The Jailer's Cruelty

Hello everyone and welcome to the latest chapter of The Fallen! Word of warning, this chapter gets a bit painful near the end so heads up on that. One thing that isn't so painful, however, is checking out my Pat reon! That's right, become a patron and stop in for news, scene samples and even commissions! And I think that's about it, so with no guest review questions this week, let the pain begin!

Hage Village: Forest Near the Demon Skull

Asta was nine years old now, and like many nine-year-olds, he was full of energy. Unlike many nine-year-olds, however, the ashen-haired boy was putting it to use in training. It was very basic training for one his age, just some pushups, sit-ups, and squats. He did running on occasion, too, but Asta felt like it was important to build up his strength first.

The reason he was doing this was because, despite his best efforts, no one was able to see the black and red energy he could produce. Naturally Asta practiced that, too, but he couldn't really get much help with instruction since most people thought he was just playing around or something. So, frustrating as it was, the ashen-haired boy had decided on this course of action: training his body alongside his odd magic. That way, he'd be prepared to fight one way or the other when he finally became a magic knight.

'A good start to the day,' Asta mused while toweling the sweat off himself, having finished the latest set of exercises. He sat down then and pulled out another little item he'd brought with him, a sketchbook of all things. It was actually a funny story how he'd come across it. A year ago, after his little episode involving the branding of the strange tattoo on his arm, he'd been out with Yuno, Orsi and some of the other orphan kids to go collect some new blankets for their beds.

The current ones had started to wear out and needed to be replaced, and since there were several blankets to collect a few hands would be needed to carry them all. But Asta was just happy to be up and about, walking happily along without a care in the world until he tripped over something and faceplanted. He wasn't hurt but he was irritated enough that he nearly kicked the offending object until he saw what it was, a book of sorts. It wasn't in the best of shape, looking somewhat old and a bit worn on the outside.

Still, the object intrigued him enough that he decided to show it to Father Orsi. The old priest looked it over while asking him where he'd gotten it. When he learned it had just been lying on the ground he decided to let Asta keep it since the item appeared to have been abandoned. The boy showed it to Sister Lily when they got back to the church and she was able to identify it as a sort of sketchbook.

The nun even demonstrated how to use a piece of charcoal to draw on the paper, creating a simple picture of a flower. Asta gave it a try after that, attempting to reproduce the flower with not so spectacular results. Despite that, he found the activity surprisingly fun. It wasn't like writing where he had to make everything legible and, according to Sister Lily, if he got good enough, he could draw whatever he wanted.

Asta didn't realize it at the time, but this was also very therapeutic for his mind. He was still plagued by the images he saw in Megicula's home and attempting to draw them out helped him to feel that the place wasn't so scary. 'I wonder how she's doing,' the ashen-haired boy mused while flipping through the drawings he'd made over the last few months. Since he could choose literally anything to draw, he'd gone on something of a tear.

He drew stuff he saw in the environment, flowers and trees mostly, several of the residents at the church, and a few of these things called caricatures. The last picture he flipped to was one he'd made of Megicula. Naturally it too was poorly made, looking more like a funky bat than the person he'd met. Still, Asta was determined to get better at this activity too so that one day, he could give the winged woman a special drawing of her as a gift.

That project, however, would have to wait as Asta's stomach growled, reminding him that breakfast would be served soon. Unbeknownst to him, Megicula had appeared once again in her astral form. 'It must be breakfast time,' she smirked, easily recalling her toy's schedule. Naturally the demoness had been checking up on him in the last few months to ensure he was still a viable option for her eventual return.

Since she didn't have much else to do in the demon prison she'd taken to learning about the boy's new regimen and figured out that he trained several times during the day. So while he readied to leave, Megicula approached the skull of the demon. The winged woman had discovered that her astral form could go between three hundred to five hundred meters from Asta due to the fact that the piece of her within the boy was tied to his soul. In this case it meant the demoness had only a couple minutes to ponder the mystery of the demon skull.

