"So what now? Will you overpower him?" Desebel asked. "That would be quite the drama, do you not think?"
"Would that I could," Ingolsol sighed, though he didn't look too disheartened. "My will grows in him. The fragment he bears of me has been given a voice. It talks to him. I can hear it whisper. Simple words, maddening words, but they have an effect.
I suppose I better commend Francis for finally being useful, and granting the opportunity."
"He's probably going to die," Desebel pointed out. "Does that not ruin the game for you?"
"If he dies, he dies. I will still have my moment. As he is now, his death would let me reach that princess, if only for a moment. Ah, how startled she will be. I can't wait to see it," Ingolsol said, laughing heartily.
"You still love her," Desebel noted.
"Have I ever denied it?" Ingolsol asked.
"No." Desebel said, as she looked away, uncomfortable, searching for a change in topic.
"What of Francis? Will you reward him for the good work he's done for you?" She asked.
"Reward him?" The question made the God go silent for a moment, before he boomed his laughter. "Of course not. I'm not some dog to come when people prepare treats for me."
"Then why did you give him power in the first place?" Came the obvious question.
Of course, Ingolsol's presence was there – he felt it. He knew it. It made his bones ache, like an arthritic sensing poor weather. Ingolsol was here, and he was watching, as he was sure other Gods were. But none could peer through that shield of darkness other than he, his Lordship, Dark God of Despair, Ingolsol.
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This wouldn't be good enough for him, Francis knew there.
He was a clever man. He'd always been a clever man. If something was not working, he would not lie to himself and insist that he was. He moved on a very particular set of facts – a strange, and possibly mad worldview, for true, but a worldview that had afforded him as much power as he currently had, the power to have a whole village burst into flame with a single click of his fingers.
And yet why did they not kneel? Why were they still standing there, cautiously, tensely, without even a backward step, as though they meant to fight him?
What was that boy that they all insisted on shouldering forward, that they all kept glancing to, as though he was the centrepiece in some massive art gallery.
He didn't understand it. Francis was far from the laws of society. He didn't feel the same conformist gravities that afflicted them, so he was unable to tell what it was that made a man kneel, that made lovers fall in love, that made children choose their friends. He was a stranger to it all. He was a stranger to people in general.
He could not see it, he could not understand it, and thus he raged against it.
He clicked his fingers for what must have been the fifth time, and once more a barrage of icicles shot and that encampment.
There were fifteen of them, and that was where those three knights were gathered. He still insisted on calling them knights in his head, for he knew the auras. He would not fall for their tricks in suggesting that the boy was no knight at all – for none but a knight would give off the strong scent of Claudia's love, of her blessing.
He knew that, for he had sought such a thing. He was no peasant either – he was a man of the Serving Class. He was an entirely different species to the mere peasantry. To suggest that a peasant could receive Claudia's favour when all his efforts had failed, it was beyond insult, beyond lies, and pure, deafening folly.