A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor

Chapter 374: The End of All Things - Part 6

"Mana..?" The mage mumbled to himself in confusion. Through the shroud of blackness where the divine will sifted itself into the pure black energy of despair, he could swear he saw the faintest neon light, flowing like water, around the man's open and pointed.

And then Dominus thrust his hand straight into Beam's chest. Those that watched found themselves gasping. Even the few soldiers that had survived struggled to look.

Those that knew Beam wanted to call out in dismay, yet they could not. Even as they opened their mouths, a dread gripped them that they could not fully wiggle their way out from. Judas spoke more with his eyes than he could with his tongue, as he saw blood well up out of the hole in the chest that Dominus had punched through.

Only Lombard managed to keep his face stony, albeit barely.

"Magic was never meant to be wielded alone," Dominus said. "I believe that now – I believe that, for it comes with understanding. A martial base was meant to be there to serve it. Those that achieved such power without the sword to guide it, they succumbed to madness… and those of us fool enough to ignore it, merely because we feared the results, we succumbed to weakness."

There was an oddly lecturing tone that Dominus rarely took on – or at least, the Dominus that Lombard knew. The Captain found himself listening closely, making note of it. He thought there to be some air of finality to the old knight's words, as though he was telling all he could, before it was too late.

"Magic is not the only power, though. Regardless – I do not understand the rest. I merely offer advice. Do not fear it. Do not fear it, I say. Fear impedes understanding.

Too much, and you'll have monsters like that, running around," he motioned with his head towards Francis. "Though, I suppose now, by your eyes, I have become something of a monster myself."

He said all this, whilst his hand was firmly plunged into Beam's chest, and his fingers coiled around his heart. Finally, he tore his gaze from the crowd, his eyes narrowed, and kept under his hat, he looked down at the boy, at his apprentice, like a doctor looking at his patient.

"I was later then," he murmured. "When Arthur fell. It seems to me my place – to exist between heroes, without ever touching the mantle myself. I was a day late then, as I told you before."

It soon became clear to those gathered that it was Beam he was speaking to, the dead. These were superstitious villagers that were watching on. Ordinarily, such a thing would have sent them shivering, terrified. Yet now, in the sea of strangeness and hell that they existed in, with all hope of normality cast aside, they dared to hope for something else, they hoped for a reversal of fates.

"This time… mm, I'd planned to come earlier, I had. I saw you battling. Your sword has improved – but there's still weakness in your blade. It's still unsure, and unsteady. You're relying on something else now. I saw that, as I tried to learn to crawl again.

It took a while. As a youth, crossing Claudia's Boundaries used to fill me with energy, and strength. With the poison there, it nearly crippled me," Dominus said.

"I am too late, but I deal with the darker things now," Dominus said, his voice dropping an octave, he began to beat Beam's heart, forcibly working it like a pump with his hand. "There's still warmth in your body, damn it boy. I know you to be a stubborn bastard. You've climbed through worse than this. The Gods have interfered, and so we make the Gods tremble. Release your hold on it, boy.

Allow it all to crumble. I will deal with the rest."

Only silence met his words, silence, and the horrible fleshy sounds of meat and blood, as the old knight forced blood around Beam's body. With the blood, he sent through his mana, wielding it as though he had spent years doing it, such was his fine control.

Only Francis saw, only Francis understood, and he felt the rage boiling in him as he did.

"NO! NO NO NO NO NO NO!" He screeched. With Dominus' interference, the divine energy had ceased to leak out of Beam's body. The change was instantaneous. It was as though the old knight had placed his body inside a capsule. It was a technique that Francis didn't know, but that was unsurprising.

The only techniques he knew were those he had developed himself, and those that he was lucky enough to read on.

Even without full understanding, he understood the implications of the interference. The old man was no ordinary human. He dealt with mana, and the occult. He was a danger. A dangerous thing that had snuck inside of Francis' domain.

He gathered the magic inside himself – or at least he tried to. It was an effort to calm it down. His mana pool was a bathtub that was still in the midst of filling, and he was trying to drag it away from the tap, even as the water ran towards him. It was a messy affair. It was a process that was not meant to be cancelled halfway through, and Francis found himself struggling to do just that.

And still, that globule of blackened divine energy floated, held in place only by Francis' will, and a lingering attachment towards Beam's body. He felt two emotions watching it spin, and twist, and flow – one was regret, that he wouldn't be able to store it immediately, and the other was anger, at the possibility of his powerful peak being interrupted.

Regardless, he didn't feel fear. No matter who stood in front of him, he didn't fear them. He was unaware of their earlier conversation, of Dominus' ascent into the Sixth Boundary, but if he had heard it, he would have scoffed. Francis knew he had already long since exceeded such things. His crossings through the Boundaries weren't known to him, for they didn't come with Claudia's blessing.

His was a power that ran parallel to it – but regardless, he had an intuitive sense of it, after so long pursuing it, and he knew himself to already be the most powerful man in the Kingdom, without a doubt.