Megicula didn't wonder how it got there as she knew a surprising amount about Clover Kingdom's history thanks to interactions with a few other demons in the prison who'd made contracts with those in the outside world. She knew the statue atop the skull was Lemiel Silvamillion Clover, the first wizard king. She knew it was he who battled and ultimately defeated the demon. However, her theory lies in the fact that she doubts the monster slain that day was actually a demon.

To begin with, Megicula did her best to keep an eye on any and all attempts made by other demons to escape the prison. As far as she knew, no demons had escaped the prison during the time this one appeared. Another oddity that disqualified this monster as being a true demon was its massive size. The tallest among her people only reached as high as four meters.

She did sense some forbidden magic, but it hadn't come from one of her brethren. Instead, it was likely this monster was a creation of sorts using forbidden magic. Admittedly, Megicula couldn't rule out the meddling of one of her own kind as she was not the only demon capable of interacting with the outside world to a certain degree. It would be something the demoness would ponder as she was finally forced to move away from the skull due to Asta's increasing distance from it.

The winged woman would soon find herself wandering around the grounds of the church. It didn't take long for Asta to finish his breakfast and head back outside with the rest of the children to play for a bit. Ironically, the boy had yet to get a good handle on his training regimen and soon had to sit down and rest under a nearby tree. At least, that's the reason he gave for taking a break under the tree.

But Megicula was becoming more familiar with the times he was practicing his anti-magic by observing the subtle fluctuations in his anti-magic core and this was one of those times. He hadn't advanced much and was still trying to sense the energy along his internal pathway system. Naturally such a thing would be difficult for an easily distracted child such as him. 'Perhaps when I obtain a greater amount of control, I should try training him a little in using his abilities,' she mused before noticing one of the children had fallen and scraped their knee.

Naturally, Sister Lily was there in a heartbeat with her healing magic at the ready. On a whim, she decided to observe the scene from behind the nun. 'Certainly the proper spell, and without an incantation,' Megicula mused, 'still, she should be able to cast such a spell without even opening her grimoire.' The demoness found it amusing in a way, how much knowledge had either been lost or misinterpreted over the years when it came to magic.

Many believe grimoires increased magic power but that wasn't the case. Everyone was born, more or less, with a predetermined amount of mana. What grimoires helped a person do was more effectively manage their magic and only use the amount of mana required for a spell. This was, however, limiting in its own way as many people assumed a spell from a grimoire couldn't be improved on.

In truth, one could wield all their spells without a grimoire if they trained long enough and hard enough, making their use of mana as controlled and efficient as possible. One could even create their own spells with enough practice and not just when they matured. Of course, many people never had a need to improve their spells to such a degree, so it was only natural that most never tried improving the spells in their grimoire. And as the nun's grimoire closed, Megicula made a note to consider whether or not it would be a good idea to teach Asta some of these facts.

One Year Later: Hage Village

Asta took a drink of leaf sap, ignoring the odd taste as he took a moment to catch his breath before getting back to training. He was ten years old now and so far he still hadn't been able to fully grasp sensing the strange mana, or whatever it was, in his body. But there had been some definite progress. The boy had been able to grasp the feeling of it enough times to know he wasn't going crazy, that there was something there.

Naturally he hadn't neglected his physical training either. In fact, it was thanks to his physical training that he was certain this strange energy in his body was doing something. Whenever he was able to capture the feeling of the energy while doing his exercises, he was always able to do more. Running, pushups, crunches, lifting, and any other exercise Asta tried would become easier and he'd be able to do more of it.

That's why he was able to ignore everyone else when they said he was wasting his time. Asta knew he was accomplishing something and if he stuck it out long enough, there were sure to be good results! A sentiment shared by Megicula as she again appeared in her astral form to check up on her little tool. 'Good, he's actually made some progress with his anti-magic,' the demoness mused.

