Dowmy, still aching from slamming into the magic barrier, half-opens an eye. Facing Arrax's threatening finger, she trembles, and her life flashes before her eyes. The experience doesn't last long; her life has been short and devoid of meaning:
Breaking the black shell of her egg; observing the sea of boiling blood without really understanding what life is; instinctively escaping the rising tide and digging a hole to hide from her stronger siblings, who were beginning to fight and eat the weak or sickly demi-imps; devouring carrion until she was strong and smart enough to climb out of the red sea; wandering for a year and surviving until she grew wings, becoming an imp (the second happiest day of her existence); listening to the subterranean races speak and learning the Secret Tongue, the language of the Underdark. Eating dark elf corpses helped Dowmy a lot to learn faster. Digging up fresh graves was her trick whenever a word or phrase proved difficult.
Thus Dowmy spent her days, scurrying through the shadows of the cavernous routes and performing capers to earn the favor—and perhaps a piece of bread—from a higher race. It wasn't a memorable life, but it was hers, and since she didn't understand what it meant to have aspirations, Dowmy was happy with her routine.
Until a group of kobolds, the rat-folk, caught her in a net while she slept.
Dowmy never liked kobolds; they are ugly, stupid, and their meat tastes like dirt to boot. But the ones who caught her were smart enough to venture out of the Underdark in disguise and trade with the surface races.
In a black market, among cages of diverse monsters, Arrax bought Dowmy along with a batch of other beasts. Arrax was traveling accompanied by his disciples; they were returning from a long expedition to the edges of the world, and given the worn state of their robes, Dowmy understood it hadn't been a pleasant vacation. They brought something with them, a bulky object covered by a tarp in a cart. Dowmy didn't know what the large object was, but she guessed it must be valuable, because when a petty thief tried to peek underneath, Arrax turned him into a sheep with a spell, then unleashed a massive scolding on the disciple who was supposed to be guarding the secret.
"Until we reach the castle, you won't taste a single bite of dinner or breakfast! Mistakes have consequences!"
The imp, listening from her cage, learned the Friendly Tongue, as the language of humans is known, although just like the Secret Tongue, it could be used for betrayal. The mages paid little attention to the imp; to them, she was just another specimen in the increasingly empty cages.
When the group prepared to rest, Arrax ordered the disciples to set up his large, vibrant blue tent—exclusively for him—into which he would take some monster that never appeared again. Sometimes shrieks of terror could be heard from the tent, sometimes the crackle of sparks, and sometimes, on the worst occasions, a sepulchral silence that left everything to the imagination.
None of the disciples dared look inside the tent until Arrax finished his experiments, at which point he would step out, point at one of them, and order them to clean up the mess.
Arrax was in no rush to return to the castle; it was his way of buying time to conduct all the tests that interested him. From what Dowmy understood, Arrax owed a very large debt to an old king.
"A human king is like a human, but stronger," Dowmy murmurs, both to practice the Friendly Tongue and to familiarize herself with the concepts the surface races use.
Thirteen days away from reaching the kingdom, the disciple Arrax had deprived of food collapsed in the middle of the road. His companions rushed to help him, and Arrax, from atop his rented donkey, leaned over and asked angrily about the reason for all the commotion.
"Master, he urgently needs food!" Marnie exclaims while the others try to lift the unconscious disciple.
Arrax shakes his head.
"I made it clear the punishment would stand until we reached the castle. What kind of mage and man would I be if I went back on my words? When I was his age, my master forced me to survive for a month by sucking on moss and eating cave mushrooms, and I never complained. But if you are so worried about him, Marnie, learn to fly and carry him in your arms before his life snuffs out."
Dowmy watched everything with large, attentive eyes, her hands wrapped around the bars of her cage. She was used to cruelty thanks to the dark elves, but the humans seemed deeply affected by the decision. For the first time in her life, Dowmy felt a prick of pride and felt better... Those disciples wouldn't last two days in the Underdark. Whereas she... She had tasted dark elf meat and lived to tell the tale, yessir!
The starving disciple died two nights later, and Arrax gave a strange order: he requested the corpse be brought inside his tent. The disciples gulped, but obeyed without asking questions. That night no screams were heard, but purple flashes did seep out from inside the tent.
One morning, 6 days before reaching the kingdom, Marnie opened Dowmy's cage and grabbed her between stiff leather-gloved hands to take her to Arrax. The imp kicked her legs, and upon imagining the fate she would suffer, she cried out:
"No, please, no! I'll be good!"
Marnie and the disciples jumped upon hearing her speak the human language. Arrax, who was busy brushing his rented donkey, raised an eyebrow and turned around, intrigued.
"They say the words of demons are capable of melting the coldest heart, and are as reliable as a poisonous bog," the sorcerer comments, a hand under his chin. Dowmy looks away, preferring to avert her face than face the mage. "But a creature as pathetic and primitive as you perhaps hasn't fully developed her betrayal gland, or maybe you retain a sliver of the true empathy that is supposed to evaporate as you grow. Perhaps we can even teach you some manners."
Maybe it was for amusement, or out of mere scientific curiosity, but the fact is that Dowmy was kept alive, dressed in rags for the first time, and instructed in the Friendly Tongue, only to then be interrogated and questioned by Arrax. At first, Dowmy breathed a sigh of relief, but her peace of mind was short-lived when she realized that every time Arrax asked her to recite a poem and she got nervous and made a mistake, he didn't hesitate to electrocute her or lash her with a riding crop.
Learning and surviving, her greatest motivations, became the core of her torment. She no longer wanted to learn more of the Friendly Tongue, because the more she knew, the more complicated Arrax's tests became and the higher the chance of making a mistake.
The imp's knowledge stagnated.
"The worm has reached the limit of its potential! What a bother," Arrax said, shaking his head, disappointed. "Well, it was bound to happen sooner or later."
From an outdoor cage, Dowmy was moved to a cage inside a dark laboratory permeated with strong smells that made her nose ache for the first few days. Arrax instructed his disciples to test attack spells on her and also to cut off parts to study them on the dissection table. Marnie, who was slightly specialized in the magical branch of healing, also had the opportunity to practice her spells and was the reason Dowmy lasted so long.
"Practice makes perfect. You will learn more by cutting open a membranous wing than by studying about them in the most detailed and dusty book in the world," Arrax said once, and the disciples absorbed the mage's words with admiration in their eyes. Arrax's curriculum was harsh, but the lessons were abundant, and they wasted no time on magical ethics or the Elenic oath promoted by the mage king.
Soon, lying in the cage, fluttering her throbbing stumps, Dowmy discovered another sin: Envy. Envy for the monsters that perished before her. And even though it was contradictory, focusing on that hateful feeling made her feel better.
Knowing she could feel things beyond pain, even if it was envy, proved to be a comfort for a meaningless life. The imp assumed that she wouldn't take long to join the dead anyway. Then one day...
Arrax concluded the secret project. The very same day the dark elves invaded the kingdom.