I couldn’t remember anything. Not my name. Not where I was from. Not what I did the day prior. Nothing. I was an adult that would read, write, and speak and knew the basic functions of things so I must have had a past, that was the only way any of this could make any sense, yet no one, including myself had any recollection of my existence beyond just a few short hours ago. The start to my consciousness had been traumatic, to put it lightly. My very first memory of consciousness began with the demons(how I knew they were demons is still a mystery) inserting a long, thin bit of glass under my fingernail and eliciting a high pitched, agonizing scream from my lips as my first experience was codified by blinding pain. The scream and my panicked whimpering seemed to startle the torturer into wakefulness about his surroundings and he let out his own surprised cry, not knowing who I was or why he was torturing anyone. He could not recollect being told to do anything of the sort and he swore up and down that he had never even seen me before in his life. At first I was unconcerned about his rapid panic about what was going on because I was mostly focused on the fact the shard of glass was still digging into my flesh, but once he gathered his wits about him enough to carefully remove the instrument of torture and press cloth to the waterfall of blood to staunch it, I was able to gather my thoughts enough to realize I had not a clue what was going on.

My mere existence seems to have thrown the castle into hysterics with many different demons coming to talk to me from all different approaches. The first interrogator sent was very soft spoken and nice, dressing my wounds and tutting along with my confusion and panic about what was going on while gently pressing me for details I simply didn’t have. Along with the most pressing injury of my bleeding hands I also was covered in bruises and various other scrapes and cuts that I, nor the demons, seemed to know how they originated, though considering what was happening when I gained consciousness it was safe to assume that they had been torturing me beforehand. Once I was patched up and it was obvious to them that the gentle method was not yielding any real information the tough, imposing characters arrived, flashing more instruments of tortures and making promises of my dismemberment, but of course they were doomed to fail as well because while I definitely would have squealed every secret I had to avoid the horrifying things they were promising to do to me, I couldn’t remember any of my secrets to tell. Finally came the mage, the magical aura radiating from him was much more powerful than any of the others and he told me that his magic would be able to unlock any repressed or hidden memories locked inside me and to stay still as his power flowed over and through me. Other than being made a little dizzy and feeling like my stomach was going to flip over if he didn’t stop soon, the magical probing was not able to unlock anything within my mind and I was left just as clueless as before.

“What do we do with him?”

Two demons, higher ups in whatever the political structure was here I assumed, had arrived a few minutes ago and had been sitting in silence staring at me as they tried to piece together just how to approach the strange situation.

“We could just leave him here and just post someone outside the door,” the female of the pair suggested.

“I suppose we could, though it seems a bit harsh housing him in a torture chamber when he’s done nothing wrong to our knowledge,” the male replied.

It was becoming a very apparent pattern for everyone to talk about me like I wasn’t in the room with them or couldn’t understand them. “If I have any say, I would greatly prefer not to stay in this room. I don’t have many memories, but the ones I have are of this room and they’re not very pleasant.”

The pair looked at me in alarm, the female raising both her eyebrows in shock. They looked to each other as if to ask if either of them had thought to ask ahead if I was actually sentient or not.

“You can speak our language?” she asked, voice heavy with suspicion.

“Am I speaking something different than I should?”

“You’re a human,” she replied with a scoff, “demons don’t teach humans their language. Any demon that would teach a human is breaking many taboos, it simply is not done.”

“Well I guess someone did at some point,” I replied with a shrug.

The female turned to her partner and shook her head gravely. “This is even more complicated than what we were told, a human who knows our language is a danger to us all if they fall into the wrong hands. The Great Church would pay a pretty penny or go to war to get access to our language.”

I had no idea what the Great Church was, but I was no longer in the mood to ask more questions and draw out the process of them deciding what to do with me for now. I was very much looking forward to laying down to sleep, even if it ended up being on the torture table. My body was completely exhausted, battered, and bruised. I felt like I needed a good meal and a long rest before I started to try to piece together who I was in earnest.

“Since it is a human who knows our language it could be someone enthralled,” the male suggested, “given enough time in the realm he could have picked up the language bit by bit.”

“Keeping humans enthralled is forbidden in the kingdom.” She dismissed the idea with a wave of her hand. “It is forbidden exactly for that reason, to prevent any human from becoming skilled enough to translate then escaping.”

“Not in other kingdoms though. Most of them, but not all, it still sometimes happens.”

