A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor

More water would be good too. At once, he was freezing, and at the same time, it felt as though his blood was boiling.

He was torn between diving under his blankets and hiding there permanently, or jumping into an icy cold lake to try and take some of the edge of the heat off, and maybe narrow down the problems that he had to deal with to a singularity, rather than the multiplicity that currently assailed him.

A moment of lucidity. He saw his boots and his clothes all set up for the previous day. They were there waiting to be pulled on. He hailed the Oliver that had had the sense to put them out ready before going to bed – that Oliver had been a prophet, to foresee such things.

A sense of mission helped to dull the pain, somewhat, just barely. Enough to stay conscious whilst his brain urged him to simply curl up close his eyes and never awaken again. It was not tiredness that motivated him so, but the desire for death, he thought.

It was awfully tempting to merely lie down and go back to bed, to pretend that everything would be fine, but some part of him knew that to relax for a second would be to never wake up again. It wasn't sleep that his brain was guided towards, but some deeper and far more permanent.

He dragged his trousers down from the top of the chest at the end of his bed, and he pulled them to the floor with him. He didn't feel up to standing up straight, but nor was lying down particularly comfortable. He wrestled with the end of the trouser legs for what seemed like an eternity, before his feet eventually found the holes, and he managed to pull them halfway on.

By the time he did so, his whole body was drenched in sweat, and the war between hot and cold was starting to be won purely by the cold, as shivers wracked his body. It was hard to tell how much of his shivering was due to the actual room temperature – for it was still the heart of winter, and he'd neglected to light a fire – and how much was due to the condition of his body.

There were socks there, next to the boots, but the idea of struggling with socks was the furthest thing from Oliver's mind. He merely wanted to get outside. By now, in his head, the outside air had adopted some sort of miraculous quality. As he felt his liver twist inside him, his irrational mind said that such things could be cured merely by achieving their goal of reaching the outside.

That spoke to Oliver, a man motivated by goals. His shirt came next. He didn't have the strength to do up the buttons, but it was on anyway. Then he dragged his feet onto his unsocked feet, pausing to tie the laces with quivering fingers. Then, he managed to pull his jacket on top of the rest, though again he didn't have the strength to do it up.

"Right…" he murmured to himself in a frail voice, as he lay shivering on the floor. "Task one, complete… Gugh…"

Another spasm of pain cut off his attempt at speech, and his head was forced hard against the floor. His mind went white, and for the next few seconds, it was all he could do to barely hold onto existence.

It passed, that wave, and he let out the breath that he'd been holding in. The next few breaths after that came in gasps. His body knew it even better than his mind did – that they were dying. It was a biological impossibility to stay calm in the midst of that, yet that was what Oliver forced himself to do.

After surviving that shock of pain, he found the energy to pull himself up to his feet. That brought another bout of pain, a vision bout. He clung to the wall with all his might, digging his fingers into the hard stone, as he fought to stay upright, even as his legs turned to mush beneath him, and the pain passed through every fibre of his being.

He felt the urge to cough again, feeling something in his throat. Again, he was sure that it was blood, before he even got a look at what was on his hand. But the last few times it hadn't been, and so he dared to hope… But no, this time it was unmistakable. In the dark of his room, what he stared at on his hand was his own blackened blood.

He wiped it away on a discarded rag, fighting to keep his heart calm. It would be so much simpler if there was an enemy they could slay to overcome this, but he knew so little about what it even was that was happening to him. The only thing he could do was resist for merely the sake of resisting. To hold on, despite the pain, with the hopes that it would somehow work itself out.

It was something that he was practised in. With the failings of his mind, his body directed everything with its wants, with its small goals. First, it was to get the clothes – then survive those two bouts of pain – now it was to reach the door, and turn the lock.

Each of them felt like a quest worthy of legend, just the basic most mundane of tasks, when in the throngs of such pain, almost seemed as monumental as a battle with the Pandora Goblin. Stay tuned to empire

He followed the wall, his head dragging along it, feeling his sweat dripping onto his hand. One step, two step, three. He reached it. That solid wood, and the lattice iron that framed it. Good sensations, the sensations of victory.

He took a knee as the pain once more intensified. Worse than the last two. If not for his grip on the handle of the door, he would have fallen flat on his face. The urge to be sick built up as well, but he forcibly held it down.

A few seconds more, and he recovered. The pain was blinding. He could even feel pressure behind his eyeballs now, as though they too wished to implode. His ears rang, and when he murmured, he could barely hear himself anymore.