A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor
Chapter 1764 - 1764: Clashing Storms - Part 6

"I can't reach him," Oliver thought, his anger swirling at that fact. All that he'd trained towards, all that he'd learned, it was insufficient. Dominus could have found away, but Oliver as he was couldn't. The more the battle went on, the more to Germanicus' advantage it would shift.

He hated that fact. He detested that fact. For it felt like an insult to the legacy of his master. Dominus was not here to defend himself. It was only Oliver who was present to show the teachings of the greatest Sword in Stormfront history. It was incomparable to the likes of Germanicus. His wisdom alone ought to have been worth more than him.

Hod had declared that he wished for Dominus Patrick, and in finding himself so insufficient, Oliver too wished for Dominus Patrick once more. He willed the wisdom and experience of his master into his blade. He remembered how straight Dominus would stand when they sparred, how he would mark the ground where he stood with his presence.

Without thinking or necessarily realizing what he was doing, Oliver found himself doing the same. He was in the forest again, high in the blank mountains, and he was training. Only, this time he was not the young Beam. He was the instructor, educating that young man. He saw the youth's potential, as Dominus had. He saw the fierceness in his eyes, and that desperation which he thought with. And so easily did he allow that might to strike him, only to turn it off to the side, and point out the weaknesses in it all.

When Germanicus found Oliver again, he was stood like that, casually enough, with his sword in one hand, in the way that Dominus used to hold it, when his arm was paining him. His other was behind his back. Calmness sat on his face, and a quiet sort of curiosity.

The Minister of Blades hurried, in the same way that Germanicus did. Gar fought his way through the crowd of men as well, back to where Oliver stood, but neither was likely to make it in time for Germanicus' charge, nor did it seem like Oliver had any intention of moving.

The giant that was King Germanicus was allowed to run up fully, he was allowed to pull his hammer back entirely, and to fill it with the genuine rage that Oliver had invoked in him, in declaring not only that he was not the strongest, but that he did not even come close. The arrogance of misbelief needed to declare such a thing – and then the arrogance needed to stand as Oliver did then.

Oliver ignored the flow that was so set against him. Dominus had not needed it to defeat Oliver a thousand times over. He hadn't needed to build a bridge towards that victory. Nor had he needed to rely on might for it. It was something else entirely.

That mighty warhammer, as big as any man was likely to grow, came crashing right in towards Oliver's chest. Throw late enough that dodging backwards was impossible, and that ducking under it, or shifting away from it was unlikely, without an impossible speed.

He tried to imitate Dominus in his stance, and in his movements, but it was the unhappy face of a child that Oliver did wear in confronting King Germanicus. His eyebrows were arched, and though he felt a good deal of calm within himself, that was not the outwards presentation that he had.

He heard the shouts of battle, and did not shift. He did not even begin to think of a counterstrategy. There was a certainty in him. A quiet waiting for something that he should not to have known yet to exist. And yet, he based his next movement on that very thing – something that the logical mind could not draw up, nor years of reasoning suppose. It was intuition of the highest sort.

A man staggered out of the crowd – a Blackthorn soldier, on his very last legs, after having been dealt a wound to his stomach. He crumbled over, right into the path of the hammer that came Oliver's way. He was forced in that direction by one of Germanicus' own Treeant troops, covered in the same swirling warpaint as Germanicus himself.

That was when the swirling sense of something within Oliver turned into an absolute certainty. Up until that point, he had not known where it was that he had to move, or what it was that he had to do.

"HOLD!" He declared to the man, just about to die, with the fullest depth of his Command.

Oliver seemed to vanish behind him, and the man himself turned, seeing King Germanicus, and his face blossomed into an insane smile. "FOR QUEEN ASABEL!" He declared, rooting himself to the spot, in line with that very strike, his spear pointed outwards to catch it.

"GRAHHHHHHHHHH!" King Germanicus bellowed, smashing through him, crushing the entire upper-half of his body into a messy splash of red. He was confident enough that though he'd lost track of Oliver, his strike was still an impossible thing to evade.

In that, he wasn't wrong. But where at first there had been impossibilities, from the tiniest little breath of wind, delivered from that which was outside of Oliver's control, there was delivered a route that none could have foreseen or planned.

With Dominus Patrick's blade, he beat at King Germanicus' warhammer from the bottom, speeding up the natural arc that the hammer had, forcing it upwards, towards where it had intended to go already. Then under it, Oliver did dash. With the mere speed of a Fourth Boundary man, and with the mere strength, he found and created his opening, and he left his wound across King Germanicus' stomach.

The sword tore through chainmail, and bit down into flesh, drawing blood. Another inch, and it might have caused the sort of damage that would have been incompatible with further life.

As it was, blood still rippled from the mighty wound, drenching down the floor in front of them. Oliver opened a second mouth in the King's stomach, and painted his legs with it, and the ground in front of them.

There, he came to a stop. A follow up attack might have been tempting, but Oliver felt not the impulse, and how quickly King Germanicus regained himself pointed to a good solid reason behind that. Any further, and it might have been him that was receiving the fatal blow instead.

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