There is a sense for greatness.

Some people carry it around like a bad smell. They make us stop on the street, and look their way, whether we wish to or not. Their appearance might be ordinary, but there’s something about them, something beyond the norm. Something that makes you almost wish to bend the knee to them.
Our kings have likely had that something, those that came from nothing but ashes and ruin, in times of trouble and famine, where the hearts of the masses are restless, and they need a cause to bind to. What makes them choose one man over another?

It is my contention that there is a true gravity to such individuals. That progress, or competence, or greatness itself carries a weight. That a man might grow greater in the dark, and whether he wishes it or not, by the sheer gravity of his existence, tigers will make their way towards his door, catching his scent in the wind.

The tigers hide themselves in the forests, in villages unknown, amongst the peasantry, but sooner or later, it does seem, that they are always cast into the light. It requires an immense effort of will to keep them hidden. A man of such a gravity will see themselves risen, without will, to ranks beyond that of the norm – in times of peace, they might rise high indeed. But in times of chaos? When the world is in upheaval, when every piece in up in the air? Then a tiger from the most lowly of starts, with a competency – a density – beyond belief, as if they were a different creature entirely – they might go all the way. They might be the creature that – though a peasant themselves – the peasantry themselves kneel to. They might go further, and make the soldiery kneel, and then even the nobles after them. And a special class, beyond all others, might go even further still, and snatch a crown the head of a king, on a flurry of brilliant victories, on a story so overwhelming it almost might have seemed preordained.

It is those men that we ought to fear, and it those men that we will eternally be at the mercy of. It is those men that we do the honour of addressing as our kings, and our emperors.

Skullic, in particular, wore a thoroughly disgruntled look, seeing his long-held ancestral home fall so easily into enemy hands. That his mood was not worse was a miracle beyond miracles. But he had to praise his own instincts as Hod had, in carefully making sure that some of his most vulnerable people had been slipped away through underground tunnels, bit by bit, so that only those left behind were either the old, or those veteran enough that they knew how to fight as well as perform their duties as a servant.


"Fear not," Hod said, putting a hand on Skullic's shoulder. "We can make use of this. You held the Skreen for longer than we intended. You have done well – and now that you are free to fight on the open field, we will get much use out of you."


"You had better, Minister," Skullic said. "A whole castle's worth of use, if you would."


Chapter 1715 - The Dogs of War - Part 1