A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor
Chapter 1680 - 1680: The Coming Storm - Part 4

"Oh Gods, that's it, isn't it?" Fitzer said, startling himself from the sound of his own voice. He laughed then – a manic, mad laugh. He shook his head, his face falling into his open palms. "Oh Gods, we were fools, weren't we?"

"You are a fool," Blackthorn said hotly. "But I would rather you not be a mad one. Speak properly. Get a hold of yourself."

He shot Reid a look, as if telling him to fix the mess of a man in front of him. "General, if I might say, you are beginning to ramble…" Reid offered delicately. "No doubt you've been under a lot of stress from the battling, but even if you are a prisoner now, the way you present yourself, I doubt it's something that you should be showing your enemy, no?"

"Pah," Fitzer said. "Pah to both of you. The damage is already done. There is nothing you can do to me that would harm my position. If you would take my life by your hand, rather me take it by my own hand, the Emerson position is stronger – for it is tyrants that now we must fight against. You ask me to speak, then you dare to correct how I speak?"

There were those embers of rage again there. A breeze passed through, stirring the fire into an angry growl along with Fitzer. They were the barest remnants of what the General had once been. Enough to stir the beast inside of General Blackthorn, making him wish that he'd had the opportunity to fight the man when he'd been stronger.

"Speak your nonsense then. What sense did you suppose it made?" Blackthorn said.

"He died there," Fitzer said, as if it was obvious. "He died protecting that pitiful little village. The greatest swordsman in living memory. Why would there not be something remaining? Do the fingers of Pandora not afflict our dead and raise them up as Corpse Soldiers, when they die with lingering attachments? Your General Patrick has slain more than a few of them in the wake of our battle, I've heard him say as much. Why wouldn't the great Dominus Patrick have left something behind?"

Blackthorn shook his head. "This is the talk of madness. You lost, and now you would blame something that you cannot see, that you cannot feel?"

"Ha," Fitzer said. "Ha. The comment of a man that has not been afflicted by something that he cannot see, and he cannot feel. Do you think my grievances would be thus if I could think and feel that which defeated me? No. Nay, I say. You're in the wrong, Blackthorn, and you would have fallen victim to it as much as I."

His hand dashed through the air to illustrate his point. He grasped something that neither Reid nor Blackthorn could see, and then he crushed his hand around it, as though capturing an insect. "This," Fitzer said. "Is the interference of the Gods. The leftover will of a legend. We already fought on tainted ground. There has been too much fighting done here, on these lands between Solgrim and Ernest… There is too much blood watered, too much will. And now, I say, the lands have a will of their own."

"I say, they exist in their own right, in protest of us. They seek to swallow up the invader. They allow the man that means in the defence something he ought not have… And for it to be Oliver Patrick as the General – for him to command the defence, when it be his father that died here before him, to see these lands protected… Now I see. Now I see the inconsistencies, the attention of the Gods. A white horse found him during the fight. He slew its rider, and mounted it. That was something, Lord Blackthorn, enough to give you chills. Something that no mortal man ought rely on. The Gods declared themselves watching then," Fitzer said.

"So, you would blame your loss on fairies, and the Gods, and all that is not you," Blackthorn said contemptuously. "How you have fallen from grace, General Fitzer. I have heard all that I need to out of you. You know nothing of the strategy of the man that defeated you. These weeks you have spent in thought on the fact have done nothing for you."

"I did not say that," Fitzer said, his tone different now, more reserved. It made Blackthorn pause, as he was clearly gathering himself to leave. "I did not say that the creature that they call Oliver Patrick was not terrifying indeed."

The look in his eyes then was not one of madness. He met Blackthorn's gaze head on, and there was clear intelligence still remaining there. "With words, it's hard to describe what he is, General Blackthorn…" Fitzer said, his hands dancing in the air again, as his fingers pulled through empty space, dragging along little breezes, little packets of wind.

"You might be able to understand," Fitzer said. "If I explain it to you."

He grinned as he said that. "And do not think you will be able to hide your answer from me if you do. I need not your words. I just need to see the look on your face. With the instincts that you are so famed for, perhaps you will see through it – and when you do, I will use it against you. Will you listen regardless?"

Blackthorn's answer was instantaneous and overwhelming. "Hundreds of men before you have tried to see through me, Fitzer, and all have failed. I will take my chances."

Fitzer snorted. "Arrogant bastard. I am glad we have not had to fight alongside each other. You would have been even more insufferable than Tussle."

"Speak then, man, before I have my fill of you. This is your last attempt. Make that point that you so declare you wish to make."

"I say that words fail me in describing it," Fitzer said. "But I will attempt regardless. I have spoken of that which should not have existed. Those little winds that blew that needed not to be there at all. Oh – the wind itself did blow on that battlefield. It howled, General Blackthorn. It stole away your words, and left your breath freezing in your lungs. Gods be good, the memory of it… Momentous, that is what it felt. I thought the moment was ours, that it was us the Gods were watching, and Oliver Patrick, he led me to believe that."