Chapter 4 – Clipped Wings
It was hardly the result that Oliver and his faction had wanted for themselves. Lacking the backing of the old Pendragon King to lend justice to their claim, there was the very obvious and easy to throw question of ’King of what?’. He wore a crown upon his head, a Pendragon crown, but he saw no true claim to the Pendragon lands. And if he were to enforce a claim despite that, then what would the results be?
It was a deadlock of a situation, as they swirled their way around the Capital. Every ti they looked towards the centre of the Stormfront, there was that pulling urge to see their armies mounted, and turned inwards. To walk towards where they knew the High King to be, and to see the solution set about entirely with military intent.
It was Hod that set them against it. His debate and his council continually stumped them, whenever Oliver’s own blood was set to peaking, as it was now with the rejection by the Pendragon King, and he declared that it would be easier to see the job done now, and have the pieces fall where they lay.
"Patience," Hod said. "It is not the High King’s armies that we need defeat now, but his legal place as the Stormfront’s monarch. To cast him down from his throne, and have justice be done, we need a solid place for that justice. A legal precedent."
The cris that he had committed, according to Hod, lacked that conviction. For a start, they were cris done through the hands of others. It was spoken word that had driven them, and had revealed the High King as the string-controller behind it all. But to fetch physical evidence from that, and assert strongly, that indeed that King they had sitting on the highest throne in the Stormfront was a King corrupt enough that he was detrintal to the interests of their people – that was a far more difficult task.
Two Silver Kings, if Oliver could be counted, was what they had in their favour. The legal assertion, of all four Silver Kings binding together to state their unified discontent for he that currently ruled, any could appreciate the weight that such a position would carry. It would be beyond question. For sothing – or a great multitude of things – to have occurred that would unite all four Silver Kings without a crack between them, the existence of that sothing seed implicit by the very fact that they were joined together.
Now they had no such union, failing almost imdiately with their attempt.
The Treeant lands seed at least more promising than the Pendragon lands that they currently marched slowly away from, but even there they would be t with no certainty. The Treeants might have strange customs in regards to the slaying of their Kings, but the fact remained that Oliver did see their armies defeated, and their old King cut down. It seed too optimistic to expect that all Treeant citizens would be content to simply bear that fact, and that they’d have no resistance at all.
The only thing stopping them – and Oliver in particular – from feeling entirely defeated was that alliance that they had managed to secure with King Erson. In the mont, it had seed like a pain to enact. He’d had to summon up his energy, and trust that Hod was making the right decision. He’d had to direct his mind in a single direction, when it was tired enough that it wished to go nowhere. It had been a chore, if he were to be honest with himself, and admit the childishness of the emotion that made the task seem all the more troubleso, even if he were to bla it on the pain that he currently felt. Yet it was that task done, as if he were simply following the orders of his mother, or soone similarly as concerned for his well-being, but similarly as nagging, that allowed him to cling on to so degree of hope.
The Erson King, in allying with them in the way that he had, gave their cause validity. He gave the crown that Oliver bore a degree of validity. For it was an agreent made between two Kings.
The King too was of the sa agreent as Hod. He disliked the intensely military approach to see the war ended.
"The optimal outco would be to see the High King surrounded and pressured enough that he would abdicate the throne of his own free will. There can be no higher form of justice than that."
Hod had been quick to agree, but he had seed doubtful that such a thing would ever co to pass, given the personality of the man that they had co to know increasingly well.
"If one does not put themselves in the position to receive such a gift from the Gods, then they never shall," the Erson King had countered, stating that at the very least it was worth trying.
Still, it was left as an ideal, and still the fact did remain that they had already crumpled. They had hoped to be a tidal wave sweeping over their political problems off the back of their military victories, so strongly fought and heroically won, but that wave had only run so far as the Erson King, whose son had already strongly advocated for them.
In his saddle, on the ride back, with a strong twist of his lips on his face, Oliver was set to the most intense of thinking.
Thus far, he had allowed the planning to Hod. Matters of the diplomatic, and the political, they seed far more his territory, and that of Verdant. More still since he did not find there to be room enough on his mind to think of much as of late. It was a storm that sat there, between his ears, eternally reflecting on things that he would much rather have forgotten. Whenever he slowed, grief was not far away. Whenever he threatened to turn his mind off, his body would talk of its own accord, in the form of violent twitches, and the occasional stirring of absolute terror.
Reviews
All reviews (0)