A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor
Chapter 1592 - 1592: The Dragon's Wrath - Part 4

Seeing that from Yorick, Oliver felt such a feeling begin to stir again. It was Ingolsol's want to keep that which belonged to him. But it was also the want of a child that feared to lose what had been taken from him before. Fear. Magnificent it was, a great swirling torrent of it.

None would have believed the degree to which a man as mighty as Oliver Patrick knew the emotion of fear. It was his oldest comrade. Fear had sat with him more than anything else. His fear was exacerbated by stubbornness. To know fear, and to build walls around it, allowing it to grow all the higher, all the more dangerous and deadly.

He had feared the dark as a child. None would dare to believe that. He had clung to his mother when the fear had been at its worst, and she had offered him the comforts that a child needed.

Recklessly throughout the day, he had operated as if he only knew courage, as if fear was a forgotten emotion to him. But he did so in the knowledge that if that fear were to ever grow too large, his mother, and his father, would be there to offer him comfort.

When he had lost them, he had learned to comfort himself, in a twisted, and dishonest sort of way. He had treated his fear with the vice iron claws of a tyrant, and turned it in place, declaring it inferior, telling it to wait until he had done what it was he needed to do. So it was that Oliver had cultivated in himself not a man that was capable of defeating fear, but a man that instead, naturally, built up large quantities of it in himself, for that very same capability of endurance. It was a mishealth.

It was the sort of thing that the gentleness of Nila pointed to, strongly, alarmingly, when she embraced him, and he felt a safety that a woman ought not offer. He felt the cracks running through the mighty structure that was Oliver Patrick, and he saw with wonder just how close it had always been to falling.

Yorick ran through those cracks. Dominus, Lombard, Tolsey, and all the important comrades that Oliver had lost ran through those cracks strongly, and they added to him. They made Oliver tighten with each death, as he held closer, and more strongly all that was important to him, declaring that he would lose nothing more, until the moment had come, where that tightness had failed him.

He had looked up at that mighty dragon, and with a tragic heart, had realized that he was insufficient, that he couldn't hold on to everything – or rather, the complete opposite. He couldn't hold on to anything. If he dared try to, the dragon would slaughter him where he stood. He would be shackled by the burdens of his own desire, and there was no movement to be had.

With such a thing, the cutting off of the hands that sought to grab everything, for the safety that it offered as a buttress against the mighty fear, there had come a realization. When he could no longer offer to himself the certainty of protection, he'd been forced in different directions, merely for the maintenance of his own sanity.

Without his hands present there, to contain the entirety of his world, and see his influence spread, he saw the world without him, and realized, with shock, and with delight, that it needed him not.

It was a painstakingly obvious thing, but for a man overcome by fear, who lived life clawing to the edge of a mountain, it came about with a profound significance. He saw with Nila, who he valued beyond his own life, that his fears were unfounded. He had feared, quietly, that he would one day say something that would displease her, and that would be it. He hadn't just feared it, he had expected it with a rigid certainty. He forced himself to maintain the perfect tightrope for as long as he could, so that he might not lose her.

But then he had dared to look, without his influence, and he had seen that his worries made not the slightest lick of sense. He had seen that he needed not reach. He need not do anything. He could trust in Nila. He could feel the love that she had for him as strong as if it were a physical quantity. It would endure, with or without him.

In seeing it in Nila, he saw it in his men, with an even higher degree of shock. He had always known, for how dramatic Verdant was at times, that his second in command held a great degree of respect for him. But he had never stopped to acknowledge it, as a physical thing, the strength of the emotion behind it, and just how much he could stand to rely on the man.

He had feared, eternally, that in not protecting his men, and not conserving all their lives, that he was letting them down, that he had failed in his duty. The fear had pointed to him, and said as such.

That was the greatest of all misunderstandings. He had failed to consider how they saw him, to even the slightest degree. He had only seen what he might do for them, and how he might care for them. He didn't not realize their intentions in regards to him. The strength of their loyalty, and their willingness to demonstrate it.

In protecting them, he was not saving them, he was only limiting them, and declaring that he did not trust them.

He misunderstood the nature of their service, why it was that they fought alongside him. Like Verdant, those Patrick men held an emotion that he still could not entirely understand. A respect for him that he felt he would never be equal to. A love that he could never repay. The only thing they asked from him was that he allow them to fight at his side. That was their love to him, their only want.