Chapter 6

The demon's stirs awake by a stream of rushing water logging into its ear and half of its face, a bit more and it would be drowning. The demon picks itself up sideways, letting water drip from inside its head of hair as blood flows down the half of it's mushed, semi-drowned face.

Searching about, the demon notes startling new developments. Something metal and round clamps on its ankle, a chain links and ties to a tall iron staff rooted in the ground. The demon stares, lost at both the bondage and the staff. It's not long before it deems itself ready to move again as a growl from its stomach bristles it to action.

Sniffing the air of its new surroundings, the demon notes a hard lack of trees, soil and life in this place. Besides the stream, everything around it is made of rock and smells the same as the curious staff and the metal bogging down its ankle. The metal is heavy and inconvenient. The demon's only been awake for a few moments and it's already annoyed with it. Pronouncing it's claws the demon strikes at it but a sharp sting arcs from the staff, through the chain link and up the Demon.

It's jaw rattles, slamming and gnashing its teeth together. The demons pauses the second after the electrifying experience is over, wide-eyed and frightened with a rapid pacing heart. Just what is happening? It surely cannot eat the chain and the staff, the source of that shock is out of the question as well. Instead, the demon follows the stream, it flows past where it awoke and deep into a dark, massive crevasse, larger and wider than anything the demon has dug or lived in before. The stream cuts through a large patch of barren land, leaving the jungle it explored in the horizon behind as well as its source.

The demon half-waddles over a few paces but doesn't pass a glowing crack in the wall. The crack exudes a sliver of white light and more like it spread through the walls, providing the cave with some light in places where it's reflected off the stream. The water flows uphill there, carrying upward on a slope in a way that sends a shiver of unease through the demon.

This is only its first encounter with water, however some instinct tells it that the water should not behave like that. Yet, it bolsters some curiosity within the demon as it turns back toward the staff to examine it instead. The demon licks that staff, recoiling at the strong metallic taste. After a second of grimacing the demons changes its mind, recognizing something in the pang of metals on its tongue, something it has tasted in blood.

The staff tastes like blood but it also tastes like punishing arc of shock from earlier. After licking the staff some more, the demon notes its surface flaking off in slivers, like curled up dust bunnies of metal filaments. It picks these off and chews, finding them not nutritious at all, not even enough to give a fraction of ESQ.

"…Yhea snoo, wlli eb."

Ears dried and perked the demon hears something approach from the cave. The path and stream light up orange as a lantern heralds the approach of two tall beings conversing with one another. One holding the lantern with falling threads of hair and the other chatting excitedly, their bright violet eyes lit up in the light.

The one with tumbling hair leans back at the entrance, letting her companion approach the demon with the lantern and a firm reaching hand. The demon snaps, growling and threatening with Essence smoking off its hands and feet.

Chuckling lightly, the violet-eyed man smirks back at his companion before snatching out at the demon. Bound by the chain, the demon only manages to skirt out of his grasp, but it's sure to sacrifice some Essence in its fists for more in its legs.

Hissing, the demon dances around the man's grasp each time he comes in for a grab. Being only half the man's height the demon soon sends the man grunting and growling as his frustration mounts and eventually he turns back, yelling at his now smirking companion.

The demon's hope sour at the woman's introduction, just as tall and possibly faster, the demon fears it's time to be eaten has come at last. Then, she falls to kneel beside the staff, fetching something tied in cloth before whistling a soft hooting tune unlike anything the demon's heard.

Sniffing, the woman interests the demon, enough that a second of distraction earns it further imprisonment as her persistent companion snatches it up from behind. Holding it up and bearing the retaliatory bites as the woman yells at him. The two enter some squabble and the demon finds it's bites do nothing but annoy the human as he rewards each one with a harsh squeeze, letting up the moment the demon releases its bite.

The woman snaps for its attention and the demons turns from the man's quirky tasting blood to look into her eyes. She pushes a tight braid aside as she presents the demon what she's unravelled— a glimmering rock, or perhaps more by the scent.

A combination of colours swirls within the rock. The demon lifts its ear, twitching as it picks up a faint hum, almost a ringing sound emanating from the bright thing. Nostrils flared, the demon smells something familiar as well, blood most certain but blood like in the staff it licked.

The demon turns away, if it's anything like the staff then it's not worth tasting, but the woman insists, shoving it closer, prodding its face with it all while casting glances at her chattering companion.

He crushes harder than before and the demon rages, thrashing at his grip.

[{Blood Rush} Active!]

He has none of it and cracks the demon's side and arm with a single flex. He leans in beside the thrashing demon swelling with Essence, bulking muscles and fangs, grabbing it by its head of hair to let it thrash mid-air while he stands back and commands with a flare of violet in his eyes, "Behave!"

[{Blood Rush} Disabled!]

Mind swirling, a cool, freezing sensation flows through the demon as it hangs, held by an unknown imposing man and fed a strange rock by a sympathetic woman.