A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor

And Oliver was not even there to appreciate it properly. He'd gathered himself enough to form up his army, but when the necessity of his speaking had disappeared, so too had the necessity of his thinking. Greater problems took charge in his heart, as some part of him, with this encroaching tide of terrible blackness, realized something.

That what he had lost was not just the names of those who had died, not just the individuals themselves. He realized, with a sudden spring of terror, that what he had lost was everything. That, the hole left by them all together was not something that he could patch, or ever be filled. It robbed him of ever going back to what once was – those quiet days in Solgrim, with Ernest ever watchful nearby. Of the safety of his alliances with Asabel and with Blackwell, and the reassurance of all that Skullic had done and would continue to do for him.

There was none of that anymore. He could not sit securely in Solgrim as he was. He had not the resources, nor the allies. Everything had been snatched up from him. His whole world was brought to caving in all at once. What he had lost was not just those precious few individuals – he'd lost the home that he'd built, for a second, even more horrifying time.

It enclosed him in those dark storm clouds, cutting him off from anything and everything. Nothing could stand to hold itself anymore. The void that was left kept with it a rushing demanding wind that tore down anything that Oliver tried to build up, with this crushing force of destruction.

Lightning flashed, and important things, one after the other, were robbed from him.

Nila, who he'd so relied on for so long. Could he ever be the same for her? Could he trust that she would be able to stay with him, and that the world would allow the two of them to be together, after all that had happened?

There was not the slightest fact to draw on, nothing that could rival that which sought to destroy him. It tore through the life that he'd built up. It took the name Oliver Patrick, and it killed it, like it had once killed the name Tempest.

All those important things that he had built up since he had won that name. None of them truly remained. Carefully, he'd made a stable place for himself. A little castle where he could at least survive. Now, far too many supporting beams of that castle had been torn apart, and it too was set to crumbling.

A grander structure than what he had lost as Tempest. Then, it was merely a home, and the entirety of his heart. Now he had pieces that other men would covet. Yet the weight of the loss felt nearly identical. Those material things, they had never meant even the smallest thing to him. His contentment had been in lying on the floor. He had rushed out into the woods to be away for it all, like Dominus and Penelope had once done. And just like them, he had lost his heart once more in the process.

Stitched together it had been, bound up by the crudest of staples. Scared beyond measure, hardly capable of beating, and still unable to beat with the warmth of a normal man. It had taken an excessive amount of kindness to see him approaching a whole again. Then, once more, that terrifying world had robbed him.

Spiralling, Oliver realized he was. He fought to keep his attention on the battlefield around him, but he found no place for his mind to dive into there. Hod held him in place, his eyes elsewhere, not realizing that in robbing Oliver of his purpose in leading, even only temporarily, he robbed him of the single boat that he had to carry him out away from his sinking existence.

He had a brief glimmer of something. It might have been pride. A twinkle in the eye. He could not have said exactly which happening it was. It was a vague awareness at best, that something precious to him was doing well, even with him standing still. That too only served to hurry Oliver Patrick away from the light. Those remaining things that he loved, they would do well enough without him.

"General Patrick," he heard. Not spoken aloud, but from the depths of his mind, as he drifted around, a rushing wind of destruction, tearing him apart.

It tore that apart too. General. He'd been proud to bear that title, and look what it had won him. What had he gained for that pride? Nothing. And what had he lost for it? Everything. His reaching hand, all his wants. The world scolded him for it. The nature that he had Dominus sought to understand, it turned firmly on him.

The spiralling, its intentions. Oliver could feel where he would likely end up. That general direction of straight down. That fractured state of being. Done too quickly, too suddenly, that it brushed far too close to that part of him again. It came with a stream of fire, a clench of his fist, and a sudden spurting of rage.

Too much, too quickly. Even nature itself was too greedy. The rage ran through Oliver's veins in place of blood. He dragged himself back out of those thick churning waters, and he looked at the world properly again, resisting all that fate would have him be.

He drank in the battlefield forcibly, with a great hand above it all, trying to clench it into a fist. He saw Tiberius circling, testingly. Like wolves running at bison, trying to break a few individuals away from the pack, so they might deal with them alone.

The man circled, but he did not manage his aims. He was forced to sprint around, again and again, applying a pressure. But that pressure only made Oliver's rage increase. Command flowed out of him wordlessly. His men tightened their formation even further, though there ought not to have been any room left for that.