A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor Chapter 1846: Old Boulders - Part 3

Chapter 1846: Old Boulders – Part 3

That was the problem for Hod, trying to compete with the likes of the Stormfront’s Great Generals. They had access to a realm that was almost dreamy that he could not even conceive of. He paved his way by concrete logical thoughts, and they professed that they did the sa, but he could tell at tis there was a lie in that. There was a look they all got, when they made a decision that was based on sothing else. When their eyes went glassy, and they did sothing that was inexplicable. It was those moves that terrified Hod. It was those moves that changed the course of a battlefield or situation entirely. They seed like a gift from the Gods, a sudden idea, a sudden hand on the shoulder.

Hod had no such things. He could only see the effects that gifts from that realm gave, and then make inferences about it, just as he had made inferences about the Ti of Tigers, and been able to predict to a degree that others had not been able to, just quite what was likely to co about.

To dive into the world of dreams, with mind fully conscious, when those guards at the gate were the most adept of integrators, cruel in their barring of any who did not et those requirents. That was the task that Hod was given, with his body that was far too frail even for that effort. Still, he did as he always did, he pushed that sa frail body, that sa frail mind, burdened by his own aggressive logic, by the own sharp scalpel of his consciousness, he cast his net wide, and did attempt to map a realm of overwhelming genius that he had been denied complete access to.

He cast that net of them all, and saw, in even the reactions of his own allies, in Oliver, Verdant, and those under him, that they seed to implicitly understand that which Tavar knew to fear. For even though they took backwards steps against his envelopnt, there was a tension in those steps, a threat that they seed to believe they’d be able to manifest, if Tavar picked his position wrongly.

They likely knew not even why they were doing it. None of them truly did. Theirs were whispers in the ear, given by the Gods themselves. They danced to a song that they could not understand. Hod could start to see the regularity of that music, he could start to see the hum of a verse, and in seeing it, he thought that perhaps he could dare to predict the next divine line, spoken in a language that no human should ever have been able to imitate, without giving himself over entirely to the Gods.

To do so was to walk the line of madness. Hod was no stranger to that either. His usually cold expression crept into a stretched sort of smile. The look about his eyes was twisted now, rather than icy. His eyes kept themselves narrow, but there was a wideness to the pupils that bespoke of sothing rather unsettling.

Hod allowed himself it. Clenching his fingers against the leg of his trousers, he allowed that strange itch in the head that others knew to be madness. He tempered it with the iron of his own logic, but in the sa way, he felt his logic cool, and beco a distant thing, rather than the sole ruler of his mind.

When he looked at the world like that, he fancied he could see more than re brick, and re stone. He could hear sothing else, and see sothing else. There was a whisper to the howling wind that seed to hold the secret to all forbidden knowledge, if he rely dedicated enough ti to listening to it. There were the little fingers of the fae, sat curled around the edges of houses, glittering, drawing the eye to them, beginning him to shift his feet, and move his position, so that he might catch sight of the true body of the creature.

The world was drenched in far more that demanded his attention than the re battlefield in front of him, and when he did look down at that, it more seed like a lake, full of endless swirling little currents, than it did a sea of n, all fighting for the superiority of the position.

He hardly knew by that point indeed what he was looking for, and when he did find it, he did it casually, with a scrunch of his eyebrows, and a gleeful point of his finger, like a child noticing a bird doing sothing silly, and attempting to point it out to his mother.

“Well, well, what do you see? Fear spreads like a disease among thee,” Hod tittered. “Aren’t you sitting upon that which is a glass house, dear General Tavar?”

He had not been able to see it, in the way that Tavar and the rest were able. He had no sense for the Command that they all had co to know and speak of. He could only see the expressions of soldiers, and what was written on their faces, and guess to how well inspired they seed to be. Indeed, he saw the earlier routed n, and he knew Tavar’s morale to be weakened, but he knew not how much.

To turn his back on Oliver Patrick, or Verdant Idris then, would be to invite the inevitable charge – and those two, they would break through, if there was a re line of infantry in their way. And to those n that ought to have been far off up ahead, running deeper into the city, the fear would creep in like the dark into a house without candles. They’d look behind them, and feel the terror with iron certainty. Such soldiers would be near useless in carrying out their mission. Chaos would descend, and that chaos would be to the advantage of the allied forces.