A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor

There wasn't the time to think. The gazes around the table felt nearly oppressive. If only there was someone he could ask, some way to solve the problem on his own…

He reached into himself, and tried to feel that feeling of Command that he'd felt when he'd taken control of those villagers. It had felt like a physical change, like the gaining of a second beating heart. Maybe that was required of him here? Maybe he needed to properly connect with the board and its pieces, as the professor had said.

As Gargon goaded him on, telling him to hurry up, Oliver gently tapped the pieces on their heads, in what felt to him like pointless superstition. But he had seen stranger things, and he had done stranger things, so until he tested it, he wasn't quite willing to set it aside as a possibility.

'Soldiers,' he murmured to them. 'Am I not a worthy general for you? Do you require a man of noble birth in order to heed his orders? You are pieces of the battlefield, are you not? Is victory not as sweet for you as it would be for me? Lend me your strength, and we will crush these arrogant foes, before our numbers grow any weaker.'

He raised his eyes and gave the command.

"Frontline, forward!" He felt Blackthorn stiffen beside him. He hadn't meant to raise his voice. It was not a shout, but the hardness of his tone was there. It was the sort of thing that the likes of Gargon could not match, for he had never experienced the emotion that lead to a commanding voice like that.

His pieces trembled, violently, more violently than before, as if to refute his claims that they would only obey nobility. He could have sworn he got that sense from them. The sense that they genuinely delighted in this game, like a predator delighted in the hunt.

But despite their seemingly enthusiastic response – at least to him – they did not move, they only caused the board to quake, and the table beneath it to tremble. It was loud enough to draw heads from other tables.

When the trembling died down though, and the other students saw that nothing had happened, they quickly returned to their own games.

It was a situation worth sighing in, but Oliver refrained. Something had happened. He'd felt something. The others had seen something. Gargon – for a split second – had worn a particularly alarmed look on his face.

It was the entire front rank that was vibrating, after all… If they were to move with anything approaching that magnitude of influence, then his bowmen would be slaughtered, and the game would basically be done.

"Fine, I suppose it's my turn again," Gargon said gleefully. "I'm really not sure how much more of this you can take. If you'd had bowmen, at least I wouldn't have been able to walk through you quite so easily… Though I could have walked round you, seeing as though your pieces don't even move."

No one was there to laugh at his comment. The rest of his usual entourage had remained back at their own table. The other students around them seemed to take in a part of Oliver's oppressive aura of concentration.

"Bowmen, find yourself new targets, but keep well out of range," Gargon said. It was a complicated assignment for a simple piece. Instructions like move forward and move backwards were far easier to follow, and made far more sense when they were obeyed. But these pieces were something special. They seemed to be something half alive.

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They listened to Gargon's order, and began to obey, perfectly positioning themselves according to his will.

"Mm, I think your pieces should probably move back," Oliver said. Since he was having trouble getting his pieces to move, he opted, somewhat casually, to try a little bit of mental warfare. "My entire front row has been testifying that it's ready to go. Retreat, if you know what's good for you."

"Hah, your entire front row? There's only three pieces left in it?" Gargon cackled, dismissing his idle threat for what it was.

Of course, Oliver knew different, as did his pieces. Once the troops of the initial front line were wiped out, those troops in the second line that failed the gap then became part of the front line, at least in terms of command structure.

Regardless, it was more Gargon's pieces that Oliver was focusing on than his own. He could feel his own pieces' will to win. What about their will to destroy the enemy? Could he feel out the enemy just as well as he had his own pieces? Could he attach some sort of target to them, and have his pieces target them properly?

He couldn't touch them like he could his own, but he could glare at them, and he glared something fierce. They hardly seemed like pieces to him anymore. It was less a game than it should have been. These pieces were real opposition to him, and he treated them as such, bearing down on them with the full weight of his displeasure.n/ô/vel/b//in dot c//om

From the side, Lasha watched his intense expression of concentration. That was something that she had learned from her short time in his company. The man that they called Oliver Patrick was not the impulsive brute that everyone seemed to think he was. He had a far more thoughtful side to him.

Even now, the others that did not know him quite as well likely saw him as a child hunched over his board, annoyed to be losing a game, but only she that was nearest to him saw the intense expression of concentration. She saw what went on in the eyes that no one else could see... and she was sure she saw a hint of gold.

"What!?" Gargon shouted, outraged. Lasha turned to look. His pieces – pieces that had been moving a confident three squares each turn up until now – had frozen in place, at a mere half square of movement. Lasha hadn't thought that was possible. She thought the board only dealt in whole squares.

There was some sort of mechanism in it that calculated the command power, and rounded it, she was sure… and yet…