Imprisoned

The Dukes left the palace immediately, for they knew that this was an opportunity given to them by the Emperor to swallow the Rist Dukedom. Duchess Rist only looked on with hollow eyes. The moment she had seen the pillar turn black, she knew that everything was lost.

Humans were the biggest enemies of the demons. They looked very similar to demons physically, but their inner organs behaved in a completely different manner. They could not absorb Dark Energy like demons, instead what they absorbed was simply called Material Energy. Demons and humans were perpetually at war and the competition between the two was immense and furious. Intermixing between the two races was one of the biggest crimes among the demons, without any question.

Leon was paralyzed in fear as he saw his mother clean out the weaker nobles, only to warily see the emperor's blood colored Shadow Weapon rotating in the air like a drill, crackling and causing millions of cracks in space that continued to heal themselves. The Emperor was looking at the goings on with some bemusement as he shook his head. He suddenly snorted and the nobles who were being dispatched by the ferocious rose vine were pushed out of the hall by an unspeakable force. When the Duchess saw that, her eyes turned into pin pricks. It was only now that she realized how truly deep the Emperor had hidden his power!

The Emperor twirled the scarlet silky hair in his left index finger as he blinked. As if understanding his intention, that terrifying thorn which was drilling in the air flew like a jet towards the vines. Leon couldn't even see the trajectory of that levitating spike of blood red energy that was crackling. One instant it was beside the emperor and the next instant it had pierced into the vine. The moment it did so, The Duchess vomited out a huge amount of blood and fell on her knees. The Emperor simple looked on in amusement as if playing with a toy.

The thorn began sucking in energy from the bulbous vine as the roses that were attached to the vine began to decay at a visible rate. The vine seemed to have aged in a few minutes as the thorns seemed to wither away and the vine began rotting. Leon saw to his horror that at the same time, his mother who looked like in the peak of her youth since he had seen as as a child was aging rapidly. Her smooth skin was turning wrinkly and creases began to form beside her eye and on her forehead. Her flesh hollowed out and her back turned hunched. Her height shortened and her hair turned a thin sickly white and began to wither away slowly into dust.

"Devouring Life..." The Duchess mumbled in confusion, as she saw herself age and the hope within her eyes had been wiped away. As she was about to close her eyes she saw the look of fear on Leon's face and her face turned bitter. "It's because of a disgrace like you that I lost everything!" She screamed with her dying breath, hatred in her eyes as she slapped the boy away. The emperor saw this and laughed. The demon race was a cruel one.

Leon felt like a thousand boulders smashed into him. His mother hadn't held back from her hit, but the Emperor seemed to have taken away much of her power and thus Leon didn't die. But he felt like all his bones were broken. He lay there on the cracked floor from the intense battle bleeding from every orifice and unable to move. His eyes turned dim as he saw his own mother looking at him with hatred in her dying breath. Cursing him to not have existed as she disappeared into dust. He saw the mocking look on the face of the Emperor, that terrifying spike that felt like it could destroy the whole world and the terrible pain that he faced in his body, before his vision gave way.

When Leon felt his consciousness return, he was surprised, yet despondent. "I am alive?" He thought in confusion, but the pain caused him to open his eyes to see that he was chained onto a thick black wood as he was being paraded around the capital city. Every bone in his body was broken and his limbs and his chest had been tied with scalding rope, a rope made of a material that causes acid like burns on contact with any organic matter.

Struggling to open his eyes and the constant incredible pain that was pushing him into and out of consciousness, Leon saw a river of blood in front of him. He had been brought in front of the Rist Palace, his home. Everyone had been slaughtered and were strewn on the ground. Piles after piles of bodies of distant cousins, nephews, uncles and other nobles who were subordinate to the Rist Clan had been exterminated. Leon saw the blood lust in the gleeful eyes of the youth who were slaughtering others.

"Is this my fault?" Leon wondered to his disheartened self? He had already given up hope and just wanted to die already. The physical pain was already unbearable, and now they were inflicting him with the mental torture of guilt. "What did I do to deserve this? Am I not your brother?" He wanted to scream, but he couldn't vocalize any thoughts because no part of his body was willing to move.

Leon was paraded all around the city as the commoners all hurled abuses at him and threw stones and eggs at him. "Die half-breed scum!" They chanted in a frenzy. Leon could not take it anymore and closed his eyes. He just wanted to die, but his ordeal wasn't over yet.

When he opened his eyes, he was bound in chains in a stone room. There was no window and the place looked extremely decrepit. He couldn't move as all his bones were broken. Initially the pain was intolerable, but now his eyes had turned lifeless and his body numb to all external influences. He simply lay there unmoving, in a dazed state.

