Chapter 2: The Ropes Break and Strangle

Days of abuse pass.

What happened next was bizarre, the demon threw him into another room he had never seen before. It wasn’t as if someone else would be more efficient at cutting the walls or serving as a labor slave, Matt thought. 'So that decision was rather pointless.'

Bruised and battered but not broken, his skin shifted and was tied together by supernatural forces. Matt had realized or perhaps only better understood, that the pain was false. This pain wasn’t meant to signify danger or warn a person of harm as in reality, this pain was here to incapacitate and torment.

The solution was obvious, he had to ignore the pain, as it truly didn't matter. Matt recalled that something in his brain controlled said sensation of pain. Perhaps even other nerve-related sensations such as touch, but he couldn't remember enough to do a lobotomy on himself.

The room he was in was very quiet, there was nothing to do here except to allow his thoughts to wander.

If this was a punishment, the demon was as dumb as his insults, it was a moment of peace for him. Oh, what he planned to do when he got out of here.

His goals meant gathering information on escaping his jailor, preferably killing him/it.

Matt touched the walls, a hot, ashy type of rock. Kicking at it, dust and grains of rock fell onto the ground. This place was liable to collapse if the structure was so weak.

His legs weren’t fine, but he was still able to still walk.

But the look of them made him suspect something, perhaps the demons here were just survivors, adapting via mutilation. Matt was currently a patchwork of skin, with his legs healing strangely. It was as if he had the front legs of a goat, bent forwards and unable to straighten.

They didn’t hurt as they once had, but that just worried Matt. What would he look like at the end of this?

He could barely remember that something carried him into this hell, burning hands and torturing him as he fell. Who would help him here? And he certainly needed help to gain revenge.

And what would happen, if he had chosen to not crawl out of the lava? Would he just become a greater monster, more of a demon?

He was still sitting here, recovering in peace.

At this point a thought occurred to him, what if he was abandoned, or here to be isolated, starved?

At that awful thought, he felt a different type of pain in his stomach. ‘Just thinking about it just brings a new type of pain?’

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A test he didn't mean to start, a hypothesis not meant to be tested, Matt once again struggled to breathe.

Matt crouches, continuously breathing out and pushing a hand onto his stomach. Without air, Matt somehow felt better. At the same time, his attention began to wander more, his thoughts meandering, and losing track of his thoughts more often.

It felt strange but also natural for him to fall asleep once more.

When Matt woke up, he was still in the room. He felt fewer eyes on him. Perhaps less paranoia.

Where was the exit? Was this a chance to escape? If he hadn’t even heard or seen the demon, perhaps he had a chance of just leaving. (Being woken up with kicks so often wasn’t pleasant, Matt could say that much.)

Shakily walking on unbalanced legs he heads towards the… strange light.

Ash was illuminated by a deep blue light by the opening. But as Matt approached, he noticed something strange.

The temperature dropped, and the pain in his legs which had begun to fade reemerged.

The ash was cold, so cold that Matt would believe it if he was told that it was winter.

What would that even mean in hell? A bit of concern spread across his broken facial features, and he took a short peek outside. A landscape of white ash, likely all cold to the touch, and slow creatures wandering the plains. These creatures weren’t bold, weren't frightful, but this unsettled Matt all the same.

Compared to the hidden area he thought he was in, this area was far too spacious. Compared to the hell he felt so much pain in, it was less chaotic and less red.

From far away, a person might even find this peaceful, the surroundings seeming like snow instead of ash. The lighting was blue, a stark difference that convinced Matt that something had happened.

Matt went back into the cave, searching for any opening other than the one covered with freezing ash.

‘What… what had happened?’

He wasn’t safe but he also wasn’t in danger. How had he gotten here?

Unlike his first journey, he hadn’t fallen into any holes, nor had he been carried. He was only tossed into a room.

The hidden area and torment he had gotten a bit used to, monotonously cutting the wall’s veins for blood the demon took away.

‘Fire, ice, wrath, sloth?’

It was for an instant he thought about what had happened, but now he felt a bit more confident in bearing whatever pain he needed to remain in this presumably safer area.

A step through the blue light, cold seeping into him. But… the pain was literally unbearable in his mutated legs, he hobbled a few steps forward before walking right back into the cave.

This wasn’t going to work unless he figured out what was going on.

‘My legs were injured and then healed in the fire area, my body was also battered there but no other mutations happened. Now when I’m here, my mutated legs, perhaps adapted to the fire area, cannot function.’

He considered his options until he realized what he had to do.

If he crawled out there, screaming or paralyzed with pain, he was bound to die. The cold was very real, and he knew that regardless of any healing he received he would be far slower than the monsters and demons here.

If he kept his mutated legs, there was no way he was going to walk around, even slowly.

He feared it, the cold, the heat, the pain. But all that did was add to the list of enemies he wanted to utterly decimate. The demon who tossed him out over lava, the demon who took him to the relative safety to only to abuse him as a slave.

He would have to mutilate his legs and get them to mutate again, or adapt once more.

But… he was afraid and weak.

Even if he wanted to, damaging his legs so much as to match the lava’s damage? With the strange healing that would prove nearly impossible, an exercise in futility and pain.

And he was afraid. He hadn’t seen blue in the fiery area, just like how he didn't see red limbs among the white and blue demons here.

In the fiery pits with the constant red light, he hadn’t noticed his legs being a shade of red, but it was quite obvious now.

If mixing and matching mutated body parts was possible, and traveling between areas possible, why hadn't other monsters and demons done it yet?

Did the body parts just not work well? Were mutations rarer than he thought?

Would he lose his legs forever?

Matthew didn’t know what to do, but eventually, it was perhaps decided for him.

Something had made a sound close by.