A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor
Chapter 1540 - 1540: Where Art The Fire - Part 5

"Gods be damned. Gods damn my greed. Gods damn myself, for not having the courage to do what you once saw to be the right choice. I should have rid the world of myself before it could go too far. I am an abomination, a poison. They praise my achievements for my youth, but do they not know the tainted platform that I stand on? Of course they do not. I ought not exist… I ought not…" Oliver said, his anger quenching the tears just for a second. "And Nila… When she too finds out what I am… where shall I be?"

That last blow tore his heart apart. His words ran dry, and his head fell against his chest. He knelt in the snow, in front of the statue of his dead master, with snowflakes gathering atop his shoulders and his head. He wished for nothing more than death then, knowing the mistake that he had made, and knowing the wave that he had let go too far.

He did not know how long he stayed like that, only that his hands were soon enough covered entirely by snow, to the point that they seemed buried. Every finger and toe was numb, and still Oliver did not shift, he continued to look down with glassy eyes, wishing for his own death.

"Has my student grown so pathetic?" Came a voice. Oliver could hear it as clear as day, and he had to cry for the nostalgia of it. He was so broken and beaten, that the mere memory of Dominus was enough to make him feel a wound.

"A short few months, Master, and you claimed such a piece of my heart," Oliver said, prompted by his memory of Dominus' voice. "I did not thank you for all that you gave me. I would have been still crawling in the mud, if not for you. I might even have been dead, if not for you."

"It was your time," the Dominus of memory said simply, in the matter-of-fact way that he always did. "You know the ways of Claudia now, Beam. If not through me, it would have been through someone else. The rivers flow, and the gravity pulls, something would have been presented. It was your own struggles that pulled you there."

"…But it was you in the end, Master," Oliver said, arguing with his memory. "It was you – you who gave your life, in the defence of what I had considered to be important. You had no attachment to this village, and yet…"

"Fool," Dominus chided. "I am a knight. Do not patronise me. A knight fights in defence of the weak. Have you forgotten that, if nothing else?"

"I have forgotten that," Oliver agreed. "Have you not seen the way I claw for power, and how corrupt I grow?"

"Once more, the gravity pulls you towards it, student of mine," Dominus said. "You have wrestled with corruption more than any other, you know of it, you are suited to it. You have endured the curse of Ingolsol for nearly a decade. What is the corrupting effect of power, when compared to the corrupting effect of Ingolsol?"

"They are one and the same, Master," Oliver said. "Power is his to wield. Power makes him stronger. Power is what he pushes me towards."

"Power is his domain," Dominus agreed. "But power lies in your hands. Just as your progress lies in your own hands – Claudia merely governs over its laws, she can not change its course. Ingolsol presides over that which already exists. It is your hand it sits in. There are no excuses to be made. You have grasped it, now govern with it."

Oliver looked up.

There, before the statue, in the place of the footsteps that he had followed, there stood the old knight, as he had been in life, with that serious air, and the strange playfulness that sat behind it all. There stood a man as Oliver had forgotten him – tainted by the bitterness of his situation, and still forthright.

"You weep, Beam," Dominus said, kindly, for him. "As you ought to. I have wept. When the woman that I loved was taken from me, did I not know the same tears? She offered me the same comfort that your Nila does. Do you think me a weaker man for it?"

Oliver shook his head, unable to say anything. He briefly wondered whether he was truly talking to the dead, or whether he had died in the cold somewhere along the way, as he had wished to.

"Ah, but then you would say, you do not condemn it in others, only in yourself," Dominus said. "Suffering, Beam, does not entitle you to the things that it does. Just because you suffer, does not mean your problems ought to be solved, or that you can bear your post more freely. The highest mountains run just as deep. If you do not allow yourself weakness, you will be toppled."

"I would go further," Dominus said. "That girl, she has humbled you. In the same day that you seized a power beyond yourself, she struck you down, and surprised you. Allow it of her, before you are overwhelmed by your own idea of yourself. Be in awe of the power that you wield. Let it shock you, let it frighten you, like it disease every waking moment, as it does now – that it the proper reaction to such overwhelming might. You closeness to Ingolsol allows you to understand it. It is above you, do not forget that, and do not allow yourself to grow equal to it. If it is ever beyond you, you will not grow so casual in its use."

"Do not grow so casual in its use, is all I might say," Dominus concluded, when it was clear that Oliver had no reply for him.

When Oliver finally did find the words rising up into his throat, and he looked up once more, to steal a glance at the ghostly apparition of his master, the man was no longer there. Only the stone, with snow frozen against it, and the man's stern visage remained.