A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor

Indeed, Oliver could not deny it. In the face of many of his problems, he simply summoned up as much strength, and as much will as he could. That was the style of Overwhelm in its essense, and it was all he had. Even with the Dark God's taunting, he did not think that he could yet provide an adequate replacement for it.

"Fine," he said eventually. His eyes were already speckled with gold, so there was hardly any need for him to loosen Ingolsol's chains further. But even that fraction that he did allow caused a great wave of pleasure to emanate out from the Dark God. He made himself known, to the slightest degree more, and he looked out on the battlefield, drinking in all their fear.

With him, Oliver let loose Claudia. She was just as overwhelming, in her own sort of way. She looked for Progress in their hearts. Their hope, and their longing, and she bid that he do what he could to encourage them.

He wondered if that was the most he'd ever dared to release them. He hardly held back a piece of himself. He only kept just enough to remain conscious. It was a dangerous risk, when the two forces were already pulling his self in two different directions.

He could feel a tugging on his mind as if to tear him in two, but so too could he feel a force running straight through him from the ground, as if the gravity had lessened, and something was urging him to take flight.

Ingolsol growled his pleasure, and even Claudia murmured in relief. Both of them were Fragments of divinity. Oliver had never considered it before, but he supposed then that it must have been immensely uncomfortable to be kept subordinate to a mere mortal, when one was Fragment of the most powerful beings that there were.

He caught the barest glimpses of their mind, as he allowed the two their power. They'd spoken of themselves before, but not to the degree that could be offered by a glimpse into one's mind. From Ingolsol, Oliver felt the strong pulling of desire. He saw a flash of a gilded throne. He saw an army, and he saw a closed door. From Claudia, he saw a still pool, a shield, and a sword.

"FIRYR!" He said, shouting the name, allowing himself to consider the weight of just those few syllables. There was a conviction merely in that slight change of enunciation that he didn't ordinarily have. That was already the lickings of fiery Command.

Firyr stiffened at the mention of his name, ever so slight. Chang was bearing down on him, so he didn't have time to do much more than that. Though his senses did cloud, to the smallest degree, with feelings that weren't his own. As Chang's glaive came for him, Firyr's mind was bordered by a sense for a raging fire that did not exist.

It licked at his head, and by his ears, warning him against greater things than the glaive that sought to take his life.

"DOMINANCE, FIRYR!" Oliver said. Simple words, spoken differently. Ingolsol's mind gave him the glimpse. A consideration for a word often used, but not quite as well understood as what he used then. Ingolsol's sense for it was that throne. It was of thousands of powerful beings kneeling by his feet.

The most powerful and reaching of all desires.

Oliver could have sworn that Firyr stood up straighter hearing it. It was the most simple of terms, but it struck a chord with Firyr, he who had come to know Oliver so well. A word that struck profundity in Oliver did much the same with him Firyr, by the connections of Command that had already been established between the two of them.

"Dominance…" Firyr said, his lips curling into a smile. For him, that word reminded him of a certain name. The name written under a warrior's statue. An ideal often spoken of, but never seen by him. It was the sort of ideal that he had chased, whilst in the Syndran army, taking orders from superiors he knew to be lesser than him.

There was hope there, whenever he dreamt of it. To be so strong and mighty, that all problems were solvable. That complexity was reduced to irrelevance, from the sheer might that he wielded. He'd been convinced of that ideal before, and now he was convinced of it again. His blood stirred with a lion's fury.

CLANG!

He deflected Chang's blow with a return strike of his spear. The man was forced to take a backwards step, almost falling from the saddle of the horse beneath him.

"What… weight…" Chang said, feeling the vibration along his glaive's steel shaft, all the way into his bones. Spears weren't meant to carry that weight. That was the weight of a chopping weapon.

Weight it might have been, but that wasn't enough to make Chang lose his confidence. He was still afflicted by his own Commandant's force of Command – and he had his men surrounding his foe.

"Seeds," he said to himself. "Plant the seeds, Chang… Plant the seeds."

The words of a master, given to him in a time of turbulence. The seeds were his understanding of combat. Lay the foundations, he believed, and the reward would come. He'd seen it true in life, as well as with the blade. He'd done the same thing with his lady wife, Noone, and he swore to do the same again.

Firyr caught a footsoldier so hard with a thrust of his spear that he lifted him up off his feet, and sent him flying back, heavy armour and heavy shield moving just as easily as if they were made out of leather, or even paper.

There was wrath in Firyr's eyes. Enough wrath to make Chang shiver. There was a presence to him that was greedy. If the battlefield was Chang's orchard, then he feared Firyr to be the brute that aimed to eat all his fruit.

"GURAHHH!" Chang bellowed. An overhead strike. It felt right to him, there and then. He'd already sowed his seeds, with the wounds he'd already mounted up on Firyr, and the strikes he'd already delivered. He'd gotten his foe used to a certain pattern, and now he was set to break it. It had all the means of a winning strike.

'No one!' He called inside his mind, borrowing the strength of his wife, and lending it to his blade.