Chapter 1999: The Scale of a Foe - Part 4
"...It...is...done," Claudia said, selecting words from several indistinct sentences, forming sentences of their own, as if making the final pronouncement on Oliver’s life. An idea sparked in him. A poisoned seed quickly given root. Something that Oliver had thought of many times before. He could simply kill himself, before he grew too rotten. That would be the way, wouldn’t it? The others had all the strength they needed. They required Oliver Patrick not anymore. The weakness that Oliver spread was a poison.
"...Seize... more..." Ingolsol said, never satisfied. His desires blended with Claudia’s. King of the Black Mountains, he seemed to scoff at that thought. He was the source of a darker desire, something that terrified Oliver. When the High King was indeed slain, how was it that Oliver could take that chair for himself?
Oliver lashed at the darkness with his sword, hissing. It wounded him that such a thought could ever pass through his mind, and it frightened him. Corrupt beyond measure. That crown that he’d left in his room with Nila, and it still followed him all the way here.
More, more. Why did he wish so strongly for more?
There was a hole in his heart, and he knew not what to bandage it with, aside from more. More strength, more power, higher position. Then surely, he would be able to rest at night. Surely there would be no fear that could ever reach him.
It terrified him to the highest degree. He had thought himself to be immune to such things. Now he knew not what he was. Tiberius, that voice still in Oliver’s head. It seemed somehow that the man, in the end, had been the one to win. It was as if Tiberius’ poison had been the true driver to see that crown placed on Oliver’s head, for this was the result of it now. It ate at him, and made him less than it was.
"Ah..." Oliver gasped, falling to a knee, the fear consuming him. He grabbed at his heart, feeling the dagger that sat there. Had he not been through so much already? Why was it that he still suffered? Indeed, why was all still worse than before? Had they not overcome that grand foe? Who was there left to fear – there was only the High King himself, and Oliver was certain that they would be able to match him. They were certainly strong enough to.
The snow, even that was thinning. The longest winter that he knew. Or was that true? Those winters as a slave had been worse. Yet he’d endured those, shivering and determined. Holding back his flinches, reserving them for an older Oliver, who thought himself to be in a better position.
Too much weakness, present too often. Too much that Oliver didn’t like about himself, or where they stood.
Everything stank of a certain degree of stagnation. It was as if all that they once stood for, the roaring flood of a mighty river, had now fallen down to the slow trickle of a stream, and everything they did was devoid of life.
In all areas, Oliver could find no purity, aside from the ones he invented. The occassional idea, that sprang him to life once more, only to abandon him again, and leave him as he was now.
"I shouldn’t be King," he thought to himself, realizing what he was, as he saw his hands shake. "If I had any degree of sense, I would hand this crown over now, and disappear. Nila too, I shouldn’t be around her. If I loved her, I’d leave her."
That thought swelled, along with the fear. The fear seemed to make it seem more honest, as if it truly was the right direction to go in. Speaking in a language that Oliver Patrick understood – an avenue that needed courage to confront it. Courage was always noble, wasn’t it?
Sword thrust into the snow, Dominus’ blade, sullied by the icy soil that it found, the deeper Oliver drove. Two warring forces in Oliver’s self. Not fragments, but something else. The occasional glimpse of two separate things, not knowing yet which one was which. The sense, almost, that he was hiding some of himself, in an attempt to trick some other part of himself.
The battle with the Emerson’s, what was that?
There was something to that line of thought, as Oliver sat there in the snow.
He thought himself to be the most pathetic man in the world, capable of nothing, and sullied by everything. But as he knelt in the snow, any that watched would have begged to differ. When the suffering that contorted his face was replaced by something else – that furious light in his stormy eyes – there was undeniable power, undeniable grandness.
The monsters that he imagined in the dark were only half constructed of his mind. The winter had allowed those creatures of Pandora to breed, for how few hunters and soldiers had made their way into the mountains to see themselves culled. Hobgoblins, Black Wolves, and other terrifying creatures made their way through the dark, and detected the slightest whiff of something human.
The scent of corruption and weakness had brought them to the little place in the forest where Oliver sat, where the trees were close enough that there was hardly any room to stand. There as Oliver knelt, dwelling on taking his own life, did those creatures truly titter, and give in to their starving desires.
Then there was that sudden raising of Oliver’s head, a clenching of his fist, as he seized a thread of something, almost beginning to understand something, as he remembered back to the feeling in his chest during the battle with the Emersons. It was just a flash, but it was enough to override the hunger of those frightening creatures. They took a step back, and then turned tail to rush deeper into the darkness, leaving Oliver to his thoughts, and his own continual and relentless imagination.