A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor
Chapter 1677 - 1677: The Coming Storm - Part 1

"And you suppose that time to be now? By your hand?" King Pendragon asked. "Why?"

"Because I have seen firsthand what this corruption has done," Queen Asabel said. "And because I know I am not alone in thinking so. This is the will of my allies, of the people closest to me, whom I respect. It is not simply a decision borne out of the back of my mind, on some whim."

"To start a rebellion with no forward planning, that was not a whim?" The Pendragon King said.

Queen Asabel did not reply. "I say again, King Pendragon, Queen Pendragon. I order you both to surrender and cede your lands to my alliance."

"Who will rule them in our stead?" King Pendragon asked.

"I shall," Queen Asabel replied.

He looked at her. His face was aged now, but there was still the trace of the handsomeness that had been there in youth, though there were just as many wrinkles to attempt to mar it, and his golden mane that had once shone in the sun was now thin, and dull. He looked at her hard enough that he might have glared a hole through her. For the distance between the two of them, for the intensity of that stare, for Queen Asabel, he might have only been a nose away.

Whatever it was he saw, it seemed to please him not. He tore his silver crown from his head, and he launched it from the top of his steps, down along the marble walkway, and set it bouncing to just a few steps away from Queen Asabel's feet.

"You take that," he said, "daughter of mine. And you take it on my will, yes? You wear it, not as this Queen of a faction that you have made. You wear it as Queen Pendragon, ruler of all your lands. If you are to burn it all to the ground, then the least you can do is stand firm and unified as you do so."

"Father—" Queen Pendragon tried to say.

"I am not your father," King Pendragon said. "Nor am I your King. The wounds you have sowed between us are far too deep."

He threw his sword down then too.

"Now I am nothing," he said. "I am no Pendragon. I am no royal. I am no man. I forsake my name, I forsake my titles. Will you still take me prisoner regardless?"

"…I have to," Asabel said, her voice cracking, as she bit her lip, unable to return even an ounce of the favour that her father had shown her.

"Very well," King Pendragon said. "Then see it done, and show no weakness. If you are committing to this foolish cause, then go all the way – for that is the way you were raised. If you remember none of my teachings, then at least remember the will of the Pendragon House. Fire and honour, Queen Asabel. I pray that you shall know when to use both.

"Oliver Patrick," General Blackthorn said, the name coming out of his mouth as a growl.

The younger man had vacated his rooms in the Blackwell estate, out of respect for the newly arrived General. Something about that, however, rubbed General Blackthorn up the wrong way. To him, it was an unnecessary display of respect. He would not have ordered that Oliver move regardless – for the sake of the efficiency of the building of their encampment. And yet the young man had done it anyway, and the way that he had done it seemed almost arrogant, as if he had done it ironically, rather than genuinely.

"And Blackwell – he has no taste," Blackthorn said, sniffing at the state of the room that he found himself in. It was far too finely furnished. It stunk of the fashion sense of a woman. There were all sorts of unnecessary items on display. Fine tea sets imported from the Verna, with little jade rims around the porcelain centre. There were gold medals dangling from the walls, the relics of hundreds of years ago, when House Black had been a unity. Those, at least, Blackthorn could appreciate, but not to the degree that he could ignore the rest of it.

The defence of Ernest was the task that the man was given, but as of yet, he did not know quite how he intended to operate. He had arrived in the city, only to find that the state of it was far different from what he had been imagining on his travels to the west.

He almost felt mad, with how jolting the reality was compared to what had expected. He would have been convinced he was that, if his Colonels hadn't reacted the same way. Apparently, it was most certainly an unusual sight, to see all the prisoners gathered as they were, and the soldiers thusly organized.

It was like he had wandered into someone else's cooking halfway through. He hardly knew what went in the pot, or what Oliver had constructed his tower of cards out of. It made him reluctant to give orders, for fear he'd send the whole thing collapsing – and that very reluctance made him even more irritated. There ought not to have been anything complicated enough built by Oliver Patrick's hands that he could not decipher.

He was forced to gather information. He might have summoned the young man himself, and questioned him directly, but already Oliver Patrick was growing increasingly famed for his innsubordinance. He had ignored Blackwell's orders on more than one occasion, and Blackthorn didn't want to give him any excuse to do the same with him.

"We'll be paying General Fitzer a visit then, my Lord?" Reid asked, knowing already what Blackthorn's intentions were – they hadn't shifted since he had voiced them a short while earlier. "Now, or after you have eaten?"

"We'll see it done now," Blackthorn said.

And so it was, he found himself in a room just a short distance down the corridor, not too different to his own, and face to face with a General Fitzer. That was another usual state – how closely Oliver had kept his high-ranking prisoners to his own room. There was just a loose guard on one side of the door, and that was all. Some thick bolts had been all that truly stood between General Fitzer and freedom. And yet the man had practically chosen to stay as he was.