A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor

That seemed to be the key. To make use of it more. He'd only known Command to go one way. He thought himself to be reasonably adept at using it in that one way. At the very least, he'd managed to push Firyr, Nila, and Blackthorn through the Second Boundary off the strength of it.

"What if a General is meant to do more than that, though?" Oliver wondered, as he sliced the air in two with his sword. "What if a true General could push a man that he knew well as far as the Third Boundary?"

"I think you to be mistaken in this, Oliver," Claudia cautioned. Her words came as clearly as if he was standing beside him in his state of reaching. Whenever he opened his mind to new ideas, inevitably, it was the Fragments that seemed to speak first.

"Obviously!" Ingolsol bit in. "Those other fools can't give a push. They dare not. They're not greedy enough."

Even hearing them both say it, Oliver didn't quite know what he'd done in the moments that it had happened. He'd only spoken encouragement, and he'd felt an alignment within himself, knowing that there would be strength in it. He'd been able to go no further than that.

"This is foolishness," Oliver said, seeing his sword grow sloppy as his mind grew preoccupied. "I'm focusing on too many things, and achieving nothing. I should at least try to do something… If they can't describe it with words, who am I to think that I am able to? The unspoken should be left unspoken. I ought to grasp it by other means."

"Tsch, it can all be grasped by such means, if you had the will," Ingolsol said. "Where's your greed, mortal? Is it not tempting to think of? Does it not dangle in front of you like a juicy fruit? If there's the possibility, you must grasp it."

"Progress can be achieved by any means," Claudia seconded. "Just because none have done it before does not mean that you will not. The strangeness of your situation makes your attempts all the more likely."

"Given the time constraint, I shouldn't be walking so strongly in the unknown," Oliver said. "Others have done it, so I should be able to…"

"Ha! That is even more arrogant, fool! Other great men have done it! You compare yourself to them, with so little to show for it? You saw what Khan offered, you saw even Karstly, and no one knows that man's name. Compared to them both, you're nothing.

You're a cricket on a battlefield of wolves."

"I would not put it so harshly, but there is some amount of truth in his words, Oliver," Claudia said. "Progress is like a river, you understand? It winds, and it winds. There is no straight line in any one direction. You must wrestle with it."

The Fragments, he had come to understand, were nourished by Oliver's own experience. That Oliver heard Dominus' words in what Claudia said was no longer a surprise to him. She had been there when he had listened to Dominus' explanations, and she had learned from them, just as she had. Ingolsol had of course learned in other ways.

"Or it's more like a noose that slowly strangles you," Ingolsol said. "There's always a time limit with it. If you don't get it, you perish, and someone stronger takes the throne. Someone like me. Yield your body to me, mortal, and I'll give you the grand victories that you seek, even if you have to watch from the back seat! Haha!"

After all the years, the nature of Ingolsol's jests had now changed. He always spoke with an outstretched hand, like a thief trying to rifle through the pockets of any that would stop to listen to him.

"You're weaker than you were," Ingolsol said. "Where it matters. You've lost your edge, what ought to drive you. You're thinking yourself to be a good man now, aren't you, mortal? That's the wrong approach. You'll be undercut by anyone with a lick of sense.

That man Karstly, he's devilish enough to see through it. He'll use you. You'll never grow your Command under him. You'll only become more of a whipped dog."

"Enough, Ingolsol," Oliver said. "You always try to stir up trouble in me. You can cease. I've a respect for Karstly, after seeing what he did, but I will not cede entirely to him. I will always be eyeing his seat, and seeking to see what it is that makes him strong. But then he knows that already.

That is why he handles me as he does. I imagine to him I am no different from many such ambitious newcomers."

"He is a young enough man himself," Claudia commented. "I wonder if he has even past his thirtieth year yet? Perhaps that is why he seems to understand you so well… The way he controls his troops, it is a wonder. He doesn't do it with straight lines, or boundaries. He guides you all with the sublest degree of flow."

"…" Oliver paused his sword swinging when he heard Claudia say that.

"There's a strangeness to that, isn't there?" He said. "The way a battlefield moves, the way a heart moves, the way progress moves… They're all so similar. There's a flow to them all that seems to beat the same steady rhythm. Some sort of principle. I wonder if Command exists in that? To send my Command towards men… they match me."

His eyes twinkled as he filled in the rest of his sentence for himself. "And to have the Command flow the other way, perhaps it is I that need to match them?" There seemed profundity in that statement, but it still made him frown. "Why is there any sort of strength in that, though? How can a man be bolstered by… such vagueness?"

"Vagueness, and power, I wonder if I will ever have a true grasp of it?" Oliver said to himself. "I grasp for it, even after saying I should likely try something else. It fogs my mind, and I don't know what to do with it."

He looked at his hand, and sighed. "Fogs my mind, and cripples my body… There should be more fluidity to me. I shouldn't be trampling my consciousness with unnecessary thoughts. All that Dominus taught me, and I know myself not to be using every drop of wisdom he bestowed. I've become too infatuated with strength, that I have neglected the smaller details.

There was a time when I'd bend and scrape for every scrap of progress, and now, as if I am above it, I do not lower myself unless there is something as strong as a Boundary Break to reach for…"

He shook his head. "That is not how Beam was. It is not how we were forced to move back then. Doing the simplest of press-ups in the dirt of the Black Mountains, and being elated when those numbers finally surpassed forty. That was all that I had. Now I have so much more… I am just not putting it together as I should be."