sunslammers

1.25

The Son of Rome

As much as Griffon had tried to rope me into it, I had never been a member of the Rosy Dawn. Not truly. There were certain duties that a slave simply could not ignore, no matter the attire they wore or the company they kept. As much as Griffin was the Young Aristocrat of the cult, second only to one in many ways, he was second.

I only ever met Damon Aetos twice. The second time during the initiation rites that his son had dragged me through, in the impacted cavern where the bisected corpse of the fallen sun god lay in eternal rest. As rosy light had bloomed in that corpse’s pal, the sun rising, the kyrios’ eyes had drifted from his son to me. And though I hadn’t sensed anything at the time with my senses dulled by iron shackles, I had known then, as I had known from the beginning, that every breath I drew within the Scarlet City was a breath that he had allowed me.

The first time I met Damon Aetos, my wounds were still bleeding and my ears were still ringing from the thunder of war.

He’d commanded his captain and soldiers to leave, and then his brothers. Then he sat silent, while I knelt on that marble floor, patiently waiting. Night fell, and the moon rose. Sounds of conversation and combat and simple life drifted through the open terrace of his office. He didn’t fidget. Didn’t move.

Finally, as the dawn broke over the eastern mountain range, the Tyrant of the Scarlet City spoke to me for the first time.

“You failed.”

For a moment, I didn’t realize the words had been spoken out loud. They’d been echoing in my mind for hours already.

I finally looked at him, then, and he gazed upon me without pity nor contempt. Nothing at all but expectation.

He wasn’t surprised in the slightest.

“The city of Rome has fallen,” he continued, unbothered by my vacant stare. “Her legions are scattered and gone. You are all that remains.”

He stood from his desk, and he towered. His stature was reminiscent of the hulking Goths of the western front, sans their hulking frames and grotesque features. He could have stood eye to eye with the demons of Carthage. Rounding his desk, he walked out onto the terrace and watched the light spread through his city.

“Your provinces won’t mourn your passing,” he told me. “Those conquered won’t weep for the conqueror. All that you are, all that your ancestors have wrought, will be gone in a decade. Nothing will remain. And the children of Aeneas die with you.”

And so I spoke my first words to him.

“I know that. I know all of that.”

My fists clenched, unable to grasp the captain's virtue. As if it would have mattered. It hadn’t then, and it wouldn’t now. I slammed my fist into the floor anyway. The marble cracked.

“Your cloak was white, once,” he said, as if I hadn’t spoken. The filthy rag miraculously still clung to my shoulder, but it had long since been stained an earthy red by blood and muck over the course of the campaign. Even so, it remained what it was. The mark of a Roman legion’s senior commander.

I snarled and tore it off my shoulder.

“It’s too late for that.” He rendered judgement without hesitation. Blind as I was to Pneuma and virtue, I still felt it as it slammed down on my head. Forced it to bow. “You accepted that mantle and you failed the men that it placed beneath you. There’s no escaping that.”

A Tyrant's judgment was absolute. Blood sprayed from my clenched teeth, marring the Tyrant's spotless floor. I heard the rush of thunder in my ears and saw the darkness creeping in from the edges as I forced my eyes up. Up.

Damon Aetos turned from his terrace and met my eyes again. Expectant.

“I never deserved it,” I said, every word forced out into the open air, every syllable exacerbating the wounds that those dogs had given me. If I kept talking beneath the weight of his influence, I would die. “I failed them. My men. My mentors. Rome. I don’t deserve to call myself a legionnaire, let alone a captain. Nothing you say could possibly make me hate you more than I hate myself. No judgment of yours could ever be as brutal as what I deserve.”

Damon Aetos considered me for a long moment. Then he nodded, and the weight of his judgment fell away from me. I snarled again and slammed both mangled fists against the marble.

“Anybody can become angry. That much is easy.” Two broad, calloused hands wrapped around my wrists, tighter and far more unyielding than the iron manacles. The kyrios dragged me to my feet. “But to be angry with the right person and to the right degree, and at the right time, and for the right purpose?”

He pressed without particular force, and I slammed down into a chair. He leaned back against his desk, obscuring three of the four warriors carved into its front face.

“That is not within everyone’s power,” he told me. “And it is not easy.”

My strength was fading. The echoes of the fifth were growing louder by the minute. I’d be joining them soon.

“What is your name?”

I stared vacantly at the light on the horizon.

“Solus.”

“The last son of Rome,” he mused. “King of salt and ash. I suppose this is all that remains.” The kyrios snapped his fingers and a man that bore his age with tempered grace entered the office immediately.

“Mend him,” Damon Aetos decided, “and put him to work.”

The old man bowed his head at once, but then raised it, and asked the Tyrant, “As a slave, Damon? Are you certain?”

I would later come to know this old man as the first among servants within the Rosy Dawn, oldest by far. But to this day, I still didn’t know how he’d had the gall to question a Tyrant where all others would have bowed their heads in supplication. More than that, I didn’t know why the Tyrant had allowed it. Damon Aetos hadn’t lashed out in anger at the slave’s audacity. He had only turned away, dismissing us both as he returned to the business of ruling the Scarlet City.

“Whatever he may have been before, Carthage took it from him. He’s nothing now.”

For all that Griffin had tried to include me in the daily life of a true initiate, for all that he had sponsored me himself through the rites, his word came second to his father’s. And Damon Aetos had decided from the very beginning that there was no place for me within his domain.

S

I’ve never been a peer amongst those seeking answers beneath the mysterious light of dawn, that was the simple fact of things. But I had worked among them and observed the things they did.

The people of Greece were in many ways exactly as my childhood mentor had described, and in many ways they were more. More vibrant, more academic, more boisterous and free spirited, more arrogant and frivolous in their pursuits. They were as alien to me as the Goths, the Britons, and the Celts. In more ways than one, I didn’t know what it truly meant to be an initiate of a Greek mystery cult. But I knew where to start.

The stone steps carved into this particular section of Kaukoso Mons served as a half theater, it’s surface crowded by mystikos of the Raging Heaven cult. Boys, girls, men and women, they gathered as individuals and in small groups both with tablets and empty rolls of papyrus in hand. Nearly a dozen varying shades of indigo and its component colors abounded in their attire.

At the foot of the steps, on a circular platform that jutted out over the southern face of the mountain, a philosopher conducted his lectures.

He was a young man in appearance, broad shouldered and tan, only the bare wrinkle of crow's feet around his eyes and the gray hairs on his chest giving lie to his apparent age. His hair was still full and dark, his beard thick and curly. He spoke with the weight of years and the confidence of someone that knew they were the smartest in the room.

Philosophers lecturing junior initiates had been a common occurrence in the Rosy Dawn. It was the primary method of advancements for those too young and weak to challenge their peers in the octagon or on the track. The early years were the most formative, as well, and so the young ones especially were presented with as many ideas and as much knowledge as they could fit in their heads.

All too often, the virtue that a man pulls from the sea of his soul was not the work of any one mentor. It was an amalgamation of a thousand different moments, words, and impressions. It was the natural way. The right way, many would say.

It was a question I couldn’t answer myself.

The topic being covered here this afternoon, high up on the southern face of the mountain where junior initiates without experience abounded, was numerology. Pythagoreanism specifically. It was a commonly known fact that the mystery cults of the free Mediterranean were some of the finest institutions in the world, and if Griffon and Anastasia were to be believed, the Raging Heaven stood above even them in the quality of its instructors.

As I reclined with my elbows propped up against the stone steps behind me, listening, I found it somewhat hard to believe.

“Within nature there is a guiding principle, a thoughtful design which makes itself apparent to anyone who cares to seek it out,” the Philosopher lectured, brandishing a hand and pointing two fingers up to heaven. “The observance of these designs allows us to fill in the empty spaces that have been left behind in the natural world. We use numbers to represent concepts beyond traditional comprehension, and in so doing we pave the way for understanding of our future. Something as monumental as the passage of stars can’t be predicted intuitively. But it can be distilled down to numbers. And numbers can always be predicted.”

The Philosopher led his audience through a primer, something I remember learning about when I was still too short to punch a man in his jaw without jumping. Some of the gathered initiates seemed equally disinterested, but others were scribing with focused intensity.

The Philosopher transitioned after a while into specific examples, ticking the fingers of his other hand off, one at a time.

“Before the manipulation of numbers, there is meaning in the numbers themselves. The Broad’s model of the soul tells us that we exist in three parts. We ascend through fourr mortal realms, and within each we take ten ranks upon ourselves. There is meaning in every number, as there is meaning in every blade of grass and every shifting grain of sand.”

He looked up at us all with patient expectation. “Somebody tell me the significance of the first number, éna.”

“Victory,” called a girl in dark maroon robes. The Philosopher inclined his head in acceptance.

“Another.”

“Survival,” a young man in a soft purple-blue tunic proposed, only for one of his fellows sitting beside him to immediately suggest the exact opposite.

The Philosopher cut in before an argument could ensue. “Both equally correct answers- and both lacking. You could all suggest a different meaning, and each would contain a portion of the truth, but none would be fully complete, because above all éna is-”

“Unity,” spoke a voice from above, and every mystiko in attendance turned to watch a new arrival descend the stone steps. “One is the origin of all things. It is to numerology as numerology is to nature. All aspects of the world can be broken into numbers, and all numbers can be broken into éna.”

“Exactly right,” the Philosopher said, annoyance at the interruption warring with a visible fondness for the young man hopping down the steps. “Come again to steal my students from me, Jason?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t dream of it,” the Hero said, to the quiet disappointment of most in attendance. He winked at a group of particularly vocal young initiates nearby, hopping down the steps three at a time with the eerie grace all advanced cultivators moved with. “I just thought you might like an assistant. It never hurts to have a second set of-”

Burning blue eyes met mine and Jason stumbled. A pair of girls with flowers braided into their hair cried out as a Hero twice their size stepped into them and sent them sprawling to the level below, into the laps of a group of boys.

“Jason?” The Philosopher asked, pneuma rising in concern.

“My mistake,” the Hero said, catching himself in the next moment and offering both girls a hand. He lifted them back up to their seats and apologized to both of them, smiling indulgently at their starstruck expressions. “Actually, I think I’ll sit in for this one. I suppose I have been acting the mentor too often lately. I’ve still got plenty to learn, eh?”

With that he leapt back up the steps. He somehow managed to lannd in a casual sprawl that covered three levels as if they were a cushioned lounge, claiming for himself one of the many empty spaces in the rows most distant from the lecturer.

It placed him only a few scant feet away from me.

“What are you doing here, Sol?” he murmured, once the Philosopher had returned to his lecture and Jason had shooed the mystikos’ wandering eyes away from him.

“Learning,” I said blithely. Jason snorted.

“Right, and I’m the king of Egypt.”

“Far from home,” I observed. His lips twitched towards a grin, but he muscled it down.

“But really,” he said, “is this about the other night?”

The Philosopher gestured down on his platform and conjured wisps of flame the color of honey, carving into the air as if it was a clay tablet. He traced geometric shapes in the wind, labeling their sides with exacting and espousing the meanings behind their pairings.

“I came here for him,” I said, and it was even true. I hadn’t had the privilege of personally attending lectures at the Rosy Dawn, but I’d caught enough in passing and remembered enough of my mentor to know that they were my best chance at piecing together the Greek style of cultivation.

I was here to find my mentor, that was true above all. But I had to acknowledge the possibility that I wouldn’t find him here. Until I knew one way or another, I had to make the best of my time here. I’d seek him out as soon as I knew where to go. Whether that was across the city or across the continent, it would be done.

For his part, Jason’s heart flames redoubled behind his eyes, and his lips parted in understanding.

“So he is conspiring with Alazon. I suspected, but I should have known.”

I quietly sighed.

“Don’t jump to conclusions,” was all I said. Jason nodded fractionally, eyeing the Philosopher below with carefully masked suspicion.

“Of course, we’ll have to play this carefully. But if you’re right, and I think you are… we could prove beyond a doubt that Alazon was involved that night.”

I resigned myself to this new reality, frowning at the implication of what he’d just said. By my vague memories of the funeral, I remembered a young man cast from the same mold as Griffon, but forged from inferior materials. A young aristocrat without the grit to back up his gall. Scythas had told Griffin and I the following day that he’d been implicated by the Crow we captured. He’d all but admitted to it himself, the bastard, running off like he had.

But it seemed he’d made a convincing case for himself. Or, perhaps more likely, someone had made it for him.

“What about you?” I asked quietly. Jason blinked, adjusting his robes a bit and looking faintly embarrassed.

“These lectures… Depending on who’s giving them, they have a tendency to drift.”

I raised an eyebrow. Jason coughed into his fist.

“The initiates are still impressionable this far up the mountain,” he explained. “Still naïve and dazzled by the sanctuary city and it’s grand plateau. Many of them still barely know what rhetoric is, let alone how to steel themselves against it.”

My eyes widened as I realized what he was getting at. I watched the philosopher craft meaning out of thin air, carve it into the air with the shimmering flame, and watched the mystikos in attendance drink it in like a desert oasis.

It made sense when I thought about it. Rhetoric was a tool like any other. A Philosopher could use it to convince as easily as they could to explain. If Griffon had been right in the temple of the father, resisting it could even be a question of comparative cultivation.

“They’re recruiting.”

Jason nodded, a dark look in his eyes.

These are the moments that are meant to provide for new cultivators,” he said quietly. “Many of these initiates are so exceptional that they gained admittance to the cult before cementing their virtue. Lectures like these provide a wider foundation for them to draw upon when the moment comes. When they’re given in good faith.”

More maneuvering. My eyes narrowed.

“So you offer your assistance in lecturing as their senior in cultivation.”

“An impossible thing to refuse,” he agreed. “And if I happen to steer things away from one particular topic or another, who’s to say there’s any intent behind it?” Because accusing him of such a thing would mean implicating themselves.

“Spitting in their eyes and daring them to blink,” I said without any particular inflection.

Jason smiled bleakly, tilting his head back and gazing up at the ceaseless storm.

“What can I say?” he murmured. “Defying Tyrants is a Hero’s virtue.”

The scent of burnt yew assaulted me. It whirled around Jason, marking him, as he’d been marked the night of the funeral. I was beginning to understand now. The Crows were targeting Olympic contenders as the elders angled for influence within the cult, but that wasn’t the whole of it. There

“Where’s your room?” I asked him, and Jason answered without hesitation. Too trusting. I swallowed down the bile in my throat and looked back at him with heavy intent. “Stay there tonight. We’ll talk tomorrow, at the agora.”

Jason smiled fiercely.

S

Three crows came in the night for the Hero of the Alabaster Isles. Each of them was a lesser existence to the great Hero, but they hadn’t been tasked with extraction. Tonight, they were the rusted blades in the dark.

If they shattered, it wouldn’t matter. So long as they buried their poison in the Hero’s heart first. Death was an acceptable consequence, so long as it claimed all parties. Two of the Crows crept through the cerulean-veined halls of the Hero’s quarters, while the third scaled the mountain up to his window.

The hungry ravens fell upon the two in the hall before they could scream, and the third Crow crested the edge of the Hero’s terrace only to find him waiting inside, blue eyes burning in the dark.

Jason caught it by the throat and dragged it inside.

1.24

The Young Griffon

One of the better indicators of a person‘s character was the way they treated their juniors. The hunger for standing was a natural element of every human soul, and the temptation to abuse that standing ever with us. Not always for its own sake, perhaps, but all too often opportunities presented themselves just out of reach, and all too often there were other people, subordinates or friends or even family, positioned just right to act as stepping stones so you could close that distance.

For many, it was a question that almost didn’t warrant asking. When it was nothing more than glory or fortune on the line, the temptation was strong enough. But for cultivators, those who coveted divinity’s distant star, existences that gained years of extended life for each small advancement? Well. For them, it wasn’t a question at all.

The path to heaven was only wide enough for one man to walk it at a time. My tutors had hammered that into me at an early age. In the end, we were all alone when we challenged the Fates. The only uncertainty was how many lesser men we stomped down on our way up.

Eventually, a cultivator placed all beneath them. It was only a matter of when. We called it the Tyrannic Realm for a reason, after all.

Still, there were those that understood this fact and accepted it as a necessary consequence of defying what the fates had planned for them - good and bad. And on the other hand, there were those that hid behind it like a shield, cringing away from all responsibility.

I was pleased to find that Elissa was the former of the two.

“What did I say? It isn’t a matter of force or finesse, it’s your grip,” the Heroine said sharply. The scars on her marble skin turned an otherwise stern frown into something truly vicious.

The boy she was lecturing, a tan youth that looked to be somewhere between Heron and Castor’s age, stood to like he had been struck, quickly shifting his grip to something that looked less comfortable for him, but better overall. His blade was a fine thing, simply crafted with impeccable materials. Flawless iron, and a wavering line of bronze traveling through its surface like a serpent, or a sun ray. Looking at it and the boy that held it, nervous and eager and hopeful, his Raging Heaven attire neatly folded and set aside in a way that spoke of his care for it, I got the impression that they were together a product of simple laborers and backwater settlements.

For him to have qualified for admittance to the Raging Heaven at his age, the indigo jewel of the Half-Step City, he must have been truly talented. His pneuma, firmly in the Sophic Realm, spoke to this as well. Still, even among prodigies, there were those who stood above.

While the boy and four others brandished naked iron, Elissa held only an olive tree’s branch and her loose grip. It was more than enough.

Desert-heat eyes scoured the boy’s form until, satisfied, she made a come-hither gesture with her free hand. All five took a different approach, some lunging low and others taking wide, sweeping strikes. Her olive tree branch whipped out with improbable speed, not only taking strikes from weapons that should have severed it with ease, but knocking them aside without care. She pivoted - pranced, really - moving through them with the grace of a dancer at a symposia.

Without looking, she whipped her branch around to meet the knife edge of my descending palm, scowling as the Rosy Fingers of Dawn lit her impromptu weapon on fire. Five young Philosophers of the Raging Heaven leapt back, alarmed and shouting.

“What do you want, Griffon?” Elissa asked irritably. I smiled and shrugged, pivoting on one foot and driving up with my other hand.

[The sun rises.]

I didn’t manifest any violent intent, and my attack wasn’t particularly quick. In an instant the Heroine figured out what I was doing and scoffed, but nonetheless twisted with a similarly languid motion and swept her burning branch at my hand, forcing the strike aside.

“This lowly sophist heard that a Heroine was dispensing wisdom to her juniors. What else could I do but seek some out for myself? For a newly minted Philosopher, such a fortuitous encounter might only come once in my life.” As I spoke, I led her through something that was as much a dance as it was a fight, a nameless game of choreographed violence that I had often played with Nikolas when I was younger.

“Newly minted Philosopher,” she repeated as we moved, almost offended in her skepticism. In response, I flexed my Pneuma. It was undeniably of the Sophic Realm, first rank.

Elissa didn’t believe it for a moment. But the boys did.

“Junior!”

“Without even asking!”

“The audacity!” The boy with the shoddy grip rushed me with his blade poised. He was older than the trio of boys I’d slapped around the day before, closer to his physical prime, and that made his superior cultivation far more dangerous.

A pankration hand yanked him back by the white cloth hanging around his waist. When he jerked around to strike at it another two hammered up between his legs. The boy choked and fell to the dirt.

“I’ve noticed a trend among the initiates of this cult,” I said conversationally, splaying ten more hands in a burning ring around us, warding off the other philosophers. They eyed me warily while their fellow gagged on the ground.

“I don’t care.” There had been a bare flicker of something fatally sharp in those desert heat eyes, an instant of protective rage. It was gone as quick as it came, when she realized I’d only given the boy something convincing to think about.

“Yes you do,” I said easily, continuing our dance without missing a step. It was a game as much as any of the others I’d played the last couple days, a lighthearted representation of a fatal encounter. We took lazy, almost sloppy swings at one another, but the strikes they represented were a murderous blur in my mind’s eye. This was not a game won by increments. The first to falter lost.

As her branch represented a blade, and my fists were only that, I was at a firm disadvantage. In theory. But I had been smacking down live steel since I was a boy. And this game was entirely a question of tactics.

Elissa’s swordplay was some of the best I’d ever seen, but it had been Nikolas Aetos that taught me this game.

“Tell me, then,” she demanded, focusing intently as the blade of my left hand met the tip of her branch and gently burnt it away.

I could almost see the image in her head, of ten thousand pankration hands slamming against her blade with ruinous heat, breaking it at its imperfect points. As far as she was concerned, we had both only been feeling one another out when we clashed at the funeral. She thought I had far more to give.

I glanced at the young men ringed around us. Outrage and jealousy abounded, and it was easy enough to see why. I hadn’t inserted myself into her impromptu lesson immediately, after all. In observing, I’d spent as much time taking the measure of her juniors in relation to her as I had of her relation to them.

It was fortunate enough for a cultivator in the Heroic Realm to give you a moment of their time. It was doubly fortunate when they were a beautiful woman and you were just discovering your body’s earthly desires. These five had sought her out on this jagged peak within spitting distance of the Storm That Never Ceased because she was by far the best swordsman that would give them the time of day.

“They’re all soft.”

But more than that, they’d come to bask in her attention.

Five Sophic cultivators seethed at my disdain, their influence lashing out impotently at my pankration hands. Their egos broke against the Rosy Fingers of Dawn without resistance, closer to sea spray than any true wave.

“They’re young,” Elissa reproached me. Ho, there was real anger in that desert heat. How surprising.

“Children are young,” I dismissed, ducking a sharp jab at my eyes and thrusting a palm at her kidney. She twisted artfully, fuschia silk shifting across her sculpted skin. I snorted as five sets of eyes stared. “Cultivators are only ever unrefined.”

“It isn’t enough to say things that sound meaningful,” Elissa replied, striking. “It has to actually mean something, too.”

“How cruel.” Advance, feint, step back. “But you know, it isn’t enough to act like you’ve disproven something, either.” Above our heads, the undying storm rumbled. “You still have to prove me wrong.”

Elissa scowled and suddenly shifted the rhythm she’d kept thus far, adopting a new style. The transition was so smooth that I almost didn’t notice in time. I leaned away from the next three strikes, raising an eyebrow.

She caved. “Soft in what way, then?”

“I have a cousin,” I said, and the pankration hands surrounding us turned their palms inward. Two went rigid and flat like daggers, and were seized by two more in turn. They began to dance through the air in a series of sharp jabs, slashes, and cuts.

For all that he had harbored absurd shame over his lack of manifested virtue, the littlest kyrios had never allowed himself to wallow and shirk his martial pursuits. The five young Philosophers watched with reluctant fascination as I illustrated Myron’s dagger forms. One boy in particular, with delicate features and thin fingers, traced the motions with intense focus. He’d come here to learn the sword, ostensibly, but knives were clearly his true interest.

“You have a cousin,” Elissa repeated flatly.

“Several, actually. But the youngest is nine years old, and already his foundations are packed tighter than anything I’ve seen on this pretty mountain. Compared to these boys his cultivation may be lesser, but he is the better man. When discourse turns to dispute, he possesses the only thing that truly matters. The element that these boys lack.”

One of the two pankration suddenly twisted and threw its makeshift dagger-hand. It drove through the stone behind the sunray swordsman, just missing his head. He flinched sideways.

“An edge.”

Elissa said nothing.

She was surprisingly kind to her juniors, that was the truth. She was surprisingly tolerant of their obvious motives, that was the truth as well. She was even, most surprising of all, a bit protective of her junior mystikos in spite of the way she’d treated myself and Scythas at the kyrios’ funeral. But in the end, there was one aspect of her that was not surprising at all. She was a Heroine, and she knew what distinguished those that ascended from those that did not.

She bore its mark all over her body.

And she knew that these children didn’t have it.

“What am I missing here, honored Heroine?” I pressed her quietly, closing the distance and drawing her into the final exchange. “This is the Half-Step City, isn’t it? This is the cult that only accepts the finest souls of the free Mediterranean, isn’t it? So tell me, why are they all so soft?”

I knew why, of course. I felt it in my bones, in the new marrow that shot through them like ruby veins. But some things were too important not to confirm. Our exchanges became frenzied, though the speed never changed. Alyssa’s burning eyes darted this way and that, tracking burning fists that didn’t exist. In my own mind’s eye, I waded through a storm of bronze.

Iron sharpens iron, she spoke in the voice of her soul, a clear chime to my Sophic sense. And so in asking one question, I was given three answers.

Her burning branch halted beside my right ear. The Heroine snarled in frustration and threw down her weapon. I tapped her chest a second time, directly over her heart. One of the boys made a disbelieving sound and was quickly hushed by his fellows.

“Elaborate,” I invited her, stepping back and inclining my head. She mirrored me, grudgingly.

“Iron sharpens iron,” she said out loud. There was something there, a contempt for someone other than me. “A strong foundation requires strong opposition.”

“Naturally,” I agreed. I waved a hand at the young Philosophers. “So then, you’re saying these shining gems of the free Mediterranean didn’t experience any true hardship on the road to the Raging Heaven Cult?”

It was rather sad, watching them throttle their indignation before Alyssa could notice it. As if they could hide anything from her. She pretended not to see it anyway, for their sake.

“You know I’m not.”

“I do.”

“Then why-” She shook her head. Disgusted with me, no doubt. “The initiates here are all exceptional cultivators, the best of the best. It isn’t their fault that this place is the way it is.”

“Who’s fault is it, then?” I asked. It had been a gut feeling, a supposition built upon small observations and simple intuition, but here and now, as one of the stronger existences in the enlightened world stared at me silently, unwilling to speak, I knew it was the truth.

Tyrants.

“You grew up in a nowhere nation, separated from the enlightened world by an entire ocean,” she finally said. I nodded because it was true. “If you decided one day that you were going to beat a rival of yours to death, who could punish you for it?”

My father. “The kyrios of the Rosy Dawn.”

“Damon Aetros,” she said, and the immortal storm roared above our heads. “Did he make a habit of intervening directly in the affairs of his younger initiates?”

I snorted.

Elissa nodded, taking that for the answer that it was. “Then if not him, who? The elders?”

“If they noticed.”

“Exactly.” Her jaw, slender and refined and marred by deep scars, flexed. “There are limits to the perceptions of Philosophers and Heroes. Lapses in awareness and simple lack of care. It is not in a Philosopher's nature to ignore life’s greater mysteries in favor of tending to children. It is not in a Hero’s nature to ignore life‘s greater threats in favor of small disputes.”

She explained the problem to me the only way she could. By explaining everything else instead.

It was not within the capabilities of Philosophers and Heroes to track everything that took place in their vicinity. Nor was it in their nature to care overly much about what those beneath them did. To subjugate them at every perceived slight.

But Tyrants were a different existence altogether.

“Eight kings, but only one crown,” I mused. The alarm that took hold of her in that moment was as sharp and immediate as it had been the night of the funeral. Lightning flashed above our heads.

“Must you always tempt the Fates?” she whispered furiously.

I tilted my head to regard the five frowning philosophers. At a certain point, they had started to understand the difference between us. They regarded me as prey regarded predator. As they should have from the start.

“My senior brothers,” I said, and smiled as they leaned in, unconsciously, to listen. “You came here for wisdom, so listen for a moment. You are surrounded, and you are watched, that is true. It’s entirely possible that no matter what you do beneath this curtain of tribulation, you will be angering a lion. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t act.”

Without looking, I picked up the discarded olive branch with a pankration hand and offered it to Elissa. She eyed it like it was a real blade after all.

“Neutrality won’t protect you forever,” I promised them all. “The higher ups may only be watching for now, but they’ll get hungry eventually. And when the lion is hungry, he eats.”

§

The young woman, once a crow but now unmasked and someone again, choked as the hungry raven on the right gripped her by the throat and slammed her against a marble pillar. Chains rattled and went taught, binding her to the stone and throttling her cultivation.

“She wasn’t wrong,” The hungry raven on the right mused in a voice of shifting sand. “Cowards you may be, skulking around in the dark, but you’re the only ones getting anything done around here. A cat’s paw is still dangerous, isn’t it?”

The young woman grit her teeth and thrashed against her binds. The raven chuckled.

“Which king do you serve?” Her small part of providence urged her not to speak, to give nothing away. As if she would have. The young woman kept her silence.

The hungry raven on the left drove its bronze spear through her thigh, and she choked back a scream.

“Where is the man who knows everything?” The hungry raven on the left demanded.

“I asked first,” cawed the other.

“We’re not doing this.”

“Anonymity isn’t an excuse to be rude.”

The hungry raven on the left ignored its bare-chested counterpart, leaning down until its face was level with hers. By its build, it was almost certainly a man. And while before she had been nothing but shadows and unseen malice, she was now Harmodias of Krókos. A woman, her wrists bound to the marble column by chains. At their mercy. She closed her eyes and leaned away from it all.

“What do you know of the man who knows everything?” he asked again.

“Nothing,” she whispered. He twisted the spear’s head in her thigh. She winced and shivered. “Nothing.”

He considered her silently, while the other raven waited impatiently, resting his weight on the shaft of a ludicrously large bronze war axe. Finally, he sighed and drew back. She could feel the end approaching. After all this time, all that Harmodias had given in pursuit of the heights, this was where she succumbed. In the dark, with no one to mourn her passing. It was too cruel. It was simply too cruel-

The raven on the left broke the chain that bound her, and without another word threw her off the side of Kaukoso Mons.

“Worthless, thoughtless-!” she heard the raven on the right shout, before the whistling winds stole it all away. Her small part of providence suddenly came alive within her unseen shadow, cawing and flapping its wings furiously as it burst out of a fold in her clothes and took flight. It would return to its source, and they would know what had taken place here. Who had killed her, and what they were after. If nothing else, she could take some comfort in that. Her death wouldn’t be entirely without meaning.

The last thing she saw was an eagle cutting through the sky like an arrow. It overtook her crow in an instant, sinking its talons into ink-black flesh and careening back up the mountain.

Harmodias opened her mouth to scream and promptly slammed through the sloped roof of one Olympia’s nicer bathhouses.

[Interlude 2] The Rein-Holder

???

You are nothing.

Liquid purpose burns a trail down your throat, melting through fragile linings of tissue and sinew. You’ve always been proud of your constitution, in those quiet moments of honesty you believed yourself to be truly strong, but your body can do nothing but give way to this force. The marrow burrows through your body, following channels that do not yet exist in your unrefined body. What can not be found is created instead.

You fall to your knees, choking. You hack and spit, and when that does nothing for you, you jam your fingers down your throat. You gag. You heave. But nothing comes up.

You reach desperately for your companion, but too late. He took the marrow into himself a mere instant after you did, and now he stumbles back, falling into the soiled pool beneath the feet of the thunderer. You try to rise, but the marrow is in your spine now. Your limbs lock up and you fall, fall, fall.

The last thing you notice is the smoke. Cypress, dilute but unmistakable. You hold on to that sensation, desperately, reaching for the accompanying meaning, but your thoughts slip away from you like that self same smoke. The marrow courses up your spine and into your brain. In the end, your own thoughts slip away from you.

The Rein-Holder takes you in hand.

[The cawing crow lives for nine generations of men in their prime]

You are no one.

The marrow makes a domain of your semblance. It rises through porous skin, bubbling up inside the lines of your newly painted tattoos. Spirit olive oil with its midnight tint gives way to shining crimson script. The olive oil burns away entirely, clouds of steam billowing up around you.

Your companion reaches desperately for you, but the pain has already knocked you back. You fall through the stone dias at the feet of the cloud-gatherer, the stone as porous as your own flesh, and into the olive oil pool. It flash boils in an instant.

You bare your teeth in naked threat, though no one is there to see it, and focus your strength inward. You scour your own blood, turning your vital breath against your body. You burn away arteries, vital organs, and inevitably, you turn upon the branching paths of light within your spine-

But the marrow has beaten you there. You stop breathing. Your pneuma howls and fades. You try to snarl, but you don’t have the control for even that. You track the marrow as it winds up the contours of your spine, unable to do anything but hate it, and then it’s in your brain and you’re unable to do even that.

The Rein-Holder brings you to heel.

[The cawing crow serves nine generations of tyrants in their domains]

You are nothing, king of no one.

The city of Rome has fallen, and demons did the work. You remember the snarling faces of the wolves that salted your city. You remember how they fought, impossibly, like men in formation. You remember their tactics. You remember they can cultivate. You remember that your father-

Your father. You remember your father. You remember Gaius. Your last mentor, the first being-

You remember your first mentor. You remember his rhetoric, and the years that he walked the streets of Rome. You remember that he taught you the language of the Alikoans, which served you well when you were… bound. Bound in slavery. Bound to Greece.

You remember that Damon Aetos’ men drove back the demons. You remember that Damon Aetos took you into his estate.

You remember that Damon Aetos knows of the threat, and he has not spoken of it.

The Rein-Holder beckons you.

[The cawing crow serves nine generations of tyrants and their purposes]

You are no one, king of nothing.

The Cult of the Rosy Dawn has finally rid itself of you, and you did the work yourself. You remember the scowling faces of the aunts and uncles that hated your existence. You remember how they spoke to you, poisonously, when no one was around to hear them. You remember their contempt. You remember their resentment. You remember their fear of you, their fear of your resemblance to your father-

Your father. You remember your father. You remember Damon Aetos.

Damon Aetos is your father.

Starlight marrow flickers for a bare moment, and then it explodes through your brain and back down your spine, the tree of your life, and it burns all that it touches.

The Rein-Holder condemns you.

[The cawing crow eats nine generations of men in their passing]

Your companion is condemned.

Rise. Your legs are unsteady, but they are stronger than before. The marrow has burnt new channels through you, connected points of light within you that had until now sat as islands in the dark. You are stronger than you were a moment before. A moment from now, you’ll be stronger still.

You step through the gemstone mosaics that decorate the pool. You see your companion, dying in the boiling olive oil. The tattoos he’d painted on himself are blood red where before they were black, and they seethe with a visible heat that vaporizes any oil that touches them.

His face is closed off from you by his midnight veil. In a way, he’s already dead. This is simply mercy. You raise your celestial spear and drive it through his heart.

… You raise your celestial spear and drive it through his heart.

You raise your celestial spear-

Listen to me.

[The cawing crow dies]

You are condemned.

The marrow spreads through every inch of you, and it burns. It melts and it sears. Your blood boils within your veins. The marrow alights upon the fine threads that spread like roots from your spine, burning them away one by one. Your gut, your heart, and your brain are encircled.

Your stomach dissolves, devoured by its own biles. Your heart bursts. Your brain shuts down, thought by thought, until all the lights in the sky of your soul have flickered and gone out.

You were the son of Damon Aetos. Now you are dead.

