A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor

Chapter 339: The Birth of a Leader - Part 15

The temperature dropped by a few more degrees, but the mage merely offered a single strained smile, rather than a storm of ice, as he struggled to hold on to his calm. "I think not, worm. Your own lacking skills of perception might deceive you, but my Lord's nose does not lie to me. I can smell the scent of three of you."

"Three of us there may be, but only two of us are knights. That goes contrary to the little story that you've crafted for yourself, does it not?" Lombard said. By now Beam could tell that he was purposefully being inflammatory, abandoning his usual nobleesque mannerisms in favour of merely riling the mage up. "Can you guess which of us it is?"

The mage didn't like that. Even from a mile away – for that was literally how far away he was standing – they could see he didn't like it. Lombard's word cut under his skin.

"You lie. I smell it. I smell it! LIAR! LIAR! I SMELL IT!" The mage said, giving in to rage.

"That whore only chooses the rich! She never chose me! She says hard work, she does! Who has worked harder? Not you, knight! Not you with your gold, and your bread, and your women!

Not you! None have worked harder than I, yet the whore did not hear my prayers, she didn't!"

"The boy," Lombard interrupted. "A peasant. Worse than that – an ex-slave. Claudia blessed him."

"LIAAAAAAAAAR!" The mage roared, as he swung his hand, and another storm of ice lances came shooting in, this time three from each side, and this time far more dangerous than the last.

Instead of puncturing through houses like it had before, they completely steamrolled them, flattening everything in their path, less like watery glass and more like blue stone, they hit with all the weight of rocky pillars charging at a speed triple that of a horse.

Again the villagers managed to dodge out the way, but this time they were unable to escape injury. The explosion of a nearby burning house caught a few of them, handing out bruises and burns, but no worse than that, for they were quickly freed from their situation by their fellow man.

It was Beam's party that had the worst of it, as the ice lances all came together, they created a powerful impact zone that was difficult to dodge. Knowing what they had from the last time, they were able to throw themselves further than before.

Beam kept an eye out on Nila, expecting her to be too slow to escape the blast, but she was able to nimbly roll out of the way like a rabbit through the underbrush. It was Judas and the soldiers that had the harder time. He had to kick one of them into the others, in order to free as many as he could from the blast.

Skidding into the snow, and cradling their heads, they were all showered in ice, as it rained upon them like stones. But again, none of them were injured. It was only Beam, who'd attempted to save the others, that bore the worst of the blast.

His already shredded shirt – from all the battling that they'd done earlier – once more found itself with a fresh slice through. That slice proved to be the final straw for the cloth, for it finally opened itself fully, baring his full back, with the rags of blue cloth hanging on either side like curtains.

As they got back to their feet, Lombard noted the scars, and narrowed his eyes. He put a hand on Beam's shoulder and spun him to face the mage.

"Are those the marks of a knight, mage?" Lombard asked calmly. "I think you've deceived yourself. You've sold your soul for darkness and power, convincing yourself you were just. You were merely lacking."

"DECEPTION!" The mage howled. "I will not be convinced."

"Which Dark God do you pray to that you would scorn deception?" Lombard asked.

"Ingolsol," a single name, spoken calmly, enough to silence a room full of people. The darkest of all the dark gods. The most powerful, the most feared, the most hard to understand. One did not make light of prayers to him, especially if they were a knight.

For the people of Solgrim, under the Elder's leadership, it had been a different, more unusual matter – but elsewhere in the world, that name was spoken with caution.

The mage seemed to pick up on Lombard's hesitancy. A hesitancy that had been ingrained in him since youth. He knew the power of the Gods. He knew to take them seriously. The man right in front of him was living proof of such a fact, as was his own strength in combat.

"Does that name cower you?" The mage said, sounding delighted. "It should. Only the chosen, only the brave, only he will Ingolsol accept. He demands sacrifice, and in return for sacrifice, he grants a man power. I am evidence of that.

I am evidence of the lies that these whore worshippers spew, keeping the feeble-minded populace in their shackles – and I am that which opposes all that, and claims the crown as a result. Now, knight, go to despair, and go to the grave, as the seed beds for my ascension." Experience tales at mvl

"Ah… So that is what this is then?" Lombard asked. "You mean to offer up these villagers to Ingolsol as sacrifices? Is that the darkness that sits in the air? Is that meant to be his presence?"

The mage smiled at that. The smile of a mathematician seeing one of his colleagues fail at a problem that he had solved ever so easily. The same superior smile that he was fond of wearing. "Oh, it's far more complicated than that, knight. You think yourself a clever man, but you have been caught like rats in my plan from the start. The Yarmdon, the monsters, did you think it coincidence?

No, no. These are the seeds of despair, the creation of chaos."

"You mean to tell me that you predicted our victory?" Lombard asked. "Then why are you not aware of the boy? If you knew our victory, if you had seen it, then his presence should be meaningful to you."