Love from Land and Water(Infinite X Shadow)

XVII

When evening rolls in, Shadow heard the rusty iron door open, then the squeaky hinges of the door to his cell. The guard tossed something onto the stone floor, then closed the cell door and exits the room. Uncurling from the fetal position in the far corner, Shadow saw a whole loaf of bread. 'Bout time I ate something other than nothing,' he thought, crawling to the bread, Eclipse followed him.

Shadow sat on his knees as he tried to split loaf for the two of them. Unfortunately it didn't break. 'That's strange.' The hedgehog bit into it to break it off like that, but that gave Shadow a feeling that he cracked a tooth.

Highly frustrated, the sea prince tossed it towards a corner where it shattered to hundreds of pieces. Both he and Eclipse stared in surprise. 'Sorry Eclipse, no dinner tonight,' Shadow thought as he held out his hands for Eclipse to climb into. Behind him was a wooden board hung by chains on the wall, probably a makeshift bed. However the two prisoners just huddled in the corner that doesn't have glass bread shards.

The next morning Shadow was woken up by his door unlocking. The female guard that originally stood outside the room was standing next to the bars, she said nothing. Both doors were wide open and it didn't seem like there was anybody going to spring a trap once he walked through a doorway. Shadow hesitantly got up and put sleeping Eclipse in his quills.

The guard standing outside the cell just watched him with piercing eyes. Two other castle guards began to escort Shadow to the throne room. Upon entry, Infinite rushed up to him and twirls him by his waist. "Shadow! The phantom Ruby was found! It wasn't you this entire time!" The jackal said with a massive smile.

Shadow was still very confused why Infinite picked him up like that, but he shook it off for the moment. The hedgehog looks over the jackal's shoulder to see Mephiles and Iblis waving at him, with a white bat tied up on the floor between them. A quick throat clear from the blacksmith told Infinite and Shadow to come over.

"I'll give a brief summary of how we found the heirloom," Mephiles began, " Iblis was going to get some water and he found this sorry excuse of a bat digging through my smithy. I woke up to noise, found her strangling him, I pulled her off. Then... You can tell what happened in the end right here." The gray hedgehog points down at the bat, whom was wriggling around to get out of the restraints.

As soon as the bat makes eye contact with Shadow, she stopped fighting the rope and puts on a sweet face. "Why hello there, handsome. The name's Rouge The Bat. If you free me, we can have some fun," the captive said with a wink. It took a few moments for the sea prince to figure out where Rouge was making googly eyes at, and felt very sick once he figured out what she wanted to do with him. 'Ma'am, I'm gay-' Shadow thought as the disgust piles up deep in his gut.

"Nobody will be setting you free anytime soon," Iblis growled, lightly kicking Rouge's side. "Anyway, here's the Ruby back," the blacksmith hands Infinite the Phantom Ruby. The guards then drag the prisoner to the dungeon, all while Rouge was trying to sweet talk them into letting her go.

"Welcome back, Shadow," the jackal prince turned to Shadow with a smile on his face.