… Now you are dead.

Now you are-!

[The cawing crow-]

You stab your companion. You stab your companion who you’ve always despised. You stab your companion that had the gall to lecture you about your city. You stab the son of the man that enslaved you. You stab him. You stab him. You stab him.

Kill him.

[The crow-]

You stop moving, and you die. You lay back down in the pool, and you die. You stop smiling. You die. You die. You die.

[...]

YOU STOP EATING ME

[The raven grows old in the lifetime of three seers]

The tomb of the father is silent but for the haggard breathing of two young men. Cloaked in shadow and shrouded by sin, they have no faces to look upon. No voices to hear. And yet, they are more than simple crows.

The hungry ravens catch their breath. For a moment, all is still. Something silent passes between them. A beat.

They vanish into the night.

1.23

The Son of Rome

“That went differently in your head, didn’t it,” I said, eyeing the ink-black pile of bones and bile that Sorea had vomited into my open palm. They were warm, warmer than they should have been. Scorching hot, even by a cultivator’s standards.

“You just ate it,” Griffon said, addressing my bird with incredulous disgust. “How did you digest the second one that fast?”

My eyes rolled. “It isn’t a real crow. We have no idea what its flesh is even made of.”

“Pneuma, obviously.” He stalked over to the corpse of the assassin he’d impaled on the stone sentinel’s trident. He didn’t hesitate to desecrate it, jostling the dead man from the restful position I’d settled him in and twisting his head to and fro. He gripped his jaw and looked into his slack mouth, then the narrow passages of his nostrils and ears.

It occurred to me that this may have been the first life the Young Aristocrat of the Rosy Dawn had ever taken.

“There wasn’t another crow in his robe?” he asked. At my negative response, he slammed a palm to the hollowed stone beside the corpse’s face and pushed himself to his feet. He turned to pace across the tiles.

“What is a Crow without his wings?” Griffon murmured, nearly to himself, frowning ferociously. He spat. “No one.”

“They may have only sent one for the pair of them,” I offered. Scarlet eyes turned balefully my way. “

“Tell me then, master. How many Crows did you come across without their wings on the night of the kyrios’ funeral?”

I frowned, considering the pile of scalding hot cartilage in my palm. My memories were largely a blur, but the cadence was always clear. The steady rhythm of the legions marched a vivid path through otherwise muddled memories. I followed that path, soundlessly mouthing the words, and in those crystalline moments I remembered the Crows.

I remembered the way they’d crumpled. The way they’d skulked, the way they’d scattered, the way they’d screamed. Never in my life had I come close to the alabaster heights of what the Greeks called the Heroic Realm - but then, it hadn’t mattered much that night. I’d led weaker men against greater enemies than them. With Anastasia, Scythas, and Jason at my side, they hadn’t stood a chance.

I remembered how they’d fallen. And I remembered the sounds of beating wings in the shadows as they fled.

“Sorea,” I said. The messenger eagle flexed its great talons around my forearm, just enough to acknowledge me. “Did you notice another?” Virtuous beast or not, it was still only a bird. Yet the look Sorea gave me in response to that question was utterly unmistakeable. “That’s a no.”

“Bastard must have sent it off when I arrived.” Griffon reclaimed his stolen rags and ran flaming hands up and down them, grimacing at the trio of gaping trident holes in the cloth. “Sol, trade me.”

“Not a chance,” I said without hesitation, dumping the ink-black crow bones on the lip of the olive oil pool and brushing Sorea off my arm. He edged towards the bones, beak snapping softly. “Leave them.” The bird shrieked indignantly but obeyed, taking flight out of the temple and vanishing into the night.

I wrung out the robes of a dead man, watching what moisture remained fall into the pool, drop by drop. I contemplated Griffon’s reflection, the darkness of his expression as he turned his set of midnight attire over in his hands.

“You’ve never killed a man before,” I said without judgement. For a moment, his eyes flickered.

“Wrong.”

Lies built upon truth. “You’ve never killed a man before today,” I clarified. His silence spoke for him. “It shakes you. I know.” Frozen moments, memories of all the men I’d stood shoulder to shoulder with when they took their first life. All the men I’d commanded to bloody their unsullied hands.

In the pursuit of a higher ideal, the men of Rome could bear that burden without regret. With the hand of Gaius guiding them, legionnaires struck down the enemies of the Republic without fear of the heavens above. But even so, and even then, that blood could drown you as surely as the sea. Salt and ash.

I considered the reflection of my only true companion in this barbarous world, and wondered how many dead men it would take to drown him.

“It isn’t weakness to regret-”

“I don’t.”

My hands clenched around the twist of black cloth, wringing a trickle of olive oil from it that struck the pool and distorted his reflection with ripples. I looked at him. His face matched his words. There was no regret in the set of his jaw, no grief in those narrowed eyes. Stripped of his usual good humor, what remained was the same foundation that had always been there. What I’d recognized the day I met him.

“From the moment I was born, I’ve known the worth of my soul.” The words were matter-of-fact. Without doubt. “My life is mine. If someone tries to take it, I won’t hesitate to take theirs first. I have nothing to regret.”

I didn’t argue. I knew the truth when I saw it.

“Mad Greek,” I said ruefully. He smirked faintly and belted the mangled black robe around his waist, obscuring his Rosy Dawn attire and golden tunic turned makeshift satchel.

“You still want to do this?” I knew the answer already. I shrugged the dead man’s disguise over my indigo robes. What had been a voluminous fit on the would-be assassin was just tight enough that I knew I wouldn’t be comfortable fighting in it, so I didn’t bother wearing it as it was intended. As a cloak, it would do.

The seemingly mundane material blurred at the edges of my perceptions, fading into the shadows around us like a lash of paint across canvas. Growing thinner and blending together. Like I was a piece of this place as much as anything else. As I wrapped the layers around my body, I felt my own sense of self, the sensation of my own vital breath’s circulation, fading into anonymity.

It wasn’t exactly the same, but it was closer to those iron manacles that it should have been.

“Of course,” Griffon said, pulling me from my thoughts. He had the crow’s hood over his head now, obscuring his most striking features. He’d even done something to his hair while I wasn’t looking, preventing it from spilling down to his shoulders in its usual way. “You noticed it too, didn’t you?”

“The cloth conceals,” I said, and as the sheer black hood fell over my face, thin enough to see through without issue, my voice changed as well. Not enough to belong to someone else. Just enough to not belong to me.

“What is a mask if not a tool of anonymity?” Griffin mused, leaning over the rim of the pool to consider himself.

I noticed a somewhat glaring flaw in his disguise.

“Worthless, when you’re still half naked.” Oddly enough, it was more pleasing than unsettling to hear a stranger's voice render judgment on his stupidity in place of my own. For a moment, it was as if I wasn’t the only sane person left in this world.

Griffin shrugged, unconcerned. “You wouldn’t trade me, and I refuse to wear a tunic riddled with holes.”

“Anyone from the funeral will recognize you immediately.”

“Don’t be so sure,” he said lightly, gathering up crow bones in his cupped palms and dipping them into the pool. A stranger's pneuma, utterly divorced from Griffon’s and yet his nonetheless, permeated through the pool and the bones in particular, wearing away at them the same way he had worn away a chunk of marble an eternity ago at the Rosy Dawn’s initiation trials.

Ink-black flecks of bone whirled and dispersed in the olive oil, turning the pool black. Forming storm clouds beneath the chryselephantine king’s feet. Pankration hands that felt like nothing I had ever encountered before but could be nothing other than Griffon’s own violent intent dipped into the pool one by one, cupping ink-black olive oil in ethereal palms.

I watched twenty hands trace across Griffon's bare torso, along his shoulders and around his back. The lines they drew were seemingly random, whirling loops around his arms and jagged lines up and down the musculature of his chest. It was only once they’d drawn back as one, clapping against one another in apparent satisfaction, that I beheld the full picture.

He looked like a completely different man. It was the ink as much as the cloth. Black olive oil tattoos, painted with shocking precision. He hadn’t just obscured the distinct lines of muscle that any of our companions could have identified in an instant. He’d framed them, traced them, and in the smallest of margins, he’d brushed outside of those lines. Not enough to alert a casual eye. Just enough to suggest a slightly different definition. Focusing on any one detail, there wasn’t much. But as a whole, the insertion of his muscles looked completely different.

I couldn’t see his face behind the hood, but the silent spreading of his hands was clear enough expectation. I grunted, and that was answer enough for him. He chuckled and swaggered over to the outer perimeter of the hollowed temple, towards the statue sentinels that waited in the archways.

“We’re still blind,” I reminded him. He plucked a true bronze spear from the marble hands that held it, weighing it consideringly before shrugging and tossing it over his shoulder at me. I caught the surprisingly heavy weapon and spun it in my right hand. It was a good weapon. The best I’d held in over a year.

“So we’ll gather information. By force, if necessary. Though I can’t imagine anyone being shy to confide in you.” He plucked a gleaming bow and a winged arrow from another faceless sentinel, held it for about a heartbeat, and then dropped it to the ground and moved on. It clattered deafeningly against the holy stone. The fine hairs on the back of my neck rose.

“This feels like the wrong approach.”

Griffin took a broad axe from clenched marble fists and tossed it from hand to hand to pankration hand, nodding in satisfaction.

“Careful brother,” he said idly. “There’s a fine line between caution and cowardice.”

“What about audacity and insanity?” I returned, unbothered. The torch light caught a pattern in the haft of the spear as I spun it, shimmering trails of textured bronze that differed just enough to be aesthetic. “You know precious little about the storm brewing here, and I know even less. And you’re suggesting we dive into it headfirst.”

“Why are you here, Sol?” Griffin asked, contemplating the featureless face of the looming sentinel.

“To find my mentor.”

“Why?”

“You know why,” I said, annoyed.

“All for power? All to kill the dogs?” He turned away from the statue, bereft of its axe. He lifted the hooded veil from his face and skewered me with a look. “You think the easy path will lead you there?”

My eyes narrowed.

“You’re worried that you won’t survive the conquerors path,” Griffon said. With a certainty that made my lip twitch up from my teeth. He advanced with that gleaming bronze axe in hand. “You’re worried that the scholar's path will take too long. And you’ve convinced yourself that the champion’s path is nothing but flash and thunder. You worry that you don’t deserve to want it.”

He stopped just outside the range of the spear he’d tossed me. One of his pankration hands reached across that distance and lifted the hood from my face. He smiled a sharp challenge.

“Allow your brother to cleanse your heart of worries. I’ll do it in your place.”

I sneered fully. His smile only grew.

“I’ll take the foolish risks,” he promised me. “I’ll walk the treacherous roads and suffer the trails untread. When the dogs come barking, I’ll scour them from this earth in your name.”

My sneer turned to a snarl. The hands of our influence slammed together in a deadlock struggle. Beneath the anonymous shroud of the crow’s shadow, we strained against ideals in place of each other.

“I’ll return the city of Rome to you,” Griffon continued, and the fact that every word of it was his true intention only made me more furious. “I’ll fight all the battles that you can’t.”

“What are you doing?” I asked him through grit teeth.

“Something different.” He advanced a step further, within the range of my spear. I stepped forward to meet him, into the range of his axe. In the low light of the vandalized temple, the father’s shadow loomed over us both in ivory judgment.

“Does it anger you?” he whispered softly. “The thought of someone else making right what your enemies made wrong? If Rome is all that’s in your heart, it shouldn’t. If your only wish is to see the dogs of Carthage wiped out, then this should be nothing but a relief.”

Whatever he saw in my eyes, he seemed to like it. He continued, with that terrible satisfaction.

“You may doubt yourself, but you wouldn’t dare doubt me. I swear that I’ll do it. I absolve you of this burden. So if that’s the only reason you’re still here, if that’s the only reason you’re still alive while all of your men are dead, then go join them without regrets. Be free. And I’ll take care of the rest.”

“Enough. Be silent.”

“I refuse.” Scarlet eyes danced. “You can lie to yourself, but you can’t lie to me. You’ll never be satisfied with a victory you didn’t seize with your own two hands. You’ll never be able to rest until you tear those animals apart and eat their beating hearts.

“Your virtuous heart won’t accept this world until you take it from them.”

Gravitas rocked the father’s temple, three thousand dead men pressing down on my shoulders, the weight of command far too heavy to bear. Always, forever too heavy. And yet. And yet.

“If I don’t,” I whispered, “Who will?”

Griffon smiled brilliantly, standing unshaken while eleven stone sentinels crumbled beneath the captain’s virtue. He surveyed the blasphemous destruction with a keen eye. Pankration hands swept across the hallowed grounds and gathered up the bronze weapons left behind.

“We’ll have to find a place to keep these,” he decided, surveying each in turn. “Leaving all but two behind would be far too obvious. And who knows? We may yet convince our fellow sophists to join us in our humble little adventure. In fact-”

He paused at the sound of bones snapping. Blinked and stared at the fragment of ink black bone I held out to him. A deep, vibrant red light burned blindingly at the center of the shard.

“What are you thinking?” he asked, with something like glee.

“We’re blind without wings,” I said, dropping the broken bone. A pankration hand caught it as it fell. “If we can’t make use of these scavengers in life, the least they can do is serve us in death.”

“Seems dangerous,” Griffon said. He raised an eyebrow. “Twelves to see who goes first?”

Danger. Risk. Certain, inescapable death. Perhaps Griffon was right. It was time to stop pretending that it was dread that made my heart pound in this city of monstrous barbarians, and not anticipation.

A captain leads from the front, I told him in the voice of my soul, and sucked the starlight marrow from the bone.

1.22

The Young Griffon

It had to be said. For all of my accolades and for all of my majesty, for all that I was the only man that could ever be me, I was not perfect. I had my failings. And even more egregious than that, I was not all-knowing. In some respects, I was not even particularly well-informed.

My father had always done things in his own time, and the Scarlet City had regulated its pace to match his. For all that I was myself, I was no different in that regard. I cultivated the virtue that he forced upon me, I excelled in the tasks that he set before me, and I learned the lessons that he saw fit to teach me. And only those lessons.

I sought out what I could, whenever I could, of course. But if Damon Aetos didn’t want you to know something, there wasn’t a single soul in Alikos that would dare to speak of it. If there was something he didn’t want you to have, all the gold in Egypt couldn’t convince an Alikoan to sell it to you.

I’d always known that my father was keeping things from me. But I hadn’t quite grasped the scope of it until I’d stepped foot into the sanctuary city.

The Crows were each of the Sophic Realm, which meant that whichever faction sent them hadn’t been pointed our way by our new friends. Otherwise, they would have sent Heroes. In the kyrios’ absence, the Raging Heaven had abandoned all but the most surface level pretenses of unity. The various factions of the free Mediterranean had only just begun to pick each other apart trying to fill the chasm left behind, and division was the name of the game.

Sol and I had implicated ourselves by associating with not one, but six Heroic cultivators in full view of various indigo initiates. This had been inevitable.

Tirelessly, the Crow on the left promised in the voice of his soul.

Forever at hand, the Crow on the right declared with unwavering resolve.

I saw the confusion in Sol’s eyes, soon overtaken by the storm. Gravitas rocked the temple, an inaudible boom that made my teeth vibrate and pounded the Crow on the right back into the olive oil pool. Sol lunged forward to trade blows with the Crow on the left, but the cultivator in black deftly avoided him, ducking and pivoting on one foot and laying a vicious kick into his right shin.

It didn’t sweep Sol’s legs out from under him like the Crow had intended, but the Roman grunted and staggered sideways, pointing a damning finger at the scavenger. Torchlight shadow flickered around him and he blurred left, faster than any Sophic cultivator could possibly move.

He avoided the invocation of Sol’s virtue and caught my clenched fist with his gut. I savored the sweet sound of a man choking on air, hammering into him from every angle with pankration hands wreathed in the rosy light of dawn.

[The dawn breaks.]

Without pause, spoke the Crow, slamming his forehead into mine. Starlight exploded in my eyes and my ears rang, the force of the blow unlike anything I had experienced from a Philosopher before. I bared my teeth in a grin and caught his hands as they lashed up.

A thin line of blood trickled down from the point where his hooded forehead met mine, as the sounds of splashing and savage struggle sounded from the olive oil pool that served as the foundation for the chryselephantine throne. The Crow had no heart flames to illuminate his eyes behind his hood, but I stared deeply into them anyway.

“So this is a man of principle,” I mused, gripping his hood and the tattered edges of his midnight robes with the hands of my intent, ripping and tearing. His pneuma flared.

And he spoke. “Sacrilege,” the Crow intoned. “To fight in the temple of the Father.” And just as before, when those young Philosophers had stated their facts, the strength of his soul re-doubled.

I abandoned the effort of unmasking him as the pressure on our joined hands became unbearable. Pankration hands chopped viciously down on his forearms, forcing him to release me. I leapt back across the tiles.

Three boys, and now this. Not a coincidence - this was something fundamental. Something I should know.

“Starting a fight is far worse than ending it,” I replied, putting the weight of my pneuma behind it. I felt a hint of something, some weightlessness, but I was only imitating what I’d observed as an outsider. I concentrated, while Sol jumped straight up to the ceiling in a spray of olive oil, the Crow on the right in close pursuit.

My opponent turned to flickering shadows again, but he’d already shown me the trick of it the first time. He braced himself first, taking the stance that he would emerge from the technique in. Chambering a right hook from fifty feet away.

I leaned right, dodging it by a hair, and drove a knee up between his legs. As I did it, I condemned him.

“Ambushing your cult’s own honored guests,” I denounced him, striking him twice in the kidney and five times across the face. “On your city’s own holy ground!” The Crow lurched back, shadows flickering as he attempted to escape me. I grabbed him with flaming hands and reeled him back in. “Among heaven and earth, you alone are the dishonored one!”

And I felt it. A power that stirred above my eyes, pulsing through my skull and coursing down, down, ripping through me like an entire jug of kykeon and filling me with vital strength.

The Crow stomped my bare foot and lowered his shoulder into my chest, charging. Lightning threads of pain shot through my foot, and my cultivation faltered as he knocked the wind out of me. He was my superior in cultivation, but that had been the case before with the children. But this cultivator was a grown man - his body had weathered years of intense conditioning. The strength of his body matched that of his soul.

And then, the strength of his reason superseded mine as he lifted my feet from the floor and snarled.

“Fool. I am no one.”

The inexplicable head rush left me as quickly as it had come, an ice bath that shocked the senses and stole the strength from my limbs. It almost killed me as the Crow took us to the ground, producing a hideous rusted dagger from a fold in his robes and stabbing it at my side. But even while my mind wavered, my intent remained true. Pankration hands caught the blade and knocked it from his hand, even as its rusted edge cut into my soul.

I spat blood onto his black veil and swung my legs up, hooking them around his chest and twisting at the waist while we fell to the tiles. The assassin’s blade clattered to the hallowed marble floor, the sound of it all wrong as it skittered and spun across the tiles. The Crow lurched for it, kicking viciously at me, but it was too late. I had him.

The Crow on the right flared his influence, crying out in that soundless voice, and Sol responded in kind with a tidal wave of gravity that caught everyone within the temple. Myself included. My stomach flipped and my heart flew up into my throat as the entire world shifted onto a different axis, and I flew sideways as if I was falling out of the sky. Somewhere up above, Sorea shrieked and the Crow cried out in his real voice.

A marble sentinel stood in the shadow of an archway, kneeling in deference as it faced the father. There were eleven others in the temple, each carrying a weapon and all of them without a face. This one had a trident in hand, brandished invitingly as we approached it. The Crow thrashed against my hold as our bodies lifted off the ground entirely, hammering into me with clenched fists and vile shadow techniques that burnt away at the touch of the rosy fingers.

I planted an open palm flat against the Crow’s hooded face and shoved it sideways, twisting him around with the leverage of my leg lock as I did. The statued sentinel may have been nothing more than stone, but its trident was purest bronze. I slammed the Crow into it, and all three points of the trident erupted out of his chest.

I pulled myself to the ground with pankration hands and turned, catching the second Crow as Sol’s attack sent him flying my way. He immediately went wild, fighting me like a rat caught by its tail. Which, in the end, wasn’t far from the truth.

“You’re no one, are you?” I grunted, planting my feet and ignoring his impotent elbows and kicks as I heaved him over my shoulder. The head rush returned, blooming inside my skull and coursing through my limbs as I invoked what could only be the primary weapon of every warrior scholar.

“As if I could ever lose to such a coward. My tribulation has a face.”

Their rhetoric.

I slammed the Crow to the floor and stepped back as Sol plummeted from the tip of the Father’s ivory spear and stomped the poor bastard through the scarlet tiles. An invocation of Gravitas at the moment of impact caved the scavenger’s chest in entirely. The sound of it was horrific. The noise the man made as he arched up was even more so. I caught his face with pankration hands and drove it back down, smothering him until he went limp.

The philosopher died, and his last gagging breath exploded through the temple. One last gasp, raging through the temple of the Father and extinguishing every torch in sight.

Ensconced in sudden darkness, the true crow nearly got away.

Sorea swept down with a triumphant cry and sank its talons into an avian mass of liquid shadow as it attempted to flee. Just as before, the manifestation of anonymity wailed horribly as it was consumed by the Roman messenger eagle bit by bit.

“What was that?” Sol asked gutturally. His indigo attire, pristine just a few moments ago, was now drenched in olive oil and torn at his stomach and his right thigh where the crow had cut him. Poisoned again, no doubt, though he was breathing easy for now.

“Difficult to say,” I said sarcastically, swiping blood from my bare chest. “But if I had to guess, I’d say it was my point being proven.”

Sol scowled, running a hand through oil-slick black hair. “Not that. What were they saying? And how were they saying it?”

“Ho, the great Legate doesn’t know? I was going to ask you, master,” I said mockingly. A wave of his influence hit me, the riptide pull urging me off my feet. I set my stance and braced with pneuma hands, spitting blood at his feet in response.

“Just tell me,” he snapped. “I’m sick and tired of not knowing what’s going on.”

“That makes two of us.” In the dark, with little but the wet sounds of a virtuous beast gorging itself and a Sophic cultivator struggling to force breath through punctured lungs, Sol and I took the measure of one another.

I snapped my fingers and lit the scrambled torches of the holy temple with the rosy fingers of dawn, righting any that had fallen. Sol seemed utterly unsurprised to see me grinning.

“I suppose it’s my turn to be the master again, since your worthless mentor taught you so little of our ways.”

“He taught me as much as he could,” Sol defended the man without hesitation. “It isn’t any fault of his that our time was cut short.”

“I’m sure,” I said agreeably. Then, with the voice of my soul, I rendered judgement while advancing forward a step. “But he still left you unprepared. He neglected your foundations, and now you’re here, lost and without understanding. He failed.”

Crouched over the broken corpse of a mangled Crow, bearing his teeth up at me in naked threat, I could see the wolf in him. I smirked, savoring the head rush of my rhetoric hitting home, and spoke to him again without moving my lips.

Snarl all you want. You know I never lie.

“We’re men of principle,” I told my Roman brother. “Philosophers seeking wisdom and ultimate enlightenment. More than that, though, we strive to educate those around us in the same way that we have been educated ourselves. Would you say that your mentor was a wise man? A worldly, well-informed man?” Sol nodded grudgingly. I splayed my hands. “And thus he failed you as a Philosopher, because he only passed on a fraction of those things to you.

“We understand the world around us as Philosophers, the rules of nature, but how can we impress that understanding upon others? How may we convince them that they may see?”

“Rhetoric,” Sol realized.

I nodded. “The principles we live by are a power all their own.” Our ability to fight our baser instincts and our heart’s desires in pursuit of a more perfect existence, that was where reason triumphed over spirit and hunger. That was where a Philosopher truly shined. Rhetoric, then, was our ability to impose the rules of nature as we understood them onto others.

There was incredible power in living a principled life. There was even more incredible power in understanding the world, and in passing that understanding on to others. I internalized these concepts, slotting them into gaps that my father had intentionally left in my education. They fit seamlessly together.

“Why didn’t the Heroes do this?” Sol wondered, troubled. He stood and began wringing what oil he could from his robes.

“I don’t know,” I admitted freely. “But I have a few ideas.”

“And you said my mentor was a failure. You had a Tyrant for a father, and you’re still not sure? What sort of father keeps their son in the dark?”

“What sort of father drags his son with him to war?” I returned. A tense moment came and went.

“My father wanted the best for me,” Sol said with utter conviction.

“And so did mine.”

Sol grimaced, shaking olive oil from his hair and considering the corpse at our feet. “I still don’t like this. I’d rather leave Olympia and look elsewhere.”

“It’s too late for that,” I said, kneeling beside the dead Crow and laying my hands across his body, all twenty-two of them. “Our hands are bloodied now. Are you really fine with leaving things as they are? Leaving the Raging Heaven to consume itself, leaving our friends to suffer?”

His right hand clenched into a fist, and I knew I had won. “Don’t act like you’re doing this for them. You came here looking for a thrill, and you’ve found it. It’s for you, not for them.”

“Wrong,” I said. “It’s both.” I closed my eyes and said a short, silent prayer for the departed man. Then I started stripping him. “Tell me, Sol. Did you find your mentor?”

He shook his head.

“Did you find any leads?” I asked, considering the face of the dead man as the hood pulled free. I didn’t know him. Sol remained silent, which was answer enough. “Let me guess. You confided in Anastasia and she recognized his name. But she didn’t give you anything concrete.”

He grunted.

“You know what sort of existence a Heroic cultivator is, Sol. You’ve heard the stories. If your war stories are more than just dust and wind, you’ve seen it for yourself.”

“Get to the point.”

I scoffed, but obliged him. “You know as well as I do that a Hero’s full strength can’t be contained by a city, even if that city is Olympia. It doesn’t fit down alleyways and corridors. It doesn’t thrive in friendly spars and controlled competitions. My cousin Nikolas had plans to compete in the Olympic Games this year, did you know that? His companions, too. Yet they didn’t wear indigo when they came back home, and he never once spoke of the Raging Heaven when he was telling his stories. Why do you think that is?”

“Because he didn’t join it,” Sol said, frowning thoughtfully.

“Exactly.” I unwrapped the black robes from the dead Philosopher and stood, moving over to the olive oil pool and dunking them in it, scouring the blood from the cloth with pankration hands. “Almost all of the athletes that compete in the Games do so as outsiders. The mystery cults can not possibly hope to provide for a Hero seeking advancement. It simply isn’t possible.”

“Even with Tyrants there to mentor them?” Sol asked.

“Cultivators are greedy existences, you know this,” I said, shrugging. “There’s only one type of man that a Tyrant will mentor.”

His heir.

Something slid into Sol’s bearing, some nameless steel, and he crossed over to the Crow skewered on the sentinel’s trident. I didn’t see what happened, focusing on my scrubbing, but I felt the pulse of his will and heard the crunch of a man’s skull caving in. My pankration hands cupped the torches protectively as the Philosopher’s last gasp ripped through the temple. There was a pause and then a brief shuffling of cloth, and Sol appeared at my side, dunking his own set of black rags into the olive oil.

“A Hero can’t advance in a cage,” he said quietly, his eyes distant while he worked. Reliving a thousand different memories. “So why are they here?”

“That’s the question,” I confirmed, pulling my new robes from the pool and cracking them like a whip, spraying spirit oil across the Father’s feet. “A Hero can’t be anything less than a significant existence. What could have led them here? What could possibly be worth their time within these walls?”

What could they be running from?

We worked in silence for a few moments, Sol scrubbing while I dried my robes with smoldering palms.

Belatedly, I added, “Also, I want to see the Oracles.”

Sol looked at me incredulously. “Oracles? One wasn’t enough?”

“Who do you think I am?”

The Roman shook his head in disgust and pulled his own robes from the pool, passing them to me when I offered a flaming hand. “How do you plan on blending in? We don’t know who these two answered to. We don’t have any idea how they all communicate with one another. We’ll be rooted out within a day.”

“Use that head of yours, Legate.” I waved a hand at the virtuous beast perched on a high arch, observing us with curiosity. “They’re called Crows for a reason.”

Sol’s eyes narrowed. “Sorea. To me.” The eagle let fly an obliging cry and swept down from the arches, landing gently on the Roman’s outstretched arm. Mongrel bird. The cuts it had given me still stung.

The Roman brandished his open palm and said firmly, “Spit it out.”

Sorea cocked its head, and then its body heaved. The great messenger eagle vomited a pile of ink-black bones into Sol’s hand. Enough for two small birds.

My nose wrinkled. “Well. That’s unfortunate.”

1.21

The Son of Rome

“Is it always like this?” I asked the girl in the sun ray silks. I waved vaguely, encompassing the entirety of the lounge pavilion. Her lips curled down, the only facial feature not obscured by her golden veil.

“To greater or lesser degrees,” Selene said, sighing softly. “It usually isn’t this egregious outside of holidays and celebrations. The death of the kyrios has left everyone on edge.”

I watched a pair of bare-chested men hold a third upside down while a trio of women in sheer, see-through silks threw grapes into his mouth.

“Seems like it.”

“They distract themselves as best they can,” Selene said. “The cult is not well and they know it. There is safety in numbers, and safety in the sun. Out here in the open, surrounded by their peers, they can relax without fear of scavengers.”

Crows. My eyes narrowed, ire rising. I despised their ilk. Gaius had suffered from no end of rats in his time as general of the west, nipping at his heels and striking from the dark. It was why he never slept.

“Still,” I grunted. “They could be doing better things with their time.”

“They’re young,” Selene said, leaning back on the head rest of her lounge. “And they’re afraid. Uncertain. It’s disappointing to see, but can you blame them for seeking relief in simple distractions?” Yes. I could. Most of the truly debauched cultivators on this plateau were older than me.

I glanced at Selene, though, smirking in faint amusement. “Wise words for a fifteen year old.”

“Looks can be deceiving, cultivator.” There was an airy, mystical quality to her smile.

“They can be,” I acknowledged. “Are yours?”

“They are. I may only look like I’m fifteen years of age, but the truth is far different.” She waved a hand over her person, head tilting to reveal the slope of her sun-kissed neck. “I’m actually sixteen.”

I snorted a laugh. Selene smiled indulgently.

“My mistake,” I conceded. “What brings the wise woman to a place like this?”

Selene’s head tilted further. The golden veil that covered her face slipped just a bit with the motion, exposing the gentle slope of her jaw. Her eyes remained shrouded, but I could imagine them gazing out over the mountain, and the sanctuary city below.

“There is strength in numbers,” she repeated, sadly.

No matter where you went, scum would always be scum. “These Crows,” I said slowly. “Their maneuvering. Is it really that dire?” I was fighting myself as I spoke. I’d already involved myself beyond any sensible mark two nights ago. If Scythas was to be believed, a Tyrant wanted to see me because of it. I couldn’t afford to dig deeper. Yet even so.

“They’re not the worst of it,” she said, shaking her head. “They operate at night for the most part. It’s the paranoia they invoke by simply existing. The suspicion. The elders have always had means of competing with one another behind closed doors - Olympia wouldn’t survive any direct contention. But it was never this flagrant.”

“The kyrios kept them in line,” I guessed.

“He did. It was known that lasting harm, let alone death, was not allowed in his halls. There was maneuvering, there were power plays, but mystikos could walk the steps of Kaukoso Mons without fear at night.”

“But now the kyrios is dead,” I said, looking back over the pavilion with a more discerning eye. Whether I saw it now because I expected to see it, or whether it had always been there, I could see the tension now. Tightly leashed stress in every raving man, woman, and child. It drove them to excess. It robbed them of their senses.

“And no one knows who they can trust.” Selene nodded. “Acting out in protest of the shadow game only makes you a target. Withdrawing from it entirely is an insult to your city’s elder. The Raging Heaven was entirely unprepared for the death of the kyrios, and now it suffers because of it.”

“How long will this take to resolve itself?” I asked, the magnitude of things settling in. Cultivators were an elevated existence, capable of things that barbarian and ordinary man could hardly dream of doing. The higher up the divine mountain they went, the more stark this divide became. And two nights ago, I had seen Heroes hunted through the streets like dogs. Something told me it was only going to get worse.

“I don’t know,” Selene admitted. “With regards to politics, I only have my father’s word to go off of. Outsiders aren’t told much of these things.”

“Outsider? You’re not an initiate?”

“The Raging Heaven accepts only the best,” Selene said, tilting her head to face me. “Cultivators that have proven themselves to be exceptional beyond all conventional measures. Whether they be civic, sophic, or heroic, it is not enough to be simply powerful or well-connected. You must be significant - your story worth hearing.”

“But you live here anyway,” I mused. Scythas had mentioned accommodations for guests, I supposed. My eyes wandered, as the rest of what she’d said simmered in my mind. It sounded wrong. “I can’t say I’m interested in hearing any of the stories on display here.”

“That’s because you didn’t know them before they joined.” There was something powerfully troubled in her voice, some sorrow in the way her fingers caressed the golden filigree of sunrays woven into her tunic. “The cults of greater mysteries exist for many purposes, and their prestige is undeniable, but ultimately, they are artificial institutions. And how can an aspiring Hero refine ivory from their soul without the proper conflict to drive them?”

The sentiment was a familiar one. I’d heard its like often enough during my time at the Rosy Dawn. “You don’t want to join this cult, even if you could,” I observed. Selene smiled wistfully.

“I love my father and my mother,” she murmured. “But there are days that I can’t help wondering what life is like when you live it yourself, and not vicariously. Now that the kyrios is dead, I fear I’ll be suffering more and more days like that.”

I frowned, dropping my olives back onto their platter. I’d lost my appetite.

“You don’t have many friends here, do you?”

“How cruel.” Selene placed a hand to her chest. “What gave me away?”

“You wouldn’t be talking to me. Also, every single person on this plateau has been avoiding this corner since you sat down.” I flicked an olive across the pavilion. It struck the ear of a Philosopher that had been eyeing me earlier, sizing me up for a fight. The man flinched, but he did not turn. “They’re too afraid to even look.”

Selene was silent.

“You may not be a member of the cult,” I said. “But your father is. And he’s prominent enough to extend his influence to you.” Piece by piece, I was assembling a mental image of this place and its people. Different in every way from the Rosy Dawn on the surface. But the foundations? Those were all the same.

“You have eyes, cultivator,” Selene said softly. “So tell me, where is Olympus Mons?”

I looked back, meeting the shadowed silhouette of her eyes through the gossamer veil.

“Not here.”

A sharp cry split the skies before she could respond, and mystikos of the Raging Heaven turned and craned their heads to see a shadow bolt shoot out of the sky. It spiralled and careened through the air in a blur, avoiding thrown cups and pneuma projectiles hurled up at it with contemptuous ease.

