Prelude

Chapter 1: Prelude

Hell was here.

He used to be a man.

He used to be human.

But they turned him into a beast.

There wasn't a man, nor beast, that was ever expecting to come out alive from these walls. He had been residing in this cauldron prison for the longest time he could remember.

He had been here ever since he came into this world. He was here from the very beginning. This was his world. This was the only world he knew up to this point.

"Time for lunch," the prison guard who took care of him most of the time said as she slowly approached his cage. The cage had bars made of orange bones. The prisoner was currently alone in his cell. This hadn't been the case in a long, long time, since it wasn't unheard that the manager of this hell prison would keep a dozen prisoners in only one cage. This was exactly how it was here up until a few days ago, right before the other inmates with the prisoner had been taken by the guards to be used as living ingredients for the next witch's brew made in the village surrounding the prison. His turn was eventually going to come again. "Don't worry, it's going just as good as the last time," she told him, attempting to reassure him without truly trying to. Especially as she showed up with this half-cooked and decaying chicken in the dirty plate she had in her hands. The prison guard was a young woman. She was twenty-six years old, and she was seen wearing a rusted armor set that ended up being pretty revealing. She had the shoulder plates, the armored boots, the gauntlets, the helmet, but didn't wear anything else outside of a skimpy two-piece bikini set made of cloth. This was most likely the case, since she wasn't exactly prepared for any forms of battles on a daily basis. Only cruelty and hurting the already weak and poorly-fed prisoners.

The guard had sapphire blue eyes and long blonde hair that reached down to her big butt. The skimpy bikini top she wore did an awfully poor job at containing her tits, which continuously resulted in having them jiggle around whenever she moved.

Once again that evening, the guard tried seeing that one prisoner in the cell, coming closer to the bars made of bones, and she still couldn't see much. The interior of the cage was so dark she couldn't see the prisoner. The only thing she could make out was the vague shape of his shadow, of his silhouette in the darkness.

"There you are," she said, relieved to be able to find the shape of his body in the dark. There was a torch to her right in the corridor outside the cage, but it didn't do a decent enough job at lighting anything. "So, you don't want to speak to me tonight as well? How boring is that? Anyway, I'm leaving your meal here. Down on the ground. It's up to you to come to eat or not," then, as she was about to delicately placed his plate down on the ground right in front of the bars, she smirked, thinking of something a bit more amusing to do. She paused for a few seconds. Then, the next move she made was to deliberately throw his food in the cell, sending his meal flying everywhere, scattered all over the interior of the cage. The prisoner still didn't move. He didn't care.

"Oops," she said, smiling some more.

"..." the prisoner didn't say anything again.

"Still no reaction from you, huh? How impressive. I saw many other men cry and brought to despair when seeing their last meal scattered all over their cage the evening before their execution. I guess you are already dead inside. That's good. That means we broke you all this time you are here. Well, why I can't make out who you are in the dark and that I don't remember you, I have to believe that you have been here for a long time to be this calmed. Anyway," she slowly turned around, closing her eyes and preparing herself to leave the silent prisoner alone for that one last time, "I should probably go now. The others are going to wonder where I went," she added. Suddenly feeling like the grim corridor of the prisoner was progressively turning darker and darker, she turned her head to the torch to her side, mounted on the wall, witnessed the flame weakening. "Uh, that would be a decent idea to come back later on and fix this. The servants can do it. Oh, and remember," she turned her attention back to the lone prisoner in the cell without turning her head around, "it's not because I'm not seeing you crying to death right now that you won't when I'm gone. You are a weak, fragile and pathetic piece of junk that is going to be dead tomorrow. I want you to remember this as you cry yourself to sleep, disgusting man," she told him right as she was about to move her right foot and moved forward, walking away from the cell.

However, at the last moment, before she could go, a big, massive, muscular, densely hairy arm reached for her right shoulder as she tried slowly and casually moving away from the cage. Without her knowing about it or suspecting what was coming her way, she was suddenly held back. Pulled back toward the orange bones that constituted the bars of the cell. She gasped as it all unfolded. Her back abruptly hit the bars. Hurting her.

"I won't deny the 'disgusting' part with you, but I can assure you one thing: I am not a man," the prisoner spoke for the first time. A deep and growling voice. A beast-sounding voice.

