A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor

Dominus continued to pump Beam's heart for him, as he ran his mana through him.

"Gods… no wonder," he mumbled to himself, as his hold reached deeper into Beam's body. He'd known the Gods to have interfered. Claudia's whispers had told him as much, the moment he crossed the Sixth Boundary. But he didn't know the extent to which they played. He felt what Nila had felt earlier, that she was reaching her hand into a forge.

But Dominus did not reach out with a single finger, he reached out with every nerve in his body.

His words gradually grew quieter and quieter, until he no longer had to speak aloud, for he was quite sure that Beam could hear him, even as he spoke inside his head.

'Come on now boy, rescue it from the wreckage, bind it all together, you have the will to, don't you?'

'This was not meant to be your first battlefield…. If only you knew, the true state of the world. To quest against mages and monsters, at the age you are… I saw you take the Yarmdon pup's head. A man of the Third Boundary, in the end, was he not? You do not need to waste away here. You've suffered enough.'

"Gugh…" That was the only sound they heard from Dominus, after a long minute. Lombard had found himself nervously glancing towards the mage atop his tower. He was clearly wrestling with something, his eyes were wild, and his hands were animated. The shouts he gave were angry. Then, Dominus coughed, and everything seemed to change.

With one cough, there came two more, as blackened blood ran down the front of Dominus' tattered clothes.

"Dominus, leave it – don't deprive the world of yourself, attempting to resurrect the dead," Lombard said.

"Not dead," Dominus said, finally opening his eyes, for the first time, his voice hoarse. "The dead cannot be revived, but a stopped heart, for a few minutes… It does not seem to be the end."

Or so Dominus was learning. With his new found magic, it was as though he'd put on a lens that allowed him to see the world in a different light. Vaguely, he'd grasped for it, unsure what results it would yield. He'd plunged his hand towards the boy's heart merely on instinct, merely because he felt the power of his newfound ability.

He had not known what results exactly it would yield, other than the fact that he felt he could achieve it.

'The divine energy incubates, keeping the soul in a stasis, as it continues to burn it away,' Dominus noted, words and terms that he'd never in his life considered, but now he had access to, as a result of stumbling through the door of the Sixth Boundary. Concepts that he'd interacted with before, but never truly grasped, they now had names, and urgently, he put those names together.

With the cough of blackened blood, he reached through the fire, and he hit a stone wall.

"Gugh…" another cough, worse than the last two. It seemed to shake his entire body. He felt as though he'd just run headfirst into a city's walls.

Clumsily, he slowed himself down there, finally grasping at something that resembled the boy that he once knew, something other than that painful all-consuming fire. He grasped for a way in, searching the walls for anything that looked like a door. Instead, what he found was more equivalent to the iron of a castle gate.

He put his hand on that gate, and he was forced to grit his teeth. It was all he could do not to cry out. If the heat of before was the heat of the forge, then this here was the heat of the heart of a volcano, the heat of hell, he could feel his very being melting away just by staying in contact with it.

'Gods… Gods… Gods…' he cursed to himself. He'd assumed the heat from before to be the divine energy – but this was it. Locked behind the iron gates of Beam's soul, he'd locked as much of that godly energy inside of him, for the sake of his comrades.

A shadowy figure appeared atop the wall in Dominus' mind's eye.

"What are you doing, old man? These here are the fires of hell, and you stand in front of my keep," the figure said, and Dominus knew it to be Ingolsol. He could feel the waves of malice passing off the being, dark and binding.

"I come not for you, but your master," Dominus replied.

"I have no master, ashes give no orders," Ingolsol said bitingly.

"Open these gates, and he will return to you," Dominus said.

"Hah? How do you suppose that? Do you know tricks to revive the dead?" Ingolsol asked.

"The very walls and this very gate are proof of his life," Dominus pointed out.

There was a pause at that, as Ingolsol went silent. "I have no control over these gates – open them as you will, and you will burn to ashes from it. You think yourself strong, mortal, but you know nothing of the fires of a God."

"The dealings with Gods and the dealings with death, they're best left for the old," Dominus said. "Beam, you made me a promise, did you not? In return for my teachings, you would slay the Pandora Goblin in my place. Do you intend to go back on your promise? Or do you look down on me, now that you have proven yourself worthy? Do you think I cannot withstand the same flames that you have?"

"How can he speak, when his body is inflamed?" Ingolsol said lazily. "You were too late. It might have been fun, had things been different. There was carnage and chaos to be reeked. But you were too late, be content with flames, and be content with ashes."

But even as Ingolsol spoke, the gates opened.

Dominus found himself smiling. There it was, the will that was Beam. His will was not a conscious thought – it never could be. The mind was too fragile to endure what he had. Nor was it a product of his soul, even the soul would have been stained and corrupted by the malice that Beam had endured, and the malice that he had felt.

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