I held out an arm and the messenger eagle of Rome swept down onto it with surprising force, talons wrapping around my arm with deceptive care. Sharp enough to draw blood, but steady enough not to. It snapped its beak, sharp eyes riveted on my discarded olives. I gathered them back up and offered my open palm to the bird of prey. It snapped them up in its beak one by one, each snap powerful enough to sever a man’s finger, but it didn’t once nick me.

“What is that?” Selene asked, astonished.

“A messenger from Rome,” I answered, running the back of my free hand along the ridge of its wing. The eagle ruffled its feathers, pleased with the attention. I smirked.

“You’re from Rome?” I raised an eyebrow at the sudden hitch in her voice.

“I am.”

“I’ve never met anyone from Rome before,” she confided, with barely constrained excitement. She leaned forward on her lounge, planting both hands on the edge of its upholstery. “Clear across the sea! You must have seen so many amazing places before coming here.”

I thought of Gaius’ campaigns. The mountain ranges of the Gauls, treacherous heights and war-torn valleys, and the Black Forest that sprawled across entire nations. The frozen north, with their swirling Celt sigils carved into the stones and planted in their fields, squat villages clustered around the seas. Even the vile marshes and miserably damp plains of Brittania.

“You have no idea,” I told her. She lit up even further. It was odd, seeing the sudden shift in her demeanor. A bit endearing, but odd.

I was distracted by a gagging sound, and turned in time to see the eagle vomit into my open hand. My nose wrinkled. But mercifully, instead of mashed olives and the breakfast I’d fed it earlier in the day, a scroll of rolled papyrus fell into my palm. I stared at the missive for a moment, then back up at the bird.

“These are supposed to go around your leg.”

The eagle trilled sharply, snapping its beak.

“Did it just… scoff at you?” Selene asked wonderingly.

I glared at the bird. “It did.”

Miraculously, the message wasn’t covered in bile despite where it had come from. I unrolled it, curious, and rolled my eyes when I saw the distinctive handwriting scrawled across a scrap of one of Scythas’ star charts.

Greetings brother,

I pray this message finds you promptly and in good health, though I’m not expecting much from a mongrel Roman bird. Assuming it has, though, meet me after dusk where the stars align and the heavens descend to earth.

Come alone. We need to talk.

The bird can come too, I suppose. His name is Sorea. I named him for you, since you couldn’t be bothered to do it yourself.

Worthless Roman. You’re welcome.

Griffon

I crumpled the letter in my fist. I was hardly even a novice when it came to stargazing, but I had a good idea of where to look. Based on the phrasing and the portion of the star chart he’d used as canvas for the message, I could find him.

“Sorea,” I mused, considering the eagle. It cocked its head expectantly. “Do you like that name?” Could it understand me at all?

Sorea squeezed my arm, talons digging into my skin perilously close to drawing blood, and then he took flight in a burst of speed that far outstripped any mundane eagle.

“Was that a yes?” I called after him. He cried out sharply and was gone in the next instant.

I stood from my lounge, rolling my shoulders and looking down the mountain. The sun would set soon, evening shadows cast by the mountain already covering most of the sanctuary city. The Storm That Never Ceased rumbled ominously overhead. Best get started now. I’d have to get my clothes back later.

“Wait.” I looked down, surprised, at the hand gripping my indigo attire. Selene looked up at me, visibly bashful in spite of the fact that I couldn’t see most of her face.

“I have to go see a friend,” I told her. She bit her lip.

“Solus,” she said hesitantly. “You’re not a member of the Raging Heaven either, are you?” I considered her and the question both. My first instinct was to lie. So was my second instinct.

“No. I’m not.”

“Then could we speak again?” she asked. “I’d like to hear about the places you’ve been.”

I sighed, and conceded. “If you can find me.”

Selene smiled brilliantly.

“I will.”

S

My first concern had been leaving the cult, but it hadn’t been an issue in the end. The guards at the gates, those closest to the city, recognized me at once. But rather than demanding to know my name or how I’d acquired my indigo attire, they only grinned knowingly and told me to take it easier at the clubs this time. The benefits of having friends in high places.

I followed my intuition and the clue that Griffon had given me while the sun fell behind the ever roiling peak of Kaukoso Mons. I walked the streets of Olympia, ignoring the deference and hushed words of praise that her citizens heaped upon me. They thought I was an initiate of the Raging Heaven. Even so, this was more than even Griffon had gotten walking the streets of Alikos. Too much.

I wandered, and the sun fell fully from the sky. Eventually I stopped in a nondescript street in one of Olympia’s eastern residential districts. I looked straight up and saw the constellation Griffon had taken from the star chart, the Nemean Lion, the star of its tail curving in line with the sun’s path of descent. This was it.

Griffon was nowhere to be found, of course. Late as always. I sat down on a citizen’s patio and resigned myself to a long wait.

The muted lights of dusk gave way to true night. Still he didn’t come. Finally, I scowled and stood.

“Star maps and riddles,” I muttered, spitting in disgust. Just tell me where to go, worthless Greek.

“Sir,” a hesitant voice said. Behind me, a young boy peered out at me from the cracked door to his home. “Do you need help?” Well, it didn’t hurt to ask.

“Where do the stars align?” I asked him. “At what point does heaven descend to earth?”

The boy stared at me in bewilderment, and then he was gone. Pulled back by the shoulders, a man taking his place in the entryway. His father inclined his head deeply to me, posture rigid.

“I apologize for my son, honored Philosopher, and beg for your understanding. He’s only five years old this spring. We haven’t yet prepared him for the rigors of philosophy.” He was tense, painfully nervous.

I just wanted directions.

Sorea cried out above our heads, a dark impression on the sky. He shot by like an arrow from a bow, flying low over the marble columns and shingled roofs of the city. It was better than nothing. I spared the frazzled citizen and his son a nod and took off after my eagle as fast as my legs could carry me.

The eagle led me down a familiar path of scarlet brick roads and ruin, back the way Griffon and I had first come when we entered the city. As I ate up the landscape with my strides, I wondered if I was expecting too much from the bird, and if I was about to be led back into the sea. But before we could make it to the coast where Olympia’s small port city resided, Sorea dipped left and spiraled down into the shroud of a familiar monument.

One of the world’s eight wonders, as Griffon had referred to it. A massive open-faced temple with an even more massive statue lounging beneath the shelter it provided. The temple of the father.

I found Griffon inside, lounging on the edge of the raised platform that served as a dias and pool both, catching the thin rivulets of olive oil that dripped off the statue. The father was just as impressive to behold the second time as he’d been the first. Titanic, gleaming in the light of torches and flaming braziers that illuminated the temple at night.

“You’re late.”

“I wouldn’t have been if you’d told me where to go.” Up above, Sorea perched himself on the father’s shoulders, flapping his wings expansively. I nodded my thanks.

“I did. If I’d spelled it out and your bird had been intercepted, I’d be in dire straits right now.”

There was something in his voice. His bearing, too, now that I looked. I realized what it was at once. He was restless again. That languid satisfaction that had been rolling off of him in waves since we’d let fly the sails of the Eos was gone, and in its place, the hunger had returned. Three days. It had lasted longer than I’d expected, honestly.

“What happened?” I asked. He crossed his arms over his bare chest. The golden tunic that he claimed to have taken from an old woman was wrapped around his waist now, serving as an impromptu satchel for some lump that I couldn’t discern.

“I spoke to the Oracle,” he said, adding as an afterthought, “of the Broken Tide.”

I hummed. “That was the big one’s cult, wasn’t it? Kyno, the one with the crocodile skin.”

“The same,” he said, jaw flexing. He wasn’t angry. No, it was more focused than that. There was a dark hunger in him now. “She threatened me with tribulation.”

“You’re overdue for one,” I said, leaning against the raised dias. It was tall enough to rest my forearms on it without having to bend. The olive oil pool shimmered in the torch light, reflecting the inexplicable light of the stars etched on the temple’s ceiling. “What else?”

“She mentioned Alikos. You scarlet sons are all the same,” he quoted. “And before that, I exchanged discourse with a few up-and-coming Philosophers of the Raging Heaven.” I snorted. I could imagine the sort of discourse they’d exchanged. The kind that left bruises and broke bones. “They told me something interesting about my humble home.”

He told me, and my eyebrows rose. “Shut off from the Mediterranean? How can that be? Your cousin has been off adventuring for years.”

“Not just that. Foreign dignitaries visit us in scores every year.” Griffon pushed off from the dias and began to pace. “Most come from valence territories within Magna Graecia, true, but not all of them. It doesn’t make sense.”

“Ask a member of the Rosy Dawn,” I suggested. “This is the nexus of the free cities, isn’t it? We may be the first delegates ‘sent’ for the Games, but surely there are long-term members of the Raging Heaven that came from your side of the Ionian.”

“Have you forgotten we’re on the run?” Griffon asked, frowning deeply in thought. Invisible to the eye but bright as day to a cultivator’s sense, his pankration hands massaged his temples and shoulders, alleviating tension as best they could.

“It’s only been three days since we left,” I reasoned. “They might not have heard.”

Griffon shook his head. “No. They know. We have to look into this ourselves.”

“And how do you intend to do that?”

Fierce anticipation shone in scarlet eyes. “How else? We’re going to scavenge.”

My lip lifted in a sneer. I should have known. “I refuse.”

“Ho? Refuse what?”

“I refuse to skulk around like a Crow, picking at corpses and offal.” The quiet despair with which the girl in the golden veil had spoken, and the omnipresent anxiety I had seen in the mystikos of the Raging Heaven. It wasn’t something I had any interest in contributing to.

“We have no choice,” he said, shrugging. “We can’t stay here under the usual terms. We’ve drawn too much attention.”

“Because of you.”

Griffon sneered. “It wasn’t my actions that put you in a Tyrant’s line of sight. How was that meeting, by the way?” I glared silently. “That’s what I thought. Do you think you can ignore an elder forever without them acting on the insult? Do you think we can continue to do as we wish in broad daylight, unmolested? Of course not. The higher ups are too busy to bother with us themselves, but they have other means.”

“We could get a room in the city,” I said stubbornly. “Or stay outside of it, even. I’m not afraid of sleeping in the dirt.”

“I’m sure you aren’t,” he said scornfully. “But that won’t work either. We’re already targets, and because of that we can’t afford to be passive. While the Crows are out, the only place we can hide is among them.”

Griffon stopped pacing, and all twenty of his pankration hands flexed in anticipation. He smiled ferociously.

“Starting now.”

Thus exposed, two Crows exploded out of the olive oil pool.

1.20

The Young Griffon

It paid to have friends in high places, after all.

The temple of the Oracle was an eerie edifice. Frankincense and myr hung thick in the air, stifling the senses and making the eyes burn. Walking through the gilded archway, past the Heroic cultivators of the Broken Tide Cult that guarded the Oracle with their lives, I could hardly see a foot in front of my face.

The winter winds of the Mediterranean were hardly worth mentioning for a cultivator of even the most pitiful ranks of the Civic realm, but inside this temple I had to fight my teeth not to chatter. The smoke from the torches lining the walls were somehow cold, and from one moment to the next smelled of frankincense, of myr - and of the Ionian Sea.

The smoke clung like salt water to my skin, drenching me in a cold sweat not three steps past the archway. My pulse beat a quick rhythm in my throat. I swallowed down the instinctive urge to fight. I’d never felt a presence like this in my life.

“Be mindful,” Kyno muttered. “The gods are watching.”

“No, they’re not,” I said, distracted. I peered through the smoke and seafoam. “But she is.”

The Oracle of the Broken Tide was an old woman, shrunken and frail. In contrast to Kyno, her teal attire was pristine, its colors vibrant, while the woman herself was washed out and grayed. Her hair, the pallor of her skin, and even her eyes. The blind woman stared unerringly at me, the wrinkles on her face creasing as she smirked.

“Someone is here that doesn’t belong.” Her voice was as brittle and aged as the rest of her, a bare rasp that could hardly be heard over the crackle of sea salt torches on the walls.

Kyno clapped a hand on my shoulder, pulling me back a step before I could speak. He leveled me with a severe look, as if I’d start firing off at a divine woman in the seat of her power for one snide comment. I hadn’t even introduced myself yet.

“Honored Oracle,” he said respectfully, bowing his head. “These lowly sophists have come to pay their respects.” He glanced my way again, and seemed surprised to see me bowing my head as well. Honestly, what had I done to give him such a low impression of me?

“I’m sure you have.” The old woman beckoned us forward with a spider-thin hand. “Come then, into the depths - if you can swim.”

I stepped forward without hesitation, and her presence subsumed me.

Depths had been the appropriate way to describe it. I felt myself sinking, falling endlessly into an existence that only got darker and colder the further down it went. Even as my feet padded silently across firm stone, I plummeted into the deep. The woman’s washed out gray eyes tracked me as I approached. A reflex, I realized. It wasn’t that she could see me, not with her eyes. It was that she knew where I was, and her eyes remembered to follow.

“How long have you been blind?” I asked the Oracle, stopping just within her reach.

“Since the day I was born,” she said, reaching out and grasping my face with a frail hand. Her skin was colder than the smoke, and smooth, utterly free of calluses. “Since when could you see?”

I considered it. “Since four months ago.”

“Cocky boy,” she chortled, pinching my cheek. “The proper answer is tomorrow, if fortune favors me.”

Kyno came to stand beside me, his posture rigid as the Oracle’s presence washed over him. The flames in his eyes flickered and guttered, muffled beneath the waves. There was a slow, rhythmic quality to the motion of his chest. A breathing technique.

“And what about you, young Hero of the Broken Tide?” The Oracle turned those blind eyes on Kyno. “What brings the great huntsman to my humble shrine?”

“We seek guidance, and offer our devotion to the tide,” he answered, his voice faintly strained.

The Oracle wagged a finger. “It should be in the reverse order!” Kyno grimaced and bowed his head.

“My apologies.”

“And what sort of guidance can I give you? A young man of your standing should know at least this much of how the world works. The gods don’t guide us anymore.”

“That’s all you’re good for, is it?” I asked, idly observing the finer details of her. There were remnants of striking features, worn down by time - a royal nose, sharp cheekbones, and there, beneath the milk and mist of blindness, serrated pupils split into three segments. “A lifetime of keeping company with the world’s finest men and women, legendary souls seeking you out at every opportunity, and you have nothing to say? I could spend a lifetime in a box with no holes and still have something useful to say at the end of it.”

Kyno attempted to strike me, but he wasn’t Sol. I knocked the blow aside with pankration intent, maintaining eye contact with the blind Oracle. He wouldn’t dare exert himself enough to break past my hands. Not here.

“Wiser than you look,” the old woman said approvingly. “But what makes you think you’re worthy of my wisdom?”

I scoffed. “What makes you think your wisdom is worthy of me?”

“Griffon!” Kyno snarled, panicked and infuriated in equal measure. Ho. It seemed all I’d needed to do to break through that rugged stoicism of his was involve his cult’s divine messenger.

The Oracle laughed.

It was the broken, hacking laugh of an old woman on death’s door, but it was also the waves crashing against the cliffside in Alikos, the roar of a hurricane tearing up the surface of the Ionian Sea. Kyno eased back a step, his chest rising and falling once more in the rhythm of a controlled breathing technique. I squinted through the sea spray, brushing salt from my eyes.

“Indeed!” The Oracle of the Broken Tide crowed. “Just so!  How can any of us know what lies beneath the waves unless we plumb their depths ourselves? How can we discern what’s casting the shadows if we don’t first step out of the cave?”

She rose abruptly from the upholstered seat she’d been sitting in, so oversized for her shriveled body, and lurched forward to seize my face with both hands. For all her age, her grip was undeniably strong in that moment. She looked deeply into my eyes, close enough for me to smell the grapes on her breath. She was more than just old now. She was ancient.

Her pupils were tridents.

“What is it about you scarlet sons that compels you to go where you’re not wanted, to say what no one wants to hear, and to do what you absolutely must not do?” Somehow, I got the feeling the Oracle wasn’t speaking to me, or even to herself. “What is it within you that chafes at the suggestion of heaven?”

I smirked and made to answer, but she beat me to it.

“Because the tribulations are the best part.”

“I thought you couldn’t see the future anymore,” I said, bemused.

“I don’t need to see the future when the past is standing here in front of me,” the Oracle said, clapping her hands against my cheeks and turning my head from side to side. Spearing me with those tridents. “You’re all the same. As above, so below.”

Something inside of me spasmed. “What are you talking about, old woman?”

“I’m talking about you, fool boy. What are you talking about? You came to me for advice, didn’t you? Or perhaps you’re only here to gawk at what you hope to one day be.”

With my head tilted back as it was, I couldn’t quite look at the old woman. But I made my intent known. “I don’t hope.”

“No, you don’t, do you?” she mused, running bone-thin fingers along the veins of my neck and down, probing my torso. In search of what, I couldn’t say. “You act. So act, here and now. You have the Oracle’s attention, so make use of it. Shall I check your heart for demons?”

I scoffed. “Please.”

“Physical therapy, then? Shall this old woman ignore her own aches and pains and tend to yours?” Her fingertips dug into the sensitive flesh beneath my ribs, sending lightning threads of sensation up my chest. Not quite pain, but certainly not pleasure.

I took her hands in my own and pulled them away. “There’s nothing your hands can do for me that my own can’t do better.”

“Not the spirit, and not the body either,” she said, unbothered. “A question of the mind, then. Or rather, an answer.”

I tilted my head. There was something in those eyes - aside from the blindness, obviously. Something shifty and mischievous, utterly at odds with her age. The old woman pulled away from me and turned, rifling through the various stands and tables and shelves that surrounded her holy tripod.

Finally, with a triumphant cackle, she pulled a false face from the clutter.

It was a theatre mask, carved from cypress and painted in pale tones. A woman’s face, pale and drawn and horrified. The mouth gaped open grotesquely, allowing space for the one wearing it to breathe and be heard. The eyes were wide and vacuous, the pits of them dilated to allow for the wearer to see. The eyebrows were thick and brushed with gold, arching up in dismay. It was the expression of a woman that had seen a ghost.

“You came here looking for this, didn’t you?”

This? “I don’t know what this is.” The Oracle pressed the mask into my hands. It was smooth to the touch, and inexplicably warm.

“This is the answer to the question you refuse to ask,” the Oracle said. I looked sharply up at her. Her expression was light and devious. It made her look younger by half a century.

“I don’t come here for a mask,” I informed her. She simply smiled wider, baring her teeth.

“This isn’t a mask,” she said, the words heavy with purpose. I realized she was still holding it, the knuckles of her gnarled hands bleeding white from the force of her grip. “This is your future.”

I jerked the mask out of her grip, turning it over in my hands. There was a word carved into its inner face. I read it once, and then I read it again. My heart hammered in my chest.

“Son of scarlet sin,” the Oracle whispered in a voice of low tide and shifting sands, “You have the audacity to intrude on a messenger of the Fates before your journey has even truly begun, to plunder them with your arrogant eyes in search of their divinity. There are a thousand thousand mysteries in this world. Did you really think you were ready to solve the greatest of them?”

“Who are you?” I murmured.

The old woman curled her fingers, beckoning me down. I leaned forward, jaw clenching as she whispered into my ear.

“My name is Melpomene. And I am the first of your tribulations.”

I turned and stalked out of the temple.

Kyno caught up to me about a hundred steps up the mountain, a thinly-veiled mania in his eyes. His crocodile mantle seemed to lash its tail as he bounded up the steps, such was the force of his charge.

“What was that!?” he demanded of me, his pneuma and influence a riotous wave.

I frowned, turning the mask over and over in my hand.

“I have no idea.”

But I was going to find out.

1.19

The Son of Rome

Anastasia drew attention as a matter of course. It was a consequence of her status and appearance both - men couldn’t help but steal what glances they could when she was nearby. But as she choked and coughed and hammered her chest, the other mystikos in the bath looked openly our way. She mastered herself quickly, setting her cup aside, but the damage had been done.

After a night of hunting Crows and a full day of drinking the following day, it had been my old mentor’s name that finally broke her steady composure. It wasn’t an encouraging thought.

“You-” she said, when the worst of it had passed, “You’re serious?”

“Why would I lie?” Ironic, perhaps. But valid in this case.

“I can think of a few reasons.” She shook her head, brushing damp hair out of her face. Her lips pursed as she mulled the knowledge over, green ember eyes flickering. “How did you come to know him, if I may?”

I frowned. Oddly enough, I didn’t mind telling her. Maybe it was that poisonous nostalgia, or maybe she’d managed to charm me while I wasn’t looking. The result was the same either way. I was not, however, comfortable with the rest of the bathing pavilion listening in. I reached out with my influence and smacked down every grasping hand that I could feel with my Sophic sense.

Every single Philosopher in the pavilion flinched. The degrees varied, some recovering in a split second and carrying on their vapid conversations, while others jerked and kicked up ripples in the water. One and all, they retracted. Even here, the baths were nothing but viper pits filled with gossips. From Rome to Greece, everything under the sun was the same.

“You get used to it,” Anastasia assured me. “It isn’t as if they can do anything with the information. They’re just children.”

To a cultivator of her standing, perhaps. But I wasn’t so far above these people, or above them at all. Many of them were older than me, their cultivation further advanced. That wasn’t even the crux of the issue, though.

I’d thought my year in chains had ground down the last of my pride, yet here it was, rearing its head again. I’d grown used to the respect afforded to me in the legions, come to expect it, even if I’d never truly deserved it.

“A child doesn't fear a flame until it burns them,” I said, smoothing out a scowl. “That was one of the first lessons he ever taught me. Said it was his duty to burn me himself, before I threw myself fully into the fire.”

“You were young,” she said, half a question.

I leaned back against the marble rim of the basin, the cool stone a pleasant contrast to the scalding water. “I was an arrogant child. My mother was convinced that the world revolved around me on a satin thread, and my father’s duties kept him too busy to notice until the damage had been done. I’d never been burned. Was convinced I never would be.”

“That sounds familiar,” Anastasia said, mirth briefly overtaking her tension. “I was wondering what you saw in Griffon to take him on as a student. It was you after all.”

In a way, she wasn’t wrong.

“Griffon is better than I was,” I disagreed anyway. It was worth saying, though I’d never say it to his face. “I’m the fruit of all my mentors’ labors. Griffon is what he is in spite of his.”

“For better and for worse,” she said wryly. I smirked faintly.

“For better and for worse.”

“How did he convince you to take him on?” Anastasia asked. That one was easy enough.

“His cousin challenged me to a fist fight.”

Anastasia blinked. “Where did he stand?”

“The seventh rank of the Civic Realm.”

She winced. “I assume Griffon didn’t take his passing well.”

I glanced sidelong at her, frowning. “I didn’t kill him.”

“Truly?” Anastasia looked at me, as if in a new light. “I didn’t take you for a merciful man.” As if sparing a child that didn’t know any better was mercy. Every time I forgot, the world reminded me what vile creatures cultivators could be.

“He wasn’t a threat.” I shrugged. “I could have beaten him in chains.”

“The fearsome Legate in chains,” Anastasia mused, reclaiming some of her smoke and teasing. “That’s a sight I wouldn’t mind seeing.”

I rolled my eyes and took up her cup, drinking deeply from it. The water was cool and refreshing. The rim of the cup tasted inexplicably of figs. Sweet.

“Griffon stepped in before I could do much to the boy, regardless,” I continued. “He demanded that I stop. Told me that I’d had enough fun.”

“You took him to task for that, surely?”

I smiled faintly. “I did.” That struggle in his family’s filial pool had been the first time in months that I’d felt truly alive. It had been the same for him, too, I knew.

“But he impressed you, and here you are,” Anastasia deduced.

“Here we are.”

The conversation stalled, the Heroine hesitating suddenly. I offered her cup back to her, raising an eyebrow. We’d come this far. Might as well see it through. Anastasia took the cup, running her thumb along its edge.

“And what about you?” she finally asked. “How did you convince your master to take you on?”

“I didn’t.” At her blank look, I elaborated. “I was in the forum with a group of my peers-” Not friends. Not really. “-and we’d just caught a pair of thieves our age attempting to pick us. We decided we’d take the hands they’d slipped into our purses as punishment, after we’d properly shamed them.”

The memory was the oddest sort of bittersweet. Shameful to look back on through the lens of my younger self, but warm for what it had ultimately led to.

“Looking back, I think they were brothers. The older of the two begged us to take both of his hands instead of one from each of them. We refused, of course, and so he tried something different and goaded us instead. Insisted up and down that we’d do no better than him if put in his position and made to survive.” I sighed. “The young patrician couldn’t stomach such an insult, especially in front of my peers. So I offered him a wager.”

Anastasia had turned to face me fully at this point, resting her crossed arms on the lip of the basin and laying her cheek on them. There was a knowing glint in her eyes, and steady interest.

“Any rat can snatch a purse when no one is bothering to look at them, was my reasoning at the time. But for a young patrician to do so? That was a true test of skill. I bet him that I could pick five purses without getting caught a single time, and if I did I’d take his thieving left hand and all five fingers of his right. One hand for justice, and a finger for every time I proved him wrong.”

“You didn’t consider what would happen to you if you were caught, yourself? That you’d share his fate?” Anastasia asked, terribly amused. I raised a hand, fingers spread wide.

“Young and arrogant. Failure wasn’t even a possibility in my mind.”

“But if he was correct, and you did fail. What then?”

“Then he lived to pick another pocket, and his brother got to keep his hands.” I shook my head minutely, lost in the memories. “I stole four purses without drawing a single glance. But on the fifth, an old man caught me by the arm as I was rummaging through his robes.”

“Fool boy. You should have stopped at four.”

“You stole from-?” Anastasia stopped herself, eyes wide. “You and Griffon are a better fit than I thought.”

“I tried to steal from him,” I corrected her with dry amusement. “He’d seen me from the beginning, though. All the way back to the wager I’d made with the plebs. And so he offered me a wager of his own.”

Calloused hands and a stern demeanor. A ludicrous beard that I couldn’t imagine him without, and finely kept robes of scarlet and white. I’d never forget the look of him in that moment. The terror I’d felt.

“Justice is quick, so you’ll have to be quicker,” I recited, words that I’d never forget. “Unmake these crimes you’ve committed before they’re found out, or I’ll take that greedy hand.”

“Unsteal four purses,” Anastasia repeated with incredulous mirth.

“In the middle of the forum at its busiest hour, without any of them noticing,” I confirmed. “To this day I’m not sure how I did it.”

“And after you did? What happened then?”

“I turned tail and ran home as fast as I could. He was already there, though. Discussing the terms of tuition with my father."

S

As it turned out, the Raging Heaven took all aspects of hygiene quite seriously. By the time we left the baths and returned to the benches on the outer edge of the bathing pavilion, my Rosy Dawn attire was gone. In its place was a fresh set of indigo robes. They were a more vibrant purple than what the Philosophers of the cult were wearing, and upon closer inspection I saw golden threads woven into the sleeves. Branching strands of lightning.

A consequence of the company I was keeping, it seemed. The slaves had seen a Heroine accompanied by a man they didn’t know and decided to err on the side of caution, favoring me with the same privileged treatment that she enjoyed.

Anastasia assured me that a slave would return my clothes to me once they’d been thoroughly cleansed, and promised that she’d find out whatever she could about my mentor’s whereabouts. Then she left, to do whatever it was that cultivators in the Raging Heaven did.

I found myself following a stream of mystikos up the stone-carved steps to an open plateau. This far up the mountain, there were as many Civic cultivators as Sophic, and a cursory glance didn’t reveal a single hero on the grand plateau. It was furnished in the same style as the Rosy Dawn’s various symposia rooms, lounging couches around its edges and tables in the middle, covered in drink and food and games of all types.

Unlike the Rosy Dawn, the plateau was utterly open to the elements, awarding a spectacular view of the sanctuary city below, and an awe-inspiring vantage of the Storm That Never Ceased up above.

I’d chosen a couch furthest from the commotion of young men and women jostling for recognition and losing themselves to the delirious rush of alcohol and good company. There were games of all kinds being played throughout the plateau, some that even tempted me, but I contented myself with picking from a small platter of olives and waiting for my clothes to be returned to me.

I watched the mystikos that I’d followed here compete in mock games with one another, chat languidly with friends, and drink themselves senseless. And as time passed, I watched as those same mystikos grew tired of drinking and fooling around and decided to soothe their fatigue with another bout at the baths below.

How slow did time move in a place like this? Did these people truly live like this, day in and day out?

“It’s unfortunate, isn’t it?”

There was a woman standing next to me.

I bit down on a curse, smothering my immediate reaction and forcing my fists to unclench. The young woman politely pretended not to notice.

“The indulgence,” she continued, her voice sad. “The stagnation.” She sighed and sat down on the dining couch next to mine. “Is this seat taken?”

“It is now,” I said, surveying her in my periphery.

She looked young, from what could be seen of her. Around my age, if not less by a couple years. It was difficult to tell with the veil covering the upper half of her face, a golden sun weave that obscured her eyes and most of her blonde braids. She was slender compared to Elissa and Anastasia, who’d both been toned and chiseled by combat, but she didn’t carry herself like the rest of the mystikos on the plateau.

She didn’t dress like them either. In place of indigo robes or any other cult attire that I’d seen before, she wore a pure white tunic with golden sunray filigree woven into its fabric. She had a golden sash cinched around her waist, and another that hung loosely off her hips. Her skin was utterly free of blemishes and her nails were painted.

I reached out a hand of my influence, and she took it in her own without hesitation. There was a powerful warmth to her presence. Like basking in the sun.

“I don’t believe I’ve seen you before,” she said. “What is your name, cultivator?”

“Solus.”

“A pleasure to meet you, Solus,” she said, quietly genuine. A beat of silence passed.

“And yours?” I prompted her.

She tilted her head. “You don’t know?” Somehow, the audacity of asking such a question was lost in her delivery of it. Rather than being irritated, I found myself smiling faintly. I held out a real hand filled with olives, offering her one.

“Enlighten me.”

The girl in the golden veil took from me an olive and popped it into her mouth. She chewed slowly, savoring the taste, and smiled.

“It’s Selene.”

1.18

The Young Griffon

The Oracles were divine messengers, sent down to us lowly men from the heights of Olympus Mons. They transcribed the words of immortals, writ large upon the world, and gave them to us in a form we could understand. If their tongues were the thread, the words they produced were the tangled weaves of destiny itself.

For time immemorial the Oracles have guided the greatest Heroes on their paths to glory and prophesied the fall of the vilest Tyrants. It was not enough to say that these women were heaven sent. Divinity was in their very blood. After all, how else could they understand the incomprehensible tongue of the pantheon?

Every champion’s journey began with the Oracle. Women of prophecy existed in every culture worth mentioning, but it was an intuitive truth that the Oracle was a reflection of her patron deity. And of course, it went without saying that the Greek pantheon was superior to all others.

Our Oracles were simply the best in the world.

It was no coincidence that in the midst of the war for the Mediterranean, while the free city-states were fighting with all they had to expel his armies, the Conqueror had chosen to push through the bloody seas of hoplites and Heroes to speak to the Oracle. Alone, as vulnerable as he would ever be in his entire life, it was no act of madness that had driven him to the divine temple. It was a desire to know. The hunger.

When the Oracle had spat upon him and refused to ask the gods for a foreign Tyrant’s destiny, he’d dragged her out of her holy domain by the hair and beat her in the streets before her people and the heavens themselves. Citizens and soldiers alike had thrown themselves at the Conqueror in outrage and despair, and all of them were cut down by his fury. In the end, it wasn’t the people of Greece or the Oracle herself that broke.

Her patron deity cried out with the Oracle’s own mouth, and gave the Conqueror what he had come for in exchange for her life.

It nearly cost him his life during the retreat back to his armies, and some said that the turning point of the war lay entirely on his shoulders, in that moment. While separated from his forces, the phalanxes were given their one and only chance to scour the enemy from our borders. And they took it. By the time the Conqueror rejoined with them, injured and near death, the Macedonian hordes were in full retreat. They never returned.

My father, though, in the one time he’d spoken of it, said that the Conqueror had hardly walked away from the incursion disappointed. And if the stories of what followed were true, he’d found more than enough success in other nations, on other battlefields. Perhaps the Oracle had been a part of that. Perhaps not. Regardless, the losses that he sustained that day were simply the price of admittance to the divine temple.

Immortal insight was a boon that needed no explanation. Yet we were cultivators, were we not? In the end, our ultimate goal was to spit in the face of heaven and throw off its threads, was it not? What did it matter what the immortals had to say? Why should the supreme Conqueror care for the words of a being too cowardly to show its face while he savaged its chosen messenger?

I was curious to see what the fuss was about, I had to admit. But I wasn’t looking for prophecy. I wanted to meet the women that had been touched by divinity.

Unfortunately, it turned out that gaining audience with such a woman was easier said than done. Since the first kyrios of the Raging Heaven Cult had consolidated the great powers of the Mediterranean within Olympia’s walls, each of the Oracles now resided here at Kaukoso Mons. But this hadn’t turned out to be the convenience I’d thought it would be.

I watched another initiate of the Raging Heaven beg admittance to a temple of an Oracle, and once more I watched an initiate face cold rejection. The third in as many hours. The mystiko, a wild-eyed woman with streaks of gray in her hair that belied her apparent youth, fled the entry archway in hysterical tears. The guards didn’t even watch her go. The fires of Heroic cultivators burned dully in their eyes.

It was to be expected that not every mongrel off the streets would be granted audience with a divine messenger, but I hadn’t expected things to be quite this strict. Thus far, only one initiate had been granted admittance to the temple, and they had been a Heroic cultivator themselves.

The Oracle’s word was the beginning and the end of nearly every great epic, the bane of Tyrants the world over. Why would they waste their breath on anything less than a Hero? I’d checked three of the nine temples since this morning, and the principle had held true for each one. The only question that remained was whether or not a Hero could bring a friend.

I waved gaily to the guard on the right as his influence crashed against me, white-backed waves and dangerous intent. Onto the next.

For every deity of the sublime pantheon, there was an Oracle to spread their word. One for each of the eight city-states, and two for the Coast. Their temples were spread out around the foot of the mountain, intermingling with the personal estates of the Raging Heaven’s elders. Should another conqueror ever come calling, from the wilds of Macedon or wherever else, they would have to contend with far more than their predecessor to reach their prize.