"What the fuck are you?" she asked him, her back still colliding with the bars. Unable to turn around to see what the prisoner looked like, unable to free herself, she began panicking.

"Originally, I was going to follow the instructions of your friends tomorrow and accept my fate to be turned into ingredients for potions or something like that, but you changed my mind."

"How so?"

"You've made me realize just how much I don't deserve to die here with low-life brats such as you."

"It's you, isn't it?" the woman said, panting.

"Uh?"

"There were rumors about one of our prisoners not being a mortal. Being a beast instead of a man. I thought it was all bullshit until now. So, is it true? You were born this way? As a creature?" the guard asked him.

"Apparently," he simply said to her in his deep and nightmarish voice.

"What are you going to do with me now?"

"I don't know yet. The earliest and only thing I remember from my life is inhabiting these walls. Living here. I don't care about anything. Seriously, between you and me, I'm tempted to break your skull.

"... Ugh…" she gasped as he made this revelation to her.

"That would be something I get to do before getting executed tomorrow," he added.

"Either that or I could unlock your cage and let you out. Allow you to escape. I have the key," she told him, horribly sweating and fearing for her life.

"You would do that?"

"I could. If you let me live," she bargained with him.

"But if you are right and that you do have the key on your person, wouldn't it be easier for me to end you now and then grab the key from your corpse right after?" he asked her.

"Please. Don't kill me," she begged him. Losing hope.

However, at this moment, the huge hands of the creature in the cell began sliding down the guard's body, touching and feeling her interesting and voluptuous forms. She was unsure about this at first, but she soon largely preferred this rather than having his finger forcing on the side of her head or around her neck as she thought she was about to be strangled earlier. His hands slid down to her big breasts first.

He felt them through her, the thin fabric of her bikini top.

"Although I don't remember ever having touched a woman before," he admitted to her, going hand-to-hand with not remembering much before his life in this prison.

"You want me?" she asked him, hesitantly.

Then, all of a sudden, as she asked him this question, her words reminded him of something.

He abruptly began seeing quick flashes of his time before the cauldron prison. The time he didn't remember. The time he didn't think he had. He was in a totally different place. A different side of the world, perhaps. It was dark. This was the last day of his life. This was the last night of his life before the cauldron prison. He couldn't see or learn how he ended up here or why, but the only thing he knew was that he wasn't alone when his life changed and was transported here because he remembered hearing someone say some exact words the guard just said to him in the prison.

"You want me? Don't you?" he heard this in his mind. Never saw who said these words exactly.

Then, it all ended. He felt like he was brought back to the prison. He was still holding the guard hostage. Still holding on to her breasts.

"Hey, do you hear me? Do you want me instead?" she repeated to him.

"The only thing I want is not to die here," he told her.

"Okay, but I thought you just said you didn't care if you were executed tomorrow?"

"I'm fine with the execution, but that can wait for a bit longer until I figure out what happened to me," he revealed to her.

"What happened to you? What are you talking about?"

"Open the gate or I'm going to make soup with your head. I won't die in prison," he told her.

"Okay, okay, okay, you got it, big boy," she fetched for her key in the leather satchel she was wearing on the side of her right hip and unlocked the gate of his cage for him. The gate opened up, making a rattle of noises as it did. The beast from the cell had to let go of her for a short amount of time while he opened the gate.

Coming out of his cage also meant that he was coming out of the dark of the cell, coming out of the darkness that had been holding him back all these years he spent in this living hell. For the first time ever, the guard fully saw what the monster looked like. She was shocked to discover what was probably the tallest and biggest creature she had ever seen up close. The reborn monster was a Minotaur. A hulking and vastly muscular beast with a pair of sharp horns on the sides of his head. The head of a bull. The body of a man-beast. Normal human hands. Hooves for feet. A long bull's tail. He had a bit of fur there and there, but what she could see was mostly skin. His skin was dull-grey and a dark purple. Being a prisoner in this shit-hole, he was completely naked, leaving his huge flaccid thirty-inches long penis to be fully seen as well as his gigantic testicles.

She observed the beast in awe for a few seconds during the reveal as he ultimately came out of the shadows, and then soon tried escaping, beginning to run down the corridor and alert her friends.

Fortunately for him, he managed to grab her left hand right before she ran away.

"Where are you going like that?"

