A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor
Chapter 1884 - 1884: Blessings and Curses - Part 1

"Discipline," he murmured to himself again.

The Pandora Goblin tried tricks of other sorts. It brought to life weeping children, and it made them beg in soft voices for mercy from Dominus' blade. But Dominus could hardly hear, much less see. It was instinct that guided him, and his instincts found that central weakness that Arthur had found. The pain became his shield, nothing could pierce past it. Even when Penelope was conjured up out of sand in front of him, there was enough pain that he could barely make her out and his sword did not hesitate.

Quagmires, rivers, forests, all those obstacles that Arthur had confronted. An endless stream of monsters. Beasts with tentacles. Then giants again. Streams of fire, gusts of wind, floods of water. Dominus and his sword cut through them all. The Pandora Goblin had determined that it would not take a step back, for it had never taken a step back in all its thousands of years before, but now Dominus was right in front of it, and it was forced to act.

It could smell the stench of Claudia pouring off him, just as it had poured off Arthur, and the creature hated him for it. It hated him almost as much as it had begun to fear him. It raised up its forepaw again, that swift strike that Dominus had not even been able to see before, nor had Arthur.

Then it came for him, and it swatted only empty air. A wound on its side was what the creature was left with. A single rushing charge, on a leg that was already half-done in by poison. The sort of strike that he'd practised thousands of times before. Done without emotion, without fanfare, just the products of decades of discipline. It tore open the Pandora Goblin's side, and set its green blood to bleeding.

The creature howled in pain, and it rushed away, observing Dominus from a distance. The knight might have rushed after him there, and supposed after that he could slay him, and claim that wish on his back.

But discipline too held him back from that. He gave no pursuit, knowing the truest state of himself. He'd already neglected the cause he'd sworn himself towards, and neared death already. There was an opportunity to retreat. Taking Arthur's body along with him, he struggled on the long journey back to the dark black lake where Penelope's body already rested.

He did not look over his shoulder to see if the Pandora Goblin would let him go. He had not the energy. It took all he had to keep a grasp on his pain. He swore to himself that he would not lose himself again. The Pandora Goblin, in its fear, made no attempts to stop him.

"Prince Hendrick," Greeves said.

"Merchant," Hendrick said, with a just amount of ice. "You're looking unusually happy. That's quite a disgusting grin you wear on your face."

"My Lord Patrick will see you now," Greeves said.

"Oh, it's my Lord Patrick now, is it? Now that the battles over?" Hendrick said. "Not 'foolish boy', as it was when you were cowering in here with me, whilst they busied themselves with their fighting."

Greeves didn't rise to the bait. "Best place for me, it is. I'd only get in the way out there."

Without even a goodbye, Greeves dismissed himself, every bit in the good mood that Prince Hendrick had accused him of being in. He spared a few excited words for Oliver at the door, and clapped him on the shoulder, before he practically danced away.

"Forgive him," Oliver said, as he watched the man go. "He might be busier than all of us now, in the fact that this is over. The roads will see themselves opened once more, and someone has to take advantage of that freedom. He is our man."

"You're quick to tell your enemies your plans," Prince Hendrick noted.

"It's something you could have deduced yourself. But it does wound me to hear you continually suppose me to be your enemy," Oliver said.

"Are you not exactly that?" Prince Hendrick said. "Is that not why you come to me, unchanged, wearing the same bloodied armour that you slew a King in – as a threat?"

Oliver looked down on himself. The Prince wasn't wrong. Oliver hadn't had time yet to change. Or, well, at the very least, he hadn't had time to consider that changing now and dressing appropriately before a Prince might be something that was very much expected of him.

The last few hours had been complete turmoil. The battle was over, but without a General to formally surrender and take charge of those troops that had been beaten, matters had been difficult. Twenty thousand men remained of Tavar's army, and the question naturally stood as to what to do with them, given that they already had ten thousand Emerson soldiers as prisoners, they weren't inclined to add to that number – not when they themselves had been reduced to a pitiful five thousand.

Those remaining twenty thousand were a good mix of soldiers too. From all different houses across the lands. Some from Tavar's own House, and some from the Treeant lands – those very lands whom they had killed the King of. One would have thought that such soldiers would be the most resistant to surrender, and yet, they were not only the quickest to surrender, they were the quickest to kneel.

General Blackthorn had barked out his orders to them to throw down their weapons. Seventeen thousand men had done so, and those Treeant soldiers had simply stood there, in their strange menacing dress, with those spiral tattoos on their bare chests, and the war paint on their cheeks. They'd looked at Blackthorn, and then, practically ignored the man.

"You not command us," one particularly brutish man had said. He was of a size that almost mirrored that of King Germanicus. "You not defeat us. He defeat us."

He had pointed to Oliver then, to Oliver's surprise. That was not a weapon pointed his way with hostility, nor was it fear. Oliver knew how to tell the difference between the two of those by now. And with his senses so heightened from battle, he could tell further the emotion that lay beyond it. Command still buoyed him, and attempted to reach out to the remaining Patrick men, to keep themselves ready, just in case a fight really did break out. It was that same swirling sense of Command that found that which the Treeant men extended, all three thousand of them. It was a wanting, the holding of a rope, the begging for a taking.