Chapter 2000: The Scale of a Foe – Part 5
To face an army that much larger than himself, knowing it to be impossible, he had not been able to think his way to a solution. He had to, to a large degree, lie to himself – or at least, that was how he perceived it. He made himself as small as humanly possible, to escape the view of what he thought to be a grand dragon.
He’d never tried to explain that sensation to another, for it would have no doubt been one of those most insane things that they’d ever heard, but to Oliver it was the most real thing in the world. A great dragon, beyond Oliver, the greatest enemy that he’d ever faced – that was who he truly did war with, not that Emerson army.
The dragon was coiled up in something larger. There was that dragon, then there was that cocky sense of assurance he’d found in himself. That sense which had blossomed in his battle with Tiberius into something that seemed to have a life of its own – that which could seize a crown without the slightest shred of thought or desire.
That, Oliver had to convince himself, was a creature that existed. That boy who had picked up the crown was different to him in his waking moments. He had only been present for the shortest amount of time, but he had been far purer than Oliver himself. Immune to the corruption of the world. Even with the sword, his perspective was far greater than Oliver’s own, far purer. He sought not strength. He had simply swung that sword, and battled, because he enjoyed it more than anything else. Childish, most certainly, that creature was, but he was so far beyond Oliver that Oliver could never hope to condemn him for that.
Something between the two. Two entirely different states of being, for the greatest battles that Oliver Patrick had already won.
There had been a sense, especially in the battle with the Emersons, that something had changed, that he could no longer cling to the same old ways. Nay, it was something more pleasant – it was the fact that he no longer needed to. Something had been broken and cracked, and he no longer needed to handle himself to the same degree. There had been a feeling of salvation, and yet where was that thing?
There had been that sense too, in the battle with Tiberius, in a different form. It was as if he had been rebuilt, and put back together, as a purer creature, devoid of those weaknesses that he had held before. For how else could he have hoped to beat Tiberius without being exactly that? The man that Oliver had encountered, once again, he found to be entirely beyond him.
In the battle with the Emersons, it was as if he had accidentally crossed a line. It was as if he had blown into the throne room of the Gods, on the lightest breeze, with the clumsiest of looks, and they had thought him such a fool, and such a lightness that they had not kicked him out immediately. That he had blown past the legs of the most terrifying dragon he knew, without it even realizing.
There was a gate, somewhere, that such a creature defended. Oliver could feel it with all the certainty of his heart beating. That imagery everywhere, in his dreams, and in the waking world, it haunted him. The feeling of a great door somewhere being cracked open. Of Ingolsol walking free, but not only him – of something inside Oliver’s chest finally, accidentally, making its way forward.
As if he had lied to himself strongly enough, and tricked himself strongly enough, that he had stumbled past a line of his own, that was his own limitations.
It made him sweat to try and think on it directly, and to forcibly put the pieces together, as if he understood at all what he was doing, and as if there was a precedent for it.
It was an act of insanity, for true, for there was nothing physical that Oliver could cling to, and there was most certainly no way he could share his interpretations with anyone else. When it was there, however, that ever-moving bridge, and when Oliver could make his way along it, it felt like he was finally in the right place, that he was finally speaking some sense of truth.
Then it would come flashing back, old desires, so stagnant, so terribly wrong now, cloaked in deceit.
They came back again just as strong, whispering to him to get stronger, to run further and faster, to train harder. To seize more land, to gather up more power for himself and his people.
The same words that he had always told himself. Why were they so corrupt now? The speaker was different, he thought.
A sudden burst of anger. He was on his feet, and he was swinging the sword at the empty air in his frustration. A slash from above, cutting open the head of an invisible foe. Then a swift block, guarding his chest against the fangs of a great snake that he imagined. Then another need to defend, for an attack that came from below.
Now Oliver tried to lunge, to find his heart, but for third time, he was made to defend. Beginning to feel overwhelmed, he took a step back, gnashing his teeth. Invisible it certainly was, but that creature that he thought against was as real as anything that Oliver had crossed swords with.
On his lacking sleep, in the pure darkness of the forest, where the shadows were inky, and ran into each other, capable of painting any sort of picture as long as there was enough fear to be a motive, there sprang to life something that ought to have been beyond Oliver’s imagining.
With every strike that it delivered Oliver, that creature grew larger. Vaster, more snake-like, with a startling similarity to that which he’d seen on Tiberius’ banners. Only this one, Oliver thought he knew had a name. With every attempt at cutting it, Oliver knew that name better.