A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor
Chapter 1543 - 1543: Where Art The Fire - Part 8

Its height from the ground came up just to his lower chest, and its roundness – before they had carved at it, so Oliver could actually lift it – had made it near impossible for him to wrap his arms around it. It looked frankly ridiculous to have anyone budge that, and even Dominus had seemed mildly alarmed in making another human being lift it – though Oliver had never been able to do much more than budge it just the slightest inch from the ground. That was all Dominus had required from him, after all.

He stood in front of it now, and dusted the snow off the top of it with a smile on his face. He ran the fingers along the crude marks in the rock that Dominus had seen hammered away from Oliver's hands. "Damn it, old man," he cursed him. "You really didn't allow me much to work with."

The holds were even shallower than he remembered, as he ducked in to wrap his arms around them. He did find, however, that it was less of a stretch to reach them than it had once been. He was not a big man by any stretch of the imagination, but he was far larger than he once was.

Tight to his chest, he clutched it, working the muscles in his back, not needing to feign the respect that he had for the boulder's immense weight. The sheer size of it made him respect it, even if his memory did not. He tightened every muscle that he could, and then he heaved, pulling himself backwards, as much as he was lifting the stone upwards.

It shifted with him, quickly enough that Oliver almost lost his footing. He'd only wanted to free it from the ground by a small inch, as he had once done, but now he found himself lifting it towards his knees, to rest there, before he lifted it all the way to his chest, as he had once done so many times for the smaller stones.

When he dropped it, the ground shook violently beneath him. A cloud of snow went flying to cushion its fall.

Oliver looked at his own hands in awe. "…It is easy to forget, just how strange the Fourth Boundary is," he murmured to himself. The strength went beyond human comprehension. His only ways of testing it had been against other men, and when one fought men as mighty as Generals, one forgot just how physically beyond the pale the men of the Fourth Boundary were.

As a child, he would have called such men Gods, he would have called such feats impossible. Even when he had trained with Dominus after breaking through the Second Boundary, he would have said the same. But the old knight, with a single arm, and the other riddled with poison, had easily been able to keep up with him.

Fifth Boundary his strength might have been, but the poison limited it to immense degrees. Oliver had to marvel, now that he was in a better position, higher up the metaphorical mountain, to properly appreciate the strength that Dominus Patrick had achieved.

The man had lived for years with that poison running through him. From the Pandora Goblin of all creatures. It wasn't the sort of thing that a man ought to have been able to survive minutes from, and Dominus had been able to survive years holding it back.

"I wonder if I can hold back the poison of this power that long," Oliver wondered. "I wonder if I can hold out at least long enough to see us win this war?"

Even that as a thought seemed impossible to him. Though his body could move weights that he hadn't been able to years ago, and though he could do such things with ease, he found that the old wounds of his heart still ran deep. If anything, they ran deeper. He'd ignored them for years, and he'd hardened his heart against them, and now he found that very same heart creaking, when he placed the most immense of responsibilities on himself.

A self-deprecating smile rose to his lips, as he imagined the future that was in store for him. He would break, eventually, he knew that. The question was where, and when, and how embarrassing would it be? He wondered whether he'd have the foresight to claim his own life before he could tarnish his legacy, and insult those that had sworn loyalty to him by his weakness. He wasn't so sure, but he dared to cling to it as a hope.

"War, Master," he said, as he strolled through where Dominus' campsite had once been. "War with the entire country… If it had come in your lifetime, when you and Arthur were still alive to fight in it, that would have been justice, I think. But now we fight for the wrong reasons. We fight now that the damage has already been done. We're too angry a warring band."

"I think I'm too angry too," Oliver said, pausing, feeling how near the rage was to stirring. He had all the reasons in the world to hate the High King, and the more he dwelled on the matter, the more he found those reasons springing to mind. He wondered what lengths he would go to in order to see his own vengeance enacted. He wondered if he would forsake his honour.

"…Honour is the only thing I have serving as a balance," Oliver said. "If I lose that too, I really will be entirely gone… Honourably is the only way I can act, even if I am riddled with weakness."

He thought he understood honour better now that he was older. Before, he thought it had been a case of discipline, that knights did so rigidly, merely out of their superior morality, and the strength of their character. But now, when weakness flooded him, and threatened to drown him, he saw honour to be something different. Honour was a tether of safety. It was something for a man to cling to, when uncertainty was afoot. Honour wasn't a limiter on strength – honour was the source of that strength, allowing one to act with certainty. As soon as honour was forsaken for progress, that progress was tainted.