Starting out as a Dragon Slave

The sun had barely risen over the cold, merciless horizon of the draconic kingdom when dragon guards smashed open the cell doors without restraint, brutally dragging the gladiators from their sleep. Mordred had barely closed his eyes all night, haunted by the king’s chilling promises. But even this brief sleepless night could not have prepared him for what was to come.

Barefoot on the frozen stone, Mordred and the other gladiators were pushed roughly toward a new courtyard, much larger and more isolated than any he had known before. Thick walls surrounded it, topped with rusted spikes. The sky above was covered in a uniform, dreary gray, as if the gods themselves were averting their gaze from the atrocities about to unfold.

The sky, like a mirror of the souls who would suffer in this place, was a visceral gray, almost alive in its malevolence. Low clouds, gorged with rain that refused to fall, weighed upon the courtyard like a lid sealing a tomb.

Awaiting the gladiators stood figures, motionless as statues. Their ink-black cloaks rippled imperceptibly, though no wind blew within the enclosed space. Their faces disappeared behind sculpted helmets representing dragon skulls, the empty eye sockets revealing nothing but impenetrable darkness. These masks were not mere metal protections, but morbid works where every detail every scale, every fang had been chiseled with maniacal precision. Ancient runes, engraved in the metal, seemed to pulse with a sickly light of their own, illuminating nothing.

Among them, one figure stood out. His armor, so deep black that it seemed to absorb the surrounding light, was covered with crimson runes that pulsed to the rhythm of an invisible heart. Each beat momentarily cast bloody reflections on the surrounding stone, as if the armor were bleeding through its inscriptions.

He advanced with measured steps, each movement calculated with inhuman precision. When he finally spoke, his voice rose, devoid of emotion but charged with an icy authority that penetrated the very souls of those who listened:

- "You are here to become something other than what you are. Forget your previous lives. Forget your name, your dreams, your fears. From now on, you are nothing but weapons."

No sooner had these words been spoken than a group of servants emerged from the peripheral shadows. Their movements were strangely jerky, as if their joints had been broken and then imperfectly reconstructed. Their bloodshot eyes stared into the void. On the trays they carried rested vials of black glass tinted with greenish reflections, within which bubbled a thick liquid. The substance seemed animated with a life of its own, pulsing against the glass walls as if seeking to escape.

Before Mordred could anticipate what would follow, two guards with steel grips seized him. One grabbed his jaw with such force that the bones painfully cracked, forcing his mouth open. The other threw his head back, exposing his vulnerable throat to the dim light. The servant then approached, holding the vial whose bubbling contents now emitted an acrid, sulfurous smoke.

The liquid was poured directly into his throat, immediately burning everything in its path. It was a transcendent agony, as if every atom of his being was consciously torn apart and then resewn with incandescent thread. The poison for poison it was seemed endowed with a malevolent intelligence, methodically exploring every corner of his body to inflict maximum suffering.

Mordred collapsed onto the icy flagstones, his body contorting at impossible angles. His muscles contracted with such violence that distinct cracking sounds echoed through the courtyard his own tendons tearing under the pressure. His skin, turned translucent by the poison’s effect, revealed the network of his veins, now black and bulging, carrying the abomination through his system. His throat tightened in an inhuman spasm, choking the scream that desperately tried to escape.

- "This is your first lesson," the masked man said coldly. "Your body must become accustomed to poison and suffering. Today’s pain is tomorrow’s strength."

The convulsions lasted an eternity compressed into minutes. Each second stretched into centuries of torment. Mordred’s breathing became a wet rattle, blood flowing from his nostrils, his ears, the corners of his eyes. Some of his veins, unable to contain the pressure of the poison, burst beneath his skin, creating morbid patterns resembling purple spider webs on his pallid epidermis.

They pried his mouth open again and poured in another vial that he could not distinguish through the veil of his suffering; immediately a wave of relief washed over him.

He didn’t even have time to enjoy it as they administered the first liquid again and the pain returned like a hungry predator. He endured this again, again, again, again, AGAIN.

And when at last the intensity of the torture began to decrease, Mordred realized with horror that it was not because the pain was diminishing, but because his body was beginning to adapt to it. Something was changing within him at the cellular level, a fundamental transformation of which he could feel every microscopic mutation.

[Ding, skill created: poison resistance lvl 5]

Sprawled on the cold stone, his face bathed in his own blood, he tried to stand. His limbs trembled violently, at first refusing to obey his will. The sweat flowing from his body was no longer transparent but tinged with a subtle blackness his organism was expelling the last traces of poison through every available pore.

- "Stand up," ordered the man in black armor.

The order cracked like a whip in the still air. Mordred struggled against his own body, against gravity that seemed tenfold, against waves of nausea that threatened to overwhelm him. Through superhuman effort, he managed to get to his knees, then, dangerously wobbling, to stand.

