“Waaaahhh!!!”

A baby’s cry resounded throughout the spacious room as the scurrying of feet clicked against the wooden floor accompanied by numerous excited voices.

[***]

…

[***]

…

Ben’s mind and body jolted into action as he began coughing as an instinctual reaction to recovering from drowning.

“Wait…” Ben suddenly realised he was no longer submerged in water and began to try and understand his surroundings; his eyes darted around the room he was currently in, spotting several strange humanoid creatures circling him, although he couldn’t completely make out their features as his eyes were still adjusting to the light after being submerged in absolute darkness for what seemed like decades.

His eyes gradually cleared up and he looked down to inspect his body and found himself lying on a bed stark naked, with his first thought being ‘Ah! The cold water shrunk him!’ though he quickly realised that this body was not his own, with a small chubby frame and not a single strand hair to be seen besides the soft tuft of hair on his head.

“Great… I ended up as a useless human ag… wait… i-is that...”

Ben mustered all the strength he could in his infant body, raising his arm and grabbed at his target, wrapping his tiny fingers around it and bringing it up to his face to inspect it.

“…a tail?”

The wriggling object within his tiny hands, was indeed a tail, but having previously been a human Ben found this simple feature to be completely bewildering, especially after following the length of the tail to find it seamlessly attached to his lower back, and he could even control it if he concentrated hard enough, but otherwise without seeing it he would never have known it was there.

Putting aside the strange tail, something even stranger was happening, Ben could actually feel his body gaining strength, he didn’t know how such a thing was possible but with every passing second he could feel the strength in his muscles increasing, to the point he could now move his own head independently, with his new found strength he used his arms to slowly prop himself up into a sitting position to better observe his surroundings once more.

It was at this moment that Bens brain finally recovered from the shock of drowning and returned his hearing, with all the new stimuli Ben had completely failed to recognise he couldn’t hear anything, but suddenly his hearing kicked in, flooding his brain with new and strange sounds.

Ben turned his head straight towards the strange noises and saw the strange humanoid figures he saw previously, they were speaking in a language unknown to Ben and seemed to be in the middle of a heated argument, it was at this point Ben heard the cry of a baby, and with no others babies in the vicinity, the source must be him so he quickly controlled his vocal chords with his newfound strength and closed his mouth to finally put a stop to the annoying wail.

With his eyes clear once more Ben was able to get a good look at these creatures, and only one word came to mind when he saw them - Demon!

They stood roughly 8 feet tall, their skin varied in colours with black, brown, and green being the main colours, although others possessed different hues of these three colours, along with the unusual skin colour they all possessed a red glow that seemed to ripple across their skin with random patterns.

Their hair was even more unusual, the creature with the largest frame had hair that didn’t seem too out of place, being blood red and flowed down to below its shoulders, the rest were not so ‘normal’ with one creature having purple and yellow hair, another having green and orange, one of the creatures even had seven different colours strewn throughout their hair.

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And last but not least were their tails, unlike Ben’s tail they all possessed strange shapes on their tips, one had a tip resembling a coiled spring, another had a rather simple one with it being what seemed like a perfect cube; though the one that caught Ben’s eye was owned by the largest creature, its tail had a vicious looking scythe which had been stabbed into the ground, most likely to stop it from accidently injuring anyone.

The sudden and abrupt stop to the baby’s cry caused the arguing creatures to go quiet and look towards the new-born infant, wanting to find out what made the child stop his crying.

Ben’s heart almost stopped as he watched the creatures suddenly stop and turn to face him.

What they saw made some of them make strange faces, a mixture of confusion and fear; what they were looking at did not seem to resemble the face of a baby, there was no emotion… not fear, not curiosity, Nor joy appeared on this child’s face, it was strange, and those who looked into the piercing sky-blue eyes of this baby felt an unpleasant chill run down their spine causing them to become fearful and no longer dared to look into his eyes.

One creature in particular walked forward from this group and stood in front of Ben. Lifting his head upwards to look at the face of this creature, Ben felt a strange connection within him, his blood seeming to resonate with this creature, being unable to speak their language he had no choice but to convey his confusion with his body, tilting his head to the side and sending a curious gaze towards the creature.

Seeming to understand Ben’s confused gaze the creature let out a chuckle before speaking some words to the those behind him, a smaller creature walked out and produced a small red orb and placed it into a dark metal goblet, presenting it to the creature that Ben could only assume was the leader of those present.

Grabbing the goblet, the creature proceeded to use its sharp blue-tinted teeth to bite down into its tongue and then spat the blood into the goblet, Ben was astonished by this series of actions, he didn’t understand what this creature was trying to do, to further add onto his astonishment, the tongue that had a hole pierced through healed rapidly, so much so the wound had completely healed within several seconds.

“I hope it doesn’t make me drink that” Ben grimaced at this thought.

After giving the goblet a few swirls the creature gave a nod and reached out to hand Ben the goblet, looking into Ben’s eyes and giving a second nod indicating for him to drink the goblets contents.

“Ah, it’s really making me do it” Ben’s emotionless face stared at the creature, meeting it’s eyes before shaking his head from side to side, and using his arms and legs to push himself backwards, away from the creature, clearly showing he was wary of both the creature and the questionable drink presented to him.

Surprise painted itself on the creatures face as it stared at the child in front of it, it couldn’t believe that a new-born infant could possess the intelligence and awareness to become wary and distance itself from the unknown, generally children were extremely curious, always wanting to explore and experience the world around them, including everything that could be eaten or drank.

Instead of being angered by the child disobeying it, the creature broke out into a bright smile, it lowered its huge frame onto its knees beside the bed to become eye level with the small child, this action caused a commotion within the group of creatures standing further away, the creature ignored this and placed the goblet down onto the floor, then it lifted its arm and slowly reached towards Ben.

Ben was surprised at this action, not knowing what to make of it, but with the amicable smile on the creatures face as well as its slow but cautious hand it didn’t seem it was intending to harm him, so he patiently waited for the large hand to reach him, while also maintaining his curious gaze with the creature, only glancing at the incoming hand.

The creatures eyes lit up and smiled even brighter when the child didn’t seem scared of it, after several seconds it’s hand came to rest atop Ben’s head giving his hair a playful ruffle, when his hand stopped, it was lowered and the creature extended a finger before poking Ben in the chest very lightly as it did so it said a single word.

[Aris]

After doing so, the creature retracted its hand and then pointed towards itself, again saying a single word.

[Evest]

After it said the word ‘Aris’ Ben became confused, having several questions flow through his mind, until it pointed to itself and spoke another word, Ben immediately understood “Aris, huh, I guess that’s my new name… Aris… I like it” Ben broke out into a warm smile hearing his new name, he didn’t know if it had any special meaning in this creature’s strange language but for some reason it made him feel warm inside.