“Lord Sovereign!? DEITIES!? WHAT THE FU–!” I force myself to stop before I could really get going and took a deep breath to calm down.

  ‘That can wait for later. Right now, there’s a time limit and I need food more than answers. Just take it one thing at a time.’ I thought to myself and settled for glaring up at the demon while the skill snarled at him.

  “You. Have some serious explaining to do when this is done, Mr. ‘Lord Sovereign, Devourer of Gods’.” I told him in a quiet voice, jabbing my finger against the middle of his chest to punctuate my words. It may have not been the smartest idea to do considering how sharp his chest teeth probably were, but I came out of it unharmed and got my point across. The Demon Lord even had the decency to look contrite.

  “Am I to take it that you agree to this?” He asked me hopefully and I sighed as I hit Yes in the messages.

  “Thank you, Samuel. I will try my best not to disappoint you.” He said to me when I assume he got the confirmation of the Agreement.

  “Yeah, yeah. What do you need me to do?” I asked, still not happy about things.

  “I just need you to let me do this to you. Just like when I was taking the miasma from you. It will sting a bit though even if you let me. Not letting me will just end in failure on my part.” He told me.

  “I’ll try.” I replied as I attempted to relax myself both mentally and physically for him.

  He nodded in thanks, and I heard the sound of pouring sand. Looking around, I saw the cot and stool dissolve back into the ground just before the Demon took a step back from me. He paused to take measure of the space between us, and judging it was satisfactory, settled his hands on my shoulders. I could feel the teeth of his hand mouths move against my skin as he adjusted the position and spread of his fingers.

  When he was done, the sparse webbing between his thumbs and forefingers rested against the sides of my neck while the teeth of his hand mouths twitched on top of my shoulders. His thumbs cross each other on my chest, their claws posed to dig into my feeble pecks. Meanwhile, his fingers were spread evenly across my back with his three of his four fingers over lapping each other and my backbone.

  “Ready?” He asked me once his hands were in place.

  “As I will ever be.” I replied and decided to focus on my breathing and letting him do this to me, not why he was doing this to me.

  After my second deep breath, my breathing hitched as all ten of his claws plunged into my flesh and his hand mouths bit into me. It wasn’t an easy, painless pinch like before. Oh no. His claws were ten points of burning, prickly pain like the one time someone jabbed me with a needle full of Novocain or something similar. They weren’t as painful as I thought they would be, but they still hurt and lacked the numbing effect of the drug. His mouths weren’t much different being a pair of rings of smaller pinpoints of it and they had declined taking chunks out of me as well.

  “Breathe, Samuel. Breathe and relax.” The demon told me, and I took his advice, forcing the breath to complete and continuing the deep slow breathing I had chosen to focus on.

  My first impulse after my breathing had settled was to push the pain away. To make it fade. A thought came to me though that it might hinder the process somehow if I did that, so I invited it to flow into me and disperse instead. It had the desired result as far as I knew as needle thin threads of fire started to spread throughout my body. It felt like they were building a cage inside of me and all of my external muscles twitch slightly as the lines reached them.

  Halfway through the process, I started to taste blood and something warm trickled from the side of my mouth. Whatever it was, made the demon frown and I felt the progress of the lines pause as their current placements were nudged and tweaked and their planned paths were altered. The pain from them faded quite a bit as the changes were made and the process finished.

  ‘That’s it?’ I tried to say once I thought it was over.

  To my surprise, neither my mouth nor my voice box moved to obey, and my steady breathing didn’t change. I started to panic at the unexpected loss of control and my body started to jerk and twitch as I tried to get it to obey me once more. I think the demon tried to call my name or speak to me in a calming manner, but I was too busy trying to get my body to obey to notice.

  Suddenly, I found my head shrouded in a wet, hot, humid darkness. Equally warm flesh and breath brushed against my head while a wet leathery tongue licked my face and the points of deadly sharp teeth resting gently – carefully – against my neck. I felt my mind and self instinctively grow very, very still as it sank home that I was in the mouth of a very big predator.

  One that could very well and very easily behead me at that moment.

  The biggest predator a voice from my memory whispered and one that could devour me at any moment if it so chooses.

