A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor
Chapter 1598 - 1598: To Flow or to Fly - Part 5

The Patrick army now was just a building that had already long since caught fire. There was no recovering it. All its walls were charred, and its foundations were already threatening to collapse. It was beyond the point where it even seemed worth saving. Any villager with a bucket might simply have put it down and shrugged, supposing that it was easier to let the fire do the rest of the destruction, and to simply rebuild again.

Would that the Patrick army had something to rebuild with, though – Volguard and his group of guards had long since been swarmed, and there seemed not the slightest quiver of action from them. The bowmen that had put up a fight for so long had too been scorched by the flames. Their resistance had been overwhelmed. Occasionally, there was a flash of red hair, reminding the enemy of how dangerous their number had once been, and the occasional shout from a stern and serious woman looking for allies to unite. But they too were destined to be turned to ash along with the rest of them.

"It is an admirable level of resilience," Fitzer commented.

"…Do you not need to send better men out to see him dealt with?" Prince Hendrick asked.

"Unnecessary. He resists, but the men around him still grow weary. When he is once more by himself, a tide of normal men will be enough to deal him the fatal blow. Look – his side is already wounded."

"Are you in agreement, Tussle?" Hendrick asked.

"…That he has lasted as long as he has, that is the admirable note, my Prince – his resistances, they've already been depleted. I do suppose our dear enemy has used up all he has," Tussle said.

Hendrick nodded, his shoulders relaxing. Looking upon the enemy, he saw nothing but their remains, and those slight few pockets of resistance. Until Oliver Patrick was cut down, and fallen to the earth, he would not relax in his entirety, but he dared to suppose that where they were now was a mighty fine step in the right direction.

Oliver continued to allow the wind to buoy him, bit by bit, was he battered back and forth. He remained light, and yielding, to all the different forces that came his way. Until the very instant that one force grew more dominant than the rest, and attempted to hold him in a certain direction for too long, and convince him of his flow. Then his anger would flash, and his want for freedom would take over, and he'd sever the tie between him and them, so that he might return to his disconnected state.

Now there built up a force grander than the rest. All things coalesce, it was a fact that Oliver had held to increasingly. In strategy he had seen it, and on the very battlefield that he had stood, he had seen it to be true, when they had fallen into the tactic that had allowed Tussle to force them into combat. Nothing continues disconnected forever, no matter how one might try, or how much of a leaf in the wind one might be.

Oliver felt himself falling into a pattern. The very fact of his constant disconnect became the pattern. What had once been the goal to escape the dragon's attention quickly became something solid, and predictable, an obvious fact within the dragon's eye. It was laden with contradictions, but the fact was, the gravity grew strong, and he was held in place by it, his ability to drift grew less and less, until there came a point that it felt as if he was moving stuck in the mud.

The dragon grew all the more dangerous in that. If the dragon could see him, it could tear him apart. The only defence Oliver had against it was his invisibility. The sensation of that gravity, tying him in place, built in a feeling of uncomfortable anger. He twisted his lips. It was the same sensation that he got from a manipulative man, when he felt himself being carefully guided in a direction that would benefit the other party. Greeves was the worst for that, but being around the slimy man had gave him a greater degree of prowess in spotting it.

"Gar, Minister," Oliver said, all of a sudden, as that anger grew in him. "With me, if you would."

The two of them looked up, surprised. Oliver had not said a word, and they expected nothing from him. They certainly did not expect that small degree of Command that Oliver held in his voice, so opposite in approach to all that he had done until that point.

It went against the quietness that he had built up, and its gravity, and so loudness was the new quietness, when it was quietness that was expected. A contradiction amongst contradictions. The same feeling of careful disconnect, and he followed it, freeing himself of all the forces that attempted to pull at him, and the direction it pulled him in was the direction of old – a direction of overwhelm.

It wasn't all at once. It was slow, and steady, and precise. He couldn't throw in all the overwhelm that he had once before. To do so would have been to override the gentle currents that he so tensely tried to ride. Even with an anger in him, he had no more force than a leaf in the wind.

The Minister seemed to borrow a flash of energy somewhere when it was that Oliver spoke to him. They'd already been fighting together, but a single command made all the difference, especially when that command was laden with a small spirit of true Command.

They looked a fresh set of three now as they held their enemies off. To the point that it was they that were taking steps towards the wall of men, to plunge their swords in waiting flesh, rather than allowing them to come towards them.

From the walls of Solgrim, there came frowns of surprise. "I suppose they've found a second wind…" Fitzer commented. "They're damn resilient."