A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor

Chapter 371: The End of All Things - Part 3

"Rise," he murmured, delightedly. He was managing to restrain his emotions just long enough so that he could continue with the ritual. There was so much power. So much godly power. Years and years of planning, without the slightest thing to show for progress, and now here it was. That was the road of magic.

Explosions of power, with mere madness in between.

He twisted the power out of Beam, feeling its divine energy and its potency. He could feel something mortal in there as well, clinging on to the last remainder of its life, but Francis mercilessly ignored it, and continued to pull.

The divine energy had a golden quality, much of it. He took care to die it all with the despair of Ingolsol as he guided it higher, playing tug-of-war against the residual will of Beam's body. He moulded it like a potter, attempting to keep it dense and solid, whilst still offering it shape.

"Beautiful, simply beautiful," he praised. It was so thick, so powerful, better than anything he could have imagined. It was practically solid now. Like a black honey that only he could play with. And that thickness was only achieved by stuffing it all into a tiny, mortal body.

It was an impressive thing. He spared the perished boy just that thought. He'd felt a kindredness to him. He'd felt the favour that Claudia granted him, against Ingolsol's will, and he also felt the jealousy that came with it.

But in the end, there was respect there. A respect that he could not afford to dwell on, for it frightened him. The prospect of a mortal controlling even the slightest fragment of divine power – it was horrifying. The prospect of a mortal resisting it for as long as Beam had, it was horrifying.

It was too difficult to think on, and its relevance to the problem that Francis had to currently solve was now gone, so he ignored it, and focused on his task.

The culmination of power, of months of work. That was what he now felt. He'd known it would be like this – he'd known it would unlock a path to the potential that he could hardly fathom. His mind had gone white every time he'd dreamed about it. He knew it was a road to the future that was dangerously potent.

Had there still been an ounce of humanity left in Francis, with that mind of his, he would have been hailed as the greatest of men. The sages would have calmed his name into their stone tablets, ensuring that it lived on for generations, for the fragility of paper was too much to risk such an important task on.

As it happened, he was blessed with none of those things. For all his work, there was no reward, save the reward he gave for himself, the rewards that he put in front of him.

His gold was a power that none could see. They could feel it – but they'd never live to tell the tale of it. His intention was to kill everyone in front of him. He'd come to the village with such plans. It was Solgrim first, and then the rest of the Stormfront. He would flatten all those that had denied him for all those years.

Never personally – or at least, rarely – had his talents been dismissed. It was obvious to see even from young that he would grow up to achieve great things. It was the country that he despised. The country and the Kingdom that did not raise him up before his time.

The country that wasn't wise enough to see his true worth, such that he had to reach into the depths of hell just to show what he was capable of.

It was an interesting thing, for he was sure he'd forgone his humanity. He was sure there wasn't a tace of compassion left in him, and yet, his whole rage was founded on that lack of empathy. He would destroy a country for the very fact that he'd been forced to give it up. He would destroy the planet then. Or maybe he wouldn't. Francis feared looking so far ahead, even further than he already was.

He knew there was danger there, beyond power. He knew that any further, and he would lose all semblance of the soul that once was.

Some part of him – a part that would never again speak – regretted what he had become, deep below the surface, it was a lonely emotion that tainted all he tried to achieve, for he was already a lost vessel, on a lonely lake, never to be retrieved.

He'd put a name to that only feeling, as he'd looked at Beam. He'd named the feeling without even realizing he was doing so, without properly connecting to the full magnitude of what it meant for him.

He accused the boy of greed. He saw that he refused to forsake his morals for progress, and he pointed a stiff and angry finger, labelling that what it was. To achieve ultimate power, Francis knew, one could not be greedy.

He knew that a man had to give all he had in order to grasp it, even beyond what he had, he had to sacrifice all that was around him for that power, for how else could there be progress?

Yet the dead sacrificed none of that. The dead was more villainous than he, to defy it all, to claim it all, it was too greedy, far too greedy, far too frightening.

"And so the boy ensured that his life was never uneventful," a voice said, interrupting Francis' thoughts and disrupting the guiding of that Dark Energy that he'd been toying with.

A cloaked figure kneeled in the crater by the body of Beam, his straw hat hiding his face from sight.

Francis gazed at him in alarm from atop his tower. He had not even seen the man's approach. E'd appeared like an apparition. It was not that he snuck up to where he was either, using the shadows to his advantage. It was something greater than that, something approaching magic.

Francis' eyes had been fixed in the same spot for a good while, with such an intensity of concentration, that he was sure to have noticed any movements.