I'm the Firebender for the Red Sand Rabaroos and my prompts are the Suit of Diamonds which features someone rich living without their riches, Azulon as a character, playing cards as an object and the restriction of no words starting with 'm'. Word count: 1,456
The prisoner of Cipol
The thing about legends is that all have some truth in it, but some are so fantastic that people wonder what could be true and what could be a blatant lie; but by Agni as witness what I tell you is a truth I saw with these two eyes that are weary of this world and could soon be closed for the eternal sleep that comes to us all.
Once upon a time, there was a great Lord in the nation whose emblem is the very fire that kindles the hearts of people. This Lord went by the name of Azulon and had everything those of us who call ourselves civilized people could cherish: The love of his people and his beautiful wife, unimaginable quantities of cherished precious objects that are used as currency, a prosperous dominion that knew nothing but splendor and what would be his ultimate downfall: Two sons, the oldest one wise but concerned with the ethereal beauties of this world and not with the throne that was his by right and the youngest one; a hideous cur who wanted the throne to satisfy his perverse desires and would still be unsatisfied; for he had a hole in his heart no possession, power or knowledge could fill, and in his infinite greed dreamt of expanding his dominions over the entire world.
Sensing his youngest son wickedness, Lord Azulon had him sent on an impossible quest to capture a spirit from the legends of creation, hoping that his youngest would find wisdom and the joy of traveling and encountering new people enough to satiate his everlasting hunger.
But instead his youngest son, so wicked I dare not even speak his name, did not searched for the spirit even a single day. Instead he arrived and using his most villainous trait left the soldiers that were told to accompany him by saying such a task would require years of spiritual cleansing and a simple existence that would be easier to achieve if he was left to his own.
Convinced by the villainous prince and his smooth talking, the soldiers returned to their wives and homes and the words deceived even his own father; who thought the task would work its intended purpose on his flesh and blood.
But all of them had been deceived, for the prince had brought in his traveling case not clothes or books but enough gems and coins to live a life of a king and leave a vast inheritance to his offspring; yet this was not the purpose he had brought them for.
In all his atrocious want for power which knew no boundaries, he hired an army of those soldiers who hear only the call of the coins in their pocket, which they allowed to be graciously filled by the traitorous prince, who gave them one simple command: They were to discreetly but with great thought raise havoc in the allied realm of his father, destroying and looting as they went forth with their orders.
This was planned to the ultimate detail so that eventually his father would have to send help to the ailing friend in the form of soldiers led by his brother, whom the villain prince would have killed gladly and without hesitation had it not been that when the time came, after the army of scoundrels had run amuck the realm and spilled a river of blood on the once gracious land, his brother's son had led the peace-restoring force; his father recently lost the love of his life to the unfathomable will of Agni.
Wrathful, the hideous prince poisoned his own flesh and blood disguised as a local vendor that grateful for the promise of peace in the land had given the soldiers of the nation of fire a wine barrel to each, his finest to the leader; keeping to himself that all the barrels had been laced with a poison that would put the soldiers to sleep and in their sleep they would remain trapped for all of the remaining days of eternity.
When news of this reached the palace, the oldest son of Lord Azulon hung himself in grief as he had lost all he held close in this world; horrifying Azulon, for he had now to rely on his youngest son to take the responsability of being the heir to the crown.
Azulon held hopes that even as little time as the two years since his youngest left for exile had changed his offspring's ways for the better; only to be horrified at the events that took place the moment his youngest stepped into the palace.
Working with the passion that burns inside the greedy and hateful, the prince quickly convinced even all of his father's councilors with his viper tongue that the ways of his father were guiding the country to its ruin and that only he knew the way that would insure the future prosperity of the nation.
In this belief the councilors brought the generals and the commoners together under the vile of banner that is the one of self-righteousness, they brought the country to a havoc so great that when the prince raided the palace and removed his father from the throne, people cheered in the streets that such a vile figure had been brought down.
Lord Azulon was sent to the darkest prison in the realm, the one that bears the name of Cipol and that is said to be reserved for the scum of this world, such as your humble servant who had raped and slain 40 women over the course of only five years.
In Cipol the sun does not shine and the nightingale cannot be heard in spring, for it's all dark corridors and cold that slowly but surely brings the strongly willed to lunacy and death by their own hand.
All the once proud Lord Azulon had with him was a deck of playing cards that he used to play with yours truly in such a vast variety of ways that I do not remember playing the same game with him twice in all the time we had to share our dimly lit chamber.
This went by for a long time until one day he started laughing without reason, so whole-heartedly I was starting to plot how to kill him in a painless manner, fearing he had at last broken to his unending streak of tragedy.
I was about to carry the plan when he raised his hand in a way that signaled a halt and I was suddenly anchored to the ground.
"I have not lost the grasp of this world as you so fear" Lord Azulon said in a commanding voice as he lowered his hand and started playing with his cards, shuffling them in his hands "In fact, I have finally perfected an escape from this wretched place"
At hearing this, the resolve in me had been given new life as even the smallest of children knew Cipol was inescapable, something Lord Azulon quickly remarked himself.
"All these years I thought this place was inescapable" he said grinning "when all it is needed to leave it behind was this deck I hold."
Before I could even comprehend what I had been told the cards took life of their own and floated, I too dumbstruck to say a word, and in their own life they formed a window from which a fire was noticeable from the other side. A fire that after years of thought I've come to realize in this state of old age that were Agni's servants being invoked, for I once had heard Lord Azulon was wise in the sacred arts of controlling the element where Agni resides in this world.
"Now, come and grant justice" was all the former Lord of our nation said before the fire reached out of the card-fashioned window and engulfed him in a blinding stream of light, consuming him in an instant along with the cards that had allowed it to be in existence for such a brief time.
Consumed by fear and disbelief I had it as a trick the solitude of the imprisonment until one day I was pardoned a new Lord, the wicked prince's son, who had suffered his whole life under the yoke of such a despicable figure until one day a fiery vision of his grandfather started him on path that would led him to bring justice to the nation and removed that horrid prince from power, finding out through visions in the flame of what had actually happened and deciding that if I had been worthy to see such a feat, I was worthy to be let out prison for the remainder of my life.