The dragon already breathed its fire on him, it already slashed at him with its claws, and saw him wounded, but Oliver Patrick bore a stubbornness that allowed him to hold on to the tiniest of wills, despite the situation. It was a tiny will that had kept him pushing through slavery. Each day, when he had awoken with shackles on his wrist, and remembered the hurt of losing his family in a fit of bloody slaughter, it threatened to break him. If he had dared to let it all in his mind at once, it would have.
His was a method of self-preservation that he had learned, forcefully, all that time ago. It was that which had allowed him to endure Ingolsol. Against that mighty God of Power, there could never have been a prospect of standing up to him – but nor could he have let himself be defeated, for to do so would have meant to submit entirely to the curse, and to lose himself.
