A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor

BAM!

Beam's boot collided with the door once more, this time bending the middle hinge of the door, nearly snapping it. The door was beginning to cave inwards on the left, though it was still held in place firmly by the bolted lock on one side.

'If you cared about the children, would you not have waited until they were gone?' A voice of doubt asked him, as he drew his boot back once more. He couldn't tell whether that voice was his own. He only knew that he didn't know.

He wrinkled his nose, as he tried to steady his blurring vision. It had been a while since the dizziness had hit him quite so strongly.

"You alright, boy?" The sergeant asked, noticing him stagger, and noticing the strained look on his face.

Beam didn't answer. He brought his boot back once again, and put all his uncertainty into a single forceful kick.

BAM!

The door finally caved completely on the left side. Not enough that it yet completely revealed what was inside, but enough that Beam could force the door back with his hands, and step through.

Before he went, he gave a look to the sergeant. The sergeant seemed to know what he meant, for he came forward with the torch, and shined it through the gap where Beam was heading.

Beam put his shoulder against the door, and forced the gap wider. The wood creaked, as it was forced to give, with the bolts still ruthlessly holding it in place on the right side. Beam's sword was grasped in both of his hands. He was prepared to swing and take a limb the moment he laid eyes upon the Elder. His eyes danced with anticipation.

He stepped into the darkness.

The room was larger than he had first thought it would be – but that was all he could tell. That, and how cluttered the space was, along with the foul stench in the air. It was only when the sergeant stepped into the room after him that they were able to truly reveal the vast space.

"Gods…" For the second time that day, the sergeant found himself murmuring that. He found him lacing his fingers together in prayer at his waist, as he muttered for Claudia's protection against the evil.

Beam felt his sword lower. The readiness that he'd entered with was replaced by an acute uncertainty. The anger that he'd been so ready to direct was snatched away from him.

Indeed, they'd found the Elder, just as they'd hoped. Well, it actually went beyond what they'd hoped – they'd assumed the man himself to be long gone, and it to be some servant or another that was keeping the house in his name.

They'd found the Elder – or at least what was left of him.

The man Beam saw looked – oddly – a little more youthful than the Elder that he was familiar with seeing. A strange thing to note, now that he was looking at a corpse.

He'd dressed himself in the same dark robes that Beam had seen those forest shadows wear, yet unlike those shadows, Beam could quite clearly see his face, for his hood had been forced, and a puddle of dried blood decorated the area around his mouth.

It was hard to tell just what had killed him. Whether it was the stake through his throat – for the Elder's body was now held entirely upright by such a thing. It was as though that wooden stake had been hammered into the wall for the express purpose of killing the man.

The point of it was facing outwards, though, and Beam saw the partially shattered remains of a boar skull, that he assumed had been making use of the stake before the Elder.

Now, the stakes in his hands – those were certainly hammered in. It was their blunt points that faced outwards. It was as though an artist had taken inspiration from an accidental, or even natural occurrence, and merely added to it.

But again, it was hard to tell quite what had killed him. For there was that stake through his throat, and those stakes through his hands – but there was also a massive gaping hole where his stomach had been.

The sergeant's torch cowered for only a moment, hesitant to reveal the corpse in all its horrific glory. But then his experience took over, as the veteran of many battlefields, who had seen men mangled and maimed in more ways than he could count.

With the torch held closer, it was hard not to spot the strange state of the wound that the Elder bore. "…It's been charred closed," the sergeant noted, both awed and horrified.

A few of his lower ribs had been removed, along with all his intestines, his kidneys, and half his liver. A hole the size of a picture frame – that's what he'd been left with. And yet not a drop of blood stained his clothes. Nor did anything leave its perfect position. It was as though the wound had been instantly charred, closed the moment that it had happened.

Neither Beam nor the sergeant was particularly well-versed in such things. There was only one word that seemed fitting for it. "Magic," Beam muttered. The sergeant nodded along with him. It was just as evil a thing as he had been led to believe. To the sergeant, the remnants of that magic seemed to explain the haunting evil that still sat in the air.

They turned away from the corpse, to acknowledge the carnage that had taken place in the rest of the room.

The man that they'd labelled guilty, long before even discovering his body, he was now dead. It was difficult to say just what sort of role he'd played in the abduction of the children – whether he was merely the whipped dog of someone else, forced to do everything that he did. Or whether he was part of a more give-and-take relationship, one that had gone wrong.