It was folly for a junior initiate to even walk along these hallowed paths, of course. Spanning the distance between elders, senior initiates, and the dwellings of honored guests such as the Oracles, these were the roads that only privileged members of the cult were permitted to travel. There were main trails - staircases cut from the mountain’s face so that initiates could come and go from the cult. But these glittering walkways of indigo mosaics were not for the likes of juniors and outsiders to tread. If they were, I would have surely seen some by now.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

Instead, seniors alone trawled these roads.

“Good afternoon, fellow sophists,” I greeted the approaching trio. Three Philosophers, each noticeably younger than me, and wearing the deep indigo robes of the cult’s privileged mystikos.

Young prodigies, each and every one.

The one that had called out to me, a young Philosopher of the eighth rank, stopped just short of colliding with me and drove a finger into the center of my chest.

“Where are your robes, mystiko?” he demanded. “And why aren’t you wearing them?”

“I haven’t received any,” I answered, lifting my palms. What can you do? The young cultivator’s expression darkened.

“No one passes through the gates of the Raging Heaven Cult without membership or a sponsor,” he said, a curious weight to the words that I felt in his influence. From one moment to the next it suddenly became heavier, more oppressive. Nothing compared to a Hero, however… “Where is you sponsor? Do you mean to tell me you’re accusing them of negligence, to leave you alone without even a set of proper robes to wear?”

The other two Philosophers with him, children of similar prestige and stylized robes, stepped threateningly towards me. Their lips moved silently, a habit I’d noticed in some of our own Sophic cultivators back in the Rosy Dawn. Preparing some virtue or another.

Best to defuse this situation before it came to that.

“Naturally, I’d never accuse the Raging Heaven of such a thing,” I said placatingly. “They were simply too drunk to handle the small details last night.”

Hn. Perhaps that wasn’t the ideal way to put it.

The young Philosopher went from poking my chest to gripping the golden fabric of my tunic tight and yanking me down to his eye level. Admirable strength for his age. He glared at me, his eyes a furious terracotta brown.

“What are you playing at, cultivator?” he asked in a deadly tone of voice. He reminded me of Myron, during the preliminary trials of the initiation rites. “Walking the roads reserved for senior initiates and honored elders, wearing whatever this is-”

“What are you wearing, anyway?” the leaner of the three demanded. He was the tallest of the bunch, in the midst of filling out into his adult frame. “What sort of city wears those colors?”

“Oh, this?” I plucked the Philosopher’s hand off my tunic and rubbed the material between my fingers. He stared at his own hand, and then at mine. “An old woman gave me this at the kyrios’ funeral. Said it was disrespectful for me to be walking around a dead man’s wake with a bare chest.”

They connected the dots quickly, looking to my cult attire what hung tattered and bloodstained around my waist. Disbelief, followed by derision passed through their eyes.

“The Rosy Dawn?” The third boy Philosopher asked incredulously. “You’re a new arrival from the Rosy Dawn.”

“Just sailed in the day before last.”

The lead boy broke into a slow chuckle, and soon that chuckle turned to laughter. His friends followed suit. It was an ugly sort of laugh, the kind that promised pain, but they were still too young and small to put it off. So it just ended up making me laugh, too.

“Shut up!” the leader snapped. “Of all the stories you could have told, you chose the most flagrant! The Scarlet City has been shut off from the Mediterranean for nearly twenty years now. You think we wouldn’t have heard if that had changed? How naive do you think we are?”

What?

“A stranger wandering the same paths that seniors and honored elders tread,” the taller of the three said, his own influence rippling and expanding the same way the leader’s had earlier. Magnifying. “With no sponsor to claim him, and false attire from a cult he couldn’t possibly belong to.”

“Are you calling me a liar?” I asked, thoughts racing. Instinct. “My virtuous heart won’t accept that.”

The lead Philosopher’s leaps peeled back from his teeth.

“I’m calling you a crow.”

The trio exploded into motion.

I realized instantly that these three weren’t the same breed of Philosopher that I’d become accustomed to back in the Rosy Dawn. They moved with speed and precision that spoke to long hours in the gymnasium, with coordinated that spoke to a strong bond of shared trust, and with power that spoke to their natural talent at cultivation. They reminded me of Myron even more, and even Nikolas in the days before he’d left.

More than that, their influence sang. Their pneuma cried out to me, to a sense that I hadn’t had until two days ago, and I heard it in the crashing waves.

Death to deceivers! The tall and lean Philosopher’s influence cried accusingly, wrapping around his body and pooling in his clenched fists.

Root out the rats, the third Philosopher’s influence hissed, surging up his legs as he leapt into a spinning kick.

Cast the unworthy into the light, said the leader’s influence, clearest of the three. It seeped into the roots of his hair, making the deep brown curls billow as he rushed into the press of battle.

The trio assaulted me in utter silence, and it was deafening.

So that’s how it was.

This heart of mine won’t lie! I declared in the voice of my soul, and lunged forward to meet them.

S

Kyno opened the door to his chambers wearing nothing but his crocodile skin cloak. I raised an eyebrow at the sight, but he only grunted and tilted his head back.

“In.”

I obliged, dragging my new friends behind me. They all groaned pitifully, nursing minor wounds as if they were on death’s door. I rolled my eyes and let them drop.

“Dont be like that,” I scolded. “I barely even hit you.”

I spat a mouthful of bloody saliva onto the tall one, probing a loose tooth gingerly with my tongue. They were good for their age, I’d give them that much. They’d done more damage to me three-on-one than the Rosy Dawn’s esteemed elders had done with five.

“What is this?” Kyno asked roughly, wrapping faded green robes around his waist to preserve some semblance of modesty. “What are you playing at, Griffon?”

“Nothing at all, friend,” I said, waving a hand at the three child Philosophers. “I needed to find you and these three were kind enough to direct me.”

“And you returned that kindness, did you,” he rumbled, looking over the bruises and burns, and in the case of the tall one, the broken jaw.

“I held back when I could,” I said, shrugging. “They’re better than they look.”

“I’m sure they are,” Kyno said quietly. His dark eyes were piercing. “And I’m sure it’s only coincidence that they inflicted as much damage to you as Elissa did, at the funeral.”

That was more to do with the fact that she’d hardly been trying at the time, and these three had given it their all. I smiled silently. Kyno grunted.

“I’m too hungover for this,” he said. “You. Get me food and water.” The leader of the three looked at his pointing finger, and then at him with wide eyes.

“You truly know him, honored Hero?”

“What did I tell you?” I asked, crossing my arms. “My sponsor was drunk.”

Kyno’s influence roiled in displeasure, but there was little he could say. In a way, the new companions Sol and I found were our sponsors. They’d gotten us into the cult, for better and for worse. It had been drunk and unintentional, of course, but then all the best things generally were.

“Go,” Kyno commanded. All three dashed out of the room as fast as their legs could carry them, casting fearful glances back at me as they went.

“Nice boys,” I commented. “Bright for their age, too.”

“The Raging Heaven accepts nothing less,” Kyno said, sitting down heavily on the edge of his bed and massaging his temples. When I tried to add my own pankration hands to help he only slapped them away, glaring at me. “What do you want, Griffon?”

“I want to see the Oracle.”

“Then go see her.” He waved a hand vaguely east, towards the opposite side of the mountain. “The Scarlet Oracle is that way.”

“I tried that,” I admitted. “Unfortunately, Philosophers aren’t allowed audience with the Oracle on their own.” Kyno stared silently at me with bloodshot eyes, his crocodile’s eyes glaring right along with him.

“I told you at the funeral that I have no interest in the games of politicians and Tyrants,” he said, finally. “What makes you think I want to be a part of yours?”

Ho? “What do you mean?”

Kyno spat on the floor, lips twisting at the taste of something foul. “You want to pretend you’re a junior, be my guest. But I won’t be roped into whatever it is you and your master are planning.”

Hnn. I was getting dangerously close to being in over my head. I’d approached Scythas with only a vague plan in mind at the funeral, and things had rapidly spiraled out of my control from there. This might be my only chance to withdraw before the situation was well and truly beyond my influence.

On the other hand.

“What makes you think you aren’t already implicated?” I asked, cocking an eyebrow. “Juniors they may be, but there are three young prodigies that can attest to you not denying me when I called you my sponsor. No matter what happens, you’ll be a part of what comes next. In the eyes of the elders and the heavens above.”

The Heroic giant went very still. The fine hairs on my arms and the back of my neck shivered and stood up. My pulse started to pound in mingled excitement and anticipation.

“We were all drunk.” Even as he said it, he knew it didn’t matter. “You dare blackmail a Hero?”

I rolled my eyes. So dramatic. “I’m not trying to kill the Oracle. I just want to see her. Will you help me or not?”

Kyno considered me. “Why?”

“Why do I want to see her?”

He nodded.

I leaned back against his door frame, mulling over the question. There were several answers to that question. But in the end, there was only one appropriate response.

“They say that the Oracles are the blood of the pantheon,” I said, as if discussing the sun in the sky. “Even if it’s only the smallest fraction, they carry a piece of one of the divine existances that climbed Olympus Mons and made it their own, once upon a time.”

“The Oracles don’t deliver prophecies anymore,” Kyno said. I shrugged, smiling wryly.

“That’s fine. I don’t care much for them anyway, prophecies. The Oracle herself is the prize.”

His brow furrowed. “You can’t be planning to-”

I waved the thought off, disgusted. “Nothing like that. It’s far more profound than that.”

The Hero spread his hands expectantly.

“That fraction of divine blood is the end of the road that we’re all so perilously rushing down,” I said. “Sprinting with all that we have, careening hopelessly into the depths.” I leaned forward, and in his own eyes I saw the fire. I smiled. “I want to see the end of the road, Kyno. Don’t you?”

The Hero groaned and stood.

1.17

The Son of Rome

The Raging Heaven Cult was a series of connected estates and valence communities, growing like weeds around the foot of Kaukoso Mons. Similar to the Rosy Dawn in its construction, the various estates were connected by winding paths of stone carved into the mountain itself. Walking paths, staircases, and even arched bridges of stone could be found within its boundaries.

In an inversion of the Rosy Dawn, the most influential members of the cult lived at the lowest points, where the mountain met the earth. The junior initiates lived in quarters further up the mountain, perilously close to the storm. There was an ever-present sensation of malice and threat hung over the cult. The low roll of thunder was constant. I felt it in my bones.

The Storm That Never Ceased hung over the peak of Kaukoso Mons like a funeral veil, illuminating the mountain and its various estates at all hours of the day and night with flashes of chain lightning. Walking along the carved stone paths and looking up the mountain at that writhing monument to heaven’s fury, I wondered.

What could the act of building an entire human civilization on the face of such an edifice be called, if not hubris?

“It never stops?” I asked, though the answer was in the name. I couldn’t tear my eyes away. The clouds were impossible to see past, darkly foreboding. The crash of constant thunder was felt more than heard, most of its volume muted by something within the cult’s structures themselves. Beyond the gates of the Raging Heaven Cult, though, it was deafening.

“How could it?” Anastasia asked, glancing up only briefly at it. “The Storm That Never Ceases is a monument to the hubris of man, tribulation made manifest. Humanity tempts the Fates, and the thunder rolls. While one exists, the other must as well.”

She stepped lightly up the mountain, disdaining the stone stairs in favor of hopping and skipping like a mountain goat. Simply because she could.

“Setting up camp under it isn’t exactly a step in the right direction,” I observed. She glanced back at me, swinging her arms and smiling mischievously.

“True enough, your student was right about one thing. Audacity is the providence of cultivation - it’s what drives us to the ivory heights. And what could possibly be more audacious than forging our souls by the light of heavenly tribulation?”

The architecture of the cults of greater mystery, as well as the cities in which they resided, seemed to follow a particular theme. Alikos was called the Scarlet City for a reason - its fashions, its architecture, and its great works of art reflected that. The sanctuary state of Olympia was much the same, taking a brush of indigo to itself in varying degrees.

Electric blues and crimson reds abounded, mingling at points where roofs were shingled and robes were dyed to form a royal purple hue. The estates of the Raging Heaven followed a hierarchy of color that diverged from a vibrant indigo at the base of the mountain where the elders and core initiates resided, turning to distinct blues and reds as one progressed up to where the senior initiates and athletes did their cultivating, worked into the murals painted on the walls and the statues carved out of their pillars. Furthest up the mountain, where the juniors beat themselves bloody and ground down the stone steps day and night, those vibrant reds and blues rejoined to form imperfect shades of the elders’ royal purple.

I ran the tips of my fingers along a stone relief carved into the mountain beside our path, a man reclining in a vineyard drinking deeply from two cups. One in each hand. The twin streams of wine pouring into his mouth were veins of a muddled violet gem that glittered in the light of flashing lightning. Precious stone sitting in open air, unharvested.

“The more I see of this culture,” I said, almost to myself, “The less I understand it.” How many legionnaires would have given their lives in war for a bare sliver of these violet veins?

“Is it really so different in Rome?” Anastasia asked. She leapt from one outcropping of stone to another, a distance of over a hundred feet vertically up the mountain. Rather than trying to keep pace, I simply kept walking up the steps until I’d reached her again.

“There was excess,” I admitted, thinking back to the days of my childhood, when everything had been wonderful and nothing had been enough. Precious gems, fine silks, and ornaments of gold had been standard provisions for my mother and distant family. “But we could never afford to do the things I’ve seen done in the free cities. I’d like to hope that if we’d had that wealth, we wouldn’t have spent it so frivolously.”

“You would, would you?” she asked, hopping down and rejoining me on the steps. Her arms linked behind her back, the dark onyx robes of her cult fluttering in the gale winds of the Storm That Never Ceased.

“We don’t have artists or poets in the magnitudes that your Greeks do, I’ll admit, but I have yet to see a nation as virtuous as the republic. Our heroes are men of war, and of the fields. Not slayers of monsters, but defenders of law and order. Beholden to none but the Twelve Tables. Righteous.” My right hand clenched reflexively. “And strong.”

Anastasia considered me thoughtfully. “I confess that I don’t know much of the Roman mythos.”

“It’s not as exciting as Ríastrad or the Seven Sages,” I said, eyes unfocusing as I trudged up the steps. “Rome was only founded a few centuries ago. Younger than your kyrios.” And shorter lived. My teeth grit. “Our men are our mythos, cunning generals and wise senators. One of our greatest heroes was nothing more or less than a man that commanded the Legions when we needed him to, and returned to a life of quiet cultivation on his farm when we didn’t.”

“Cincinnatus was the first dictator, the one that every Roman adores,” Gaius told me as his eyes roamed over the sand table. We were alone, and so he let his frustrations slip. But only for a moment. “The heavens adored him, too. So much so that they placed all his enemies in front of him.”

“If we glorify contentment, how can we break past the boundaries of our mortality?” Anastasia asked quietly. Not directly opposing me, but closer now.

“Cultivation only makes us more of who we are.” It was a curse as much as it was a prayer. “And not every culture follows the same trail up the mountain. Even the barbarians have their own paths to providence.”

“Is that the Roman way, then? Cultivating fields when you’re not cultivating war?”

I snorted in spite of myself. “We also enjoy games.”

She nudged me with her shoulder. “You didn’t come to Olympia to play games, though.” Her eyes flickered, and she said, almost sadly, “And you’re not here to farm, either. Are you?”

“Everything that I am is the product of the men that mentored me,” I said eventually, remembering sunlit mornings in quiet vineyards, scorching afternoons in the sandpits and the surf, and cold, dark evenings in the command tent. Hunched over sand tables and inked dialogues. “They did what they could with the materials they were given, but I’m no hero. The good people of Rome are better than I could ever hope to be.”

“I don’t think that’s true,” Anastasia denied me with a smile. She didn’t hesitate to do so. “But even so, I think I’d like to see this city for myself. See if it compares to my own Nkrí. Maybe one day you could bring me there,” she said slyly.

“Maybe one day I will,” I said, restraining with willpower alone the reaction that her words nearly evoked.

She didn’t know.

S

The baths at the Rosy Dawn had been works of native majesty, making use of the natural springs within the eastern mountain range of the Scarlet City to create soothing hot water pools and purifying steam rooms. They’d been minimally decorated, by the Greek standard, meaning they were utterly luxurious by the standards of the average Roman.

The Raging Heaven’s baths, on the other hand, were absurd by any metric.

There were as many bathing pavilions as there were estates on the mountain, all of them publicly available to the mystikos of the cult, and no doubt there were dozens of smaller private bathing suites besides. The one that Anastasia took me to was anointed in alabaster and ruby veins, two massive basins placed on the mountain, rather than carved out of it. They were ringed by corinthian pillars holding up a ceiling that was painted in maroon and fuschia shades to mimic the night sky at false dawn.

The alabaster tubs, each capable of fitting at least fifty men without any of them being forced to touch, were smooth and decorated with carved lines and rosettes that I realized represented the stars in the sky on two particular days - one pool for the winter equinox and the other for the spring.

Their temperatures were regulated by unnatural means, one of them so cold that thin flecks of ice floated on its surface, and the other hot enough to make the air above it shimmer and distort. It was a de facto way of separating the baths by rank, I supposed. At temperatures this extreme, even captains of the Civic realm would struggle to cope for more than a few minutes.

I could only imagine how bad it was in the baths at the foot of the mountain.

“You don’t seem to be enjoying yourself very much,” Anastasia observed, languidly turning her head to face me. We sat only a short distance apart at one edge of the basin, the rest of the tub full nearly to capacity with Sophic cultivators. Men and women bathed together, naked as the day they were born, jostling and exchanging discourse without care.

I abstained from the first answer that came to my mind, instead saying, “We do it in the reverse order back home.”

Anastasia blinked, small chips of ice fluttering from her eyelashes with the motion. “Hot bath, and then cold?”

I nodded.

“That’s barbaric.”

I glanced around the bathing pavilion, at the naked men and women mingling freely, and, in some cases, without any space between them. I looked to the pillars holding up the roof, each carved in the shape of a man or a woman engaged in debauched recreation.

“Barbarism is in the eye of the beholder,” I said, fighting a sneer.

“There are benefits to our way,” she explained, rather than take offense. “Medical boons. These waters were gathered from blessed springs across the free Mediterannean, and each has its own unique properties. A frigid shock to the system followed by searing heat has a cleansing effect on the body, and the spiritual properties of the water have a similar effect on the soul.”

That much, at least, I could not deny. My entire body was numb from the cold, and if not for the conditioning I had put it through in the Legions, I was sure it would be far past the point of discomfort. But the lingering, spiritual and bone-deep ache of the infected wounds on each of my shoulders had vanished completely as soon as I stepped in.

“Do they have many bath houses in Rome, Solus?” Anastasia asked me, curious.

“We do,” I said, something painful and joyous in equal measure about speaking of home in the present tense. “Hundreds of them, each a work of human ingenuity in place of natural fortune, fed by aqueducts that span entire countrysides and mountain ranges. Simple, compared to this, but finely built.”

“I would be surprised if they were as gaudy as these,” Anastasia said lightly. “Even the baths where I live aren’t like these. I would say they’re closer to yours - reliably built, and comfortable. We carve them from pewter and warm them in the heat of our flaming mountains.”

“Do you bathe together there as you do here?” I asked wryly. Anastasia laughed. It was a pleasant sound, throaty and musical.

“Dual cultivation has its own benefits, you know,” she said slyly. I rolled my eyes in disgust. “Besides, I told you already that these baths have medicinal properties, as all good baths do. Where better to exchange discourse than in such a place, where your body and mind are at their best?”

I eyed a pair across the pool, a man with long brown hair that floated on the icy surface and a young woman with pale skin covered in tattoos of whirling purple ink. They were whispering in each other’s ears, the woman sitting on the man’s lap, both giggling every so often.

“I see.”

“Are all Romans as uptights as you, Solus?” Anastasia teased.

“Are all soldiers as tightly wound as you, husband?”

I stood abruptly from the bath.

The hot bath felt colder than the ice bath when I first stepped into it, but that soon gave way to an almost agonizing heat and a rush of tingling sensation on my skin, numbness giving way to warmth. I exhaled roughly, letting it wash over me. Air filled my lungs easier than usual, more fully, and my pneuma circulated freely throughout my body. It wasn’t nearly as satisfying as jumping into an ice cold pool after sweating for hours in a hot bath, but it was pleasant in its own way.

“I apologize,” Anastasia murmured, slipping in beside me. “I meant no offense.” She had two cups of cool water in her hand, and she offered me one. I took it mechanically, staring straight ahead for all the good it did me. No matter where I looked, I saw degeneracy, and degeneracy saw me. The vile sensation of eyes roaming across my naked chest assaulted me from all sides.

“I’m married,” I said, not trusting myself to say more.

“Is that so?” Anastasia hummed. “What’s her name?”

I realized why I was so at ease with Anastasia compared to the others. Even Griffon, who had approached conversation with her as a challenge to be overcome.

They had the same schemes in their eyes.

“Luna,” I said, and in the mirage heat of the baths, I could almost see her sitting across from me. Smiling in that way of hers.

“Is she back in Rome?”

Salt and ash.

“She is.”

“A shame for her, then,” the Heroine mused, shifting just so in the water, so that I felt the waves. “Your student had another point, audacious as he was in making it. We cultivators are greedy existences. We see something we want, and we take it. Even if it’s off-limits to us. Especially if it’s off-limits to us.”

I glanced sidelong at her. Schemes. Schemes and naked interest.

Not subtle at all.

“You don’t want me,” I said, because I’d never had patients for scheming. “Not for that.”

Green eyes crinkled and the interest deepened.

“Don’t be so sure,” she said lightly. She leaned back against the alabaster basin of the scorching hot bath, eyes flicking from one mystiko to another as she surveyed the pavilion. “Either way, I’ve brought you to one of the Raging Heaven Cult’s bastions of rhetoric. Do you see what you’re looking for?”

“No.” I’d known that from the moment we arrived.

“Are you looking for anything in particular?” she pressed. “Anyone, perhaps?”

I considered deflecting or lying, but decided it didn’t matter in the end. “I’m looking for my mentor. He used to live in this city, years ago.”

“Truly?” Anastasia asked, surprised. “If I’d known that, I wouldn’t have taken you to a place like this. The elders never venture this far up the mountain outside of the initiation rites.”

“He wasn’t an elder,” I said, shaking my head. “At least I don’t believe so. Your elders are all Heroes and Tyrants, aren’t they?”

“You’re saying…”

“My mentor was a great man, but he was only a Philosopher.” I shrugged. Perhaps that was too much information for my cover, perhaps not. I’d soon find out.

“Only a Philosopher,” Anastasia muttered, in the same tone that Griffon had used when I told him about my father, in a different bath in the Scarlet City. “Well, the Raging Heaven Cult has no shortage of those. I’m sure he’s around here somewhere. And if he is, I can surely find him. What was his name?” she asked, drinking gracefully from her cup.

I told her.

The Heroine choked.

1.16

The Young Griffon

Anastasia was what a charitable man would call dangerous. I’d known from the moment I felt the searing heat of her influence, and again the instant I’d seen the cruel amusement in her eyes while Sol battered a defenseless man in the club. She was the type to leave men pining endlessly for even the kiss of her heel.

Fortunately she wasn’t my type, and when lust was removed from the equation she became simply interesting.

“Sol is a brutal taskmaster,” I said in explanation of the broken bed frame. “Hardly gave me a moment to wake up before testing my pankration. Wouldn’t even let me stretch first.” It really was a shame. For Scythas especially. It had been a comfortable bed, feathered down and silk sheets.

“And the rest of the furniture?” Anastasia asked, arching a dark brow. Scythas grimaced, in part because of her lack of care for him as she brushed past him, into the room, and in part because we truly had made a mess of the place.

Sol said nothing, matching the Heroine’s smoldering stare and holding it as she approached him. Knowing him, the fool thought he was establishing authority.

“We may have had a cup too many,” I admitted.

“An understatement if I’ve ever heard one,” she said, rolling her eyes. Sol exhaled, satisfied that he’d won the ‘staredown’. “I’ve seen lesser men die from drinking in such excess.” The Heroine perched herself on the sloped headrest of Sol’s dining couch, stroking his eagle from tip to tail feather while he fed it scraps of his breakfast.

Evidently, I was the only man in the room with a voice. That suited me just fine.

“We’re cultivators. It’s our providence to exceed lesser men.”

“Even in your vices?” she asked, amused.

“Especially in our vices.”

“My master would call that hubris,” she murmured. “Even children know that vice is the inverse of virtue.”

“Yet the heavens strike down virtuous souls like the kyrios while men like me run wild,” I said, leaning a cheek on my hand as I reclined. I retrieved with pankrations intent the charts that Scythas had taken from me, forgotten on his couch when Anastasia broke down the door.

“The heavens may not be prompt,” she countered, “But their wrath is always felt in the end.” The fine details of her were dark and nearly menacing, smoldering green eyes and smirking red lips, framed by long midnight black hair. The contrast with her marble pale skin was undeniably enticing. A fine aesthetic.

I grinned sharply, meeting her gaze over an array of star charts.

“I hope so. The tribulations are the best part.”

For a moment she was honestly thrown. “What have you been teaching this one, Solus?”

“Not nearly enough,” Sol said flatly. I snickered, flipping through papyrus sheets. Scythas finally made a decision, forcing the heavy bedroom door back into its frame with another painful crunch of breaking locks.

“Tell me, Anastasia.” The Heroine hummed invitingly. “Did we trade life stories while I was drunk?”

“We did not.”

“Good. It would have been rude to ask twice.”

She chuckled. “My, my. Moving fast, aren’t you? Some women enjoy the direct approach, but I prefer a bit of courting first.”

“You think far too highly of yourself,” I informed her pleasantly. “I couldn’t possibly be less interested in you as a woman.”

For the first time since I’d met her the Heroine truly looked at me. The eddies of her influence brushed against mine, caustic and searching.

“Are you calling me ugly, cultivator?” she asked me softly. She was nothing of the sort, of course, but it wouldn’t do to give her that satisfaction. I was certain she got enough of that from her fellow initiates.

“I see a more attractive face than yours every time I pass a clear pool,” I replied instead. Scythas coughed, choking on a mouthful of white wine. Sol just rolled his eyes.

Viridescent flames and caustic influence pressed against me, lapping against the edges of my awareness. Then, all at once, it fell away.

“I like you,” Anastasia decided. “But I like your mentor more.”

“Understandable,” I said. “With a smile like that, who wouldn’t?” Sol favored me with a gesture that surely meant ‘Thank you, brother’ in legion-speak.

“The two of you are an odd combination,” Anastasia mused. “A wolf keeping company with a lion. What could have possibly brought a Roman and a scarlet son together?”

Scythas stiffened in my peripheral vision. “Roman?”

Very interesting.

“It’s a funny story,” I told her. “Tragic, too, as all the best ones are.”

“I’m listening,” she said simply. I shared a look with Sol. I understood his intent without any words being said. This was neither the time nor the place to be discussing our flight from the Scarlet City, and certainly Sol had no desire to share his personally tragic circumstances with two potential enemies of vastly superior cultivation.

I nodded minutely, letting him know that I understood, and he relaxed.

“We can trade,” I proposed, blithely ignoring the suffocating pressure of Sol’s murderous influence. “My cousin always said there’s nothing quite like trading stories around a fire.”

The rosy light of dawn crept from the cradle of my palm to the tips of my fingers, and I flicked a spark of my burning pneuma into a brazier mounted on top of a marble column. It caught the snow-white charcoal within and went up in a cheerful scarlet flame.

“A question for a question?” she asked, not committing one way or another. Scythas, having partly rejoined the group with forearms resting over the back of his lounge, didn’t look any more eager to share.

“Exactly.” It was clear that they needed some convincing, so I continued, “Let’s make it interesting - a king’s game. The winner asks the questions, and the losers answer.”

“How convenient. The one who never loses never has to answer questions,” Anastasia said wryly, tucking a ringlet strand of hair behind her ear. Scythas’ eyes tracked the motion unconsciously. “And I suppose you have just the game in mind.”

I splayed my hands invitingly. “Take your pick.”

The Heroine considered me for a moment. “There is a game I wouldn’t mind playing,” she finally said. “But we don’t have any knuckles.”

Sol wordlessly dropped a handful of knuckle bones on the dining table. They scattered across the dark wood, over a dozen of them, each rattling loudly.

“... where did you get those?” I asked.

“Don’t worry about it.”

Hn.

“We’ll need a drachma as well,” Anastasia said. Scythas reached for a pouch on a nearby wall-carved shelf. Sol beat him to it.

A single drachma fell to the table, chiming as it struck.

Sol leaned forward on his bench lounge with quiet anticipation. Of course, the offering of a game had convinced him easiest of all. “The game is knucklebones. The figures are Under the Triumphal Arch and Aqueducts. Heads ends the round. Twelves decide.”

With that said he took up the drachma and flicked it into the air, and all four of us exploded into motion.

Knucklebones was an even simpler game than Ascension, won and lost on physical dexterity alone. A single jack, in this case a drachma, was thrown up and the knuckles were gathered in hand while it fell, through various means depending on the figure being played. I’d seen this variant a few times in the Rosy Dawn, when Sol had been teaching it to the children in his care. Each figure had its own rules and win conditions, but the first round to decide the order was always the same. Smash and grab.

I snatched up three knuckles before Anastasia flipped the table with her foot and Scythas vaulted clear over his dining couch, heart flames raging as he blurred through the air. The golden coin clattered musically against the stone floor at the same moment the table shattered against the far wall. The drachma bounced and spun.

Gravitas struck the coin and pressed it to the marble floor. Heads.

“What was that?” Sol snarled.

“Do they not play it this way in Rome?” Anastasia opened her left hand, smugly presenting four knuckle bones. Somehow, she’d gathered them without rising from her seat. Scythas looked at the two in his hand with chagrin. “It’s hardly a challenge otherwise.”

A game like knuckle bones, based entirely upon reaction time, required no particular effort from a cultivator past a certain point of advancement. It was hardly a game at all if each player could grab every bone from the table before the jack started to fall. That being the case, an extra element of challenge was needed.

“Apologies for your room,” I told Scythas. He waved it off, having already come to terms with the damages. Surprisingly easygoing, compared to his usual temperament.

“Cheaters and thieves, all of you,” Sol said, disgusted, and dropped six knuckles onto the floor. Anastasia raised an eyebrow, impressed. Scythas stared uncomprehendingly.

“How often do you play this game?” I asked, amused. He sneered.

“I have the first question. Where do the good philosophers go?”

“Oh? So it’s like that,” Anastasia mused. She stroked the messenger eagle’s head thoughtfully. Scythas, for his part, crossed his arms in concentration, crouching by his dining couch.

Scythas snapped his fingers suddenly. “A philosopher is nothing but a man who can see the surface of all that he doesn’t know.”

“Who told you that?” I asked curiously. The Hero looked at me strangely.

“Solus did, last night. Have you forgotten even that?”

Sol looked about as confused as I felt.

“If a philosopher is simply the first blind man to know he’s missing his sight, where does he go to see?” Anastasia posed, sounding the problem out. For the moment, any enmity between the Hero and the Heroine was forgotten as they pondered the question.

“I think he just wants to know where the Sophic cultivators spend their time here,” I said. I was rewarded with disdain, and two superior cultivators looking down their noses at me. Ah. So this was what it felt like.

“How pitiful,” Anastasia said.

“Do you take everything at face value?” Scythas added.

“Forgive me,” I demurred. By this point Sol had closed his eyes, solemn face a mask of deep consideration and weighty expectation. In reality, I could tell that he was trying not to snap.

“If it’s a question of belonging-”

“Under the Triumphal Arch,” he declared, cutting them off and taking up the coin once more. He pressed the tips of his index and middle fingers against the blue-veined marble, forming an arch. We each followed suit, Anastasia leaning precariously over from her seat on the dining couch.

The coin flipped and knuckle bones flew.

The objective of Under the Triumphal Arch was to flick as many knuckle bones through the arch of one’s fingers as possible before the jack fell. Depending on the placement of the bones from the previous figure, as well as the actions of the other players and the trajectories involved, the difficulty of the game could change. Of course, for cultivators of Anastasia and Scythas’ standing, it was hardly worth playing. Unless they cheated.

I flicked a knuckle bone with one hand and sent it flying through the arch that my other hand formed. However, just before it could pass through, a whistling projectile struck it from the side and sent it flying off course. Another projectile struck a knuckle next to my arch before I could even attempt to flick it through. In an instant, the room became a whirling storm of flying bones.

Anastasia smiled innocently at me, caustic green flames burning merrily in her eyes.

“I count twenty-three through mine,” she reported at the end. There were only twelve knuckle bones in total, meaning she was a liar or she had flicked multiple sets in the time it took a coin to fall.

“Eight,” Scythas reported sourly. I didn’t bother vocalizing my null score.

We looked to Sol, and beheld the sight of him silently flicking bones through the arc of his fingers while the golden drachma hovered just above the ground, spinning lazily in the air. Anastasia and Scythas both lunged for the nearest knuckle, stabbing their fingers back to the floor hard enough to crack the marble.

Sol released his virtue’s hold on the coin and it fell cleanly with heads facing up.

“Forty.”

“But that’s-” Scythas protested. Sol stared at him, daring him to finish the statement. He didn’t.

“Where do the good philosophers of the Raging Heaven go?” he asked this time, leaving nothing to the imagination.

It didn’t help.

“So that’s your game,” Scythas said, massaging his jaw. “Juniors and seniors. The wandering philosophers of the free mediterranean versus the scholars of the Half-Step City. A physical place, after all.”

“Nothing so simple as that,” Anastasia countered. “The divide itself is the question. We may break bread in the light of the divine storm, but is it really the case that we are the seniors, and wanderers like Solus are the juniors? What makes a junior a junior and a senior a senior among philosophers? Age? Standing? Or perhaps virtue?”

“None of the above,” I disagreed, all too happy to further derail the question while Sol silently despaired. “Among philosophers, rhetoric alone is king.”

“So it’s a question of who among us has the best rhetoric.” Anastasia, still bent over the lounge’s headrest, twisted and leaned one arm against the cushion beside Sol, resting her head on it as she thought. “A dangerous question, especially now. The Raging Heaven Cult may soon be at war with itself. You never know who might be listening, or when.”

“There isn’t anyone,” Sol said, his voice dull. Ah. He’d given up.

Anastasia looked up at him, startled. “What?”

“Nobody is listening to us right now,” Sol repeated. “I’d smell it.” As before, at the funeral, a Heroic cultivator balked at something Sol had presented as a simple observation. Scythas, for his part, just shook his head in wonder.

“My, my,” the Heroine said softly.

“You’re free to speak your minds,” I prompted them. Deep contemplation was the response. Free from the paranoia of another party listening in, they devoted their full attention to the prospect.

