A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor
Chapter 1823 - 1823: The Spell of The Past - Part 1

The High King had acted his cruelty for all these years. He'd ensured that the name of Persephone could not even be spoken without consequences. For the quiet life that she'd sought to live, it seemed strangely poetic, as well as tragic. It was another attack aimed at a dead man in Dominus. A muddying of the waters, a corrupting of the very history that they knew to be true. A corrupting of the High King's own mind.

He wondered how the High King had not seen it. Whether it was madness, or something else, some sort of strange self-justification. Perhaps he assumed that his information network was not perfect, or perhaps he attributed a deviousness to Dominus and Persephone that they did not have.

There was just a single question that begged asking – the child that Persephone carried, stabbed through the womb, nearly nineteen years ago. Just how had that child survived, and been able to carry the name Patrick?

All it required was the smallest little bit of thinking, and the answer was obvious. There was certainty in the way Persephone had died. The High King's spies had made sure of it. She had indeed been with child, and there had never been a sign of other children before it. Those that knew the nature of her slaying, with a dagger to the belly, knew too the certainty that such a child would never have breathed a breath of Stormfront air, however tragic that might have been.

It was a phantom now that bore the name Patrick. A fact that only Blake seemed to acknowledge. The Oliver Patrick now, that stirred the realm – he could not have been their son. Not in the sense of blood. Yet in all other respects, he was both of them, well and truly. He was Persephone's natural talent, and he was Dominus' unyielding will. He was that which was brought about by their union, a mighty love, passed on. With just the barest touch, it had made that Oliver Patrick young man what he was. He was the anger of the Gods, brought about to see them punished for what they had done. The very winds blew in his favour. It was the Gods entirely in Oliver Patrick that they fought against. More than any other man in Queen Asabel's alliance, it was that young man that he feared most.

A King had found his deathbed, soon after his daughter's premature death. A man that had taken risks, broken tradition, for the happiness of the daughter that he had put in jeopardy. Her choice of a companion, he found he did not approve of it. He found, more surprisingly, that he never had – not of the man himself, only of his position. In meeting Dominus Patrick, it was hard to disapprove of the way he carried himself.

Still, he had been surprised. Surprised that it was a man of such stout seriousness that someone as free moving as Persephone had chosen. He had expected another, more whimsical sort. It made him study the man more, supposing that there was far more to him than met the eye. Even in terms of strength, he ought to have seemed lacking. He was a terribly unremarkable man, and yet, when one caught his eyes right, one saw the truth of his aura, and his position amongst the Boundaries.

Though she had always sniffed at the Treeant tradition of the strongest man becoming King, in the end, to the King, it did seem that was what she had chosen. One of the strongest warriors in all of the Stormfront, second, he supposed, only to Arthur.

When they decided to disappear from the world, and live together, he had no objections. That too was Treeant. It was not a terribly uncommon practice. He was certain in time that the affairs of the world would draw them back. For it was obvious that their pairing was a thing of remarkableness. They that prayed to Gaia could not fail to see just how delighted the world was whenever the two of them were together. One had only needed to watch them, when they walked side by side, to see endless stories unfold.

He had not supposed that their reentry into the realms of men would be through the dark body of his daughter's corpse. So beautiful in life she had been, and so anguished she'd fallen in death. A woman deeply in love. A woman at the very height of her happiness, with the promise of more happiness to come – all of it taken from her, by a poisoned blade.

"He must pay," the Treeant King had said, his fist shaking in anger, as he looked over the body of Persephone, together with a distant Dominus. "We will have war, Ser Patrick. We will make him bleed for what he did to her. We will drag him from the throne."

Dominus had said nothing, and had instead pulled up his eyes towards the starry night. "...She would have counselled otherwise," he said. "I want nothing more than to pull the sword from my belt and do the same. But that woman was wiser than me, good King Treeant. She would see the effects that it had on the realm, and she would wonder whether that was what the Gods truly wanted. Do you see what the Gods want tonight? I hear not a thing. I see no signs."

The night was dark, and quiet, and perfect. The sky was clear, and the stars shone strongly enough that little clouds of distant galaxies could be seen with an undeniable perfection. It didn't feel right. The world ought to have been weeping, in the same way that once it had celebrated the fact that the two of them were together.

"She said once, how often disaster befell the two of us when we were together – it was a sign of something. Something grand about our pairing," Dominus said. "I could not believe that much. I only knew that I loved the woman, and would still do anything for her."