A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor

The Firyr that had stood before him there had clenched his fist, and felt fire spread across his chest. He'd been eager for the battlefield, he'd been certain that they would achieve further heroics on it, just as they had in that impossible and awful battle against the Emersons. So why was it now that he had forgotten? Why was it now he could not find that certainty?

"That is faith," Claudia said. "That which you hold to, even when you can no longer see the reasons why. That which you cling to, in the depths of darkness. You have faith in General Patrick do you not? Do you have faith in that man, who could see better than you, the Firyr who had such a strong certainty in him, when he had the luxury of vision? Will you believe in that version of you, despite the darkness around you?"

Firyr stood, wordlessly. He could feel Claudia standing behind him, as if she really was a physical presence. As if she was the best of women, there to support him, when he was at his very weakest.

And then there was something – a hard shove to the back. Cruelly done, against Firyr's wants and expectations. From that very hand that he trusted. He looked behind him, and he could see that smile, not cruel, not sober, but playful. The smile of a silver-haired woman with purple eyes, who loved him like no mother had ever loved a child. She gave him that push through the doorway that he was terrified to cross, and then Firyr was falling. Not downwards, but forwards, into that realm that he should not yet be in. Into that realm that should have taken him years longer to reach – buoyed by the wind of General Patrick.

When he clenched his fist, he did so with a renewed strength. When he cracked his neck, it came with a feeling of anticipation. Newness ran through his body, the overwhelming drenching of potential. He did not need anyone to tell him what it was, for he recognized the sensation. A step into somewhere new, and terrifying – a step into the Third Boundary.

His feet hit the sunned strip of a new world, a new domain in which he could conquer, and the darkness shrank back before it. The uncertainty started to fade, along with the unquenchable fear, and he remembered once more, why it was he'd had faith from the start. Because Oliver Patrick saw far more than Firyr, far more than anyone. Far more than even Oliver Patrick himself thought he saw. To predict that a man would break through to the Third Boundary in the heat of battle, who was likely to do that, other than Oliver Patrick? He that seemed to delight in the progress of his men more than any other creature other than Claudia possibly could.

With it, he could feel the return of his General, though he had supposed the man to have withdrawn himself. He was there, somewhere, with an iron hand, sitting upon a gilded gold chair. Like a King, he gave Firyr the nod, and with it, there was an unspoken order. Take those five hundred men, and secure gold of the highest sort from it. Firyr grinned at it. "Aye, your Highness, I reckon I'll see that done."

They were a good hundred metres away from their Captain, those men, and Firyr was not the sort to come rushing towards anyone's side. He drew back his neck, and pointed his mouth to the sky, and bellowed with that naturally loud voice of his, that which could be heard even over the waves of the crashing sea. "RIGHT, YOU LITTLE BASTARDS! IF YOU'RE GOING TO STAND THERE AND DALLY, I'LL KILL THE LOT OF YOU MYSELF!"

That tickle in his throat, the feeling of something beyond his words. There was more there. The deliverance of that certainty that he now felt, that which had the capacity to keep the fear at bay. That which made him feel like he was existing in his moment of flight not for mere seconds at a time, but for the stretch of a whole battlefield.

He didn't have to see the men individually, he could feel them. He felt them because now, he had a need for them, and he had a want for them. His goal was the same, he strove to reach General Blackthorn. But not to outrun his fear. Instead, to give proof to the man that ridiculously chose to stick to his belief in him. For that, he could not simply be Firyr, even if he was Firyr of the Third Boundary now. If he really wanted to change the battlefield, he would need help.

The men, whipped by Firyr's Command, battled harder for it. Their disorganization was remedied by sheer grit. First, they hacked away the men around them that had threatened to break their formation. And then they closed the gaps between their ranks, forming up like a spear to thrust through. Firyr held out his hand, waiting for them, and gathered up as they were, they came running forward.

Tavar watched now with narrowed eyes, as another one of those Patrick Commanders that he had paid only the slightest bit of curious attention to suddenly became much more than they ought to have been. "Lady Blackthorn, for you, I do feel a sense of delight. For the history you bear, and the struggle you had in getting your father to accept your place on the battlefield. But for that other man, that man of foreign blood, I feel an uncertainty. Is that not three of you now, that have shattered through the Boundaries that claimed you, and have all arisen as high as the Third?"

He looked from Colonel Idris, to Captain Blackthorn and Captain Firyr, and there could be no mistaking their presences. It was Third Boundary for a certainty – those that broke through had not yet the ability to try and camouflage that fact. But then there was the immediate question as to why it was they'd found their place together.