“The best rhetoric in the cult,” Anastasia murmured.

“Where blind men go to see,” Scythas continued.

They both reached the same conclusion.

“The baths.”

Sol swallowed back a mouthful of blood.

“Aqueducts,” was all he said, pressing the tips of his four longest fingers to the floor, creating three arches where there had only been one before. The aim of this figure was to complete as many sets as possible, one set being a knuckle flicked through each of the three arches of the aqueduct in sequence. The coin flipped up into the air, and pneuma flooded the room.

This time, all three of us kept an eye on the coin to make sure it settled completely to the floor, and Scythas unveiled a trick involving what I was certain was a manipulation of the wind itself. Sol, having been thoroughly demoralized, didn’t participate at all. The coin landed tails up this time, leading to another flip and an extended round. By the end of it Scythas had collected thirty-seven sets of three, while Anastasia had taken nineteen, and I had taken eight.

Triumphantly, Scythas leveled a finger at Sol. “I have to know, Solus! Where do you stand among heaven and earth?”

I inhaled the heavy, expectant silence. Pneuma flooded my veins, coursing through my blood in spiraling threads and heating it nearly to the boiling point. My muscles shivered and tensed unnoticeably in anticipation. It had happened sooner than I’d hoped, but later than I’d expected. I supposed this charade was always doomed to fail.

While I prepared myself for the fight of our lives, Sol calmly answered.

“Legate.”

Ah. So that was what they called him.

“Legion commander?” Anastasia looked up at him through narrow eyes. “How old are you really, Solus?”

“That sounds like another question.” Sol offered the golden drachma to Scythas, who after a moment took it.

“I have another question, so I’ll be winning again,” he declared. “The figure is Aqueducts, once more.”

“That’s a mistake,” I said lazily. “I never lose the same game twice.” The Hero scoffed and flipped the coin.

My pankration hands filled the room.

Fingers of my purest intent drove through the marble floor, five hands creating nineteen arches, each lined up end-to-end in a grand aqueduct that I immediately filled. The remaining fifteen pankration hands blurred across the floor, flicking and intercepting knuckle bones at every possible opportunity. Whistling blurs shot through the arches of my aqueduct, and were fired back just as quickly by pankration hands waiting on the other side.

With my flesh and blood hand I caught the golden drachma and slapped it against the back of my other true hand. Heads.

“Would you like to know how many that was?” I asked. Scythas spat on his own floor in lieu of reply. “Anastasia?”

“No need,” she said, satisfaction in her eyes as they traced the invisible lines of my violent intent. “I’ve just had one of my questions answered.”

“Ho, is that so? Then it’s only fair if you answer mine - you’re here to compete, aren’t you?”

“I am.”

“In which event?”

“That’s two questions,” she admonished me. “And you already knew the answer to both. You have eyes, don’t you?” The javelin, then.

“And you, Scythas?”

“That’s three,” Anastasia said, with some real annoyance this time.

I shrugged and flipped the coin. “Twelves.”

Sol flicked a finger, a pulse of his virtue sending all twelve of the knuckle bones flying into the air. He didn’t move beyond that, still abstaining out of spite. This was the simplest figure - the goal was to catch as many of the flying bones on the back of your hand as possible. Twelve arms of pankration intent caught the bones while the rest slapped aside Scythas and Anastasia’s reaching hands.

“And you, Scythas?” I asked again, smiling pleasantly.

The Hero scowled. “The sprints.”

“Twelves,” I repeated, flipping. Heroic spirits flared and wind and flame raged throughout the room, burning furniture to ashes and tearing silk sheets to shreds. It was all in vain.

“The javelin, then,” I mused, returning my attention to the Heroine while my pankration hands rolled the knuckle bones around on the backs of their palms. “But you fight with it as well, so which came first? Was the martial path a consequence of the athlete’s desire, or were the games an escape from your troubled past?”

There was less humor in her eyes now. “Neither.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Twelves.” I felt phantom agony in fingers that I didn’t truly have as the Heroic cultivators turned their pneuma upon my pankration hands in their frustration. They were petty strikes with no real heat behind them, but that was by a Hero’s standards.

Still, they lost.

“How did you know Sol was from Rome?” I pressed her.

“He was singing a Legion marching song when I found him.”

Sol refocused on the conversation, looking narrowly down at her. “When you approached me, you said that I was a wolf after all. You knew what I was from the moment I called out to you.” Anastasia was a much better actor than Scythas, that much was certain. But she wasn’t better than me. I saw her frustration clear as day.

“If it wasn’t the cadence, but the call itself,” I pondered, “then what was it about my good master’s influence that evoked thoughts of Rome? Past experience, perhaps? Something to do with that javelin of yours?”

Anastasia stared at me, silent for a long moment. Finally she nodded, conceding.

“I was right to worry after all,” she said. “How did you know which game I would pick?”

“I didn’t.” Satisfied, I tossed the coin into the air and waved a hand invitingly. I poured myself and Sol another cup of wine while the two heroic cultivators fought over the airborne knuckles. It was sweeter than the usual affair at the Rosy Dawn, light and faintly tart on the tongue.

“What about you?” Anastasia asked, balancing seven knuckle bones on the back of her hand. Dark hair pooled around her head as she looked upside-down at me. “Which golden frond do you desire, Griffon of the Rosy Dawn?”

I leered at her over the rim of my drinking cup. “Isn’t it obvious? I want them all.”

“Every event?” Scythas asked in disbelief. “Are you out of your mind!? Where do you stand?”

“That’s two questions,” I admonished him, flashing my most charming smile.

“I’ve decided I like you less,” Anastasia said. I placed a hand over my heart, wounded. She laughed. “Much less.”

The Heroine twisted and rose to her feet, brushing down her cult attire and giving the messenger eagle one last affectionate scratch. She was close enough to Sol that their noses would touch if he tilted his head just a fraction.

“That’s enough games for me, I think. Shall I escort you to the place where good philosophers go, Solus?”

“After you,” he said, unbothered by her close proximity. She looked into his eyes a moment longer, slowly smiling, before turning and heading for the door.

“I have another question,” I called, while Sol forced the door out of its broken frame. Anastasia glanced back at me, raising an eyebrow. “What is the first virtue?”

Caustic green eyes glittered.

“Purity,” she said, and then to me, “Where do you stand among heaven and earth?”

“You have eyes, don’t you?” I asked mockingly. “I’m nothing more than a Philosopher of the first rank.”

“Liar,” she scoffed. Anastasia walked out the door and Sol followed her.

Scythas, myself, and an eagle stewed in the silence they left behind. Eventually, Scythas set about salvaging what he could from the room, slipping items and articles of clothing inexplicably into the folds of his cult attire as he worked. I drank and shuffled through his star charts, gathering my thoughts.

“So. Anastasia?”

Scythas threw his things down in disgust and stalked out of his own room.

“It’s just you and I now,” I informed the great messenger eagle of Rome. It cocked its head at me. I offered it a bridge of pankration palms, and after a moment it fluttered up onto the first and hopped across them to my outstretched arm. Its talons curled easily around my forearm, and the kiss of their edges was sharp against even my tempered skin.

“You’re no mere bird, are you?” I asked it. It looked at me expectantly. I offered it a scrap of my own meal, the skin of a swordfish. The eagle snapped it down. “That’s been clear since you found us on the Eos. Now, even more so. No mundane bird would be able to detect my pankration intent.”

The virtuous beast ruffled its feathers, either unable to understand or unwilling to care. Perhaps it only spoke Latin.

“You’re Sol’s companion, that’s clear as day, but that worthless Roman hasn’t even given you a proper name. You’re certainly worthy of that much.”

My pneuma rose, washing over the bird and urging it to submit. Its talons dug painfully into my arms, drawing fine lines of blood, and it spread its wings wide in defiance. The virtuous beast shrieked in my face, unwilling to bend beneath my strength.

I laughed. “Sorea you shall be.” The lost eagle of Rome. I offered it a roll of papyrus that I had torn from one of Scythas’ star charts and written a quick message on with a formless hand while observing the bird.

Rather than offer a leg for me to tie the missive to, the virtuous beast simply darted forward and snapped the roll up in its beak, swallowing it without hesitation.

“Disgusting,” I said fondly, flicking my arm and dislodging the creature. “Be gone from my sight, mongrel bird.”

Sorea took flight through the balcony terrace with one last parting shriek, beating its wings and shooting up the mountain at a dizzying speed.

I stood up from my lounge, stretching mightily. I sighed, relishing the myriad pops and cracks of my body unwinding. Pankration hands massaged and dug into the tight muscles of my shoulders and neck, coaxing the tension out of my flesh.

Now then. Where was that Oracle?

1.15

The Son of Rome

I woke up and immediately regretted it.

Remnants of the funeral drums echoed behind my eyes, an unbearable throbbing that turned my stomach. My body ached down to the marrow of my bones, and my mouth was drier than a day at the Senate. I shifted, grunting. Even the soft brush of silk sheets was intolerable. I cracked an eye open.

Luxury. It was a sparsely decorated room, but what was there was of an undeniable quality. The floor was smooth stone that reflected the light of the sun, shot through with an electric blue lapis. The walls were covered in hanging tapestries of Olympic scenes painted with the painstaking detail of an artist’s life piece. A single ivory column, waist-high, stood central in the room, with a golden cradle for torch flame perched atop it.

A dining table cut from a fine, dark wood sat off in a corner. Each of its legs had been carved in the Corinthian style, with faux vines winding up their length. Large papyrus charts blanketed the table in place of food, gleaming with recently applied ink.

Upholstered dining couches and bronze-backed chairs were scattered throughout the room, and while those that remained intact were of the utmost quality, most of them had been smashed to pieces.

There were other things, personal items and keep-sakes that I couldn’t be bothered to keep my eyes open for. Satisfied that I wasn’t dead or imprisoned, I rolled over on the blessedly comfortable bed.

Into Griffon’s foot.

I shoved the filthy limb out of my face. He jerked awake, scarlet eyes snapping open.

“What-”

“Get out of my bed,” I said hoarsely. Everything, including my own voice, felt unpleasant. I needed another three days of sleep at least.

“Your bed?” Griffon repeated, incredulous. “Neither of us owns anything. It’s as much mine as it is yours.”

“I don’t care. Get out.”

“Denied.” He rolled over, using the crook of his elbow as a pillow. “Be quiet, will you? I had a long night.” I knew he was smirking as he said it. It was why he’d turned away. It was purely an attempt to get under my skin.

It worked.

Gravitas threw him from the bed, and twenty arms of pankration intent tossed me off the other side in turn. I came to my feet spitting mad, my head pounding and the taste of blood in my mouth. He rose up across the bed, looking far better rested and entirely too smug.

“I’m going to kill you,” I told him.

“You’re welcome to try.”

We both lunged for the bed.

It was Scythas’ room, as it turned out. The Hero in question returned to his room with food and drink in hand, just in time to see us shatter his bed with our wrestling. We both froze, Griffon’s hands wrapped around my throat and my own pressing a pillow down on his face. Hazel-flame eyes, flecked with golden embers, met mine. More than angry, he looked exasperated.

“We have halls for that,” he said, shaking his head and sweeping the papyrus off his dining table with one foot. He laid out three loaves of dark brown bread alongside a long, narrow slab of stone covered with seared fish. A pitcher of water and another of sparkling white wine. “At least eat something first. The two of you necked more kykeon in a day than most senior initiates drink in a week.”

That explained a few things. I cursed my hubris. What sort of fool went binge drinking immediately after a night of brutal fighting? After multiple brushes with death? Men like me were why officers hated the infantry.

“Light work,” Griffon boasted through the pillow, smacking my shoulders in a tap. It was no coincidence that he found the lingering cuts the Crow had left me. A night of work had purged the worst of the cultivator’s poisonous pneuma from my system - but it still stung like a bastard.

I pressed down harder on the pillow. Pankration hands slapped insistently at my shoulders.

The bread was still warm, and the fish was coated in olive oil and richly seasoned with pepper and ginger. After I had forced down a cup of the sweet white wine and several cups of water, I even began to enjoy it. Griffon and Scythas made small talk while we ate, trading stories of the day before. Apparently I had lost an entire day to exhaustion and spirit wine. The sun was just now rising again, a full day after the kyrios’ funeral.

“So this is the Raging Heaven Cult,” Griffon mused, licking a trickle of olive oil off his thumb and surveying the room with a critical eye. “Are all of the initiates given private rooms?”

“Definitely not,” Scythas said, shaking his head. “Junior initiates share rooms, four to a dorm for Philosophers and eight for Citizens. Heroic cultivators and those with seniority are given rooms like these. The elders each have their own estates scattered around the mountain, where their city’s representative initiates tend to congregate.”

He seemed to think of something and said to me, “Naturally, there are more spacious accommodations for honored guests. Elder Aleuas asked me to extend you an invitation to his estate, I’m sure he’ll be happy to accommodate you during your stay.”

“Naturally,” Griffon echoed. I raised an eyebrow at him, but he only smirked faintly. Most young lords, whether they be aristocrats or patricians, would have chafed fiercely at the sudden reversal of our dynamic. Griffon, though, seemed amused by the novelty of it.

“See to it that he treats my master well,” he said imperiously. “He went through much to get here.”

“You mentioned that before,” Scythas said, with sudden intensity. I had a blurred impression of an exchange from the morning before, like something out of a fever dream. The contents of it had been washed out by the alcohol and the exhaustion, but I remembered enough. Demons on the western front.

“What does your elder want with me?” I asked him, rather than answer the unspoken question. The food and the wine and the bed had improved my mood substantially, but not nearly enough to delve into that particular topic. Fortunately, the night before last had given Scythas an overinflated view of me. He accepted the deflection for what it was and didn’t pry further.

“Jason and I brought the Crow in yesterday while you were playing Ascension,” he explained. I nodded, distantly remembering a game of dice, and… a cheater? A cheater. “Cyril we turned over to Elder Gelon, as we couldn’t prove that he was involved in the same way Alazon was. But it was enough that we had the Crow and testimony from Alazon’s lackeys. Elder Aleuas wants to thank you for assisting an initiate from his city and discuss the events of the night in person.”

Somehow, I doubted that was all the good elder wanted from me. More importantly, though, what had been that cheater’s name?

“What are these?” Griffon asked, picking up one of the papyrus sheets that Scythas had slid off the table. It was a star chart covered in fresh ink, a map of the night sky in winter.

“You don’t remember?” Scythas’ eyes widened in outrage. “They’re for my cultivation - you said you knew what you were talking about when you offered to help!”

“If I said that I knew, then I did,” Griffon assured him, scanning it with interest. “I just don’t remember it.”

For a moment, Scythas was lost for words. He looked at me. “Is he always like this?”

“He is.”

“How can you not remember?” he asked, nearly desperate. “We spoke about this for hours.”

“His tolerance for wine has always been pitiful.” I didn’t hesitate to condemn my student for forgetting such an important conversation. What that conversation had been about, I couldn’t say, but it was surely outrageous that Griffon had forgotten it.

The man in question shrugged one shoulder, shooting me an amused look, and spread another chart across his lap. He hummed.

“Ah.” It only took him a few moments to find what he’d been looking for. “You’re on the hunt.”

“He remembers,” Scythas said, raising both hands in wonder.

Griffon shook his head absently, wild blond mane spilling over his shoulder. “No, I don’t recall anything past the bathhouse.”

Bathhouse?

“Oh, of course. You just took one look at the night sky in spring and realized what ails my soul,” Scythas said scathingly. Griffon didn’t respond, grabbing another chart from the pile. “... You’re serious?”

“I always am,” Griffon said. I snorted. “Be silent, master.”

Astronomy had never been my primary focus, even as a boy. It was something my mentor had alluded to in the early days of my instruction but never delved fully into. I knew all of the constellations worth knowing, of course, and I knew how to navigate by them, but after I’d left home to join the legions my education had become far more practical.

I had learned to read omens from the night sky before a battle, and I was distantly aware of how to divine the seasons from their formations. But by and large, cosmology was not a field I’d had the luxury of exploring.

Which meant those feverish lashes of ink were Griffon’s doing. I observed what looked to be a spear traced through the stars, a fist, and a hound with a snake in its mouth. The more I looked, the less it made sense. What could I have possibly contributed to this conversation, drunk and half dead?

“I can see where I was going with this now,” Griffon said, faintly amused. “You want to cheat.”

“I do not!” Griffon could have slapped him across the face, and I don’t think Scythas would have been as offended as he was right then.

“And yet here you are, setting your sights on the Conqueror’s Path,” Griffon said with no particular judgement. There was scarlet laughter in his eyes as Scythas jerked the charts from his hands.

“Forget it,” Scythas muttered sourly. His eyes flickered to me, chagrined, as if my opinion somehow mattered to him. How absurd.

I reached over and clapped him on the shoulder. I had to reach for it. The two of them were laid out on their dining couches in the indolent Greek style, an unpleasant reminder of younger days in Rome. I sat on my own couch like it was a bench. Old habits.

“You have nothing to be ashamed of,” I told him truthfully. Griffon had a way of getting under the skin. It was as much a skill of his as his pankration intent and his rosy fingers of dawn. But whatever it was that Scythas had asked our help for last night, I could tell that it was a difficult subject for him. It wasn’t something he’d shared lightly, even with the addition of alcohol.

He relaxed at the small gesture, nodding once. “Thank you again,” he said quietly. “I didn’t stop to think when you pointed out those Crows. You probably could have handled it yourself, but I would have been in over my head if you hadn’t come with me. So thank you.”

“You handled yourself well. You all did.” It was a gross understatement. My recollections of that night were a blur of pain and single-minded focus, further muddled by potent spirit wine, but what I did remember of Scythas and the other two evoked memories of the best days in Gaius’ legions.

Heroic cultivators were impossible legends, myths made reality. I was reminded of that fact over and over again, in the aftermath of the kyrios’ funeral, while we stalked the stalkers and chased them from their shadows.

My contribution to the list of miracles performed that night was to somehow not die, not even once, and to come out of it with my reputation intact. Admittedly, that might have been the unlikeliest occurrence of the night.

Speaking of. “Where are Jason and Anastasia?” I asked him. I remembered them surviving the night, but not much more than that.

“Jason’s sleeping yesterday off, along with the other three if I had to guess.” He shifted on his couch. His faint green cult attire, a marked difference from the royal indigos of the sanctuary city, shifted with the motion. It fell away from tanned muscle and sinew. He had no scars.

“And Anastasia?”

“I don’t know and I don’t care to, either.” His lip twitched towards a sneer, but he seemed to think better of it. “She is… not a woman I would associate with freely.”

“Ho?” Griffon leaned forward on his dining couch, suddenly invested. “And why is that?” I vaguely remembered him grilling me in a private moment, while we’d walked the streets of Olympia surrounded by rowdy Heroes, about the new additions Scythas and I had returned with.

“Where that one goes, disaster surely follows,” Scythas said darkly. “She’s an ill omen in silk robes and a widower’s veil.”

The investment grew. “Go on.”

“Don’t be a fool,” Scythas snapped. Then, to me, “Just keep an eye on her. You may be able to take care of yourself, but with her that isn’t always enough. She has a way of… tempting.”

Ah. I smiled, in the distant way of my adopted father.

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Right,” he said, averting his eyes.

“I think I’ll pay her a visit anyway,” Griffon said, winking when Scythas glared at him. “My master often tells me I’m a foolish man.”

“For all the good it does,” I returned wryly.

“I warned you,” Scythas said. “What follows is on your head.”

There came a crack, a mechanical crunch of sliding bolt locks being forced out of place. Light flared along the surface of Scythas’ door, bronze script burning with a visible light that seared the senses, alerting anyone within view of an imminent breach. Then, as quickly as it had come, it flickered and went out as the door was forced open.

Anastasia leaned against the mangled door frame, a vicious smile in her eyes. A massive Roman messenger eagle was perched on her right shoulder, which beat its wings and swept across the room to land on the curve of my dining couch, looking expectantly up at me. In lieu of a message, I offered it a scrap of fish.

Scythas came to his feet, fists clenched.

“My, my,” the Heroine said. “You three have certainly been busy.” Smoldering green eyes surveyed the mangled room, drifting past Scythas without truly seeing him. They lingered for a moment on Griffon, and the charming grin he reserved for strangers that didn’t know him yet.

But they settled, inevitably, on me.

1.14

The Young Griffon

I had come to the sanctuary city of Olympia to convene with the Oracle. Instead, I now found myself in a rowdy club, accompanying my new Heroic companions to an after-funeral drinking wake of sorts. As the first lights of the dawn peered through the stylized bronze doors of the club, I decided I didn’t mind.

My fellow sophists shook their bleak mood once they had some spirit wine in them. The club was a more refined take on the thermopolia that Sol and I had visited the previous summer - the food on display was obviously higher quality, elevated beyond slopping stews that we’d been offered in the Scarlet City. The kykeon itself was the strongest I’d ever drank outside of the Rosy Dawn’s initiation rites.

They treated it like piss water and drank it only under duress. It got them drunk readily enough, though.

Kyno, Elissa, and Lefteris told stories of the kyrios around a table covered in broad, shallow kylixes filled with potent spirit wine. Throughout the club, others were doing the same. I brushed my awareness curiously through the bar, finding cultivators of nearly every realm. Citizens mingled readily with Philosophers, and even a few more Heroic cultivators.

The usual hierarchy was only vaguely felt. This had the feel of a club frequented exclusively by cultivators, and if the abundance of indigo cult attire was any indication, by the Raging Heaven Cult in particular. Civic cultivators traded stories and laughter and reminiscence with Sophic cultivators as junior and senior, not lesser and better. The atmosphere was a stark contrast to the funeral we’d just left.

Cultivators told stories and drank deeply from their cups in the dead Tyrant’s honor. Watching them and listening to them talk, I found myself wishing I could have known the man myself.

“My grandfather met him once,” Kyno admitted after his third drink. Elissa leaned in while Lefteris smiled knowingly. “They were hunting the same beast, a chimera made up of half a dozen heroic beasts. My grandfather found it first, and…”

“My master knew him before he left the Raging Heaven Cult,” Elissa confided, later. Kyno and Lefteris were both visibly interested. This was a story neither had heard before. “They’d always been on friendly terms, but when my master decided he was leaving Olympia for good and severing all ties the kyrios offered him a wager. A single sword exchange, no pneuma involved, and if the kyrios won my master had to keep his faith. They squared off in an octagon of marble and gold…”

At one point Lefteris got up and went to the marble bar along the far wall, inlaid along its edges with indigo inscriptions of drinking games. When he came back he had a terracotta jar of wine half his height tucked under one arm, and a game in the other.

“The kyrios loved games of all kinds,” he said, while Elissa rubbed her hands together gleefully and Kyno knocked back the rest of his glass in one shot, a haunted look in his eyes. Even his skinned crocodile mantle looked traumatized. “This one was his favorite by far. He’d offer every initiate at least one game with him during their time at the Raging Heaven, more if they were lucky. He believed its mechanics had ties to the Fates.”

It was the sort of absurd statement that I enjoyed hearing. I watched Lefteris spread the carved stone tiles across the table, linking them end to end. A grid of two-by-three and a grid of four-by-three, connected in the middle by a bridge of two single tiles.

“What’s it called?” I asked curiously.

All three answered at once.

“Ascension.”

“The rules are simple,” Lefteris explained, distributing fourteen pieces, seven on either side of the assembled board.

“Yet profound,” Elissa interjected, with the air of someone telling a bad joke ahead of time. Kyno chuckled.

“Exactly right,” Lefteris agreed without shame. “Each player is given seven pieces, and the objective is in the name. Move all seven pieces from the beginning,” he tapped two of the blocks, one in each corner at the bottom of the board, “to the end.” He tapped the two corners second from the top. “First one there wins.”

Each piece was cut from a different type of stone. When I picked one up, a smooth red jasper, certain portions of the stone caught the light of the oil lamps and shimmered.

The pieces followed a certain track on the board, which overlapped in the middle. The blocks that weren’t in the middle were safe havens for one player or the other, but those that did were combat zones where pieces could do battle. While inhabiting the upper or lower grids, outside the bridge, players could choose to have their pieces avoid conflict as they ascended. But there was no getting through the bottleneck without conflict.

If a piece was taken by an opponent, it was sent back to the pool of eligible pieces outside the board. A player could have all seven of their pieces on the board at one time, or they could utilize only one - it was a question of strategic preference. Movement and combat were decided by dice.

I was presented with two bone dice for the game, tetrahedrons with values carved into the corners of their faces. Lefteris offered me the first round as practice. The stories continued as we played.

“When I first saw that cursed mountain I didn’t think I’d survive it. But do you know what the kyrios told me, that night before the rites?”

“I had just wasted a month of my life in closed doors cultivation only to achieve nothing at all, and who do I see when I open the doors?”

“I’ve taken the monster with me, because what else was I going to do, and so the entryway is covered in blood and offal. Elder Solon is furious, the junior is nearly dead and won’t stop vomiting blood over my back, and just as I’m about to lose my patience, who arrives but the kyrios?”

The kyrios had lived a full life from the sounds of it. As they reminisced, drinking and laughing, smiling wistfully in turns, we continued to play the game of Ascension. After my first couple practice games the victor’s rule was imposed. The winner kept the board while the loser gave way to a new challenger.

I cycled through a couple times, getting a feel for the rules and various play styles. Even among my companions, Kyno, Elissa, and Lefteris all employed wildly different strategies. Aggression, prudence, and pure brazen luck were present in varying proportions among the three of them. Poor joke or not, it really was a simple guy with a surprisingly profound strategic depth to it. And the introduction of luck as a mechanic meant that it could never be fully solved.

I found myself enjoying it more than I thought I would. Once I had firmly grasped the rules and core playstyles, I slowly built out my own over the course of several games. After the first couple times that I was washed out, first by Lefteris and then by Elissa, I started to win. And I didn’t stop.

“You said he tied the Fates to this?” I asked offhandedly, somewhere around my sixth game in a row. Another table of Raging Heaven cultivators had noticed us playing and wandered over, pitching in to the conversation as well as the rotation of games. I was currently playing another Philosopher, eighth rank. He wasn’t very good.

“The kyrios was a firm believer in the Pythagorean school of philosophy,” Lefteris explained, watching us intently as we played. “Among other numerologies. Depending on the results of your rolls, when you roll them, where your piece ends up and if it’s in conflict with an opponent. Even which of your pieces it is. There are some whose entire cultivation journey revolves around the study of this game.”

I couldn’t think of a more boring life than one spent analyzing a board game. Still, it was very fun to play.

I glanced wryly at Lefteris as I set my piece over my opponent’s piece at the bottleneck, taking it. “Ho? And what do these dice have to say about me?”

I continued to play, and I continued to win. My control of the board was absolute, unchallenged among heaven and earth. Eventually Lefteris jumped back in as my opponent, and when he lost and another cultivator tried to take his place he waved them off. The Civic cultivator protested for only a moment. Lefteris gave him a look that sent him scurrying to the other side of the club.

“You’ve never played this game before today?” he asked me suspiciously, resetting the pieces.

“Never in my life,” I said easily. “Perhaps I’m simply gifted.”

“The kyrios was like that,” Kyno mused. “It was as if any craft he picked up was something he’d been practicing for decades already, after only the briefest period of introduction. They say he only ever lost the game of Ascension once.”

“His first,” I guessed, rather than make the obvious joke.

“No,” Elissa said. “It was a game he lost after centuries of uncontested mastery. It took place only two decades ago.”

“Is that so?” I asked, interested. “Who beat him?” Elissa and Kyno shared a look across the table.

“Damon Aetos,” Lefteris said, and tossed me the dice.

S

“You’re a liar and a cheat!” Lefteris accused me, slapping the table furiously and spilling our stone pieces off the board. Well, his stone pieces. Mine had already ascended. Kyno and Elissa watched in mixed amusement and disbelief. Wide cups of spirit wine and ivory marbles used for betting covered the table.

We’d drawn something of a crowd.

As per the rules we’d established early on, the loser of a given match had to down an entire cup of kykeon without pause. This was a fairly benign rule when the intention was for the loser to then cede the table to someone else, and not stubbornly remain to lose over and over again.

For a Heroic cultivator, it would take several cups to make a dent in their prodigious tolerance.

Lefteris had the deeply rosy cheeks and glassy eyes of a man that had had far too much to drink. The sun had risen fully through the dawn, and I had won quite a few games. I was on my third cup of wine at the moment.

“Careful friend,” I said, propping my chin on one hand and smiling wickedly. “My virtuous heart won’t tolerate such an accusation.”

“I said what I said,” he said, doubling down. Lefteris looked to Elissa and Kyno for validation, ignoring the jeers and taunts of the cultivators standing around the table. They had drachma riding on these games and were obviously biased. “He’s doing something to the dice, I’m sure of it!”

Elissa hummed, twirling her finger through her wine and flicking a clump of the impure lees at a target on the far wall. It struck dead center and a cheer went up from a nearby table. She shot them a quick grin before answering.

“It does seem like something he would do,” she agreed, in such a way that made it clear she disagreed. Still a bit sore over our introduction, but she was coming around.

Kyno just patted him on the arm. “The only thing worse than a loser is a sore loser.”

I came to a decision. “Let’s see, then,” I said, sweeping the stone tiles and pieces to the side of the table, leaving only the dice. “Is it strategy and good fortune, or am I a fraud? We’ll let the heavens decide. I’ll even close my eyes.”

Lefteris considered the dice doubtfully.

“If you’d rather apologize I’ll accept it,” I told him graciously. The Heroic archer scowled and snatched up the dice, shaking once and letting them fly across the table.

Snake eyes.

Laughter rippled through our little audience. I closed my eyes and rolled. When I opened them, I saw Lefteris’ furious glare, and on the table - a one and a two.

“That’s one,” I told him breezily. “How many rounds would you like to try?”

“First to four,” he spat, sweeping up the dice. He rolled again. A four and a three, this time. There were three sets of numbers on each corner of the dice, each ascending by a factor of ten. In this case, a four, forty, or a four hundred accompanied by a three, thirty, or a three hundred.

The distinction hardly mattered here. I let the dice fly with a lazy flick. When I opened my eyes, I saw seven, seventy, and seven hundred. A three and a four. Tie.

Lefteris shook the dice like they owed him money, Kyno and Elissa watching with poorly masked amusement as bone tetrahedrons bounced across the table. One and two. I rolled without fanfare and got the same result. Again.

“Impossible!” Lefteris snarled. I saw sweat beading on his brow. In a way, I supposed tying was more stressful than losing outright. “It’s the dice. There’s something wrong with the dice!”

“Are you accusing the owner of giving us weighted dice?” I asked, raising an eyebrow. The owner in question shivered in quiet fear, hovering over by the bar.

“We’ve been here countless times, Lefteris,” Kyno chided him. “You know Timon wouldn’t do that.”

“Something he’s doing, then,” the drunken archer insisted.

“Or perhaps,” I said slyly, “The Muses love me more than you.”

It was a benign comment, but with a challenging undertone - a thinly veiled way of saying that my cultivation was superior to his. It was a less common taunt among the lower realms, but still present. Undeniably, it hit harder once one reached the Heroic realm and their lives became the subject of Epics.

When it became clear that Lefteris was too angry to roll, I took it upon myself to lead the next round. The dice clattered against the wood top, amidst cheers and calls for either my victory or Lefteris’, depending on who was betting.

Twin twos. I leaned back and watched as Lefteris made the most focused cast of his life. I knew as they fell that it wouldn’t be enough. Victory was a certainty in my heart.

Twin fours. I frowned.

I took the dice again when he gestured, accepting the change in order. A win to a win, and two ties. I let fly my dice and nodded when a four and a one resulted. Lefteris breathed deeply and cast again.

Twin threes.

Something…

I rolled one more time, the heavens yielding a three and a two. Lefteris was confident now.

Twin threes, again.

“You’re cheating,” I said with certainty. “My mentor would crucify you for that.”

“Who’s the sore loser now?” Lefteris asked smugly. “I’m throwing the same dice as you, fellow sophist.”

“You are,” I admitted. “But you’re not throwing them fairly.”

“It’s unfair now that the winds are blowing my way, is it?”

“No,” I said. “It’s unfair because you’re timing the dice.”

It was the purest form of cheating among cultivators, utilizing the enhanced dexterity and perception granted by cultivation to manipulate exactly how the dice would fall. Such was a Heroic cultivator’s alacrity that he could do it blind drunk and be correct every time. In fact, it was only because he was so drunk that I picked up on it at all.

Lefteris met my stare unflinchingly. “You’re wrong.” The crowd was quiet. The tension in the air was thick and cloying.

“Close your eyes,” I ordered. “As I did.” Lefteris obliged without hesitation, confident in his innocence. Or confident in his ability to continue cheating. He held out a hand and I pressed one of the dice onto his empty palm, it’s point jutting straight up. His expression remained serene.

Then I placed the second tetrahedron directly on top of the first, balancing it precariously on the tip, and his smile vanished. Kyno chuckled, a low rumble in his chest.

Heroic cultivators were existences far beyond anything a Philosopher like myself could imagine. I didn’t doubt for a moment that Lefteris could feel the impressions of the marked dice against his palm, and I also didn’t doubt that he could use that knowledge to time it completely blind.

But he couldn’t cheat the second die.

“What will you do?” I asked him. “You can fix one of the dice, but heaven will have its hand on the other.”

“What are you accusing me of, junior?” Lefteris asked me quietly, rather than throw. His eyes opened. Kyno and Elissa eyed us both speculatively.

“Who says I’m your junior? I’m accusing you of being shit at dice, and a sore loser besides.”

“It’s like that then!” His heart flames ignited at the insult. “I think it’s time you and I exchanged discourse, Griffon!”

“I have a better idea,” I said, grinning fiercely. I slammed my elbow down on the table and offered him my open hand. “The Muses have abandoned you. Let’s see if your body has too.”

The club devolved into hollering chaos as I arm wrestled the archer for all that I was worth. He pressed down on me with every ounce of strength in his Heroic body, but for all that he was stronger than me by an incomprehensible metric in terms of our tripartite souls, it was not necessarily the same story when it came to our bodies. He was an archer, a ranged warrior. His body, though far beyond anything an archer in a lower realm could possess, simply hadn’t been tempered the same way mine had. We were built differently.

My body was superior. And admittedly, he was incredibly drunk.

He cheated, of course. But this time so did I. As soon as I saw the flames in his eyes flare up I seized his hand with all twenty of my pankration arms and drove it down onto the table.

