"Oh crap, my back is killing me." Toby was not prepared for this ordinary complication given his demon body, but it was no wonder as he had fallen asleep while sitting, his back leaning against the hard wall of the cave. All the trouble from the previous night flooded into his brain and to his dismay, he remembered even the fact that he had no idea how to deal with most of them.

The thing in the back of his mind? How to deal with it? The only solution he could think of was not to tug on the memories that were clearly not his. He was more and more inclined to think that memories were key in his personal battle for his mind.

His status? It made no sense whatsoever. The only idea he had was to use his supposedly incredibly high mysticism in some indirect way, circumventing the need for possessing skills.

The most immediate complication was how to get some useful information out of his companion, a girl he had just recently raped and tortured, apparently having some kind of a deal with her.

"Irwen?" She jerked her body, when she heard his voice, but there was no more reaction from her.

"Are you going to pretend to be asleep all day?" Toby asked with irony, while grinning at her maliciously.

"Crappy demonic body and its habits!" Toby cursed in his mind, this would be difficult, he would probably have to consciously do every little action to get rid of these mannerisms. While he battled with his body, nothing happened as Irwen ignored him.

"Huh? Some post traumatic stress or stuff like that? No! I have no idea how to deal with that!" Toby thought about the best approach, but failed to come up with anything sensible.

"Think Toby, Think! Think, think, think . . ." He could invent only one approach. He remembered that stereotypes helped in these kinds of situations, the things like getting up and brushing your teeth, regular meals, exercise and so forth. Were the elves brushing teeth? He did not think they did, even though their teeth were usually white and clean. Cheaters! Cheaters! Poor tooth paste pharma companies! So much money on advertisement wasted!

"Wait, work normally stupid demonic brain, this again!" Toby cursed under his breath. He noticed demonic physiology processed things differently. SImply put, traumatic thing were not as traumatic as they seemed for a demon's brain, just a casual sailing. The brain had a tendency to throw it out of the window and be done with it. It required extra focus to act as a human would.

"Irwen, take out some supplies, we will have a meal. Do we have something to eat with us?" He asked and Irwen suddenly. . .. did absolutely nothing and continued to ignore him. The only visible change on her body was that her facial muscles tensed.

"Fine!" Toby walked to one of their packs and elaborately searched through its contents, his claws not making the job easier.He had found some dried meat and sliced a chunk with his claw.

"Nice, they are not completely useless." Toby whispered to himself and divided the peice into two halves, offering one to his companion.

"Open your eyes and take that." He commanded and to his surprise, his words had the impact of a hammer, Irwen opened her eyes and moved with haste to take the piece of meat. She held it in her hand, apparently not planning to eat it, just staring at it as it was in her hand.

"Like seriously? Is she my robot now or what?" Toby shook his head in amazement.

"Eat it." He said and she immediately began to eat, like his personal puppet.

"jeez, this will be difficult." Toby sighed with a heavy heart. He was a teenager who bravely saved little kittens to obtain the awe of the elderly! He was not a psychiatrist!

* * * *

"Irwen?" The sound of the demon's voice was like a bucket of cold water, freezing her in an instant.

"Are you going to pretend to be asleep all day?" She opened her left eye a little for a second, just to see the monster's toothy grin. Evil thing! The next round of torture was here, but she did not want to! She stubbornly ignored the voice to buy herself some extra seconds of peace. She felt the touch of steel against her neck and knew the sadistic thing would definitely use the collar to discipline her any second now.

"Irwen, take out some supplies, we will have a meal. Do we have something to eat with us?" It was definitely a trap, he knew very well what they had. She expected the pain arrive any second now due to her insubordination.

"Fine!" To her surprise, no assault happened and the demon got the things himself. He had to be toying with her.

"Open your eyes and take that." She could feel his proximity, his breath against her face and did not dare to disobey. The moment her eyes opened, her spine felt like freezing by the sight of his sharp teeth.Without thoughts, she executed his command, as she had originally expected something other then food to be presented to her in this manner.

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"Eat it." She began to chew the meat slowly, looking at the black monster.

Right when she was about to lower her guard, that what she had been expecting the whole time came. With a shriek full of pain, Irwen caught her neck and curled into a ball, the food she had been chewing on falling out of her mouth.

The pain! She knew he had been about to do this, just toying with her, striking the moment she had a sliver of hope again.

He was an absolute abomination, how could she get close to something like this? Forget the mission, she would never be able to do this.

"I hope he will get bored and kill me soon." She felt like something cracked inside her and gave up.

* * * *

"Retarded ring!" Toby could not hold back his annoyance and cursed aloud, when he looked at his finger. He was sure that as a psychiatrist he had just gotten mark zero out of ten.

How does this evil thing operate? How had he switched it on? More importantly, how to switch it off?!

He was about to search in his memories where there surely was enough information, but stopped himself immediately, afraid of the thing hiding somewhere in his mind. However, he had no leasure to fool around! The poor thing on the floor screamed like there was no tomorrow and he had to act with haste.

The first thing that he came up with was to pull the ring off. He did just that the moment the thought came to him, but to his horror .. .

"Why is it still on!? What is this trickery?!" He was dumbstruck, when the ring did its evil job even after he took it off.

"What to do? What to do? How to stop it?" He began to panic, it was clear to him that having this switched on for longer periods of time probably equaled death for those on the collar's end of the tool.

He did the first thing he thought off again, he bit into it with his fangs.

