A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor-Chapter 1205 The Chains of the Wicked - Part 3
1205: The Chains of the Wicked – Part 3
1205: The Chains of the Wicked – Part 3
He did not even have the time to curse, for Oliver’s sword was coming for him again, pinning his attention to him alone, having solved the extra problem that would do to get between them.
“Give up, boy!
You’ve already lost!” Zilan hissed, speaking the Stormfront tongue in an effort to break Oliver’s will.
“You will fall here and now.
For what reason do you resist?”
Oliver had no reply for him.
He barley understood the words that had been said, even though they were spoken in his language.
The only language Oliver now knew was fury, and the fury demanded that he keep fighting, to reclaim the head from Zilan that he had struck from Lombard – or at the very least, to hold him in place, and allow him to go no further.
“They have been dealt with, my Lord,” Verdant said, holding a hand in salute to his bloodied chest, just above the long gash that Zilan had given him, tearing through the plate of his armour.
“Assist the others,” Oliver said, his eyes not drifting from Zilan for even a second.
Vaguely was he aware that the rest of his army was doing battle, though he had not the time to check on it.
It was the language of Command that he spoke then, not the language of the Stormfront.
Verdant and Blackthorn were sent away, their exhausted bodies buoyed by the strings of such Command.
Now even the soldiers that Zilan had at his disposal had found themselves tangled up.
The cunning Commander that had kept the Patrick soldiers at a distance had managed to keep the battlefield steady as the chariots kept coming.
He allowed them the arc that would lead to their encirclement, and then, when the moment had been right, just as they’d done on the other side of the battle before, with Firyr at the head of them, they’d broken straight through the enemy line.
Without Oliver, it was not the massacre that it would have otherwise been before.
They could not effectively chase down all the chariots that they could not see the backs of.
However, it brought the battle that they were fighting far closer to a draw than it otherwise would have been.
Off the back of the same tactic that Oliver had pioneered earlier, the charge of the chariots was faced with their second defeat.
Running out of options, Zilan began to seize on whatever he could snatch.
His glaive was being tangled in their close exchange, and so he rid himself of it.
In the fraction of the window of an opening that he offered unarmed, Oliver’s sword came to slice through him.
There, Zilan was waiting for it.
He’d given the opening, and he had something prepared to match it.
His thick hairy hand caught Oliver’s sword arm by the wrist, and he locked it in place.
His mouth curled up into a smile that raised his long drooping mustache.
“My victory, boy,” he said, clamping down hard with the fingers of the wrist, chaining Oliver’s arm in place.
Oliver snarled, attempting to fight it… But the strength of a General was not to be taken lightly.
Reduced to pure physicality like this, there were no options.
The only option that he had was to struggle against the restraints.
He felt the chains as if they were digging into his very skin.
He kicked at them.
He remembered a time in which foes like Zilan would have been brought low with all the ease of a slight flicking of his shoulder.
He remembered – or he thought he remembered – how he had sent those heads flying.
How even the Gods had learned to fear him.
For what he represented.
He that had lent the Kings of times past all the might that he wielded.
He that they had prayed to, when they sought for strength beyond their means.
He shook at those chains, he kicked at the shackles.
He descended down from his throne, and with golden eyes, he hammered upon the door that had kept him sealed for the longest time.
“DO YOU NOT FEEL THIS MIGHTY PULLING, CLAUDIA?” Ingolsol bellowed, and Oliver bellowed with him, his mind entirely elsewhere.
“THIS PROGRESS THAT WE HAVE BUILT UP, DO YOU NOT FEEL ITS FLOW?
DO YOU NOT SEE HOW WE HAVE TWISTED THE FATE THAT WAS MEANT TO BE, AND HOW EVERY PROBLEM THE MIGHTY HAVE THROWN AT US HAS BEEN BENT?”
Claudia heard Ingolsol’s cries as if he was right next to her, shouting through the doorway of her room.
It made her shudder.
It tossed her long silver-hair up past his shoulders, as if carried by the fury of the breeze.
Her own memories dragged her back to an era, so many thousands of years ago.
She remembered the name that Ingolsol had been called, just for the slightest fraction of a second, she remembered his true title, beyond that of despair.
And just for that fraction of a second, the heavy doors that had kept Ingolsol sealed in the darkness for those thousands of years opened by the slightest amount.
The name drifted into the mortal realm.
Towards the mind of a single young man that would hear it, and he would understand.
Ingolsol the God of Despair.
He had not brought Oliver despair – not always.
Despair did not encapsulate what he was.
There was a lagging truth to it all that had been kept drenched in shadow.
As Oliver kicked and he sought away out of his entrapment, he threw away that fog.
He dusted off an old book.
A tome in a man’s mind that had been kept sealed away from mortals for all those thousands of years.
With the Key of Progress that Claudia offered, he broke that seal, and he said it aloud.
“Ingolsol… The God of Power,” he said, his eyes glowing a deep gold, stared into Zilan’s eyes.
Then the General knew to shudder.
He’d heard something that ought not to have been heard.
It crushed on his mind with all the weight of incomprehensibility.
The second it was spoken, it froze him, and in the second that followed, it was vanished, dragged away, forgotten once more for another millennium.
A void was put in its place.
He forgot – but Oliver did not.
Oliver would remember.
With Ingolsol’s name, and Ingolsol’s wrath, he saw the Fourth Boundary.
