He felt the gazes of so many looking his way, as the anger folded itself up inside him. Up it rose, then it fell again, folding and folding, denser and denser. The blackness of the initial rage, barely contained, mixing in with fear. Again, and again, it went over and over. His reaction to the Erson betrayal, as it began to settle, bit by bit. Forced together by the hand of sothing grand and mighty, that seed to refuse the position that they stood in.
Even as Greeves walked away, the anger did not fade. In speaking to Greeves, he’d surprised himself – for, it turned out, Oliver knew not himself. Frightened is what he thought himself to be, and he certainly was, but for the anger to rise so quickly despite that, along with overwhelming certainty, as if he was a different creature entirely.
Thumping of his heart, driving towards sothing. Gripping at sothing, clawing at it. They expected sothing of him, those n that stood around him. Oliver could feel sothing oozing out of himself. Command, indeed, but a different sensation than before. A changed Ingolsol, and a changed Claudia, but most importantly of all, a changed Oliver Patrick.
He was not the man that he had once been. Not since the battle with the Ersons, and certainly not since the battle with Tiberius. His intuition worked in different ways, and his very personality seed to point in directions that he did not understand.
But he delighted in that feeling as it rose up in him. The southern wind still blew, threatening to spread a fire that had already gone out, but no longer did it seem against Oliver. It rose him up, up, and up so more, as if he’d spread his wings out for it. As if, sohow, this storm that they’d endured, as if it benefitted him.
A twist of Oliver’s lips, a look he should not have been capable of. A fire in his eyes. As if the throne was there, as if he’d planned it from the start – but of course there was no planning. He had no hand in it, he had not expected it. It was his failure that had brought him here. And yet sohow, it was fine. Sohow, it was better than it otherwise could have been. So part of him stirred, feeling opportunity.
So part of him was delighted to have it out in the open now. For the whispers of politics that they’d played at. The uncertain alliance, the uncertain future. This, after all, was better, so part of Oliver scread, louder and louder as Greeves walked away, gathering up his team of n as he went. So part of him declared that the fire that the Ersons had started burned away the corruption that Oliver had feared would spread.
Now sothing in Oliver rose up in retaliation. An anger of the most exquisite, most just sort. It robbed him of all thoughts in his head, and consud him, entirely the colour of white. Stirring inside it, just as he stirred with the wind. A physical thing, not just present in the interiors of Oliver’s mind, but present in the Command that he whipped up, and the many gazes that Oliver pulled towards him.
For Nila’s efforts, and the efforts of Greeves – and now Blackthorn, who commanded the sa job that Greeves had in seeing the stone building stripped in his absence – the fire had been stopped before the walls of the Blackwell estate. Just close enough that it could almost char the whitened walls of the grey stone brick, but it had failed to touch it.
Now, it was being pushed back, and flattened, and now along with it, there was an impulse that Oliver could not resist.
"This is our victory," Oliver announced, though there were still other fires to fight in the city. "Acknowledge it to be true, gentlen. The Ersons have declared war on us, in an act of cowardly betrayal – and this all they have managed to achieve!"
Oliver threw his arm out wide, his voice dripping with irritation. "This is it! This is what they threw themselves into battle for. The charring of old wooden buildings. The aiming for my head, and the failing to achieve it. The failing to diminish our supplies by any considerable degree. The failing to burn our stables, and our horses, and the failing to hurt anything here of true irreplaceable historic importance. Thanks to you, soldiers and civilians, the Ersons have thrown themselves into a failure of the most catastrophic sort."
n stopped their efforts with the fire just to listen to him. His voice dragged them in. His eyes looked towards a future that they could not see. They swelled gold, then purple, then grey – then, for a period that spanned a good few seconds, did it seem as if they were ringed entirely in silver. As if they were the eyes of another being entirely.
The wind lent to him, as if the Command that Oliver oozed made it subservient to him. It took his words, and did not drown them out, but it raised them up.
"I am a failed ruler," Oliver said. "You see that, for I have failed my efforts in diplomacy. I wear a crown, as your King, but what lands do I truly rule over, other than these charred remains of Ernest? I am a King of nothing, but of you that today fight with . A King without training, without skill, or technique. There is only one thing that I know, and I can trust in, and that is war. And I can promise you this – this is a war that ends in our favour. The Ersons took a gamble. They supposed much, and in the end, have gained little. Now, our war enters into the realm in which we shine. General Blackthorn and I shall see the enemy punished. There is no corner of the Stormfront more adept at battle than those that have gathered here in this little city of Ernest – and we shall prove that today. I have the utmost confidence in our allies. We will secure a justice for ourselves."
He looked over to Nila, as he made that speech, to gauge her reaction, as the emotions flooded through him. To see whether truly he’d hit upon sothing honest, or whether he was being mislead by sothing that disguised itself as intuition. She stared back at him, looking unhappy, but in the end, even she nodded.
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