A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor
Chapter 1896 - 1896: An Inland Kraken - Part 8

He was not a man to raise his voice for pointless command or begging. He saw the foolishness in the way the other Stormfront Generals did it, and he declared again there, that such a place would not be him. He refused too to acknowledge that he was on the back foot, even if that was indeed where he was heading. After the collision of the arrowhead, with now Skullic and his men joining the fray, and Blackwell to come shortly after, Tiberius' number had reduced all the way to ten thousand. That solid unbreachable mountain upon which he had himself perched, where not might reach him, crumbled beneath his feet.

If there was an opportunity to form a charge of his own, he would have taken it. He still had two thousand heavy cavalry that he might make use of. Yet there was the issue of losing his entire army in the process. He toyed with the thought of attacking Blackwell from the side, as he was the slowest of the lot, having lost his horse. In doing so, however, he would most certainly lose the rest of his infantry, and the bowmen beyond them. It wasn't an attack that was swift enough.

Tiberius coiled his fingers around the reins of his horse, and gritted his teeth. "I acknowledge it," he hissed. "You are troublesome. Yes, yes. You Stormfronters are troublesome. But I am not defeated – and I shall not be defeated, not by your likes. Mere men cannot defeat the likes of an Emperor."

Even as he said that, such a thing was exactly what was occurring. Karstly and his men burst past the infantry, thrashing finally into those archers that had bothered them for so long. He slaughtered them as he passed without a shred of mercy, and his men did the same, with a great sense of relief. The sort of relief that finally came with swatting down the same blood-swollen mosquito that relentlessly bit and bit even beyond the point of fulfillment.

When Blackwell collided with the infantry as well, the charge was complete. His extension of men transformed the arrowhead into something that threatened to encircle the flanks. Half his number coiled around the side of the enemy infantry, swallowing them there, whilst Blackwell himself bit straight through, full of energy, despite the wound that had bothered him so before. He fancied that nothing could bother him then. The world was full of light once more.

Was that not exactly where ultimate meaning was held? Against the most impossible of foes, to struggle, and to relentlessly claw one's way through the mud, searching for any hint of value, for any tool that might be useful in pinning it down. And when one finally did find it, the moment was this – it was when General Blackwell could fill his muscles with all that mindless strength that his Black instincts constantly insisted that he give in to. When he could become nothing more than a rampaging bear, full up on its own fury, and rage. When there was no longer anything to hold back, when it was that moment where, one had to use everything that they had, and they had to thrash down the enemy by sheer overwhelm.

Blackwell's eyes were red from the bloodshot, and his heart pounded from the thrill of it. He fancied he had never hated an enemy more than Emperor Tiberius, for he did not think he had feared an enemy more than him. To fight off against the seed of Pandora – he would not wish to do such a thing. Not again. To do that which Arthur and Dominus had done before him. He could only thank his luck that he was not alone in doing so. Without Queen Asabel, he might not have gone all the way. Indeed, without her, their resistance might have ended with the likes of Skullic.

Karstly cut a diagonal charge past the remaining bowmen, breaking arrowhead formation, and making his intentions direct, and straightforward. A man on a mission of vengeance, disgusted with what Tiberius had wrought against him in the past, and determined to make him pay for it. So diagonal was his path that now, he was well in line with General Blackwell, as the two of them made their way forward.

That two thousand strong heavy cavalry that Tiberius sat at the head of did not seem quite so mighty when they were forked between those two separate charges – Blackwell and his infantry bursting through from the front, and then Karstly dashing across the field to attack him from the side. Soon Broadstone would be there as well, to complete the entrapment, and if Skullic had any wit – Tiberius was not convinced that he did – he'd do the sensible thing and thread around from the rear, completing the encirclement.

That ought to have been Tiberius' cue to retreat. His front line was shattered, and his bowmen along with it. The men that were surviving were mere pockets of resistance, isolated and ununited, and soon to be cut down if Blackwell and his men had the opportunity to turn upon them. But Tiberius would not have it. He would not admit defeat, not until the very last moment. He stood his ground, fierce, almost heroic, if not for the bitter anger that he spewed as he drew his sword.

"Dogs, dogs, every last one of them! And you as well!" He said, turning his blade on the man next to him, and cutting him down from his horse, slaying him for the lack of salient advice that he'd been able to offer him. That cloud of fog that Tiberius had always hung over his opponents, none had been able to pierce through it before. None until Blackwell, and none until Queen Asabel. The natures of the two of them – and worse still, the two of them together – were enough to make him sick. Their eyes glowed with a strong sense of justice, as if they really believed that the world would reward them as Claudia claimed it would – that their own suffering would somehow be acknowledged by Gods that were far busier doing other things.