A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor

Chapter 383: The Promise of Dawn - Part 4

In the same night, he had confronted a mage of the rarest kind. He'd done battle against magics that most would never see in their entire life. And then he'd been plunged into the suffocating world of divinity, pulled apart by the smallest thread that Ingolsol had attached to him.

Such things were the tools of madness. Such things were not what progress was meant to look like, not according to the teachings of Claudia. Progress was a process of careful struggle. To be greeted by the most extreme of extremes the second a sword was put in his hand – it was unnatural. It should have been devastating.

He knew nought of knighthood, truly. He'd never been amongst the true military, sve for Lombard. He had never even set foot in a city. And yet he'd seen such extremes. He had no foundation for which to explain what had happened to him, no course through which to integrate it. His life seemed like a terrible mistake.

To Ingolsol, a God that had watched thousands upon thousands of years of human interaction, he knew Beam to be an anomaly. He knew the events of his life to thus far be entirely unstable, and it was with prior knowledge that he condemned the boy to death.

It was only with the benefit of hindsight, when the scholars found wrought the results of all that Beam's life had ended up being, when they saw all that he would go on to do, that they pointed to this crucible of madness.

There came – through the lens of a single man's life – a profound understanding of the tightrope of being. The nature of what was required to make such a monster. Always on the edge, always the impossible, always warring.

There was only a single body in history capable of balancing all that Beam had done in that night, all that he had endured, and all that he had achieved, relative to the strength and knowledge of the world that he did them at.

Ironically, it was through Ingolsol's own urse that Beam had developed the grit to endure it. That instinct for balance, as he entreated with the fragment of the Dark God inside him.

Ingolsol cast the boy away from his mind, and away from the future annals of history, for he, as much as everyone else, could not see the true weight of that single fragment he'd inflicted on that boy all those years ago.

And so Dominus said, with confidence in his chest, "I will send you back to a place where you can watch, and you will see it to be true. You will know the foresight of a mortal to have exceeded yours. And then we will have won, again, just as I intend to now."

Ingolsol lowered the palm that he had raised earlier to stop Dominus in his tracks, and he clenched it in a fist.

The Dark God regarded them. He looked at the boy, at the warrior, and at all those villagers that had survived their battle, and he pointed a finger.

"It clings to all of you," he said, in a voice that could have been a whisper. "Those golden strands that Claudia cultivates, like you grow crops in your fields. There's worth to you, the type that can't be cultivated in a sword school, not even in ten years of training. Congratulations, mortals. You've survived."

"I am not such an evil God, after all. Despite the twistedness of my heart, I cannot find it in myself to eliminate you all – and so, out of respect for your kneeling towards your superior, I will offer you all a new lease of life, just as Claudia does. She has her tests, I have mine. I will claim you passed, and you will go forth for me, as soldiers of Ingolsol.

You will wear black armour in my name, and you will inflict the same knowledge on these civilians. The same knowledge that you have learned here tonight."

Dominus' eyes hardened. He knew the Dark God spoke not of Blessings, but of Curses. That was his way, that was always his way.

"And if I slay you here, tonight?" Dominus asked.

"Then you will die," Ingolsol pointed out.

"Hah, you think my death frightens me, Ingolsol?" Dominus said with a laugh. He spoke the Dark God's name without fear. "People fear death, because they fear loss. I no longer have anything in this world, save my name, and that too, I leave to my apprentice. See it done, Lombard."

Lombard's eyes widened, as he realized the significance of what his superior was saying.

"…I'll see it done, Dominus," he said, with a bow of his head, a show of respect. The man could barely breathe.

"You have wrought iron there," Dominus went on. "Boy, I leave you in Lombard's care. Listen to him, and walk your road to greatness. I will be watching, do you hear me?"

Beam's mind was a mess of pain. He felt as though a hundred pairs of hands were all clawing at his brain. He had to squint, to focus. He heard Dominus, and could just barely process what he was saying. With that understanding, there came an emptiness in his heart that almost rivalled the pain in his head.

"Yes… master," he said, for what he thought would be the last time. He bit his tongue, as he made the greatest effort to continue. Nila gripped his hand tightly, reading the pain on his face as though it were a book. "I will… seize… it."

Those were the only words that he could force out of his mouth. Small words, enough to be said quickly, but for Dominus, their meaning was enough.

"Seize it all, boy," Dominus said. "Seize it all."

And then he turned his back on them completely, on the villagers watching, on Lombard, his old comrade, on Tolsey, as he stood mute, on Nila and Greeves, who watched, uncertainly. They saw in him, more than a man. Judas – a man who knew nothing of soldiery until recently – could suddenly see the honour in it, mixed up in a golden hew.

Those few stragglers that knew of soldiery, they saw much the same, but they saw too beyond it, for many knew of Dominus' past, scorned as he was by their king.