[The Godslayer's Hell] 2 – Imprisoned

As he lay bleeding on the ground, a black handprint that was attached to both his Heart and Soul began to glow in an ominous dark hue, flashing with every beat of his slowly dying heart.

His power and strength drained from him with each beat of his heart as the Golden Ichor that made his Divine Blood seeped out from his wounds.

With each passing moment, he became less and less till he looked like a mummified corpse, and his strength was less than even that of a mortal.

As his vision darkened, his breath stalled, and his mind shut down, his body slowly faded away from reality as the realm collapsed and the Curse took hold and forced him back to life.

His heart continued to beat, and his soul stayed attached to his body as his mummified corpse slowly appeared somewhere...𝘦𝘭𝘴𝘦 and 𝘮𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘥.

As his crusted eyelids slowly opened, Kratos wondered if he was in the Underworld as he found his eyes slowly gliding along the dungeon cell he found himself in.

Trying to get up proved fruitless as Kratos found his body to be so weak that it was comparable to a young child.

It was the weakest Kratos has ever found himself, even remembering himself to be quite strong ever since he was but a child.

Using all his strength, he dragged himself to a wall and sat against it.

Strangely, he found himself no longer able to breathe or smell, and even his sense of touch and hearing were so muted that it was barely noticeable.

He was a husk of his former self, and though he felt he didn't deserve to continue existing and even hoped he would cease to be after his death, he was forced to sit there and think.

Think over the consequences of his actions, over the countless lives that were ended due to them.

How he was blinded by his rage and refused to listen to anything he was told that he felt wasn't necessary.

He indeed became the monster everyone saw him...

---

For days, he sat alone in that cell, only being able to remember all of his deeds, the lives he took and saved, and his past.

Only then did he finally try to get up, struggling even to stand and falling multiple times...

It was a struggle even to move, but Kratos was nothing but determined, and after enough effort, he was finally able to stand.

He limped to the edge of his cell and looked between the bars that made his cell's door.

He futilely tried to open the door, but it didn't budge, his strength far too weak to move it.

Cumbling back onto the floor, he crawled and rested against the nearby wall.

For what felt like an eternity, he sat in that cell, alone with nothing but his thoughts and memories.

His soul was drained, his body only surviving due to the few embers that were left of his soul.

The divinities he stole from the Olympic Gods were locked entirely away as he was too weak to use them, as were their divine weapons.

He was too weak to do anything.

So, he thought, and he dreamt of his family, the consequences of his actions, and the horrifying deeds that caused so much death and destruction.

After what felt like eons passed, and he only grew weaker and weaker, he was surprised to hear with his muted senses something above swing open.

Craning his head to look up, he saw what looked to be some man in strange armor, one that briefly glanced at him before kicking a husk of a corpse down the hole into his cell.

The corpse slammed into the ground with a squelch, its head and body becoming disfigured as its disgusting blood began to coat the ground.

But that's not what caught Kratos's attention. It was the strange floating fire above the corpse.

A flame that Kratos, for some reason, recognized to be a Soul.

Crawling towards the soul, he reached out and absorbed the soul.

To his immense surprise, he felt a tiny increase in his soul, and a key fell out of the soul.

Reaching out for the key, he grabbed it and looked up to the hatch on the closed roof, then the cell door.

With great effort, he climbed to his feet and limped to the cell door, and with great ease, slid the key into the door and turned, hearing an audible 'click.'

With all his strength, he pushed open the door, falling to the ground when he managed to open it far enough to slip through.

Getting back on his feet, Kratos limped out of the cell and began to walk down a long corridor that was lined with many more cells like the one he was trapped in.

If he could breathe, he'd be panting from how hard he was struggling to move his body as each step took a tremendous amount of effort due to his frail and weak body.

That's when he noticed a creature, a husk of a corpse, limping down the hall mindlessly.

When the creature caught sight of Kratos, it let out an awful shriek and charged at Kratos languidly.

Eyeing his surroundings, Kratos bent over and grabbed a rock, and when the shambling corpse got close enough, he swung down the rock onto the corpse's head with all of his might, sending them both to the ground.

Luckily, all it took was one hit. Unluckily, he heard another shriek and, looking up from the ground, revealed another shambling corpse making its way to him.

This one went down just as quickly as the first, and just like the corpse dropped into his cell, these two creatures also seemed to leave behind a 'soul' that Kratos's body readily absorbed, giving him a tiny amount of strength back.

The amount he got from the creature's soul was so small that it was hardly noticeable and would have been unseen by most due to how negligible of an increase it was.

Continuing down the corridor, he was surprised to see some giant fat monster stalking in a chamber below.

This creature was so large it put even Hercules to shame, and its appearance so hideous that few monsters could ever hope to compare.

Heading up some stairs, Kratos soon found himself climbing up a ladder that led to a small courtyard with a coiled sword impaled into the ground.

Feeling strangely drawn to the sword, he reached out, and to his surprise, the sword burst into flames, becoming a strangely comfortable bonfire.

It was warm, but not hot. It was comfortable, like a warm blanket in a cold winter. It was hard to describe just how comforting the bonfire was.

If he didn't know better, he would have wondered if the bonfire was a representation of Hestia's Hearth, but Hestia was long dead.

Taking a moment to rest in the warm embrace of the bonfire, he eventually stepped away, having noticed something sticking out of the ground nearby.

A broken blade.

Reaching down, he grabbed it before examining the broken blade.

It was nearly useless, but it would be better than the rock he was using.

Now armed with a broken sword, he regretfully walked past the bonfire and up some stairs, now standing before a pair of large and heavy closed doors.

Putting down the sword, he put both of his hands against the door and began to push...and push, yet the doors did not budge.

The door only started to budge when Kratos every ounce of his strength into pushing just one of the doors open.

With a brief moment to relax, Kratos couldn't help but frown when he realized that he was not standing in the very room he saw the giant ugly monster wandering around just minutes ago.

'Thump....Thump...'

And it seemed that the monster was approaching.