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In the ghastly, vermillion cast of dusk, a young group of witches dance around a campfire. Hooting and hollering like wild beasts, they link arms and down liquor, their laughter rising into the evening air like toxic smoke.
It's the night of the solstice, and Belos has learnt that it's customary for the denizens of this region to host their celebrations just outside of their sacred land: a dense forest, within which lies the Titan's Sanctuary - a clearing where the heart of the Titan is believed to beat, still. Local legend tells that on nights like this, when joy and revelry fill the sky, one can feel his heartbeats quake the ground.
By ancient tradition, both the forest and the Sanctuary are revered, hallowed ground - a devil's imitation of a churchyard. Access is prohibited, with none permitted to step foot beyond the borders of the trees. Still, Belos intends to put their legends to the test: if the heart of the Titan himself truly does reside within the forbidden forest, he must seek it out. The Titan's blood had proven a folly, and the Sanctuary is the last place the witch-hunter can think of where he might find the answers he needs.
Concealed in a dark cloak, Belos sneaks by the drunken crowds, his hood pulled low over his face. Those dreadful little beasts - the palismen - are starting to fight back in the way of muscle spasms and a transient yet debilitating pain, one that ravages his very bones til he's screaming in agony. But to Belos, the pain is trivial, negligible next to the ugly green scar that now lacerates his face, the seeping rot of this place winding its roots deeper into his very soul. Belos has given up his name, his face, his very identity for the sake of his holy mission - now he has to ensure there's nothing left to stand in his way.
As he ducks into the shadows of the trees, Belos' fingers trace over the curves of his ears. Sometimes, it feels like they're all he has left.
Allowed to grow untamed and undisciplined, the terrain beyond the trees is overgrown, twisting, and Belos takes careful steps, using the light of his staff to guide him once he's far enough from the revelry that it won't be spotted. Sparse enough are the trees that he's vaguely able to use the stars to navigate, a crude imitation of the skill his mother had taught him; and so he wanders deeper into the bowels of the forest, in search of the Titan's Sanctuary.
All the while, the forest around him becomes darker, denser, the trees packing together to blot out the stars. Even with the light from his staff, Belos nearly walks right into a wall of bracken; and then realises there is no way around it. This must be the place - though he'd hardly call it a Sanctuary. The maze of brambles and thorns is ugly as sin, just like everything else on The Boiling Isles; even the small orange flowers, almost phospherescent with their soft petals, seem garish in the dark. He reaches out to pluck one.
"Argh!" Pain bursts through his hand, stinging and unwelcoming. He's starting to get the distinct feeling that Sanctuary doesn't want him there.
But Belos is getting tired of being told where he cannot go.
Swinging his staff in a wide arc, he channels all his anger, all his hatred for Him and for Her and for every witch on these blasted Isles onto the bracken - and watches it blast apart. Shredded leaves and wilted petals drift down around him through the haze of the crimson smoke left by his magic, still crackling in the air. And when the scene clears, Belos has to catch his breath.
The clearing truly is beautiful, he thinks for a moment. Spindling trees not dissimilar to willows bow as if in deference to the little lake, leaves in faded hues of yellow and amber spiralling down to kiss its waters. Belos can't tell, exactly, where the glow of lavender light is emanating from: it seems to be everything, everywhere, nature alive as if the Titan's beating heart suffuses beauty to its very surroundings.
No, no; this pretty scene is more like a mirage in a desert, a temptation for his eyes - one that'll have him suffocating on sand, if he's not careful.
Perhaps this is the Isles' way of begging for one last chance, Belos thinks, smiling. He rather likes that thought.
Still, he's not here to daydream. He has a job to do.
He sets about searching the Sanctuary, staff in hand. The serenity of the quiet trees, the placid lake, threatens to lure him into a false sense of security. Knowing the truth of this infernal realm, he's sure something unsightly with far too many teeth is lurking in the shrubs, just waiting to catch him unawares. A few times, he thinks he hears rustling in the branches, or the tittering of birds above - but there's nothing there when he beams the light from his staff, as if nature itself is holding its breath.
Finally, he hears it over the silence of the clearing; a steady drumbeat, one-two, one-two, coming from the east. From what his ears can tell, it can't be far away at all, though he'll have to walk round the edge of the lake.
Odd. In the quiet, steady air, he should've heard it much sooner.
Trepidation dogging his steps, Belos walks to the edge of the lake, following the waterline around from a safe distance. The heat coming off the boiling water is another reminder that, despite any beauty the Sanctuary might mask itself with, he is indeed still in Hell. God, what he'd give to feel the rain on his skin, the tickle of the tide on his bare ankles.
Soon, he tells himself. The same word he's been parroting in his mind over and over for centuries, now. Soon. However long it takes, however many palismen he has to consume, Belos - Philip - will return home.
He refuses to die here.
The rhythmic one-two, one-two is growing louder the further he walks along the lake, and he knows he must be drawing close. And then he spies it - just beyond the bounds of the treeline, a cave arches high into the treetops. Suspended just within the mouth - though God knows how - he sees it: a huge, beating heart.
"Philip."
