Awakening, seeing the surrounds that he had been transported to while unconscious, the recruit sits up straight, and then stands. In front of him, almost rusted through formerly iron bars that led into a hallway that had been poorly maintained over a span of years. A stench of musk, mixed with rotting corpses he was sure were still being held in the cells next to him assaulted the air that filtered through the nose holes on the mask. Yes, the mask was still on. He was still dressed in his armor, an odd fate for someone kidnapped by bandits as he was...

Click, clack. The sound of wooden soled shoes stepping on the mossy stone floor derails his train of thought. Tensing up, trying not to move, he hears the footsteps get closer, increasing in volume with each and every single step. A cold snicker, a voice carrying on a conversation approaches at the same pace as the footsteps, although the words he cannot quite make out, spoken with an accent foreign to him.

From the corner of the hallway, into his field of vision, he sees a small army led into the corridor in which his realm of captivity was located by a tall, well built man with jet black hair. His facial expression twisted from the evils he had done, but not hardened, which was the case with the recruit's master; the man who betrayed him. However, that was a matter for another time. The recruit rationalized that if he were to ever find out why his master had done what he had done, he would have to escape this Hell alive.

The man leading the group turned to the last cell before the wall signaled the end of the room, the cell that held the young recruit. A black and red cape adorned his body, running down to his knees. Smiling a grin of bad intentions, his teeth gleamed white and sparkled like a sword in the sunlight. He approaches the cell, resting his hand on the horizontal divider of the two sets of vertical running bars. He leans his face up to the bars, and in a raspy, agitated voice he begins to speak.

"Hey! Get up, you Black Coat fuck!" He said, grabbing onto one of the bars of the cell and shaking the door almost to the point of breaking it off in his hands. The recruit, unsure of what would happen if he refused to follow the order, stands up and approaches the cell, sure of the bars being narrow enough to protect him from the wrath of the man on the other side.

Smirking, the man pulls out a key and jams it in the lock on the outside of the cell door. Turning it, the rusted tumblers squeal and unlock, allowing the door to swing open. Standing aside, he motions for the recruit to walk out, which he hesitantly does. When he exits the cell and enters the corridor alongside the man and his small army, two of the larger men grab him, both taking one of his arms and force him down the hallway, around the corner.

Yelling obscenities at him, they continue to drag him by the arms down the hallway, the stench of musk drowned out by the odor of burnt flesh. The three reach the end of the hallway, a large wooden door, reinforced with iron. One of the guards, the one on the recruit's right looks over at him and smiles a grin of broken, yellow teeth. The same wooden footsteps can be heard from behind the three once again, a signal that their leader would soon be arriving. Holding onto his other arm, the second guard was noticeably smaller than his counterpart, and had a frightened expression on his face and avoiding looking at one part of the room for too long.

"Ah, here is where you're faced with two options, you Black Coat piece of garbage!" The man in the black and red cape said, slamming his open palm down hard on the recruit's shoulder and gripping the top of it momentarily, before removing his hand entirely. "You can either sever your ties, burn your bridges, whatever you wish to call it, or you can die like a coward; you know, just like all of your friends did."

The young man felt tears welling up in his eyes, hidden from them with assistance from the mask. A single tear rolled down his cheek, in honor and remembrance of his fallen comrades. Unbeknownst to him, in his state of honoring the dead, mentally paying his respects because he knew that he would never get the chance to physically, the larger man with the broken teeth had pushed open the sturdy door. A force, pressing on his back knocks him through the door, falling a bout a foot into a large circular pit. Looking back on the fall, he sees the man in the cape lower his foot back onto the ground and smirking.

On the other side of the pit, a similar large door opens. A thunderous roar fills the makeshift arena as a large, three eyed, hunchback beast steps into the arena. It's skin stained a shade of blue, the eyes shining a bright yellow. On the ground beside the recruit, a thud can be heard as his hammer now sits inches away from him. He smiled slyly under the mask, assured he could take the abomination, no matter what it was.

Suddenly, the beast charged him, the force of it merely running into him knocking him far back, against the wall of the arena. The hammer had flown far from his grasp, the thing standing between the man and his weapon. All of the confidence drained away as the shock set in.

He wasn't meant to survive.