A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor

Chapter 335: The Birth of a Leader - Part 11

Like a glass bowl heated and then suddenly thrown into a lake of ice, she shattered. She'd been thrown into what should have been the worst moment in any a villager's life – a Yarmdon raid. She'd been prepared to die there, they all had been. Such was the life of a villager.

They'd grown up with such a possibility permanently in the depths of their minds, When the moment finally came, they were only too quick to make their peace with it.

And yet, they hadn't made their peace. They'd done the impossible that no villager would even dare to dream of. They'd manage to fight back. They'd fought, they'd survived, and they'd won.

They'd tasted such a victory, after such odds, they'd achieved impossible feats that even trained soldiers couldn't manage… And now, after ascending the tallest staircase offered to one in their position, she'd been brought down straight towards the depths of hell.

The strange thing wasn't that she'd broken. The strange thing was that the others had yet to. Many of them still had yet to sever their battle readiness. Even as morale came crashing down, many of them did not teeter towards despair, because they shared such a burden with their fellow men, and with their leader, who even now, held them all together.

This woman could not. The knife flashed, and it was the woman closest to her that she attacked.

Two screams rang out. The scream of a woman losing her mind, and the scream of a woman losing her life.

A thoroughly horrific affair. To survive all that they had, only to be killed by the hand of an ally.

The mage cackled, and he sang that word out again, as though it was a song. "Despairrrrrrr," he said. "Oh, the sweetness of despair. To give it all for power. To surrender all that one has. To offer up a black rose towards his majesty, and to be given the power to topple kingdoms in return.

Suchhhhhhhhhhh sweetness. Succcccccch joy. Such such such… Ah. I can barely contain it. How will they react when they finally see it?"

His voice went high and childish towards the end, squeaking with a horrid excitement. Beam could guess what he was excited for. Two Half-Titans had climbed up in all four locations, but there was still a mass of blackness, larger than even they were, that had not yet formed into anything yet.

Judging from the size of it, it was impossible for it to be anything else… But still, Beam found himself hoping that he was mistaken, that there would be some sort of overreach, and it would collapse before it could truly come into fruition.

But the Gods did not hear his thoughts, it seemed. It reached out, with the claws of a Gorebeast, only three times its size. With those, it dragged itself out of the hole, slow and languid, as though lazy. Even with its limbs formed like that, the flesh on its back still rippled, as it changed, and many spikes arose.

On its chest, there was the shell of A Konbreaker, only this shell was the size of a mansion's gate, fitting for a beast of its size.

When it finally drew itself properly upright, it dwarfed the Hobgoblin so completely as to be ridiculous. It was at least double the size of the two Half-Titans beneath it, and they too were at least double the size of the Hobgoblins.

Beam wasn't quite sure, but he thought that each of the monsters in front of him were larger than those he had seen in the past. There was a strength to their souls as well, a hardness that would not be easily dismissed.

When the Titan opened its mouth to give a roar – and all the other Titans did so at the same time – more hearts began to shatter, three this time, plunging themselves into despair, as they were hit with a roar that felt more like a seismic wave, shaking them off their feet.

"So that's a Titan…" Judas said grimly. Even in his darkest moment, he couldn't help his character. He couldn't help those snide little comments – they were one of the few things that allowed him to keep his grasp on his sanity, whilst others were already breaking.

It seemed as though Judas had chosen his timing perfectly, for the mage did not notice. He was still gleefully observing the breaking of a handful more souls.

"One… Two… Three… Ohhh, five!" He counted them gleefully. A man this time… four of them, followed by another woman. Within the span of a moment, they went from civilized people, to demons.

They'd been ordered in place, but the villagers couldn't hold it anymore. Another man was pushed to the floor by one of Ingolsol's cursed, and he was savaged. He was stabbed again and again and again, until the strikes passed thirty, and the whole world lost count, for the whole world turned away.

"More!" The mage shouted. "Dice him up, these ingrates!"

But the mage was still shouting, as though he was drawing the deepest pleasure from every villager that slew another. His monsters hung hauntingly by his side, along with his robed figures, on every corner of their village.

The fissures spat out the last of their power. With them, there came another fifty Horned-Goblins, with bows and spears along with them. Seeing them, Beam felt his heart sink. One army would be one thing… But four? And then there was still the mage, with his unknown abilities, able to make men explode without even touching them.

The villagers moved, those that still had not given quite into despair, who still had the slightest flickerings of light left over from their victory.

"They've fallen to The Madness!" One man called. "We're going to have to finish them!"

And he was not a maverick for saying so. The Madness was known to be incurable. Though, it was worse than that. For every moment The Madness inflicted villagers breathed life, they grew more and more dangerous, more and more powerful, until it would take a whole group of people to take them down.