated skirt, the beast swallowed a bitter laugh. After the holy knights, now this man too was putting human women's clothes on it as if it were only natural.

The man laid the beast back on the bed and covered it with a new blanket that carried a faint lavender scent. It felt rather warm and soft. The beast drew the blanket up to its chest and closed its eyes. It fell asleep almost immediately.

It had no idea how much time passed after that. Suddenly, the beast woke to its shoulder being shaken. The man who had dressed it in new clothes was looking down at it.

Had he been here the whole time?

The beast could not tell whether the man had stood guard here all night, but at least seven hours seemed to have passed. Its body felt much lighter.

The man looking down at the beast turned away. As he left the cell, he suddenly glanced back. The expression in that sidelong look was somehow complicated, beyond what the beast could immediately read...

Soon, the man turned his head and left the solitary cell. Seeing him go without locking the barred door, the beast finally understood what was happening. Prisoners were coming here soon.

The darkness along the corridor remained quiet. The beast did not sit up, only stared silently at the fireplace. Little by little, noise began to build deeper in the corridor.

"What the hell is this nonsense about a demon? I’ve lived long enough to see everything."