To Xuelan's dismay, the next thing she knew, she was being shoved into a cage.

("Kien!") She tried to call out telepathically.

However, her ex-boyfriend ignored her entirely. Instead, he grinned along with the other five incubi in their party, as if he had already become friends with all the sex demons. Kien was one of the tallest in the entire group, and he towered over the shortest incubus by half a head. Despite his menacing stature, he currently seemed to be in an easy-going and relaxed mood.

"Any of you hungry? I heard there's a nice brothel in town."

"Oh, I'm famished. I didn't get to eat my fill earlier with Earl's bitch." Arteise said.

"I could use a bath. My slave bled all over me and it's a mess." Earl added in agreement.

Earlier, they had walked down the slope for five minutes before rendezvous-ing with everyone else in front of the train wreck. The pile of metal had been smashed to smithereens, and it was smoking so badly that Xuelan couldn't help but cough while her eyes teared from the burning fumes. There were little bits of debris and scattered dismembered limbs (...she tried not to look at them) all over the bottom of the ravine, and the disaster scene looked like the aftermath of a plane crash.

"You're not taking your slave with you, Kien?" Neiel asked.

"I thought it would be nice to spend some time with you five."

Xuelan had a pleading look on her eyes.

("Kien! Don't leave me behind!")

Kien expressionlessly added the lock on the door of her cage, and he showed so sign of having heard anything she said. It was almost as if her ex-boyfriend had transformed into another person... a frightening and cold-hearted stranger that she no longer recognized. 

In theory, Xuelan knew that he was acting, but why couldn't he answer her telepathic messages?

The bastard never explained anything to her, and she hated being kept in the dark. It made her feel powerless, and it reminded her of the fact that she truly was at his total mercy. For the past fifteen minutes, Xuelan had almost been firing telepathic messages to her ex-boyfriend nearly constantly, almost desperate to reassure herself that all of this was just roleplay, but at some point he simply stopped responding.

She wasn't even sure if he was still listening to her...

"Your poor slave looks like she's about to cry," Ranes laughed. "She's really attached to you."

"She's going to need to learn to take care of herself."

"Neglect play, huh?"

Xuelan was indignant. This was not neglect play!

On a more serious level, what if another demon or monster wandered over and found her left behind inside a cage? This was extremely dangerous, and there was no telling when someone might come along and decide to whisk her away. Objectively speaking, it was a million times safer right next to Kien's side, and she seriously did not want to be abandoned.

After fiddling with the lock, Kien stood up and turned to the rest of the incubi.

"Let's see if we can invite anyone else to come with us," he said.

+ + +

Shortly thereafter, a small crowd of sex demons departed from the train wreck, leaving behind only a small number of imp-like demons that were hauling things around and cleaning up the wreckage.

Xuelan's cage was identical to a heavy-duty dog crate, and it was only big enough for her to kneel. The space was cramped, and she hugged her legs to her chest, trying to curl up into a smaller ball. However, it was difficult for her to find a comfortable position. It was hard for her to imagine how anyone might sleep in one of these unpleasant things.

Xuelan felt cold, parched, and hungry. Her aching body was terribly sore.

For almost no reason whatsoever, tears started forming at her eyes again.

She remembered at this point that she hadn't eaten anything since yesterday. This morning, Kien had tied her to a vibrator and forced her to orgasm continuously for hours. Then, some crazy stuff happened and she ended up on a train, where Kein fucked her brains out once again. Then the train exploded and they almost died, and now he had shoved her into a cage just as the sky was starting to turn dark.

The adrenaline and oxytocin in her body was starting to fade, and Xuelan was starting to feel the intense emotional rebound.

The aches in her body aside, her feelings swung wildly like tiny rowboat tossed about in a hurricane. Was Kien on her side or not? Was he nice or cruel? Was this abuse? Did he actually care about her? Or was she just a tool to be used and exploited as long as it was convenient? Had he been manipulating her brain this entire time? How many of her thoughts were actually her own? Could he just be controlling her like a puppet strung up on a marionette? She felt like she was going insane with frenzied thoughts of doubt.

She was his slave.

His slave. His slave. His slave!

Kien could do anything to her and she couldn't lift a finger to resist.

Xuelan felt herself emotionally breaking down.

At one point, the imps came to Xuelan's cage, and they hauled her over to a pile of crates and cages that they had salvaged from the wreck. The boxes were stacked on top of each other like a pile of luggage, and the little demons covered the entire pile with a large black tarp, plummeting everything into sheer darkness.

Xuelan was busy wiping the tears from her eyes as she cried silently, too preoccupied with her mess of feelings to really pay attention to what was happening around her.

+ + +

There was a weak clunk from cage right next to hers.

Xuelan slowly turned around, and she remembered that she could see in the dark. Kien had given her this ability a short while ago when he had leveled up.

Her eyes slowly scanned through the darkness of crates and boxes.

It was...

...that other slave from back in the railcar.

She was missing one of her legs, her entire face was covered with blood, and a large gash the size of a boulder was torn through her abdomen. A large steel pipe was impaled through her chest, and her raspy breathing was weak and strained. By all respect and reason, she ought to have been dead. There was no physical way a human body could sustain terrible injuries of such severity.

But humans were immortal.

The half-dead corpse slowly reached her hand through the cage bars.

It passed in between the steel grids and extended into Xuelan's cage.

At first, Xuelan was frightened, but she hesitantly grabbed hold of that bloody hand.

It was cold, slimy, and horrific, like holding hands with a zombie. However, the girl's grip was solid, as if saying that they were there for each other in this hellish nightmare of a place.

Tears continued to spill down Xuelan's eyes.

All of this was unforgivable.

Unforgivable.

+ + +

Xuelan was hyperventilating, and she forced herself to take deep breaths.

She swallowed the knots her throat and wiped the tears from eyes with her hands, which were now stained with the girl's blood.

("I'm not a victim.") She told herself.

She repeated it to herself.

She had no idea if telepathy would do anything if her owner wasn't in range to hear her thoughts, but somehow it was reassuring to talk to herself with the voice in her head. It was a little bit of a useless skill, but even useless skills felt empowering in this kind of dark and wretched situation. Skills meant that she could do things, and it meant that she wasn't just a useless bag of meat to be fucked and raped for EXP by cruel and sadistic sex demons.

("I'm not a victim!") Xuelan screamed into her mind, her voice choked up.

She pushed herself up to her knees and crawled weakly to the door of the cage.

Even though she knew it was probably useless, Xuelan motivated herself to try to tamper with the lock. At the very minimum, she could try to familiarize herself with the design, and hopefully that added knowledge would eventually give her some useful future insight. Even if she had no idea how to pick locks today, perhaps one day she could gradually learn the skill.

But as soon as she placed her hands on it, the device clicked open.

A realization crossed Xuelan's mind.

Kien had never locked it.

 

∎