A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor
Chapter 1785 - 1785: By Claudia's Will - Part 1

Was he a foolish man for seeing it, and being as excited by it as he was? Or was he simply that which a normal man was bound to experience? By the blood of his own fingernails, he'd clawed his way up a mountain reserved for geniuses, and he was afforded the view from atop its walls that he had now. The view that let him see the likes of Karstly and his struggles from above, and the view that let him see the growth of Queen Asabel. Naturally, he could not help but find himself moved. It was not his destiny that carried them all, but he was content with that. He wanted to see, more desperately than he wanted his heart to continue beating, just how far it was that Queen Asabel would go – and just what sort of destiny did await her?

Would she, in her legend, eclipse even Arthur, without having ever picked up the sword? Broadstone could believe it. For she was beyond soldier, beyond man and flesh. Something more of the faerie realm.

On the wall atop his fortress, Broadstone went to his knees, in front of hundreds of his men. Broadstone was not a man that impressed religion on any of those that followed him. Rarely did he even speak of such matters. To him, it was an expressly personal, increasingly delicate thing. He didn't want another to influence him, or risk punching a hole in that intensity of belief that so animated him. Quietly was he religious, but fiercely.

His men expected it of him by now, for he did the same thing before every battle. Quiet, serious, stern – the General that they relied on. He was no Karstly in all his colourfulness, but they loved him for that. His extreme solid sincerity, like the stone that his house was named after.

To Claudia he gave a prayer of beseeching. For the likes of those Karstly's and Skullics – those men of talents that filled their ranks and had the utmost degree in potential. He begged of Claudia that they might see beyond themselves, that they might look to the cause in its highest degree, towards Queen Asabel and towards the justice that they aimed to enact. He was certain that, if only they could see as he did, they would not be engaged in the same struggles that Karstly was currently engaged in. They would not suffer the uncertainty, where strength became something of a choice.

He wanted only that they aim highly, that they fight strongly, without reservation. It ought not to be a thing that needed to be said, but Broadstone thought that he understood it. Those with strength, they did not always feel comfortable giving in to it. How could they? For they were beyond he. They were creatures animated by the Gods. Their talents were god-given. For them to surrender to all that they were meant to give in to something beyond themselves. That was a terrifying prospect for men like Karstly, who had always known such an advantage by their own hands alone.

But he prayed for it regardless, that they would not hold back, that they would use all the strength that they had, without reservation, and give it entirely to the cause. That they would fall into their own destinies without fear, whatever it might be. Whether the use of their own strength hastened them towards an early death, he prayed that they had the courage to accept that simply as the fate that Claudia had put on them, that they would trust in she, both the deliverer of grandness and tragedy as she was. He prayed that they would find trust, that even the tragedies she gave them were for their benefit. Perhaps not in this life – but he prayed too that they would not be greedy enough to limit themselves to this life.

A man needed to surrender to that which was beyond himself, that was the core of Broadstone's belief, and the core of his prayer. For how could a man's death have meaning, if there was no cause beyond his life? How could he build towards a bridge that he did not see as existing beyond himself? The cause of Queen Asabel – that was their binding force, their ultimate goal, the only battlefield on which they ought to truly have aimed to fight. To fall into it entirely, that was liberation. It came with the willingness to give one's life for it, without hesitation or fear. He prayed then, that all those great men of their army, who were so beyond he, in Blackwell, in Skullic, in Karstly and Blackthorn, would nevertheless find the strength of heart to give their own lives – and more importantly, the entirety of their strength – towards the ultimate cause that they'd all said with words that they believed in. Words they had spoken, but as of yet, Broadstone had not seen action enough to be certain they truly believed in them.

If Blackwell had known the quality of the prayer that Broadstone had delivered, on the very same day as he now knelt inside the church of Claudia inside Queen Asabel's new Pendragon Capital, he would likely have stood up and left simply for the irony of it all.

He hated such things with a firmness. Likely all those of House Black, throughout its long history, did. They believed not in omens, not in signs, hardly even in Gods, though they held worship occasionally regardless. They believed in strength of arms, strategy, and straightforwardness.

Yet here he was, kneeling, praying for guidance, knowing not what he might do. He looked up at the high vaulted ceilings, and at the pillars of stone that held them up, so intricately carved, and he asked the Goddess that was capable of afflicting such talents in men to give him guidance. Everywhere one looked inside that church, there were traces of brilliance. In the mosaics on the floor, depicting dragons, and symbols that Blackwell knew not. In the statues of great men, past Pendragon kings, with such lifelike features that they might have stepped down from their stone dias to answer him.