She too had been analyzing the effects of such an energy on his body and had noted a few things. Namely, that anti-magic was passively increasing his physical abilities. Since no one saw him train it hadn't been realized yet that Asta was performing far above the normal physical parameters of a child his age, even if they were training just as hard as him. The boy himself was aware that his physicals went up when he used anti-magic but he was likely less aware that these changes would become more pronounced over time.

Megicula estimated that eventually, his normal strength would be beyond that of any regular human without even needing his anti-magic. It gave the demoness something to look forward to. 'Keep training and become a useful tool for me now,' she thought evilly to herself, 'I have more than a couple scores to settle.'

That Night: The Church

'Another full day,' Asta sighed as he laid down and got comfy in his bed. He'd long gotten used to the old mattress years ago but even if he hadn't the exhaustion from his routine was enough to keep him from caring as he closed his eyes and fell asleep. Usually he'd have a pretty deep slumber so dreams weren't all that common for him and the ones he did have typically involved his becoming the wizard king and marrying Sister Lily. Tonight, however, was different.

Tonight, Asta's dreams took him to a place he didn't recognize in the slightest. There were these strange beings with wings like birds, a few of whom were working on what looked like a large magic seal hovering vertically in the air. The rest of them were either floating about or gathered around a mass of cages. They were the kind one would normally put animals in, normally.

But upon seeing what was inside one particular cage, Asta's blood ran cold. It was Megicula and another grey-skinned demon girl with short hair, horns and a black tunic of sorts. Another oddity was Megicula was wearing a necklace and her apparent friend was wearing wrist ornaments, both of which were glowing with a magic script Asta had never seen before. But what really caught the boy's attention was how terrified the two of them were.

The pair spoke in a language he'd never heard before but the feeling was clear; 'why are you doing this?' The winged beings surrounding them simply laughed before giving their own answers, again in a language Asta couldn't understand. But even if he didn't know the words, he knew the tone of mocking and jeering when he heard it. What happened next was slightly less understandable for him.

The winged beings, Asta was just going to call them angels since they seemed to fit that description, appeared to be drawing lots or performing a type of macabre lottery. The winners were demons who were in the other cages or chained up and their reward was decapitation. That wouldn't have been so bad except it was done with a very blunt blade, meaning on occasion more than one blow was required for a complete beheading, prolonging the pain of the one being executed. The runner-ups were less fortunate, being mutilated until death.

Of course, had Asta known that what the angels were working on was a prison for demons, he might've called the ones being executed the more fortunate. Their torment was ending, unlike Megicula's, who was soon to be a prisoner. But her suffering would begin indirectly when it was her friend's turn. Try as she might, the jewels and the bars of their cage prevented her from using any magic and left her weak, unable to stop her tormentors from ripping her friend from her arms.

The girl demon was drug into the center of the angels who began casting magic onto her. It must've been some kind of biological magic because the body of Megicula's friend began to twist and tremble, her spine shifted, bones deformed and her skin became wrinkled and dry. She could only stare in horror at the gnarled branches that had once been her hands. The blood in her veins felt like boiling water and each breath she took made her lungs feel like they were bursting.

Even so she screamed, begging for the pain to stop, for someone to help. Megicula cried in despair, gripping the bars of the cage, ignoring the burns they were meant to give her as she tried futilely to break free and rush to her friend. The female demon's body continued to distort until she looked more and more malformed. Before long she couldn't even scream anymore.

All that she could do now was beg quietly, pleading for death. The angels looked to a clock, seeming to count down the seconds. After thirty seconds had passed, another change occurred. The female demon's skin began to crack with blood seeping from the fresh wounds. Blood also seeped from her ears and her eyes, the latter of which popped out of their sockets and hung loosely on the nerve endings as she gurgled.

Any screaming she might still have been able to do was halted by the demon literally vomiting her own intestines onto the floor. Then it ended, with Megicula's best friend exploding like a blood-filled balloon, raining what remained of her entrails all over the area, including on Megicula herself. The winged woman stared on in horror, her gaze shifting back and forth between her blood-covered hands and the spot where her friend had once been. She was too shocked to say anything, which wasn't the case for Asta who raged and continually tried to attack the angels.

