Legends of Amacia The Caverias Rebellion
Chapter 27: The Emperor’s Rage

Nearly an hour after Hanna and her raiders vanished with their prize, the Emperor came to in his throne room. His face stung badly from Nemesis’ claw marks and his chest burned badly by the redirected energy bolts he had meant for Hanna. He cursed as he slowly got to his feet, holding the side of his bloody face. He cursed Hanna and Nemesis when he saw the blood. Walking to the doorway of the throne room in a daze, the Emperor looked out seeing mutilated bodies everywhere. Some bodies were torn limb from limb while others were burned or bullet-riddled. Blood splattered all over everything and formed pools on the floor. With none living in sight, the Emperor began to walk, heading toward the Harem. “A good fuck will make me feel better,” he muttered under his breath.

Five minutes later, the Emperor came upon the ruins of the Harem. A smoky, dusty haze filled the corridor approaching the Harem’s foyer. His anger doubled when he saw the doors of the Harem blown off their hinges and the surrounding walls and ceiling heavily damaged. He stepped over scores of scorched dead guards outside the entrance in the foyer area. The damaged walls and ceiling over the entrance groaned with small pieces of stone falling. The Emperor stepped over and on the fallen, going inside the Harem. The entire Harem lay destroyed with a forty-foot crater six feet deep in its center. The periphery of the Harem to the left had collapsed along with every pillar in the chamber, leaving the ceiling dangerously unsupported. It groaned and crackled as the weight of the stone over it slowly gave way. Scanning the scene, the Emperor saw dozens more of his personal guard slaughtered, burned, and crushed under the falling debris. However, as the Emperor’s eye scrutinized the ruined Harem, he immediately noticed all of his slave women were gone. The unlocked chains spoke to this fact. With a vile curse on Hanna and the Ancient of Days, he stormed out of there heading to the Tower cell of Selina.

On the way to the Tower, the Black Fortress rumbled and shook. He heard repeated detonations deep below him, shaking the corridor so much he staggered. Leaning on the wall and shielding his head from falling debris, the Emperor felt a brief surge of heat with the same shockwave that hit Hanna and her team deep in the dungeons. It blew him down, making him cough on the peculiar fumes blown along with the shockwave. Once it passed, he got up, cursing, “What the fuck was that?” A sour thought entered his dark mind that further enraged him: Hanna had planted bombs in his fortress. The thought drove him to hurry to the Tower to check on his reluctant bride.

It wasn’t long before the Emperor discovered all the Cadre’s tower guards lay slaughtered on the floor. Not one was left alive, including the four wizards he’d personally put in charge of guarding Selina. He rushed to her cell, replaceing the door blown off the hinges. Stepping into the cell, the Emperor instantly saw Ahriaman’s headless, spineless corpse on the floor and Selina gone. Looking closer, he saw a large sword wound in Ahriaman’s right chest and a gaping hole in his left chest with his heart gone. A large bloodstain on the wall and a hole in the wall where Hanna’s sword had pinned him to the wall caught his eye. The wizard’s crushed head and bloody spine lay a few steps from his carcass. Seeing this, he uttered a curse on Nemesis, knowing the cyborg bear’s handiwork. He then saw Selina’s chains cut and hanging from the walls. Examining the cut chains, a puzzled look came over the Emperor’s face of fury. “How in the name of the Dark Lords did they cut these chains?” he growled, seeing smooth cut on the chains. “These chains are unbreakable, forged in the infernal furnaces of the Dark Lords and cursed with their dark power. Only I have the power to cut them like this.” He stewed over the puzzle until he remembered his bout with Hanna in the throne room. His memory zoomed in on Hanna wielding the Caverias Sword. “That fucking mutated she-bitch!” he roared. “She has my enemy’s sword! Shit! Only Thoth’s sword could break through the dark magic on these chains!”

Only then did the Emperor realize the extent of Hanna’s raid. Moreover, the knowledge that Hanna had retrieved Thoth Caverias’ sword from the Acheron gateway enhanced his fury. His wrath boiled over as he rampaged out of the cell with a roar. Bellowing like an enraged beast, he rushed down the corridors toward the dungeons. Hanna’s trail wasn’t hard to follow. She’d left piles of bodies everywhere she and her task force went. He went to check on the sex floor and Hell’s Kitchen, only to replace access to them completely blocked off by a catastrophic cave-in. In that area, he realized the sex floor, Hell’s Kitchen, and the Cadre Labs were the center of the last explosion. When he called out to Josephine, she didn’t answer, further enhancing his now nuclear anger. Returning to his pursuit of Hanna into the dungeon, the Emperor raced along the corridors. Most of what he saw was his people, slain. Occasionally, he would see a few of Hanna’s rebels lying among the slain. But overall, Hanna’s raid proved to be a complete rout of the Emperor’s security forces.

The Emperor followed the bodies into the dungeons until near where Hanna had entered at the lowest level he found one of her rebel fighters dying of sword and projectile trauma to the head and chest. The man named Cecil sat quietly, leaning against the wall as his life ebbed away. His body was a mangled and hacked mess, covered with blood from head to toe. He and a dozen of his friends had held the line against the loyal guards, allowing the rest of their team to escape. He was all that was left.

