Drawing on a long hoarse breath Raizel’s shoulders slumped, she had travelled for almost a week straight without stopping for rest.

Her enormous scorpion half crashed into the sandstone path leading into Myra, exhausted and completely unable to continue she collapsed. The town of mudbrick homes, decorated in colourful flowers and shaded in palm trees seemed almost a hallucination in a heat haze as Raizel’s mind fell into slumber barely catching sight of several people rushing to her aid.

Her dreams were filled with images of a life not of this world, where ever distant lands were only hours away, where the sun, moon and earth weren’t sentient, where she held love for a fool with no reason to live other than to wake up and lastly where she never wished to return. A world of fantasy and ash seeming all the greater a place than she could have fantasised while giving rousing speeches to her partner, the only one willing to listen to her insanity.

When she woke she wiped faded tears from her eyes and looked upon her surroundings, for a moment- a brief splinter in time- things seemed as though they had gone back to being before the day she died only to come crashing down to reality as she stared out of the log post bars of her cell.

‘I’m in prison again’ She commented internally not outwardly bothered by the fact itself but more so with her transformation having dispelled leaving her in the gigantic hulking red skinned form she’d been born to in this world.

It had been more than a century of living in this world and she still couldn’t stand her appearance.

Her people were called Ogres by those she had encountered out in the world and she felt it a fitting name for such a grotesque and violent people who revelled in death and slaughter, who would only find peace and normalcy when they held celebrations every decade lest they be outcast. But what was exile to a culture that avoided its own kind at every other step?

Things regarding her people only got worse the more she learned in those early years after being reborn, Ogres weren’t considered a people but monsters mindless beasts for slaying- which made for a rude awakening when she first set out into the world and was attacked, and attacked and attacked again.

It was how she developed her strength and way of fighting.

Silence pervaded her cell as hours passed, the sunlight streaming in from outside the bars changing shadows lengthening them until there was no more and the cool blue light of the moon illuminated the cell.

Eight hours of waiting finally gifted her with her captor.

“A beast drops dead at our gate carrying the unconscious body of a god blessed man, what is there to think?” A tall black haired, dark skinned human man with brilliant white bull horns pointing up into the sky coming from the side of his head, he was dressed in a faded olive skirt with a metal plate waistguard and leather sandals.

Raizel refused to respond, staring past the man at the other cell across from hers where the damaged form of Stilicho lay.

“No words?” The part Minotaur man scoffed, rolling his deep brown eyes.

Stalking along to the right blocking her view of the blonde man in the opposite.

“What is he to you? Scurrying about the sands with a man on your back- wearing the face of Emerald’s Arachne, must be important- even to a daemon like you.” He questioned with his face scrunched in a frown.

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Her lack of reaction eventually elicited an annoyed growl from the man before he left her to sleep.

Though sleep failed to find her, too many times had she trusted the night to wash away her worries when in similar situations before only for it to make things worse.

When morning came and invaded the cell the man returned, though this time he had a pair of similar looking men with him who carried tall red metal halberds.

“If you aren’t willing to tell us why you’ve come to Myra then you will die here and now Daemon, one less of your kind in the world is only a boon to the masses.” Her captor stated in a harsh demanding tone.

‘Ah… this isn’t going to work’

“My friend was sold into slavery, I freed him and we were travelling through the deserts when I became lost- Myra is just the first place we happened to find.” She answered, voice sounding raw and hoarse from dehydration.

“And your friend could corroborate this?” The man asked with an incredulous look, brow arched and all.

Raizel tried to come up with an excuse for why her friend would likely not remember what happened the same way she told it. She couldn’t be sure he wouldn’t break down again like he had in the amphitheatre as well which made waking him in any sort of way after what happened a bad idea.

The fracture to her friends mind and history was a scar on his very soul, she’d been warned by the men who pointed her in his direction after he’d become a slave that he no longer remembered his past- that on several occasions when parts of it returned he had tried to rip his eyes from his face or other horrific acts of self harm.

Ultimately it wasn’t something she could ignore any longer in that moment she called his name at the bout after realising who she’d been set upon, months of searching came to a head when she’d found herself facing him in a match she had accepted for the wage. His reaction and lack of waking since had all but cemented the facts regarding it she’d been told, one of which was that with his episodes came almost two weeks of healing before he was sane enough to wake again.

She imagined it was why he had been sold into slavery in the first place.

She’d seen many broken people sold because others refused to deal with them.

Becoming lost in thought she failed to respond not noticing when the man became indifferent to whatever she might answer and stalked across the path between the cells and opened the one opposite her ripping the golden haired man out and throwing him to the ground-

“Don't Touch Him!” Raizel growled a deep demonic rumble that caused her cell to tremble.

The ground shook staggering the three men for a moment as they stared at her with wide eyes as her red and white haired visage blurred into a haze and completely transformed into a monstrosity far larger destroying the entire cage holding her as her height shot into the air.

An easily thirty foot tall single eyed monster with enormous round muscular limbs, an indeterminately gendered torso and wide long tusks stretching out from the sides of its mouth. The monstrosity bellowed a deafening roar that shook the men to their cores-