1 Prison

An extinction-level event will start inside this Bald Eagle Dynasty prison in a few days, but for now, everyone continued per usual, even the person who would manifest himself as the calamity.

Still, today nothing out of the ordinary was happening, the guards were beating prisoners, and the prisoners not being beaten were thinking of ways to escape this hell hole.

Then along the hallways of the prison's impenetrable walls, a long, almost an endless line of prisoners was being moved.

The men and the women in the line were bruised and beaten to the point that no one would recognise them. They had their bodies mutilated so that bones were sticking out from beneath swollen skin while others didn't even have skin.

Torture like this or traumas may be the state of most prisoners, but there were exceptions. Indeed, even amongst this line of prisoners, there were individuals, who even the guards herding them onwards didn't dare to touch.

An excellent example of both types was amidst the line, shuffling ever forwards; they were a man and a young boy.

The boy was malnourished. His feet were bound by iron chains that linked to a ball of iron lagging behind him. He, for sure, wasn't enjoying his treatment.

Next to him was a man. He, on the other hand, didn't have a stain on his clothes, nor was he bound. His treatment was so proper that to the other inmates might think that he was a jailor, and in a way, he was since he considered the other inmates to be cattle.

Like everyone else, the boy was one of the so-called cattle, but being over a head shorter than him was he peeking around the place without the man caring, much less noting it.

What was the boy trying to achieve with his peeking? Well, he was trying to find anything helpful to his survival.

Yet he saw nothing that could help him around any corner nor in any cell, especially the cells for those made him feel despair more than anything else in here.

As the man gazed forward, paying no mind to the world around him, the boy saw the state of his fellow inmates. Most of whom were about the same as him; however, some were way worse. He surely wasn't doing too hot, but comparing himself to a man who had all his limbs cut off did he feel lucky.

The boy and that limbless man were both seeking for help, however, as neither was in a position to give that, their communication never went further than a stare. That random prisoner would forget him, and hopefully, he would forget.

Despite having felt that man's stare shaking him mentally, he still looked around him if, by some miracle, he would find what he was looking for, yet there was no miracle.

The boy, not finding anything then focussed on his cellmate's face where he saw that awful smirk. Not wanting to look at his face more, he began to curse the man silently. In his curses, there were no words left out for there was no need to for the boy felt the man be the devil incarnate, who spent his days on two actions.

One, beating him like the guards did, yet he was harsher in his punches.

The second? Ruining his stuff, well okay, they weren't his stuff, but he did need them to survive.

What stuff did he have? Straw baskets. And sure while straw baskets weren't much were they items that the boy crafted from straws to turn back for some extra rations.

His curses would always include words of revenge for all those broken straw baskets.

This time, however, before he got done with reciting the usuals, the boy noticed that they were arriving at their destination.

Their shared cell.

Knowing it was their time to get off the line, both of them jumped out from the line where they then began to wait for a jailor to come and open their door.

Waiting for the jailor, the boy continued his curses he had been resiting inside his head.

Meantime as he cursed, the man had different things to worry about, or one thing, which concerned the fact that how wasn't he inside his cell already. The man surely wouldn't stand here by the hallway a moment longer than needed while feeling how, in his opinion, animals hit his back.

The other inmates doing so made the man want to kill everyone in the line behind him and the boy; however, controlling his anger, he instead of that did something that he had the power to do. "Come and open this door! Now!" the man shouted towards the jailor, then adding into his disappointment, he began tapping his foot.

At best the best of times doing anything like this ends with a beating, or at worst death.

But for the boy's cellmate, it would be neither.

For sure, the boy wanted him to get beaten, yet when considering that the jailor replied, "Coming, coming." He knew there was no chance.

On the side, this way of speaking from both sent shockwaves amongst the other prisoners around them. They all had wanted to see a good thrashing, yet they witnessed this?

"Don't let him get away with that!" a prisoner from the line shouted. "Beat him up!" a prisoner in the next cell joined in. These and other comments were yelled by the other inmates, who were trying to get what they wanted.

Their shouts landed on deaf ears as the jailor was still doing what he had begun to, meaning that after the man had shouted, the jailor had quit opening the cell before them and marched over to them.

