A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor
Chapter 1609 - 1609: The Witch - Part 8

She licked her lips, crouching through the lines of men, grateful for the buffer that they provided between her and the frontlines. She was well aware of the sacrifice that had to be offered up so that she could move as freely as she was allowed to, and she felt the intensity of responsibility from it.

The man was bold, and brash, and ever so loud. He didn't seem the sort to cower behind his troops, or make any sort of sudden moves that weren't in line with the mighty charge of a buffalo. She tracked him, and understood him, as she might understand a dear. But she knew him to be a mighty man. Of the Third Boundary, at least, and she had learned quickly, through her experience in this battle, just what it took for a woman of the Second Boundary like her to be able to even wound the likes of a Colonel. Thus far, she'd failed in every attempt, but she could not afford to fail anymore.

Not even her own soldiers seemed to recognize that she was there. They were all so busy, and so preoccupied. She was just a single stone sat in the depths of a mighty pond. She desperately wanted to see the man dead. She felt more pressure in that shot than she had in any other shot in her life – but her old instincts kicked in, culling that fear. She cleared her mind of everything useless. The slightest twist of an emotion was enough to ruin a perfect shot. One had to be empty to keep that steady. The huntress' green eyes went pale, and her breathing slowed to a stop. For a brief instant, the line of soldiers parted between her and her enemy – and she did not see that opportunity missed.

"COLONEL!" Came the shout of the attendant, when he saw the horse of his leading man rear from the sudden impact. The blood was that of a fountain, raining down over all of them, from the arrow wound that he'd taken to the neck. The Colonel clawed at it desperately, and with a mighty strong hand, he plucked it free, and tried to say something, but he only made matters worse. His torn mess of a throat continued to spray blood, until there was nothing left in his body to keep his neck upright.

His horse fell, then reared again, and this time, the man's lifeless body was tossed free of it, and the tenseness that he'd been building amongst his soldiers dissipated in a sudden mighty degree of shock.

Nila's relief was a barely expressed thing, for her attention was instantly turned elsewhere. She supposed that no one had been there to witness her struggle, but that brought her no bitterness. She needed not the praise for her achievements, she only wished for their victory, for their – for Oliver's - survival.

Yet Oliver did see. With no paths to victory that he himself could find, his attention was entirely elsewhere. He could not fail to miss the small spark that Nila had started. He felt his heart swell with sudden significance, as if to say "this is it!". He wanted to charge towards it, and use it as the crux that he might base their victory on, but his outstretched hand fell short. By now, he knew the magnitude of the problem in the dragon that they had to solve, and he well knew that the single brick – though mighty – that Nila had offered him wouldn't be sufficient.

He hardly knew how to acknowledge something that grand, without making use of it, but he forced the reaching of his heart to stop. It was Claudia's want for progress, and Ingolsol's want for power that made him snatch meaning from even the smallest of things, using them to build further instruments in the war machine that Oliver Patrick had become. He fought against the impulse from both of them this time, however, and merely let it sit, with the smallest thing of acknowledgement.

In his head, he could feel the dragon growling at him, as if to say "weren't you about to do something?". It stood tense, and read, and when it was poised as such, there was no man alive that could touch it. The coldness of Oliver's heart, his careful way of disguising his intentions, or at least, rendering them none existent, that he so learned up until this point, he dared to exercise again. He felt Nila's fire, and then made himself entirely blind to it, dedicating himself once more to merely the men in front of him.

'We're losing,' he realized, with sudden alarm. Nila had managed to quash a Colonel's charge on one side of their square, but on the opposite side, there had been a breakthrough. A lack of leaders there saw their line collapse, and more than a hundred men slaughtered in a single instant of breaking.

It was the natural thing, from the pressure that they were facing, like a river eroding a rock, but it still cut deep into Oliver's heart. He felt the fear pounding, as his men were slaughtered, one by one. He saw General Tussle begin to circle, away from where General Fitzer was standing, he trotted towards where the hole in Oliver's formation had opened up, and he directed more troops towards it, with his own sword drawn, apparently about to enter the battlefield himself.

Gar and the Minister of Blades still fought by Oliver's side, along with Verdant, and Blackthorn. If there was any capable of stopping a Fourth Boundary man, it would have been Gar or the Minister.

The pressure of that assault made Oliver wish to move again. It was another piece to be grasped, another fire. There was a natural counter momentum to be had in ever attack, by the will of a counter attack. Ingolsol's anger was palpable, seeing his men slain in such a number, and Oliver's own went along with it. By the decree of that anger, in the past, they might have been able to plug that opening, but once more, Oliver detached himself from it. He drew himself back. He saw the fire, and he let it burn in the void, without trying to wield it, and without making it a part of himself.