A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor

Chapter 19: Blood and Bruises - Part 2

"Tsch, is that it? Already hunching up like a damn turtle?" Judas came strutting over to get his share of the torture in. He wound up his massive leg and booted Beam in the stomach with all the force he could muster. Beam clumsily attempted to time a small jump off his hands with the kick, so that when the kick landed, he went flying. He rolled over himself two times, then three times, then four, before his back hit a tree and he came to a stop.

Because of his little jump, the kick looked far harder than it was and it even took the sting away. As clumsy as the jump had been, Judas and his fellow debt collectors didn't seem to notice, for they merely tutted at Beam as he lay there sprawled out upon the roots of the tree, coughing up bile.

"Well, I suppose that'll do for now," Judas said aloud, resting his baton on his shoulder as he picked wax out of his ear with his free hand.

Beam glared at him with ferocity in his eyes. A look that was enough to make Judas shiver.

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"C'mon… Don't look at me like that, lad. You know I'm just doing my job. Got to get paid, after all. And this just pays better than everything else."

"Best not leave the landlord waiting too long, boy, otherwise we'll be back to see you again soon," he said, waving his hand as he left. The two other thugs left with him.

Dominus watched on as the men left, his eyes narrowed, looking at the boy huddled in a ball on the floor. He'd felt the shift in aura, the presence of darkness. Dominus assumed that the big man Judas must have felt it too, given the look on his face, but being of merely the first boundary, Judas could not sense it nearly as well as Dominus did.

For Dominus, it sent adrenaline into his bloodstream in an instant. For, after all, it was the presence of a God. The most powerful of all the Dark Gods as well – Ingolsol. Even if it was only the tiniest portion of his presence, in the form of a curse, to a mortal it may as well have been the weight of the entire universe.

"If the boy knew the true nature of that which he was afflicted with, would he be able to stay so balanced?" Dominus murmured. It was not as though the boy was locking up his emotions either – he was allowing the darkness to present itself, yet he was not losing control over it. It was an unfathomable reality. And likely something only possible after such a long time spent living with it.

"Gugh…" Only when he could no longer hear their footsteps did Beam make any attempt to move. Sitting up was a bit of a nightmare. A horrible bout of sickness overwhelmed him from the ringing in his head, and he wretched up vomit there and then.

It took a few minutes more before he regained his bearings entirely. His hand went to his face and came away red. His nose was bleeding and there was a cut above his eye, and his clothes were all covered in ash too from the remains of his old home.

"Heh…" he sighed, looking at the blood on his hand. "This is such a pain…"

Out of all the missions Dominus had given him for the month, improving his reputation was going to be the hardest.

His hand felt around his stomach and ribs. "Not broken, thank goodness," he murmured to himself. No bones were broken, but he was certainly bruised. It would take a good couple of weeks before the results of the violence faded.

"And now I have to… Go and get bread?" He reminded himself. "Then do that other thing after… Hah."

He eyed the sky. It was getting late into the morning. If he didn't hurry, then he would be doing his runs in the dark.

He stood on wobbly legs, almost falling back to the floor again. "My head…" he moaned as his vision blurred for a few seconds and pain wracked his skull. But it was a dizziness he'd grown used to and it soon stabilized. Then it was the pain of his torso that took over, not letting him forget for a single second the beating he had endured.