A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor

Chapter 344: The Will of Men, The Will of Gods - Part 5

He searched for Ingolsol's aura, to see where it had been concentrating, to find that point in which the despair was thick enough so that he could attempt to manifest himself… and his eyes were drawn to an angry-looking boy, his eyes swimming with shards of gold and purple.

"Lord?" Francis asked on instinct. For a second, he thought that the boy had been possessed.

"If I were your Lord, I would have you skinned," Beam said. He'd never uttered such black words before. He'd never physically wished to torture a man to deal, to tear his fingernails from his fingers, and to gauge out his eyes in a slow display of mercilessness. But with Francis, it was different. He could feel it so strongly – that thing that drove Francis. He understood it.

And it infuriated him.

Francis drew back his head in reproach, his eyes widening, madness flickering in them, as he shook his head to and fro, as if to deny a vicious reality. "No no no no no. What foul trick is this? What scent have you smeared yourself in, you deceptive defiler? What manner of sin have you committed."

There were only fifty metres between the two of them now. Such a distance – though much closer than before – and yet it was like they were breathing down each other's necks. Beam could almost feel the man's breath on his face. He saw that pale, porcelain skin, that long, sleek black hair and that perfectly framed face. All that handsomeness, tinged entirely with insanity.

And in him, Francis could see something as well. Different from the Cursed, he felt Ingolsol's mark, as though he'd scratched his claws down his prey's back, to mark it as his own, so that he might save it for later.

The Dark God of Despair, the Fallen God of Power – he did not leave anything for later. Francis knew that better than anyone. He was an intelligent man, and an intellectual man. He'd studied the arts and the sciences with far more vigour than even the most noble of nobles.

He'd wrestled with concepts that even sages struggled with, and he'd managed to find insight in them, an insight that no other could find.

Those insights were not understood, however. They never were, despite their profundity, despite the effort he had put into seeking them out, he found that his social station only fell. He was a man that new study, and he thought he knew hard work, and progress – he'd hailed Claudia for every new idea that he found, every new discovery that he'd made.

Continue reading on ???

Yet it wasn't until he'd studied Ingolsol, and all that the Dark God entailed… Only then, when he dusted off the books marked as forbidden, only then did his knowledge begin to shape his life. Only then could it interact with the reality around him, and improve it. If Ingolsol were a subject of academia, then no one was as well read on the matter as Francis.

It puzzled him, it irked him, and more than anything, it annoyed him. He didn't understand it. What manner of curse had the boy been saddled with? What was Ingolsol's interest in him?

Beam was stood at a half-crouch, with his sword ready and his eyes narrowed. He dared to take a step in the snow. When Francis did not move in response, he dared to take another.

Standing by himself as he was, a few paces in front of his giant army, Francis looked ever-so vulnerable.

His robes were more dark purple than pure black. With his handsome features, when he remained still, you could easily mistake him for nobility. But the second he moved, that illusion was shattered. Everything was stiff, and robotic, tinged by erraticness.

He move his neck like a startled bird, fixing Beam with the most attentive eyes, as though seeing him for the first time, but also without truly seeing him at all.

The mage ran through several possible theories in his head, as his confusion reached a fervour pitch. Anything that he could use to explain what he saw in front of him, he clung to.

"This… This… Is that old man's doing?" Francis asked himself. If the Elder had managed to succeed in his study of mana, as Francis had assumed earlier, then a curse on the boy might not be out of his reach… But it was less a curse, and more a dark shadow, like the threat of a boulder falling from the sky.

Step by step, Beam closed the distance, as Francis pondered. He did not know what was going through the mage's mind to allow him to get so close, with his sword drawn, and his intentions clearly written on his face. The others watched, from their distance, over a mile away.

"What's going on?" Judas asked. "Why's that mage letting him get so close? He's underestimating the boy, ain't he? He'll take off his head if he gets a few steps closer."

"He's mad to the core," Lombard noted. "…But I do not think him to be foolish, perse. It's possible he merely doesn't acknowledge Beam as a threat."

"Should we not go and support him?" Nila asked, anxiously. She was well aware that she couldn't hope to cover such a distance with his bow. Whilst strong, she wasn't nearly strong enough to draw a war bow – her bow was good for a couple of hundred feet, at most.

"I think it's safe to assume that if he wanted us dead, he would have killed us already," Lombard said with his usual calmness, though it did little to hide the tiredness that was written on his face. "But that's not to say he doesn't want us dead eventually, for he's been quite content to kill the villagers along the way. No, his goal is more obvious than that.

For such a man so deep into insanity, his motives are clear. He wants to see us despair, for the sake of his God, and for the sake of power."

"Then, our fate is to be tortured to death," Greeves said grimly. He made his way to join the commander's group in between the bouts of chaos. Loriel's death was heavy on his mind, but living was even heavier, and with every fresh icicle storm that came charging across the plains, his eyes were drawn back towards his house, which as of yet, had narrowly managed to avoid getting hit.