1.113

The Young Griffon

Violence told a story.

The Young Aristocrat of the Raging Heaven Cult stepped into my octagon of swords and immediately moved to end the fight. He didn’t bother shedding his twice-bronzed silks – naturally, he didn’t need a naked fighter’s mobility to beat me. He didn’t wait for my word or the word of a third party to start the match – of course, I’d forfeited all courtesies when I treated him as my lesser. And most importantly, he didn’t present his wrists to be clapped in iron chains, as was the standard for Heroes playing in the pit – it went without saying that I wouldn’t be able to push him to the point that he’d draw upon his pneuma, even out of reflex.

The Hero struck first and with finality, making a statement through action alone that everyone in the pit could understand. It was a gesture I was more than happy to match, especially with regards to the chains.

Not for all the treasures of Heaven and Earth, not for a single frozen moment, would I ever be a willing slave again.

Alazon was from the brazen Coast, a city lauded in times of war for the valor of its fighting sons. He was a legendary Hero on top of that, grander than any mortal man could be. But that did not mean he was grand in all things. It should have. It should have meant that he was larger than life, glorious in every sense of the word, in every aspect of himself.

But here we were.

My fellow Young Aristocrat lunged straight for me with his right hand outstretched, faster than mortal eyes could track, and grasped nothing but the open air.

“Wrong!” I admonished him sharply, finishing my pivot right and laying a vicious kick into the side of his leading knee. The Hero’s breath hitched, caught just before he could call upon his pneuma, and his leg went out from under him without that bracing strength.

In an instant, the dull curiosity of the athletes in the pit was sharpened to a cutting edge. Alazon turned his fall forward into a graceful roll and came back to his feet as if we’d choreographed the exchange together, but his alacrity alone was not enough to change the truth of it. He’d tried to end this before it was begun and save himself the shameful hassle, but he’d failed.

Now his peers were moving from their spots. Gathering around in naked interest to see the spectacle unfold. To see the story told.

The upstart cracked his neck and rolled his shoulders, while the Olympic athlete across from him slapped sand out of his silk robes.

“You’re not fast enough for that,” I informed him, and moved a bare moment before he did. Ducking low and to the right, I avoided the blur of a leaping roundhouse kick that would have shattered my skull and seized him by the back of his bronzed attire. I planted my feet and pulled him out of his trajectory. “You’re not fast enough to be fast alone!”

He thrashed free just before I could bury him, spinning sideways in the air and landing in a crouch just within the octagon’s northernmost boundary. His eyes were wide, his heart incredulous.

There came an appreciative whistle. Alazon twitched and glanced back at a lithe and ruggedly built man with umber flames in his eyes, leaning with both hands on the pommel of one of my boundary blades and watching us with naked interest. Our first Heroic spectator, though assuredly not our last.

Only then did Alazon accept my challenge in full. His eyes hardened, and in their cold light I saw more than just the promise of a broken ego. I saw my death, and the death of the humble orator as well.

Unfortunately, that wasn’t a story I had any interest in being told.

The Hero took two bounding steps across the octagon and into my reach, lashing out with a straight right jab and feinting a left hook when I leaned away from it. I stepped into it, caught it on my forearm and struck him once in his kidney. It was like striking a brick with my bare fist. He exhaled sharply, forced himself not to bring to bear his pneuma when he sucked a new breath in, and in that moment of conscious restraint I struck him twice again in the liver and then the gut.

Alazon lurched back to make space and I planted a foot on the trailing hem of his cult attire. It didn’t make him stumble, but the sound of ripping silk and the sight of his attire unraveling halfway from his frame may have been worse. A Heroine off to our right guffawed, and another three competitors traded amused grins as they crowded in around the octagon.

“The Fleet Foot, Alazon.”

I addressed him by his title carved in stone. I knew it not because I’d asked around, but because I’d memorized every name worth knowing on the cult’s stairway to heaven. I’d found him there on the twenty-second step.

“Young Aristocrat of the Brazen Aegis – or at least, Young Aristocrat of her humble colony faction here in Olympia. I’m curious. Who taught you how to fight?”

My opponent spat at my feet and rushed in with bright eyes blazing.

His next three blows were cautious, his footwork lighter as he moved. The jabs were weak enough because of it that I could catch them on my raised arms and only suffer the pain of future bruises. I raised my knee at the same time that he raised his and smiled through the lightning-white lance of pain when they collided. Alazon snarled a curse and hopped sideways, flexing the offended limb.

“This brazen inexperience.” Off to my left, a Hero in a golden loincloth groaned at the pun. “Tell me who’s to blame for it!”

“Enough of barking dogs!” The Fleet Foot Hero snapped.

He closed the gap again and again he was rebuffed. He swung each clenched fist with more punishing force than the mightiest unawoken man could produce with a hammer and two hands. His legs moved him faster than a mundane horse could run without any active pneuma to bolster him, nearly as fast as I could move with all the swiftness granted by my vital breath. And neither fact mattered, because he didn’t know how to fight.

Oh, he thought he did. And perhaps by the standards of the common man it was so. His form was clean enough, and a swift body with strength behind it made up for much in most situations. If this had been a fight at our fullest strengths I would have been at a ruinous disadvantage. Yet here in my octagon, what was any of it worth?

“A family from the Coast and a place of prominence in the Raging Heaven Cult. The question isn’t if you were taught, but by who,” I reasoned, striding around the perimeter of the octagon and accepting the jibes and nudges of the athletes gathering in to watch. Alazon’s eyes followed me calculatingly. “Who did you the disservice-?”

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He exploded across the octagon just as I was passing Chilon. By the time the Obol Orator had begun to cry out a warning, I had already begun shifting my feet in the sand. I ducked his haymaker and lunged up into him, wrapping my arms in a bear hug around his torso and taking his momentum for myself. He kneed me frantically while he tried to escape the hold, but it was too late.

Spinning on my heel, I fell back and slammed him into the sand. The Hero’s breath exploded out of him. Our little crowd hollered and rained insults down upon the fallen aristocrat. In the distance, yet more Olympic athletes turned curiously our way.

I rolled sideways and away from Alazon while he gagged. Three times he’d kneed me while I was pulling him from the air to plant him in the earth, and three times he’d broken bone. Pacing again with my back straight, I ignored the urge to hunch over my battered ribs and instead filled the wheeling channels inside me with air. Not that I’d do anything with it. Not yet.

“Tell me who failed you,” I demanded. “Give me their name!”