A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor

He ran his fingers over their cold blackness. The humans might have called it black iron if they'd seen the look of it, but the Gods knew it to be different. Mere iron couldn't contain the likes of Ingolsol.

His touch was strangely delicate. It always struck that Demon to be a sad thing, when he stood there like a lost cat, pawing at his door. There was a degree of cruelty in there.

Yet today, when his fingers felt the tautness of the chains, as they often did, he came upon the barest link of slackness. He pulled, and the chain gave ever so slightly. The man's smile grew. A devilishly handsome face, and his golden eyes glowed all the brighter.

"Do you see?" He said, rounding on the demon. "Do you see, Demon? There begins our change. From a seed – from an avenue – that I had given up hope of thousands of years ago."

He pulled on the chain even harder, as if to yank it free. Of course, the chain held. Thousands of years could not have passed with Ingolsol remaining a prisoner if those chains had been weak. Still, he laughed. A great booming thing.

"HEAR ME, CLAUDIA!" Ingolsol shouted. He knew she could hear him. Especially here, right on the edge of the door. His voice wormed its way all the way into her throne room.

"Mistress Claudia…" Claudia's attendant said, a worried look on her face.

"It is fine," Claudia said, fighting to keep her calm. "Even with the measures that we have put in place, we knew that there were still means through which his voice could reach us."

"THE TIME OF CHANGE COMES, CLAUDIA!" Ingolsol bellowed. "WILL YOU ALLOW IT? WILL YOU SEE MY RETURN, THROUGH THE SEED THAT YOU YOURSELF HAVE SPAWNED?"

The irony struck Ingolsol as being most potent. The only being in all the world that he truly coveted, above all else, and she had made a seed of the very same mortal that Ingolsol had. It was too rich. He delighted in it.

"UNIFY THOSE GODS, CLAUDIA!" Ingolsol said, laughter in his voice. "YOU BARELY STOPPED ME BEFORE, WITH ALL OF YOU JOINED TOGETHER! YOU WILL NOT STOP ME AGAIN! THE MORTAL REALM WILL KNOW MY TRUE NAME, AND YOU GODS WILL HEAR IT TOO. I WILL SIT UPON THE THRONE THAT I WAS ALWAYS MEANT TO SIT. YOU CAN ONLY DENY FATE FOR THE SHORTEST OF TIMES!

YOU YOURSELF KNOW SUCH THINGS!"

The Gods made their declarations to each other, their timing not too dissimilar from the timing of Oliver's own declaration. As the Karstly forces began to set up their encampment in their newly conquered land, ferrying the thousands of bodies of the slain away, they were not the only mortals in the realm that had felt a stirring.

As far away as Lord Blackwell was, he thought he knew that he had felt the conclusion.

"It is done, then," he declared to himself, looking at his map. He had counted his fingers, and he'd counted the days. Karstly's name was not well known to many, but Blackwell counted on his competence. He was not a man to be late. If all had proceeded as they had calculated, then now would most certainly be the day in which he established his position.

Even Khan, riding his way towards Blackwell's castles, with tens of thousands of men at his back, dared to cast a glance over his shoulder towards the mountain that he always knew was certain to fall.

"Forgive me, Phalem," he murmured to himself. "For I have indeed sinned."

It was a confession, but not one made with overwhelming regret. His eyes only stayed pointed behind him for the barest few moments. Then with a snap of his neck, they were pointed forwards once more. Towards the future, and towards the success of his mission.

"I will not fail here," he declared to himself. A childish declaration, he knew. As aged as Khan had become, he knew not to rely merely on the strength of will, and emotions, but he could not help himself doing it anyway.

One small blunder, and he'd found himself unnerved. It would have been easy to dismiss as a mere accident – and he was quite tempted to – given the nature of the mountain corridor that they'd fought in, so poorly suited for Verna tactics.

Following behind him, there were the siege weapons of Verna war. There were half a hundred ballista, half a hundred catapults, half a hundred siege towers, and the tens of thousands of men to operate them. They had archers, and they even had chariots for the event that the battle was taken to the plains. In every conceivable metric, Khan knew the makeup of his army to be superior.

He only needed to get out into the open, in front of those stolen castles, and he swore to himself, he would make no more mistakes. As the Grand General of the Verna defensive campaign, he could not afford to.

