"Raziel?" Soleia echoed, furrowing her eyebrows in confusion. "I don’t understand. I thought these people were under the employ of the King―"
"They are mainly prisoners of war," Rafael explained. He pursed his lips, swallowing before he continued. "Whoever’s left alive is brought back here after each battle."
"How?" Soleia asked, her eyes wide with incredulity. Her lips gaped open and closed a couple of tis before she finally squeezed out her next words. "Most magic practitioners are nobility, at the very least. How is it that there are so many here?"
There had to be at least fifty people cramd into five small cells. Even the dungeons in Vramid where Orion and his n were kept before their sentence were much better than this, and that was a low bar to et.
What about the kingdoms they hailed from? Did their kings and queens not care? Did their families even know they were still alive? Or was King Recaldo so confident that he could keep them hidden that he didn’t care about the possibility of causing an even bigger war?
"Nobility will not be sent to fight in the front lines," Rafael replied bitterly, his smile not reaching his eyes. "Those who are strapped in and sent out to the battlefields are typically illegitimate sons and daughters, people with no political power despite their noble ancestors."
A shiver ran down Soleia’s spine as more and more wails filled the air. It seed more like a chorus of ghouls than the cries of the living.
She looked at Rafael, and for the first ti since she had found out about his true identity, she felt a wave of pity for him. He had spoken it so... personally. She supposed it was because he, too, was in the sa position― an illegitimate son who was only given the power to rule simply because he had proved his worth in battle.
Or in this case, serving his father’s purposes.
"Other than war prisoners, a good number of them are orphans or children born into poverty," Rafael explained. "Plucked off the streets, or a sum of money is given to their parents in exchange for their magical children."
"What does Prince Raziel have to do with this?" Soleia asked, a little scared of the answer Rafael might give. She watched as he laughed coldly, his expression quickly darkening.
"Raziel... is no good man," Rafael said. He slowly turned to look at Soleia. "You may think he is the better brother, between him and Ricard, or even , but just because his control of blood is limited to healing, doesn’t an he cannot use that in an offensive way."
Rafael offered Soleia a hand, and when she took it, he carefully led her further into the dungeon. They walked past several cells. So of them were empty, while so were filled with people who weren’t moving. Soleia wasn’t sure if they were simply resting, ignoring them, or dead.
"How have they not escaped?" she asked, looking at the cells she passed, fear crawling under her skin the further they walked.
What good were god-like powers that could command the forces of nature? In the end, these people were still trapped like rats in cages, left in the dungeons to rot― if they were lucky.
"They have tried," Rafael said. "But without crystals, they are no better than ordinary n and won. What more can they do other than wait for judgnt day?" He continued, "They were brought in after being weakened with sedatives. Sotis, the more aggressive ones are constantly given new dosages to keep them tad. Raziel’s thods... can be cruel."
"And this is his playground?" Soleia hesitantly asked. Rafael rely nodded.
In Soleia’s mind, Prince Raziel was always the scholarly, polite, and quiet half of the pair. He was much nicer to be around when compared to Prince Ricard, and she had spent separate monts with him alone. Those two tis, she never felt the sa sense of danger around Raziel as she did around Ricard.
Now, she understood why.
Prince Raziel was rely a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
"It seems like Raziel isn’t here today," Rafael said. "But when he is, you mustn’t co down here alone, you hear ?" he warned. Then, he shook his head. "Scratch that. You cannot co down here by yourself, no matter whether or not Raziel is present."
"What has he done specifically to make you so wary of him?" Soleia asked, furrowing her eyebrows.
"See for yourself," Rafael said.
He stepped aside and allowed Soleia to advance without a blocked view. When her eyes fell on the blood-stained stone and the dismbered body parts that were kept in glass jars, she felt her stomach turn. She hadn’t even the ti to collect herself before she braced the wall, and out went the food she had eaten earlier.
Bodies — living, dead, and dismbered — littered the area. There were jars and tubes of all sorts of colors, and a small, locked cabinet was placed at the far corner, away from the cells. All sorts of crystals were neatly arranged in there, kept away from the prisoners.
The light from their torch caused several prisoners to hiss, almost as though they were vampires who couldn’t face the sun. If they could crawl, they would pull their bodies away into the corner of their tiny prison. If not, they curled in on themselves, shielding their faces from the light.
"Soleia!" Rafael exclaid, coming over to support her as she continued to hurl the contents of her stomach.
"W-What is all of this?" Soleia muttered, her eyes wide with horror. She took the handkerchief that Rafael held out for her, dabbing her lips as she surveyed the room. For so strange, morbid reason, she couldn’t seem to look away.
"Raziel has a high position in court, along with Ricard, not because of his magic," Rafael explained. "It is because of his knowledge of it. "He has been studying magic in the human body for years. That’s why Ricard cannot kill him like he did the rest of our brothers."
"And here I thought it was because Prince Ricard actually liked Prince Raziel," Soleia comnted softly.
She stiffened when a voice replied to her.
"Human affection is unreliable."
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