A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor

"Ah, yes, I suppose now might be a good time to reintroduce the rest of our friends," the mage said. There was an audible click, as he clicked his fingers together. There was a flash of green light, like the bursting of green flame. It forced any who looked towards it to squint heavily. And by the time they\'d looked again, hell had already opened up.

The snow melted wherever those robed figures walked. With each step forward, that pure pristine white was once more reduced to the few scraps of green still left. And then even that green began to wither, as the grass greyed then blackened, until it rotted completely, and became nothing more than dust.

That dust fell into the earth, only to be scattered by a wind that didn\'t exist. There was no sign of the outside world in their cage of blackened flames. Even the sky was denied to them. The moon and stars could not reach them. Only the eyes of the Gods that really strained themselves might have been able to make out figures, but that was the best they could do.

In that cage of unnaturalness, that blackness of spirit and soul, all withered as soon as it came in contact with them. And when that mage\'s click rang out, that withering was given purpose, as the ground shook and trembled, as though liquid, as though giving birth.

The green light that the mage had cast was caught on the ends of the robbed figure\'s weapons. In an instant, they\'d each managed to brandish them. Spiked flails hanging on the ends of chain, now green with flame. Swords with horrific-looking jagged edges, now fully coated in that same flame. A pair of knives dual wielded by a smaller figure, the size of a child.

A spear, with flames of green that danced on its very end, and fired in concentrated bursts at times like a missile.

The robed figures seemed unmoved by the weapons that they\'d gotten in their hands, or the deadly green flames that clung to the end of them. They were within a mile of the village by now, and they merely stood, motionless, like dark statues, as ominous as they could be behind that man.

Closer now that he was, they could see the length of his black hair, and the paleness of his skin. They couldn\'t quite tell yet, for he wasn\'t close enough for the smallest of details, but from afar, it seemed that he was a peculiarly handsome man.

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And the mood by the feet of all four of these peculiarly handsome men, it danced, as though given life, just as Beam had before seen the flesh of monsters dance when they evolved.

The mud ran itself liquid, and a trench sank into the soil, a fissure of demonism.

A tendril of blackness reached up from the fissure, and hardened itself into a claw. A claw that Beam recognized, for he had killed enough of them. He only hoped that it was the claw of the weaker species, and not the evolved versions.

More tendrils shot out, and more claws formed. This time, rather than the claw of a Gorebeast, Beam saw three-fingered vice-grips of one of the Konbreaker. Unnerving, thoroughly unnerving was the sight. And from a single trench, hundreds upon hundreds of those tendrils reached up.

Beam had seen such things before, and it still unsettled him, it still ran chills down his spine and through his heart. For the villagers, it was another matter entirely. He could feel their hearts wavering, going towards that which Ingolsol continually sought.

"Despair. Despair. Despair," Ingolsol sang.

Another voice joined Ingolsol, gleefully, accidently. "Despair," he said. His voice had a peculiar music to it now. The closer he came, the more human he became, and the more human he became, the more haunting he became.

Beam could feel it. The mage was watching them all carefully. Only now had he uttered the same word as Ingolsol. Only now had he revealed that he had the same intentions. And now Beam could feel that it was working. The villagers were right on the cusp of it, that true despair that reigned down when truly everything was taken from them, when everything was beyond hopeless.

The creatures crawled out from the trench. One Gorebeast, then to, then a Konbreaker, then another, then a hobgoblin, then another… And then there were ten of them. Ten hobgoblins, twenty Gorebeasts, and ten Konbreakers.

Even with such numbers, the trenches did not cease their bubbling, and on all sides, more of the same creatures came crawling out. One tendril of darkness was larger than the others. Another tendril joined it… And then another. Seeing it, Beam had a particularly bad feeling. Three more such tendrils began to bind themselves together, until they were roughly of the same size.

By the time the first Half-Titan made his presence known, the first villager broke. Beam could feel it like a needle through his heart. Something had snapped in the woman. She was blown out at her weakest point. Her vision of reality had been severed completely, unable to survive under the pressure that she\'d been put under.