The sudden rumble shakes the very skeleton of the Isles itself, has Belos lurching and planting his staff in the ground for something to cling onto as it comes again, an earthquake that seems specifically designated to throw him into the lake. He drops low for stability, fingers twisting in the red grass and praying to God that a tree doesn't fall on him.
"Philip."
No - the voice is coming from the lake itself, and he can see some great, dark mass taking shape in the still water. The earth has stilled, so he stands - he's not going to do himself the indignity of crawling.
The thing in the water is huge, and looks almost furry but for where his head becomes a skull, a single yellow eye staring at Belos from one socket and a worm-like creature twisting from the other. God, but he resembles the skeleton on which the Isles have formed - and yet he inspires no awe or fear in Belos. For Heaven's sake, he's wearing a nightgown.
Belos slashes at the surface of the water with his staff, sending ripples distorting the creature's visage. And yet it remains, staring at him unerringly.
"Name yourself," Belos commands, drawing up to his full height and glaring down at the creature rendered in the water. "You're the Titan, yes?"
"Yes. And you're Philip Wittebane. The human."
Human. The Titan's voice carries none of the disrespect that the witches and demons have sneered at him over the years, and yet, he's the one they ritualise, the one they curse by, swear to.
Belos' lip curls. This false god is not worthy of his respect.
"Such a feeble, impotent god, to be confined to the bounds of a lake," Belos smirks. It's laughable, really, how they worship this thing; his decaying wings, his missing eye. Even as they dance like ghouls upon his carcass, some part of the Titan is still trapped here, watching silently through an unpassable window. How pathetic.
"I'm not a god, Philip. I certainly never wanted to be seen as one," the Titan sighs, shaking his head. "No matter how the Children of the Isles celebrate me."
"I must confess, I am curious," Belos asks, "what stops you speaking to those… Children of the Isles? You're clearly able to communicate with me."
"I've been gone a long time, Philip. Even my magic can weaken. I can watch over my children, but this lake, by my heart, is the last window I can speak through."
And thanks to the locals' foolish beliefs, their ridiculous notions of sacred land, that window now belongs to Belos.
"I've been watching you," the Titan continues, his voice hard. "I've been watching you for decades, Philip Wittebane. You murder witches and demons, devour their palismen, you manipulate the mind of a misguided child-"
"The child you trapped in a tablet?" Belos asks innocently, pulling The Collector's slab from the fortified inner pocket of his cloak. It's a heavy, unwieldy thing, but Belos carries it with him more often than not, for lack of a truly safe place to store it. "For you to punish an innocent so severely, locking him in that awful place - perhaps you're right. You're no god at all."
Each syllable seems to spear the Titan like a knife, a pained expression growing on his face in sync with the smile stretching across Belos'. Stricken by a sudden urgency, The Titan seems to lean forward, his face growing larger in the lakewater.
"Let me speak to him," the Titan implores. "Collector - Philip, please, I must-"
"I'm afraid he's resting, and I do so hate to wake him," Belos keeps his voice soft as he tucks The Collector's tablet back inside his cloak. The last thing he needs is the two of them talking to each other. "You know what children are like."
"Give up on your revenge!" The Titan implores, and Belos nearly laughs. For a deity to beg a human - how low, how deplorable this realm is. "You don't have to be unhappy here."
Anger strikes Belos' heart, and as if on cue his arms begin to hurt, as if the bones in them are stretching, trying their damnedest to reform beneath his very flesh. The witch-hunter grips his staff hard, channelling his pain into the tips of his fingers. He cannot appear weak - not now.
"I shouldn't be here at all," Belos snarls, his staff whirring mechanically and lighting up red in response to his iron-grip. "Caleb was bewitched by one of your so-called children, enticed through a portal that closed behind us, and now his corpse rots beneath your soils. He belongs with me. My brother belongs at home."
"I fear your hate will devour you, Philip," the Titan's voice is soft, and full of hateable, unbearable pity. "If it hasn't already."
Unfettered pain roars along Belos' nervous system, the thunder of a storm directly over his head warning of imminent escape.
And so he casts it with all his agony, all his fury, sending bolts of scarlet lightning out in an array over the lake, radiant arrows of heavenly fire. When the smoke clears, the Titan is gone.
Belos slumps down against a tree trunk, drained. Without the aid of a palisman, the pain leaves his body through his locked-up fingertips, and they slowly come back to life as he picks at the orange grass beneath his hand. Somewhere to the south, Belos thinks, grass just like this is feeding on Caleb's body. The Boiling Isles seem to take pleasure in corrupting human life, then consuming it like vultures.
Belos' fist clenches, and then the patch of grass is swallowed in a red blaze, leaving nothing but scorched, cracked-open dirt.
Meanwhile, his mind turns like the cogs in his staff. If the Titan truly can speak to nobody outside of this Sanctuary, then Belos must do what he can to ensure that the Titan never speaks to anyone else ever again. Even if it means becoming the Titan's prophet. Even if it means immersing himself in the rot to cleanse it, and razing this wretched land from within. Cupping the soft, curved shells of his ears, Belos can't quite bring himself to cry.
He knows what he must do now.