A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor
Chapter 1562 - 1562: Shifting Tides - Part 5

"Very well," Verdant said, with a certain hint of curiosity. "Do you wish to be delivering the message in our Lord's stead, Lady Blackthorn?"

He hardly needed to ask, given that she had already disappeared halfway along the ramparts. She was ever an overactive woman, and standing in place for so long likely wore on her.

"Yes." Was all the woman said, before she promptly went sprinting, as fast as any could hope to be, down all the steps that threaded their way around the gatehouse and then out onto the field to speak to the others.

Firyr stopped her with a curiosity. Jorah listened in as well. The two of them looked up at their Lord peering down from atop the walls, and they both shrugged their shoulders, allowing Blackthorn her command, realizing that from Oliver, they couldn't help but allow some degree of strangeness.

"What are you expecting to happen, my Lord?" Verdant asked curiously.

"I don't really know," Oliver said. "I just felt like trying it. It seems fun, doesn't it?"

It was more the reply of a young boy, throwing various things in the fire, to see how they all burned in different ways. But somehow, to Verdant, that seemed to suit Oliver far more than the serious way he had attempted to pierce through the world for the rest of the week. There seemed a certain degree of awful power in it.

Somehow, lying languidly, childishly, like a cat, eyeing the world from atop his wall, and throwing the strangeness of such commands down at his men, Oliver Patrick struck him as a far more terrifying man than when he stood tall, with anger buoying his every word. It was a contradiction of the highest to Verdant, and he did not understand it – he could appreciate it.

Soon enough, Blackthorn had arrived at the man that she was ordered to speak to. Quietly, succinctly, she gave her orders. The man looked up towards Oliver Patrick, looking down at him from his high wall. That Oliver could even see far enough to pick him out from a distance was a subject of surprise to him, nevermind the fact of the title that he had suddenly been tossed, like an arrow straight through the shoulder.

There was a sense to that man that he was being tested in some form or another. That the title he'd been given wasn't about him, but about something else. He almost wished to decline it for that fact. Oliver grinned, seeing his nervous reaction, feeling as if he could read even more into the man from it. It was a matter of the most exciting. It was such a contradiction, all of it. These rhythms that he had the men build up, the very streams of their existence, and then he was allowed to be a stone, tossed into them, creating ripples of his own.

It was a strange thing to remember, now that he had climbed so high. When he looked – and really looked, not just as philosophical exercise – there he saw the lives of other men. But now just for the sake of seeing them, but for the sake of feeling them, as close to a physical thing as he could. Oliver Patrick, in all that he did, attempted to build the grand flows that Dominus lived by, but in doing so, he forgot that there indeed existed streams already, and little rivers, flowing within the lives of everyone that he met. They all had their own directions that they were pointing towards. It was something that he ought to have known intrinsically already, but only now that he brought it to the forefront of his mind could he appreciate it, even if he did not realize entirely that was what he was doing.

The training resumed, and the new Sergeant was allowed to speak through it all. The exercises came so easily to him, that he was able to look over his shoulder, and pay attention to the men around him, as he had been ordered to, so that he could ensure that they were not falling behind.

He paid particular attention to the same youth from before, noting how much he was flagging. Oliver could not hear exactly the words that he was saying to him, but he could guess at them.

"Easy now," he said. "Easy. Just give the strike enough to perform it. Don't tire yourself out, boy. Get a rhythm. There you are, easy. Keep that."

The youth was too dead-eyed to give his appreciation. His exhaustion had eaten away at everything that he was, but Oliver had to observe, with distinct certainty, that the words of the man next to him – now that he was able to speak, rather than just glance over – were having a significant effect on him. The very manner with which he was performing his strikes changed, and conformed, becoming more of a mirror of the man next to him, than just a flow of his own.

A mirror it might have been, but his essence still remained in it, like the extra sprinkle of salt in a soup that something else had made.

The newly crowned Sergeant took his duty seriously, and he expanded his attention to all the men around him that he had been given, and Oliver watched, with a distinct feeling of delight, as those that had been flagging started to buoy themselves.

All around this central figure, that had been crashing through so easily, so relentlessly, that he could afford to pay attention to those around him.

"An intriguing experiment, my Lord," Verdant said, seeing through it, without Oliver having to explain it to him.

"Isn't it?" Oliver grinned. "It's ever so interesting… Though I don't know quite what to do with it yet. Maybe I should… No. I'll ruin it by thinking about it. I'll just keep watching. It'll solve itself."

"…A rather intriguing thing to hear from you, of all people, my Lord," Verdant said, though he regret saying it straight away. He didn't want to distract Oliver from whatever it was that had caught his attention, though he could not resist the remark.

"Hm? Is it?" Oliver asked, but then he quickly shrugged the question away. "Ah, well, it's fun. I don't mind it. We'll see what happens. Yes, this is interesting. Oh, Blackthorn, what was the man like when you met him?"