A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor
Chapter 1836 - 1836: The Quietest Battlefield - Part 1

"A foolish, pathetic endeavour," the High King snorted. "Done by a weak man that had no better options."

"But he beat you, didn't he?" Persephone said. "Did he not force your hand? Did the Gods not force you to give me my freedom, bit by bit? They work against you, for the sins that you have committed."

"The sins of holding to promises that were given to me? You talk foolishness, demon, begone."

"A promise? Whoever promised? You took a sentence of suggestion, and spun it out of control—"

"BEGONE, I TELL YOU!"

"You are a child who missed a toy. That was all I was to you."

"BEGONE!" The High King roared again, and pulled a pillow over his face, covering his eyes and ears, so that no more words could ever leak through.

The trickery of something dark was all that had been used against him. For his losses did not make sense to him. He was forced, as the King, to deliver the King's justice. He was forced to move for the sake of his House. A King could not tolerate such an insult to his pride as to have a promise broken away from him.

He could certainly not tolerate the insult that Persephone and Dominus' years of marriage had caused. Each day, their time together had stoked the flames of his anger more and more. It had made him spend his time in a nervous anxiousness. He could hardly sit, for fear of that feeling returning, fear of what they might be up to – that man Dominus, and the woman that the High King coveted above all else.

Blake counselled him against doing anything. He said that ship by now had very well sailed. That for the honour of the crown, it was evident that they must stay their hand. That there were things that even a King could not fight against.

So the High King had found a man that could fight against it. And he had proved to Blake, with the death of Pestophone, that there was indeed nothing that the might of the crown could not overcome. He proved it in one fell mighty swoop, that the crown of the High King was absolute. Absolute over Pestophone. Absolute over Dominus. And absolute, even over Arthur, who all said the Gods loved best, and by whose hand had he been slain?

"MINE!" The High King hissed to himself. They had called him hero, invulnerable, immune, capable of overcoming any foe. But without even lifting a sword, the High King had seen him disposed of, and it was only Blake that existed to know the greatness of the High King's achievement. And now even Blake began slowly but surely to turn against him, infected by the poison of the Patricks.

There would be something, the High King knew, for as long as that crown sat upon his head, there would be something that he could do to ensure this war ended in his favour. Blake assured him it would, but the High King did not rely upon any single man. He instead, found the paper that he had brought to bed with him, and he uncorked the inkpot that he had hidden under his pillow, along with a quill, and to the Yarmdon King, and the Emperor of the Verna, he addressed his message. For they would know, in a way that others didn't, just what an insult it was to see the highest royalty challenged. And, with the promise of reward, they would see justice brought about.

With a sensation that the world itself had shifted, King Germancius' head fell to the floor heavily, struck down by Oliver's sword, a blade that was still suspended midair, as if the General could not believe himself what he had done.

By now, the armies of both Tavar and Hod were all but mobilized, around the gates of Ernest, they found their purchase inside the interior walls. Tavar had seen his aim achieved, of getting his army inside the walls of the ancient city, but so too had the defenders achieved their aim, of seeing the strength of Tavar's army limited, and seeing a mighty man of authority struck down.

Twenty thousand men in Tavar faced off against the eight thousand that Hod had managed to bring down into the courtyard. Around the centre of Patrick men, that had seen those Treeant slaughtered, upon a mound of corpses, did the army of Hod, and the army of Ernest, form itself.

General Blackthorn stood bristling, and violent. The moment that he'd waited for since the very battle had started – that which the Blackthorn House was famous for. The possibility of a single, overwhelming attacking charge. Now that they were on flat ground, with a good distance to build up momentum, between him and the enemy, the Blackthorn men beneath their General stood poised, and dangerous, making up for the cavalry that the army of Ernest would have otherwise lacked.

That it didn't start in a single bound was the strangeness of it. For all the fires that had burned, and tensions that had been exchanged, and blood that was still being spilled, one would have expected it to begin in a single instance, like the volatile ignition of gunpowder, or even something beyond it, crafted by the hands of one of the Academy's better alchemists.

But it hadn't. A battlefield that time seemed to have surprised, that was what stood there now, as a strange sort of painting, lacking the eye of artists that would properly see it remembered. They were stunned in place, frozen in it.

The civil war had begun seemingly as a simple rebellion, something that no lands were especially strangers too. But all had been certain from the start that it could bring about no true change, other than destruction. When Queen Asabel had joined the cause, and had seen the Pendragon crown placed squarely on her own head, she had changed that narrative ever so slightly. But the head that lay on the floor was something of an entirely different quality.

Kings were beyond men. They might have appeared to be fleshy, and of bone and skin, but all knew that they were imbued with the grand authority of the Gods. They were not people to be struck down casually. One might try, but no matter how strongly he posed the attack, the Gods would always grant the King a certain armour. Kings were toppled by politics, and they were surrounded, and made to surrender. The Gods would never allow a blade to properly reach them.