A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor
Chapter 1779 - 1779: Demands of the Wind - Part 4

"I don't know…" Oliver said. The conversation had taken a turn that he struggled to keep up with.

"That there exists more than we know," Hod said. "Naturally, that is the case. It simply makes sense. We group that which we don't understand, we call it chaos, we call it fortune. But there are strands of these things, like some form of magic, that others can interfere with in ways that I know not. The mages know of mana, they interfere with that, and it sickens them. Blackthorn has his own way. He sees an aggressiveness in the air, a fire that our mortal eyes cannot see. I have studied his battles – there's a brilliant man, General Patrick, let me assure you. He has built victories off the slightest spark, something that anyone would overlook, and yet it is the most obvious thing in the world to him. He sees that which others do not. You too found a victory today, on a line that others could not," Hod said.

"Please, Minister," Oliver said, finally losing his cool. "I will not accept praise for it. That none of you have insulted me for it I find an act of surprise. It almost makes me lose respect for you. I did something foolish today. I abandoned my men and crept away from battle by myself, for something that was only an impulse. There was no logic to it. I knew it to be foolish, yet I did it anyway. That it worked out at all is the only surprise to it. That is the only reason that you do not strip the rank you gave me from my head immediately. But if it hadn't worked out, you would have seen it for that which it was, the very height of foolishness."

"You trusted in something that the rest of us could not see," Hod said. "How could I fault you for that, when I have spoken as I have? You have a sense for a magic, Oliver Patrick. Does that disturb you? All great men are not mere men. All men that draw the eye and make you linger in looking at them do so because they carry with them something that you do not understand. If we could so easily define every General and soldier by his Boundaries and his mastery of Command, there would never be a moment of surprise in our battles and our world. Yet, there is nothing but surprise! It continues to surprise us, from the very start. That which we define only makes the matter all the more difficult to grasp."

"It's foolishness, Hod," Oliver said. "There's nothing to it. It's just stupidity. Sometimes I feel like doing something, like you get an itch and you just scratch it. Then something happens."

"You don't entirely even believe what you yourself are saying," Hod said. "That wound on your hand – that isn't done out of a lack of trust, or respect for oneself. That is done out of fear. Even if you do not consciously acknowledge it, since your battle with the Emersons, you have found something that others respect and you yourself fear."

"Then what is it!?" Oliver cried. "If it is such a power, why can I not command it? If it is such a power, why do indeed I fear it? Why does it not feel earned? Why does it invalidate everything that I have ever done and tried to achieve? If it is something, then it is not mine, it is something else entirely! I have no will in the matter, it does what it will with me. I am merely an instrument of it, and my will has no place. How can I outsource my own responsibility to that which I do not understand?"

There were angry tears running down Oliver's cheeks. He didn't know when they'd gotten there, but they certainly didn't show any signs of clearing up anytime soon.

"Something beyond you, is it?" Hod smiled. "That is magic, is it not? That is the realm of the Gods, of divinity. What do you receive, if not the love of them?"

"Come Hod, it is nothing so convenient. The Gods don't give without reason. They don't suddenly shower us in fortune. They don't choose men. They make us suffer, and through our suffering there is borne seeds – cruelly borne, they are, for they never appear where we wish them to. For all our efforts in predicting them, they arrive not where we expect them to be."

"And you have suffered, General Patrick. A young man of your age does not become what you are without a good degree of suffering. The tears on your cheeks, the wound on your hand, they speak to it," Hod said. "If it means anything to you, I find that regretful – that I must push you the way I do."

He put a hand on Oliver's shoulder as he said that, and there was a hint of genuine emotion there, as if the Minister of Logic truly cared, and this was not just another logical argument that he'd seen built up, for some other purpose.

"But you are required," Hod said. "Whether you wish it or not, you are indeed being pushed. Forces are at work that you can no longer resist. You and Dominus enjoyed your talk of rivers, so I tell you that you are firmly caught up in the current. If you try and resist it now, then all you have achieved and tried to defend will be swept up in your wake. You speak of deserving it, being granted it, and you find insult in it, but you see it differently to I do. You speak as if it was something apart from yourself, different from all you've ever been, a sudden new gift – but when you move, Oliver Patrick, the choices you make, they are entirely you."

"What..?" Oliver said, his eyes widening, feeling as if something profound was said, but he understood it not.

"If it were something apart from you, it would bear a personality, a flavour, that was not your own," Minister Hod said. "But this is what you have always been. Reckless, and impulsive, you have continued to make foolish choices that many would criticise. We have done all we could to educate you out of that, thinking it to be a flaw. Yet that flaw has blossomed. It has become something beyond our reckoning that we can no longer entirely analyse. It is entirely you, General Patrick, you need not fear it."