A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor-Chapter 1915: Tears of the Gods - Part 4

Tiberius’ men swarmed what was left of Oliver’s. Those good Patrick men that he was so proud of, now so uselessly placed. They that had entered into the storm so many times off the back of their General, and they who now found a storm so much bigger than themselves. A swirling quagmire in which no creature could escape from its sticky mud.

An effort of will. Not even truly Oliver’s will. The horse beneath him, in Nelson, likely contributed as much to their disentanglement as anything that Oliver himself did. The men at the back of Oliver pushed him forward as well. There was a sense of buoyancy, like a chunk of wood rising back up out of the waters. The tides of battle carried Tiberius beyond Oliver, past him, along with the momentum of his charge, and Oliver too was forced to go the opposite way.

That fire that he’d clung to, that burning rage. It faded. A candle buffeted by the wind. And a cold wind it was. It came sweeping into the hearth of Oliver’s house. It blew straight at the heart of him, and it sent that flame to flickering, to the point that it was almost out.

Oliver tried to resurrect it. His anger was a fleeting thing now. Almost as if it was afraid of him. That overwhelming dreadful rage. That which he had relied on since his youth, to block out the worst of his fear. Now, even that ran away from him. Tiberius’ hand, it was. That self-proclaimed Emperor. He took, and he took, as if it was the most natural thing in the world. Those people so precious to Oliver. That woman, with that beautiful heart, who had been in his corner for the longest time. And the great General Blackwell, who had served as a shield, allowing him to grow, even when the malice of the High King was so continually directed towards him. 𝙛𝒓𝓮𝒆𝔀𝒆𝙗𝓷𝒐𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝓶

And for them, he could not even summon up that burning fire. For no longer than a single charge. Just a single sword stroke, that was all it had taken from Tiberius to make sure that Oliver understood. The sheer difference between the two of them. Rage was pointless. There was no gap to be bridged. There was only despair.

Hovering, and hovering, a sinkhole in the ground. Oliver’s horse took him beyond Tiberius’ engagement. Some of his men broke free with him, and flanked him, but he did not have the awareness to notice their faces, or recognize their presences. He dared not look around either, knowing full well that behind him, he would find loyal soldiers, drowning for their General’s pointless charge.

He had put himself back on his horse when the despair had come. That ought to have been the achievement. That ought to have been very well enough. He should have been able to plunge forward, and dart away from it.

That degree of despair. There was only one time in Oliver’s history that he had felt anything like it. The death of his family, the seizing of his freedom. Only then had he lost so much in a single sweep, and being so poorly placed to do anything about it. Then, the despair had properly set in. His heart had threatened to tear itself into pieces.

Yet somehow, it did not. Right on the brink of that overwhelm, for days Oliver had endured. He’d sat in the worst part of it, and he’d dwelled there. Neither solving his emotions, nor having them run away from him, to lose his mind in its entirety. He’d simply sat, and he’d waited. Not daring to want for anything, to dare to imagine even beyond a few minutes in the future. It had only been that single objective – endure. For that degree of despair, that ought to have been enough. All he had to do was endure, not knowing in the process what indeed it was that he was enduring. That supposed Curse of Despair – the weight of Ingolsol’s Blessing.

Now, he could hardly stand still. To endure, he knew how, only if his mind was vacant. If he didn’t need to think himself through his current situation, and shoulder the burdens of his men. Then it might have been something that Oliver was capable of. Even his rage could not carry him through. Against the harshness of that pressure, he had not the means to make whole that which was now fractured. The storm brewed, and it only continued to take from Oliver.

He could hear the screams of his men as they were slaughtered by the backend of Tiberius’ charge. More good soldiers lost to a tide, because of his indecision, his inability to thread them together to the properness that they ought to have been guided by.

He dared to turn his Nelson, to steal a look for himself, but as soon as he did, those eyes were on him – Tiberius saw straight through him. The man understood his wants. Whenever there was a flicker of emotion from Oliver, some sort of direction or aim, the man’s eyes glowed, as if he delighted in it.

Oliver reduced himself. Not out of thought, or true understanding, but out of instinct. The same thing that had so quickly quelled his burning rage, when some part of him had understood, that the only thing that would be burned by his swirling fire were himself and his men. To survive was to make himself invisible, to limit his desires, to block everything from his mind.

And yet, how could he? To put a hand on his heart, as he’d done in his battle against the Emerson’s. To make himself so invisible, that his heart hardly seemed to beat. That was a feat achieved when he was at his calmness. He’d only had the immense pressure of battle to deal with, and the responsibility. He did not have the pain of a crushing sadness. Unbearable that present might have been, but it was still incomparable to his current situation.