A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor
Chapter 1824 - 1824: The Spell of The Past - Part 2

"What do you propose?" The King asked, his anger still not fading. He looked to Dominus for guidance, he that had apparently come to know Persephone best.

The knight's eyes were filled with an incredible sadness when he turned to her. The stoney grey of their colour was a thing that seemed to suck in all the warmth of the world. "Nothing," Dominus said. "It pains my heart, but there is nothing that yet can be done. To act now would be to act merely to fill this void in my heart. I feel no pullings of rightness as I once did. The best course of action now, for us, and for the realm, is simply to wait. Justice will come in time, when it is right to be done. But one can not dismantle the realm overnight."

"Nothing!?" The King roared. "Nothing? For the murder of my daughter! The murder of your wife, and our unborn child – you would have there be done nothing?"

Dominus looked at him again, harder this time, a different glint in his eye. It was not the look of a man that had given up. "I declare that we wait, for I am certain, in time, when justice does come, it will be an overwhelming thing. It will not simply defeat the King in battle. It will erase the stain of his existence entirely from time – it will cast his weakness into the light, and for centuries, all will know what it is that man committed, in order to rob the world of something that he could not possess."

The King paused. He'd had the wrong of it. It was not that Dominus was forsaking his vengeance. It was that he believed time would give an even more frightening form of it. He had faith in the Gods that had loved them so, when the two had been together in life.

"What will you do?" The King asked.

"I will wait, and I will sharpen my blade, for the day that is to come," Dominus said.

"And what of Arthur? The High King seeks to see him killed too."

"Nothing can slay Arthur. He does not need the help of me – he is far my better," Dominus said. "Will you allow me to bury her, King Treeant? I would have none know of her grave but you. The High King will not be allowed the satisfaction of tormenting her in death, as he did in life."

"Where do you intend to have her rest?"

"There is a lake, hidden in the mountains, with heather all around it," Dominus said. "A place that seemed as if a thousand little cities had sprung up on its shores, in the rock, so different in the shape of everything, the more one travels. Dozens of streams run into it, and on a night, the stars shine on its black waters, and it lights up, like the eyes of the Gods. She had said, and I had agreed, that if we were to die, that would be a pleasant place to have our souls roam for all eternity."

"It does sound like the sort of place that she would like," the King confessed. "So be it. She would want you to do it. This is my fault. If I had not been loose in my lips all those years ago, the High King would never have had a reason to think that he had a claim to her."

"No, King Treeant," Dominus said. "It is not your fault. When weakness sits the throne, it will end in corruption regardless. The question would merely have been the difference of the problem. I will leave you now. I mislike being so close to the city."

He did leave then. Dominus Patrick always did. He was a man rigid in his word. Likely, no one's word meant more in all the kingdom than that of Dominus' Patrick. He always held to it, and always followed through.

The Treeant King watched him go, his rage still swirling in his chest, as he saw the limp body of his beloved daughter sway in the arms of her lover.

The tears ran, and he could now do nothing about them. Dominus had determined a different path. He did not give in to quick anger, and the Treeant King knew there to be wisdom in that. The man that was able to retain his cool for the longest always seemed to come out on top, in one form or another.

But the Treeant King was not such a man. He desired only action in order to fill in the hole that had been left in him, in order to right the damage that had been done, and the mistakes that he had made.

He ground his teeth together. He hated standing still. The most precious little thing in his life – his daughter. Her happiness was his happiness, and her happiness had ended with a knife to the gut. How could he go on after that?

The man called Dominus Patrick terrified him. That he could stand still, and do nothing, despite all that had happened. That cold look in his eye, when he had seen not the day before them, not even the following weeks, or the following year, but likely a whole decade in the future, and he had declared that his revenge would begin there. What kind of stony hearted discipline allowed a mortal man to do that?

The Treeant King knew just how much Dominus had loved his daughter. He had seen the two of them together, when they finally allowed themselves to relax around each other. He had heard Dominus' reckless declaration to the realm, presenting the love that he held for her for all to criticise, and he had found, though slightly annoyed, he respected it. And as the weeks passed, and it became more obvious just how much of a self-sacrificing risk Dominus had taken for that which was dear to him, the Treeant King had respected him all the more.

He thought a week ahead, like Dominus did, but all he could imagine was how Perstophone's body would rot and decay, in the grave that Dominus chose for her. With each passing day, her soul would grow more distant from this world, and her memory would grow ever darker. The thought made the giant man weep with the immensity of a waterfall. He fell to his knees. No blow of the hammer could have struck him harder than that.