1.111

The Son of Rome

The day that we boarded the Eos and set sail for distant Thracia, Griffon and I had been of one mind. It was the Gadfly’s intent to keep us busy – to keep us safe from ourselves and the higher powers we had provoked with our unkind marauding. Mostly, it was to get us out of his sight. Griffon and I had understood that, and we had afforded that sentiment about as much respect as it deserved.

We’ll do it all at once. That had been our silent agreement, spoken through the ravens in our shadows. At first I’d disagreed with him, but the return of the Eos and her irreverent sea dogs had convinced me. Leveraging the experiences of our ship’s worldly crew, as well as our Heroic companions’ connections, we would travel the Free Mediterranean and the greater boundaries beyond as outlined in the Gadfly’s map. We’d walk in-step the same path that Bakkhos had walked before us, and we would discover as he had discovered the reagents to divine sustenance.

That had been the plan. And then, on our very first stop, we had been afforded a glimpse at the Tyrant Riot’s true nature – the company that he had kept, the foundation that he had established, and the virtue at his core. Griffon and I, and to an indirect degree Selene and Scythas, had each drank from the Mad Tyrant’s cup and suffered a portion of his mania.

We had been humbled, each in our own ways. The decision to turn back to Olympia after all had been grudgingly made, but there was too much we didn’t know. There were too many mysteries to solve them all in a bare handful of weeks, and Griffon was still as adamant as he’d ever been about being in the Half-Step City when the Olympic Games began.

So we had returned.

And the Gadfly had betrayed us.

Now here I stood, trapped beneath the immortal storm crown that hung over Kaukoso Mons. Entangled by the infernal web of the Raging Heaven Cult’s politics. An unwitting, unqualified participant in a great city’s conflict of succession.

Again.

Stranded though I was beneath the storm, I wasn’t entirely deafened. As surely as the breeze, Sorea carried the words I couldn’t say to the cultivators that needed to hear them and delivered each of their responses faithfully back to me.

Solus,

The road to Lacedaemon is long and treacherous with Spartans – I’ve never seen so many Infernal sons in my life, and I think I was a happier person for it. This morning alone I’ve seen three separate exchanges of “discourse” between scholars of this rusted mystery faith, and two of the three ended in death. The third would have as well, had I not stepped in to save the losing party’s life.

Would you believe that the miserable wretch had the audacity to spit on my silks and accuse me of obstructing his refinement? These dogs would rather die than be humbled even one single time. I swear to you, it took every drop of temperance within me not to stomp his fool head through the earth. These roads are bad enough, though, and he’d already been mauled so savagely that a kiss on the cheek might have killed him – let alone a kiss from my boot.

Anyway. Your eagle is giving me an ugly look, so I’ll get to the point.

I’ve searched these mountains and their valleys and paced up and down the city’s coasts. I’ve learned just shy of nothing and found even less. There are an endless number of merchants ready and willing to sell me wine along with its various reagents, and a disappointing proportion of them are just as willing to lie to my face and claim that they have the key to nectar itself hidden in their moth-bitten bags. But there are vanishingly few who actually knew of Bakkhos and his exploits here, and none at all who knew him personally as far as I’ve found.

I’m sorry, Solus. If it was Naxos I’d have found the damned reagent already. Maybe… if you sent Scythas south my way, along with Sorea, I could guide him through the Isles. Even if I can’t be on the ship myself-

At any rate, I’m just outside of Krokos now. I’ll wait here until the eagle comes back.

Might do some hunting in the meantime. I haven’t found any thousand year old grapes, but there are more virtuous beasts skulking around these roads than there are men with sense. Just yesterday a traveling metic swore to me on his father’s ashes that he’d seen a feral stallion break a brown bear’s back and eat its beating heart. I’d be lying if I told you I wasn’t interested in seeing a creature like that with my own two eyes.

Hope all is well on your end. Take care.

Jason

I skimmed it once, quickly, and then combed through the missive line-by-line a second time while Sorea tucked his head under his wings in the darkness of my cave dwelling and went to sleep. He deserved it, with the miles I was putting him through.

After my fourth pass through Jason’s letter, I sighed and stood.

The cave that Socrates called his own was only a stone’s throw away from the dwelling I’d claimed in Lefteris’ absence. Close enough to see the whites of his eyes if he was standing at the mouth of his cave and I at mine. In any other case but this one, I would have struggled to believe that the Heroic archer could have lived this close to another cultivator for so many months without having even the faintest inkling of his presence. But the Gadfly had mentored the Broad, who had in turn mentored Aristotle – and I had more than enough experience with my old master’s anonymous wanderings to know that it was all too easy to overlook a real philosopher when they had no intention of being known.

Trodding heavily up the mountain path to the Gadfly’s hidden cavern home, I considered my options once again. Each letter returned by the Heroic souls Griffon and I had entangled ourselves with had been another option crossed off my list. Each letter returned was another dead end, every journey a marker on the map wasted.

With Scythas and Bakhur, we had been able to find our mark even in the vast borderless lands of savage Thracia. It had been my hope that given a bit more time to make up for the lack of extra hands, Jason and Anastasia could have managed the same success in the other parts of the free Mediterranean that the Gadfly intended to banish us to. It had been a naive hope, but I had hoped for it nonetheless. And when two of Griffon’s three had returned my letters with their reluctant support etched into the papyrus, that hope had doubled and redoubled again.

But a passing familiarity with the late kyrios could only take them so far. Each of our Heroic companions had known Bakkhos just as well as Scythas, all of them in their own ways, but unlike Scythas they hadn’t had any idea what they were looking for. They’d traveled far and wide, burned days and weeks they’d all have rather spent training for the Games, and they’d found nothing for it in the end.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

There were four golden markers on the central landmass of the free Mediterranean, and so I had sent four Heroic cultivators to scour them for the components of divine nectar.

Jason had gone to the marker furthest south – the free-city of Krokos in the land of Lacedaemon, home to the Infernal Frenzy Cult. He had found nothing there but a cult full of restless soldiers with no one but themselves to cut their teeth on, and a countryside crawling with virtuous beasts.

Elissa had gone east over mountains Boeon to the closest marker relative to Olympia, the city-state of Levanta. A fruitless trip. Kyno had ventured further south and close to home, combing through the city of Paleta just north of The Coast. A wasted endeavor. And finally, Anastasia had gone north along the western coast as far as one could go without crossing into Macedonian soil, traversing the uninhabited breakers in search of that vaguely labeled Aornum. And what had she found?

Nothing. All of them, nothing.

Because of who?

“You,” I spoke, and the word rebounded with heat off the cavern walls.

The man known as the Scholar exhaled slowly and opened one eye, staring at me upside down like a bat. Balancing on the bald portion of his skull with his legs crossed above him like he were sitting on air, he looked about as ridiculous as an old man could look. But he was as heavily muscled as he’d ever been, and he was mended enough from his encounter with Polyzalus that he’d been able to remove his linen bandages without bleeding out on the cave floor.