A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor

"DIE!" Francis voiced, a single word, tinged by a spray of spittle, a handsome man, marred by his own erraticness.

But all his icy attacks had achieved was a cloud of dust and obscurity. Dominus emerged, unfazed, his sword still calmly by his side.

"Juvenile," he told him, his voice betrayed no anger.

That single word was enough to cut right through the heart of Francis' being. It was the same look that he had seen others give him, men of higher status, the old professors that had seen promise in him. It was pity, mixed with something else. Was it disappointment? Whatever it was, it was an infuriating concoction.

Francis had the might of the world at his fingertips, or so he felt. His mage was only limited by his imagination and his efficiency. His lack of known spells did not prove to be an issue any longer, for he did not need the comfortable scope that a spell provided. His mana was so vast that he could simply force his magic into existence.

"EARTH HANDS!" It was not a spell, it was merely the image that he had in his mind. He wanted to crush Dominus like the bug he was. He wanted to demonstrate the difference in power between him and the man in front of him. The difference between Francis the Mage, and those dogs that followed the traditional path, those that had scorned him.

At his words, two hands of earth – three times the size of a man – sprung up out of the ground, either side of Dominus. Before the villagers could even register what it was they were seeing, the hands slapped angrily together, without a shred of resistance.

A brief pause.

The briefest.

Even the anguished villagers, so devoid of emotion, so tired after such a long ride – even they were beginning to feel something now. They'd followed the battle with their eyes without particularly intending to, without real care for the outcome, but now they felt the slightest emotion crawl back in. Anxiety for that man… and possibly hope.

But the hands only stood for as long as gravity allowed them to. The slash that dismantled them both seemed to have been executed by something even faster than Francis' magic.

The tops of the fingers of the Earth Hands slid off, falling to the ground with a mighty crash. Dominus continued walking, unscathed, towards that tower where Francis stood.

It was not speed that Dominus needed to finish the man off. It was not the race against time that it had been a few moments before. Instead, it was more like fitting a key into a lock. He solved the puzzle in front of him carefully, and as he did it, he solved the one behind it as well.

"WHAT MANNER OF MAGIC DO YOU WIELD, SWORDSMAN?" Francis asked in dismay. His eyes had been unable to follow what had happened, even after he had enhanced them. But it was not his eyes that failed to track the movement – it was his mind. He had not existed in the same martial realm that Dominus had, he could not hope to swim in those waters, nor understand their depths.

"Magic? That was simple swordsplay," Dominus said, as though he was informing a child. "You've gobbled yourself a vast amount of power, mage, but you're missing the ingredient that makes it all tick."

"The ingredient?" Francis asked quietly. For a moment, those words hit him with a profundity. He'd opened his eyes with a wide panic, as an anxiety assailed him, and he rushed around all four corners of his mind trying to find something that he missed. But quickly his calm took over – or his madness – and he dismissed it. "YOU CANNOT DISTRACT ME WITH PETTY WORD GAMES! I WILL CRUSH YOU!

CRUSH YOU, I WILL!"

Dominus sighed. "This is the sort of man your country could have had a use for, Lombard," he said, speaking back of his shoulder. Though he was quite a distance away by now, his words reached the Captain. Lombard found himself looking at the mage with a frown.

"Indeed," he thought. "I would have a use for that, in the same way, a man needs a solid trebuchet for a siege."

Francis cast another spell in fury, he knew they were mocking him. He started to play with more of the elements now, things that he had been unable to tap into before, before these long preparations, and before this vast power. He hit Dominus with fire.

He swept his hand aside, and a tsunami of flame blossomed in front of the path that Dominus walked. Dominus paused in front of it, as though alarmed – but there was a grin on his lips. He stepped through it without further hesitation. Not even his clothes caught aflame.

At this, the villagers did gasp. They'd managed to summon the barest fragment of an emotion that they did not have the energy for. Their hearts began to realize what it was that their eyes were seeing – a master at work. The strongest warrior in all of Stormfront. They did not know it quite in those terms, but their heart put it in other words for them: 'to the front, there stands a great man.'

It was not a suspenseful fight, like that they saw from Beam. There was no will, no passion, no frantic pounding against the doors of fate, demanding that they be let through. This was the chill of seeing a master at work, someone unparalleled in his profession, and none felt those chills greater than Tolsey and Lombard.

"FOULNESS! TRICKERY!" Francis said in dismay, horrified to see his powerful magic cast aside so easily, as though it was nothing more than a sharp breath of cold wind, something to be overcome merely by tolerating it.

"Trickery?" Dominus said, regarding the flames. "There's no strength in this. This is mere ordinary fire. Do you only know how to increase the size of your magic? Have you not strength?"

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