Iraikae

Prelude
The creature looked at the display.

    CRITICAL FAILURE IMMINENT.

    The text was in a strange language of swirls and dots. The creature was watching a human wriggle around in its cocoon. It had eight spindly legs connected to a carapace that supported an eye in a floating orb of orange liquid. The eye was able to turn in any direction, and it would make a man dizzy watching it move as fast as it did.
    That eye looked intelligent.
    "Tell the others that my human is close to escape," it was clearly the voice of the creature. The language was one of low rumbles and clicks.
    The alien looked back at the cocoon with the human in its floating sphere of orange liquid. It could have sworn that the human was looking at him but that couldn't have been possible.
    The creature shook his eye. He was just being paranoid.

Part 1
Iraikae looked up at the sky.
    Why did it always have to be him?
    Every day they chased him, hunted him. It was ruthless what they did to him. The pain he felt in his lifetime was unimaginable.
    The pain. The pain that he had to relive over and over.
    Iraikae hated his curse.
    Eternal life was the bane of his existence, compliments of the tormentors that beat him to death over and over again. What had he done? It was forgotten to him. Eons of pain will do that to a man.
    Iraikae looked up at the sky. He'd do anything to die. Not to die and come back. To let the folds of darkness carry him away forever. It would be glorious.
    A sound echoed through the cloister. It was a loud boom that reverberated around the space, bouncing from wall to wall.
    Silence fell over the monkhood once more. It only lasted a few seconds before the screaming started.
    It was the monks, of course. Their pain was unbearable as the beasts fell upon them. The beasts were horrible creatures.
    Covered in large spikes to gore their target, they had huge gaping mouths to swallow a man whole. Once the man was inside its bowels, acid would begin to cover him until the pain became too much.
    Iraikae had been on the receiving end of it many times before, and it always drove Iraikae so mad with pain that he wanted to die. And death ALWAYS came soon after the pain. Sweet, glorious death.
    He would only get to enjoy it for a few minutes before he was pushed back into the land of the living. Back where he would be killed again.
    Iraikae ran into the room where the rest of the monks had been praying only moments earlier. As he expected, the monsters were shoveling the monks into their mouths.
    "Back off," one brave monk said, pointing a bible at one of the beasts. The beast didn't blink an eye as it swallowed the poor monk whole.
    Gone. Just like that, life was taken.
    In a matter of moments, the room was decimated, all monks killed. The beasts encircled Iraikae.
    They always did this before they killed him. Stared him down before pouncing. One of the beasts lunged right on cue.
    Iraikae's body snapped into motion, swinging his leg around. It connected with the beast's eye with a dull thud.
    The beast shook its head and retreated back into the ring.
    Iraikae knew their dance. One by one, they would lunge at him. Try to exhaust him to death before killing him.
    He would stay on his feet fighting until his body gave out. He would collapse onto the floor, where one of the beasts would swallow him whole.
    Another beast lunged at Iraikae. He responded with a deft punch in the eye. Once again, the beast slunk back.
    Maybe if I had a sword, I would be able to rid the world of these awful creatures, Iraikae thought to himself.
    He had always wondered if they could die. He hadn't succeeded yet. That was the other part of his curse: if he held any sort of weapon, he died.
    He didn't understand why. It was probably so he couldn't defend himself or others when the beasts came.
    Iraikae bolted at a break in the beasts' ranks. He only had a split second to make his decision.
    His hand reached and grabbed onto one of the beast's horns, using his momentum to vault over the creature. The ground rushed up to meet him, and he stumbled.
    In a second, he was back on his feet, running for his life. He could hear the rumble of the beasts stampeding after him.
    He ran faster than he ever had, his legs flying in front of him so fast he couldn't stop even if he wanted to.
    He risked a glance behind him. The beasts were gaining. He had never been able to outrun them. Iraikae glanced at the sky.
    There was an eye floating above him in an orb of orange liquid as if a god peering through the sky. Iraikae blinked. It was gone.
    That's new, Iraikae thought as his lapse in concentration let the beasts catch up with him. One of the brutes grabbed him by his shoulder and flung him over his shoulder.
    Iraikae flew through the sky as the pain erupted in his shoulder. The stars weren't even able to appear in his vision before he hit the ground, and it all went black.
    When he opened them again, he was floating in the familiar darkness. Was that light he could see in the distance?

Interlude
The alien creature sensed it before the screen even alerted him of anything.
    He raised his voice and started to share with his colony in a loud booming voice:
    "The human is not returning to stasis," it said. "Alert the matitions."
    He looked back at the writhing human. This was about to get messy.

Part 2: 

As time went on, the light seemed to grow brighter.

    Is this it? Iraikae thought to himself. Am I finally about to die?

    The light slowly grew brighter until Iraikae's eyes fluttered open. Pain. Blinding pain erupted in his eyes as he felt liquid flow into them.

    It hurt with the pain of a thousand fires. Iraikae flailed about and felt his arms move sluggishly through liquid. Something was wrong.

