A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor

"Why indeed…" Fitzer said, sparing the dazed Oliver Patrick another look. His gaze must have hovered for just a moment too long, for Oliver's head turned lifelessly to look at him. Ghostly phantom eyes. Chilling enough that Fitzer did not wish to linger in them for too long.

A horn blew from the other side of the battlefield. Tiberius sent the officers of the High King's forces scampering back to take their positions. Those men were rigid for different reasons, and highly motivated. Not for a want for victory, but for the sake of fleeing from the terror that they felt. They fought, because no enemy in front of them could be as terrifying as the Emperor behind them.

And as Oliver drifted deeper into himself, the first dispatchment of soldiers were set to charging. Three thousand of the High King's infantry, charging towards Hod's centre. Hod gave the command, and brought his archers to the front, peppering them as they came.

"Have the cavalry…" Oliver heard Hod say. Just the beginning of the sentence, like a fragment from a dream.

A locked door that Oliver could not get past. This overwhelming sense of fear. Stairs going downwards, into the basement of a mansion house. A world peppered with darkness. He reached for the handle, and looked around him. Hod's voice. The cavalry. Oliver looked around for Hod to assist him. He needed to get into that house, somehow, to relieve himself of a burden, but he knew not how. It was too terrifying in there, and where was Hod? Where was that cavalry that he was promised? That would do – that would have been the perfect answer to whatever waited him inside. Good strong cavalry, a dispatchment of men that he might lead…

There was someone else too. Where was Nila? The house was there in one second, and in another, he was in the middle of a forest, searching endlessly. He and Nila had made a promise. They'd meet just before the sunset, in the deepness of the Black Mountains, where a stream ran so straight and deep in the rock that they'd joked that Dominus must have carved it free with his sword, or else some dragon must have melted through it, in a rebuke of the trespassers.

Where was she now? The sky was still full of light. There were still hours to go before he could see her. But so desperately did he want to. That terrified longing. Running through the forest as if to find her. Where was she now? Hunting? If he could find her, then he could see her earlier. And he needed to, more than anything else, or he feared he might disappear. He looked down, and his legs were already starting to fade. Purpling as if they were Dominus' flesh. A poison eating away at him, consuming him from the inside out.

Then that house again, as if he had just remembered something more important. A jarring change of scenery, one that his mind could no longer even recognize. He was a different person again, different intentions. Nila forgotten. Where was Hod? Why would no one come with him, to see inside that darkened house? He was frightened, so terribly frightened, just as he'd been as a child.

Back then, it was his mother he would run to, or his father, when he needed to go out into the darkness. He'd beg them to come with him. His oldest, and longest fear, the fear of the dark.

Conquered? Maybe on the surface. He'd dwelled in the darkest of forests, and gone running through them, as if he was the most dangerous creature to be had in the mountains. Maybe some part of him even believed that. But there were different sorts of darknesses. There was the simple absence of sunlight, then there was this thick cloudy thing, a mind of its own, full of demons, full of all the horrors of the world.

He reached for the handle, his fingers resting on the edge. Terror kicked in. It was so dark. So dark already outside, but inside, in that basement, it was sure to be darker. He didn't want to go inside. But his body yearned for it. He couldn't resist it. There was a burden on him that needed to be lifted. He wondered if he could relieve it without going inside – if he could dash off somewhere, and find some other path.

He knew that to be an effort of fallacy, however. The darkness was the only thing that could solve it, as it always was. Everything that came weightily to Oliver Patrick, to Beam, to Tempest, they had all been solved in the dark. Once, as a child, with comforting hands there to see him through it. Then, and since then, it had been nothing at all but himself. Alone, so terribly alone.

He wondered if, after all, people simply did not like him. If he was just a cruel creature that they whispered of behind his back. That they tolerated the company of, but would never truly go out of their way for. Childish thoughts welled up, indigence, and tears. Why would no one come to help him? Why was it here, again, in the darkness, all alone?

Home – he'd lost that. There was nothing for him. So why was he standing outside of its door, longing to go back inside? It was no longer his house. What filled it were no longer his possessions. It was something else entirely.

Even the hand that reached for that handle, that was no longer his hand. He didn't recognize it. The shape was different. Clawed and frightened.

He could bear it no longer. That horrible sensation was intolerable. Frightened he was, but the pressure built. It fought to be free of him. The only way to escape it was to go inside. There was no one with him, no one at his back to push him further. Just this awful, dreadful, overwhelming pressure.

He grabbed the handle, and terror filled him. The shadows reached out before he could even get it open more than a crack. They wound around him, with a physical quality, and they pulled him inside, before he could even summon up a scream.