A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor

Chapter 381: The Promise of Dawn - Part 2

Pandora soon developed, as her Goblin developed. Her tendrils grew more varied in form, as she gave birth to more of the monsters across the world, as powers of different sorts became more accessible, as the emotions and heartache of thousands of years of warring were giving a more concrete form, with Divine energy, and Gods, mana, and everything in between.

Unchallenged Pandora went, for thousands upon thousands of years. She was the soul evil that their planet knew of, and even then, she was evil in an innocent sense, in the same way that man regards the poison snake as evil, for it has slain his comrade.

The rise of Ingolsol occurred sometime after. A blank spot in history. In truth, it was all a blank spot in history. The theologians – and the greatest of warriors, for the distance between the two was lesser than it might have been elsewhere – inferred these dates, through their observing of the world, and the responses that it gave them.

There was a time, in their history, when the west did burn. When flames rose up, nearly as high as the black mountains, as they licked up into the sky.

It was a time of catastrophe. A great ball of fire, in the night sky, sent crashing down towards their sandy shores.

It hit, and in an instant, thousands upon thousands of lives were snuffed out. Those that lived back then learned to curse the fire, for it burned for many days, taking all that was green and savoury, every drop of life that they'd known.

And then, when the floods came, they learned to curse that too.

When the very earth beneath their feet cracked out, and fissures formed, swallowing up whole towns, they cursed that as well.

Despair began its whisperings.

It was then that the theologians found their first sighting of Ingolsol's influence. The God of Despair, as he soon came to be known, for the curses he inflicted upon people, and the souls he stole, as he damaged them through their knowledge of the future.

It was then that they first knew of him, but none of the theologians dare to claim that he was not older. All the evidence seemed to point to this single origin, this great disaster, a period of fifty years that left the country teetering on the brink. If a single one of them had the courage to point a finger at it, and say 'this is when Ingolsol arose', then all around him would have to agree.

But they never did.

The reason for that? It hasn't been put into words. Or at least, it hasn't been put into words that anyone has yet recorded, or words that anyone has dared to speak.

But if one is to tell of Dominus, if they are to tell of the rise of the Dark Hero Beam, then he has to brave the dangers that come with prodding a stick into the terrifying fires that belong to Ingolsol.

For it was indeed fear that stopped the theologians from speaking of it. Rational men could not even bring themselves to put their pens in their inkwells, and make an attempt at a conclusion. The fear was too great.

Knowledge requires perspective, and if a man is to engage in dangerous knowledge, he should know what it is that he is getting himself into.

Of all the Gods, there was none with a more clouded history than Ingolsol. For all his trickery, he seemed to be a son of Pandora. And yet, from what they knew of Gods, the most powerful were those that stood as a symbol of a more isolated branch. A complicated line of thought, but in practicality, it proves more simple.

If there be a God of War, strong, and filled with mighty divine energy, enough to put him amongst the ranks of the very strongest, then a God of Battle – as a newer addition to the ranks of the Gods – would know lesser strength, for what he represented was largely covered by someone else.

So it came to be wondered – though none, for reasons they could not express, dared to ask it aloud – just why was it that Ingolsol supposedly wielded such power? Why of all the Gods, including Claudia, did it seem to be Ingolsol that could interact most freely with the mortal realm?

Was he, as a Dark God, not a simple son of Pandora? Did he not walk the same path as she? Should he be not limited by the power that the older more ancestral God had already drunk up from him?

Always pictured on a throne, always with a crown near him, in any that dared to express his visage in a painting, out of some twisted desire to gaze into the void, the most feared of all Gods. The hardest to understand.

The mere Curses of Ingolsol – the tiniest of fragments that ran up in correlation with feelings of despair – they were enough to send the soldiery into a panic. A Cursed Being that had lived for longer than a week was enough to notify the King. It was enough to summon the generals over. It was a natural disaster like a hurricane.

The man – or fragment, as he was – that Dominus faced off against, he went beyond a national-level threat.

If any military commander outside of their battling had laid eyes upon the scene, his blood would have left him. He would have abandoned his post on the spot. It would have taken a Great General to ensure that his men stood their ground. Even then, victory would have been uncertain, if even impossible.

The King would have been sent into hiding. The nearby town of Blackwell would have been evacuated. All that were strong would have been sent to do battle against this being, this natural disaster.

Even the air around Ingolsol seemed to know that was what he was. He'd morphed his own features into Francis'. It was as though someone had suddenly presented Francis at his best. All of his handsomeness remained, with none of his frailty. His face was filled out, his height taller, and his muscles thicker.