hotmtlnovel Chapter 225 Prisoners Of War
Chapter 225 Prisoners Of War
• TITANS LANDING, SIX MONTHS LATER.
THE CLANGING OF HOLLOW CHAINS echoed in the pit dungeons of the royal castle at Darkwake. In the largest chambers of the sordid prisons, a gods-damned cavern hundred-feet tall and twice that in breadth, lay Israfel. Upon first glance, the Apollyon couldn't be recognized. . .for he was not human.
No. He was Titan.
Ninety feet of scarlet bulk: muscle made of stone, veins running in magma, skin hissing volcanic steam, black smoke pouring out his nostrils, and his huge gilded eyes leaking streams of fire. He was to the entire continent, the captured Red Titan, the Rebel Lord.
His prison was secluded, cut deep into the same mountain the castle was hewn from; cut deep into adamant stone. The chains that held him were of forgers iron, and still spelled by [Hemlock Threads] of the Grand Ashari witches. His great body, laid in those chains still gave off so much heat a band of firetamers had been employed, given the only job of putting out the flames.
Israfel was as a war dragon. Abandoned by his tribe. Lost to the memory of mortals. Bleeding fire and gold. Unable to remember when he was yet human—for human he had been.
He had been this way. . .in this appalling, colossal red flesh for six months.
The tiny door adjacent to where he lay squeaked open. He smelled two women walk in, but didn't turn from his side. He did not care if they thought he was asleep or not. He was a Gargantuan. Merely turning around would vibrate the stone walls.
So he stayed still. And listened to them talk.
One of the women was saying, "you think he's ever gonna change back? He's been like this all through the fall and last winter."
The second voice, the other woman spoke calmer when she replied: "Yes. He has to. I know it's hard to imagine him reverting back to human size now that he's been locked in this form all-season. But this is my nephew we're talking about, Hèla. My darling boy. I AM NOT GIVING UP ON HIM. Never."
Rafel blinked his huge, flaming eyes away, where they couldn't see.
It was Lilith, the second woman. Explore stories on empire
He held his breath through the silence that reigned afterward. A small, pregnant, and awkward quiet. He didn't like it. He wanted them gone; they had put him here. Chained in off in darkness and flame. Who were they to act like they cared? But he did not utter this. He couldn't. He had not said a single word since he was changed.
After a short while, Lilith turned with Hèla and left the cavern. They'd been visiting like this every few days for through the winter, like clockwork. Rafel knew Lilith prayed for a miracle: that her 'darling boy' would revert back to human. But frankly, he didn't care if her did.
Being human afforded emotions. Things he didn't want to think about—like Rosa and Bruna, and how one was beheaded and the other drowned.
No.
He'd rather stay as he was. As the Red Titan, Lord of the Rebels, in his prison of fire, he didn't think, or speak... or do much of anything.
He didn't grieve.
And so he was happy. Let his Auntie be sad all he wanted. She forced his hand to this. Perhaps, the one thing that made Rafel smile these dark days were that he had taken the life of that madman.
Yes!
Before he was stuck in this form, he had killed the Usurper. Murdered the bastard. Tore apart the cunt to shreds. Bathed in the vile blood of him. Yes! Rafel killed the demon King, Thebault de Vríes: First of His Name, Lord of the Nine Realms, god of deception, and Keeper of the [Eternal Flame]. He killed Mephistopheles.
It was this brazen murder that had gifted him the infamous title across the Continent: the Rebel Lord.
Even now, it made him smile again.
As the metallic sounds of latches signalled the exit of his Aunt from his furnace prison, Israfel closed his eyes on more time and relived that night at Corynthia; he ignored the burn of his fire tears as they ran down his stone cheeks. He remembered:
That ominous twilight, six moons past, he had just become the Titan, morphing into this creature of astounding size and strength; and red all over in sulphuric skin and acidic breath.
The five digits of Rafel's Titan [Fire Palm] appeared massively in the ground, forming the shape of a five-finger crater in the hard earth. The winds went silent for a beat. Ravenna's [Kronos Bubble] was falling out of the sky. Rafel caught it—in his huge right hand.
She was like a pixie in the hollow of his hand.
But the Red Titan wasn't done yet, and he looked down upon the King, from his measure up in the Corynthian twilight sky, flat-pressed into the earth. If Mephistopheles wasn't an [S Rank] devil, he'd be dead: his bones shattered on impact. On the spot where he lay, in the palm-shaped crater, Meph was like an awkwardly large spider. His limbs were splayed everywhere where he had been mashed into the earth like paste.
"Yikes!" Hèla blinked at the smashed form of the king.
The Red Titan poured his brimming wrath down.
"TITAN ARTS! FURY OF KONG!"
Rafel summoned a rare ancient Hel art: [Gorilla Pound-for-Pound]. He closed his great fists around Ravenna, knowing the [Kronos Bubble] would be impervious; invulnerable. And then he brought those mighty arms down on Mephistopheles. The demon King was just rising from the rubble, his bones cracking as his joints tried to fix up, his healing abilities picking up, when Rafel brought down his first punch.
BOOM!
The Titan hand broke the earth asunder. Those on the ground jumped. The collision of his fist hit like thunder. He flattened the bits of stone about. Stone that was hard as diamond. But not to be compared when matched with [Fury of Kong].
If King Kong had horns and was red, with eyes leaking fire, that would be Israfel at the moment.
BOOM! BOOM! BA-DA BOOM! BAM!
He went to town on Meph. Punching away. Hulk smashing! His wallops hit hard and heavy, and fast. Meph couldn't heal himself quickly enough.
The Red Titan's fists were splashed in blood, and when he paused, the Usurper was as a banana peel on the earth.
Rafel lifted him up with a single finger to his large face. His hot breath scalded Meph's bleeding, broken body. The demon King coughed, about to say something but his mangled lips and snaggletooth couldn't move. Rafel liked it; evil cunts didn't deserve last words. Using both hands, Rafel held Meph apart with his thumbs.
One to his head, the other to his legs.
"GRRRRHHH!!!"
Rafel pulled.
—And the King of Eldoria went splat.
From there things went haywire: Rafel went on to scatter Mephistopheles soul in the void, so he could not resurrect. Lilith beckoned to Giselle and Yuriel when he began a rampage, storming on the earth. And it was only by the united force of the demoness, faerie, and Seraphim that they were able to bind Rafel in hefty chains—and a cross [demonagogue] strapped to his chest.
The crucifix being stabbed into him to restrain his demonic mana from overflowing and blasting them all to smithereens.
Thereafter, the Red Titan was ferried across the ocean on three ships to Titans Landing. The denizens of the Capital fishing on the early morning's coasts saw the frigates arrive in the mist of dawn, like giant spirits in the Cold Sea, bearing high with their banners the great red gargantuan.
In the days that followed the murder of the King, the Titan came to be known as the Rebel Lord. And it stuck.
This was how it had ended six moons before. And now, in the present, Rafel opened his eyes. Still in the flaming Giant form in which he had being brought into captivity, he laid his large head on the cold stone of the cavern dungeon and listened for the slow singing that was certain to come shortly.
And it did.
It was the voice of two women, his fellow prisoners: Corazón Mortimer and Aya Naamah.
Their own dungeons were not too far from his. And their singing was about love and war.
Just last night, gossip from the castle had reached his ears by a spelled firefly smuggled into his cage: Ravenna was alive—and she now was the Crown-queen of the Nine Realms.