Chapter 2001: The Scale of a Foe – Part 6
The trees flattened themselves from the creature’s immensity – or so Oliver thought, not realizing at all that he’d startled an immense Titan with his swordplay, and sent it scampering, knocking over trees in its wake. Ever since Francis’ meddling with the monsters in those mountains, the occasional Titan still appeared, and none knew exactly why. Oliver needed no explanation, however. It simply seemed right to him that corruption would not disappear in an instant. Besides, they were not so much of a pain to deal with. Any Second Boundary soldier of his, if they worked together, would be able to flatten them. It was only the villagers that they worried for.
Reality and imagination blended together. In the darkness, Oliver was convinced one thing was happening, like the workings of some sort of magic, or some sort of dreamlike state, whereas any observer might have seen it quite differently.
With the frightening of those monsters, there were soon enough cleared a rather large clearing – and Oliver knew that to simply be a foot of that massive monster. A dragon it seemed like, with the broad wings that it had, swooping up over the height of the trees, but Oliver had never known a dragon to have as many heads as this creature did.
Attack after attack Oliver was forced to defend. He was constantly put on the back foot. And the creature was cunning too. Those heads could change shape, and take on any form that it willed. It would trick him with a sense of goodness, by shifting to the shape of a woman that needed defending, and distracting him off in another direction, and it would take Oliver the longest time to learn the falseness of it.
It spoke so many different tongues, and knew so many different things, and every time Oliver did find a window to strike it, the creature seemed to guess at exactly what he was going to do the longest time in advance.
It knew him and his swordplay better than even Oliver knew it himself. The only thing that could get through to it were those little sparks of ideas that Oliver often found to himself. When different patterns were knitted together, and with a will, and a feeling like magic, something new sprang to life, and Oliver decided on another mode of being.
“The creature strikes with its teeth. If I allow it an arm, and get it to open its mouth, I can stab through it,” Oliver said to himself. A truth, strongly felt, a feeling of purity to it, so much so that it had its own colour of whiteness in Oliver’s heart. It made him feel alive, and beat back that feeling of stagnation.
Once, then twice, Oliver caught the creature with that realization. He lopped off one head in a mighty blow, and then stabbed through a second, wounding it. Then the creature would draw back, hissing, and those heads would grow back, as if they were never wounded at all, and the idea that Oliver had fought with would no longer be true. The creature turned it to its own advantage. It dyed Oliver’s idea the green colour of poison, and every time he reached for it, Oliver could feel himself growing weaker.
An impossible foe, impossible to confront directly. So why was it, that the more Oliver did battle with it, the more certain he grew of himself?
He was firmly on the back foot, dazed, in a dream-like state. It was as if he hadn’t woken up from bed at all, and had simply stayed there. Or as if the dreams had come following with him. The fact that the Hydra – as he now knew it to be – existed worried him not, and surprised him not. He thought of nothing but it, nor the damage it was likely to do to Ernest.
Somehow, he knew this was only his monster. That, the only man it would ever do battle with was him, Oliver Patrick. There was no instinct to protect anyone else, and so no worry in that regard. It was Oliver’s foe, well and truly, and every now and then there’d come an impulse of madness that almost seemed delighted of that fact.
Though this was Oliver’s first time seeing such a creature, there was a familiarity to it, and Oliver found he knew it far better than he would have liked. It brought a smile to his face – a crazed sort of smile.
“You’re it, aren’t you?” He said to it. “You’re the creature I tricked, in order to beat the Emersons. You’re that which limits me.”
The creature didn’t respond with words. It could have, but it didn’t. The certainty in Oliver’s chest was enough to convince him of what it was.
It was more than just that. He knew the creature too well, and it knew him too well. It had been there far longer than that. Indeed, it was that which he’d needed to slip past, in order to defeat the Emersons, but it had been growing for long beyond that.
The creature drew upon everything that Oliver was. Every scrap of suffering he had endured, every bit of weakness he had displayed, it had seen that creature nourished. That creature was those long years spent as a slave. It was the fear that he had slept with, knowing that he would never have a safe moment to himself. Knowing that he would only grow weaker, and more exhausted, given that there was no time to rest.
The creature was that which he’d kept hidden, when it was necessary that he be strong. It had grown in the dark, ignored. The suffering had not been displaced into thin air, it had been there, quietly growing stronger, and at times, not so quietly. At times, it would be there, as if it was all that there was to Oliver, and other times, he had been able to quietly run away from it.
It was something he had needed to keep in constant check. He barred the creature away from himself, unconsciously, and in return, the creature guarded a gate.