"I thought you would let me go?" she said, all confused and frightened.

"I'm still thinking about it."

"What?"

"First, I'd like to feel human again."

"What is that supposed to mean?" she asked him.

"I used to be a man," he revealed to her.

Then, the next moment, the Minotaur was kissing the lady guard. Filling her mouth with his pleasurable tongue. Using her. He remembered everything that she and her other colleagues did to him and the other prisoners all this time. The horrible pain they caused everyone. He kissed her and sucked her face while playing with her big tits through the fabric of her bikini top. When he was done with her, he let her fall to the ground. An intense amount of saliva was coming out of her mouth. She had been sexually satisfied by this. She remained, lingering on the ground without moving much.

"It's time for me to go now."

"Uh…" she was left nearly unconscious.

The escaped Minotaur had been hoping to fuck the devil out of that blonde guard. He purely and deeply desired to do it, but he couldn't. Getting out of here alive was much more important, which was why he abandoned her with only a disgusting and messy bestial kiss. And to be honest, this didn't feel right to him. Even if that blonde guard was all over him and internally wishing for him to make love to her, that never happened because he didn't want it.

This wasn't the right moment.

***

Since this was the middle of the night, he was able to go around most other guards relatively easily, finding out that most of them were asleep at this point.

Still, this didn't mean that there weren't a couple of guards who noticed him. However, most of them weren't trained to be battling huge and tall beasts such as Minotaurs. Most guards were trained to keep human prisoners in their cages. Not only that, but a great portion of the guards were already busy keeping other prisoners under control, as all of them were remarkably excited and amped up to see the beast walking free among the personal of the prison.

"He is out! He is free!" one of the prisoners shouted.

The Minotaur didn't say anything.

He didn't have to.

"What do we do?" a less experienced guard asked her supervisor. The both of them were scared to death.

"We can't stop him. But it's okay, he won't be able to get through the gate. It's locked," the supervisor hoped.

The Minotaur then reached the iron gate of the prison. The last door preventing him from being completely free. He soon began punching it with all his strength. Punch by punch, he slowly began tearing it apart.

Thud! Thud Thud! Thud!

"Are you sure he won't be able to get through?" the inexperienced guard asked.

"..." the supervisor couldn't believe it.

Boom! The iron gate finally went down.

The Minotaur left the prison without saying a word.

"Should we go after him?"

"No. Leave it be. Let's wait for backup," the supervisor said. She felt like throwing up, she was shocked the beast didn't kill all of them.

Before leaving the prison, he previously grabbed a long piece of dark brown cloth, a blanket from his cell, and used it as a cloak to hide his entity once out of there. When he walked out of there and felt the fresh air for what he believed to be the first time of his life, the beast looked back one more time at the place that was originally meant to be his tomb, the prison that was constructed in the shape of a cauldron.

He finally left.

***

However, he barely had enough time to turn the corner of a street and suddenly felt something spiky wrapping itself around his heart. He hunched forward and touched the left side of his chest with the palm of his hand.

Something was not right.

He stopped in the middle of the street.

What is wrong with me? He thought, asking himself.

He felt like the vital energy of his body was leaving him. Abandoning him. He felt powerless.

What is this? What is this sickening feeling? He kept asking himself.

He kept walking in the street.

Working through pain.

It's okay. I'll make it through the night.

***

The next day, on the road, the Minotaur came across countless 'wanted' signs wherever he went to. Signs with drawings of the faces of many human murderers, rapists and other wanted criminals all over them.

Even though it had only been a few hours since he escaped, he began thinking that he would see similar wanted posters but featuring drawings of his bestial face. He was paranoid.

Then, as he continued travelling, the chest pain he felt last night came back again. He touched the left side of his chest, tried enduring the pain one more time before, unfortunately, collapsed this time. He collapsed on the side of the road.

Fuck, he thought to himself.

He felt his health getting even worse than before. He felt closer to death.

That can't be good.

Five seconds later, the Minotaur heard footsteps. Someone was coming this way. A large shadow loomed over his nearly dead body. The beast looked up. He saw the shadowy silhouette of a woman. With the bright morning sunlight in his eyes, blinding him, he couldn't see much.

"You look like shit," the soothing but also stern, sexy voice of the approaching woman said to him.

"Who are you?" the creature asked her.

"I am The Witch Queen."