“In the outlands,” she said with a short laugh like she couldn’t believe she was having to entertain the idea further, “no civilized demon would dare go against the general consensus. The price of being found out is usually death for all involved, the humans and demons alike.”

“Still not completely unheard of, thus possible,” he continued to press. “Right now we have nothing to latch onto so any lead is a strand to follow that we didn’t have before. Though, it does beg a further question of just how a human from the outlands would end up getting into the castle dungeon undetected.”

“And with the interrogater torturing him with no recollection as to the why or how.”

“May I have something to eat soon?” I asked, finally to a point where my patience had run through. “Sleep would be nice too, I don’t know anything so you don’t need me to be conscious. Let me eat then tie me down so I can’t run away or something while I sleep, I don’t care.”

“Mind wiping maybe.” She acted like she hadn’t heard me at all, too focused on what had happened to give any care to my well being.

“Please,” I pleaded, “do what you want with me but let me have the very basics of comfort. I have done nothing wrong and complied the whole time to your demands with no resistance.”

“He’s right,” the male said with a nod in my direction.

“He’s also under investigation and not just some guest. Guests are invited, he was not and is very suspicious on top of it.” She seemed determined not to extend even the basic dignity to me.

“Even your mage was not able to unlock anything within my mind, surely you must understand that means I cannot be a threat to you. I don’t even know my own name let alone what this kingdom is or even what realm I’m in.”

“You know about different realms?” she asked sharply.

“I guess? I don’t know!” I was getting extremely frustrated that no one seemed to get that I truly knew nothing and that anything that came out of my mouth was a surprise to me as well. “Sure I guess I do but I don’t know how or why I know it. That’s the whole point, how can I be a threat when I don’t have enough memories to have a plot or a vendetta?!”

She turned to her partner and shook her head emphatically like she had just made a major determination. “He knows our language and about traveling realms, this is exactly what the Church has always wanted. We need to see the king at this very moment and afterwards have a stern word with the interrogators who don’t seem to know how to do the very basics of their job.”

I let out a frustrated, angry groan as they turned and left, slamming the dungeon room door closed behind them and the lock clicked, securing me inside. I really did not like her tone in reference to going to see the king, I had a grave feeling that what they were going to see him about was in reference to my link to the mortal coil. While I did not have much conscious experience with living as of yet, I still found myself pretty attached to it, so I immediately began to look around the room and try to think of a way that I could perhaps get out. With a single glance and focus on the room I was in it came to me in a thunderclap that I actually knew the entire layout of the castle itself, including the secret rooms and passageways within the walls. Maybe their first assumption that I was some kind of spy sent to infiltrate the castle was not wrong.

It was almost hilariously easy now that I had realized that I knew all the secrets of the castle to calmly get up off the torture rack I had been seated on and walk over to the wall opposite the door, step on a stone in the corner of the room and watch as a small segment of the wall puffed out a cloud of dust, then unsealed and began to open. I had not anticipated that a flood of water would rush in as well, rather unfortunate because once the tepid water reached far enough to puddle underneath the door it would not be long before whomever was guarding me would notice and come investigate. Guessing that I had mere moments before the water reached the door, I threw myself blindly into the hidden passage and thoughtlessly threw my hand up beside me in the darkness to hit a switch that closed the hidden door behind me.

It was pitch black and couldn’t see even my hand in front of my face, yet I knew exactly which direction to go and even anticipated when the passage made a sharp right turn and was able to keep myself from smacking face first into the wall. The only issue was the disgusting water I was treading through. The farther I went towards where I knew the exit to be, the higher it rose up my legs until it was all the way to my waist by the time the small glimmer of light from the exit door came into view. Curiously, the door itself seemed to have been opened recently though someone had attempted to cover it over before. How I knew to look for the signs that probably everyone else would overlook further added to the growing suspicion that I was some kind of spy. It was as good a guess as any and might explain why my mind would have been wiped, perhaps it was a fail safe if I were to be caught.

I breathed deeply in the fresh air once I was able to scramble out of the door and close it back up, adjusting the moss on the small hill to hide it and make sure I left it looking even more untouched than it had been before I used it. Escape made, I sat down next to the door and looked around at my surroundings though it was mostly pointless, I already knew where everything was, but it was strange to see what I already felt like I had a thousand times for the first time. I knew where to go, though I had never traveled the path before in my recollection, but it would get me to the human realm where I would blend in. What I did from there I had about as much clue as to what I had done before now, but if I stayed here I would have no future instead of an uncertain one.