Chapter 1974: Clipped Wings - Part 2
In feeling out the problem himself, and seeing the look on the old Pendragon King’s face, and his cruel pronouncement, Oliver could hardly set the problem away from his mind. The political he disliked, but the political was exactly what he was forced into at the moment. The mountain of the problem that they faced – his own position of Kingship – something that had seemed so arrogant to enforce that it seemed like a matter that he did not even tend to himself. Something in his heart, stating that such power should be given, rather than taken. For was it not his men, and the army that he led, that gave him such power? Yet in the same vein, was it not he who had plucked the crown from the soil, and decided that he would take that power for himself.
Wonderment at that, as he thought on it. The snow beat against his face, cooling his head pleasantly. A good sensation for thinking. A scarf that Nila had forced him to wear, pulled up just above his mouth. Hunched in his saddle, the people closest to him in all the world, all of them pondering the same problem. The quietest little bit of the world, the snow closing them off from all else. All of them thinking the same thing, puzzling over the same problem.
One could almost imagine that they were one head. That they were working in unison, despite none of them finding enough of a gap in the wind and snow to say much at all. All of them on the same problem – how was it that they could assert the claim of Oliver Patrick for Kingship? How was it that they could justify making this man that was a low-noble at best, or otherwise a peasant to those that truly knew him, a King?
And for Oliver himself to think upon that, as if he were the most power-lusting man in the realm. Or if he was entirely delusional. It was not a fact missed by him as he thought it. As if he were a child, sat in his room dreaming the impossible. Yet, the impossible was right there. Magic sat on his head in the form of the crown. He wouldn’t have believed it – and still couldn’t truly believe it – if it was not again and again stated by those nearest to him. And if the Emerson King himself hadn’t acknowledged it. It was so much easier to point to a sort of group madness, than the actual fact of it happening. For what could allow for that? The more Oliver pondered the problem, the more he stumbled upon the ingredients that formed the problem. Or more like he simply stumbled upon that single strange ingredient – the fact that, after all, supposedly, he was now a King.
It felt like he could hardly go further in his analysis, or attempt to form any sort of solution, for that ingredient was so strange he could not help but stumble upon it again and again. Him? A King? It made him snort with derision, and equally, it made his hands twitch, as if he were genuinely afraid of something. Him, a King? A question spoken almost with worry now. Him? Who had not even governance over his own heart? Who could hardly sleep, without Nila near enough by to reassure him?
Him that did not even wish to confront his own past, let alone the problems of the state? Whose memories now bled out of him increasingly, with each passing day, as that period of years returned to the fore as if to remind him how bad it had once been?
He that had killed so many, and lost so many, in the crucible of his chosen avenue of existence? In that amphitheatre where all things important to Oliver seemingly had been born and lost – right there upon the battlefield? How could any man that had spilled as much blood as he attempt to seize the crown of a King?
The answer came quickly, spoken by Ingolsol and Claudia alike. A finger pointed in a single direction. That of the First King. A shadowy figure in the heart of his mind. Rich in imagination, yet not specific. His face was a blur, obscured, yet Oliver could still feel that strange smile there, overwrought in charisma. Those fearless eyes, eternally focused ahead. The broadness of his shoulders. The strength of his heart.
What a man he must have been, Oliver thought, to hold the likes of House Black under him, not only as allies, but as subordinates. For the First King was not the only man in contention for the throne. Great forces enacted on those people of the Stormfront before they had even earned that name for themselves. Great forces ensured that they would either fight and finally claim lands for themselves, or be entirely wiped out. Someone had needed to take the reins. And it was that man, whose book Oliver had seen read, in his own hand. The only gift that the High King had ever truly given him – and it had been intended as an insult.
There was an irony in that. That such an ill-delivered gift would be the very source of Oliver’s attempt at finding reassurances. For the answer was there, for many of the questions that he asked himself as to ’why?’. The answer always seemed to be in the form of the First King’s book, and the First King’s thinking.
Why had Oliver stooped to pick up that crown? What was it in himself that had seen him so distracted? Where was the strength of that heart, and the brilliance of character, to make that decision in the moment without a single straining thought? It made Oliver scratch at himself. It felt entirely like a different person, a brief bit of madness. What other explanation could there be for it than that? To have lost so much so suddenly. To have been forced to fight the most impressive of all the foes he had ever crossed swords with in the same moment. How could that not break a man? And was it not a broken man that had picked up the crown?