A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor
Chapter 1460 - 1460: The Grand Strategist - Part 6

Now when she spoke to him, the beast cowered. She was a more terrifying Fragment for him than even Ingolsol could have been. He thought her face to be filled with mockery, as if disdaining all that a man held valuable, and overwhelming. "Come, little lion, show them your teeth," she said jeeringly, threateningly. She had never struck him with physical force, despite that armour that she wore. This aggressive Claudia, in fact, was easier for Blackwell to deal with than the creature that he'd first been burdened with.

What had come to him then, when he was at the height of his rage, and his strength, yearning for the Second Boundary, had been a girl, of his age, and the most terrifying extent of sweetness. He'd been told that he'd fainted in the outer courtyard of the Academy, but Blackwell still maintained to this day that he'd been transported somewhere else entirely. It was a summer meadow in his mind, with a large, well canopied tree, and a silver-haired girl of the most incredible beauty, sitting reading a book under it.

Just looking at her had stunned him. He hadn't needed to say a word. Long grass of yellow brushed at his waist. He was fully armoured – for reasons he didn't quite understand – but his plate metal made him feel only slower, and weaker.

The girl had looked up from her reading, showing him her purple eyes, and the most crushing, wounding smile that he could have ever been delivered. He felt his eyes water, to the point of tears, just from that single gesture – but he had not allowed himself to cry. Lord Blackwell hadn't allowed tears to stream from his face since his father had scolded him as a young boy of five. That girl, just in appearance, had threatened to break that in an instant.

"Hello, great Lord," she had told him. Back then, there hadn't at all been anything great about him. The House of Blackwell was weaker than it had been in two centuries. Only in his head and in his rage had he managed to grasp anything that approached strength.

That rage, like a beast, swirled around in him constantly. It made him a master in arms and warfare. Some even liked to say that it made him grow up faster than his fellow man. At the mere age of sixteen, he'd had a full beard, and shoulders broad enough that they threatened to be stuck in the doorway, along with an intimidating and respectable towering height. He was convinced of his own aptitude for greatness, long before any other was – for who else could believe in it but he? He saw the Blackthorns, and what they had won for themselves, as the most famed attacking Generals and Colonels in the kingdom, and he dared to believe that he could rival it.

All that intensity, and that emotion, and in an instant, the manifestation of Claudia that he had seen had shattered it. He looked at her, and his fire died. So easily did she match him, with such an effortless sweetness that even she did not seem to understand.

The slight tilt of her youthful head was more powerful than any spear thrust that he had practised thousands of times. He stood there, utterly stunned, feeling as if there were a hole in his chest. He had never known a defeat like that before. Against men and women alike, he was a man of the utmost overwhelm. At times, it had hurt him to see how women shied away from him, knowing his intensity, misunderstanding that a man of his chivalry would never do anything to hurt them – or so he had convinced himself. But the truth was, his rage was dangerous and erratic. He preferred to keep his distance, for fear of shattering that illusion for himself.

"Why do you stand there like a stranger, great Lord Blackwell?" The girl said, closing her book with a delicate little pop, and cupping her chin in her hand to look at him. Her smile was playful, and teasing, but always overwhelmingly sweet.

Indeed – it was overwhelming. In a different way to what Blackwell was. He thought himself to be a poison, and that Goddess before him was the antidote, effective enough to snuff him out entirely.

He could never have hoped to go to her, so she instead had come to him. With her white dress fluttering behind her, she'd slipped away from the shade of her tree, out into the open sunlight, and she had danced before him. He found that her height was barely enough to make it up to his chest, but with her fearless grin, one would never have thought as much.

"You're wearing armour," she noted with a smile. "Are there enemies around here, or are you looking for a fight?"

She rose up her hands playfully to accent that fact, and then gave him a little jab towards his torso. He looked down at where her fingers had reached him, his expression eternally stunned, his mind white. "Ohhh, was I too fast for you?" She said. "Let's see if you can track this one."

She struck him again. "I thought you were the best in your class, in matters of the martial, Lord Blackwell? You trained realllly hard, but is this all that your training has won you?"

From anyone else, those words would have cut deep enough to castrate his heart, but from her, they gave him the daring he finally needed. He raised up a hand as if to fight her. She struck him again, as fast as a fox, and giggled as she danced back through the grass. She invited that he chase him, and so he did.

After having his armour beat like a drum for a while, he finally worked up the courage to throw a light jab of his own. He found Claudia's stomach, and instantly worried from the noise of it. But she laughed at him, and threw an attack straight back. "You're realllly bad!" She told him, managing to work a smile from his lips, as he tried his fight again, with more speed that time.