A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor
Chapter 1595 - 1595: To Flow or to Fly - Part 2

As his Lord, Oliver ought to have done the same. He wondered how many would be disappointed by his meekness. Whether Dominus would look down on his lack of resistance, and wonder why it was that he had not fought, even though he was so consumed by the void of the blackness that he called his enemy.

"I was defeated in advance," Oliver would have argued, if he were questioned, though he would have said so weakly, with a smile, for even the resistance of that stance held no force. There was no force to be had. It was not only the rivers that buoyed him now – it was the gentleness of the wind. He was but a leaf in it, carried beyond it.

For so long, he had looked to rivers in the same way that Dominus had. He had seen the mountain streams carve away at the rocks around them, and he had run his fingers along the erosion lines that they had left, and he had thought with wonder at their achievements.

Now, he could not rely on such things. All that the dragon could see, it could take from him. The water and the streams, they were no different. If it saw it, the dragon would steal it, and crush him with it.

It had already taken everything that Oliver Patrick had owned. Two thousand little candles, in the hearts of men, Oliver had begun the battle with – and even with them, he had known they could not beat back the darkness.

Now, he found himself alone, the world completely black. There was nothing to reach for, no wills of different men to ride. They were nothing at all. It was more void even than the heart of fighting that Gar had offered to him. It was so overwhelming that it ought to have been a matter for philosophical contemplation, an extreme that never should exist, rather than the very reality in front of him.

In the void, there was no movement, there was nothing to crush, nothing to snatch, no goals to be had, no achievements to be made, no plans to carve, desires to snatch. There was nothing at all, nothing but the gentle stirrings of the wind. The wind, its gentleness, that was the only thing the dragon could not snatch away. It was the only thing that the dragon too relied upon, and could not command at will. It needed the wind.

It was not will that brought Oliver's sword crashing down, nor the command of the wind. The wind had reached its highest point, the tidal wave of men had carried him as far as it possibly could. Gravity, it fought with that wind, and the wind knew the battle to be over.

The treasured blade fell onto a soldier's head, cleaving through his helmet, and separated his face into a perfect diagonal half, revealing the row of bottom teeth, all the way to the bloodied back. For a moment, Oliver was allowed to touch the ground. Then the men carried him up again, the tidal wave of them all. A smaller height than before, they angrily pulled at him, and snatched pieces of his surcoat, leaving gouges in his armour.

Then again, his feet fell to the floor, and with no thought to anything, Oliver cleaved another man, and then another, and suddenly, his feet were left rooted.

Once, he would have seen those three corpses that he had left, and he would have seen the beginnings of a stream, a mighty little fire that was set to be started from the few embers that had been left. But no longer could he hold to such hopes. He was alone in it all, sat in the void. The only reason he moved at all was because of the gentle wind that pulled at him.

He felt the old forces of flow needling at him, telling him to push in the same direction that he had before, to build something there, but he resisted them with a shake of his head, knowing full well how dangerous it would be. He knew the dragon would sniff out that fire, and see that stream of flow, long before it could be anything.

His sword fell in another direction, differently, as though attacking his previous example. He speared a man through the chest, and then grappled him, bringing him close, for seemingly no reason at all. If anything, it might have been out of sheer disagreeableness. Perhaps that was the nature of the wind that Oliver so failed to understand.

A dagger came alarmingly close to Oliver's back for his decision. The man he's skewered held enough light in his eyes to make the attempt. But it never did reach Oliver. The slightest slap of his hand to the side, and the problem was so solved, carefully, and perfectly, as if in the void, it by itself, were the most important thing in the world.

When he released the man, and let him clatter to the ground, the acknowledgement he gave it, as it bounced off the ground, its chainmail ringing, was far beyond anything that he would have given it before. All sorts of things demanded Oliver's attention, from within himself, and without himself, there were all sorts of little flowers that seemed to wish for Oliver to fall into, but he never stayed in any of them for too long.

He would let them pull for the shortest few moments, in the form of his own fear, and his want, and then he would feel something that was a strange mix of both revolution, and fear, and he would draw back again. Perhaps it was simply the pressure of the dragon that set him to moving.

Twenty corpses appeared at his feet before he even really had a thought to how it had happened. His breathing was far from being steady. His arms were even almost cold. There was no desire in any of the killings, no thought as to what it might build towards – and yet build towards something, it still did.