  If he did this to get my attention, he certainly got it.

  “Are you going to listen to me now?” He asked, without a trace of anger or annoyance. Just an every so gentle calm that was used to soothe frighten children. Tears of fear flooded my eyes and as I tried to nod but all I managed was to get my head to twitch.

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  “I will take that as a yes.” He said and his tongue licked the tears from my eyes as he remove my head from his mouth.

  “Now, you really need to stay calm for this to work. Particularly since the way you were resisting me was going to get you severely hurt. There is a right way to do that but we will work on that later along with a great number of other things. Now is not the time for it however since we need to secure an adequate source of food for you. Do you understand?” he said, the calm gentleness in his voice remaining steady. I tried to nod once more but only succeeded in getting my head to twitch again. He got the message though and continued.

  “Very good. This next part is not necessary but it will give me better, finer control when I have it. Doing this will also strengthen the connection between your mind and this place allowing us to better communicate with each other when you are not here. This connection will be permanent but you can always chose to block what goes through it on your end if you so chose. Think of it as a door inside of your mind and you alone have the keys to its lock, you just have to keep it unlocked an open for there to be good communication.” He explained and I calmed further as I listened. The fear wasn’t gone from me just yet but it had down graded to a frightened wariness and I wanted to pull away from him after what he did. I didn’t try though, knowing it would probably be useless right now and there was a chance that he was right about me hurting myself by trying to fight his control the wrong way.

  ‘What do you need me to do?’ I tried to ask when he paused at the end of the explanation. I wondered briefly if he could even hear me trying to speak like this.

  “I need you to let me in when I do this, much like when I was forming the channels for my control over your body…. I am not certain how else to describe it other than me flowing into you.” He told me.

  ‘Like the pain from the channels.’ I commented mentally.

  “Yes… About that. You should have been a bit more active with that. It would have help me to properly place them sooner if you had chosen to resist the pain some. It would have made where the channels should have been more clear to me and it would have hurt less. Even now, they still do not feel quite right to me but I can fix them once I am inside.” He explained and then turned slightly hesitant.

  “If you will let me that is.” He said.

  It took me a moment to think about it and a few more to relax enough to ‘let him in’ as it were. It felt like I was opening myself up to an attack when I finally did manage to do it, and it only lasted for a brief moment but that was all he needed. I felt him ‘hold’ the way open for himself as his body dissolved into blackness that flowed into me on my next inhale.

  It went down my throat and settled into my chest before spreading outward into my limbs and extremities. I felt my mind be brushed aside as he came in like a dark predator the size of a mountain had decided to move in with me. Which was technically correct. He had told me that he was the biggest predator in this world.

  I felt the wires of my ‘cage’ shift and move as his… ‘self’ spread, and my muscles once again started twitching. The pain of the cage’s creation disappeared with his changes to it but without the pain to distract me, I began to feel nauseous instead. It was like my body objected to him being inside of it but with his control of it and nebulous from, there wasn’t really anything or anyway for it to eject him.

  Once he was done fixing my ‘cage’, I felt him shift around inside of me like he was putting on a new set of clothing. Tugging and pulling things into place caused my muscles to spasm at first but those spasms soon smoothed out into controlled contractions as he got more comfortable. Eventually, he lifted my hands to examine them, twisting them back and forth in front of us while carefully flexing the fingers one by one.

  It was disturbing to witness since I could feel the movement but knew it wasn’t me doing it. I resisted it out of reflex causing my whole body to jerk in response. There was a flare of irritation from the demon at my action, but I felt him let it go to focus on me instead. Which was worse than him having him in full control of every movement my body could make.

  I felt the mountain size predator turn his attention to my entirely too small self and fear gripped my heart once more as he regarded me. With a smirk he made with my mouth, I felt a tongue curl around my mental self and scoop me up into that predator’s maw. Darkness clouded my vision, and I got temporarily disconnected from my senses as he 'swallowed'. I didn’t end up in a stomach though but rather I felt like I had settled somewhere within the creature’s chest where I felt safe from it and anything else that would think to hurt me. It was a rather calming feeling and the mental pressure from being brushed or set aside was gone as my connection with my body was returned to me.