A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor

"You are very much fire trapped in a bottle," he tutted. "You will either burn your way through, or you'll die out and disappear… As long as we serve in the same army, I will not allow you to die out."

That was as close to approval as Lombard ever came. He gave a swift begrudging nod, and then he turned on his heel, returning to his men.

"Begin the descent," Lombard ordered. "We shall start work on ordering our supplies. Camp will need to be made."

Even as the others allowed the moment to worm its way into their hearts, Lombard still dragged his mind back towards reality, and he told them – as he always did – just what needed to be done. Oliver had to smile, even if he wasn't quite ready to leave himself just yet.

He looked up one final time to glance at Karstly, and he clenched his fist tight enough that his fingernails drew blood from his palm. "Progress, Dominus, I do swear it," Oliver said. "Where that man stands now, I will stand there soon enough. I cannot allow myself to stay the same."

A small stream of blood swam through his fingers, and ran down through the bottom of his fist. Each drop of red that landed on the hard boulder gave Oliver even more certainty. Drip, drip, drip, it went, and with it, so too stirred his Fragments.

The Goddess Claudia, so generous and so motherly in her personality, and still she stirred with Progress came to be. Hers was a want that burned even hotter than Ingolsol's own fires. She made herself seem a meek God, meek enough that all of the Stormfront felt that they could approach her in worship, yet in that heart, at the centre of her being, they was indeed something of a beast.

She knew the cruelty that Progress demanded of a man, and yet she pushed him towards it anyway, just as she pushed all her subjects towards it.

"Fangs and teeth, mortals," the Fragment said. "Cultivate them in yourselves. They are the only weapons that you have against your cruel fate."

It was the coldest that Oliver had heard her. It made his mind white for a brief moment of icy stillness. The divinity was overpowering. They were times in which both Fragments had seemed almost human, but it was in moments like these that Oliver was forced to remember their heavenly origins.

For once, even Ingolsol did not pounce on what Claudia had said. Instead, he laughed. A truly hearty laugh.

"Something remembers in me," Ingolsol said, his voice was almost a purr, but much more of a growl. "There's something about you, wench, squirrelled away in your tiny little heart. Enough that it excites even me."

Claudia did not make to reply, but her thoughtfulness reached both Oliver and his other Fragment.

"Power," Ingolsol continued. "If you do not snatch it, others will. If you were satisfied, boy, I would have overtaken you. Allow your greed to fester, and allow it to drive you. Otherwise you'll end up as boring as every other mortal in this realm…"

Even Ingolsol seemed different, in that moment. There was a distance to his words. Usually they had an edge to them, so sharp that they might have run a man through – but then there was only distance, as if he was truly trying to remember what he'd said he had.

Both Fragments were unaware that the strange calling that they felt was nothing something that they had imagined.

From the realms of the Gods, both Claudia and Ingolsol watched the field of that battle.

Claudia, from by her pool, as she watched the waters stir with narrowed eyes, and Ingolsol from upon his throne, as he stared into the goblet that held the redness of his wine.

"Do you feel it, Demon?" He asked that servant of his, so distinctly like Claudia in her appearance.

"…I might," she replied cautiously. She wasn't sure. She was honest to a fault. A fact that often irritated Ingolsol.

The great Dark God arose from his chair, tutting through the motion, dissatisfied, as always, with the woman's input. He'd seen all he wished to see from the mortal realm – at least for now. There was beginning a change.

"These halls…" Ingolsol said, marching down the steps of his throne. "They have contained me for far too long." His voice echoed around the vast space, so replete with shadows. "But now there begins a shift."

The demon followed after him, her dress trailing down the steps as she went, and her heels clacking off the black stone floors.

"You know to follow," Ingolsol noted. "Do you know where we are headed?"

"I do," the demon replied. More than once did Ingolsol drag her along the path through his halls, all the way down towards the back of it, where the shadows extended even more thickly, and a man – or God – could not see, unless he was right before it.

It felt a great distance when the shadows pressed around like that, but Ingolsol showed no shred of fear. The Domain of Darkness was not a place where he had been born, but it was a place that he had grown used to.

With an outstretched palm, he plunged his hand through the curtain of black, and he hit upon something hard, and cold.

Only when he touched it did it reveal itself, as everything else plunged itself into that endless dark. The darkness in that domain was like no other. It spread like a disease. It seized upon all forms of light. The only thing that offered even the slightest flicker of illumination was the throne upon which Ingolsol sat and the golden eyes of the Dark God himself.

With his palm touching it, there was revealed a door, bigger than a man, bigger than an elephant, bigger even than every palace in the mortal realm. It extended up, far enough that one could not see where it ended. So too did extend to the left and the right, beyond a distance that Ingolsol's eyes could successfully illuminate. But they needed not to.

His focus was on its centre, and on its many locks, and its many chains.