But there was no use. He was a ghost here, a mere bystander to the events happening to the demoness. Likewise, he was helpless to stop them when Megicula's turn came and she was forcibly drug out of the cage, her protests fierce but ultimately futile as she was strapped into a high-backed chair. She must've been among the last demons to be sentenced in this way as many more angels appeared to watch the spectacle.

Megicula again begged her captors for release, not seeming to understand why these events were happening. Again, the angels merely ignored her words, giving her looks and comments that said 'you're dirt', a sentiment Asta had suffered before. Thus, the demoness's torture began. No spells were involved this time, instead they started by pulling off one of her clawed nails.

Megicula yelled in pain as one after the other was pulled, slowly and with as little care as possible to maximize the anguish. Tears filled the winged woman's eyes as she seemed to be asking why this was happening. Asta again couldn't understand what she was saying was that her kind just wanted to live in peace. The angels simply responded maliciously, continuing the torture on the demoness who started screaming hysterically.

Asta closed his eyes and covered his ears, not wanting to witness anymore. But it was useless. Even with his ears covered he heard, even with his eyes closed and his face turned away, he saw the person he'd called friend crying from the incredible pain while the angels laughed as if it was the most hilarious thing they'd ever seen. Finally, all ten nails were pulled out, which should have signaled the end. However, the angels thought for a moment and came up with another torture they could do and before long, Megicula was screaming in anguish once more.

When Asta finally awoke, he bolted out of bed, screaming. He ran around the room before bursting through the door, continuing to yell in hopes that he could drown out the shrieking of his friend. Asta didn't want to see anymore, didn't want to hear anymore. The boy feared that if he stopped running, stopped yelling then he'd be forced to endure witnessing more cruelty. The entire village would be awoken that night by his screams before he was finally calmed down.

Demon Prison

Megicula stared ahead, her wanderings having brought her to one of the walls of the prison. It was far from the first time it had happened, after centuries or more of wandering the same place, she'd lost count of the number of times she'd reached one of the boundaries. At some point, a pattern of sorts had begun to form with her unconsciously. Whenever she started approaching this particular wall, Megicula would start thinking back to the beginning, the moments that led up to the imprisonment of her and the rest of her kind.

The demoness looked down at her nails, which had grown back a long, long time ago and felt the scar on her neck that was hidden by the black star patterned tattoo encircling it. The final torture, a near decapitation before her imprisonment. Remembering it all now and the fate of her friend, the betrayal they'd suffered. Megicula slammed her fist against the barrier then with all her strength. It was enough to make it appear but no more as she continued to strike the construct again and again until her fists bled.

She knew it did no good but when these memories came up it wasn't always possible for her to keep her emotions down. So the winged woman screamed hysterically in seeming madness and despair until she finally exhausted herself and collapsed to her knees. Tears filled her eyes as she cursed her tormentors, humans, spirits, and anything else she felt contributed to her current situation. Then, gradually, her crying ceased.

'That was…faster than before,' Megicula noted curiously. Naturally she'd had an extended period of time for the trauma of the past to lessen and it occurred somewhat less frequently. But when her feelings finally burst forth it always took some time for her to regain her senses. This time, her peace and tranquility returned sooner than before.

'Perhaps I'm finally able to process my grief more efficiently,' the winged woman mused. Had she known at the time the real reason behind her lessened pain, she would've found it ridiculous. After all, it shouldn't be possible that one she hated would be able to help her.

Pain is likely the best way to describe this particular chapter. Probably a good thing it was one of the shorter chapters, but why don't you tell me what you think in your comments and reviews! Same goes for what you liked/disliked or if you've got any neat ideas for future chapters. And stop by my Pat reon and see about becoming a patron for news and other exciting tidbits! Stop in next time as Asta continues to advance in his training of anti-magic! 'Til then.