A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor

The passageway had extended in size all of a sudden merely to accommodate that gate. It seemed far too big to be necessary.

Strangely, too, the wood of the door didn't show any traces of rot. Nor did the iron brackets that bound it show any traces of rust. They would have struggled to move it if it hadn't already been opened a fraction, and from its sturdiness, it seemed impossible that they would have been able to break past it had it been locked.

That wasn't worth worrying about, though, not when the way forward was so tantalisingly offered. The source of the blue light was clearly coming from beyond the door. Even with it opened a crack, enough for three men to fit through, the angle of the door prevented them from seeing much of the beyond apart from a single stone brick wall.

Northman came to a halt, giving the door the weighing that it deserved. The snaking procession of soldiers halted behind him. They could just barely see Cormrant at the back, beyond all the men. The two of them – Northman and Cormrant – shared a nod, as though reaffirming their resoluteness. Only then did Northman step forward.

The soldiers took the tenseness of their commanders as an appropriate warning and the front row was already fighting to lower their spears.

"Steady," Northman murmured, as Oliver approached the door with him. There could quite easily have been men with bows pointed their way just beyond the door, or even ranks of spears just as their own. They gave the threat of the unknown the caution that it required, edging closer and closer to the rim of the door, as they attempted to stick their necks around.

With his blade drawn, Oliver stepped clear first, quickening his step and preparing his sword for whatever might attack him.

Ready though he was, nothing came.

Nothing came for his blade, but much information came for his eyes. Dead silent though it was, enough to make him doubt what he was seeing, he was still quite sure those were the bandits that they were chasing.

After all, where would two hundred men and women dressed in peasant garb be conjured from, all this distance underground?

The cavern was vast, as the passage had led them to expect. Even with two hundred people in there, gathered towards its centre, it wasn't even close to being cramped. It could have handled ten times that number quite comfortably.

Even though there were so many of the bandits, they were all gathered with an orderliness that Oliver wouldn't have expected from them.

They'd seemed a disconnected group when he fought them in the woods and atop the walls of the fort, but here they were as solemn and unified as statues, all of them gathered around the steps of a central stone platform in a giant ring, eyeing whatever was happening as though it was the most important thing in the world.

And it might well have been. Where else could one find such a strong source of blue light, after all? Where did one find blue flames of bonfire that rose up as high as a house?

"Gods be good, what the hell is that?" Northman murmured, seeing the same thing that Oliver was.

The bandits' backs were to them, as more and more soldiers came past the door to gather Oliver and the Commander. It would have been easy enough to rush them from the back. It might even have been wise to do so. But they were as frozen to the spot as the bandits themselves were, awed by the sky-blue flame and its majesty.

As they watched, a man danced around, silently, but his passion was unmistakable. He had the head of a large bull fastened to the top of his skull like a helmet, still dripping blood. The blood splattered down his bare chest, as he continued his passionate and silent dance around the full degree of the bonfire. Explore stories on My Virtual Library Empire

"Great one!" A bandit murmured, stepping up a row of the ringed steps, like a moth drawn to a candle, he reached his hand towards the dancing man far above him.

The dancing man did not pause to acknowledge him – but something else must have.

The man's reaching hand shone a blue flame and burst alight.

He gasped audibly, a noise that echoed around the silent cavern. It was not a gasp of terror, but of bliss.

He crawled up another set of steps, and the flame spread until it shrouded his whole body.

One might have mistaken it for an illusion at first, given how the man withstood it without even the slightest cry of pain. That thought was quickly shattered, though, as the higher the man climbed, the hotter the flames burned, and the more it became evident that it was burning away its skin.@@novelbin@@

"Claudia have mercy…" Oliver heard Rofus mutter, as he watched from beside him.

By the time he was three steps away from the top of the platform, the flesh of his face had been stripped away so thoroughly that his skull was revealed. Only then did his legs lose their strength, and he collapsed forward, hard against the stone, his hand still reaching, the flames still burning.

The blue continued to burn away at his corpse, eviscerating his clothing, and his flesh, leaving nothing but bones. When the bones remained, still it burned, until there was nothing but a cloud of ash.

Only then did the blue flame return to the fire, but not before it dragged the ash of the man back with it, in a great cloud, straight towards the source.

Throughout it all, the bull-headed man danced.

"Damn it," Oliver cursed. "I've seen this darkness before. That's magic, I assume."

"My eyes weren't deceiving me then," Northman muttered. "The Battle of Solgrim, where you fought with Lombard against the Yarmdon. It was said that there was a mage involved in that..?"

"True enough," Oliver said.

"Well, now that I'm seeing what I'm seeing, I don't suppose I have any choice but to believe it," Northman murmured. "Still, the job needs doing. You've experience with this sort of thing. What do we do?"