A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor
Chapter 1765 - 1765: Clashing Storms - Part 7

As the King's blood flowed from his wound, and he looked down on himself in shock, a sudden wing came ripple across the walls. The sky had been clear of snow that day, and cloudless. There had been hardly the barest hint of a breeze. Yet that wind came suddenly, and strongly, enough to interrupt the fighting of those thousands of men, and to cut through down towards their bones, freezing them.

It brought Minister Hod stirring with a sudden alertness. He looked towards the direction of the southern wall, from the headquarters that he'd set up for himself towards the south.

"Already?" He murmured to himself, wondering whether he was misreading the situation. But then he saw it in the behaviour of the troops that followed. They spoke it as clearly as the words of a book for a man like Hod. That nervous movement of Tavar's men. That frantic excitement of the Patrick troops. They had not even needed to shout it for him to know.

General Blackthorn interrupted his own command to look there as well. He was near enough to Hod that the two could shout to each other.

"Oliver Patrick?" He said, in a low voice.

The Minister nodded.

General Blackthorn twisted his lips in a fierce smile. Bearing his teeth as he was, he looked more wolf than man. A cruel excitement surrounded him. "So this is what they felt. What Fitzer felt, and Prince Hendrick… And Tussle before it was turned on him. This is what was used to overturn an army of twenty thousand."

From below the southern wall, it was Tavar that had the best view. He, like Hod, had known what to expect from Oliver, given his achievement. He'd known that there had needed to exist something beyond the known. Yet he had not caught a whiff of it yet. Not until that very moment, when he saw the prodigy that he knew well to be his trump card in this coming war so suddenly sliced across the stomach.

There ought to have been no roads towards it, no routes that would make it sensible, yet with a quietness that seemed like the favour of the Gods, Oliver had found it amidst the chaos, as surely as a tiger might find the scent of a deer.

He had to admit to himself the alarm. Given that he had his oath, and this war to win, on behalf of the High King. He had to drink in the sensation, as the wind tore through his armour, and made his white hair dance, and he had to acknowledge it to be a terrifying thing indeed. Terrifying enough that he would need to alter his strategy entirely just to contain it.

Yet there was still a part of him, as the man in charge of the Academy, and a man who had at times personally seen to Oliver Patrick's education, that felt just a hint of pride. He saw that feeling quashed quickly however, though he couldn't remove the smile from his face fast enough.

"A General capable of overturning an army ten times his size. A Sword capable of matching King Germanicus," Tavar said, shaking his head. "My dear Minister of Logic. This is the Time of Tigers that you have so sought. Do you delight in it? Or do you see, as I do, that we mere mortal men begin to wander far too close to the territory of our Gods?"

Against King Germanicus, Oliver stood, heaving in deep breaths. He had no idea why it was he felt so exhausted. He'd hardly moved. His mind was as blank as an empty sheet of parchment, yet a vicious fear ran through him. It took all the courage he had simply to stand where he stood. His teeth chattered, and he wanted to run. He wanted nothing more than to curl up somewhere quiet and warm, away from the world, where there was safety, and reassurance.

For the King Germanicus, however, he could see none of those emotions. All he saw were those terrifyingly bright eyes that Oliver Patrick staring him down with, completely unblinking. Of green, and blue, and grey. A great swirling storm they were, with flecks of purple and gold dancing in their centre.

He shuddered despite himself. He felt trapped, as if he'd so suddenly fallen into the depths of a mighty river, and its currents were pulling him everywhere aside from where it was that he wanted to go. The wound to his stomach did not help matters. He felt immobilized. Weak, and vulnerable.

"…The steady flow of a river?" He muttered to himself. "There was nothing so slow and steady about that." He said accusingly, like a boy that had been lied to.

"Dominus could see it," Oliver said, straightening himself up, as his hands shook, and his body trembled, fighting the urge to cry. He had never felt so vulnerable in all his life – not since the battle with the Emersons. Perhaps even more so. "The moments when progress does coalesce, when there's an explosion that we don't understand. He acknowledged that we looked to the rivers merely for that which bore a close resemblance to it… But we'd never get the true thing just from them. For entirely, it is beyond us. Entirely, it is the realm of the Gods."

Oliver could not move nor think to follow up. His only want was to flee. That was not true of the men around him, however. The wind that blew through them brought the fires in their hearts raging to a storm. The cry was given.

"OUR GENERAL DRAWS THE BLOOD OF A KING!" It was shouted, as a peasant soldier saw what had happened, and unable to contain himself, gave a roar up to the sky.

The Patrick men heard it, and knew it to be true, for they could feel their General's Command flowing through them, in a rush of something that had not yet had a name until that peasant soldier had given it one.

Then the Minister of Blades and Gar were moving, looking to finish that which Oliver had already started. King Germanicus, for his part, looked far too stunned to continue the fight. His broken fingers at the hands of General Blackthorn, and now his bloodied stomach from the likes of General Patrick. He was suddenly beginning to feel as if the Stormfront Generals that General Tavar had so warned him to respect were rather terrifying creatures indeed.