A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor
Chapter 1768 - 1768: Wounded Pride - Part 3

There had been true praise as well, from his mother, and his father. He'd caused them no end of trouble, he knew that. There would constantly be a new idea planted in his head, to try something that he ought not have. Mixing dung with water, and then charcoal, and then deciding a few spiders added in for good measure wouldn't go amiss. He called it a potion, but his mother hadn't been terribly convinced when it stank out their home.

Effortless it had been then. Until it wasn't any longer. Until existence itself became suffering, and all that was important was snatched for it. When to crawl forward meant dragging one by one's nails across an old set of floorboards, bleeding as he went.

That suffering. The sheer weight that each step brought. That reassurance that indeed, he was struggling as hard as he could be.

"But why do you force yourself to struggle still?" A voice asked. A younger Oliver, by the name of Tempest.

Oliver's lip twitched. The tears came again. He didn't like it. For something to put a hand on the source of his pain so easily. He didn't like it at all. He didn't want to see it, he didn't want to confront it. He certainly didn't want to imagine a future in which he was wrong. In which there was this terrifying unknown, where the limitations he had supposed to be on himself no longer existed.

"Haven't you done enough?" The young boy asked. "Aren't you tired, Oliver Patrick? Do you not see – it doesn't hate us after all. The world that we struggled against. It seems to love us quite a lot."

Oliver collapsed onto his desk, as sobs wracked his entire body. He clawed at the wood of it, trying to make it stop. It was so painful. To see all those scars. He had no idea how much pain he had carried. Once those tears had started, they would not stop. The terror they brought was unfathomable. He wanted to disappear. He feared to cry any further. He thought he might lose his mind, and then his heart.

When he cried for a time, he wasn't even sure if he was crying anymore. Those could well have been laughs that were coming out of his throat. He was convinced, ever so convinced, of the lost state of his mind.

"It's okay," Tempest said, putting a hand on his head. He was barely eight years old in that image, but the damn boy understood. Those damn eyes that so many had seen the bright spark of fearsome intelligence and will in – they saw through even an Oliver so much older than he. He saw it, and he understood it. He held for him the compassion of all those years. "Don't you remember, Oliver? How we used to fly? Don't you want to fly again?"

Oliver shook his head vigorously. He knew what flying meant. The trust required to fly was impossible for him. He didn't have that whimsy anymore. The world was far too terrifying a place for him to trust in. It had betrayed him – it had taken that which was most important from him. His very family. It had turned his back on him. "How dare you declare that?"

"Ah," Tempest said, nodding sadly. "It took from us. It did. But did Dominus not teach you, the flow of all things? You have seen it yourself, in the forest. We were just another part of it. A bird ought not cut off its wings, merely in defiance."

"I am not a bird," Oliver said, misliking the way the image of the young boy spoke with such refinement. It made him seem a far more haunting and sinister creature.

"Aren't you?" Tempest said. "Have you not always been certain of it, Oliver? When you used to hear that praise? That grandness awaited us? The world looked at us, and they declared it."

"Grandness has already been delivered. Ask for no more, we deserve no more."

"You deserve the gift that you have forgotten," Tempest said. "You are chained by your own hands, Oliver. You are already it. From the moment you defeated the Emersons, you have known it to be true. It slips out of you, more and more. That which you once were. The magic has already begun. The storm had already arrived. You will be forced to fly, Oliver, so you had better learn how once more."

Oliver shook his head violently, wracked by fear. He did not wish to see the world as Tempest saw it. A vision so far beyond where Oliver currently stood that he could not abide by it. The boy was so certain. Ever so certain.

"The world loves you, Oliver," Tempest said. "It always has. It is you that turned your back on it, not it you. You have forced yourself to struggle. You harm yourself."

Oliver clenched his teeth. "You make it sound as if I could have done better."

Tempest shook his head. "That is the road we were destined to go down. But that road is at its end. The suffering that you endured. It's enough now. You do not need to carry such a burden any longer. Allow the wind to heal your wounds."

"It took our family from us," Oliver said. "How can you forgive it so easily, when it turned its backs on us? We used to run through it. We trusted it more than anything. Why would I trust it again?"

"Because you are forced to," Tempest said. "There are things more important to you now than yourself. The battle with the Emersons proved that, did it not? For yourself, you would never have gone that far. But for those you love? You will do anything. Do you not see, Oliver? They will for you to fly again. Does Nila not see the chains that you have set around your heart? Does she not seek to free you from yourself?"

Oliver's hands trembled with a violence. He shook his head. It was far too terrifying. He wanted nothing more than for it to stop. He wasn't ready to hear it.

"It loves you, Oliver," Tempest said. "It always has. It never betrayed you, not even once."