A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor

He found a stirring fury strong enough to rival the likes of dragon fire.

A handful of minutes, that was all that he'd been preoccupied for. There was no army in the land, placed in such a position, that could have made anything significant happen in those short few handfuls of minutes.

The source of that sickly feeling in Tiberius' chest. He found it right in front of him.

A man that ought to have been trapped in the chains of Tiberius' making, surrounded by ten thousand men. And now a man that was right there, freer than a bird, as if the danger had only leant him further speed.

He saw the damage that Oliver Patrick had done. Of those ten thousand men that had surrounded him, barely five thousand remained, half-routed, and completely broken. And of those thousand men that Oliver Patrick himself led, it was hard to see what damage had been done to them. Indeed, there was an illusion towards the opposite direction. It was as if, since the last time that Tiberius had seen them, they had increased in number, or else grown stronger.

For the weight of their presence was more terrifying than it had been before.

Nay, it was not only their presence, it was Oliver Patrick himself.

He, for the entire battle – Tiberius only realized it now – had carried himself with a lightness of presence that seemed impossible. The feeling of him, it was off. Even when those men raised their fists, and they declared him King. Even when Oliver Patrick had put a crown upon his own head, he had seemed a small thing. Light, and insignificant.

That was not true for the man that stood in front of Tiberius now, just about to burst through the last remaining wall of Tiberius' men, soon to be bearing down on Tiberius himself.

That man, horseless, with his dirty crown on his head, was suffocating.

In a realm that Tiberius had never heard of, nor even thought of, he could hear the grinding of something. The breaking of chains that ought never have been broken. Chains that had been bearing an immense pressure for the longest of times.

He saw a set of doors, impossibly large, open themselves, just wide enough for a man to fit through. And then there was a set of golden eyes. There was a smile. And a sauntering. A lazy stretch, as a creature entirely beyond Tiberius' comprehension wandered down from an immaculate throne of black and gold.

"Ingolsol," Tiberius found himself saying. Not his knowledge, but Pandora's. He felt the Fragment within him quake. Terror there, true fright. He felt himself frighten in the process. Pandora – one of the three Old Gods. The Goddess of Chaos, mightier than any other, Tiberius had been sure of it, and he had seen it, in so easily overcoming those that had been Blessed by Claudia. Then why did she fall so timid, in the presence of the Dark God of Despair?

Nay. Nay again. He was not that. The truth of it, with the breaking of chains, and the opening of that door, it forced its way into Tiberius' mind. Not the God of Despair, but the God of Power. He that had seen Pandora punished for her relentless pursuit of her daughter Claudia. He that had single handedly defeated not only she, but he who had declared war on the entire realm of Gods by his lonesome, and almost won.

Those same golden eyes he saw in front of him. Just for a second. That same weight of presence, as if the Dark God was right there in front of him himself. Tiberius stood frozen. His charge collapsed behind him. He felt like a squirrel, in the presence of a hawk. As if it was entirely natural for him to be consumed by the man in front of him. As if he had met his natural predator.

That moment of hesitation – it was enough. Oliver was there, broken through, right in front of Tiberius. The Emperor lost the speed of his charge, and found himself trapped amid a sea of ten thousand men that refused to budge.

'Oliver Patrick. Oliver Patrick. Oliver Patrick,' Tiberius thought to himself, the panic building, as he tried to put a strategy together, to defeat that which stood in front of him.

"Monster. Creatin. You should not exist," he muttered under his breath, the same accusations that had been breathed against him before. He found it difficult to breathe. The weight of the creature called Ingolsol. The God of Power. Enough presence to him to warp the realm of reality according to his will. How could such a thing ever be hidden? How could he ever walk beneath the radar of normal men? Why was it only now that Tiberius could see that which he was?

Grey, stormy eyes now. Those were what he saw when he looked at Oliver Patrick. And still he could feel that presence stirring. The wind whipping. A storm for true. Two things existed in him, two complete opposites, in Claudia and in Ingolsol. An impossibility that froze Tiberius' jaw in place. Something that ought not to have existed, even more than he should not have.

He remembered Blackwell's claim, and the look of satisfaction that he died with. That hope. Had Blackwell known what it was that Oliver Patrick was? Had Queen Asabel?

No. They could not have. None knew, and none could have predicted it. What was in front of him was far too overwhelming. If any had known what he was before now, that crown would have been placed upon his head far sooner, or else, he would have been killed.

Light, weak, innocent and boyish. That was the King that Tiberius had seen appointed. And indeed, he was still all those things… Impossibly, he was still all those things. Tiberius should his head, working his mouth, trying to unfreeze himself, and spur it into action. His own intelligence worked against him, as he put the pieces together, and found the truth within his own mind.