The only prisoner not shocked by this was the boy, not everyone knew his cellmate as he did. Well, neither did he know anything about him; he didn't even know the man's name. What he did know was that the man had a lot of power.

So his order had worked, and the jailor had come to them, following which, the jailor began scrambling to find the right key from his key chain.

The boy, watching this from the sidelines thought that the jailor was trying his best; however, the man didn't agree, and unlike the boy, he dared to show his displeasement.

To the man's antics, the jailor apologised until he found the right key.

When finally finding the key, he unlocked the cell door, even nicely opening it and politely gesturing for the man to enter.

The man took the offer. The boy followed.

Following the man, the boy after turning his back against the jailor felt something on it. He did note this, but acting to it was a different thing, and so the boy flew face-first into the jail cell's floor.

Such a thing occurring had been on his mind, so he wasn't too surprised by it; however, nothing could help him with the instinctive screaming he let out from experiencing it in practice.

The boy screamed.

The man and the jailor laughed.

The jailor didn't find this too funny, but he laughed because the man who with he wanted to be on good terms laughed like it was the funniest shit ever. Even so due to the man's laughs being such horrid thing to penetrate one's ears, the jailor soon stopped, faking a small smile as he left the cell.

When the jailor left them, the boy had stopped his screaming and was staring at the man.

Seeing the boy look at him furiously the man asked him, ¨Why are you looking at me, peasant?¨

"Because I hat—" the boy wanted to scream.

Before he could finish his sentence, the man interrupted him by planting his boot against his face. "Now, now," the man said, condescendingly.

The boy's mouth was pressing against the hard ground, yet he still tried to cry out, "I hate you!" But his words were muffled.

The man might not know what he said, but he could guess, and therefore the man turned his foot back and forth, grinding the boy's face into the ground.

"Peasant, you should be happy today!"

'Happy my ass,' the boy thought under the boot. Currently, some of his cheek's skin was beginning to twist and tear off, so why be happy?

The boy was squirming and squealing under his boot, yet the man, not caring continued, "I'll be leaving you tomorrow," he stated.

The boy barely listening.

His skin was under reconstruction, yet when hearing such news from the horse's mouth, he definitely heard and grasped everything in seconds.

'He's leaving? He's finally leaving?' The boy, when understanding this, stopped squirming under the man's foot, for he had lost the feeling of pain.

"I know, I know. It must hurt you dearly to know that I'll be gone soon, but don't worry. I have instructed the jailors to keep you company," he said so, but there was no difference, the jailors would beat the boy anyway.

Besides, that was so little that for a second, the boy thought of saying something sarcastic like, 'You'll truly be missed.'

As the boy was lying on the ground senseless, it made the man think if he was dead, and so he decided to investigate, yet what waited under his boot was a smile.

"What, you actually want me gone?" the man yelled at the boy.

Not having a boot on his head, the boy responded, "Why would I want to keep a sick bastard like you as my cellmate a day more?" the boy mumbled the words out with a spat of blood.

"You ungrateful brat!" To this response, the man yelled louder together with kicking the boy in the stomach.

Getting hit again was bad, no doubt, but not feeling pain anymore was it all worth it; the smile on his face didn't die down.

Soon the man noted that his cellmate wasn't reacting to pain anymore. Realising this, he shifted his focus to look for the next target which didn't take long either since there wasn't a whole lot of items in this bland jail cell of theirs.

The boy rolled over to his side, allowing him to see that the man was doing, yet when seeing what he was thinking of doing. "Stop you ugly bastard. I need those baskets more than you need your balls!" he yelled.

The man ignored the boy's slurs and grabbed one of the baskets.

The boy tried to get up; however, in his current state, he got his hands under him, nothing else. His feet didn't listen, so he was trapped in place, and all he could do was throw curses, and watch the undoing of his labour.

The man smirked at him as he tore the baskets to shreds. "Oh, you needed these for something? I was thinking about using them as a bed," he told his plans.

"You well know that I need those baskets!" the boy cried out, not acting tough anymore.

"Yeah, you did"—the man shrugged his shoulders—"but now that they are like this...might as well use them for bed sheets. Hahaha..."

"You fucker," The boy uttered with the last of his strength before falling to the ground, losing consciousness. At least the fall was much shorter than last time, though the fall of his soul was deeper.