A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor
Chapter 1547 - 1547: Where Art The Fire - Part 12

"A simple house, in a simple wood, distant from humanity," Oliver said. "With Nila to hunt with… Damn you, Gods, if I had been allowed that, I would have not been here to bring about your war. You prodded me towards this – and you invite the chaos that is to come from it."

He knew his words were weak ones, and he scorned himself even more with everyone that fell out of his mouth, but he could not help the bitterness. Fear made twisted the best of men, and Oliver Patrick had never been so afraid, not since losing his family, for he had never in his life had so much to lose, and never had he faced so overwhelming an obstacle.

"…I shouldn't be afraid," he tried to tell himself, but that didn't work. It hadn't worked when he was Beam. It hadn't worked when the first slave shackles had been strapped onto his wrist. It wasn't the absence of fear that had made him who he was.

"…At the very least, I can't stand still," Oliver said, trying to summon some strength into his fingers again, remembering his master's words.

"Damn them, for what they have forced us to do," he said, remembering his anger. "Damn them, if they think that we can not overcome this."

He struck the tree trunk, once, then twice, tearing the skin from his knuckles. There was an emotion in him, that was exclusively his, an arrogance that he could not blame on Ingolsol. His one and only reaction to the fear that had consumed him.

It wasn't confidence per say… It wasn't entirely just will. It wasn't entirely just anger either. It was a resentment towards the fear, and also an acknowledgement of it. As if he had been given a mighty foe. When he realized that the fear would never go anywhere, no matter what he did, he'd made a companion of it. A rival, and an enemy. To that one emotion, he declared that he would never give in. He would not seek to weaken it – if anything, he would seek to grow it in his strength.

He would multiply the fearful thoughts in his head, he would give rise to all possible terrible scenarios that he could consider, enough that his mind might feel seconds away from shutting down from the sheer overwhelming anxiety. And when it came to the point that it felt like it would be too much, he would do as he always did, and he would snarl, and contain it all.

The most overwhelming problem that Oliver had ever faced. A fear large enough to snuff out the will of even the Fragment of Ingolsol in him, for the Dark God held no answers, despite his excitement. And to that fear, Oliver said, "I will defeat you regardless."

He had nothing to hope for, but that was the very strength of the emotion. He could not even imagine seconds into the future. He allowed his very reality to become stripped by flames, and he did not bother to see beyond it. That wilful, angry, scathing and irrational emotion, a giant hand that declared, out of sheer disagreeableness, that it would not be defeated, regardless of the circumstance – that was Beam in his entirety. That was the heart that was capable of bearing Ingolsol, when none else could.

At the very heart of him, Oliver Patrick might have been accused of being even more arrogant that the Dark God himself, though arrogance, perhaps, still could not describe him entirely, just as no other word could. For an arrogant man would not feel the fear he did. It was borderline masochistic, to be drawing strength from the very weakness that riddled him, but he allowed both to grow inside himself, both the anger, and the fear, until he was the most fragile yet explosive creature for miles around.

The slightest touch, from someone with the precision of Nila, and he would crumble. But to all other adversities, he was a flowing river that threatened, irrationally, to sweep over everything.

He gathered himself in that tree. He allowed fear to flood him, and then he growled at it, again and again. "There's no chance of victory," he told himself, feeling the fear flood.

"Yet we will snatch it anyway." He said, clenching his teeth, and his fist, his eyes aglow.

"We do not have the resources," it said, coming again, pounding at his heart, weakening him.

"We will fight regardless," he said, his anger growing to match the strength of the fear that grew.

"Everything we love will be turned to ash," it said, the most powerful of all its blows, a stake through Oliver's heart, that which he feared above everything.

And to that, once more, he snarled. "It shall not be. We will not allow it to be so. It matters not what the future points to. For as long as we draw breath, we will carve a path through it. We care not for impossibility. We make impossibility our strength. It is the fuel to our muscles, the fire in our heart. Speak your tragic futures, and I say, we will overcome it. Build the wall higher, and we will grow wings to scale it. We will find whatever magic is necessary. We will defeat this hourglass. We will defeat all monsters that rise up in our way. If we need strength beyond the Boundaries, then we will shatter them. If even the Gods can not match the difficulty of our task, then we will rise above the Gods. Whatever it takes. Whatever arrogance we need to fall into. Whatever pieces of our soul we need to sell. Victory will be achieved. VICTORY WILL BE ACHIEVED!"

He punched the tree again, to accent that point, hard enough to see it cracked. With the blood that dripped from the torn flesh of his knuckle, he made a vow, with his eyes brows clenched in a glare, that he would achieve his victory, no matter what it took, and no matter what he had to do. There were things that he could not afford to lose, and he was determined, like the most dangerous of toddlers, never to let them go.