A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor
Chapter 1767 - 1767: Wounded Pride - Part 2

It seemed to declare, instead, that Oliver Patrick was useless in the enterprise. That he should try not, lest he only get in his own way. Something else would seize the victory for him. It was already an affair well and done. But how could he possibly know that? How could he see towards that which did not exist yet? Was it not simple madness? It brought him no fresh cunning, no ideas, no routes towards the future. It was only an arrogant certainty of what the result might be.

And what good was such a thing? Could it even be considered to be accurate? Why ought he trust in just a random piece of madness that laid within his body?

The trouble was – he did trust it. Implicitly. The sense he'd had before the battle with the Emersons, and then again, when he was dealt the problem of Germanicus. There had been a certainty in him that he dared not rely on, and twice, it had proved itself to be right.

Twice it had proved that there existed a road that Oliver could not conceive of. That, all his planning, all his cunning was wasted compared to it. That his will meant nothing in the face of it – that the world would simply open up, and lay the path for him.

It seemed to declare, if Oliver did listen, then there were rewards to be had. It took the problem of his strategy, and it mocked it. It declared such a thing to be easy to solve. It took the problem of the battlefield that he currently stood on, and it mocked that too. In a laughter that was part Ingolsol, and part something else. And then with a wind that was part Claudia, and part something else as well.

It ran through him, it took control of him, and it did all that he was unable to do himself. It told him to give in. That it was there for the taking. A power that he could not reconcile with any of the knowledge that he currently had.

"Can I even call it power?" Oliver said aloud, his voice quivering. He fell and clutched his head in his hands. It didn't feel like power. It wasn't an addition to who he was. It felt, instead, like the thing threatened to consume him. That it would overwrite him with something else.

He didn't like it, not one bit. What was this grandness that it offered? "Why me?" Oliver said. "Why me, why now? Why? Do you laugh at my struggles? Do you mock me?"

He had a feeling that the thing did. With its presence, the years, and the pain that they brought fell upon Oliver's chest all at once. The lightness of its touch wormed through him, and like Nila's hands, they revealed all the cracks that he hadn't realized were still there. An acute, immobilizing pain. There was naught he could do but cry from it.

He could not have predicted that this was where he'd end up. It wasn't him at all. It was unfair. A victory beyond his hands, routes beyond his imagining. A buoyancy seemingly offered by the Gods. It wasn't fair at all. He hated it. He didn't want to listen to it. It invalidated him. Why did he deserve it?

For all his struggle – why this. Why now? Dominus had never said anything like it. He'd told Oliver of the Boundaries, and was this not what the Boundaries were meant to be? A power that could only be attributed to the Gods, that went entirely beyond man?

Why did it carry all the strangeness of a Boundary Break here, and yet none of its reassurance? Oliver did not believe he had worked to carry it. He didn't like the way that it had arrived so arrogantly. Nor did he even trust that it was as powerful as it claimed to be.

So indeed, why was it that he was so frightened of it?

It declared to him that it was time to give up. That he ought simply rest, and place his trust somewhere else. It pointed to the pain of the years, and said, he'd already done enough.

But Oliver could not believe that. "Done enough?" Oliver said, in a sudden fit of anger. "How can I have done enough? Others have suffered far more than me. Who am I to be the recipient of something so grand? Who are you? What are you? Are you madness? Claudia, Ingolsol! Answer! What is this that runs through me, where does this certainty come from?"

His Fragments did not answer. They did not even mutter a word. It was as if they were thousands of miles away, engaged in something else entirely. They left Oliver Patrick alone towards something that was both foreign and entirely familiar.

A sudden flash of memory made Oliver feel sick to his stomach.

He remembered the way he had run as a child. He was through the meadow, racing, racing. He pushed himself until his heart felt like it might burst. There was no reason to. There was no one to see his efforts, and no reason to push himself so far.

None but the wind. It had listened. It had blown through him, and sung a melody to him, as if he were a hero on a battlefield entirely of his own. It had made his flesh tingle with excitement, and buffeted him forward. It had been so effortless then.

When the children had been struggling to learn their plants, by the teachings of one of the older men in the village, what was it that brought those names to Oliver's memory so easily? He had never tried to do any of it. He hadn't pushed himself. He had been genuinely curious as to what they were. And he'd been surprised every time the name would arise unbidden from his memory.

Effortlessly, he had overturned it. Even in effort, he applied it effortlessly. He loved the rawness of his aching body when applied himself to pointless endeavours. He loved to push himself without reason. There was an incredible satisfaction in it. Pure, and pointless – but something had always been kind to him for it. Like a hand on his shoulder, nodding their praise.