The club erupted with deafening cheers, and Kyno held Lefteris down while Elissa and I poured cups of spirit wine into his open mouth. Somewhere in the mayhem, the bronze doors of the club swung open and admitted a group of cultivators.

There were six of them, and as I brushed over them with a casual eye I saw them staring directly at us. Two had the fires of Heroic cultivation in their eyes, while the other four were deep into the Sophic realm. Without hesitation, the sharper of the two Heros sauntered over to our table. Three Philosophers followed on his heels, while the other Hero and one of the Philosophers went to the bar.

I saw the Hero’s eyes flicker to our empty chairs, vacated while we held Lefteris down and administered his punishment for cheating. Sensing what was to come next, I grabbed the chairs with three hands of pankration intent and pulled them back before he reached them. Something ugly swept across the faces of his entourage. The Hero smiled faintly.

Kyno cursed under his breath when he spotted them, righting Lefteris in his chair. Elissa turned cold, staring silently at the Hero and leaning on the table next to the bronze blade she’d laid across it. Lefteris sputtered and slapped as much wine out of his robes as he could.

“Greetings, Philosopher,” the Hero insulted me. “You’ve taken my seats.”

I felt a powerful sense of déjà vu.

“I don’t see your name on any of them,” I replied.

His eyes flared, but instead of attacking or responding the way I’d expected him to, he simply nodded at the chairs.

“See for yourself.”

There was a name carved into the back of each chair that hadn’t been there before. Alazon.

Heroic cultivators were nothing but swagger and bad attitudes. I loved it.

“Unfortunately, I can’t read,” I declared. Lefteris laughed. Evidently too drunk for a proper cultivator standoff.

“My, the junior initiates are bold these days. Hardly in the Sophic realm and you dare talk back to a Hero?” Alazon’s voice was deceptively mild, while his pneuma radiated threat. Was this what it felt like? No, I was far more fun than this, surely.

“My mentor always said I was a precocious child,” I said, only realizing as I said it that the three behind me would assume I meant Sol, and not the old man that had taught me the quadrivium.

“A common affliction,” Alazon said understandingly. “Fortunately, that is what senior initiates are for. Come, brother, allow me to guide you on your path to virtue.” He spread his hands invitingly, and a monstrous pressure swept through the club.

The waves of Alazon’s influence crashed against my own and only broke after some effort on my part. I smiled coldly. I could feel the difference between this one and Elissa. His temper was shorter, and his pneuma was even more densely vibrant. He wouldn’t waste time on warning blows or choreographed moves. I could see the intent in the curve of his smirk.

He wanted to shatter my ego. And I wasn’t strong enough to stop him.

“Enough of this,” Kyno said, stepping up beside me. His massive hands flexed threateningly, and- was the crocodile skin glaring? “We’ve been here all morning, Alazon. Find another table.”

“Of course I’d be happy to trade discourse with you as well, brother,” Alazon said obligingly. “In fact, I’m sure my juniors here would be honored to see your virtue in action. Perhaps you could advise them?” The three Philosophers with him fanned out around us, and in my peripheral I saw the other two returning with their drinks, coincidentally placing them behind us.

“Six on four is hardly fair,” I pointed out. “Arguably, Lefteris is drunk enough to count against us.”

“Perhaps it’s best you took him home, then,” Alazon suggested.

Evidently tired of the word play, Elissa grabbed her bronze blade and drove it through one of the chairs, splitting it down the middle and kicking both pieces across the floor. Alazon stopped one with his sandaled foot, letting the other skitter by and shatter against the far war. His expression shuttered, and the tension in the room crystalized. I inhaled.

A cultivator’s influence washed through the club.

Every able body stiffened as the waves swept over them, examining them, urging them beneath its surface. It was a challenge to fight. A riptide pull. I started to chuckle. Alazon, who had whipped around to stare at the bronze doors, turned back to me just as quick.

“What are you laughing at?” he demanded furiously.

“You.”

Gravitas blew the bronze doors off their hinges and Sol stalked into the club, dragging a cultivator dressed in black rags and a hood behind him. He had that storm in his eyes, and there was a dark weight to them that made him look twice and twice again more menacing than usual. From past experiences I knew that dark weight was exhaustion. He was all but dead on his feet.

But they didn’t know that. Three cultivators walked through the ruined entryway behind him, Scythas as well as a man and a woman I hadn’t seen before. A cursory glance at their pneuma revealed that all three were of the Heroic realm. The hooded cultivator, too.

Sol threw the struggling Hero down onto the floor and stomped them through it when they tried to rise. The woman in his group laughed lightly, laying a hand on his shoulder. There was a cut there, angry and red, and it was mirrored on the other side of him.

“Careful,” the Heroine said playfully. “This is the last one. We need them intact.”

“I pay my respects to the kyrios,” he said, ignoring her. His voice was as darkly strained as the rest of him. “For maintaining order in a cult full of animals.” The last word came out as a snarl. He stomped the downed cultivator savagely. The man cried out in pain and fear.

I watched a Hero cower before Sol, and so did everyone else inside the club. The context, doubtlessly, was not as impressive as the image here and now. But that hardly mattered. I fought to contain my smile and lost. Worthless Roman, I really was going to have to pretend he was my mentor after this.

“Who are you?” Alazon asked, confused and wary. No doubt his senses were telling him the truth of things - that Sol was only a Philosopher, and barely at that. But his eyes were telling him something else entirely. And if nothing else, the status of the three Heros flanking him were undeniable.

I couldn’t resist.

“Master,” I greeted him cheerfully. “Where have you been? You look terrible.”

Sol looked, saw me standing by a table covered in cups of wine and a dice game, and his lips peeled back from his teeth. Lefteris’ chair scraped loudly against the floor as he edged it back, away from my ‘mentor’. Elissa’s hand tightened to a white-knuckled grip on her blade. Kyno’s jaw flexed.

“Your master?” Ah, there was the uncertainty. You tried to Young Aristocrat the Young Aristocrat, Alazon. It’s only natural that tribulation would follow. “I’ve never seen either of you before.”

“We’re new arrivals,” I explained truthfully. “I came to compete, and Sol wanted a bit of culture before he goes back to fighting demons on the western front.”

“You’re here for the Games?” The third member of Sol’s companions asked, surprised. He glanced at Sol. “That’s… not what I would have guessed.”

“Seems almost too tame,” the Heroine agreed, twirling a bloody javelin in her hand. Steam drifted away from it as I watched, the blood superheated by something invisible to the eye. The waves of her influence were scorching hot as they brushed up against mine.

“Demons?” Scythas asked, edging in close. “Is that true, Sol?”

I could visibly see the last thread of Sol’s patience snap.

The downed cultivator gagged as Sol picked him up by the throat and ripped the hood off his head. He would have been handsome, I was sure, and some of it could still be seen beneath the blood and swollen bruises, but it was difficult to appreciate now. He coughed and weakly spat, to his credit at least attempting to be defiant in the face of the storm.

Sol headbutted him as hard as he could. The crack of their foreheads slamming together and the way the Hero’s head snapped back made it seem as if his neck had snapped, just for a moment. The cultivator’s eyes quivered, dazed. They swept across the room.

And settled, for just a moment, on Alazon. They moved on at once. But it was too late.

“You,” Sol snapped, throwing the cultivator to the ground and stalking towards the Young Aristocrat. Alazon took a step back, an unconscious reaction. It doomed him. “Tell me how many there are and the names of their targets. Now.” For all that he had resisted my charade at the start, Sol was one hell of an actor. If he was acting, that was. I leaned back against our table, impressed enough to let it play out without any interruption.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Alazon denied any involvement with the events that had sullied the funeral, of course. “I don’t even know that man.” Shadow politics were perhaps an inevitability in an institution like this, but being linked to those unpleasant dealings was something else altogether.

Alazon’s loyal companions slowly distanced themselves from him, each trying very hard not to catch Sol’s notice in doing so. Scythas and the other two were watching them intently, though.

“How cold of you, Alazon,” the Heroine with the bloody javelin said disapprovingly. “I’ve seen you and Alexios here exchanging discourse on more than one occasion. Surely you recognize him - the bruises aren’t that bad.”

The captain’s influence pressed down on everyone in the club. I held my breath. I could see how close Sol was to collapse. If they called his bluff and attacked, we had enough Heros on our side to win the ensuing brawl. But he wouldn’t necessarily survive it.

Luckily, Alazon was something that I have never been, even in my days as Young Aristocrat of the Rosy Dawn.

A coward.

The Heroic Young Aristocrat exploded into motion, away from Sol and the rest of us, vaulting the bar and disappearing through the back of the establishment. The Heros that had been in the club but not taken any sides up until that point took off in pursuit of him, open collusion being the line that they apparently could not abide being crossed. The rest of Alazon’s entourage tried to follow suit in escaping, but the Philosophers were swarmed by the other cultivators in the club and Scythas and his friend took down the second Hero of the group with punishing force.

In the riotous haze of pneuma, heroic spirits, and virtuous techniques tearing through the establishment, I nearly missed that crow that exploded out of the robes of the cultivator that Sol had dragged in.

The bird looked like it was made of squid ink instead of flesh, whirling liquid shadow in the shape of a crow rather than the creature itself. It shot through the air like an arrow from a bow, narrowly avoiding a dozen different techniques and shooting through the open doorway. It cawed mockingly as it vanished from view.

Abruptly, that caw turned to an odd, whistling shriek.

A Roman messenger eagle swooped into the club and landed on Sol’s shoulder. The crow construct struggled weakly as the eagle snapped it down its throat one bite at a time.

Sol approached our table in a controlled stagger, taking my seat and my cup of wine too, draining it in one pull. He ignored the chaos currently resolving itself in the club, the shouts and struggles of men individually capable of crushing stone and leveling buildings. He surveyed the table, and the game of Ascension clustered to one side of it. The Heroine with the javelin leaned on the back of his chair, stroking his eagle and cooing softly to it while it preened.

“You’re playing dice?” he asked roughly.

Elissa and Kyno shared a look, and slowly, slowly, sat back down in their chairs. Lefteris, having been too drunk to stand in the first place, eased his back up to the table.

“We were,” I said. I smirked faintly, glancing at Lefteris. He paled. “Before my new friend over here cheated.”

Sol’s eyes narrowed to slits.

1.13 [The Young Miss-tocrat]

The Young Miss-tocrat

She didn’t know what to do.

After Lydia’s uncle dismissed them from the study, her mother and Aunt Raisa took the five of them back to Raisa’s suite within the estate. The two Heroic women sat them down on lounging couches with large painted cups of spirit wine, sweet and warm and heavily spiced. They asked them, gently, to go over the events of the night again, in greater detail.

Heron, in contrast to when Uncle Damon had been asking, supplied most of the details. Castor and Rena added small details here and there, nursing their cups of wine. Myron didn’t say anything more than he had in the office, shrugging his mother off when she attempted to pry into the times he’d spent with Lio and the slave.

No. Not Lio.

Griffon.

Lydia’s mother did her best to coax answers out of Lydia. Anything at all, really. But she didn’t know what to say. So she didn’t say anything at all.

After the debrief came the consoling. Castor’s wrist required setting, though fortunately it was a clean injury. Their mother muttered furiously while she wrapped it, vowing that if Griffon hadn’t been so lucky in delivering such a fine break, she’d have hunted him down herself. Somehow, Lydia knew luck hadn’t had anything to do with it.

Lydia’s mother moved on to treating Rena’s swollen left eye as soon as the wrist was set. Meanwhile, her aunt was carefully prodding Myron’s right leg, her expression darkening every time he winced. Heron sat beside his little brother, on the same dining couch, a wet cloth pressed against the ugly bruise on his face. Every so often he spat blood into a jar on the floor. Griffon had knocked out two of his back teeth.

Of the five of them, only Lydia had escaped the encounter unscathed. She wasn’t even bruised.

Chryse and Raisa did their best to convince them that it wasn’t their fault as they worked. It quickly turned from assurance to ranting, though. Griffon’s actions were entirely his own, her mother assured her. They were only the natural result of a character that had been flawed from the start. Weakness of spirit made manifest. Heron agreed emphatically, and surprisingly Castor did too. Rena didn’t say anything, staring into her cup of spiced wine miserably.

Myron only scowled and shook his head each time his mother, aunt, and male cousins tried to convince him that Griffon had always been selfish. They said some things to Lydia as well. Lydia didn’t bother hearing them.

Their fathers joined them. Uncle Stavros was furious, of course, but his anger couldn’t compare to Lydia’s own father. Fotios Aetos was a man of powerful restraint, but in that moment he looked fit to kill a man. He stopped only briefly to cup Reina’s swollen cheek comfortingly, and to inspect Castor’s wrapped wrist, before kneeling in front of Lydia.

“He was a worthless boy from the moment he could walk,” Lydia’s father spoke fiercely, taking her hands in his and gripping them tight. “And now he’s a worthless man. The world can have him. I’ll find you a husband that’s better than him in every way, I promise you that.”

Her father pulled her into a tight embrace. Lydia didn’t feel the tears as they fell, but when the hug ended there were damp spots on his robes where her face had been pressed.

“Of course you can do it!” Griffon assured her, a hundred feet up the rock wall, clinging to the steepest face of the eastern mountain range. Only eight years old and already fearless. He held out a hand as if she could simply reach up and take it. His scarlet eyes were bright. “Where I go, you go. You’re going to be my wife, aren’t you?”

She didn’t want a better husband.

They gave up trying to comfort her after some time, moving on to their other children and nephews. When Heron sat beside her and tried to tell her that this might have been for the best, Lydia gave him such a poisonous glare that he didn’t say another word to her. When they left her aunt’s suite, Lydia returned to her own room without a word. They let her go.

She sat on her bed and stared at a small bronze mirror. Her reflection was empty, almost confused. How had it happened so quickly? Had he been acting the entire time? Since the Daylight Games? Since that slave had arrived? Or from the beginning.

Had Griffon ever cared for her? For any of them?

At some point the sun set and night fell. Castor and Rena brought her dinner and pulled up two dining couches next to her bed so they could eat with her. They picked at their food in silence after a handful of aborted attempts at conversation. Lydia didn’t touch the plate they’d brought. They left it there with her.

Later, in the middle of the night, the door to her room cracked open. A shadowed silhouette slid inside before shutting it silently behind them. Lydia was still awake, of course. She hadn’t even bothered trying to sleep, instead dragging a dining couch out onto her terrace and contemplating the heavens. She looked at her intruder, vitriol on the tip of her tongue.

Leave me alone.

The scathing comment escaped her when she saw who it was. Myron limped quietly across her room, sitting beside her on the bench and leaning his shoulder against hers. For a while they sat there like that, just watching the stars.

Finally, he found his voice.

“I should have stopped him. I’m sorry.”

It was the most absurd thing he could have possibly said. He was the youngest of them all, and Lydia’s junior in cultivation besides. To say nothing of how he compared to Lio- to Griffon. For her youngest cousin to take personal responsibility for something all his elder cousins had failed to do was beyond all reason.

Lydia tried to tell him this, but all that came out was a choked sob. She found herself hunching over, burying her face in the crook between his shoulder and his neck, sobbing and sobbing. It hit her all at once, everything she’d been trying not to feel. The grief, the agony, and the betrayal.

Myron whispered soothingly to her all the while, forcing himself to stay strong for her sake. But his voice trembled with every word.

----

Niko arrived the next morning.

Myron jerked away at the creak of the opening door, falling entirely off her bed. They had both fallen asleep, thoroughly drained, just before dawn. Lydia looked blearily first at the newly risen sun, and then at her eldest cousin. There was some mirth in his eyes as he watched Myron just barely catch himself on all fours, but it was subdued.

He’d brought breakfast with him, three simply adorned platters balanced on his left hand, and a pitcher of fresh water in his right. He set it all wordlessly down on Lydia’s dining table and set down to eat. Lydia considered telling him to leave, or perhaps rolling over and going back to sleep, but Myron made the choice for her by stumbling to his feet and joining Niko at the low table. Lydia threw her sheets aside.

“I’m not hungry,” she said, just so he’d know.

“Neither am I,” Niko said, popping an olive into his mouth. He washed it down with a long pull of clear water.

Reluctantly, Lydia started to eat. The food was simple and filling. Niko spoke to them as they ate.

“Uncle Damon spoke to the elders last night,” he said, leaning an elbow on the table. There was a different air about him without his usual travel clothes. For the first time since he’d returned for his wedding, Nikolas Aetos wore the cult cloths of the Rosy Dawn. Specifically, he wore the predominantly scarlet style that Griffon had always worn. The attire of the Young Aristocrat.

“What did he decide to do with them?” Myron asked.

“Oh, nothing too severe.” Niko shrugged. “A few of them will be losing their seniority within the cult. One tried making excuses to the very end, apparently, so he’ll be getting a beating and some mandatory closed doors cultivation. As for Old Chersis, Uncle Damon decided the broken nose Lio gave him was enough punishment, and told him to let it heal naturally. You can imagine how pleased he was about that.”

Myron cracked a smile at the mental image, but it was a fleeting thing. Lydia picked methodically at a vine of grapes on her plate.

“Speculation is running rampant through the cult, unfortunately,” Niko continued, giving up the attempt at humor. “It’ll be that way for a while. They weren’t very subtle on their way out the door.”

Lydia drank deeply from her cup, hoping it would wash the sour taste out of her mouth. It didn’t. She tried eating a grape, but it only made it worse. She wondered if this was what a deviation felt like.

“I spoke to the others earlier this morning,” Niko said. “Rena is taking it hard. Castor is still a bit shocked, I think. An injury like that is always frightening for a sword artist, no matter how easy it heals. Heron is putting on a show and acting glad, but I can tell he’s struggling as well.”

“It’s not a show,” Myron muttered. He picked at a small block of cheese with his thumb, breaking it into crumbles. “He’s always hated Lio.”

Niko frowned. “You shouldn’t think that of your brother.”

“It’s the truth,” Lydia whispered. “Our parents, too - they couldn’t throw him to the wolves fast enough. Like they’d waited years for this moment.”

“That much is probably true,” Niko admitted. “But Heron is only taking cues from his parents. Don’t be too hard on him.”

Neither of them replied. Niko sighed.

“Uncle Stavros and Uncle Fotios told me the two of you were taking it the worst,” he said. “I know it’s still fresh, and it hurts, but you have to understand that this wasn’t your fault. If anything, the blame lies with me.”

Lydia remembered the look in Griffon’s eyes that night around the campfire, as she’d drifted off to sleep in his arms. How cold they’d been. She’d never seen him like that in her entire life. And she’d done nothing about it. Stupid. She was so stupid.

“I should have known that he was feeling the itch.” Niko ran a hand through his hair, frustrated. “And I should have known better than to taunt him with stories of all the things he couldn’t have. Patience has never been his virtue, and I should have known that. I knew it before I left. I got too carried away reminiscing with all of you, and I pushed him over the edge.”

“It would have happened anyway,” Myron said, looking far too weary for his age. Lydia reached over and took his hand in hers, squeezing it. “Something happened to him after the initiation rites last year. Ever since then…” He shook his head and repeated, “It would have happened anyway.”

“Lio is-” Niko hesitated, considering his words. Finally, he decided to go through with them. “Lio is a wanderer. I’ve met his type, over the course of my travels. He was always a little thrill-seeker growing up. When I saw how subdued he was at the dock, I thought adulthood might have mellowed him out. But he’s still the same Lio. Always chasing new experiences, even at the expense of himself and the people he cares about. It’s who he is.

“Heron and Castor told me what he said to you, at the end. I want you both to know that he didn’t mean it.”

“Lio doesn’t lie,” Myron said at once.

Niko smiled faintly, bitterly. “He may not have lied, but he didn’t tell you the truth either.”

A fine sentiment, but it wouldn’t allow her to forget. She’d heard those words in her dreams.

I won’t suffer another day with you.

“Niko,” Lydia said, tracing a pattern in the wood of the table with her fingertips. “Could you tell us another story?”

“Of course,” he said quickly. “Any story you’d like. What did you have in mind?”

“Tell us about Olympia.”

His eager acquiescence vanished in a moment. Niko leaned back on his elbows, considering them both. “You really want to know? Right now?”

“Not knowing is worse,” Myron said. Lydia nodded in agreement. “What are they getting themselves into?”

Against his own instincts, Niko obliged them.

“Olympia is the cultural epicenter of the Hellenistic world. It’s the home of the Olympic Games, as you know, but even during off years it’s a melting pot of Greek civilizations. Its poorest districts are far beyond anything we have here in the Scarlet City.

“It’s known as the Half-Step City, or the Plateau, because it’s the second-most divine place in the world. Just short of Olympus itself. It’s where our world’s most powerful cultivators congregate, and it’s where champions are born.”

“But only Heros can compete in the Olympic Games, right?” Myron asked. The obvious question in his mind was something Lydia herself had been thinking about all night.

“That’s right,” Niko agreed, smiling wryly. “Lio may be exceptional for his age, but even he can’t pass as a Hero just yet. He won’t be competing this time around.”

“Then why go?” Myron pressed. “Just to see it happen? Lio’s never been a spectator. And why tell me in the first place?”

“It may have been a misdirection,” Nico suggested. “Something to throw any pursuers off their trail. He may not be headed there at all.”

“Griffon doesn’t lie,” Lydia said, echoing Myron. Both of them looked at her blankly.

“What did you call him?” Nico asked, confused.

“It’s…” Myron paused, glancing her way. “It’s what Sol calls him.”

“It’s the name he chose for himself,” Lydia quietly corrected her littlest cousin.

“I see.” Niko sighed, processing that, and moved on. “There are as many thing to do in Olympia as you could think of. They honor every holiday of every city-state, and more of their own making. It’s an old joke that the citizens of Olympia holiday as often as the rest of the world works. The revelries are constant, and business is exceedingly lucrative no matter the trade. It’s a city of abundance.”

“What are the people there like?” Myron asked. At this, Nico perked up despite himself.

“Incredible! By and large, anyway. I’ve met many good friends there, and even a couple of my current companions. It’s a nexus for cultivators of every kind, you see, but especially for those of great renown. It’s not at all rare to meet a Tyrant in the course of your daily errands. The city is teeming with outstanding people.”

He leaned across the table, nudging Myron slyly. “I met my Iphys there, too. People say there are as many fine marble beauties in the Half-Step City as there are stars in the sky.”

“I see,” Lydia whispered.

Niko winced.

“Not that any of them could hold a candle to my beautiful cousins,” he quickly amended.

“I don’t need your pity,” she said, unable to summon any real heat to the words. “Why wouldn’t he want a woman from such a fantastic place? I’m sure he’ll find someone there who can stand beside him.”

“Don’t say that!” Myron cried, slapping the table. Such was his passion that when it split down the middle he didn’t immediately apologize for the lapse in his control. “Lio cares about you. That’s not why he left, and that’s not what he’s looking for.”

Niko said nothing. The fact of the matter was, he’d been gone for too long. He didn’t know enough to say one way or another. Lydia scowled, glaring at her littlest cousin.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said sharply. The anger was slow to come, but when it did, it burned. She felt her eyes grow hot again, but she refused to cry. Not in front of Niko. “You’re too young. You’ve never experienced something like this before.”

“I don’t have to be old to see Olympus when it’s right in front of my face,” he shot back. “Lio made a mistake in the heat of the moment. He got impatient, that’s all! If we bring him back, I’m sure we can make him see reason!”

“Bring him back?” Lydia asked, incredulous. “How can we bring him back? He beat us like unruly children, all at the same time, and that was without the slave’s help! We’re too weak.”

“We can get stronger,” he insisted.

“You saw the difference between us,” Lydia said, her voice rising precipitously. “He isn’t going to be standing still while we rush to catch up!”

“So you just want to let him go?” Myron asked in disbelief. “But you love him.”

“Of course I love him.” The anger and passion fell away from her in an instant. Lydia shook her head softly. “But it doesn’t matter. Loving him isn’t enough. It never has been.”

“You’re both too pessimistic,” Niko said.

They looked sharply at him. He tilted his head, Heroic flames flickering behind thoughtful eyes.

“Catching up to him is far from impossible,” he explained to Lydia. Then, to Myron, “And you won’t be going after him alone.”

“Do you mean-?” Myron trailed off hopefully. The grinding sound of nails digging through wood alerted Lydia to the fact that she was gripping the table’s edge hard enough to carve furrows into its surface.

“Can the two of you keep a secret?” Niko asked in return, leaning in.

They nodded frantically.

“You can likely tell from what I’m wearing, but your fathers both demanded that Lio be abolished as heir to the Rosy Dawn as punishment for his actions. Uncle Damon agreed, and made me the Young Aristocrat in his place.

“I may not be as bad as Lio, but I’m certainly not ready to stay here for the rest of my life. My time abroad has spoiled me too much, and I still have too many things that I want to do before I settle down. Gods know my wife would be furious, and I just got her. So in the interest of killing many birds with one stone, and possibly even reclaiming my ship, I intend to track him down myself. If the two of you are up for it, I can bring you with me.”

“You’re telling the truth?” Lydia demanded, fearful that she would wake up at any moment.

“I am,” he said firmly. “It will take time, but I’ll find a way to convince our uncle to let me go. We’ll bring him home, kicking and screaming if need be, and make certain he does things in the proper order for once in his life. I know the boy that he used to be, and I saw a glimpse of the man he is today. He may have been troubled here, but he didn’t hate it, and he certainly doesn’t hate any of you. He’s at a turning point in his life and he needs guidance. Now more than ever.”

“When?” Myron asked, the only question that mattered. They both leaned forward, three heads huddled together over a broken table and three plates of forgotten scraps.

“Sooner than later,” Niko promised. “There are a few things I need to do if I’m to get Uncle Damon’s approval. They’ll take me some time, but that will give the two of you time to get up to speed for the outside world.”

“How much time?” Lydia demanded.

“Months at the most, weeks if we’re fortunate.” Niko poked her forehead. “Relax. We’ll find him.”

“Relax.” She grit her teeth. “He’s on his way to the most powerful city in the Mediterranean, we might not be able to follow him for months, and you’re telling me to relax? Forget months from now. I’m worried about him today.”

“You shouldn’t be,” Lydia’s eldest cousin chided her. “Lio is many things, not all of them good, but he’s always been resourceful. He knows how to conduct himself in a dangerous environment. And from what I’ve heard, his companion isn’t half bad himself.”

“You don’t know the new Lio,” Myron said, unable to help himself. “It might already be too late.” Niko rolled his eyes, standing up from the table and stretching. The light of a new dawn was bright on the horizon.

“It’s only been a day,” Niko said dismissively. “How much trouble could they have possibly gotten into?”

1.12

The Son of Rome

In the time it took my heart to beat twice, Scythas had covered a distance that contained hundreds of citizens and lesser cultivators. I followed as fast as I was physically able to, but the difference in our cultivation was undeniable. Two more heartbeats passed, and I reached the mouth of the alleyway.

Scythas was already rounding a corner, piercing deeper into the unlit bowels of the sanctuary city. I plunged into the darkness myself, the screams and wails of injured citizens and those still grieving fading to echoes that rebounded through the latticework of alleys.

I followed the sounds of Scythas raging.

“Cowards!” he hollered. “Unfilial sons! Rotten, scavenging Crows!”

I heard a powerful impact, and then a suffocating sensation enveloped my senses. Hands in the dark, reaching insidiously for the tattered edges of my cult attire. Wearing it properly is a skill, Griffon’s airy voice reminded me. I pivoted, stepping adroitly past the grasping hands and then leaping into the air. I caught the rail of a terrace on the third floor, jutting out over the alley, and swung myself up and over the limbs of shadow intent.

The nameless technique, or perhaps simply the murderous intent of the Crows we were chasing, pursued me down the alley. The sounds of vicious struggle carried from around a corner, off to my right. I slid down the stone face of another building and bolted for the conflict.

I nearly died in that moment.

A man that stank of shadows lunged at me as soon as I rounded the corner. He had a filthy, rusted knife in his hand. The sounds of conflict I’d been following vanished all at once. I’d been tricked, guided into a trap by false sounds and his own vile intent.

The knife - an assassin’s weapon, all red rust and filthy, chipped edges - tickled the skin of my throat.

Gravitas.

The weight of command slammed him against the western wall, pressing his knife hand flat against the stone. It only lasted a moment, the overwhelming heat of his Heroic spirit burning through the captain’s virtue in the time it took me to plant my feet and lurch forward.

I drove a fist into the Crow’s gut. I’d have been better off punching the stone wall behind him. The third knuckle of my right hand cracked nauseatingly against his stomach, and he wasn’t even winded. The knife came back around. I only just ducked it before it could take my left eye. I drove a knee up into his crotch and viciously headbutted his face, and this time we both reeled. Even still, he managed to wrap five fingers around my throat like a vice.

Gravitas.

The pressure to lead drove the masked cultivator through the stone wall entirely, tearing his hand away from my throat in the process. A woman shrieked from inside, and as I bolted through the new entryway to the residential building I saw her scrambling for the door while the Crow pulled himself from the rubble.

I didn’t give him the chance. A Heroic cultivator’s speed was too much for me, that much was clear. The only chance I had was to disorient and dispatch.

Gravitas.

The captain’s virtue threw him sideways through the rubble, punching through another wall into a room filled with colorful threads and bolts of cloth, a loom in its center. Another woman, older than the first, cowered in the furthest corner of the room, visibly fighting the urge to scream.

My foot missed its legion-issue boot as I drove it into the Crow’s stomach. Silver threads of pain shot up my calf, but this time the cultivator gagged from the force of the blow. Even now he was faster than me, whipping around like a snake and letting fly his rusted assassin’s blade. Fortunately, I already had my pirate blade in hand. I deflected the thrown knife-

And my sword shattered.

I didn’t have time to gawk at the impossible interaction. The knife had been knocked off course, but now I was without a weapon and the cultivator was regaining his feet. So I returned his projectile with a projectile, viciously throwing the empty hilt of my broken sword at his face. He flinched back, just for a moment, and I pressed down on him with the captain’s virtue.

Gravitas.

The Crow’s skull hit the marble floor with an ugly crack. By the time he’d regained his senses, a moment and an eternity, I had the loom in my hands - raised up above my head.

The lady of the house winced and covered her face as I shattered her loom on the Crow’s face.

When all was said and done my hands were a bloody, bruised mess, and my shoulders ached beneath the weight of so many consecutive uses of the captain’s virtue. I picked the unconscious cultivator up and threw him over my shoulder. As an afterthought, I pulled the midnight hood off his head. I didn’t recognize the man’s face beneath, obviously, and wouldn’t have even if it wasn’t just as battered as my hands. I committed his features to memory anyway.

“Apologies for your loom,” I told the woman crouched in the corner. She stared at me. Apparently she didn’t speak Alikoan either. I sighed and left her home the same way I’d entered.

I’d already fallen far behind Scythas, and now I’d wasted precious moments fighting. The Crow naturally didn’t have the courtesy to be light in my arms, either. I shrugged him into a more comfortable position and raced down the opposite alley at my best pace. I followed new sounds of conflict that I could only hope were genuine this time. Shouts, flesh striking flesh, and the whistle of projectiles cutting through the air.

Scythas’ pneuma suddenly flared like a beacon of light in the narrow corridor, and another hooded cultivator came hurtling out of the darkness.

I twisted at the waist, heaving the unconscious Crow over my shoulder and throwing him at the airborne cultivator with all the force I could muster alongside the captain’s virtue. The Crow flew out of my hands like a rock from a sling and hit the approaching cultivator with punishing force. My aim had been true. They both went flying through an open terrace into the apartment beyond. Panicked shouts and vitriolic curses sounded from inside.

Scythas was next, flying out of the shadows and slamming back-first into a stone wall a few feet away. The breath exploded out of him, and he sank to the cobbled street. He had another Hero in his arms.

“You took your time,” he gasped, struggling to regain his wind. “There were two more, did you-?”

“They’ll be coming back,” I said. I wasn’t optimistic enough to think otherwise. Scythas nodded and spat blood, wiping his mouth with a grimace.

“That one is strong,” he said. That one, it turned out, was a rapidly approaching pneuma that reeked of blood and unkept promises. The kidnapped Hero grunted urgently, shaking his arms. A wad of damp cloth had been shoved in his mouth to prevent him from calling for help, and a deceptively thin metal cord had been lashed several times around his wrists. He didn’t have the strength to break it. Bound by iron, his cultivation was suppressed.

Scythas struggled with the cord, trying fruitlessly to find the leading edge of it. The hostage grunted with increasing panic as the bloodstained pneuma drew closer. Following an instinct, I pulled the rusted dagger that had shattered my sword from a fold in my cult attire and slid its edge between the Hero’s wrists and the metal cord. He hissed in pain when it touched his skin, but the cord parted like silk when I drew up on it.

The Hero immediately pulled the damp cloth out of his mouth and spat the taste of it onto the ground, scraping his teeth across his tongue in disgust.

“They took me by surprise,” he said gruffly, nodding to me in thanks. “They won’t have such an easy time of it-”

Before he could finish his posturing, the third Crow exploded out of the shadows of the far alley. At the same time, the shadow intent of the Crow I’d beaten unconscious along with another, unfamiliar pneuma of similar intensity exploded from the upper residence behind us. They were awake again, and they were ready to fight.

I pointed a finger at the strongest of the three.

Gravitas.

Stone shrieked and flew apart from the walls and street both, but the Crow had already leapt back into the shadows the moment I made the gesture.

“Show me then,” I demanded. “Take care of the subordinates. I’ll handle this one.” Before I could actually think about what I was doing, I rushed forward into the darkness to meet the strongest of the three. Behind me, Scythas and the other hero shouted a challenge and leapt straight up, meeting the other two kidnappers midair as they vaulted the terrace.

Rusted blades clashed in the dark. I couldn’t see my enemy, but I could feel their breath against my face. I felt the hands of their influence gripping mine, pushing me back, sliding my knife away from theirs so they could punch it through my throat.

I was as thoroughly outclassed as Griffon had been against the scarred Heroine. The only difference was, I didn’t have him here to bail me out of my fight.

So I taunted them. “You’re not very good at this, are you? A real throat cutter is never seen unless they choose to be.”

A flurry of shadow motion made my senses scream. I crouched, jerking our crossed blades aside. Invisible knives buried themselves in the wall where my head had been. Dagger intent. Each one was dripping with poison that my eyes couldn’t see, that had no corporeal form, but it was clear as day to my pneuma sense. Poison, synthesized by their soul.

