A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor-Chapter 845: Building Back - Part 4
"My Lord," Verdant said, "the fact that such a thing is even an option to you is frightening. Do you recall what I once spoke of as the gravity of competence? Those were not my words – they were Bohemothia's. Those words stand true here again. Our fates are entangled. Some men's fates hold gravity over the rest.
You fear what is only natural. What you fear is power itself."
Oliver felt a shudder. It was if Verdant had said the very words that he shouldn't have. Ingolsol stirred, as though recalling a long lost memory. Claudia grew uneasy.
…
…
In a realm separate from the Gods, forever sealed away, for fear of what the entity might do, there sat a handsome and devilish man upon a gilded throne.
The smile on his lips was potent enough to melt stone. He tapped a ringed finger against the arm of his chair, almost purring with delight.
"My dear attendant, did you hear?" Ingolsol said.
The beautiful, horn-headed woman dipped her head in reverence towards her master. Her movements were polite, as was her tone, and the words themselves. But behind them lay the subtlest hint of exasperation. "I hear only whispers, my Lord. Unless you were to choose to share it with me, I would not be able to hear them clearly."
"Ah, no matter," Ingolsol said, gazing into his cup of the deepest red wine. "She will have heard, and perhaps she will have felt it too. Tell me, what do you think, dearest Claudia?"
By her pool, the silver-haired Goddess stirred. She looked up, as if expecting someone to call her name.
"My Lady?" Her attendant said from her desk, looking over her glasses at her mistress. "Did you hear something?"
"No… At least, nothing that would cause me to stir," Claudia said. "The realm of mortals is full of life, perhaps that is… Mm. It is difficult to set aside this discontent."
"Are you watching the same boy again?" The attendant asked, her tone gentle.
"How could I not? He lies at the twisting centrepiece of so many lives," Claudia said. "He is that which the other Gods continually berate me for. I can do nothing but pray for his success, for he is the most dangerous decision I have ever made."
"You swore magnanimity, my Lady," the attendant cautioned.
"And I exercise it. I merely watch, and listen, and hope for him, as I hope for all of them."
…
…
"My Lord?" Verdant said, bringing Oliver's attention back to the room. "Did you hear what I said? You, in your carefulness, fear the kind of power that a King wields without question, or even a nobleman. The power to change destinies at the slightest whim."
"Even then, Verdant, in overcoming that fear, I cannot believe I have such power," Oliver said. "That fear is better kept that, as a warden of a line better not crossed."
"And yet, you have proven that you do. You see a world that the rest of us are not privy to," Verdant said. "Forgive me for speaking harshly, but if you insist on this fear, then every single one of us will die."
Oliver flinched.
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"You know it to be true as well as I," Verdant said. "Perhaps, in the back of your mind, you still see retreat as an option. It is not. The enemy will be under strict orders to ensure that we perish."
Oliver said nothing. He did, on some level, hold that to be true. At the very least, he considered it a strong possibility. Though, he wasn't sure if he agreed with what Verdant said. Had he really been clinging onto some sort of hope of salvation?
"You have dealt with death before, have you not?" Verdant asked, his tone a little gentler now. "In Solgrim, you took command, did you not? A significant number died then, yet you overcame."
Oliver nodded. He had dealt with death before, and it hadn't been easy then, just as it wasn't now. It was the days leading up to the Battle of Solgrim that had struck him as the hardest, with the deaths of people that ought to have been avoided. Even after the battle had concluded, a weighty number of lives had been lost, and their deaths were placed squarely on his shoulders.
That was far from an easy thing to live with, and it often left his sleep troubled.
The very fact that Oliver was still able to function after such a catastrophic loss as they experienced today was a fact that should have been celebrated, but Oliver would never dare to. To grow accustomed to the loss of lives was not a thing that he liked the sound of.
"My Lord, you must take command completely," Verdant said. "There is untapped potential in many of these men, and you have already laid the groundwork towards accessing it, even if you did not do such a thing consciously."
"Verdant, I say again, do you know what you ask of me? Do you not know what growth asks of a man? There's a certain amount that can be achieved through training, and hard work, but to make significant changes in a short amount of time requires something…"
"Catastrophic?" Verdant said, finishing for him, a listless smile on his lips. "Indeed, that was a fact that I experienced for myself, when Behemothia first gave me his Blessing."
Once more, Oliver went quiet. Verdant rarely spoke of this incident. Oliver had a feeling that he felt uncomfortable talking about it, and so he'd never tried to press him on it.
"An hour out of port, we were struck," Verdant said, recalling the incident. "The weather hadn't been good. The wind was strong enough to be dangerous, and the rain was whipping, and our vessel was too small to be comfortable with it. The shipmaster gave his assurances, though. Said a storm like that wouldn't catch a sailor like him, and he was right, in that."
"Struck?" Oliver said. "By what?"