- "The first transformation has begun," the dragon master coldly observed. "Now, we will accelerate it."

What followed surpassed in horror anything Mordred could have imagined in his darkest nightmares. The day transformed into a meticulously orchestrated succession of tortures, each designed not simply to inflict pain, but to fundamentally reshape flesh and mind.

In one part of the courtyard, the gladiators were tied to metal columns previously heated to incandescence. The flesh of their backs instantly fused with the burning metal, finally tearing out screams that the poison had suppressed. The smell of charred flesh filled the air, acrid and nauseating. When they were finally detached, pieces of their skin remained stuck to the metal, leaving their backs raw, exposed down to the quivering muscles.

- "Your skin will be reborn stronger, more resistant," calmly explained one of the masked torturers, as if delivering an academic lesson. "Pain is the catalyst for your metamorphosis."

In another corner, vats filled with liquids of unnameable colors awaited. Without explanation, Mordred and three other gladiators were forcibly immersed in these caustic baths. The effect was immediate: their epidermis literally began to dissolve, detaching in floating shreds as the liquid penetrated to the deep layers of their tissues. The sensation was that of being devoured alive by thousands of tiny voracious creatures.

[Ding, constitution +10] [Ding, regeneration has leveled up]

When they were finally extracted from the vats, their skin had taken on a strangely pearly hue, almost translucent in places. Subtle patterns, resembling tiny scales, began to appear in certain areas. The process had begun.

[Ding, Draconic Body evolves]

Without granting them the slightest respite, the dragon masters led them to a section where immense stone blocks awaited. Exhausted, suffering beyond all measure, the gladiators were forced to lift these impossible masses, their already torn muscles protesting under the superhuman effort.

- "Your limits exist only in your weak human mind," declared one of the torturers.

Mordred felt his shoulders dislocate under the crushing weight, his knees progressively giving way. Yet, miraculously—or perhaps through the effect of the transformations already taking place his broken bones began to knit back together almost immediately, in renewed agony. His torn muscles reconstituted beneath his skin, denser, more powerful, but at the price of suffering that transcended all understanding.

He finally collapsed, the stone block partially crushing his leg, which gave way with a sinister crack. The bones pierced the skin, exposing white fragments stained with blood. The pain was so intense that it created a strange clarity in his mind, like a window opening onto another level of consciousness.

The torturers manifested neither disappointment nor anger at his failure—only an icy patience, as if all this were merely a calculated step in a larger process. Two of them lifted him without gentleness, one grasping his broken leg and, with an expert but brutal movement, repositioning the bones to their initial position. The pain was so acute that Mordred momentarily lost consciousness.

When he came to, seconds or minutes later, an alchemist in a purple robe stood before him. Without a word, the man plunged an oversized syringe into a vial containing a silvery liquid with iridescent reflections. The needle, as long as a dagger and as wide as a finger, was thrust directly into the open wound of his leg, piercing to the bone marrow.

The injection was a transcendent experience of agony. The silver liquid spread through his skeletal system, literally illuminating his veins from within, creating a luminescent network visible through his skin. He could feel his bones regenerating at an impossible speed, the fragments welding back together, becoming denser, more resistant than before. But the process itself was as if each bone cell individually exploded only to be reborn.

Mordred was no longer capable of screaming. His voice had broken hours earlier, his vocal cords having given way under the incessant howls. His mind, however, continued to scream in a deafening silence.

The day progressed in this macabre choreography of scientifically calculated tortures. Each torture was designed not simply to inflict pain, but to transform, rebuild, forge.

In a particularly atrocious phase, the gladiators were placed in metal frames that kept their eyelids open facing sources of blinding light. Drops of a corrosive liquid were regularly deposited on their eyeballs, progressively dissolving the outer layers of the eye only to rebuild them afterward.

The ocular pain was particular, more intimate and invasive than any other. Mordred literally felt his perceptions transforming, the world changing in hue and texture before him. At times, he could perceive things previously invisible subtle currents of energy, auras surrounding living beings, hidden patterns in the very structure of reality.

Between each torture session, the gladiators were not allowed to rest. Brutal combat exercises were imposed on them, forcing them to use their mutilated bodies undergoing transformation. The draconic weapons masters pushed them beyond all human limits, making them fight until the ground became slippery with their own blood.

Over the interminable hours, Mordred began to perceive a strange phenomenon: his mind was progressively dissociating from his body. The pain was still there, omnipresent, devastating, but he began to observe it with clinical detachment, almost as a spectator to his own torture. This separation was not a relief but another form of horror, that of feeling foreign in his own flesh.

