A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor
Chapter 1579 - 1579: War at the Gates - Part 3

He pointed again at the same terrified soldiers that they had eyed before, and he received the same doubtful looks. "Strange creatures, all of them. All of them so full of danger. It's strange to me that they would ever listen to a word that I said."

"They have come to love you, General," Jorah pointed out. He had come to know the new recruits better than any of the others, given how intimately he had been involved with their training. "It would be stranger to me if they did not listen to your words."

"Ah, yes," Oliver said. "There is that. Even stranger than they are, even more terrifying."

'Listen,' he said, in his own head, as he looked at his men. He signalled out a single man from them, and bore his focus on him. Just an ordinary man, by all appearances, with a helm on his head that was far too large for him, and a shake in his hands, as he beheld the enemy, beginning their march into Solgrim, and beginning to set up tents outside its walls for those men of lower command that could not fit inside.

It was easy to reduce such a man. By the will of Ingolsol, he could easily drift and make it so. He could see a creature that, a hundred fights out of a hundred, Olvier Patrick would butcher, to whatever degree he felt was necessary. He could see a man that, in any martial skill, he would rise the victor, no matter the contest that they saw.

But such a sight, he had begun to feel, was not the truest reality of it. For, there were indeed creatures, before which, that man was terrifying. If a child were to look up at him, and see the skill that the man had earned with the weapon, throughout his short weeks of training, they would be terrified.

If a child's eyes landed on any one of those men, they would be met with the same amount of fear. Oliver wasn't so sure that the children were wrong in their vision. He didn't think that, just because the children were weaker, their fear was without basis. For when he looked, and really looked, he could feel Claudia stirring within him, and through her, he felt the same degree of fear.

This mighty Fragment of a God, and she saw so much that was strange about them. A mere surface level inspection, and it was possible to reduce them, but when Claudia looked deeper, with her purple eyes, and she saw the contractions layered upon contradiction, a single man was such a horrifying creature that it caused even her to quiver. It seemed almost foolish to look any further. It seemed especially foolish for a General to look so deep, and inspire in himself, a fear of his own men.

Yet indeed, that was what Oliver had done. A defeated man, as he was, bowled over by his own problem, the mighty Emerson dragon that sat upon the horizon. How was a defeated man not to cower before the dangerous? A defeated man lost all that he was, he had not the strength to defend himself.

He could only look, and see the danger, and dwell on the fear. Claudia pointed to a truth. She felt the love of the men for her, despite her own fear. It was that love that they held for her that willed her to eternally look deeper. It was danger, it was exciting, and it was so terribly fun and rewarding. It was living, in its truest sense.

The absence of fear, Oliver found that he wished for it no longer. For he was dragged, by the will of those men, and the small bits of gravity that they held within them, to look deeper, and deeper. And there was a sense of their delight, even if they did not come close to him, to express it outwardly, when he saw deeper into them, and he understood them better.

He did not furrow his brow to attempt it, just as he did not raise up his arms in effort, and clench his fist to make plans to defeat the Emersons, knowing full well that he would be crushed.

With no victory in sight, there was no point in trying, and so Oliver did not try. He willed himself to do nothing. He dragged along, by something other than himself, and he delighted in it. What ought to have been the weightiest few weeks of his life, as he wracked his brain for a plan, had instead come with profundity, and immense enjoyment and reward.

He made no efforts to build the bridge towards victory, for to even think about it brought a feeling in his chest that threatened to overwhelm. It was as if the dragon sat in his very heart, and eyed him dangerously, looking for any sign of his intentions. If he showed the slightest shred of wanting, it would hold him in its jaws, and never let him go. It would not even let him look into the distance any longer. Victory would cease to be a consideration.

There was such a weight to Oliver's existence, from the pressure of that dragon's glare, that he felt he could not even walk quickly any longer without its permission. He could not spar with ferocity. He could not demonstrate the slightest shred of its will. For it would see, and it would lunge at him, and it would gobble him up in its entirety.

He could only move where it was easy to move. It made his actions appear effortless, and whimsical. It made his expressions seem childish, and blissful. It made him see a man at one with the world, as if he were being carried along by the very currents of existence, and none could fight him.

But the truth was, he could not do it any other way. He could move nowhere except from where it was natural to move. Where it was natural to move, so too was it quietest to move. The sound didn't reach the dragon's ears. It didn't lunge at him.

Even in doing so, he could still hear the dragon growl. He could not follow the naturalness perfectly, for he was merely a man. He only had Claudia's ears to listen by, and her eyes to see, and by it, he did the best that he could, walking in the shadows.