"Fuck, so hard!" And just barely managed to keep all his teeth as the ring was made out of hard metal.

"Kill me. Please kill me!" The elf managed to squeeze out in between of her screaming and Toby understood the only option was for him to man up, or demon up?

"Come on you hellish fuck, I will smack you into oblivion if you dare to come out!" Toby began to dive into the part of his mind that he could hardly even call his. Fortunately he had a reference, he knew that the collars were related to the thing's last memories. He searched through its thoughts, motives, urges, memories and in doing so, he invoked past ones that were related to them. He skimmed through the alien-like mind and only at this moment understood the towering difference between the thing and himself.

It was twisted to no end.

Fortunately, he found a gesture that operated the ring and hurriedly switched it off.

The screams had been replaced with barely audible moans.

Toby placed the palm of his hand on his forehead and breathed out heavily.

"This could have gone better. Much, much better."

With his back along the wall, Toby slided slowly to the ground and looked at the previously chewed meat and ate it. Strangely enough it did not seem disgusting to him, but he remembered clearly that an act like this should have felt repulsing. For a second, he thought about abandoning the girl, it might be for the best given the history between them, but he knew nothing about the dangers of this region, there might be dangerous beasts wandering around and she was in no shape to take care of herself now. Looking at her, she appeared to be delirious. Toby did not know how long he took when he had been searching in his memories, but it seemed to be long enough to worsen her issues.

He could surely leave her to die, but he was afraid to make decisions too removed from his original human self. It could strengthen the demonic thing surely lurking in the back of his mind. His instincts told him that similar actions would eventually end up turning him into it.

He refused to let it happen.

Besides, he would not have let her here to die, even if he had not been afraid of such an outcome. He was no murderer and her current state was partially his fault, he had been the one activating the ring the second time.

"Where have we been?" Toby asked and his teeth made another chewing motion.

"Ahh, stereotypes, breakfast." Toby, the psychiatrist had been on-line again. "Let's attempt a better score this time shall we?"

Toby thought about serving her the meat again, but it felt too lacking. She was an elf, given her kind's connection with forests, he should probably try to get some fruits or berries. He liked the idea and left the cave to forage something good, remembering not to venture too far away from the entrance.

* * * *

He watched all night and heard a lot. He considered himself an honorable elf, not doing anything bad to his own, but a direct order from a Great Tree was something else. Their wisdom was something transcendent, it was not the place of an ordinary hunter like him to question their orders. When morning came, he heard more screaming, it was longer than the previous day.

"That is it, now only to check the body." He waited until the demon had left the cave and sneaked in, looking for the corpse of the traitor.

He remembered what the Great Tree had said, he had to check that the one dealing with demons was really dead before The Mistglaives arrived, they could not be trusted given the target was related to someone having much influence among them.

He had not searched for long, the target was lying on a piece of cloth, curled into a ball. Her hair was a mess and she had not reacted to his presence even after he arrived next to her. Still, she lived and his orders were very clear about what to do.

* * * *

"I am stupid, stupid!" Toby whispered angrily while big, blue berries were falling out of his hands into the grass. He had been too enthusiastic and rushed out without thinking about where he would be putting his harvest.

"I need to take at least some large piece of cloth with me." He rushed back into the cave, jogging to the place where he had left his companion, the same place their things lay on the ground.

Turning around a corner, he was stunned by the situation he saw.

"Move!" He roared, when he saw a dagger descending in the direction of the elf"s chest and began to ran to intercept the attacker. It was clear that he would not make it in time, not having any other choice than making a gesture with his right hand, trying to force his elven friend to move out of the weapon's trajectory. Jerking her body in shock, Irwen still received the blow, but was hit into her arm, instead of her chest.

Toby quickly flashed another gesture again to switch off the collar before he arrived in front of the attacker, who had his dagger probably stuck in Irwen's bone. Not waiting for his enemy to make a move of his own, Toby began swiping wildly with his claws, quickly turning the attacker into a bloody mess.

Toby was quite pissed and ceased to slash at the attacker only after he was dead three times over. His gaze locked with Irwen, who held her arm, the dagger still stuck in it.

"I brought berries." Toby informed her with serious face that he forcefully maintained and looked at the berries rolling on the rock under their feet, most of them crushed or stained with blood.

She stared at him absentmindedly

"One out of ten." Toby mumbled, realizing that they had to move immediately. Their breakfast had to wait.

If a single treehugging attacker came, more were bound to follow.

Toby wanted to turn their relationship into something more friendly, only to be forced to order Irwen around to get her out of the cave. He asked her about the region, wanting to know where they were going, but she was completely unresponsive.

He had imagined his reincarnation into another world differently, he should have met some friends in a town, join a guild, conquer a dungeon, save poor villagers from monsters, live through awkward moments tagging along local beauties in distress, saving the day in the end and being rewarded by a king, who would bestow a noble title upon him . .oh inventing his own branch of magic and . .No, simply no, everything was broken instead!

He had been attacked and heavily injured by a wolf, had to work . .Work! . .in a futuristic city, then he had been teleported by some malicious bastard and a knight-ass of death impaled him, forcing him to flee god knows where, where he had been kind of devoured by a demon while trying to escape? And now he had this body, the sins of the fucker weighting him down and as his companion a traumatized person he had commited his crimes against, well he had not, but who would believe him?

She did not speak to him at all!

And his status was broken!

Where was some party of adventurers he could join and embark on an epic quest with them? Where?!