Chapter 1972: The Old Dragon - Part 8
"Would I?" Viktor Pendragon said. "Or do I intend to see that stability enforced, by putting a true blooded monarch back on the throne. By allowing people the foundation that they sorely missed. You, apparently, have opposite intentions. If you have any sort of goodwill at all, you will surrender this crown."
Oliver twisted his lips. The crown still sat firmly in Benjamin’s fingers. He didn’t like it – he’d discussed it with his advisors before, and the power of a crown on their side, for the sake of the justice that they aimed to enact. It was not something to give up easily.
He knew not what to do, where that line was, and where corruption began. His conversation with Verdant pointed towards something, but he knew it entirely not. He wasn’t sure if he was fractions of moments away from making one of the worst decisions of his career, and giving into a darkness of desires that he himself did not even know he had. Perhaps, after all, he was a mere puppet of Ingolsol, giving into the Dark God’s want for power. There was no clearness, but there was something that he needed to trust in, and Oliver desperately searched around in the darkness, for that little fraction of something that might mean something.
When he had first picked up the crown, it had seemed like the most obvious, most natural thing in the world. This, however, was anything but natural. The Pendragon King would not yield, and what followed, if they chose to oppose him, was certainly tyranny.
He looked to Hod. It would be easier to give the crown up, and to find other methods of achieving what they wished for, yet the Minister of Logic shook his head at him. Strategically sound Hod always seemed to be, yet was he always moral? Oliver looked to Verdant for reassurance. That man too shook his head, the utmost faith in his eyes. He looked to Lasha, and she gave the same pronouncement, even more sternly. Then, Oliver looked to Nila, realizing that, even more than the rest, when it concerned morality, and the matters of his own heart, she might have been his highest governor – a Minister in her own right.
He implored her with his eyes, desperately seeking for the right answer. She was always careful, and always kind. She sought not power for power’s sake. Like he, she would have been content with simplicity, to disappear from the world and live a nameless existence as long as those that she cared about were safe and provided for. The right sort of woman to ask in Oliver’s position.
She, unlike the rest, spoke. She gave him an answer that Oliver found himself all too ready to cling to.
"I do not think you will give in to power, Oliver," Nila said. "Go all the way."
Oliver was on his feet at that. The council that he had received was unanimous. A storm of thought – and then an instant of action. He walked down the length of the table, a man of purpose. He paused by the young Pendragon Prince Benjamin, and he knelt before him, kind, yet determined.
"Forgive me, Prince Pendragon," he said. "But I have need of the crown of your sister for just a little while longer."
He did not reach out for it. He wanted the boy to understand. He looked him in the eye as he made that request, hoping, at least, that the young Benjamin might understand just a little glimmer of his intentions. That as he grew older, he would not be filled with resentment for the Patrick man that had stolen his birthright from him. Perhaps it was a want far too great, and too self-serving, but Oliver wished for it regardless.
It was difficult to tell if Benjamin really understood what he was doing when he nodded the way he did. That golden hair, with those piercing green eyes, almost a male mirror image of Asabel. A heart pure enough that Oliver felt like a man covered in dirt next to him. He offered Oliver the crown as if it were a toy, and as if Oliver were asking for a turn of it.
With another apology, and then a nod of thanks, Oliver took it from him, and placed it back on his own head.
"So, you have made your decision," Viktor Pendragon said. "You seize power for yourself, and you go against the natural order of things. You insult the family of your dead friend, and steal from her younger brother. So begins your tyranny, does it, Oliver Patrick? Where do you intend to go from here, when you know for a certainty that these Pendragon lands will not declare for you? For truly you are a tyrant, and an outsider."
"I know not," Oliver said. "But I am glad that we have spoken regardless, Lord Pendragon. I assure you of the safety for yourself and your family. It ought not have needed saying, but given that your opinion of me is so low, I will say it regardless and make a pledge for that, on all my honour. Whether that still means anything to you, I still know not."
"You will have to forgive me for not trusting you, Oliver Patrick," Lord Pendragon said. "After all that you have done, and the decisions that you continue to make, you seem to me simply as you are. A man in search of the utmost in power, and a man that will stop at nothing to achieve it. Somehow, your advisors seem to see you differently. I wonder what false image you have implanted in their minds, but I see it not. Maybe you will endeavour to prove me wrong, but I doubt it. Your nature will continue pouring out of you, and it will see you consumed in a matter of time."
"You will be proved wrong," Oliver swore.
The Lord Pendragon shrugged. "You. Arthur. Dominus. You have all said the same things to me. You have all doubted that which should be most obvious and self-evident. Those two got themselves killed far too early. What of you, Patrick? Will your demise be just as untimely?"