We exchanged a flurry of blows that I wouldn’t have been able to visibly track even if there had been light to do so. I operated solely on instinct and my other senses, reflexes hammered into me by my mentors and by war allowing me to block and deflect most strikes. I caught a stab at my temple with a forearm, and bit down on a thumb attempting to gouge my eye out with full force. I felt a tooth crack before the skin broke.

The blood of a Heroic cultivator was far too hot. It burned, literally, and when I spit it out it caught fire in the air. For just a moment I saw the cultivator’s silhouette, before she bounded up the wall of the nearest building, vile green light flaring from the flames behind her eyes. Her Heroic pneuma rose.

Gut instinct told me I’d die if I tried backtracking now. There would be no regrouping with the other two. There was no one here to help.

But that was fine. Hopeless fights were the domain of legionnaires, against enemies of superior numbers, superior arms, and superior stature. To be expected, always, and good fortune if the gods granted you a fair fight.

It was all business.

The inferno of the Crow’s poisonous green eyes lit up the alley, and I watched as an impossibility was writ bold on reality. The blades of her dagger intent, coated in the poison of her soul, forced themselves into true existence. Real and corporeal. They whistled through the air, flying fast for my throat, and in their after images, new daggers of dagger intent spawned like fingers unfurling from a clenched fist. Three became twelve, twelve became forty-eight, until the entire alley was filled with her intent.

I brandished my rusty knife, knowing it wouldn’t be enough. I needed more.

They say that in the Legions.

They say that in the Legions! Three thousand dead men roared in my memories.

“The life is mighty fine.” It came through clenched teeth. I deflected the first of the corporeal daggers, the fastest of the three.

The life is mighty fine!

“You leave your home for glory.” The first dagger went spiralling off to my right, spawning new blades of dagger intent in its wake. Each one spun unerringly towards me, but unlike the daggers bolstered by the Crow’s Heroic spirit, these were susceptible to my own influence. My new Sophic sense batted them away disdainfully.

You leave your home for glory!

Two more impossibly real daggers swerved at unpredictable angles on their approach. I didn’t bother trying to deflect them. I knew I’d fail. And I knew I’d look weak in the attempt. In a place like this, in a fight like this, with allies like these, appearing weak was worse than being weak. I couldn’t fail to deflect them, and I couldn’t be cut by them.

Or could I?

“To Caesar you’re assigned!” I called cadence, taking a lash of poisoned intent across each of my shoulders as the two blades flew by. I slapped aside the dozens of pneuma blades that followed, diverting their paths just enough to not be cut.

To Caesar you’re assigned!

I stood stock still, frozen. The poison coating both blades tore through my body in seconds, flowing like lava through the channels of my tripartite soul. Breathing became difficult first, the insidious poison targeting my vital breath first. Without breath, there was no cultivation. Without cultivation, there was no surviving an invasion like this.

My muscles locked up next, clenching in sudden agony. My limbs refused to move, joints grinding like rusted hinges. Through the haze of horrible sensation, I felt as much as saw the Crow swooping down on me like her namesake. Descending for the kill.

“They say that in the legions,” I breathed.

THEY SAY THAT IN THE LEGIONS!

Gravitas struck her from the sky. The Crow somehow kicked off from the air itself, heart flames flashing, and managed to avoid the brunt of the blow. It glanced off her right shoulder and sent her spinning to the ground just ahead of me.

If I could call cadence, I could breathe. If I could breathe, I could cultivate. If I could cultivate, I could march.

And if I could march, I could fight.

“The meals are mighty fine,” I informed the cultivator trying to take my life.

“What?” she asked, baffled.

THE MEALS ARE MIGHTY FINE!

“Eat leather if you’re hungry,” I explained further. She lunged up at me with a blade in each hand, ebony edges blending with the shadows cast by her eyes. She attacked head on, with the confidence of someone who knew that their target couldn’t move to stop them. I had countered her dive, but I still couldn’t move my body. My rigid posture spoke for itself. She could likely feel her poison winding through me, body and soul. Paralyzing me entirely.

EAT LEATHER IF YOU’RE HUNGRY!

Unfortunately, she had failed to account for one thing.

“Drink poison like it’s wine!” I said sharply, and uppercutted her.

Something as banal as lethal poison was no excuse for a legionnaire to stop marching.

DRINK POISON LIKE IT’S WINE!

Breath exploded out of her from the force of the punch. Delivered in cadence, it struck her harder than anything I could have normally produced. She arched up above my fist, hovering in the air for a bare moment. I forced my body to move again before she could recover. I lashed out with my other hand and grabbed the back of her neck.

“They say that in the legions!” I shouted, slamming her to the stone.

THEY SAY THAT IN THE LEGIONS!

“The pay is fine it’s great!” I kicked her up against the wall, feeling a crack that was either my foot or her ribs breaking. Maybe both.

THE PAY IS FINE IT’S GREAT!

“For every coin you gather!”

The kidnapper-turned-assassin recovered faster than I’d have liked, planting her hands against the ground and throwing herself up into a backflip that brought a slipper-clad foot a hair’s breadth away from kicking my head off my shoulders.

FOR EVERY COIN YOU GATHER!

She twisted her body in midair and lashed out with a rigid hand, slapping the knife out of my grip. In response, I caught her by the ankle and swung her into a wall with all the remaining strength of my poisoned body, the captain’s virtue, and my own furious influence.

In cadence.

“The captain gathers eight!”

For the second time in as many minutes, I threw a Heroic cultivator through a building.

THE CAPTAIN GATHERS EIGHT!

Eight poisoned daggers clattered to the stone at my feet, shaken free from the folds of her clothing. I heard a soft huff, the sound of a pouting woman, through the hole in the wall.

Utterly disproportionate to this reaction, I felt a sickening wave of poisonous pneuma surge up and out of the rubble. It rushed towards me, grasping and ravenous. The sensation alone burned like acid on my skin. If it touched me directly, I’d drop dead in seconds.

Light and heat blossomed like the petals of a flower behind me, illuminating the alley in full. The short hairs on my arms and the back of my neck sizzled and curled, burning. Coiling streamers of flame careened over my head, colliding with the wave of poisonous pneuma and erupting into a noxious cloud of steam that made my eyes water and my spirit gag.

The Crow was gone when it cleared. I turned, every muscle in my body protesting the motion, to greet the Olympic athlete walking up behind me. I didn’t let the pain show. A captain never did.

“So it was a wolf after all.”

She had laughter in her eyes and a javelin in her hand. She wore the finely woven tunic-dress of yet another mystery cult, this one a pristine onyx that I had never seen before. She approached me silently on slipper-clad feet, and her influence brushed over me in bare fingertip caresses. Careful, but inquisitive. They finally settled on each of my shoulders, where the poisoned daggers had cut me. The cultivator’s touch was feather light, but it still felt unbearable on the wounds.

“I’m sorry I didn’t come sooner,” she said, all feigned remorse and naked interest. She idly twirled her bloody javelin. “I heard you howling, but I had my hands full at the time. What did you want to say to me?”

I was too poisoned for this.

“My name is Solus,” I told her. “I’m hunting Crows.” The Heroine tilted her head, midnight ponytail falling sideways with the motion.

“Of course you are,” she said, a slow smile stealing across her lips. “Shall I join you, then?”

There was a clamor of noise and movement on the opposite end of the alley as Scythas and the other Hero came rushing to my defense. Scythas stopped short when he saw us, and then saw the Crow-sized hole in the building beside us. I watched in real time as his estimation of me rose. Wonderful.

“Sol,” Scythas finally said, looking between me and the Heroine with poorly masked unease. “She’s-”

“A fellow hunter,” she said, beaming at the disgruntled look he gave her. “You two seem to be in good shape. Still, would you like me to give you a look? Just to be sure.”

“Absolutely not,” the kidnapped Hero said without hesitation. Scythas only shook his head, looking faintly pale in the light of his own heart flame.

“If you’re certain.” The Heroine dismissed them from her notice, turning to me with anticipation. To my dismay, Scythas and his rescue followed suit. Three cultivators, each individually strong enough to wipe me from the face of the earth, looked to me for a cue. A familiar weight settled on my aching shoulders.

My body ached so fiercely that I wanted to die. Every time I spoke and blood didn’t come out in place of words, I was surprised. I wanted a skin of water, a hearty meal, and a dark room with a soft bed more than anything else in the world at that moment. If I was lucky, I’d get the water.

That was fine, though. Buried in every lie was a shade of the truth. I may not have been hunting Crows before, but there was a part of me that didn’t mind the thought of it now. Those three, at least, had been kidnappers and assassins. Their tripartite souls had borne the stains of their work eternal. If the rest of their ilk were the same? Well, I could suffer a few more hours of poison and shadow stalking.

After all, I had everything I needed laid out in front of me.

Every officer knew that the cure for a sickly soldier was more marching.

1.11

The Young Griffon

Sol and Scythas vanished down an alleyway in pursuit of a kidnapping. A beat passed.

“You’re not going after them?” The cultivator with the bow asked me. He was less cautious now, tension easing out of his posture in Sol’s absence. I glanced at the Heroine and the cultivator in the crocodile skin, and saw them relaxing as well. My nose wrinkled in irritation. I’d done all the work, yet in their eyes I was just another competitor. Meanwhile, Sol was my perceptive and dangerous mentor.

Twice the renown for half the effort. Worthless Roman.

“Why should I?” I asked, miraculously not spitting blood in my annoyance. “I may be a western savage, but even I know that it’s rude to leave a conversation unfinished.”

“This conversation never should have started in the first place,” the Heroine declared flatly. The desert heat in her eyes was only embers now. The tribulation, Sol’s nebulous comment, and the apparent kidnapping of another cultivator had thoroughly doused her competitive spirit, it seemed. A shame.

“How cruel,” I said. I tilted my head, absently rubbing the cut she’d given me on the cheek. “You know, I still haven’t gotten your name. You started a fight before I could properly introduce myself.”

“I started-?” A muscle in her scarred jaw throbbed, but the larger cultivator placed a hand on her shoulder and she sighed, relenting.

“Elissa.”

“Griffon,” I replied in turn. “Well met.”

Elissa spat at my feet.

“And you, friends?” I asked the other two, ignoring her.

“Kyno,” said the man in the crocodile skin.

“Eleftherios,” said the archer with the gold-strung bow. “Most call me Lefteris.” That was fortunate, because I would have shortened it anyway.

I struck out with three hands of pankration intent, and to their credit all three of the heroic cultivators surrounding me reacted instantly. Heroic pneuma rose and heart flames burned as three warriors, each individually capable of wiping me from the earth, prepared to defend themselves from my attack.

Each of my pankration hands slapped against their own and gripped tight, giving them a firm shake.

“Friendship seals our fates,” I said brightly, savoring their reactions. “So tell me, friends, what sort of games are at play here? What vile political maneuvering does the Cult of Raging Heaven get up to behind closed doors?” Or in the middle of crowded pavilions, as it were.

“Nothing beyond the usual,” Kyno said, when it seemed the other two would be too uncomfortable to speak. “The strong wish to be stronger, and the weak are caught up in their schemes.”

“It was inevitable that there would be a… question of succession,” Lefteris said. “The cults of greater mystery are institutions that shape entire generations. The opportunity to lead one and decide what that future will look like? That sort of renown is something cultivators work countless natural lifetimes to achieve.”

“Something like this could never be peaceful,” Elissa said, eyes shifting minutely as she surveyed the crowd. Looking for more thieves in the night.

“I don’t know about never,” I mused. “The Rosy Dawn’s transition of power was fairly simple, I’m told.”

The three Heroic cultivators looked at me as if I’d just said something incredibly dim.

“The Rosy Dawn is the Rosy Dawn,” said Lefteris.

“Damon Aetos is Damon Aetos,” Kyno amended.

Ho, so my father had admirers even here.

“Then you’re saying the fight for the throne has already begun.” I radiated disapproval despite not caring much at all, a skill I’d developed early in life to keep my cousins honest. “And before the funeral has even ended. Scythas was right. These elders truly are shameless.”

“Quiet!” Elissa hissed. “Do you want to die?”

“Not particularly.” I continued on, finishing my thought. “The question now is - which elder do you three answer to?” There was a moment of heavy silence, punctuated by meaningful looks shared amongst the three of them.

“We’re here to compete,” Lefteris said, as if that was answer enough.

Admittedly, it may have been. My knowledge of the wider world wasn’t yet what I wanted it to be. I knew precious little about the internal dynamic of the Raging Heaven Cult, or any of the mystery cults aside from the Rosy Dawn and the Burning Dusk. I didn’t have any of the context that was taken for granted among my “peers” in this circle.

I knew that the Raging Heaven was unique among the greater mystery cults, in the same way that the sanctuary city of Olympia was unique among the free city-states of the Mediterranean. As the nexus of all civilized cultures, the cult’s initiates were the finest of the finest, the most elite cultivators from all over the free world.

I knew that among these elders, each of whom would be on the level of my uncles at the bare minimum, only a few would have been born and raised in this city. The majority of the candidates for the kyrios position were foreign-born. Men who had been born and raised in far flung city-states, with far flung priorities and ideals. It was only natural that they would disdain propriety in the pursuit of those ideals. Home first, Olympia a distant second.

What I didn’t know was how an Olympic competitor’s status fit into that. Kyno seemed to see my confusion, and elaborated in his rumbling tenor.

“Every four years, the entire civilized world converges in this city to witness people like us compete. For glory, for standing, and ultimately, for the title of Champion.”

“The Champion stands supreme above all other martial cultivators,” Lefteris said, as if reciting a prayer.

“The Champion is their own existence,” Kyno explained. “Free from the trappings of filial obligation. Immune to any higher authority.”

“We crossed mountains and deserts and seas to catch lightning in our teeth,” Elissa said proudly. “Why should we involve ourselves in the squabbling of politicians?”

I knew I liked these people.

“Why involve you in this at all, then?” I supposed it wasn’t necessarily the case that the cultivator being kidnapped was another competitor, but it felt right. The way the three of them had been acting since they’d arrived was all too telling. Even after Sol left, there was tension in their souls. He’d confirmed something that they had been suspecting already, and it wasn’t difficult to guess what it was.

They were jumping at every shadow. And every pankration handshake as well. They were targets tonight, and they knew it.

“The Champion’s accomplishments are their own and can be no one else’s,” Lefteris finally said. He frowned, eyes shifting towards the center of the agora. “But there are some who claim a portion of the glory regardless.”

The crowd had rapidly thinned around us, all that remained being those powerful enough to withstand the sound of the rites. Through the diminishing haze of smoke and embers, I could just see an outline of some sort of raised platform. There was movement within, but it was impossible to discern anything further.

Knyo’s arms crossed over a broad chest. He was frowning darkly. “It isn’t uncommon for matters of promotion and other rewards within the cult to be predicated on the success of a city’s representative in the games.”

“And what greater promotion than to the mantle of the kyrios?” I asked rhetorically, nodding along. They were eliminating the competition, sabotaging the athletic talents of the opposing home cities. It was just the sort of indirect attack that usually made me sick.

Somehow, though, the execution made up for the intent. The funeral rites continued to sow chaos in the ranks of the citizenry, and the remnants of ember and smoke that had been struck down by the heavens circulated through the crowd, obscuring sight and smell. In the confusion, I witnessed another kidnapping.

The eddies of my Sophic sense brushed against their kicking feet like low tide waves. They were younger than me, wearing fine lavender robes and boasting the pneuma of a Sophic cultivator, fifth rank. For all the good it was currently doing them.

I couldn’t hear them scream, but the sight of them thrashing in the arms of two masked assailants carried loudly enough. In a flash of motion they were gone, dragging into a residential building and condemned by a front door slammed shut. It wasn’t just the competitors being targeted, it seemed.

“This is vicious,” I said appreciatively. “They’re not even bothering to hide it.”

“Why would they?” Lefteris’s lips twisted, working over a bitter taste in his mouth. “They’re all doing the same thing. And they know none of the others will dare to interrupt the funeral rites. They’d be crippling themselves.”

So it was the elders conducting the funeral. I’d suspected it already, but having it confirmed was nice as well. A Tyrant seen off by Tyrants. A jealous affair, to be sure. I started walking towards the thinning miasma in the center of the agora.

Elissa caught me by the arm. Her hand gripped tightly around the laurel leaf crown I wore on my bicep, my own champion’s token from the farce my father had put on for me.

“What do you think you’re doing?” she asked in a quiet, deadly tone.

“Introducing myself to the wise men of the cult.” What else?

“Not now,” Kyno said. I cocked an eyebrow, but he only shook his head once, with solemn finality. “Interrupting a man’s funeral is cause for retribution. Interrupting a Tyrant’s…”

“If the heavens opened up for a second time tonight and struck you down where you stood, it would be a mercy,” Elissa promised me. How sweet. She was concerned about my health. As if sensing the thought in my head, she scoffed and shoved me away.

I smiled wryly, shrugging with twenty-two arms. “I’ll defer to my seniors.” I’d still do it if the opportunity presented itself, of course. I had nothing to fear from the heavens. If I was struck by tribulation lightning for my hubris, I would simply not die. “Are we to mourn while our fellow sophists are snatched out from under us, then? I have to admit, we handle the passing of friends differently in the Scarlet City.”

“The elders are the elders,” Kyno echoed Scythas’ sentiment from before. “The actions of others can have no impact on our duty tonight. No matter their standing.”

“A great man died,” Lefteris agreed, as if remembering. “The greatest I’ve ever known. To do anything less than mourn for the length of his eulogy would be to insult his epic.”

“You respected him quite a bit,” I observed.

“We respect him still,” Kyno firmly corrected me.

“Of course we do,” Elissa said, in that way of hers. Like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “He was one of us. One of the best of us. A breaker of chains.”

“Leader of men,” Lefteris added.

“Slayer of monsters,” Kyno murmured.

“Olympic Champion,” I realized. They each nodded.

“Epics like his can’t be told in a single story,” Lefteris said somberly. “Among heaven and earth, it’s common sense that men reign supreme over beasts. It’s even more obvious that cultivators reign supreme over lesser men. But the kyrios. The kyrios stood above us all. His very existence laid siege to the heights of Olympus Mons.”

I hummed. “But he failed.”

They didn’t react as I expected them to. There was no outrage, no You dare!?’s or You’re tempting the Fates!’, no blood spat. The flames in their eyes only dimmed, and their divinely sculpted bodies slumped every so slightly.

“He failed,” Kyno agreed.

Elissa looked bleakly up. “So what hope do we have?”

In the aftermath of a great man’s failure, while our fellow sophist’s were pilfered in the night by the grasping hands of greedy old Tyrants, we considered the legacy of the kyrios of the Raging Heaven Cult. A great man, who, in the end, had been only that.

A man.

1.10

The Son of Rome

If the chanting was any quieter than the funeral drums, it was impossible to tell. Eight voices carried as one from the center of the agora, at a volume that was difficult to believe. In all my life I’d only ever experienced a few things as loud as that concert of voices.

I couldn’t understand a word they were saying, of course. For all that my childhood mentor had taught me the smallest intricacies of Alikoan, he had neglected to mention that the Greek cities each had their own dominant language, and within each language its own varying dialects. Hadn’t cared to mention it, or maybe just hadn’t had the time.

Whatever was being said, it was compelling enough. Griffon, Scythas, and the new arrival in his cloak of crocodile skin watched raptly as the funeral rites progressed. Their eyes traced the coalescent form of a smoking hand, reaching perilously for the heavens. Their gazes were hungry and wanting - whatever was being said, and whatever the hand was meant to convey, they valued it far more highly then the scrap that had just taken place between Griffon and the scarred Heroine.

A citizen of Olympia, resplendent in his indigo tunic and precious stone jewelries, cringed away from me as I knelt down. His hands were pressed against his ears, leaking blood the same as my own. If I’d needed any further indicator that we were closer to this event than we had any right to be, the punishing volume of the funeral rites had been it.

I grabbed the man’s hands and pulled them away from his ears. There were tears in his eyes. He avoided my gaze shamefully. It was one thing to be struck down in a fight, but another altogether to be reduced to this by a simple drum beat. His family was beside him, his wife and two girls that couldn’t have been any older than Myron, crouched in similar states of shock and pain. The younger of the two girls was sobbing loudly while the other rocked back-and-forth on the balls of her feet, shaking her head as if to dislodge the noise from her skull.

“This isn’t the place for you,” I told him quietly. His eyes followed my lips but there was no comprehension there. Either he couldn’t read lips or he didn’t speak Alikoan. Regardless, there was a language that every man understood. I pulled him to his feet, nodding meaningfully to his daughters.

The noble-looking man grit his teeth and scrubbed his ears with sleeves of fine indigo cloth, clearing what blood from them that he could. Then he scooped his daughters up in his arms, shushing them and making for the thinner edges of the crowd. I picked his wife up, an arm under her knees while the other supported her neck. She was stiff in my arms.

The father looked back, and there was something tragic in that look. Outrage, disgust, and a terrible acceptance. The daughter that had been rocking back and forth saw me holding her mother, and she started to scream. It couldn’t be heard above the thunder of the funeral chants. Something told me that it wouldn’t have mattered anyway. The mother wept silent tears as she watched them go.

I had always known there was a difference between those who cultivated strength and those who did not. But seeing the gap in motion was always unpleasant. I watched the father tuck his daughter’s face against his shoulder so that she wouldn’t see what was happening to her mother. He walked faster still, away from the agora, stepping over other suffering citizens as he went.

This small family - merchants or politicians of some kind, not warriors of any renown - had shown up to attend what they thought was a simple state funeral. More likely than not they lived in the heart of the city already, and had walked out into the streets to observe with everyone else. It likely hadn’t been an intentional power-play on their part the way it had been for Griffon, coming this close. Yet even so, they had been swept up in the business of cultivators. Caught the wrong eye. And now they paid the price.

I followed swiftly after them. The father was terrified now. He had a hand on each of his daughters’ heads, pressing their faces firmly into his neck. He thought I was going to take one of his daughters, too. Perhaps even both. A cultivator’s appetite was insatiable, after all. His wife was shaking in my arms now, such was the force of her sobs.

I stopped and set her gently on her feet.

We were far enough now from the noise that I trusted them to make it out safely. Even the citizens of low cultivation had kept their feet at this distance. If and when the funeral drums returned, they’d be alright.

I inclined my head slightly to the father, and then to his wife. She was staring at me, frozen. As if a sudden movement would be the end of her.

“Take care,” I said, a warning in two parts. I turned and began retracing my steps, returning to my idiot companion and his gaggle of new friends.

With any luck they’d all be dead by the time I got back.

§

The drums returned. They melded seamlessly with the chants, a deafening dread coupling that assaulted the senses.

I’d stopped along the way to shepherd several other hapless citizens out of the immediate danger. Some had gratefully accepted the guidance. Others had been too wrapped up in their own senses to notice. Most, though, had reacted in the same vein as that first family. With tightly leashed fear of the cultivator whose whims could not be predicted or denied.

Unfortunately, Griffon and his friends were still there when I returned. The Heroine was back as well, and from the looks of it had tried to pick up where she’d left off with Griffon. For whatever reason, though, the hulking cultivator in the crocodile skin had decided to step in. He was currently holding her back with a massive forearm wrapped around her throat. It wasn’t a cruel hold, but try as she might she couldn't break out of it.

They'd even picked up a new addition. Standing on the opposite side of Griffon and Scythas, another of the Heroic cultivators that I had accidentally tagged with my awareness was staring up at the undulating cloud of torch smoke. He was whipcord lean, dressed in robes of fuchsia and ebony trim, with a bow as tall as he was slung diagonally over his shoulder. He was the spitting image of every bowman I had ever known in the legions.

The archer wore armor of nicked and faded bronze beneath his cult attire. The fine robes were worn almost as an afterthought, parted at the chest and only negligently belted around his waist. Worn because they needed to be, and for no other reason.

He didn’t seem aggressive, and as I approached he didn’t pay me any mind. He was riveted on the smoking silhouette that hung over the agora. As the chanting reached an apex, Griffon and the Heroic cultivators winced as one. Even the Heroine stopped struggling just long enough to grimace up at the sky.

“What are they saying?” I asked Griffon, moving up beside him and speaking directly into his ear.

He didn’t look away from the smoke. It had changed its shape at some point - it was no longer a hand reaching futilely up to heaven. It was a towering blade now, and its edge was ember flames.

Griffon‘s lips moved silently, but I read them easily enough.

“It’s a eulogy. These were his final moments.”

“How did he die?” I asked.

Griffon smiled wonderingly as the smoke changed shape one more time. A pair of smog-soot wings spread wide over the agora of the city of Olympia. Their feathers were ash and embers, and their wingspan stretched from horizon to horizon. They beat against the air once. The weight of tribulation fell upon my shoulders.

“He challenged the heavens."

A bolt of lightning fell from a clear night sky and struck down the apparition of smoke and flame.

Citizens, Philosophers, and Heroes alike all flinched back from the heavenly tribulation. I saw silent cries of disbelief and horror ripple through the masses. I was sure we were all thinking along the same lines.

Was the kyrios really dead? What was more absurd, a Tyrant faking his own death or the heavens taking offense to his funeral? What sort of man was so reviled by the Fates that they would spit on his eulogy?

There had only been one bolt of lightning, if such a thing could be considered in terms of “only”. The searing after-impression of light that it had left behind, burnt into my eyelids when I blinked, was the only evidence it had happened at all. Relative silence settled like a blanket over the agora.

Screams and curses were smothered as people realized that the funeral rites had stopped. No, not stopped. The drums were still beating, and the men were still chanting, but the chants were now murmurs and the drum beats were bare thrummings now.

In the ringing aftermath of the post-mortem tribulation, the Heroic cultivators surrounding Griffon and I seemed to suddenly remember why they’d gathered here in the first place. I met the challenging eyes of the archer in bronze and ruffled fuschia cloth. He looked me up and down, appraising me, but the tribulation had stolen most of the heat from the gesture.

“You're the one,” he spoke into the yawning silence. “Marking us all like that. Jerking us around like dogs. Either you’re an idiot or you’re out of your mind - why did you call me here?”

I appraised him the same way he’d appraised me, made a show of it, and then shrugged.

It was an impossible question to answer, because the truth was that it had been a mistake. But to admit that now was to admit to at least one hostile Heroic cultivator that Griffon and I were pretenders. That we really were exactly as we appeared to be. That was unacceptable. So instead, I took a page out of Griffon’s book and spoke the truth in the most disingenuous way possible.

“I wasn’t the one marking you,” I told the Heroic archer honestly. The smell of cypress smoke on his skin was faint now, but it was still there without a doubt. “I only made you aware of it.”

It was the right thing to say. The archer stared at me searchingly, and slowly paled when he found no deceit.

“What are you trying to say?” he asked. I didn’t respond. Somehow, I knew that silence was the best answer now.

“Who are you two?” The Heroine demanded.

“You don’t know?” Griffon asked her, as if it was the most natural thing in the world that she would.

“You’re from the Rosy Dawn,” the man in the crocodile skin said. Somehow, the atmosphere became even more tense.

It was understandable that they hadn’t noticed until now. The classic attire of the Rosy Dawn, the fine crimson and white robes that all initiates wore, had been thoroughly defiled by the time we came to shore in Olympia dock city. Griffon’s scarlet robes were torn and bloodied, and he had used parts of them to wrap the puncture wound to his gut that the little pirate boy had given him. The faded golden shawl he’d picked up about an hour ago only further confused his allegiance.

For my part, I’d long ago soiled my cult attire with the unpleasant duties of slave work. There were some stains that didn’t wash out, and I’d lost what little bargaining power I had within the cult when Griffon lost interest in me following the daylight games. A fresh set of robes hadn’t been an option for me, and I hadn’t cared enough to press the issue.

“You’re from the Broken Tide,” Griffon returned. The larger cultivator inclined his head in acknowledgment.

“After all this time, they finally send a competitor.” The archer fingered the string of his bow, frowning. It was glossy in the torch light. Spun gold, I realized. “And when they do, they sneak you in like thieves in the night. They douse your heart flames and smother your virtues.”

“Something stinks,” the Heroine said, a ferocious scowl on her lips. She tapped the large cultivator's forearm twice and he let her go. She flicked her pure bronze blade back through the loop on her belt. She wasn’t raring for a fight now, but she looked even less pleased than she had before.

Griffon shifted his stance, just slightly enough for his shoulder to bump mine. We shared a glance in the corners of our eyes, and it wasn’t difficult to guess what the other was thinking.

We’d passed the point of no return about three Heroic cultivators ago. The only way out now was through.

“You can’t possibly think they’re connected,” Scythas protested. For all the good it did. Scythas may have been our superior in cultivation, but he was the runt of this particular group. The looks the Heroine and the archer gave him only cemented it. “They wouldn’t move now, not so soon. There’s a limit to shamelessness!”

“Careful now,” the archer said, his tone an uncomfortable mix of airy and tense. “They have eyes and ears that we can’t perceive. Whether or not these two are involved, he said it himself. We’ve been marked.”

“They wouldn’t,” Scythas insisted. “Not now. Not while the body is still warm.”

Griffon realized something - I saw it in his face. I braced myself.

“The whims of tyrants aren’t moved by such petty concerns as propriety or filial duty,” he said blithely. The cultivators surrounding us flinched.

I tasted salt in the air. It coated my tongue, in the same manner as the cypress smoke.

Someone was watching us.

“You haven’t been here long, have you,” the cultivator in the crocodile skin said. It wasn’t a question.

“You won’t be for much longer,” the Heroine said. It wasn’t a threat.

“Is that so?” Griffon asked, pearl white teeth glinting in the low light of his cultivation technique. “What a shame. I think I’m starting to like it here.”

The taste of salt on my tongue doubled and redoubled. It became overwhelming, worse than any overseasoned ration that I’d been forced to eat in the legions. There was sudden movement in my peripheral vision. A flurry of motion on the western edge of the crowd nearest to the agora, by the alleys that wound through one of Olympia’s business districts.

“You’re tempting the Fates,” the archer promised us both. “Some things aren’t meant to be said.”

“Ho? I thought it was our providence to be reviled by the Fates?” Griffon planted a hand on his hip, the other bleeding palm still negligently resting on the pommel of his stolen sword. “Are you Heroes or not?”

“Enough of this,” Scythas snapped. He glared, first at Griffon, then at his fellow Heros. “The elders are the elders. This isn’t the time nor the place to guess at their motives. The kyrios is dead. Can we not set aside petty politics for a single night? In his memory?”

His resemblance to the young soldiers of the fifth, and the truly frustrated grief in his voice, made me hesitant to speak up. But I couldn’t ignore what I was seeing forever.

“It seems not,” I said. When he turned his glare on me, I flicked my eyes to the western edge of the crowd.

At the edge of the funeral, where the fringes of Philosophers and Citizens in low favor gathered, one of the presences I had noted earlier was being dragged into an alleyway by a pair of similarly monstrous existences.

A Hero was being kidnapped.

“Crows!” Scythas snarled. He took off sprinting through the crowd. His fellow cultivators made no move to follow, nor to stop him. A sensible choice. No wise man ran full tilt into an ambush.

Scythas raced into the alleyway and I followed at his heels.

I am who I am.

1.9

The Young Griffon

The thunder of funeral drums drowned out all else. Around us, men and women of lesser constitution cried out soundlessly, gripping their ears and collapsing in the streets. It was a pitiful sight. Idly, I dragged two fingers across my right ear, frowning when they came away bloody.

“This seems excessive,” I told Scythas. He looked at me like I was simple, waving his torch at his own ears and shaking his head. “What sort of worthless cultivator can’t read lips?” Scythas gestured at his ears again, frustrated.

A calloused, marble-white hand planted itself against my chest, and the woman I’d been in the process of greeting shoved me aside. I felt the stone of the street crack beneath my feet, Scythas sent staggering as I went skidding back. The cultivator walked right past us, mouthing something to Scythas. He couldn’t read lips, of course. But I could.

Out of my way, trash.

I couldn’t physically hear the crack of my pankration hand slapping her face, but my imagination filled in the gap.

The woman went deathly still, her face turned only a fraction to the side by a blow I had used to throw a pirate clean off his ship days prior. Scythas looked between us, leaning on his back foot and gripping his torch so tightly I could see the shaft of it splinter. The drums changed their cadence as if by my own design, rising to a kinetically charged pace. Boom, da-da, boom, da-da, boom da da da boom.

You dare? The woman mouthed. Something told me even if the drums were gone, it would have been impossible to hear her. It was that sort of deadly whisper.

The Heroine finally gave me her full attention. She was marred by deep scars, from her sandaled feet to the tips of her seemingly delicate fingers. They were a shade lighter than her skin, which itself was marble white, to the point that they looked nearly translucent. Each scar was a smooth line without any jagged edges. One, curving from the nape of her neck up to the bridge of her nose, was currently creased by a furious expression.

I felt danger as she advanced on me. Her eyes were the color of desert heat, an earthen shade approaching orange that was backlit by the flame of her soul. Her heroic spirit was raging.

I strode forward to meet her. She tried subduing me with her presence alone at first. Two of my pankration hands struck out at the eddies of her influence, parting them like a swimmer parted the waves. The fire in her eyes rose and her left hand settled on the pommel of a blade that hung naked at her hip, made entirely of bronze.

No, I spoke, silent beneath the drums. Furious desert-flame eyes read my lips. You dare. Laying your mongrel hand on me, as if you were worth the time it would take to kill you.

Her grip on her sword shifted. The hairs on the back of my neck rose.

You don’t know who I am, do you? she asked. As if it was the most natural thing in the world that I would. We were close now, at her preferred sword striking distance if I had to guess. I leaned in, staring her down. I whispered an oath in the mad thunder of the funeral drums.

You’re the woman who ruined my favorite shawl, I told her. You could break your back working for the rest of your miserable life and it wouldn’t amount to half this relic’s value.

The Heroine looked down at the golden shawl that an old woman had given me an hour ago. There was a small tear in the fabric where her nail had caught it while shoving me. She stared at it for a moment, and I felt the currents of her influence ripple around it, examining it.

It’s a rag, she said confidently. It only took her most of a minute to realize.

I sneered. You have eyes. Tell me, then, where is Olympus Mons?

I noticed Scythas backing away in my peripheral vision, his eddies pressing against me in a wordless warning. I shrugged it off as I had before. On the other hand, Sol’s influence was not so easily shaken - more a riptide than a current. I forced it away with a few hands of pankration intent. Obnoxious Roman, I could handle myself.

In the moment between drum beats, the Heroic cultivator drew her blade and lashed it at my face.