"Come, Khan," Blackwell said, as if hearing Khan's want. "We will be waiting for you. We may not have your men, but we Stormfront have our ways – and the Battle board is already tilted in my favour. Let us see how you would do. With such an improvement to our numbers, we cannot lose. To Queen Asabel, we give thanks for that."

With her Generals away at war, fighting on her behalf, so many hundreds of miles away, Queen Asabel could find no peace for herself. She had been assured, by General Blackthorn, hundreds of times, that they had nothing to worry about. That their borders would be safe, no matter what the worst of occurrences were.

"It is not us that I am concerned of," she had told him, time and time again, and yet that message had never seemed to make sense to the man, for he would always pull his face, and give an exasperated sigh.

"Forgive me, my Queen. We know your heart, and we know your kindness for your subjects, but there is naught to be done here but to wait," Lord Idris would say, ever the voice of sense. "It is only prayer and supplies that we offer them. Lord Blackwell has kept us abreast of the battle situation. We will know if they need us."

Lord Idris had not lied in that. The smallest of battle details were delivered to the Pendragon Queen at her request. Even if she did not understand all of them, she poured over the information, and she had her attendants explain it to her. It was with such information that she found herself amongst the few with knowledge of Oliver's first battle.

Of course, she did not know when it would happen, nor exactly, for the missive would never focus on a mere Captain. But she at least knew that he had been put under Karstly, and that they had been sent away as the advance force.

The letter had been delivered by a cautious Blackwell after the commitment to the plan was already unstoppable. He would not have wished to risk a leak to the enemy when such a crucial mission was under way. So it was, when the letter finally did arrive for Queen Asabel, the fighting was already – in large part – over.

Karstly had managed to capture his hill, and the troops made their camp, longing for the rest that they had been promised the days before.

"…There is naught to be done, my Queen. Those that you worry for, you can only offer them prayers," Lord Idris had advised. And so it was, Queen Asabel found herself praying before a shrine of Claudia, in a church attached to her own palace.

She ignored the irony, and she kept the fear locked away, knowing that if her power was ever discovered, she would be hanged for dabbling in the magics. She told herself there were far more important things at work. Her belief in the Gods was firmer than most.

"If a prayer can offer even the slightest bit of merit to their situation, then I will pray as often and as sincerely as I am able," she resolved to herself.

She clasped her hands in front of her, and she closed her eyes, and with all the sincerity that she could muster, she prayed for the safety of those important to her. "Goddess Claudia, hear my plea…"

One by one, she went through their faces. From Karstly, to the ever amiable Captain Lombard, who had always been such a pleasant messenger between herself and General Blackthorn. Then, inevitably, her list of faces landed on Oliver, and she found herself pausing for a second, and her heart beating even faster.

Why was it that she wasn't able to hold his face in her head as clearly as the rest? She knew him better than many of the rest, and she'd even thought about him more often, but in the murky rivers of her memory, his features were so hard to pinpoint. It was all a blur. All except his eyes, so stern, so unwavering, and so often changeable.

She felt a shiver crawl up her back, and without even truly knowing why, she found a tear on her cheek. "Oh, dear Oliver, what have you done to yourself?" She asked. The tear ran from the cheek, and landed on the coolness of the floor. "You swore that you would keep yourself safe. You swore that you would come back, and that you would deliver victory… You fool.

Did you think I wished to hear words of your victory? Did you think I would dismiss you, if you returned home with nothing by an unbloodied shirt? I could think of nothing better. I would pray for it, if I dared to allow myself that selfishness. But I could not get in the way of your dreams. The Gods would scorn me for it, as would you.

I would only distance myself."

She found her mouth quivering. "So I say, instead, be safe. Cling to that promise, if no other. Be safe. Claudia, please find him safety. Please grant him warmth when he finds injury.

Please do not allow himself to throw himself into the heart of his usual recklessness. Above all, Goddess Claudia, please allow his return."

With tears staining her cheeks, Asabel felt her nose running, and she felt herself feeling rather foolish as she pulled her eyes open. She bit her lip. "Only for now," she told herself. "Find your strength, Asabel. There is a day to be carried out, and duties to be performed. Lock away your feel, gather your dress, and do what you need to do."

She rubbed at her red eyes with furious hands, and she made to stand. Her attendants pretended not to notice the redness. It would have been improper to point it out when there was nothing to be done about it. "Lord Idris has come to see you again, my Queen," a quiet woman said.

"Then you are to lead him in."

VOLUME THREE – PART 1 END