Chapter 23: Chapter 22. Breath

("Xue!")

There was a voice in her head.

("Xue! Listen to me!")

("K-Kien?")

Everything was foggy.

Suddenly, Xuelan felt her chest lighten, and all the pain disappeared. Kien had melted it all away with just a single thought, and she slowly felt her senses returning to her. The girl vaguely perceived the tentacles swirling around inside of her, and she gradually realized that she was trapped in a predicament.

She was inside her cage and squeezed by a small tentacle monster.

("Are you alright, Xue?")

Xuelan suddenly jerked a little as those tendrils stimulated something weird.

Um... aside from this obvious predicament, it seemed like she was still intact... It was a lot better now that Kien had relieved the persistent suffocation.

("...I'm o-okay... I think.") She responded.

("That bastard...")

The black-haired girl opened her eyes slowly on the floor of the cage, and she vaguely perceived that there was fighting ongoing outside. 

She couldn't see the details, but there were ringing clashes of metal, gunshots, and explosions.

Most of it went over her head, largely because she was still in a daze. The pain relief that Kien had given her was almost like morphine, and it deadened the acuity of her senses. Xuelan was still trying to process exactly what had happened, and she  only remembered that Neiel had been strangling her. 

Now they were fighting, but Xuelan was missing too many pieces of the story to comprehend the full sequence of events.

("Why did you leave me behind, Kien?") She asked, her head hurting.

There was no response at first.

There was another series of gunshots, and she heard her ex-boyfriend muttering a ('Fuck').

Ah, right. They were fighting.

Maybe it was a bad idea to distract him...

("I needed to take care of some things.") Kien responded haggardly. ("You would have gotten in the way.")

His voice was suddenly strained and difficult, as if he was struggling and losing this fight.

("Am I a burden?")

("No. You are— Urgh!")

Kien's body was suddenly knocked back a hundred feet as if struck by a train. He tumbled on the ground like a ball of weeds blown in the wind, and he slammed against a boulder some distance away.

("Kien?!")

The red-haired incubus slowly walked over.

"You have no skills, Kien. What are you, level 1? Your fighting technique is decent, I'll give you that — but it doesn't mean anything when everyone else around here has a dozen different cards up their sleeves. I'm not even breaking a sweat."

("Kien? What's happening?!")

"Give it up, kid. You're new, and you're way out of your league." Neiel said, changing the grip of the knife in his hand. "I won't ask for any of your Infernal Marks, but learn the rules of this place, okay? You can't run around killing people outside of the Wastelands."

"Fuck you."

The red-haired incubus sighed.

("Xue. Listen quick.") Kien's voice was rushed and pained.

("Kien?")

("I can't beat this guy in a straight fight, so I'll need to use you to kill him. Be ready to act on my signal.")

("Kien, wait!")

("You'll know what to do when the time comes. I'll be back.")

Xuelan struggled against the tentacles, but her ex-boyfriend vanished into a column of black smoke.

Neiel stared expressionlessly at the vacant spot on the ground.

+ + +

The red-haired incubus turned to the cage.

He knelt down and twisted open an empty jar. After putting a strange cube of gelatinous food into the glass container, the tentacle monster immediately detached from Xuelan's quivering body and crawled into the cramped space like a well-trained pet. The girl was left behind as a shivering mess on the floor of the cage.

"So Kien apparently likes you a lot," Neiel commented, his voice neutral and emotionless. "It seems like I was right about employing a damsel in distress as bait, and he completely lost his cool."

He slowly crossed his legs and sat down on the ground again.

The demon peered in between the bars of the steel.

"Do you hate me now, Xue?"

The 24-year-old trembled.

"...You raped and killed me," she whispered.

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Neiel had a blank and surprised look on his face.

"Killed you? No... I think you're misunderstanding something. You can't die. I kept you asphyxiated for..."

He slid open his Status window to check the time.

"...46 minutes. You were unconscious for the majority of it, but now that you're awake, you're totally fine. It'll take a couple more minutes for the oxygen to return to all your limbs, but then you'll be as good as you were before. No damage and certainly nothing permanent. It's really quite tame compared to some of the other stuff that happens in Hell."

Xuelan stared blankly at the incubus.

Even if he said that, it was a horrible and terrifying experience.

"What's your relationship with your Master, anyway? He seems to be just as inexperienced as you. The two of you seem quite familiar with each other for the short amount of time you've been in Hell."

Xuelan struggled to push herself up to her knees, but her limbs were weak and largely unresponsive.

"Is he your boyfriend?" Neiel asked.

"...My ex..." Xuelan answered quietly.

The incubus snorted.

"He must really hate you a lot then, to drag you down to Hell."

"Huh? ...I don't think that's the case..."

"I hate selfish bastards like him. I was married on Earth too, you know? Never in a million years would I ever think of putting my wife through this living Hell. Maybe I deserve to be here, but she has no part in this. I've done many bad things in my life, but I just want the best for my kids. I'm a simple guy, you know?"

"I... I don't know..."

Neiel suddenly slid a brown paper bag through the cage bars.

Xuelan stared blankly at the object.

After some hesitation, she slowly unwrapped it, and promptly discovered that it was a sandwich.

It looked juicy and delicious, like the best thing she had seen in a hundred years. In truth, Xuelan had no idea what it was made out of, and one of the layers looked disturbingly purple like red cabbage, but the aroma was amazing. It even contained some kind of meat. Her mouth immediately started watering, and she resisted the temptation to stuff it inside her mouth immediately.

Neiel also rolled over the apple from earlier and placed another bottle of water inside the cage.

Xuelan looked back up at him.

"Why?" She asked, entirely confused.

"You fed me. I feed you. That's the way I roll." Neiel responded. "Thanks for the meal, by the way."

Xuelan stared blankly, but then remembered that he had raped her. She had been unconscious and asphyxiated for most of the oxygen-deprived experience, so she hardly remembered feeling any of it.

It felt transactional and cold-hearted, but at least it was straightforward and consistent.

Neiel was easy to understand, and Xuelan felt like he was good at communicating his expectations.

Kien on the other hand... Xuelan still struggled to understand what he wanted. He was almost unpredictable.

"Did you learn your lesson, by the way?" Neiel continued.

"What lesson?"

"Don't leave yourself so vulnerable and helpless. If I see a free meal, I'm taking one. Others will do the same."

Xuelan suddenly felt a bit indignant and resentful.

This was victim-blaming, wasn't it? How was it her own fault for getting raped? It was seriously messed up for him to assault her, and then turn around and claim it was her own fault for compelling him to act that way. Xuelan hated this hypocrisy, and she disliked how he acted like he had done nothing wrong.

Everything about this universe was twisted and distorted.

Kien and Neiel were both messed up in the head, and neither were good people.

Truthfully, she wanted to go back to Earth, where she could run far away from both of them and live her own quiet life reading books, but here she had been abducted and forced to choose between the lesser of two evils.

"Xue, let me ask you a question." Neiel suddenly said.

Xuelan slowly met his eyes apprehensively.

"Kien killed Earl because he wanted ownership of the slave from the train. Do you understand this?"

She stared, and then nodded slowly.

The guard captain had mentioned this when he was interrogating Kien. If a demon killed another demon, then generally speaking the loser's slave became the victor's property. There seemed to be a mechanism that automatically transferred  ownership between demons.

"If I kill Kien, then you will become mine."

Neiel stared at Xuelan with serious and unflinching eyes.

"Do you want me to do this? Because I can kill him. And he will come back."

 

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