A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor
Chapter 1830 - 1830: A Man of Significance - Part 2

Now time was running out. Blackwell was on the march, and in a matter of days, they might find themselves on the battlefield. And still, Karstly had failed to acquire that which he looked for. Fourth Boundary he was, but he did not chase the Fifth Boundary. He knew that simply improving his individual might would not make him a match for Tiberius. It was strategy that made Tiberius so terrifying, strategy on the level – or perhaps even beyond it – of Minister Hod.

More complicated paintings, more colours to paint with, more techniques to shape the battlefield in front of him, that was what Karstly desired, and he spoke to the Gods of that desire, but they seemed very well in effect to ignore him.

He twisted his lips in irritation. Arrogance had always come so easily when he was able to get exactly what he wished by his own hands. Now it was something beyond himself that he had to turn to, because he had none of the answers himself.

His time in the forest was merely spent wandering, and thinking, looking for inspiration. At times he would try at the air with his sword, but then he would feel foolish and sheathe it again, and he'd thread his hands behind his back instead, for something to occupy them.

Tiberius read him too well. Karstly did not think that he was an easy man to read. He thought himself to be the height of complicated. How could anyone see through the pictures that he drew? He barely knew what he himself was drawing as he was doing it.

Perhaps then, Tiberius simply knew what he required to paint, and he hid the colours from him? A line of thought that Karstly had thought to already. Tiberius simply limited the opportunity that Karstly had to get a feel for the battlefield. Tiberius' battlefields always seemed to begin with Tiberius in a significant position of advantage.

The most irritating fact of all was how untested Tiberius was. There weren't many battles of his to reflect on, and study. He'd been dormant for far too long, and it worked to his advantage, as if that too was part of some grand plan that he'd conjured up a good time ago. Karstly despised the thought. He despised having to be second to anyone, in anything.

It was hard to find that thing that Karstly looked for, when one did search for it. That hidden edge, that he was certain existed and could sharpen the current sword of his strategy. That seemed more like something that came about accidentally, rather than something that came when one went on a journey in order to try and seek it.

That was how Karstly's progress had always come – accidentally. Now the trees that he lost himself in, so ancient, and so full of personality, seemed to mock him. The forest seemed like the sort of place that elves might have lived, if such stories of elves had any sort of truth to them. There were archways of interwoven branches, and the promise of ferns, when the winter snows did shift. Each boulder was filled with personality, their cracks making them seem far more as if they have been carved, as the remnants of an ancient city, than something that had naturally come about.

Karstly beseeched that which was older than him. He was not beyond doing that which others might have regarded as insane. He confessed to himself that his style of fighting was insane from the start. The creative flourish that he dealt all with, most would look at that and label it a form of insanity, and already, many had.

If to get stronger meant to become more unstable, then that was a risk that Karstly had been willing to take. He'd always been the eccentric man. He'd been mocked for lining up all his shoes in a circle around his bed every night as a child, but he was content to take the criticism with a smile, when so easily did he demolish the same condescending voices in the game of Battle that they all valued so highly.

Talent, and more importantly competence, was freedom, and Karstly needed freedom above all things. He could not stand to be below another man, or directly confined within the chains of some sort of hierarchy. If his decisions lost the creative flourish which they always ought to have been allowed, then Karstly found himself to be a lesser man for it. Not only was he less effective on the battlefield, but his very soul was a shade darker.

Dark decisions Karstly had made, it was true. He'd sinned, and he acknowledged that fact to himself. He would have been lying if he said his strategy against the Verna, that had seen so many civilian lives painfully stripped, did not haunt him in his dreams. But so too was he of the opinion that it was the most effective way to end the war. Even Blackwell recognized that, which is why the man had agreed.

But for the darkness of his own strategy, he was punished. It was a self sacrificing plan to enact, and one that none would ever thank him for. They would only criticise him for his cruelty, and his strangeness. They would see his smile and think that he knew not the flavour of remorse. But Karstly knew all the colours, of all the different emotions, and he knew them well, as an artist knows the array of colours available to him when he goes to buy his paints.

The truth of Karstly was easily found by those that knew him since childhood. Naturally, Samuel knew it of him. He knew the fear that had once been possible to find in Karstly's eyes, for his genius saw far too much of the tainted world around him, and often did Karstly have to flee from it in terror. He would hide under tables, and cling to the legs of his mother, refusing to go anywhere. But then, all the same, he would demolish much older men, in the very same day, in the game that they all held so highly.