A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor

Chapter 337: The Birth of a Leader - Part 13

He saw the axe that came for her back. He tried to cry out for his fellow man to stop, but with a dull thud, the heavy blade crashed into her.

She looked over her shoulder, twisting her neck at an inhuman angle, with inhuman noises coming out of her mouth, more similar to the hiss of a snake than the cry of a woman.

Dark black blood well up from her mouth, but she didn't fall yet. She turned to the man that had wounded her, and attempted a swipe. But by now, another woman had come from the side, a still-sane woman, unafflicted by Ingolsol's curse, wearing a look of pity on her face. She stabbed the Cursed woman in the stomach, slowing her once more, but not quite yet killing her.

"No…" Her husband had collapsed to the floor a short distance away, his own heart flickering towards the realm of despair and hopelessness. It was a crushing attack. Seeing it as he could, Beam soon realized that despair was a disease.

When wielded by Ingolsol, and by this mage, it could be described as no other such thing. A terrible, fast-acting virus, as one man became Cursed after another, forcing his friends and loved ones to kill him, only to afflict them with the same despair, as they were forced to do the unimaginable.

"DO NOT YIELD TO IT!" Beam shouted. It was an order. They'd subordinated themselves to him, and given him the authority to give such an order. An order without explanation, for there could be no explanation.

What good reason could there be to hold on, surrounded as they were, in the most pitiful of circumstances? What other cause could he demand that they fight for?

There was one cause – his cause. That was what he demanded. He took a slash at the chaos of the situation by reinforcing the familiar, the known, those bonds that had managed to lift them up over the impossible. Nothing had changed, they still had their leader, and they still had his commands that they needed to listen to.

Like a startled child, caught in a mischievous act, the man hurried back to his feet nervously. He was forced to watch as his wife died before his eyes, murdered by his own villagers. But he was able to hold it together despite that – for it was no murder, and it was no longer his wife. A strange emotion hit him – guilt.

He felt an instinctive guilt and embarrassment for even daring to despair. They were one body now, one unity. To leave before the others was to commit cowardice, to forget their cause. As the slightest flickerings of light managed to worm its way back into his heart, empowered by Beam's leadership, his mind struggled to fill the gap, to give rise to an explanation for the emotion that he felt.

His mind, his body, and his actions, they were all half disconnected. He was rising to his feet now, steady, and sure-footed. A wolf ready to hunt. But his eyes were looking at his wife's body, the sharpness of her eyes, the gauntness of her face, and the blood spilt all over her dress.

His mind acknowledged it as horrific. His heart wept it as a tragedy. His memories swam back to the joy that they had shared together, the children that they had raised together – and there his mind finally found its meaning.

A dull ache in his heart, supplanted by an almost irrational fire, as though he was intoxicated by something foreign. Beam's will infected him, just as Ingolsol's tried to. He was a man caught between two opposing forces, vying for his will. One force he trusted, and the other he didn't, so he rejected it.

With that, for the moment, he was able to hold himself together. His conscious mind was able to stitch together a patchwork quilt, something weak and fragile to close the gap between his present moment and the future, to give him a reason to live, to reignite those survival instincts that had kept him alive until now.

In the same way that adrenaline was capable of temporarily ignoring the physical pain of the present, the fervour of the moment, the fervour of the masses, the fervour of Beam's leadership – it granted him the temporary balm he needed in order to keep moving, despite having been placed onto the fields of hell.

Where he arose, so too did the others.

Another one of Ingolsol's Cursed was slain. Beam could hear the Dark God complaining.

"Unfortunate… How unfortunate," he said. Beam could practically hear his head shaking as he lamented his situation.

He was not the only one. By the time the last of the Cursed had been slain, and the villagers reorganized themselves as a pack, standing next to each other, with firm and unwavering hearts, unified as they had been just a short while ago, there was quite a malice developing in the air.

The air was cold already – cold enough for the few inches of snow that sat upon the ground – but now it dropped to a considerably colder temperature, as the mage's power leaked out of him, and his anger froze the air.

"WORRRRRRRRRRRRRMS!" He hollowed in outrage, as though someone had just kicked over a sandcastle that he'd spent hours crafting.

Beam allowed himself the smallest of smiles. His mind was exhausted as everyone else's, having been put through such an amount of chaos, and having endured such an evolution. It was taking all that he had merely to keep his eyes open. But there was something about hearing the lamentations of one's foe that inspired a smile, no matter the situation.

"HOW DARE YOU?" The voice thundered.

"HOW DARE YOU? HOW DARE YOU? HOW DAREEEEE YOU???"

"LOOK AROUND YOU, INSECTS. I HAVE YOU SURROUNDED. YOU WILL ALL DIE THE MOST AGONISING OF DEATHS – YOU HAVE NO CHANCE OF VICTORY," the mage shrieked, his voice shrill and feminine. "WHY DO YOU NOT DESPAIR?"