A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor
Chapter 1386 - 1386: Brilliance - Part 5

"What?" Oliver said, caught off guard by her use of that term.

Ingolsol sneered heartily at it as well. "A lesser Fragment, indeed," he said. "Your wits begin to fail you, Claudia. It will not be long before you succumb to me entirely. Why don't you try again, and choose a more fitting word?"

"I stand by it," Claudia said defiantly. "His intentions, they were innocent."

"How can a man that witnessed such slaughters and such atrocities, in a time that was far worse than ours possibly, be described as innocent, Claudia? He knew far more of the world than I do, I do suppose. Every thing that you would hope to shield the innocent from, he bore witness to," Oliver said.

"And was uncorrupted by. He looked at it all with innocent eyes. Did you not feel that in his writing, Oliver?" Claudia said.

"I don't understand that. No man who has slain thousands, and has seen tens of thousands more die by the orders he gave, could ever be innocent. That doesn't make a lick of sense," Oliver said.

"Even the Vessel sees through you, Claudia," Ingolsol said. "Is that not laughable? When you divinity is so meagre, and so easily corrupted, that the minds of a mortal can hope to spar with it – why, you ought to be laughed out of the heavens. Even the dark of the realm that you sent me to could not shield you from that shame. Perhaps I'd make a servant of you, for my amusement."

Claudia ignored Ingolsol, and clung defiantly to her point, almost to a degree that Oliver was beginning to find childish. He could not see her, but he could imagine her folding her arms, and pouting, as she was attacked from two different angles.

"Is the wild not that?" Claudia said. "Do the bears and wolves not tear apart their prey, in a manner that is most brutal and filled with blood? They commit innocent acts that we would not want the innocent to see, lest it corrupt them. But that does not make the bears or the wolves less innocent. They follow their nature. To live by the instincts that you were born with, without malice, is that not innocence?"

"Without malice…" Oliver said, scratching his chin. Now even he was having a hard time deciding what innocence even was. The bears, the wolves, the animals of the wild, they did seem to be innocent. "What of monsters, then? Their nature is to attack, and slaughter."

"With malice buried firmly in their hearts. They are beings made of hatred. They hate humans to the point that it puts their very lives in danger," Claudia said. "They are the vestiges of Pandora. A corruption that would not arise naturally. Do you not see, then, how a wolf kills without hatred?"

"This idea of not killing with hatred…" Oliver said. "It seems too thin a line to define innocence with."

"But do you not begin to have a sense for what I mean, when I describe it as that? Innocence is, after all, a quality that is hard to put your finger on. But do you not sense it in the people around you, a pureness of heart, that makes you trust them more readily?" Claudia said.

Somehow, Claudia was beginning to talk the two of them down. Oliver could no longer think of any counter points, and Ingolsol himself had gone quiet.

"So… You suppose the First King to have been a fine man, because, even though he sent his men to the slaughter, quite readily, he didn't do so with malicious intentions? They were innocent?" Oliver said.

"You humans are very different creatures," Claudia said. "You might look at each other, and suppose you have much in common, but when we view you from the heavens, and as Fragments inside of you, we see the variation in you. Your natures are entirely different. In following your natures, you end up on different paths. The nature of the First King was the nature of a General. He could wield the lives of thousands, as the most natural thing in the world, in the same way that a wolf hunts. It was not a question of morality for him. He did not have to force each limb to move, in a bid to understand his own intentions. He knew right from the start what it meant to battle, and it was his nature to accept it wholeheartedly. A wolf does not wonder if it is morally right to slaughter a deer."

"…A very different sort of man to me, then," Oliver said, heaving a sigh. "If I am to listen to you, Claudia, it would seem I am doomed from the start. I have none of that innocence, I do not think. But I suppose… I suppose your understanding of the First King is already better than mine… How strange."

"How strange for the wench not to be immediately wrong on something," Ingolsol said, with what almost sounded like begrudging agreement.

"I suppose it is only natural that you would have a better sense for him than I…" Oliver said. "Given that you chose him. But I really want to understand. There seems to be something to this that's of crucial importance, and I just don't feel like I've got a grasp on its entirety yet."

"I admit, that only in speaking of it, am I beginning to understand it myself," Claudia said. "I could have not summoned such a thought up instantly, but I do believe I am beginning to understand why I favoured him. A man capable of innocently leading thousands, in a time of war… It's an incredible personality."

"Did he aim for anything?" Oliver wondered. "Did he not wish for a unified Stormfront? A home for his people?"

"Not in the same way that you might wish, Vessel, or the way other humans might wish…" Claudia said. The way she paused, at times, it was almost as if she was beginning to remember something herself. "He seemed to have been born with that desire built into the foundations of his body. Like a stream seems to know to pursue the eventual goal of the sea… He didn't think on it, and because of it, every step he took was the purest form of progress. He played his way into a position of the utmost power. He was having fun the whole way."

"That's… Unreasonably unfair," Oliver groaned.