A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor

"Oliver!" Claudia urged. "There's divinity swirling off that fire! We can't leave him to do whatever he wishes!"

Oliver didn't need telling twice. He dashed up the steps even faster, forcing the druid around the other side of the fire to escape. Oliver chased after him again. The druid gave a deep and manic laugh as he danced away.

His escaping was quickly coming to an end, though, the distance between them gradually closed and within the span of a short few seconds, Oliver's sword was just a hair's breadth away.

The man yelped his dismay in that manic manner that he had. He seemed to be building up the courage to do something, for he would continually reach his hand towards the fire, only to pull it back in a nervousness.

Just as Oliver's sword came for his back, he finally made the commitment.

"MISTRESS PANDORA, EMPOWER ME!" He shouted, diving straight into the heart of the blue flames.

They enveloped him instantly. He screamed, unlike those before him. It seemed as though he could feel every ounce of pain that the fire dealt to him.@@novelbin@@

The fur of the bullhead erupted in flame, haloing the man in its light, as he staggered amidst the fire, his flesh burning away as he howled at the top of his lungs his dismay.

He was forced to take a knee and stagger, falling out of the fire, but the flames came with him, mercilessly savaging him even as he struggled. It was a horrific sight. Those before hadn't given up an ounce of struggle. They'd gone to the flames willingly at his beck and call. It was as though he was forced to feel the pain in their place.

One would think that, away from the fire as he was, the flames around him would lessen. That was true only at first. They started to peter out, once the most flammable parts of him had burned away, but as soon as they did, the blue fire itself seemed to reach towards him, as though sentiment, bathing him in light of its own.

He screamed even more loudly then. The scream of a man whose brain was tearing itself in half. The line between him and the bull-head was continually blurred, as the fire melted them.

In fact, the line between all of him was blurred. It was hard to make out his shape anymore, amidst those blue flames. They had seemed so clear before, but now a darkness settled in their centre. An inky darkness at that. The sort of thing that Oliver recognized. Those tendrils of blackness that had reached up out of the earth to make monsters.

Was this not the same sensation?

He shivered, and Ingolsol confirmed what he was seeing.

"Now there's a wench of a woman. The Old Gods should stay dead, if you ask me. What I wouldn't give to cast them all down again. The world has been considerably less exciting since then," Ingolsol said.

"What are you talking about?" Oliver murmured, his voice tensed, as he was forced to watch a man burn alive, unable to get any closer for the heat of the fire.

"…" Ingolsol paused, seeming to consider his question. "I… I don't think I know. Damnation. What sort of wenches do I need to burn to have access to the whole of my being?"

He'd complained about such things before. Though fragments of divinity, neither Ingolsol nor Claudia had full access to the wealth of knowledge that the Gods themselves knew. They would occasionally slip down a line of thought as they reached for it, presenting something profound, only to have no idea where it had come from.

"You owe me a burnt village for this, boy," Ingolsol said. "I've been far too cooperative for my own good. You promised me Gargon. You promised me justice. You haven't even swung a sword at any of those nobles that came your way yet – and still, you force me to sit in the presence of the likes of Pandora."

Oliver let him ramble. He could sense a nervousness to Ingolsol that was atypical. The fragment of the Dark God was usually aloof in his conniving. It was rare to see him rattle by anything.

The darkness at the centre of the blue expanded, as the body began to contort and tremble. The movements that had stopped a short few moments before as the last of the man's flesh had burned away, they now started up again with renewed vigour as spasms. Spasms so violent that they cast the body off the floor occasionally.

Now the aura was building. An aura not too dissimilar to that of a Hobgoblin in its overwhelming, though Oliver doubted that it would be a mere Hobgoblin that they were confronted with.

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"Send the soldiers back!" He shouted down to Northman. "It's coming!"

"RETREAT!" Northman ordered without hesitation. He knew nothing of the magical or the mystical, and hardly anything of the monstrous. He was only too happy to follow an order from someone that had a higher understanding of it than is.

The soldiers beat a hasty retreat away from the steps and Oliver began to do the same. It was not a moment too soon for either of them, it seemed, for the flames swelled, and then contracted, before exploding in a massive off-shoot of energy.

The wave of it hit Oliver from the back, casting him forward several feet. He hit the ground and rolled swiftly back up. The soldiers were further away from him, but even they felt a lesser version of it, enough to nearly cast a few of them off their feet.

Then they were turning, to see what such a blast had come from, looking towards the heart of it all.

The flames had disappeared, or so it seemed, for there was far less blue than before. The only glimmer of it that remained had gone back towards the centre of the platform, burning where the bonfire had, though this flame was barely as big as a candle.

Everything that it had been – whatever it was – had been given away, to that druid who'd begged for. Or what even was he now? It was impossible to say. He certainly wasn't dead – it seemed easier to say what he wasn't. That maddening dance with the flames that he'd endured, that act that should have killed him… it hadn't.