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.

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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.