Sage woke up to the feeling of cold air and even colder stone against his scales. He was in a stone chamber that looked like it was carved out of the side of a mountain with only a few perfect slices of a blade. The rectangular chamber was quite large, easily enough to fit a few school buses inside. To one side there was a set of prison bars with a gap of only a few inches between them. Surprisingly, the bars also seemed to be made of some sort of stone, but of a different and more durable type than the rest of the cell was made from. It was quite dark in the cell with only a dim glow coming from beyond the bars and around a corner.

He first took stock of his surroundings and found nothing of interest. There was a depression in the stone in one corner of the cell, and the ceiling was sloped so that a trickle of water slowly dripped into that corner to form a small pool of water. The place was not crafted for comfort, there wasn’t a single piece of furniture, not even a slab to use as a bed. Considering he’d been taken captive by Demonic Beasts, it somewhat made sense there would be nothing to accommodate a human inside. Thankfully, he was in his true form, and had been when he was captured.

I was going to be captured one way or another, I can only hope that the Beasts will be kinder to one of their own.

The stone that the cage was formed out of was anything but normal. He tried to damage it with his claws, and found he couldn’t even leave a scratch. Then he tried to use a Warp Worm to tunnel his way out and also found the attempt useless. After that Sage spent more time investigating and his Spiritual Sense could only penetrate a few inches into the walls before it was blocked by a barrier of some sort. He didn’t know what it was, but it was likely a powerful formation, special material, or even a giant magical tool.

While Sage was pondering his next move, he heard footsteps coming down the lone tunnel that led into the area outside the cage. The light grew brighter as the sound grew louder. After a few minutes a figure turned the corner and Sage was surprised by the creature in front of him. It had the head and lower body of a bull, but the torso of a man. Well, sort of. The base elements were somewhat minotaur-like, but it was quite different. The hide of the bull-like parts looked like it was made out of bronze, but that wasn’t the most unusual thing. What was most unsettling was that the bronze minotaur had four eyes and six arms. One of the lower arms was carrying a lantern, while the other carried a bucket. The creature wore a leather skirt around its waist and fixed its creepy double stacked eyes onto Sage.

“Hah, you look like crap!”

Sage automatically slipped into flattery mode, wanting to get into the beast’s good graces, “This lowly one asks for your forgiveness. It is a great shame to sully your gaze with my terrible condition.”

The bull man stood up a bit straighter, seeming pleased by such a respectful address. Then he lifted the bucket with two hands and swung it forward, dumping the contents through the bars of the cage. Tiny chunks of fat, gristle, tiny chunks of organ meat, and blood spilled onto the floor. The many armed minotaur chuckled, “Hah, nice try, but I’m not the one you need to butter up, Human.”

The word struck him like a hammer. If they knew his origin, then he would receive far different treatment than if they thought he was one of their own. He let out a throaty laugh, one that came with its fair share of hissing sounds, “You are very funny, Sir. Or do you mean to say there’s a human in here with me and my test is to sniff them out?”

The bull man snorted, huffing a hot wind into the cage and giving Sage a dull glare, “You can pretend all you like, but you can’t hide. We knew what you were long before we brought you here.”

The creature started laughing at Sage’s predicament, his eyes closing and his hoofs stomping on the ground a few times. The bronze skinned beast seemed to think this whole situation was quite hilarious as he laughed for a few minutes straight. In fact, his mirth was only interrupted when another figure came around the corner and slapped the back of his head.

The new arrival was actually a beautiful woman dressed in a blue kimono with a fluffy white fur cape. She looked drastically out of place until she ran a hand through her hair and a pair of furry ears popped up on the top of her head. She glared at the bull man, “Shut up! You’re just a prison guard, you shouldn’t be talking to the prisoners. Don’t overstep your bounds or you’ll be demoted again, Grimuk!”

The six armed and four eyed minotaur grumbled, and the woman slapped him again. Then he glared at Sage, a look that said Sage was going to suffer for witnessing this conversation. Then the bull, Grimuk, picked up his bucket and carried it along with his lantern back down the hallway and out of the chamber. The bull carried away his lantern, but the room was actually much brighter than before. Just by being in the room, the woman seems to have brightened things up somehow.

She spun around, watching the bull to make sure he left. When she did, Sage noticed that she wasn’t wearing a cape, the fluffy white fur behind her were actually four tails. They swayed gently behind her, and when she turned around they once again looked like a cape. With the vulgar bull man gone, the woman put on a charming smile and stared into the cage at Sage’s dragon-like body.

The years on the run hadn’t been kind to him. He was covered in scars, the deep wounds preventing scales from growing back. The once supple sheet of armor now warped and twisted. In many places the scales tilted to avoid the scarred areas, or they had grown larger than normal to try and cover the scars. At some point, the Jade Horde had used a poison on their crossbow bolts that burned him in such a way that it scarred his hide and prevented scales from growing back. Even as abused as he was on the outside, he’d still grown many times larger than when the chase started. The constant running and fighting had been a great method to temper his body and a diet of almost exclusively Demonic Beasts had provided an abundance of energy. His body was now about fifty feet long, large enough to touch the front and back of the cell at the same time. He was about three feet in diameter as well, which made his head nearly half the height of a man.

When the foxy woman looked at him with her charming gaze he lifted his head from the ground and stared back. Just one of his eyes was nearly the size of the woman’s whole head, but she didn’t seem intimidated. Instead she just laughed, “It’s quite impressive really. You’ve managed to piece together such an impressive body without even knowing what you’re doing.”