A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor

Twenty thousand men returned home to Ernest with the newly crowned King Patrick. More soldiers than Oliver would have expected to return with, had he known what would have awaited them when they departed. A mighty victory it was, impossible even to dwell on entirely.

Every morning, he awoke, feeling strange. As if he were a different person, inhabiting the same body. There was a vague feeling in him that he was holding something back. With each day, that feeling became less vague, and more certain.

A King. The men looked at him as one, and they held reverence for him as one, but even that felt something strange and fleeting to Oliver. Just as the deaths of his allies did. He tried not to think on it too much. He looked with his eyes, and felt with his heart, and enjoyed what it was that was around him.

He bothered Blackthorn and Verdant, feeling more comfortable with the two of them than he ever had before. Not truly reflecting why, though he felt as if they were seeing him more honestly. There was a different edge to their eyes. They saw not just the man Oliver Patrick pretended to be, but also who he was. The pains of that past.

They were gentle with him, incredibly so. Blackthorn, so often callus, and so often called cold, continually tried to coax him into telling them what it was he might be feeling. But Oliver had become an expert at dodging those questions. He would smile, and find everything and anything to distract him.

More often than not, it was his sword. As his army marched exhausted behind him, Oliver practised with his blade with a relentlessness, as if there was already an enemy in front of him. But he did not do so with the same emotion that he had before. He didn't know what he was aiming for. Only that there was a joy in his heart as he did so. There was a part of himself, that same part that he had once hated for feeling so certain, that delighted in every swing that he performed with it. That delighted in even just holding the weapon. There seemed the highest amount of meaning in even the smallest of things.

Cutting down a small handful of pine leaves, to flavour their tea with, and offering it to Verdant and Blackthorn. The two of them taking it, shaking their heads at the strangeness of him offering them tea, with that lopsided, muddied and bloodied crown upon his head.

"It's the best," he declared to them. "A fire in the mountains, and pine tea, made from melted snow? Could you find a man happier than that?"

"...Maybe if you put him inside, with literally anything else," Blackthorn had said, though she did so good naturedly, carefully. She was watching herself these days, fearful of wounding Oliver.

And they were a wounded army. It was not just he. They were warm off their victory, but they returned home as scarred men, bearing a burden of news that not a single one of them wished to dwell on.

Tensions here, and uncertainty there, in speaking with Prince Hendrick and Fitzer. An awkwardness from the two men, as they were made to deal with the fallout of their declarations. To hastily declare a man a King in the midst of battle. None were quite sure what to make of it, least of all Oliver Patrick himself. If he were a King, then of which lands?

They were questions that few knew the answers to yet. There was a swirling degree of change. It was Hod's Time of Tigers manifest, and they lost control of it entirely. "Time will tell where the pieces settle," Hod had said mildly, for there was much that had been removed, and much that had changed. The armies of the High King, supposedly, ought to have all been defeated, as far as they knew. But they too were defeated. Their position was complicated. It was hard to tell where they might go from there.

Ernest loomed in the distance. A beautiful sight. Ancient stone, set about in a neat long square, with so many towers guarding its ramparts. Defended twice, by Patrick hands. Oliver was glad again for those victories that he had contributed to there. It would have been a shame to see such a pretty place fall into ruin.

It was the Black Mountains that his gaze drifted towards most of all, however. Though he could appreciate Ernest from a distance, there was a reluctance to him in wishing to enter it. As they neared, Verdant offered him a solution to that.

"Your Majesty, the longing is evident on your face," Verdant had said. "You my take all the time that you wish. We can deal with matters in your absence."

"...Time where?" Oliver asked.

"Time alone, wherever you wish," Verdant said. "Whatever you wish. We shall strive to make it happen."

"If I were to vanish for a week, into the mountains, what would you say? Am I allowed?" Oliver asked.

Verdant snorted his laughter. "Your Majesty, you are a King. You can do whatever it is that you wish to do."

Oliver twisted his lips again. He would not call himself a King. There was a crown on his head, but he had still not entirely come to terms with the reason that it was there.

"More importantly, you need to rest," Blackthorn said. "Shall I have Nila find you?"

Oliver nodded far too quickly for his own liking. Both Blackthorn and Verdant grinned at him, and Oliver had to hide the smallest degree of a blush. "Just… you know. Miss her."

"We haven't been away all that long, but I do understand, Your Majesty," Blackthorn said, dipping her head. "I will make sure she finds you. Where shall I tell her to meet you?"

"She'll find me, you don't have to tell her a location," Oliver said. "Will you take Nelson for me, Verdant? The harshness of the mountain terrain will not agree with him."

"I shall, your Majesty," Verdant said.

"Thanks," Oliver said, hopping from his saddle, into the deep snow, with the white power rising high up on his shin.