A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor-Chapter 1200 Candles in the Wind - Part 8
1200: Candles in the Wind – Part 8
1200: Candles in the Wind – Part 8
The pain dug at him, threatening to kill him there and then.
He was almost dragged down by it.
But it was the very enemy that had inflicted that pain that gave him the lifeline.
As grief threatened to drown him, the embers of anger lit themselves with a powerful rebelliousness.
Oliver had never known such rage.
Not when the Yarmdon had attacked his village.
Not when the King had tried to see him hung, for the very assassination attempt that he had been the cause of.
Nor even when Dominus had been killed.
All those times, there was an excuse.
‘I’m not strong enough yet,’ Oliver had thought.
He’d been able to cling to that hope, that one day, his strength would set him beyond such means.
Now he had no such excuse.
With all the tools that he’d been blessed with, both by his own training with the sword, and the men that he’d been bestowed with, he knew, irrevocably, that the current state of the battlefield was not something that was destined to be.
If perfection had been achieved, it would never have come to pass.
To have the tools and to fail to use them, that brewed an anger in Oliver worse than any he’d ever felt.
For the stakes of that mistake to weigh so highly.
Five hundred men he’d lost, and Captain Lombard’s life with it, and for what?
If Oliver had known that such anger was directed at himself, he probably wouldn’t have put his spurs to his horse as he did.
He likely wouldn’t have raised his sword, and given that battle cry.
He likely would have gathered his men, and made a timely retreat.
For Rainheart’s victory could still have been salvaged.
It would have been far more sensible to group with his own General, and to put his faith in the superior might that a warrior of that class had been proven to have.
But he could not bear it.
His eyes saw an enemy, and they saw a cause, and they laid it at his door.
All that pain, all the failure, it belonged to Zilan.
There was a mountain that needed cutting down, and on the back of his rage, Oliver dared to believe that he could hack through the stone of it, and see it toppled.
Before he knew what he had done, his sword was caught against Zilan’s guard.
The man was glowering at him, his thick eyebrows drooping in a frown.
He looked at Oliver not with fear, but with the mildest of irritations.
It was the look of a man that thought he had solved that problem already.
Surrounded on all sides by chariotmen of the Verna army, it was a surer path to suicide than putting a knife to his own neck.
“Foolish boy,” was all the words of condemnation that Zilan had for him.
Then his glaive came again, and he was clearing the obstacle that barred him from his new destination.
It was the same as it had been before.
Oliver’s vision found itself blackened.
New cuts and fresh blood ran across his torso.
The dark cloud of his foe only continued to grow before his eyes.
He couldn’t track a single slash.
It was all far too overwhelming.
Oliver had dared to name one of his Styles by the same name, but Zilan quickly made him look a fool for choosing it – there existed a Style of Overwhelm that so contemptuously exceeded his own that it was embarrassing to even think about drawing comparisons.
His consciousness flagged even sooner than it had before.
His head bobbed, drawing nearer to Walter’s neck.
This time, when he fell, Zilan would have the time that he needed to see that had served.
Tiredness eked at Oliver, attempting to lull him into a quick end.
It would be easier that way, he was sure of it.
The dead were already calling to him, promising him that there was no need to fear what was next.
All of it was dark.
The crippling dark cloud that was Zilan.
The gloomy purple of the deathly hands that reached for him.
The grey lack of thought that populated Oliver’s mind.
It was as overwhelming as Zilan’s blade.
And against it all, there continued a single source of light.
The flames of anger licked.
They found fuel where there ought to have been none.
They’d begun as embers, glowing a faint red, and now they’d grown into a raging bonfire.
The darker Oliver’s world became, the more they grew.
They wouldn’t allow the dark to consume.
They beat it back.
If there was destruction to be had, then it would be at its hands.
The fire promised that.
Ingolsol’s words didn’t reach Oliver, nor did Claudia’s, but their intent did.
It was not gold that Oliver’s eyes glowed, nor purple.
For all the darkness that he saw, his gaze, as far as the enemy was concerned, remained steadily determined.
His brow was furrowed, and the stormy green and grey of his eyes did not flicker away their light for even a second.
He ought to have fallen there.
Giving up should have been the option with the most attractiveness.
Lombard was already dead.
And though Verdant and Blackthorn were still alive – Oliver could tell as such, through the eyes of Ingolsol – they were heavily wounded enough that it was unlikely they would be of any use in this fight.
And still, he could not budge.
His heart would not allow him to.
The heat of his anger refused to be cowered.
Indeed, he was beat back, step by step, but his willingness to still stand against the mighty foe did not shift for a single instant.
Each blow that fell carried with it a fresh understanding.
The might of a General, and the extra strength that a mighty army lent to him, it was beat into Oliver by the harshest of teachers.
It wasn’t just extra strength Oliver needed to overcome General Zilan.
It was something otherworldly.
Hopelessness was the only result when he mentally tried to bridge that gap, and so he could hold on to nothing but the stubborn refusal not to lose.
