Chapter 1984: Rapid Expansion - Part 8
"...You know that isn’t true, and you know she wouldn’t be. All can see what it is he is doing. He is grieving for her," Blackthorn said. She clenched her fist as she said it. "He’s grieving, I know... But why does he have to make us all suffer for it? Does he not think that we are hurting too?"
She turned her head away, so that Oliver could not see the tears beginning to form in her eyes.
"He likely does not even realize it himself," Oliver said. "It’s a painful thing to acknowledge. Your father is quite an individual. I doubt he ever expected himself that he would meet a monarch like Asabel, whom he might willingly lay down his life for."
"I think he would rather that he did..." Blackthorn said. "He longs for an excuse to follow her in death, I think. He will march towards the Capital, Oliver, and he won’t at all complain if he dies for it. It’s the end he would wish for – to commit suicide with a pretence of honour in battle."
"He shall not need to," Oliver said, reassuring her. "Things have changed—"
"You don’t know him," Blackthorn said fiercely. "He’s the worst. He’s stupid beyond belief. He’s a terrible father. He always dismissed me because I was a girl. He never paid me the slightest bit of attention until recently – and then it was only anger at my choice to serve you. He’s been a pain all the way through... He’s really the worst, Oliver..." She turned to him, her voice beginning to break, and the tears falling from her eyes. "But I don’t want him to die."
She sobbed those words, a broken woman, tired of it all. Oliver felt it in his throat, his own want to cry. The rawness of their suffering. When it was his mind thinking, without that strange feeling in his heart that seemed to understand more than his mind ever could, he asked the same question as her. Why did they need to keep fighting? Why was it not yet over? All they had endured – so many battles, so many impossible victories, and so much suffering. How was it not good enough yet?
It made him want to rage at the sky, and at Claudia. She who declared that his suffering would be rewarded, and yet where was the reward? A crown that he did not want, and power that he did not covet? That was the reward? Further responsibility, a longer road, and more daggers in his heart?
Oliver hardly thought as to what he was doing when he dragged her into a hug. The same thing Nila had done for him a thousand times. He gently patted her head, understanding more strongly than he knew the tremors that went through her heart. Feeling his own suffering resonate with it, as if she were playing the violin strings of a past existence – and what a sad song it played.
Would it all be worth it in the end? He wanted to reassure her of that, but no amount of reasoning that he could think of could do it. It was only the strength of that feeling in his chest. Maybe it was the sign of his fracturing mind, that childish little hint of it all. A different set of colours in the world, a different bit of magic. He didn’t know, but it was all that he had left to trust. Those weeks that he had spent dismissing it, in order to refind his footing, they had been wrought with suffering.
There was no solid ground left to stand on. It was far too painful. If he wished to move forward, he could only be that thing, for the fullest length of the time that he could. For that thing knew how to fly – it always knew how to fly. That thing was the child to whom brilliance came effortlessly, who yielded progress simply by accident. Who had garned praise when the world had been bright under the name Tempest. Who Dominus had seen, in the wretched creature that was Beam. Who Oliver Patrick’s teachers at the Academy had seen, beyond his own conflicted, and tumultuous existence. It was that creature that united Oliver’s men towards him. It was that creature that even the Fragments of Ingolsol and Claudia bound to inside Oliver’s mind.
It was that creature whom they currently played with – who even Ingolsol, in that vast world of existence inside the heart of who Oliver Patrick was, found a degree of pleasure in interaction with.
A boy with white hair, sat by himself on a beach.
Staring off into the distance, a listless look on his face. Seeing something in the waves that none other could see.
Who strangers strode towards, looking to find the attention of. Who those of talent felt an immense degree of power from.
Who Nila had dreamt of, and reached a hand towards.
That creature with white hair, and that stormy presence, who had finally noticed the world around him. Who had been caged inside Oliver Patrick for the longest time, bound in the chains of his suffering. Who had been set free, by the likes of Tiberius, and all the added suffering the man had brought.
And that creature, who now looked so intently towards Blackthorn, with the warmest confines of his heart. Who crushed her in a hug to show what her friendship meant to him. Who attempted to reassure her, as to the certainty that he felt. He was sure of it – it would all be fine, in one way or another. He knew not how, but they would find a way. He would stir the wind with his beating wings, and fly without rest, until the air found the smallest cracks in the walls in front of them to tear the world down, and allow them the peaceful pastures that they were so sure existed beyond it.
Lasha sobbed into Oliver’s shoulder, her body trembling. Broken they all were, those pitiful creatures of the Patrick party, and none more so than the newly crowned King that led them. But amongst the clouds that they had discovered, Oliver was certain there could be some degree of peace for them all.