A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor-Chapter 2123: Voices in the Dark - Part 4

With an easy, well-oiled click, the door came open. It was almost mockingly easy. "Maybe I should have tried opening the door first before I tried tearing it down," Oliver said to himself lightly. It felt as if humour was necessary down here, with how oppressive the atmosphere was.

Into the next chamber, Oliver allowed himself, though he did so with even more caution than before, for unlike everywhere else he had been, this place was already well lit, with small fires burning in raised braziers just like the ones he had seen outside the door.

A sizeable room, a relief from the corridor. A perfect circle, with a stone altar in the middle. Rings of white and black tiles decorated the floor. They switched, and turned themselves, revealing a number of different patterns. A great large hexagon when looked at entirely from above. Then lots of little stars, when one looked at the way individual tiles came together in different sections.

Several fire pits ran along the outskirts of the wall, some with pots hanging over them.

Oliver was strangely aware of the sound of his feet as they clomped across the floor. He was quite sure that he wasn’t moving so heavily. He was practised at moving lightly by now, and he was certainly making an effort to do so, but in that room, every sound seem elevated – except that of the fires. The fires burnt with a soundless crackle. It was if someone had taken the existence of fire and then removed the soul entirely from it.

A sloshing sound came coupled with Oliver’s feet as he moved deeper into that room. A sickening sloshing sound, like a thick liquid being poured across the floor. Loud enough that it made him look for it, straight down at his own feet, and the puddle of blood that he was standing in.

A shout of fright left his mouth involuntarily as he leapt up from the ground. He settled his heart before he had even landed, but his eyes were still wide, and traumatic. He looked behind him. The entire way he came. It was not a puddle of blood, it was a river of it, and flowed with a thick current of its own, gargling along the centre of that walkway. And now, when he looked ahead, he saw it run straight up to that altar, and beyond it, out through the opposite door.

It seeped into his boots, the warmth of it. It could hardly have been called an illusion when he could feel it very much affecting the parts of his body that it was touching. He was no stranger to blood or gore, but the sight of this made him feel a sickness deep in his stomach. It was a difficult sensation, near impossible to ignore, but barely did he manage to keep a handle on his fright.

He moved forward, along with the current of the river of blood. He came forward towards the altar. The blood flowed from there like a fountain, spilling over all sides, and somehow the river’s current kept flowing in the same direction.

The blood their hit Oliver’s cheek, and a vision flashed through his mind.

A young face, begging, as a cruel jagged knife came closer to their chest. "Please, please...". Oliver could hear the knife go in. He could hear the sharp intake of breath that came with the pain. He could see the shock, as the still comprehending eyes beheld their own removed heart, helding up before their face.

Another memory flashed through him, of the same sort. A different torture, a different young being, a different fear. Then another, and another, until hundreds of different scenes were penetrating Oliver’s mind, and crying out to him all at once in their suffering.

He staggered backwards, away from it, and just barely did he manage to keep his feet. His eyes were glassy for a handlful of seconds. He felt the suffering run through him. A strangely detached part of him observed that perhaps this was how it felt to be a Gnome – to take on another’s suffering in that sort of way.

Hundreds of terrible scenes, hundreds of individual fears. They couldn’t mesh into one mass. Each one was confronted individually, like an army of spearmen. They jabbed at Oliver, and begged at something from him.

All he could give was his sympathy; that was all he had. For he understood, to a degree, the moment of that fear. He too had been weak and young in the hands of another. He too had fallen victim to their whims and torment. It was mere luck that allowed him to survive through that. He cried on their behalf, and clenched his fist, hardening his heart, declaring it against the injustice.

Vaguely, he was aware that this was meant to have broken him. Another detached part of himself, ever so logical, separate from the emotion that made Oliver Patrick who he truly was. Perhaps it was a remannt from the Beam that had needed to be detached in order to survive. "A trap. Not the sort of trap you’re meant to survive. You’re not meant to be able to take on the suffering of even one other person without having it break you."

Oliver grunted in reply and began to move forward, but that voice in his head kept talking, kept logically evaluating what it was that he had been through.

"A week ago, wouldn’t that have broken you? A few days ago it might have. Maybe you’re broken already. You’re not strong enough to bear all that, are you?" The voice said. "We couldn’t manage when Asabel died, we’re still not recovered. So why are we marching forward now?"

Oliver ran his fingers along the lines of the crown on his head, drawing strength from it. Then he grasped the grip of the sword at his hip. Two objects of immense importance and significance, blessed by a purity in their purpose. Dominus and Asabel – perhaps two people that he admired more than anyone else.