A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor
Chapter 1849 - 1849: Old Boulders - Part 6

"On wings of want, eyes cast their gaze, see him, declare what fore, who goes, and what knave," Verdant murmured to himself, feeling the strength gather in his chest, and feeling something else begin to swirl about him. A passion that he wasn't used to. Not the passion of seeing his Lord served, but the passion of something else. With the next words of his poem, he raised his voice, and he saw them spoken aloud. "PIERCE THE LIGHT!" He declared. "LAY TREMBLE TO THE SEA!"

He barked those words, and his men looked up, moved by something else. Moved not by the words of Oliver Patrick, but by the words of Verdant Idris, who, in his heart, was a very different man. Whose upbringing had been very different. Who rightly, if he were to honour his lineage, had no place on the battlefield at all. Who had spent more time studying his books, and pursuing peace as a priest, then he had spent with weapons in his youth. The current course of his life as it had run, it was a story of incredible change in its own right. A thing that he had forgotten. A thing that, in his own strength, was so easily acknowledged.

His smile grew, as with Bohemothia's encouragement, that Sea God reminded him of all that he was. All the battles that he had fought in. All that he had become. He reminded him of the boy that had once been on the brink of drowning, only to come back as the sole survivor of his crew. He was Oliver Patrick's closest aid. He was a key instrument in the historic victory over the Emersons. And, more than all that, he was an Idris man. The first in their line to show any sort of capacity on the battlefield. Something that – though he hadn't recognized it until now – Lord Idris himself, Verdant's own father, had come to acknowledge.

The path that he had chosen was reckless, with many little problems along the way. But now, that man who had doubted him above all others gave him his respect, and he acknowledged that he would be a more than worthy heir to the Idris House.

The years had brought about such a great degree of change, and Verdant knew it was Oliver Patrick he had to thank for that. Set free he was, but he still knew who he would dedicate his fight to, and his progress. The glory of it, who Verdant was in his entirety, he wished for Oliver Patrick to see. He wished for himself to see it.

It rippled across him. Priest, and warrior. Sometimes poet, sometimes philosopher, sometimes advisor, sometimes friend. He was a man of many different faces, with overwhelming and clumsy strength that he had seen tamed, and a natural diplomacy that he had seen applied to the battlefield. Now, it was pure passion that overwrote them all, as he finished the final lines of his poem. "GRASP HOLD OF ALL! DEAR TO THEE! REST IT FREE! FROM NATURE'S BREAST! LAY COURSE, LET TREMBLE…"

He paused as he looked over those men, feeling their stirring for him, the Command that he'd afflicted over them, the trembling of their hands, their waiting for his orders. This, he realized with a gasp of his breath, and an incredible elation in his heart, was what it meant to lead. "YOUR ENDLESS UNREST!"

There was let loose a cheer of such intensity one would have thought that it was Oliver Patrick himself that had made the speech. That poem, one so dear to Verdant's heart, filled with such emotion – they saw it felt too. Verdant Idris' first true experience wielding Command, and he had two thousand men ready to fight and die for him by it.

He was not one to leave them waiting. He learned everything he knew of the battlefield from fighting alongside Oliver Patrick, and though he was set to become his own man of grandness, he could not help the reckless colours that he had been dyed in, nor could he resist that natural urge to charge.

The pressure that Tavar had exerted forced it out of him, it forced it out of all of them. Verdant pointed his spear, gave his bellow, and he brought two thousand men rushing with him, toward the edge of Tavar's encirclement, to bring the attack to that great wall that they had so feared engaging for so long.

He did so at a sprint, with golden flecks of light beginning to taint the very edge of his being. The change to Verdant was not just a simple change of heart. It was a change of the body as well. That beautiful golden light that Oliver had not seen in the longest time – and then the strange smell of salt in the air, carried by the wind, as if Ernest were much closer to the sea than it ought to have been.

When Verdant hit that wall of men, he did so with the strength of a man of the Third Boundary – and not just any man of the Third Boundary. He was a man with Bohemothia's Blessing. The God of Wisdom, and the God of the Sea. When he hit men, he did so with all the force of the waves. When Verdant's spear met those men, it drove through them, like a battering ram. A strong shoulder followed it, as Verdant continued charging forward, breaking three lines deep seemingly easily by his lonesome, and bringing those inspired men to bear behind him.

Oliver's jaw slackened ever so slightly to see the change. He knew it to be the ascension into the Third Boundary, but he had never seen any do it quite like Verdant had. It was almost as if Verdant had avoided progressing himself out of loyalty. As if, somehow, he'd had such a strong grip of his own heart that he had seen his progress frozen entirely, so that he could focus instead of better serving his Lord. If there was any man capable of such an impossible feat, Oliver thought, it would have been Verdant.