A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor
Chapter 1772 - 1772: The Head of House Patrick - Part 3

Once more, Oliver was stuck, and he had to use anything that was available to him to find his way forward. He guessed, in his heart, as the minutes passed, that Germanicus would be on his way up a ladder now. He couldn't see any sort of response from Hod as to the fact.

"Damn you as well, Minister," Oliver said. "It's impossible to keep that giant in check all by myself."

Gar must have sensed Oliver's frustration, for he was falling upon lesser enemies with an even greater degree of ferociousness than usual. He was jumping up off the ground to attack enemies from above whenever he could, so that he wouldn't be affected by that momentum that Tavar had seen brought about.

That momentum continually, wished to see Oliver and his men driven back over the wall behind them. They were forced to fight continually on the back foot. It was an immensely irritating and suffocatingly crushing position to endure from.

"Something about this is fine," Oliver murmured to himself, forcing himself to look, trying to find a silver-lining in what otherwise was a terribly placed position. His men were forced backwards, and then Tavar's men would even find a way between the lines. They were being separated into groups, at the same time as they were being pushed back. There were dozens of little isolated boulders now, being swarmed by the sea that Tavar had created.

They were isolated, but they were still holding.

"Oh…" Oliver murmured, realizing that. What had him so panicked was the fact of their endurance. They ought to be whittled down from the start, being forced to just maintain the same position – but these were peasant men, well mixed in with those Blackthorn soldiers, who were seemingly managing to maintain their position in their lonesome.

They were separated, indeed, but at the same time, they were strengthened. The battlefield found its natural balance, and the men found their natural shape in which they could last longer than they otherwise might. Tavar's waves had moulded them into that. They'd applied a pressure that had forced the men to adapt, quite naturally, towards its wants. Those that didn't were simply crushed and they died.

Oliver supposed that, if his position had really been so bad, then they wouldn't be capable of resisting at all. It was an unappealing sight, both to the logical eye of strategy that he'd been trained in, and as a man that was fighting in the confines of such a formation. But it was more solid than it looked.

Indeed, he felt that undeniable pressure, as if they were being pushed back, as if defeat was all that awaited them the way things were. But when it was that he actually paused to look at the scenes in front of him, he found that they didn't appear to be nearly as bad as the rushing of his panicked heart had made them out to be.

When he paused, he could almost find himself confident that they would not move backward without him. Nor would they explode apart in a sudden instant of overwhelm. The enemy under Tavar had reached their own sort of stagnation. They were buoyed by the fact that they were on the front foot, but that didn't do much to help them when they still couldn't smash apart the obstacles that lay to their front.

Both sides were engaged in a difficult position. Naturally, in time, Oliver was quite certain that Tavar's strategy would see them all undercut then quickly defeated, but when he drew in a deep breath and dared to simply hold on, he found it wasn't quite as bad as he had expected it to be.

Standing there just like that, in the midst of a position that should have been terrible, with Germanicus nearing the top of that eastern wall by the second, Oliver found a strange confidence. There was that part of him again, so certain and arrogant in itself. Not a part of his conscious mind, for there was no logical basis behind it. It was something else that he couldn't quite put his finger on.

Irritatingly enough, he found that with an increasing intensity, he did begin to trust that side of himself. He thought that perhaps, after all, that side of him knew more than he did. And that perhaps that side of him might need to be relied upon, in situations like the one he stood in, where it seemed as if he might not be able to do anything at all.

The longer he held the more that feeling seemed to swirl. As if it delighted in the worsening situation. Oliver felt his mistrust growing of it, at the same time that his confidence swirled. For it was madness, was it not? What sort of creature existed in him that it could dare to feel such an arrogance when confronted with the likes of Tavar's overwhelming strategy?

Did it not declare that it saw through it, if it could feel as such? Oliver knew the name of such a creature, just by contact with it - that name naturally was Ingolsol. But this wasn't quite the same Ingolsol that he was used to. The creature said not a word. His Fragments had not spoken to him in a good while. And there was a fluidness to the creature that Ingolsol lacked. Ingolsol wouldn't ever budge from his position, no matter what was said to him, but this sense felt more adaptable. More inclined to give up everything, and to play the world with a looseness.

Against its like, Oliver almost preferred Ingolsol. He knew Ingolsol and what he offered. Ingolsol was the clenching of the world in a fist. When Oliver's heart swirled, and there was the right moment to force a thousand pieces together, it was Ingolsol's might that did it.

What of this sense, however? He could almost lay it equally at Claudia's door. For it was she that gave him the paths that he needed through his tribulations. She was the one who danced, well enough for Ingolsol to find his opportunity. But Claudia had never operated with such an arrogance.