The next moment occurred very fast. Everything was happening in slow motion. The man looked at the tired warden whose eyes were shot open. Blood dripped across his claws.

He knew he needed to be fast. He was running low on energy, Suffering from dehydration and starvation. The milky blood gave him some energy, pouring into his skin, but he needed to be fast. Faster.

The warden tightened its grasp on the war axe. The man internally cursed as he noticed he didn't have more time remaining. He removed the claws from the neck and dropped the corpse of the other warden to the ground falling at his feet with a wet plop sound.

A new feeling coursed through his veins; it was adrenaline. The new biological substance was enticing; making him think faster, move faster, and ignore all the pain he had accumulated. He could get used to it.

The instant the corpse dropped to the ground, the no-longer-tired warden sprang into action.

It raised its axe above its head in a menacing stance. Thankfully enough, the man wasn't dazed enough to remain still and get hit by the falling arc. The warden was strong, it chipped parts of the stone wall with its axe.

The axe remained embedded in the wall for a hot second. And as the warden tried to remove the axe from the wall he looked at the man with a cruel expression, his eyes shining with that grey light.

The man couldn't understand that visage. Because the other guy then tried to kill him, it was just logical that it could be ready to die at any moment. If you intended to kill someone, you should be ready to be killed. It was just meant to be. Or so the red-haired man thought.

So, why was it's companion angry? The other warden was ready to die. It shouldn't be angry. The man understood why it had to kill him, but he shouldn't be angry. It just didn't make any sense.

Kill or be killed. That's a logic he could understand. It made more sense that being eternally trapped in this prison.

The bloodied man took a step back as the warden finally retrieved the axe. He didn't know how to fight it was all on instinct. Truth be told, everything he did was on instinct.

The floor was cold and slippery thanks to the milky blood. But he was cautious enough to not slip on the wet floor. The warden took a moment to think, not wanting to step over its fallen comrade.

But that moment was lesser than a blink and it charged toward him. The man crouched, avoiding the sideways axe swing following his head. The warden was strong and fast, but it wasn't very agile. He didn't even know how he was that agile being trapped for this long. This was the first time he had stretched his body after all.

Maintaining his low crouch, he took two steps back. The possibility of death was very real. The warden only needed one strike, but he would need far more to take it down.

The grieving warden then thrashed its weapon toward him in a fast attack. To the man's sluggish senses, that may well have been a lightning-fast strike. Dodging wasn't a possibility, he needed to block. He put his left claws before him to try to block the war axe.

And while he succeeded, he had underestimated the warden’s strength. The blow shattered his claws. He felt no pain, but it was dizzying losing parts of his body, his biomass.

The warden smiled at its small victory.

The man felt an itch in his broken claws. He didn't understand it at first, but soon he saw that they were growing back. He stopped the regeneration. He didn't want to waste more biomass. He was running very low on it.

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He took another step back.

It quickly became obvious that his only way to win the fight was to use his wit.

He took another step back.

The warden was strong and inhumane looking, but also big, and that put him at a severe disadvantage. The creature couldn't move freely in this small cell, but the man could.

He didn't rush for an attack, though. He needed to wait for the exact, precise moment to strike. To use the low intelligence of his warden against it.

Thankfully enough, the creature didn't notice the man's machinations and it just rushed forward. A shallow smile appeared on the man's visage.

He took another step back. Now he was out of the cell for the first time in his life, but he didn't allow that fact to blind him. He needed every ounce of focus he could gather to concentrate on the fight.

The next fractions of a second passed very slowly. For every two steps the warden took, the man took one backward.

Then the prophesied opportunity came in as the creature aligned itself with the prison's doorway.

The warden raised its war axe to unleash another descending arc. The man could feel the pressure behind the strike as the air distorted. It was a very powerful strike. One hit and he would be certainly dead.

The strike never arrived. The metallic clink filled the endless darkness. The menacing-looking weapon struck the prison bars and there it remained struck.

Now, the man screamed in his mind.

He lurched forward faster than any other creature had moved in this stale and static place. Raising his unbroken right claws, the man aimed for the inhumane creature’s neck.

As the warden was too worried about its axe, it didn't notice the lethal weapon coming toward its unprotected neck. Black blood sprayed from the wound. The strike hit true, piercing through the flesh and coming out of the other end of the neck. Death.

Or it should have been.

The light still fluttered in the warden's eyes.

How is it still alive? The man thought. Then he noticed, he was the one unprotected now. With a vicious and demonic smile, the warden released his grip on the handle of the axe and punched the man with terrifying strength.

His body flew backward for a few meters until it finally impacted a wall, the momentum damaging him further.

The man coughed, hints of blood coming out of his mouth.

He stood up, fearing that the warden may come at him once more. But then he looked at the cell. The warden had finally died from its wounds. That last attack had only been the cruelty of a dying creature, Unable to accept that it had lost the fight.

“What bad sportsmanship,” The man said between chuckles caressing his ribs as they deeply hurt.

His body dropped to the ground, not responding to his commands. This was the first time he felt this kind of lethargy. Exhaustion. Between rugged breaths, he looked at his claws. They were soaked with blood. Though that didn't stay for very long as the milky liquid began to be absorbed by his body.

Hmm.

The man inhaled. The liquid gave him energy. An energy he hadn't obtained whilst eating rodents. This substance was packed with far more nutrients than any other creature. Or at least enough energy to soothe his pain.

Suddenly, he felt a warmth in his naked torso. It felt itchy, not an uncomfortable itch but a pleasurable one. He looked down to see that red blood was sprinkling down a wound on his torso. Once more, he had underestimated the power of the wardens. He had not only been thrown around by the punch but the fist of the warden was also protected by armor. An armor with spiky protuberances. Those spikes had sickeningly ripped his skin.

But what he felt, wasn't from the pain or the wound. It was something else, something from inside of him. And it beckoned warmth.

Then flames spurted from his torso. They were bright orange and released light. This was a color and a light source that he had never seen. Yet he knew that it was fire.

It didn't burn.

Quite the contrary. It mended his flesh.

As if the flames were a vacuum, the blood trickled back up to the wound, into the flesh, and the skin closed. Any traces of a fight disappeared from his body.

“Oh,” the man whispered. “This is new.”

With a heavy and tired groan, he stood up. The insides of his body still ached, but there were no visible wounds. It was a strange feeling, to say the least.

The red-haired man didn't ponder very much on the mythical apparition and simply approached the corpses of the wardens. With his remaining set of claws, he pierced the dead body, it was a carcass ready for harvest.

Milky black blood flowed upwards from his claws to his arms, finally sinking into his body. The pallid, ashen-like skin of the corpse turned darker as all the blood was drained from it. Then he proceeded to do the same with the other dead warden.

For the first time in his life, the man felt alive, energetic, and ready for more carnage.