0.9 [The Rites Pt.1]

The mysteries. Greater or lesser, they were the foundation of enlightened society as the Mediterranean knew it. The phenomena that eluded all explanation and drove men to maddening heights of cultivation in pursuit of an explanation. No man, no matter how sublime his cultivation, had ever found a satisfying answer to even the least of the divine mysteries. They were the questions that had plagued humanity for as long as there were written histories.

But we pursued them anyway. It was our hubris that drove us. Our fundamental audacity, that we could look upon the deepest complexities of creation and decide that they were within our understanding. To be incensed that there were things in this life that were not already known to our collective conscious.

Cultivators were nothing more and nothing less than stargazers reaching desperately up to heaven, trying to catch divinity in our hands. It was the only way to part the cosmic veil. The only way to know.

What lay at the peak of Olympus Mons wasn’t something mortal eyes could see.

We stole the new initiates from their rooms as the moon fell out of the sky, covering their heads with leather sacks and coaxing them down the far side of the mountain range. More than a few panicked, stumbled, even tripped and fell. A senior mystiko was always close by to catch them, though they received an earful for the trouble.

It was a chaotic process, meant to disrupt and disorient the new blood. Several mystikos carried drums that they pounded as the new initiates staggered past, and a low chant was carried from the peak of the mountain all the way down to the harvesting fields. The chaos centered them. Forced them to focus on the rites, here and now, and not whatever delusions of renown they had been dreaming of after passing the qualification trials.

We walked them down the mountains and through the fields, until the smell of soil and livestock gave way to the salty tang of the Ionian Sea. A line of fire stood out on the beach, senior initiates patiently waiting with torches in hand and clay jugs filled to the brim with seawater. Their eyes were bright, underscored with scarlet paint.

I dumped Sol into the sand, rolling my shoulder while he cursed. One of the senior initiates approached us, walking out of the ocean shallows and offering me their torch. I accepted it, kicking the back of Sol’s knee when he tried to rise. He snarled another curse.

The senior mystiko, a man a few years older than me with scarlet-painted hair, hesitated. His eyes locked onto the manacles around Sol’s wrists, the severed halves of the chain that had connected them coiling in the sand. He looked askance at me.

“Why is the morning tide sacred?” I asked him. His expression firmed.

“Because it is the first to greet the dawn,” he said, and tore the leather sack off of Sol’s head.

The irritated Roman hardly had time to blink before the senior’s jug of salt water was upended over his head. He coughed and spat, shaking seawater from his eyes.

“Son of a-”

“Repeat after me-”

“- whore.”

“Repeat after me!” the senior initiate snapped. “I have fasted.” Sol glared at him.

“Say the words, slave,” I ordered him. “I didn’t carry you down that mountain for nothing.”

“I have fasted.”

“I have drunk the kykeon,” the senior initiate continued, procuring an animal skin from the folds of his ceremonial attire and holding it out. Sol considered it dubiously. I sighed, plucking it from the mystiko’s hand and taking a long pull from its contents. The spirit wine was sweet and potent, heavily spiced.

I tossed it Sol’s way and he reluctantly drank the rest. His pupils dilated.

“I have drunk the kykeon.”

“Then prepare to greet the dawn,” the mystiko intoned, and led us into the sea.

A man’s first experience with spirit wine was always a memorable one. Doubly so if he had the mixed fortune of experiencing it during the rites.

Sol knelt in warm waves, transfixed, along with all the other new initiates as the scarlet sun breached the far horizon. He’d drunk all but the impure lees at the bottom of the wine skin, and I knew from experience that his every essence was alive in this moment, his pneuma coursing through his veins in a way he had never felt before. It was a powerful resonance even to the most undeveloped of cultivators.

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For someone on his level it was something truly profound. It was a shame about the manacles. I could only imagine how infuriating it must have been to feel his pneuma in such a state, begging to be unleashed, and having no way to reach it.

The dawn broke fully through the waves. The rites had begun.

“What makes you think I want to join your cult?” Sol asked, later, as juniors and seniors alike hiked back up the mountain. Rising clear-eyed with the dawn. His pupils were still dilated but he had shaken off the haze that came with overindulgence of the spirits. He was lucid enough to sneer.

“What makes you think you have a choice?” I countered. “Be thankful. It’s by my grace alone that you’ll witness one of heaven’s greatest mysteries.”