It was the step that followed, when those holes ought to have widened, when doubt and fear spread strongly enough through Oliver's body as to seize him in place. The flow that ought to have been built behind them, as natural as one foot might follow the other foot, it was not forthcoming. In every battle that he had ever thought, one thing built into the next. That was his fundamental understanding of all the fights that he had ever been involved in. Something that he attributed to Claudia, and knew to be part of the vein of the Progress that she governed over.
Yet, when he needed it there, there was not that. There was a rebuttal, a lack of strength, a running in place, like there was nothing their feet could grip. Like there was a room they had entered into, whose great inhabitants loved them not. Like there was a great gravity, that willed them only to be tossed away.
