A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor

He knew the intentions of his Dark Lord better than anyone. The realization of such a thing brought a gleeful smile to his lips.

"Of course… Of course… I had merely need pop him like a balloon," he said. "And then Ingolsol will come pouring down, manifested more purely than he ever has been in history."

He sang to himself, as he stumbled upon another realization. What had seemed just moments before like a terrible stretch of unfortunateness, now it seemed to be the height of luck. Even if he\'d tried, he\'d never have been able to contain the Dark energy so densely. Not to the degree it was now, inside Beam\'s body, as it continued to go there.

At best, it would have been like the smoke off a burning house, but now they had the potential for much more, far beyond what he had expected before.

There was the stench of Claudia on him too – the boy was living proof that the two could be bound together. Claudia\'s essence could be made into Ingolsol\'s. That there was a discovery worth ten years of research. If Francis had known such a thing, he would have attacked the Academy five years earlier – he never would have waited.

He would have seized the weakest of the newly blessed nights and torn their power away from him.

His grin broadened as the villagers drew closer. He made a motion with his finger, as he loosened the hold on all of his armies. At once, there was a tremor, like a dragon had just flapped its wings overhead. The mortal men in front of him felt their knees buckle, buffeted by an unknown wind. And then they heard a roar, as monsters from all across the Domain began the charge towards them.

The charge came just as Beam\'s sword found the neck of the Half-Titan. With every monster that slew, he saw them disappear from the ranks of the other armies. He thought that to be their weakness, obvious proof that they were nothing more than mere illusions, but now he saw the truth of it.

The trembling of the earth as the monsters charged showed him that they were no more apportions, no mere illusions. Gorebeasts came thundering at a pace, ahead of the rest, crashing into houses, and sending rubble flying. They were interacting with the physical realm easily enough, just as strong as the other monsters that Beam had already slain.

Lombard noticed it at the same time as he did. "Magic," he muttered. "The greater its weakness, the greater its strength. We kill this lot in front of us, and all the other armies would fade away as well. But until then, we\'ve got four times the amount."

Beam nodded in agreement. He\'d already managed to kill ten of the worst monsters, but now the rest of the pack had been unbound, and they came forward, closing the short distance between them in a matter of moments. That short interaction that he\'d shared with Lombard was all the time he had before the first wave of them hit – a smattering of speedy Gorebeast, and arrows from the Horned Goblins.

Almost immediately, he heard the cries of the villagers, the crunch of bone, and the tear of flesh.

In the next moment, there was a Gorebeast lunging toward his neck, its jaws open wide enough to swallow his entire head, and most of his shoulders with it. He ducked, and cut open its belly, holding a hand over his eyes to avoid the spray of blood as it continued to fly overhead.

When it hit the floor, and he was able to open his eyes once more, he was able to see just what a state their front line was in.

They hadn\'t been organized at all, not from the start. Ever since the Yarmdon attack, they had been nothing more than a rabble. None of them had the tools to confront magic with a plan immediately, especially not the tools to counter a mage like Francis, who\'d spent so much time laying such an extensive trap.

In truth, still none of them knew the full extent of the situation they were in. It was as though they\'d shifted to another world entirely, under completely new laws. Of course, such things were intended – it was meant to be shocking, it was meant to be a dramatic shift. It was meant to break them.

But it didn\'t manage to. Not yet. It didn\'t manage to snatch at those spirits that it sought, to fuel the summoning of the Lord of Despair. It had failed in that, but succeeded completely in everything else.

They were tossed about like a tiny ship on a stormy sea. The chaos of the situation was unfathomable. Even now, not a single one of them held a coherent goal in their minds. There was nothing obvious for them to do, aside from kill that which was in front of them.

There was nothing obvious they should be doing – yet they were here. They were by his side. They weren\'t warriors, but now it was as though they clung to that warrior honour. Old men, young women, farmhands and shepherds and bakers – not a single one of them was without blood. As the monsters tore into them, the fire in their eyes did not fade.

Beam didn\'t understand it. He didn\'t understand them, he didn\'t understand himself. He only understood the need for violence. He couldn\'t see where victory lay. They were at the bottom of a murky swamp. They were truly in a demon\'s domain.

It seemed to be that the only choice on the cards for them was to die – that seemed to be the only eventuality. Another thirty seconds, and those other three armies would be near them, and they\'d buckle and shatter like a tiny glass house.