Return of the Titans

PART TWO: PLANS

A/N: This part will be in Third Person POV, and not Frankie's narrative. This will be the only chapter like this. Enjoy!

*****

The fire was impossible to tame.

And that was why Father loved it. He enjoyed watching the flames lick his fingers and dance between his knuckle hairs. Nothing made a smile easily come to his lips than feel their feeble heat try to melt away his flesh. It already was colored like the ash of his hearth.

The aging man raised himself from by the fire's side. Stray flames desperately reached out to stroke his tender skin but he killed them by squashing them flat. With their smoke rising to fill his nostrils, he turned to his guest.

The other man (if he could call him that) wasn't the patient kind. The tips of his claws dug into the leather upholstery and his muzzle was wrinkled in a disgusted scowl. If Father didn't know any better, Lion could have easily passed for the mate of the stuffed lioness in the corner of the study.

"Tell it to me again," Father ordered. His fingers wove between their individual gaps and he folded them beneath his chin. "Starting from the beginning."

Lion's left eye might have been empty, but its brow still furrowed in anger. His right eye blazed twice as hot in exchange for the missing orb. "The Gigante tricked us, my lord. I saw it with my own two eyes."

"Don't you mean eye, Lion?"

"How I say it means nothing," the Giant hissed at Father's try for a joke. "I told you that I suspected a few Giants to be on the mortals' side, and this further proves it. But before I could arrest him and bring him before you, my lord, he used one of his kinds' tricks." A claw trailed the fresh scar that started and ended over his vacant eye socket. His jaw gripped in rising fury. "He used my weapon against me, and he took my eye!"

"The Giants have gone senile, Lion. They're not stupid." Father glanced away, momentarily gazing into the fire. "However, this is new information to me. I could have sworn that they left these lands years ago. Why have they come back?"

"Perhaps they sense your presence, my lord," Lion suggested as his temper gradually dialed down from lack of exertion. "They are your blood."

"Yes..." Father trailed off as he stared deeply into the hearth, same as his thoughts.

The leaping flames reminded him all too much of a memory that he tried for years to suppress, and many a days, failing miserably. And for a brief moment, fragments of the thought resurfaced. Boiling hot blood raining from the sky. Blackened pits opening wide as the stars fell from the heavens. Terror-stricken screams filling the air that was laced with smoke and burning flesh. The vision only came to an abrupt end when Lion poked the flames with a nearby poker, its embers flying out from the firepit.

"Can't have this dying on us, eh, my lord?" he said.

Father blinked, as if awakening out of a deep sleep. His eyes ached like he had been staring for far too long, and he rubbed them until its dryness was no more. Once they were back to normal, he turned to his captain.

"Lion," he said, "do you remember The Great Usurping?"

Lion set down the poker as he returned to his seat. "Of course, my lord. My brothers and I were among the first on your side."

"If I remember correctly, Lion, I was alone as my sons forced me from my throne."

The animal's eye lowered itself partially. "Yes, well... We made sure that your treacherous children couldn't force us out. We stayed, unlike them. The rest of them ran away."