A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor

Chapter 346: The Will of Men, The Will of Gods - Part 7

It was far too loud a cheer for the victory that had been achieved – it was a mere three Gorebeasts, after all, out of an army of a hundred of the things, or even four hundred, if those monsters on the other side were to be more than an illusion. But they cheered anyway.

They cheered like starving men, finding their first scrap of food after over a week of empty. They cheered like blind men that caught their first hint of the light, like they'd arisen from the deep underground after days without fresh air.

They'd reached the depths of despair, without despairing.

They'd lost everything, without losing it all.

Every tiny victory was magnified tenfold, or even a hundredfold, for their was an absence of everything else. It was purely void that they'd been dropped into. This mage, a click of his fingers, and they might explode. They couldn't think of tomorrow, they couldn't even think of a minute into the future.

Francis had done his best to take everything from them, and in not breaking, and just being given the slightest bit back, it was as though it contained all the meaning in the world.

"You see it, don't you?" Lombard said. "That is him."

He pointed, and they saw.

There he was, embroiled in combat. Three Gorebeasts were dead, and he was already moving on to the next of them.

His sword sliced through the fourth Gorebeast with such force, it was like it had been hit by a hammer, rather than a sword. There was fury on his face, evident with every strike. When many men would have given into despair in his shoes, it was that fury that he put forth, steeping his limbs in a fire.

His mind had grown as quiet as it had hours before. That was its natural state by now. It had to do everything with the grimmest efficiency, lest that small trickle of energy that he had left get wasted. In truth, he'd burned through his stamina long before. It was merely grit keeping him on his feet.

"He doesn't need a reason to fight," Lombard pointed. "He is that reason. His cause eclipses ours. There's few like him. There's few men who would swing and struggle without reason. I've only met a handful of men like that, and none wielded his talent."

Another Gorebeast dead, brutal efficiency, and he was onto a Hobgoblin now. His sword ran up its forearm, splitting apart the muscle, and landed a shallow slash on its head. A Konbreaker came trampling in from the side now, seeking to take advantage of the chaos, but Beam was on it too, a moment later, offering it a deep slash on its hard arms.

It hissed at him in reply, and dared to take a step back, despite the space that such a thing left open.

With that opening, the first of the Hobgoblins fell, added to the mound of corpses, as though they were playing cards being thrown onto a table, rather than the most fearsome monsters the village of Solgrim had ever seen. Continue reading at ???

The mage watched Beam's tenacity with surprise in his eyes. He felt that aura. That aura of darkness pouring out from him. He was not a stupid man, Francis. A dangerous man, for certain. A mad man – in many people's eyes.

But none could ever call him stupid. If something did not work, if something went according to his expectations, even if it meant tearing out long-standing presuppositions, he was willing to do it.

Like Jok, he was content to sacrifice his very reality for power. Even to a greater degree – Francis was willing to sacrifice his soul.

He sensed Ingolsol in the boy. He could feel the aura of darkness. He'd set up his dome expressly for this purpose, so that the Dark Lord could manifest himself, and make his will known, but to have it concentrated here, in that boy, it was far outside his expectations.

Francis' eyes struggled to track Beam's movements.

His magic had given him power, but they had not trained him in combat. His magic had not even been achieved by the traditional route. It was his research into Ingolsol that gave him access to it. For that reason, though he could summon up floods, great storms of ice, and rageful fires, he was still nearly as weak as a normal man without it.

He had no competence with the sword, no ability to track things with his eyes… What a swordsman did with his blade, it very well might have been a different sort of magic to Francis.

"Why..?" He found himself murmuring. "Why, why why why?" His frantic thoughts – thoughts that were normally kept quiet – were spoken aloud. The strange social habits that he'd picked up, after years of single-minded pursuit, they only served to accentuate his madness.

He grasped at his hair in desperation, pulling a thick clump out, a long with a matting of blood. It was an erratic image, a disturbing image, but his mind was still efficient, calculating, like a well-oiled machine, putting it all together.

Ingolsol chose no favourites. He didn't. No. It was only Francis that had been given favour by him. Francis and a few others in the past, all of them dark and terrible people. Ingolsol never manifest himself quietly.

If he was there, blood ensued, alongside suffering and despair.

There was no basis for what he saw in front of him, what he sensed. He sensed auras even more finely than a knight. This was his area, after all – the study of mana. His conception of power had quickly blended with his conception of mana. To him, they were one and the same. They were the lens to the glasses through which he saw the world.

Both Claudia, and Ingolsol, in a single boy, they both staked their claim.

"Why why why why why?"

He was studied in the sciences, he was studied in mathematics. They'd offered him fruit, for a time, before he'd hit a wall. He used them as tools of understanding, as he delved into the arcane. That unique mind that couldn't find its place in society, not without a good amount of moulding, it had quickly been able to overcome the secrets of darkness. To close the gap between logic and the occult.

A nuanced thought process, that united the natural and the supernatural.