A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor
Chapter 1893 - 1893: An Inland Kraken - Part 5

The darkness was where Tiberius ought to have had the advantage, with that chaos that Pandora so governed. But Blackwell led them there willingly, and he did so with a broad grin on his face, fearless and entirely mad.

Each of them found themselves there, trapped in that blackness, surrounded by men. General Blackwell found his anger quickly. That monstrous Black rage. He raged like a bear surrounded by dogs. He tore them apart, from shoulder to hip, with that glaive of his. He was a whirlwind by himself. Within a short few moments, ten men lay dead around him, hardly a shred of resistance there, with another Second Boundary man amongst them. He seemed a different creature entirely.

It was not a fact isolated to him. When his own men managed to find their footing again, they too did so entirely surrounded, and they had their anger with it as well. It was a rage at their General – the sort of thing that one might extend to a close family member. There was love in it, for the camaraderie they had built up over many years, but there was rage still for the foolishness of the current moment.

Those singular soldiers, who had needed three of them to slay those armoured men before, now lunged in ferally, and they found gaps in the armour that had eluded them. The sword fell wherever they could. To the space under the helm. To the joins at the elbows. To the exposed space below the armpit. They burned all that was near them. Two thousand candle lights, set up in isolation. Against that chaos that had blanketed them before, there was a sudden and dramatic change of fates.

The speed at which they cut down the enemy was unfathomable, if one looked at how they had struggled so earlier. Their positioning was the worst it could be. There was naught to be done about it, however, except to fight wildly in the darkness, and pray that, after all, they would somehow make it through.

In such a disorganized state, they reaped results like nothing they'd reaped before. That fire that Blackwell had built, and then suddenly flashed out, it did not seem to have disappeared entirely. It was contained in the belly of their enemy. He fed it to them willingly, and they that sought to gobble up order had greedily consumed it to the fullest degree that they could, only to find themselves alarmingly full.

Individual fires, two thousand strong, they were forced to snuff out. A disorderly orderliness. Two thousand wills, pushing together. And finally, indeed, that small section of the allied army was finally able to push their enemy back.

Plated men fell in their hundreds, and they were forced backwards by a tide that they could not comprehend. It was as if they were fighting different men entirely, but there was no difference to be had. These were the same men that had always been there, fed on the experience of many wars under Blackwell, only now without the weakness that the soldiers of Pandora so sought to prey upon.

They pushed, and they pushed, and once more, a unified fire began to grow, set to burn through the entirety of them, in a single push, some four thousand men strong.

Tiberius, naturally, was not one to allow for that. As soon as that order began to be established once more, he made his move, and he sent his heavy cavalry into the mix, as Blackwell had feared that he would.

They came crashing through their own ranks of men, trampling them, and closing in on a General that by now very well battled alone. That too, however, General Blackwell was fine with. He anticipated it. The great fire that he'd sacrificed, he'd known too that such a thing would not nearly have been enough to satiate Tiberius' appetite. Unlike his men, he would not have been lulled away by that offering. He did the obvious, strategically sound thing to do, and still, it had lost much of its sting, for finally, such an order was predictable. Their movements did not appear out of thin air. In robbing all his men of light, finally, they could see their enemy.

That, however, was the only advantage that he had, and Tiberius sneered at it. Blackwell had succeeded in pulling back the veil, but that was all he'd managed. Now he was simply a General isolated and alone, as that detachment of a thousand heavy cavalry went looking for his head. Blackwell had made his gamble, and he'd made his point, but he had not the resources to build an entire victory from it, not whilst Tiberius still existed.

Blackwell received the charge with gritted teeth, even knowing to expect it. The wound in his side ached. He told himself to hold, and he held to that belief that he'd dived into the swamp with. So heavily surrounded, and by men of as significant danger as the Third Boundary, there could be no course but to endure. He swore to his failing body that it would all be for something, even as the blood ran more quickly from that old wound, he kept life in his eyes, and fought off the dizziness.

"Please! Please!" Queen Asabel said, her plea genuine, her hands grasped in front of chest. Hardly the cry of a Queen. It ought to have carried no authority. "Please don't give up hope!"

And yet… That was the heart of her. That kindness, that which sat as the foundation for the Pendragon Queen that she was becoming. The rawest part of her, that precious jewel that could not be cultivated by education. Brought about by the suffering that she was forced to bear witness to, and the desperateness of the situation that she saw being brought about.

And that was the exact thing that brought to conflagration not just the flames of Blackwell and his men, but the hearts of the entirety of her army. That nourishing hand – not a will towards progress, not the hand of Claudia that Pandora so despised, but something older, ancient, and as impartial as it was kind – somehow it married the two together.