The door to the stone room opened and an intimidating Demon walked in. He looked at Leon with a gaze of disgust and hatred. "Scum. We can't let you die yet." He said to no one in particular and lifted Leon's almost dead cracked body and threw it into a bath tub. The tub was filled with a blood red liquid and there were some kind of algae like objects floating in the liquid.

The moment Leon was thrown into the bucket, he screamed. Even though his vocal cords were not functional, he yelled out a guttural roar as if his very esophagus vibrated in horror. He felt a billion constant termites boring into his body and drilling into his insides and eating them. At the same time a violent hot liquid flowed through his body evaporating his hunger and partially healing his organs which were being bored into.

"Haha, do you like the feeling?" The large demon laughed cruelly. "This is a special method invented by our Demented Prison. The Anguish Ticks bore into your body and eat everything they can while this Spinal Fluid of the Blood Tiger has enough healing property to keep you alive and feed you so you won't die. But you will live in eternal torture!"

Leon couldn't even hear the words of the demon over the screams emerging from his own mouth. He felt his entire body was on fire and his body was being burned again and again. At the same time he felt like his body was being torn apart, as if he was being eaten alive. The pain was something far beyond he could even fathom existed. The demon smirked as he left, but Leon didn't even notice. He couldn't care less. He only had one thought in his mind. He wanted to die! He wanted all this to end.

In the Demented Prison, in the lowest underground level, in a stone cellar, a poor voice croaked in despair constantly for over a week. No one came to attend to the voice. The voice had groan hoarser and hoarser, until the voice disappeared. The demon in charge of the torture was himself horrified by the degree. Some powerful people had been ordering that the half-breed scum be kept under constant torture and now feared that the captive had died. However, he had underestimated the power of that liquid.

Leon was very much alive. A week of screaming hoarse had torn his voice box and now no sound came out. Yet He was constantly yelling. Tears streamed from his eyes as despair turned into madness and hatred. He wanted to die, but even this small request of his was denied. His own mother had almost killed him. All because he had human blood in him. His thoughts went to his father, who he realized now he hated very much. He'd rather not have been born than undergo this kind of terrifying torture.

That day, a thunderstorm covered the capital city. It was an extremely powerful storm, with lightning striking everywhere with wanton abandon. The air was filled with a rage. A static pressure began to build between the earth and the sky as clouds started to turn at a speed visible to the ordinary eye, forming whirlpools in the air. The static reached such a high degree, that all people in the city began to feel their skin tingle with goosebumps.

The emperor, who had been lazily sitting on his throne suddenly looked skywards with curiosity. "Looks like the human has taken the bait." He murmured with a smile as he got up from his throne and floated out of the palace. When the static reached a limit, a gigantic lightning to eclipse all lightnings occurred as a bolt of electrical energy bolt up from the ground to meat the sky. The light blinded everyone who had their eyes fixed in that direction. when the glare from the bolt of lightning faded, a man who looked to be in his thirties appeared. His eyes were bright blue and his hair white.

The man looked around casually, as if he were surveying his own backyard. He saw the emperor floating towards him and simply ignored him as he looked around. "Where is that lad of mine? I heard you have imprisoned him?" He asked after a survey revealed no results.

The Demon Emperor simply smiled. "I never thought that the Duke Rist was actually the great Dominic Nile in disguise. To think that a hero of the human race was actually a Duke in our Incidence Empire!" The Emperor exclaimed. "Now that you show your real face, I can see the familiarity quite clearly between you and your son. I didn't expect you to actually be so paternalistic, aren't you famous for being heartless?"

The man simply snorted as he turned his eyes towards the emperor. The two might seem to have been talking like close acquaintances, but those who were observing by the sidelines had their hearts pierced by fear. Just the casual encounter between these two peak powerhouses was causing buildings and houses to crack and destroy and the air was crackling with an immense pressure that did not allow anyone to move. They seemed to just be chatting, but a terrifying battle of wills was already taking place.

"The child? I couldn't care any less about that waste. He was just an experiment of mine that didn't work out. The moment I saw him when he was born, I realized he was a failure and gave up on that stupid whim of mine. I am here, not for him. I am here because I dare to be." Dominic said in a heroic voice. His voice boomed across the entire city.

At that moment, a desperate young man was lying in a blood colored liquid gasping for a chance to die, only to have his hopes rekindled when he heard the voice reverberate through his soul. But when he heard this man's final words he sunk further into despair. The hatred in his eyes only blinding him more. He wanted to die, but first he wanted to have his revenge.