    He could barely hear a sound emanating from outside the thick liquid he was struggling to get out of. It consisted of clicks and deep rumblings.

    He could only imagine what it could be.

    As pictures of the beasts flashed through his head, he pushed harder against the constraints of the liquid.

    Iraikae took a deep breath. There had to be a way out of this hell.

    Wait a second, he thought to himself. I can breathe?

    Of course, he could. He had taken a deep breath. Great. That meant he wasn't going to die.

    Iraikae started to flail around harder. He drew his arm back in one fluid motion and punched outward as hard as he could.

    His body moved like a wave, and his arm punctured the liquid. He felt cool air settling on his skin.

    It was an unreal feeling. Something felt distinctly real about it. The air itself felt alive.

    Iraikae pushed and struggled, trying to pull himself out of his constraints. It took a couple of minutes to free himself.

    He fell to the hard ground and rubbed his eyes. They still burned with pain, but it seemed to be going away. The rumbling was coming from behind him, and a piercing click penetrated it as a knife plunging into butter.

    Iraikae pushed himself up from the ground. He stumbled and fell, hitting the hard surface below him. He felt like a newborn calf. Nothing was cooperating.

    He tried again, pushing off the ground with his arms. This time, he stood for a few seconds. He opened his eyes and saw a strange creature in front of him.

    Great, he thought. A new tormentor.

    It had eight spindly limbs, connected to a spindly torso that supported an eye floating in orange liquid. The eye darted every which way, but it always landed back on Iraikae.

    Iraikae felt pain start to build in his legs again. He tried to walk over to the little creature, but instead fell on it. He felt the legs snap like twigs under him and something wet fall on his back.

    He reached around and put it in front of his face. It was the eyeball. Iraikae carefully put the eye on the ground. He looked at it for a moment, thinking about how alive it had been. Now it was cold and still. He stumbled to his feet. There was no time to think about such foolish things.

    He turned around and saw the cocoon. It was full of the same orange liquid that had surrounded the creature's eye. How interesting. Was this going to be a new form of eternal torture?

    Iraikae tore his eyes away from the cocoon. The room around him was circular with delicate little gadgets on the walls. When Iraikae leaned closer, he barely made out intricate swirls and dots adorning each one.

    Iraikae staggered and fell through something flimsy. When he scrambled back to his feet, he had found that the entire cave had collapsed. He was standing in the open desert. The sky above him was red with a glowing orange dot on the horizon.

    All around him were thousands of domes. They stretched far, but Iraikae could see a wall lining the perimeter.

    What is this place? Iraikae wondered. And where are the beasts?

Interlude

CONTAINMENT FAILURE

It was a drastic situation. A human had escaped, and there was already a casualty because of it. The guard protecting the humans' cocoon had fallen. Now the beast was loose.

    It was his job to contain it.

    They called him Leeran. The most feared general in all of Azlecta. He was the only one who had taken on a human and lived.

    Humans were horrible creatures. Even worse than the beasts that lived outside the city walls. They pillaged, destroyed, and killed everything that entered their path.

    That's why the Azlecta kept them in statis. In a world where they could be violent and yet no one would be harmed. It was the perfect balance of peace for everyone.

    Every once in a while, a cocoon would fail, and a human would enter the real world. It was the cost of immortality. Mistakes happen when you test things over a millennium.

    Leeran was going to contain the mistake. Once he got the human into a new cacoon he would enter statis. All would be well.

    Leeran shook his eye. How was he going to pull it off? Then an idea came to him. Maybe, just maybe, this would work.

Part 3

Iraikae heard something growl behind him. He spun around and found himself facing one of the beasts. The beasts from his old world. The world where he was sentenced to a life of eternal torture.

    He locked eyes with the beast. Today, he was going to kill it once and for all. Iraikae got into a fighting stance, ready to pounce. 

    But then it spoke.

    "Go back to the orange cocoon," the voice said in a tongue that Iraikae could understand. It was a deep guttural voice emanating from deep inside the creature's throat.

    "Go back to the orange cacoons," the beast said again for emphasis. "Or your eternal torture will increase one hundredfold. The cocoon is right behind you. All you have to do is step inside it."

    The idea was alluring to Iraikae. Maybe if he went back to the cacoon he wouldn't have to worry about his legs hurting anymore? And the horrible beast wouldn't mess with him.

    He easily could have defeated the beast, but instead, he stumbled back into the cocoon. Back into a world of ignorance. One where he was eternally tortured.

    Iraikae would never remember that day. It was wiped from his memory.

Epilogue

Leeran was the hero of the Azlecta. He had saved them from the ghastly human. There had been only one casualty. The human was now in stasis, where he would be hunted over and over again by a fabrication of the Azlecta.

    Something still bothered Leeran, though. It had all been a little too easy. Using a bit of magic to coerce the human into the cocoon had not exactly been difficult.

    Leeran shrugged his eye. He needed to enjoy himself. After all, this party was in his honor.

The End