A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor
Chapter 1892 - 1892: An Inland Kraken - Part 4

The strength of that which he'd built up, he offered freely, and in doing so, finally, did he see some measure of surprise on their faces, just as he'd seen surprise when they had charged down the hill against the enemy's expectations. It was a dangerous thing to do, indeed, just as it had been then, and he'd been punished for it before, but it was necessary now. That much was clear. And Blackwell thought he might understand enough to avoid those fatal repercussions.

Alone, he was, for the initial period. More reckless than his charge down hill had been. Apparently, the result of excessive foolishness. It went against his own instincts that made him face elsewhere. But those instincts were forged to fight against creatures of Claudia. Monsters operated by different laws.

Alone, and he was all the more powerful for it. His glaive came down as if those men were unarmoured. They were stunned by him, those lesser soldiers. The last thing they seemed to expect was for him to ripple forward, and through his own line as he had, leaving a giant hole where he had once been. That was the very sort of thing that a different army would have been able to punish him mightily for, yet these men fell to.

He hacked down twenty men by his lonesome, before order began to settle once more, and his men came threading in through the gaps, roaring their battle cries, cheering for the valour of their General. Blackwell had cut down two Second Boundary men in the process. It was only they that didn't seem to be so stupefied by his giving up of position – they were still vengeful, and in want of that which he had.

And now, with the morale of his army growing, and them cheering for it, and settling into a position that allowed them some prospect of counter attack, those men of Tiberius all began to glower with a rage. They saw the building of a fire that belonged to Claudia. That beautiful thing, when it seemed as if many small little sparks came together, as if determined by fate itself, to make that wonderful heat that saw so many men alighted. They instead saw it, and hated it.

Two thousand men – two thousand of the five thousand that he'd started with, that was what Blackwell had been reduced to, and he'd only managed to inflict a few hundred losses of his own in response. A dangerous, dangerous position. The entirety of his army hung in the balance, he was well aware of it.

If he was to look down along the line, and guess at the numbers of his men, he might have lost his cool. Ten thousand, at best, was what they had remaining, and Tiberius still had upwards of seventeen thousand. It was a complete crushing, a melting that they were powerless to resist. One that the Queen that Blackwell had sworn his loyalty to was forced to watch helplessly, casting her eyes to and fro as defeat loomed ever and ever closer. That knight of hers, Lancelot, had to pull her back more than once, as she threatened to ride in herself.

That was something that General Blackwell could not allow. He was the Commanding General of this army, and the Commanding General of this war. He had shown her a poor demonstration, and the only due recompense for that was something of the complete opposite sort.

It was along his line of practical insanity, where strategy melted into the realm of mysticisms, and it was more in imagination than in logic that Blackwell found himself to be battling, that Blackwell took his risk.

"FOR QUEEN ASABEL!" He shouted, and the men echoed it, that fire grew all the brighter, and greater conflagration. The men bound together, honoured soldiers of his, ready to fight until the last red drop of blood fled from their bodies. Ready to fight until the very moment that their General gave up – and Blackwell himself was barely still on his feet. The wound to his side bleeding slower than before, but nonetheless a danger to his continued strength.

He did the very thing that normally would be most sensible to do, knowing now that it was very much the worst thing that he could do. He built up that charge to its highest state, observing Tiberius, stood with his cavalrymen at the bottom of the hill, looking as irritated as the rest of them, wearing that look of angry cruelty that declared what the payment for General Blackwell's rebellion would be.

And then… he simply gave it away. He threatened a charge, all his men ready and waiting with him, and then he brought them to a dead stop. For those men that had shown him loyalty, he gave them instead confusion. It poured out of them, a great sickly thing, especially for men that were already so hard pressed. He plunged them into the very chaos that Tiberius so inflicted. He held them by their necks, and forced them to spit out the fire that had filled them, down into those swampy waters, where it would only fizzle out.

A complete stop he came to, and his ranks ruptured trying to stop along with him. The front line collapsed as it was run into by the second rank, and then the third rank came along with it. Men were tumbling over themselves, trying to hold to that discipline, but more than a few ended up entirely on the floor.

It was a shock of bad leadership, the very worst that it could likely be. A bad showing, once more, for the Queen that eyed them, and had drawn such hope when their cries had been shot into the air – that flare of something that they could all cling to.

It was that messy line, of completely disintegrated men, that Tiberius' infantry reengaged with. There was no formation, hardly a shred of leadership. It was every man almost entirely for himself. To have built up such a fire, to such a mighty degree, and then by a sweep of his own hand, to have cast them all into complete darkness… It was a foolish, foolish thing.