Sweat soaked her shirt as she kept on running through the maze, trying to find a way out. A way that could save her soul. She screamed in pain and despair as more and more thorns cut her uncovered skin. She took a turn to the right, but found herself stuck in a dead end, with the huge bushes closing behind her. She made a run for the small space she had left to escape and got out of the death trap just in time.

Even though she had escaped that trap, there were many more waiting to kill her, to make her surrender to Daeva, the demon who put her in that maze. Who would've thought that her life would end that way, in a realm between realms, surrounded by traps and huge bushes while being watched by Daeva, known as "one of the rejected Gods"? Well, clearly not her.

These weren't the streets of Bucharest that she grew up on, this wasn't right, not what she had agreed on.
The air around her had a reddish, disturbing colour, most likely to be poisoned. Nothing but the walls made of bushes and the thorns seemed to be able to survive there. She was pretty sure that, apart from that maze, the rest of that world was complete wasteland. If anything lived there then Rhea could only imagine what those creatures looked like, due to the damage that the poison could do to them, even if it wouldn't have been deadly for them.

She was losing blood, a lot of blood. She was slowly getting dizzy as she continued her way through the endless maze. It wasn't fair, but it was also her fault and hers only that she had ended up in that situation. All she wanted was power to protect herself from the eyes of the world, watching and judging her every move in her day by day life.

She looked up at the demon watching her and screamed with all her might, feeling how every last drop of hope had run out, just like her energy. She wasn't angry, just scared. Scared to death by the thought of dying.

Many people think that being ignored or being bullied is the worst it can get, and even kill themselves because of it, but in the situation that Rhea was in, she had no idea if she wanted to beg the demon to spare her or to kill her.

She wanted to save herself, but her chances of survival were smaller with every second that passed, while she was thinking of a way to escape, a way to trick Daeva.
But how could she escape him? Demons are powerful, smart and sly, and she had no will to live anymore.
The demon could feel her mind and way of thinking weakening, and that's when he decided it was time to interfere.

"Are you going to give up?" he asked in an intimidating voice.

"I don't... I don't know." she answered, feeling her body lose strength and start trembling.

Her skin started to peel off her hands and face, as she was trying to come up with a plan, but it was hopeless anyways. The urge to scratch her whole itching body and peel all of her sore, damaged skin off was more than just hard to resist. She couldn't feel anything anymore now. She finally felt nothing, no more pain, no more worries, just the weirdly pleasant dizziness that made her stumble on her own legs and fall onto the hard, dry ground.

"Come on, can't you see how sick you are? Just say the three words and you'll be as good as new, maybe even better." Daeva tried to convince her, as she couldn't even think properly anymore.

"I..." Rhea started, but a part of her mind was screaming at her to stop.

Come save me.

"Come on my dear, three words." a sly smile spread across the demon's face as he watched the living being slowly die in such pain that she couldn't even feel anything anymore.

Blood covered her whole body as more and more skin fell to the ground. Rhea didn't look like a human anymore, she didn't look like she could be alive in the state she was. She was coughing out blood, making it hard for her to speak.

Come save me.

"I gi..." she tried to speak as another clog of coagulated blood stopped her from speaking and made it even harder for her to breathe until she spit it out on the ground.

Come save me.

"THREE WORDS." Daeva was clearly getting impatient.

Come save me.

"I give up." she said as she struggled to breathe, but the fact that her lungs were melting inside of her wasn't helping at all.

"Very well then, my dear, let's give you what you came here for." he said and started enchanting some kind of spell in latin, but Rhea had no idea what he was saying. She could barely hear him anymore.

As soon as he was done, huge, blue flames surrounded Rhea as she slowly started seeing again, feeling again. Her skin was also almost fully recovered when an excruciating pain hit her right on her back, under the shoulder blades. It was like someone was stabbing her over and over in the same two places to dig something out. Every single bone in her body was breaking and mending itself. No, something was actually digging its way out of her, ripping her skin and spreading out.

COME SAVE ME.

All that Rhea could do was scream in pain, as her nails turned black and grew dangerously long and sharp. Her screams didn't sound human anymore. She wasn't a human anymore. She preferred to die, rather than take this torture. Anything but this. How was she still alive? Two big, bloody wing-shaped skeletons just made their way out of her back and started growing black feathers.

Daeva was purely delighted with his experiment. He hasn't had so much fun in hundreds of years. Now he finally had a toy that he created himself and whose mind he could shape however he wanted.

"Welcome back, my little demon."

No one saved me.