A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor

"You think highly of this third one then, aye?" Gorm said, his voice quieting as he came to a rest in his attack. "Is he your victory condition? Are you fool enough to put it all on that? More fool you, strategist. We have one of our own."

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Gorm continued to speak, even as Lombard merely eyed him placidly, betraying no reaction to his words. How could he? He did not understand a single one that he breathed. And yet somehow, with that latest line, it was as though Lombard understood.

"It'll be your promising youth against mine, then," he said. "Let us see who reigns supreme."

He neglected to add – even if Gorm could not understand him – that his youth was not his own. His youth belonged to a man mightier than he'd ever seen. Perhaps the man that might overshadow even Arthur himself. It was he that had seen potential in the boy, and it was he that nurtured it.

And with a sound like booming thunder, that very man had taken a step across a boundary that even Arthur himself had never managed to scrape.

With a groan, Dominus rolled onto his side. His whole body felt numb from the exertion. He touched a hand to his purpled shoulder. It felt as though fire was coursing through his veins.

He went to flex a hand. In the past, when he'd crossed each Boundary, this would be when he marvelled at the potential that he'd achieved, at this new level of strength, at this new level of insight and understanding about how the world worked.

But this time, his success only brought him closer to death.

He could hear the battlefield off in the distance. He could feel the presence of many mighty men. He realized that he should attempt to join them.

He tried to shift himself from his rock, as he sat beside a deep and plunging waterfall, high up in the Black Mountains. Yet even his new strength could not stop him from tumbling to the ground in a display that was thoroughly pathetic, especially for Stormfront's strongest warrior – nay, even then, he was likely the strongest even out of all the countries that bordered the Stormfront.

"Damn it," he complained again, as he forced himself to his feet.

In return for passing through the Sixth Boundary, he'd given up even more of his body to the Pandora Goblin's poison. It now affected most of his flesh. All four limbs were blackened by it. Most of his chest was too. It narrowly avoided his heart, but it was not by much.

He sat there on his side, sweating. But even as he sweat, and he struggled, he could not help grinning.

He dared not shout out, or give way to too much excitement, for that would only allow the poison to spread further, but the jubilation that ran through him was more extreme than even the new power that he'd grasped himself.

He'd gone about this training, at first motivated, at first inspired, thanks to the new outlook that his apprentice had given him. In training the boy, he'd begun to see the world differently, it had opened up something for him.

But then when he'd truly pushed himself once more, the same resistance that he'd felt for nearly a decade was there, constant and immovable.

He puzzled over that – he'd made progress, that much was true. Just like the rivers that he spoke so often of, he'd gone backwards by a great deal, in order to make his way forwards, but then that resistance had hit him again.

And yet, in the same instance, he'd been hit with an inconsistency. Something that ran contrary to that understanding of progress that he'd built up after all these years. Why was it that teaching the boy had brought out such progress? Was it the achievements that the boy had displayed, or was it the heart?

It was of course both those things, but it was more too. Dominus had learned time and time again that information without a foundation to support it was useless. Learning an advanced sword strike without first knowing the basics would be far more arduous than it would otherwise be.

The same was true of the inspiration the boy had given him, the progress that it had lent him – if the foundation was not already there, then he would have taken nothing from it.

He fell to thinking of the sword masters of the past. Those who sword by calligraphy and art as a means to strengthen their blade. Dominus had only seen foolishness in that his entire life, but now he was beginning to see why that might work. For progress to come from a place contrary to the one that he worked on…. It was odd for him.

It made him wonder, perhaps progress was not the straight path of a river. At least, it didn't feel like that any longer for him, not as a mortal man. It felt more like the gentle lapping of the sea. To send waves in at a cliff, and gradually wear it down. He needed both strength and distance in his waves.

He'd felt both of those today, when the realization hit. The snow had fallen, and he'd given all he had to progress. He realized that he should have taught earlier, but then he knew no other pupil would have interested him like Beam. It required a peculiarity of Beam's magnitude to thaw Dominus' rigidness.

And now, below the gaze of the Gods, they had let loose thunder in acknowledgement of his achievement. He felt their praise, and he ignored it – for he could feel in his body that he would soon be joining them anyway.

Before that, he had a task, he had to crawl his way to the battlefield that his apprentice fought on. He had to ensure this knowledge that he had salvaged did not go to waste.

And yet, his limbs were blackened and immovable. The only thing he could really do was blink.

"To think, at this point, the paths of swordsmen and mages would begin to intersect," Dominus noted with a wry smile. Once again, his expectations had been shattered. Once more, the answer lay outside the narrow framework that he'd set for himself. It was the power that few could reach, yet many tried.

Inspired by Beam, he'd sought to add that to his own swordsmanship – but only very recently did he begin to understand what that meant.