A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor
Chapter 1594 - 1594: To Flow or to Fly - Part 1

Such was the problem of the battle from the start. The lack of resources, the lack of building materials to see a bridge to victory built. The sheer scale of the dragon was impossible to defeat. And now it had them, nestled firmly in its jaws. They sat upon his tongue, and were attacked by the digestive enzymes in its saliva. Their armour melted, as did their skin, and their movements were slowed by its stickiness.

With a grim expression, Prince Hendrick watched the slaughter that he had set about. With that copper hair of his, and those piercing eyes, he was the head of the dragon. He controlled its head and body, on behalf of a man that he saw to be even mightier than he. General Fitzer and General Hendrick were mere heads that added to it, turning it into a monstrosity that some might have called a hydra.

Whatever name they gave it, they could only point to the fact that it was undefeatable. To attack one head was only to leave oneself defenceless to another. It was a mighty mythical feeling that spanned the entire landscape. It was nature itself. To fight it was as good as cursing the rain.

Neither Fitzer nor Tussle celebrated or smiled, seeing that wave come crashing down. The infantry threaded their way through the slowness of their own archers, and then came out beyond them, picking up speed once more, hunger in their eyes, a violence of want that was not their own, mere tools of a greater body.

Without a shred of politeness, they interrupted the battles that had been going on, too much enjoyable competition, without them. They received a good few volleys of arrows for their indecency, but they cared not. Straight into the still occupied central army they dove. Verdant's men, barely, on the front two lines, had found enough time to reorganize themselves, so that they could lock their feet, but still towards the back, there were enemy fighting in a melee, still holding out shreds of resistance, making the wall that they otherwise could have been all the weaker.

The enemy was vast enough that even in that first clash, they flowed straight past Verdant's army, and ran all the way down his flanks, continuing back towards the rear.

They spread out in a great fan across the field, making it all the way to where Oliver and his Swords did their fighting, meshing the two independent fronts into a single line of attack.

So the men were set to drowning. It was a literal sensation not a lack of air. They were hit so hard that the wind came from their lungs. They were carried off their feet. For a good few moments, a good portion of them were unable to find ground, and even when they did, it was ground filled with the menacing stakes of another man's weapons, in swords or spears.

Even Oliver, as mighty as he was in individual combat, was not immune to such a sensation. They were in the midst of a flood, and though he might have been a mighty boulder, against such a force, he could not fail to be carried off their feet.

It was like watching the darkness consume the day. It was both slow, and fast, and most importantly, inevitable. Of everyone, it was likely Volguard who had the most terrifying position – for he was stationed all the way to the rear, and he was forced to stand, and watch, as the enemy crept past all his allies, surrounding them in their entirety, and they came far enough to touch him, and his mere guard of fifty.

He knew in individual combat he stood not a chance. As soon as a sword or spear came his way, he would likely fall to it. He was old, but even in his prime, he had never been much for weapons play, and now the fact of his incompetence came knocking at his door, demanding that he pay the tax for his lack of activity.

"The God's eye," Verdant found himself thinking, in a moment of inattention So swept away was he, that he could not find it in himself to see through his own eyes. He saw above him, as if he were already dead, and a spirit departing for the heavens beyond the battlefield. And he saw the great black mass that consumed them, their armour shimmering, like the surface of an auspicious lake.

And in it, so too, did he see Oliver Patrick swimming, as he had in a vision so long ago.

When one is hit by such overwhelming force, did it make any sort of sense to resist?

Oliver did not even ponder that question – he was forced towards the answer. If he'd had the slightest shred of will, he would have resisted it all the way to his grave. But the mere suggestion of the battle that he claimed to fight had already crushed him, long before he had arisen.

When that hypothetical of the battle transformed into the physical reality of being swept away by all that was before him, it was no different. His sword arm was held high up above his body, as he was carried away, in the pulings of another man's will.

Once, he might have considered if that was how his enemies had felt, when he had bested them in the past. Those few missions where the bandits had seemed so convinced of their grandness, only to be shattered so completely by a man so much younger than them. They must have felt as if destiny had suddenly turned against them, as if they had confronted something greater, something mythical, and beyond mortal, just as Oliver did then.

Against such divinity, who was a mortal man to resist? At what point should a man cease his forcefulness, and allow his fate to take him? A deer ran all the way to the moment that it could no longer breath, and its legs could no longer work. Yorick had done the same. He had fought until there was nothing left in him, until he could raise up an arm no more.