The Emperor stormed down the passage, and as he approached, Cecil coughed, getting the Emperor’s attention. The Emperor ran up, seeing that the man breathing and that he was one of the rebel invaders. With murder in his eyes, he snatched Cecil by the neck like a rag doll, screaming, “Where’s that fucking mutated she-bitch Beowulf? Where is she?” Cecil hung there limply and didn’t reply as the Emperor smashed him against the wall. The Emperor pummeled him with his fist when he didn’t answer. “Answer me, insect!” the Emperor roared as he pounded Cecil’s face. Cecil coughed out a mouthful of blood and broken teeth into the Emperor’s face, which enraged the Emperor further.

“She’s gone, and you can’t catch her,” Cecil whispered shallowly.

The Emperor wiped the blood out of his eyes and yanked Cecil up nose-to-nose with him, saying with the utmost hatred and venom, “You tell me now, or I’ll rip you to pieces!”

Cecil managed a chuckle as his breath slowed. “Go to hell, demon. You will know where she went soon enough,” Cecil whispered. His eyes suddenly rolled back in his head and he gave up the ghost; his body trembling as his muscles locked up. In a matter of seconds, Cecil hung dead in the Emperor’s hand, leaving the Emperor without any answers. The Emperor screamed in fury, literally ripping the body limb from limb with his bare hands. As he scattered the pieces of Cecil everywhere, a squad of soldiers came down the passage, obviously investigating the commotion they had heard. They stopped as the Emperor scattered the guts and limbs of Cecil all over the passage.

This horrified the soldiers, but fear and loyalty to the Emperor kept them from fleeing. The Emperor turned to them, holding Cecil’s head by the hair. His eyes glowed from the rage. “What are you doing here?” he shrieked demoniacally.

“Sire, we heard a commotion and came to investigate,” the squad leader replied. “We were searching to see if any more rebels were in the area. We managed to drive them into the bowels of the dungeons before the explosion.”

The Emperor looked at the squad leader evilly. “And where were you when all of this happened?” he snarled.

“Your majesty!” the squad leader replied fearfully. “We were in the thick of it defending you and the palace. I personally killed twenty of the turncoats myself. We did everything we could to stop them. When they retreated into the dungeons we thought we had them.”

The Emperor glared at the squad leader, asking venomously, “What do you mean you thought you had them?”

By now, the squad leader stood shaking with fear. “Sire, we pursued them into the dungeons after the explosion,” the squad leader reported, his terror evident, “and then they disappeared without a trace, all of them that we hadn’t killed.”

The Emperor glared at him, roaring, “What do you mean they vanished?”

“Sire! It is just as I said, they are gone without a trace. We found evidence that they were holed up in the lowest level of the dungeon but they left no tracks or evidence as to where they went,” the squad leader reported in stark terror. He dropped to his knees, as did the rest of the squad as the Emperor approached menacingly. “Sire! It is our only desire to serve you,” the squad leader cried out, literally begging for his life as the Emperor hovered over him with the head of Cecil still in his hand.

The Emperor reached down, gripped the man by the neck, and lifted him off the floor, bellowing, “How could you let them escape! Do you have any idea what they did here? They invaded my home, killed my servants, took my bride and slaves, destroyed my pet, and caused Nemesis, Magnus, and the Captain of the Guards to desert with his best men! Again I ask; how could you let them escape?”

The squad leader squirmed in the bloody, iron grip of the Emperor, croaking, “Sire, it isn’t our fault! We did all we could under the circumstances. In a moment, they overran us. We barely managed to drive them into the dungeons.”

The Emperor shook him violently, shrieking, “FOOL! You didn’t drive them into the dungeons. They retreated to the dungeons once they had what they came for! The goddamned explosion was a ruse to buy them time to escape!” He hurled the squad leader against the wall, shattering his spine and the back of his skull, killing him instantly. Turning to the rest of the squad, he singled out one and hissed, “You. You are now in charge. Sweep the palace from dungeon to tower and make sure there are no more rebels in my house. If you replace any, you know what to do. Also, gather what is left of my guards, the Cadre that are still here, and the Rakshasar and bring them to the throne room. My house has been violated. These rebels are going to drown in seas of blood for what they did today. Now go!” The new squad leader bowed and they fled the Emperor’s face with the rest of his squad as the Emperor turned and headed to where the old squad leader had said Hanna had holed up in the dungeons.

It didn’t take the Emperor long to realize that not only had Hanna freed his bride and his slave women, but also every prisoner he locked up in the dungeons. When he got to the chamber where they had set the portal, he saw guards guarding the room. They immediately let him by with a bow as he went in. He looked very closely at everything. The first thing he noticed was the footprints seemed to stop a certain spot near the wall, beyond which there was no tracks at all. He growled as he looked for clues. Suddenly, he noticed that the ground where the portal had stood was fused. The sand and dirt on the floor lay fused into glass. A thought came to his head. The Black Prince whispered venomously in his ear, “The bastard has access to the machines somewhere.” The Emperor’s face wrinkled with anger as he stormed away.