I caught it with nineteen overlapping hands of pankration intent, and even so it almost killed me. My eyes crossed, heart hammering in time with the funeral drums as I watched the bronze edge quiver just short of my nose. My pankration arms couldn’t be cut like true flesh, but the blade bit into my soul. I tasted the blood that hadn’t been spilled.

A flicker of something other than rage appeared in the Heroine’s expression. That same intense appraisal she’d focused on my shawl she now focused on me. She considered me, not withdrawing her blade or the force behind it. Her head tilted, chestnut ringlets of hair falling across her face.

Is this your limit? she mouthed, the ghost of a challenge.

Smiling, I slapped her with my twentieth pankration hand.

Several things happened at once.

All eight funeral drums boomed simultaneously, with powerful finality. Every torch in the agora flared up, from those held aloft like Scythas’ to those guttering out on the stone streets, having been dropped by the weaker attendants when the drums first started beating. Smoke and embers whirled into the air, flowing in streamers overhead to coalesce in the center of the agora, only a short sprint away from us. We’d gotten closer than I thought.

At the same time that every torch in Olympia gained second life, so did the fire in the Heroine’s eyes. That sense of danger doubled and redoubled, confirming what I’d suspected the moment she struck me with her blade. She had only been feeling me out before. Attempting to confirm or deny my standing among heaven and earth.

I’d performed well enough to throw it into question, and then I’d slapped her across the face and all but dared her to give me her best. And now she would do just that. It wasn’t the brightest thing I’d ever done. A wiser man would have ignored the perfect opening she’d presented and deescalated a violent situation with a clearly superior opponent.

I am who I am.

All twenty of my pankration hands fanned out in front of me, moving far too slow in comparison to the technique the Heroine was preparing. In the clarity of an instant, I knew that I wouldn’t be able to predict the trajectory of her attack quick enough to react with full force. I also knew that even if it was only as powerful as the first cursory blow, I wouldn’t be able to divert it with anything less than the full force of my pankration intent.

Unbidden, I remembered something my father had once told me. An offhand comment, made in that courtyard with its filial pools on an innocuous day of my childhood. I’d done something ill-advised again, though I couldn’t remember what it was now. In place of punishment, he’d passed on an old mentor’s words to me - like a curse.

There is no great genius without some touch of madness.

I lunged into the Heroine’s strike. Her sword, an uninterrupted blade of forged bronze, weaved effortlessly through my pankration hands. She tied knots in the air with a single strike that took less than a heartbeat, and this time when the blade found my face there were no pankration hands to stop it.

But I still had two more hands.

[The sun rises.]

Searing heat lashed through my right cheek. My true hands surged up, alive with the light of the sun, and struck the flat underside of the blade. In the dusk that precedes the dawn, with both hands ascending, the technique was nearly as powerful as it could be. It knocked the blade up off its trajectory, tearing it out of my cheek before it could do more than cosmetic damage.

The scarred Heroine easily compensated for the interruption, pivoting on her feet and bringing the blade back around-

[The dawn breaks.]

Twenty hands of pankration intent became visible to the naked eye as the light of the Rosy Dawn ignited along their edges. The Heroine’s eyes widened, desert-flame flickering as she transitioned into a defensive technique. All twenty rosy fists hammered into her from different angles, and all twenty were deflected by shimmering bronze.

The twenty-first hand, one of real flesh and blood, caught her sword as it whipped around. I grinned savagely when it only cut shallowly through the light of my technique into the flesh of my hand. I’d watched her move through her defensive sword form and picked the motion with the least stability, the least power behind it. For a cultivator of her standing, it was like predicting where a raindrop would fall. But I’d done it. And I’d been right.

I twisted at the waist and gave her the twenty-second palm.

The palm strike hit her in the center of her chest, sending her skidding back. Her feet dug furrows through the stone. Her teeth grit, realization in those desert-heat eyes. I’d given her first careless shove right back to her. Heroic pneuma rose. I inhaled deeply, blood thundering through my veins.

Sol struck her with Gravitas, and through the lens of my new Sophic sense it was like a tidal wave simply washed her away. She went flying through the crowd, howling a curse that I suddenly realized could be heard in the absence of the drums.

For a moment I didn’t move, frozen in my stance. I felt eyes on me, but not as many as there might have been. The drums had stopped, but most of the people around us were still dazed in their absence. Overeager Philosophers and arrogant Citizens who had flown too close to the sun huddled on the ground, hands clapped over their ears in agony. I straightened up, exhaling slowly. I felt good.

I threw Sol a sly grin as he walked over. He had that storm in his eyes, the one that meant something exciting was coming.

“I thought I’d have to twist your arm,” I told him, swiping a thumb across the cut on my cheek. It wasn’t deep enough to scar. Somehow that was disappointing. “But you’re starting the fights for me.”

“I’m not the one who slapped her,” he said, annoyed. His gaze was distant, focused on things I couldn’t see. “For this next one, there’s a new technique I want you to practice.”

“Ho? By all means, master. This lowly sophist is here to learn.”

“It’s an ancient virtue, passed down to me from my father, and to him from his father.”

Despite myself, I was interested.

“This one awaits your wisdom,” I said formally. Sol hummed, measuring his next words with that riptide gravity.

“It’s called diplomacy.”

I snorted, shoving him away from me. He glanced at me with storm-gray amusement, before focusing fully on the cultivator currently approaching us. The Hero wearing the crocodile. I flexed all twenty-two of my hands. The two flesh hands stung, bleeding slowly from shallow cuts. The twenty of my soul’s intent stung too, and I spat the taste of their blood from my mouth.

“You didn’t draw your sword,” Scythas muttered. He was looking out over the crowd, in the direction the Heroine had been sent flying, but the words were for me.

“Of course not,” I said, ignoring the fact that I’d almost died three times. I laid a bleeding palm on the pommel of my uncle’s blade. It hummed like lightning. “She wasn’t worthy.”

The giant of a Hero emerged from the crowd, stepping over a cringing family of cultivators all wearing matching indigo tunics and huddling away from the lingering echo of the drums. His skin was lightly tanned, but weathered. His jaw was square, chest broad and strong. His hair was nearly as dark as Sol’s, but longer and shaggier. He wore ocean blue robes beneath his crocodile cloak, bleached nearly white by the sun.

Unlike the Heroine, he made no move to attack. He considered Sol and I, and Scythas beside us.

“It’s rude to start fights during a funeral,” he finally said.

Sol and I shared a look. He mouthed ‘diplomacy’, as if I’d been the one to call them to us.

“Agreed,” I said, offering him a bloody hand. He took it. He was only about a head taller than Sol and I, but his hand dwarfed mine. And the strength of his grip matched the size. I matched him grip for grip, smiling cheerfully through the pain.

“My name is Griffon, and this is Sol. What’s yours, friend?”

A chant began in the center of the agora. The smoke and embers gathered there rose into the sky, taking the form of colossal fingers. An ashen hand reaching futilely up to heaven. The funeral entered a new phase.

Virtuous Sons 1.6

The Son of Rome

“You’re an observant one, Solus.”

“Thank you, uncle.”

“I wasn’t finished.”

“Sir.”

“A keen eye is a virtue, but only if you know where to look. What to look for. Some things won’t reveal themselves to wandering eyes. And some things reveal themselves only through the observation of others.”

“Sir?”

“If you want the truest measure of a man, observe the world when he dies.”

Gaius’ Triumph was a ludicrous thing. It was decadence and ecstasy made manifest, a marching adulation that wound through every street in the great city of Rome. Impossible to ignore, and who would want to? The city entire had turned out for the celebration. Music and cheers were abundant, military buglers and musicians of the citizenry achieving a miraculous synchronicity. As if the Muses themselves played through them.

My great-uncle’s pneuma swept through the streets in a flood, declaring his return to all who had eyes to see and inexplicably revitalizing those of us in his procession. We marched as tirelessly on Rome’s stone roads as we did the marshes and swamps of the western front. Legionnaires specially chosen for their valor in battle threw fistfuls of glimmering silver denarii into the crowds of plebs.

There were more riches, of course. Far more. Gaius had his best tribunes parading them through the streets, precious metals and jewels the size of a man’s clenched fist, enough to fill cart upon cart to their furthest limits.

Triumphs were already events that every Roman, from pleb to patrician, anticipated as much as any holiday. They were city-wide celebrations that lasted long into the night, awarded only to those that shed the light of the Republic on shadowed lands.

A man could bask in the adulation of the great city only if he first added to its borders. Made it greater than it had been before.

Today, Gaius celebrated his fourth Triumph in as many days.

“We know the men we lead,” Gaius said. He sat tall on his personal mount and nodded graciously to the masses. A chariot was traditional, but the general of the western front had opted for his warhorse. “It’s the least that can be expected of us- to know their names, who they are in their hearts. They’re the blade, after all. How can victory be possible if you don’t know what’s sheathed at your hip?”

Walking beside my great-uncle’s horse, at his hip, I considered the question. Rhetorical as always.

“You’ll acquire this skill in time,” he said to me. Not an assurance but a fact, as if he could speak it into being. Maybe he could. “For now, observe what happens when a good man dies.”

Gaius whistled a high and clear note, and the triumphal banners rose.

The vast sounds of the crowd rose higher as depictions of our efforts in the west were proudly presented on eagle-topped standards. Centurions of Gaius’ favored legion carried them with stern faces, but their eyes were aglow.

Four sets of banners to match four days of triumph. On the first day, the battles for the Gallic lands had flown to riotous applause. On the second, the conquest of the savage Britons and their miserable island. Third, the bloodied snow plains of northern Germania.

Gaius paraded a toppled king around the city each day, one for every nation. They were warriors that could alone crush armies of lesser men with little effort, yet they weathered insults from patricians and plebs alike. They were spat upon by men that they could have killed with a cold snort, if not for the shackles around their wrists. And at the end of each day they were beheaded to resounding applause.

Today, though, there were no kings to mock. When the banners rose to depict the fourth and final triumph of the general of the western front, the rising tide was not of adulation.

The people of Rome cried out in anguish.

My wife’s fingers tightened around mine. She pressed herself against my side as citizens and freedmen shouted. Hollered. Wept. An old woman up on her terrace wailed, clawing at her own wrinkled face as if to draw it away from the many banners.

I looked back at the leading banner, most gruesome by far. It was the first time I’d seen it. I knew at once what it was depicting, the news that my great-uncle had received with such fury out in the field.

In shades of cinnabar and vermilion, the Young Wolf tore out his innards while his son and servants fought him.

“The people of Rome know that I alone command the western legions,” Gaius said, as if we were still sitting around the sand table in his command tent. “They know that I am more powerful than they could ever hope to be. My opinion of them matters. My status is a beast they can not afford to provoke. And yet.”

The people of Rome called out against Gaius.

“This is the legacy of a good man,” he said, cool gray eyes sweeping over the citizens of the Republic as they grieved. There were many banners today. “It doesn’t yield. Doesn’t cower. Among heaven and earth, his character is undeniable.”

A memory. My great-uncle, hunched over his sand table. A papyrus missive crushed in his fist.

I grudge you your death, as you would have grudged me your life.

“Why celebrate it at all?” I asked quietly. My wife looked fearfully at me, her grip on my hand crushing. It was madness to question the tyrant of the west.

“The first three days were celebrations,” he said. His eyes were horribly old. “Today is a statement.”

I looked upon a Republic in mourning. Understanding came, and with it dread. The people of Rome cried out in despair for their fallen sons. But they did not rise.

“You can be a good man, nephew,” he offered me. My jaw clenched.

“Or I can lead them.”

Gaius nodded.

“Never both.”

§

“Something’s wrong,” Griffon mused. He strode barefoot through streets littered with pulverized stone and all manner of detritus, one hand propped on the pommel of his stolen blade and the other swaying at his side.

It was an egregious understatement. The outer limits of Olympia were a ruin, homes and roads torn up and scattered to the four winds as if by a furious god. As we ventured further in, closer to that distant mountain with its perpetual storm, the damage slowly diminished. It was more to do with the quality of the architecture than anything else, though. The closer we drew to the heart of Olympia, the better her homes and monuments had been able to weather the apparent disaster.

Yet even as devastated slums gave way to battered residential districts, and then to smooth streets of baked scarlet clay, we hardly saw another soul. There were vagrants, yes. Urchins and slaves as well. But citizens were few and far between, and the few we did see rushed out ahead of us with torches and wrapped bundles in their arms.

“It’s fresh,” Griffon continued, scarlet eyes roving over the shadowed ruins. “But the atmosphere is all wrong. The citizens are in a rush while the mongrels are loitering.”

I flexed my right hand, near the naked blade I’d stolen from a pirate. It was an ugly, ill-wrought weapon, without even a sheath to house it. It was all I had for the moment.

“The free cities don’t hold standing armies,” I said quietly. “They conscript their citizens when they go to war.”

“Not likely.” Griffon frowned, tilting his head as if a different angle would reveal the answer to him. “Olympia is the nexus of the free Mediterranean, a sanctuary state. Any city that decided to wage war with her would be torn apart by seven sets of teeth before they breached her walls.”

Light bloomed in his swaying palm, the rosy fingers of dawn illuminating the path ahead. I tracked a female citizen’s path as she leapt off her terrace, three floors up, and landed adroitly on the red stone road. She was dressed in fine indigo robes and had a wrapped bundle in her arms. She spared us a quick glance before turning and rushing down the street. Her sandals clattered with every step.

“It’s not panic.” The stragglers were in a rush, but not frenzied. “They have somewhere to be.”

“The whole city?” Griffon asked. “At this hour?”

“Maybe the Raging Heaven is conducting its rites,” I suggested.

Griffon scoffed. “Don’t be absurd.”

“Absurd?” I echoed in disbelief. “Your father pulled a star from the sky, and you think a hurricane is absurd?”

“Onto his own cult, yes. He didn’t level the whole fucking city.”

I grunted, acknowledging the point.

We continued on, and the closer we got to the heart of the city the grander its architecture became. Theaters, bathhouses, and all manner of grand residential estates abounded. Signs of calamity abounded, but the buildings themselves had weathered the storm without issue. And still the streets were empty of citizens.

It wasn’t until we saw the torch light that I finally understood. It was a distant glow at first, hardly brighter than the light in Griffon’s palm, but as we drew closer it grew larger and brighter. It became a sea, bobbing waves of torch flame streaming into the city’s central pavilion. Thousands upon thousands of citizens gathered in the agora as the moon peered through the storm clouds wreathing the Raging Heaven’s mountain.

Eerie silence gave way to cries. To shouts. To mournful chants. And I understood.

“This is a funeral,” I said. Griffon’s eyes widened as he made the connection.

My mentor had taught me about death as the Greeks understood it. When a man died his vital essence left him in his final breath. One last gasp, easily missed. This principle held true for cultivators just the same. But the scale differed. Cultivation makes a man more of what he already is. It enhances everything he does, for better or for worse.

Olympia hadn’t been attacked. It had suffered a natural disaster, but not in the traditional sense. The truth was written on every weeping face, and in every wrapped offering. The people of Olympia, cultivators from every corner of the Mediterranean, gathered in the battered agora to pay their respects.

A tyrant had died.

Virtuous Sons 1.3

The Young Griffon

Twenty arms of pankration intent pulled me from the sea, a crawling mass of grasping hands heaving me up and over the bow of the encroaching ship. I spat sea water and raked a hand through my soaked hair, surveying the deck.

The galley was a shallow thing, hardly fit for trade - a proper trireme would have dwarfed it. Even the Eos was a bit larger. It was a vessel built for speed and agility over deep waters and shallow coastlines both. A beautiful racing girl, despite her ragged sails and sparse oars. Her keel had been lashed by rough strokes of white and blue paints, and up at the front I could see her figurehead. No woman or beast. Just a single grasping hand.

A shout went up and down the deck as my presence was noticed. There were ten men at the oars, five on each side, and all of them twisted and jerked on their benches at the sight of me. There was a pitiful mix of terror and hope on their grubby faces as they tried to get away. They couldn’t move far, unfortunately. They’d been shackled to their oars.

The slavers in charge of the vessel pounded down the deck towards me. I leapt fully onto it, rolling my neck and striding forward to meet them. The wings of my pneuma unfurled, blanketing the vessel.

The Eos was still a distant blot on the horizon. It was only just barely possible to make out the silhouette of a man crouching on the ship’s figurehead.

The Eos dipped sharply, rocking in the water, and the man was gone.

“Well now, this is hardly fair,” I said, spreading my arms wide. “I don’t even have a blade!” Indeed, my late uncle’s sword was still in its sheath back on my cousin’s ship. I was utterly defenseless before these sea thieves.

The pirate that had been closest when I boarded the vessel growled a curse in a language not my own, a curved kopis in his right hand and a braided lash in his left. He cracked the whip in an effort to disorient me, the edge of the cord kissing my nose, and swept in with his sword.

The backs of twenty palms struck his cheek at one moment, throwing him spinning into the ocean.

“Have any of you been to Olympia recently?” I asked, continuing forward while the rest of the pirates staggered to a stop. They eyed me warily. “I’m on my way to visit and I want to make the most of it. Any suggestions?”

Unfortunately for me, they didn’t get a chance to respond. A shadow passed over the ship in that instant, and two of the pirates looked up just in time to be smashed flat against the deck of a falling Roman. The slave galley rocked as Sol discharged his virtuous technique at the point of impact, arresting his momentum and driving the two hapless pirates cleanly through the wood. He stood, rolling his shoulders.

“My uncle said that two things were universal when it came to pirates,” Sol said, holding out an empty hand. His virtue called and a blade leapt to his palm, courtesy of one of the thieves he’d just flattened. “They cheat at dice no matter what, and hunger endlessly above their station. One is a symptom of the other. The punishment for both is the same.”

“You kill people for cheating at dice?” I asked, confused.

“No. We crucify them.”

The deck groaned and cracked beneath the weight of a gravity that had not been there before. The remaining slavers, seven strong and armed to the teeth, fell to their knees. The slaves slumped over their oars, unable to bring any pneuma to bear in defense against the Roman’s virtue. Their eyes rolled wildly in their heads.

“You crucify people,” I repeated. “For cheating at dice.”

One of the pirates spoke furiously, struggling to raise his head.

Sol frowned. “What did he say?”

“Just bring your own dice and they can’t cheat,” I reasoned.

“They said that?”

“No, I said-”

Hngh.

I looked down, surprised, at the bolt protruding from my stomach. Where had that come from? I touched it experimentally, wincing at the sharp stab of pain it invoked. It was real. I heard seven slavers roar and lurch across the deck at Sol, hoping to overwhelm the lone cultivator while I was stunned. I squinted at the bolt. It had entered through my back.

Behind me, a loose plank slid near soundlessly back into place. I inhaled, eyes rolling back into my head. Ow. Twenty hands of pankration intent smashed through the deck of the ship, pulling a thrashing young boy from underneath. He wiggled like a fish, fruitlessly trying to kick and bite the arms of my soul. He was small, around Myron’s age if I had to guess, and he was clutching the most bizarre bow I’d ever seen.

I pressed him to the deck and slapped his face twenty times with my pankration intent, leaving him stunned. I took the bow in my hand, and when he lurched up with it like a barnacle I gave him another twenty slaps. He fell back, clutching his face and moaning. I laid a kick into his ass for good measure, inspecting his weapon.

It was a bow and yet it was not. It had been mounted to a shaft, and at the shaft’s end there was a curved brace with wooden handles on either side. The string was attached to a sliding mechanism which the brace at the end of the handle was used to prime. I recognized the design. This was the first time I’d ever seen such a thing in person, though. It was a crude, inefficient weapon for a cultivator. The Rosy Dawn cult had no need for such a thing.

Though it clearly had its uses. I tossed it into the sea, ignoring the boy’s protesting cry, and reached behind my back. I snapped the back of the shaft, took another breath, and pulled the arrow out from the front in one swift motion.

The boy shrieked as my pankration arms rained slaps upon his face.

Wood shattered and the ship rolled dangerously beneath my feet, doing wonderful things to my wound. Worthless Roman. If you wanted to sink the ship, you should have just done so to begin with. I stalked across the deck, catching a pirate with pankration arms as he hurtled through the air and planting him through the boards next to the other two.

Sol was either taking his time or was atrociously bad at fighting on a moving ship. He wielded the pirate’s unfamiliar blade with admirable dexterity, parrying and casting aside multiple blades at once, but his opponents were wily on the deck. They moved between the shackled oarsmen, striking only with short, weaselly chops and stabs.

They were all too susceptible to the Roman’s virtue, but so was the ship.

“It occurs to me-” I paused, coughing blood. Embarrassing. I seized a man that was inching towards Sol’s blind spot and hurled him bodily over the ship’s rail. “We never asked these men what their intentions were, or if they were even targeting the Eos to begin with. For all we know they’re perfectly friendly slavers.”

“Beardless boy whore!” One of the pirates spat in their vile language, lashing a whip at me. I caught it around my own flesh and blood arm, rolling my wrist and gripping it tight. The pirate had the good sense to let go when I yanked back, but it didn’t do him much good. I whipped him with the handle’s end and shattered his teeth, sending him tumbling into the lap of an oarsman.

I rolled my eyes. “Never mind.”

We wrapped the rest of them up in short order, and Sol promptly started breaking chains. I reclined on a bench, eyeing our captives. The man I’d thrown overboard had clambered his way back onto the ship and been swiftly pummeled into submission, and I’d caught the red-haired boy before he could jump off the ship in turn. It wasn’t hard to guess his intent. He’d been diving in the direction of the Eos, the cheeky wretch.

The rest of our captives were either fully unconscious or near enough to it. I kept them in the corner of my eye anyway- I’d already been given a kiss for my hubris. I wasn’t eager for another.

“Who gave you that, by the way?” Sol asked, nodding to my wound. I’d tied the excess cloth hanging around my waist about it, stymieing the worst of the bleeding. A little salt water to cleanse it and I’d be healthy and whole tomorrow. My robes, though…

The pirate child flailed as I laid a dozen pankration slaps across his face. At this point his cheeks were about as red as his hair.

“A boy?” Sol asked. His lips twitched.

“A gastraphetes,” I corrected him sourly. “The boy just happened to be holding it. He was hiding under the deck.”

“I see,” he said, taking another set of chains in hand and snapping apart the links. His expression was stoic. I saw the mirth in his eyes, though. “Bad luck, I suppose.” I snorted, fighting my own smile.

When the last of the slaves were set loose, Sol crossed his arms and looked to me. I raised an eyebrow.

“I don’t speak their language.”

“And what do you want me to say to them?” I asked, curious. We’d broken the back of the slaving crew, and likely consigned them to death by releasing the oarsmen they’d been whipping like bulls for who knew how long. As far as I was concerned, the work was done. Our path to Olympia was clear once more.

Sol looked over the assembled oarsmen. They bowed their heads as his eyes fell upon them, murmuring thanks and prayers in a different tongue than the slavers had been using.

“Tell them where we’re going. Ask if they’d like to come.”

“I’m not taking my throne apart,” I informed him. “They’ll have to stand.” Sol rolled his eyes, waving me on. I obliged, raising my voice in their tongue. “Hear me, slaves. My brother and I sail for Olympia. Which of you dogs wants to be free?”

Ten men were added to our number, and one struggling boy pirate. We left the slavers with their ship- they wouldn’t be rowing after us anytime soon. As we swam the distance between the slave galley and the Eos, my captive spluttering and cursing as my pankration arms dunked him beneath the waves more than was strictly necessary, I addressed the Roman swimming beside me.

“Over dice?”

1.2 [Nikolas Aetos]

Slayer of monsters.

It was a title he’d been given the day he ascended, a title most cultivators within the Heroic Realm received, sooner or later. A natural consequence of the lives they lived. He took pride in it, as he knew his wife and their companions did. The life of a hero was fraught with dangers, both internal and external, but that was what made it so rewarding.

Celebrating success was important. It wasn’t always the case that the monsters lost, after all. He’d seen that particular reality for himself. Lived it, since he was a boy.

There were some monsters that even heroes couldn’t slay.

Damon Aetos stood in the gaping entry to his office. His door had been kicked cleanly off its hinges. The force of the conflict that had taken place in the hall had carried through the open entry, shattering the dining couch and table entirely. The contents of the wall-carved shelves were scattered around the room - some had been blown clear off the terrace, into the central pavilion outside.

The Tyrant of the Rosy Dawn stepped into his office and righted his desk. It had been thrown up against the back wall, but unlike the other furniture it had weathered the blow. Lacking a proper seat, he leaned back against it, arms crossed.

“Enter.”

Niko entered the ruined office with his bride at his side, a bracing hand on the small of her back. She was tense, understandably so. The initiation rites were an interesting experience, even to a cultivator of her stature, and the mystery at the bottom of the eastern mountain range baffled the mind no matter where you stood among heaven and earth. Niko had wondered, as they descended, whether it would be different now that he’d reached the same realm as his aunts and uncles, if there would be any greater clarity. But no. It had been just the same.

Then they’d exited the mountain, reeling from the mystery of the bisected corpse of the fallen sun god, and found the cult in chaos. It hadn’t been hard to guess who was behind it.

Niko’s stomach sank as his cousins slunk into the office like beaten dogs. They had the marks to match their posture, too. Bruises, split lips, and black eyes abounded. The entire right side of Heron’s face was already darkening into an ugly purple bruise, leftover from a vicious backhand. Poor Rena’s left eye was almost entirely swollen shut. Castor gingerly cradled a broken wrist, and Myron walked with a noticeable limp.

Lydia was the worst by far. She had escaped with the least physical damage, but her expression was haunting. She looked utterly lost. As the five of them knelt in front of the kyrios, she was the only one who didn’t look shamefully at the floor. She stared straight ahead.

“What happened here?” Damon asked. His voice was level. Iphys inhaled quietly, circulating her pneuma. Niko shook his head. She glanced at him, hesitated, but released it.

If it came to that, it wouldn’t matter anyway.

“I saw Lio leave the pavilion,” Myron said. The other three cousins that were paying attention to conversation visibly relaxed. “He’d been acting strange since Niko arrived, so I followed him. He went looking for Sol-”

“Sol?” Damon interrupted. Myron swallowed.

“The slave, uncle. The one that Lio sponsored for initiation.”

“Why do you know this slave by name?” Damon asked.

“We used to spend time together, the three of us,” Myron admitted.

“And why were you spending time with a slave?” It was asked with no particular inflection. Even so, the dread it invoked was palpable. Heron grit his teeth, warring with himself, but he was beaten to the punch before he could speak up on his younger brother’s behalf.

By Myron himself. “He’s skilled, uncle. I tried to ambush him when we first met and I couldn’t touch him, even in chains. He’s wise, too. He and Lio helped me get through my bottleneck over the summer. And… Lio acted like he used to, when he was with Sol. It was fun.”

Not for the first time since returning home, Niko marveled at the boy his youngest cousin had become in just a few short years. Only nine years old and already facing challenges that his elder cousins balked at. He was growing at a prodigious rate, and it was clear that it hadn’t gone to his head. Though perhaps there had been another hand involved in that.

“I see,” Damon said. His nephews and nieces waited nervously. “Continue.”

Myron exhaled. “He went looking for Sol. When he found him, he broke his manacles. I asked what they were doing, and he said…”

“Olympia,” Lydia murmured. “He said he was going to Olympia.”

Myron nodded miserably. “I should have tried to talk him down, at least stall for time until the rites finished, but I panicked. I went and found Lydia and then we split up to get the others. I found Castor and Rena while she went after Heron. By the time we joined back up they’d already made it here.”

“So you tried to fight him,” Damon stated. Nods. He hummed. “Elders, a moment.”

Five honored philosophers of the Rosy Dawn entered the kyrios’ office with what dignity they could. For all that they dwarfed Niko’s cousins in rank of cultivation, they had been savaged far worse in the escape. Three of them, philosophers Niko had not personally known before he departed from the cult, were covered in the inflamed red skin of coming bruises. The fourth was cradling a broken jaw. He was a younger man that Niko remembered vaguely as being a senior of his back when he was a mystiko. Was it Dymus? Pollio, maybe?

The fifth philosopher was a man Niko knew all too well. Old Chersis, the uncharitable. The most infamously surly tutor that every young pillar of the Rosy Dawn had to suffer at some time or another. Niko had been the first to receive his wisdom, and it had not been a pleasant experience for either of them. Before he’d left, Lio and Lydia had just started their lessons with the old philosopher.

He supposed the broken nose summed up Lio’s opinion of his tutor rather succinctly.

“Who did this to you?” Damon asked the wise men of the cult.

Niko liked to think of himself as a virtuous man, on his good days at least, and his wedding day was better than most. Still, there was a not insignificant part of him that enjoyed every single moment of old Chersis struggling to explain how the little lion of the Rosy Dawn had thrashed him not once, but twice in the span of an hour. There was some pride there as well. It was a complicated feeling.

When the story was fully told by all those involved, Damon closed his eyes in silent deliberation. Tense moments passed. He sighed.

“In summation, my son defeated the five of you alone and unarmed, simultaneously,” he said, addressing the children. “Then,” he continued, “He made a mockery of the elders that this cult holds in such high regard, that are showered with resources and renown in exchange for their competence and wisdom. Not once. But twice.”

“Lord Damon,” Chersis protested. “I did not expect him to do something so...”

“Bold,” Niko offered. His old tutor looked sharply at him.

“Cheeky. I did not expect the son of the kyrios to so brassly strike at his own tutor. The second occasion, he was not alone.”

“Ah, yes,” Damon said. “The slave.”

“He was no ordinary slave, Lord Damon,” one of the horrifically bruised philosophers insisted. “His pneuma was in the Sophic Realm at least, and his virtue was incredibly potent-”

“Potent?”

Ah, there it was.

The tyrant’s fist.

Niko held his bride firmly to him, lest she crumple to her knees beneath the weight of Damon Aetos’ pneuma. She reached back and grabbed his hand tightly. Her eyes were wide and intent, the way they always were before a fight, but her grip was white-knuckled with panic. Iphys was strong enough to know just how far beyond them the kyrios of the Rosy Dawn cult was. It was an all too familiar feeling for Niko.

“The slave’s virtue was too potent for you,” Damon repeated. “And those bruises, those were his work as well? He did that to you with his spear?”

“No, Lord Damon,” the unfortunate philosopher said through grit teeth. His head bowed, as surely as the sun set, before the kyrios’ pressure.

“Who, then?”

“The Young Aristocrat,” Old Chersis bit out. “It was a joint attack between them.”

“I believe I’ve heard enough excuses,” Damon said quietly. The philosophers shut their mouths and awaited judgement, and in that moment they looked little different from the children kneeling on the floor. “Return to your estates. Do not leave them for any reason until I’ve come for you myself. And, if you so choose, take this time to contemplate tonight’s events.”

His smile was an executioner’s blade. “It might be wise.”

The philosophers fled the room, and the tyrant pulled back his fist. Niko inhaled slowly, marveling at the sudden lack of pressure. How long had it been since a cultivator’s sheer presence had driven his soul into such a corner like that? How long had it been since anything, monster or man, had filled him with such unshakeable dread?

Since he’d first ascended to the Heroic Realm, Niko had been walking on glass. He was still acclimating to the changes in his tripartite soul, still worried even when interacting with his cousins who were all deep into the Civic Realm. They still felt like baby birds in his hands. He couldn’t trust himself to rough house with them like he used to, let alone truly spar. He’d become far too strong in too short a time.

Was that how a tyrant felt, to look at a hero? At what point did the entire world feel as if it was made of glass?

“Nikolas.” Niko straightened. There was something in his uncle’s eye. “I’m sorry. He took your father’s sword.” Iphys looked back at him, concerned. She knew the story, of course. He’d told her.

“I see,” he rasped.

“That impudent child,” came a voice from the hall. The twin eagles of the Rosy Dawn and their wives entered the office. Niko’s aunts went to their children at once, raising their faces and checking them for serious or disfiguring injury. Stavros Aetos placed a hand atop Heron’s head, his expression a storm as he locked eyes with his brother. “We warned you for years. Years, Damon! How many times has that boy spit on the name of the Rosy Dawn while you sat back and watched him fondly? How many times has he shirked his duties as heir? And now this?”

Damon’s eyes narrowed. “You want to do this now?”

“He took Iskander’s blade.” Fotios Aetos stood beside his brother, rigid with outrage. “He beat our children like dogs and discarded my daughter three months before their marriage! We’re doing it now!”

“What would you have me do?”

“I want him disowned!” Fotios snapped. Niko had never seen him so furious. Watching Aunt Chryse attempt to console Lydia, still slumped on the marble floor, he found it hard to hold it against his uncle.

“Never,” Damon said immediately. Fotios’ expression darkened, and Niko wondered if this was the day he’d see a tyrant fight. But Stavros clamped a hand on his brother’s shoulder, stopping him before he could say something he wouldn’t be able to take back.

“Disinherited, then,” Stavros said. When Damon didn’t immediately respond, he went on, “Look at our children, brother. Look at what your son has given them in return for their love. A kyrios’ hands didn’t leave those marks. This isn’t justice.”

Damon stared at his younger brother for a long moment.

“Chryse. Raisa. Take the children, please.”

Niko’s aunts looked worriedly between their husbands and their brother-in-law, but ultimately complied. Niko whispered assurances to his cousins as they passed, squeezing Rena’s shoulder and pulling Castor into a quick one-armed hug. Then it was only the pillars and them. Niko decided that was still two too many, and quietly ushered Iphys towards the door.

“Stay.”

He looked back, confusion and a low dread in his gut. “Uncle?”

“My brothers demanded we do this now, so we will.” Damon said. And then, simply, as if observing the weather, he declared, “As of now, my son is disinherited. I have no other children, so the burden of the kyrios falls to the next best candidate among my nephews and nieces.”

The dread rose.

“What does that have to do with me?” Niko asked, though he already knew.

Damon smiled faintly. “Congratulations, nephew.”

Niko looked to his other two uncles for help. Both of them had sons, surely they’d rather one of them take on the role? But no, while Stavros and Fotios were both scowling ferociously at the blatant snub, when they met his eyes they only nodded in agreement. No, no, no. He didn’t want their blessing! He didn’t want this!

In that moment, he understood perfectly what his little cousin had been feeling. And he decided he was going to do exactly the same thing about it. As soon as his uncles entered their closed door cultivation, he was going to jump in his ship and sail far, far-

“Niko!” Philon shouted, his voice carrying from outside. The fastest of their companions leapt up and through the gaping hole in the eastern wall of the Aetos estate, sliding down the hall in the blink of an eye and catching himself roughly on the door frame. He was heaving for breath, his eyes wild. The heroic cultivator held up a length of severed rope.

“They took the Eos.”

Son of a bitch.