Toward the end of this infernal day, as twilight tinted the sky blood-red, the torturers gathered the survivors in the center of the courtyard, for not all had survived and their bodies littered the ground. Their bodies, unrecognizable, bore the stigmata of the transformations undergone. Some had developed scaly plates on portions of their skin. Others displayed disturbing ocular changes, their irises slit like those of reptiles or illuminated with metallic reflections. The muscles of all had been redefined, denser, sketching almost inhuman anatomies beneath their battered skin.

The man in the black armor with red runes placed himself before them, evaluating them with what seemed to be cold satisfaction:

- "Today was only the beginning. Your bodies have been prepared for the true transformation that will come in the days ahead. Some of you will perish. Others will emerge as living weapons in the service of our king. But none will remain what they were."

He made a gesture, and servants came forward with new vials—this time filled with an icy blue liquid that emitted a light frosty vapor.

- "This will temporarily halt the transformations, allowing you to recover enough to survive until tomorrow," he explained. "But know that the process will continue in your cells, more slowly, reconfiguring your very being even during your sleep."

The icy liquid was administered to each, provoking a new wave of suffering, that of a cold so intense it burned from within. Mordred felt his transformations slow down, his tissues freezing in an intermediate state between what he had been and what he was becoming.

Thrown like garbage into a damp cell, Mordred lay on the cold floor, incapable of the slightest movement. His entire body pulsed with pain; his internal organs seemed to have been rearranged, his very skin had become alien. In the half-light, he could see his veins faintly glowing with a silvery light, vestige of the injected substances that continued their silent work.

The darkness of the cell deepened, becoming almost tangible, enveloping Mordred like a shroud. His consciousness wavered, oscillating between painful lucidity and the welcoming darkness of unconsciousness. A supernatural cold seized him not the physical cold of stone or air, but a metaphysical cold that seemed to emanate from within his very soul.

Then, abruptly, everything stopped.

Isaac opened his eyes sharply, his body jerking upright in a convulsive movement. His lungs burned as if he had held his breath for entire minutes, and he gulped the air of his room in long, desperate drafts. His skin was covered in icy sweat, his sheets completely soaked as if he had been plunged into water.

The familiar light of his room seemed almost painful to his hypersensitive eyes. The ordinary objects surrounding him his desk, his computer, his books appeared absurdly insignificant, almost offensive in their banality after the horrors he had just experienced.

His breathing was a chaotic rhythm, interrupted by involuntary spasms. Each inhalation was accompanied by a phantom pain, as if his lungs still bore the scars of poisons inhaled in the other world. His heart beat with disturbing violence, each pulse resonating all the way to his temples like a hammer striking an anvil.

Instinctively, he examined his body, almost expecting to see the transformations, the wounds, the mutations. His skin was intact, without the nascent scales or silver veins, but the sensation persisted—that of inhabiting a body that was no longer quite his own, modified at the most fundamental level.

He brought his trembling hands to his face, feeling under his fingers the damp furrows that unconscious tears had traced on his cheeks during his sleep. The taste in his mouth was identical to that of draconic poison metallic, acrid, corrosive. He could still feel the texture of the thick, burning substance flowing down his throat, devouring his entrails.

The memories of tortures remained terrifyingly clear. Not like dreams that quickly fade upon waking, but like lived experiences, branded into his memory with a red-hot iron. He could still hear the mechanical voices of the torturers, feel their merciless hands holding his limbs during injections, visualize the macabre details of their draconic masks.

Every muscle in his body trembled with exhaustion, as if he had indeed endured superhuman physical trials. His joints emitted painful cracks with each movement; his tendons seemed on the verge of breaking under the slightest tension. The phantom pain of broken and then reconstructed bones persisted, particularly in his leg where he could still feel the impact of the stone block, the perforation of his flesh by his own bone fragments, the monstrous needle injecting silver liquid deep into his marrow.

Isaac remained motionless for a long moment, desperately trying to reconcile the two realities that overlapped in his mind. The boundary between Mordred and himself had dangerously blurred.

He remained huddled for a moment, trembling slightly, his gaze fixed on his open hands before him. The physical scars weren’t there, but the phantom pain persisted, terribly real. Every muscle seemed to remind him of the inflicted injuries, each breath recalled the suffocations endured. He was here, at home, but mentally still a prisoner of the atrocities he had just endured.

Isaac violently clenched his fists, struggling to regain control of his emotions, but his jaw trembled despite himself. Images kept flashing before his eyes: the merciless dragons, the bubbling vials, the taste of blood, the infernal pain, and the king’s icy promise.

His chest rose slowly in a broken breath, and the first words he finally managed to whisper were weak, but infused with immense rage and suffering:

- "I’ll slaughter them all like animals," he said as one last, solitary tear ran down his cheek.