A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor
Chapter 1414 - 1414: Oliver Patrick - Part 1

"…You seem to be under a misapprehension, Yorick," Oliver said. "I am not a man without fear."

"You can not trick me, Captain," Yorick said. "A man like you couldn't exist with fear."

"Naturally, my mind wanders, when I consider all that might go wrong," Oliver insisted. "Naturally, when faced with a matter as big as this tournament, I will worry that it should not all go to plan. Today alone, I had more than a few questions ironed out."

"Then I ask you, how can you deal with so many?" Yorick said. "Surely you have far more concerns than I? How can you shoulder this added burden, on top of all of them? Better still, how is it you can shoulder that burden, and then still spar with Firyr so patiently, and so enthusiastically, as if there was nothing more fun in the world than that?"

"I suppose, I believe in the capacity for endurance that we mere mortals have," Oliver said. "The more problems I have acquired, the smaller each one has been made to seem, and there has come a strange calmness for it all. After all, I do not exactly have the time to spend thoroughly worrying about each one individually."

"Then, how do you endure?" Yorick asked.

"I suppose I trust that everything shall go as it should… and I trust that, should things go awry, I will have done all I can to put myself in a position to deal with it," Oliver said.

Yorick titled his head. "Is that why you still struggle with your strategy, so you can trust that you have struggled enough?"

Oliver's eyes widened. "You know… It might very well be. There's an interesting thought, Commander Yorick. You're forcing an introspection of me that I haven't likely ever done."

The Commander, however, seemed dissatisfied with it. "It's something, Captain, but it doesn't explain you at all… I'm still too far from beginning to understand you. You possess some sort of energy that is as close to magic as I've seen, and that answer doesn't come nearly close to giving me a sense for that sort of magic."

"The only magic I know how to wield is that of progress," Oliver said.

"And you truly believe that to be a magic?" Yorick said. "Is it now as far from magic as things are likely to get? We struggle, and… we somehow claw our way towards a reward. Is that just sort of… normal Captain?"

"Ohhh, indeed, that is a line of progress, Commander," Oliver said. "Perhaps that is why the normal man does not seem quite so excited by it as I am. But there comes a moment, when the struggle is severe enough that you ought to lose, but through some magic, some will of the Gods, you're able to find the slightest something. It's the tiniest of sparks, but soon enough it births itself into conflagration, and what was once hard now becomes desperately easy. Problems seem to solve themselves before you have even laid eyes upon them. All walls that were built high with the intention of blocking you out fall down. The very pull of gravity feels weaker. If there is magic – it is that. But it is a fleeting thing. Rarely have I touched upon it. It's present at the Boundaries, but it is also present in between them. The perfect few moments, when all the dots align, and the world is more colourful. If there is a magic, I think it is that."

"…The belief in struggle, then Ser?" Yorick said.

"Perhaps it is," Oliver said. "That is one of the tenets they teach, when getting those fledgling knights to break through the Second Boundary. That Claudia rewards those who struggle. But I think it's slightly more complicated than that. I feel as if it's what lies beyond struggle. When you cease to endure, and you start to get greedy and reach."

"Maybe it ought to be that I should aim for…" Yorick said thoughtfully, looking out over the training ground, seeing all those troops putting their sweat into their endeavours without a mind for the pain and discomfort their exertions brought.

"Perhaps. Or perhaps, you ought to find your own way," Oliver said. "The paths of progress begin at your door, after all. No one else's. If you try and imitate their path, you'll miss your house, and you will spend years trying to circle back."

Oliver had fallen into a silence again, but Nila found that the more time she spent around him, the more comfortable she was with those long silences of his. She could quite well guess what was on his mind, given the board that eternally occupied that tiny little room of his, on the top floor.

At least today, however, he didn't toy with it, as he often did. Nila had claimed that she wanted to visit that room, just to see what manner it was that he was living in. She only ever went all the way upstairs when it was really necessary. With the few weeks that had passed since she had last been on the top floor, as she was now, she couldn't trust that Oliver hadn't allowed his room to degenerate, for he would not let even the maids in to clean it. He insisted on doing it himself.

"A tiny realm of my own," Oliver had called it, though Nila thought that the entirety of the village could be called that. Or at the very least, the giant house that he had been given, that had once served the heir to the Blackwell house.

With his silences, she had thought that she had gotten better at reading his mood, without him having to say a word. She studied the side of his face, as she sat in one of the two wooden chairs in the room, right next to Oliver in his – as far as furnishing went, the room was pitifully empty. Even Oliver's bed, since he slept on the floor, was always rolled away in a bundle of blankets until he needed to use it.