A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor

Chapter 358: A Greedy Man - Part 1

There, at the bottom of the crater, the body of the boy still lay there, as though untouched. Worse still, that girl with the red hair, she too was untouched. And all around them were untouched, all their allies. It was the monsters that had cast up a hail of blood and bone – it was only the monsters that had suffered from that attack.

"IMPOSSSSSSSSSSSSSIBLE!" Francis cried. He was no fool. It did not require any thought. He'd already put the pieces together earlier, and then it had happened once again. This was the power of the Gods. This was their doing – but it was not they who wielded it.

Their power had no will of their own. No, this was the will of that unconscious boy. Once more he had managed to control it, and once more he had thwarted Francis with it.

The mage ground his teeth in his jaw, dismayed. He'd read books untouched for thousands of years. He'd learned things that no man could dare to risk believing – and yet it was this here that shook his heart. He, who was already so distant from reality. It shook him. It went beyond expectation.

So far beyond it. His hands trembled. He found himself suddenly afraid.

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The first time, he could believe it. A strong will, that would be explainable. TO hold on for a mere few seconds, to bear a weight that was surely like a whole house, or a whole castle, to hold on to it for the sake of his allies, and to cling to an extra few moments of life for their sake. He could understand that, to a degree. He praised that. He thought: there lies a mighty man.

A man that could resist the Gods, even for a moment.

But two at once? Two WARRING Gods at once? What was this? What was this? He couldn't stomach it. He found himself vomiting his earlier meal up, as he staggered to his knees.

'Frightening,' he shivered, tears stinging his eyes. 'Everso frightening…'

Domains that men were not meant to travel – Francis dwelled in them. He'd given up the most important connections with reality for the pursuit of that which he coveted. He'd made sacrifices that most men could not dream of. He'd done horrible things, and impossible things, and evil things.

All the while, he was alone for it, dwelling in a sea of oily evil, questing for something murky, something impossible to hold in his head.

A terrifying state to be in. A horrible amount of occult knowledge. Single truths that would have broken whole towns of men, he bore thousands of those. He held on despite thousands of those, for he knew his will to be strong. It was his will that kept him there, against the infinite void that sought to pull him apart. Sheer blind will.

He that was held together only by such will, with no other thing to support him, not even the ground beneath his feet, for his mind had no connection to that reality. He that was alone, in the truest, most terrible sense, he found himself breaking, in the midst of battle.

"Why?" He asked, as tears streamed down his face. "Why?"

He'd cried more than once in the quiet of his own rooms. A man in his position could not hold himself together all the time, after all. But never had he cried in the midst of something important. There was always strength in him, the strength to make a choice, any choice, that might lead forwards, even if it meant doing the most heinous of crimes.

Yet here was a man – nay, a boy – who had done none of that. He'd severed no connections. He'd given away no piece of his reality, nor had he given up his morals, his honour, his faith – and yet his will was there. His firmness was there.

Such that he could even command divine will, as though it was nothing more than a simple burst of hot air, something that inflicted the slightest amount of discomfort and temporary pain.

Francis clutched at his chest. It hurt his heart to see it. It wasn't fair. It was too cruel. What might, what greed, what was needed to have it all? How arrogant could a man be to drag It all with him, the weight of that baggage, to have the girl, the Gods, and the power?

That man frightened him. The mage found himself pointing a finger, as he labelled him, "Greed."

Beam didn't feel like he was asleep.

He didn't feel like he was awake either.

He didn't feel like he was sat within the earthy confines of normal comfortable reality, nor did he feel he was in the tricky space of the dream world, with its liquid fluidity and rapidly shifting scenes.

He was somewhere else entirely. Vague thought sat in his chest. The battle seemed like such a distance away. He didn't feel as though he was struggling to think, but that did not mean that thought came clearly to him either.

He didn't know where he was, or what his intentions were. He merely was, just as the room about him was. Upon deciding such a thing, he finally noticed the room about him, as though it had been called into being the moment he acknowledged its existence.

He saw a chair. Or was it a throne? Now that he focused on it, like ink, it quickly became more of a throne than a chair, with a spiked tall back, black iron and gold, with a blue cushion and a comfortable yet high seat.

He felt a sudden degree of alarm, without any reason in particular. A sudden moment of paranoia. He reached for the sword at his hip, as he'd grown used to doing over the past few months, and he assumed a defensive stance.

But there was nothing, and after a moment, the threat faded. By his eyes, nothing had happened, yet, for some reason, he did not feel as though his gesture of defence was insignificant, even though it seemed as though he had not defended against anything at all.