1.124 [Nikolas Aetos]

The Stark Blade, Nikolas Aetos

Somehow, even now, the image that appeared when Niko called to mind his cousins was a single night from years ago. The night they’d carved their refuge out of the eastern mountain range had been a warm one, the full moon and its chorus of stars burning bright over their heads.

It was Niko that did the bulk of the work, though Lio carved out more than his fair share and the rest of them chipped away as much as they could. When all was said and done they had a cavern of their own making, just large enough to fit the seven of them and a low burning fire. He remembered the exhausted satisfaction on each of their faces, their expressions glowing in that first fire’s light.

They had told each other stories – grand tragicomedies that they’d all heard before but never tired of retelling, stories of lessons they’d learned from their mentors within the Rosy Dawn Cult, and eventually, mundane stories of their time apart from each other.

He remembered Lio’s excitement that night, carefully controlled to the point that Niko was the only one that noticed it, and he remembered how his cousin’s scarlet eyes had shone when it was his time to speak. He hadn’t wasted a moment on preamble.

“Today, I did this.”

And to the astonishment of all of his cousins, the Young Aristocrat had drawn upon his pneuma and in an instant shaped it to his will. Six rosy hands had appeared in the smoke above the night fire, each one distinct from his own flesh and blood limbs.

Niko had been approaching the peak of the Sophic Realm at that point, but he’d been every bit as shocked as their younger cousins. More so, perhaps, because he’d been learned enough to fully appreciate the Young Aristocrat’s feat.

It was impressive enough that he’d been able to manifest anything at his age and level of refinement, but then Niko had achieved much the same in his own time as a Civic cultivator. No, what made it exceptional was what he had manifested. Not a sword of his intent, as Niko and so many others favored. Not a hammer or an axe or even a spear. He’d manifested hands.

Their younger cousins hadn’t understood how incredible that was then. Niko wouldn’t be surprised if they still didn’t fully grasp it today. The issue with manifesting intent, and the reason why every cultivator under the sun didn’t go around plucking whatever tool or weapon they happened to need from thin air, was because it required more than just control. For a cultivator to project Sword Intent, to shape their vital breath and condense it into a corporeal blade, they had to understand just what it was they were creating – and to what end.

Swordsmithing was an art as much as it was a craft, and Niko had seen for himself the wondrous little complexities that went into the creation of a quality blade. That being said, a sword was simple. A blade was even more so. Swords, daggers, hammers and axes and spears, the most commonly seen manifestations of refined intent, were common because of their simplicity. The more complex the working, the more difficult it was to manifest. Adding a hilt to a naked blade and making a sword of it, for example, made the venture twice as difficult.

There were twenty-seven bones in a human hand alone. Each one connected by joints and ligaments, strips of muscles and flesh functioning in staggering synchronicity. Manifesting just one would have been an outrageous feat.

Watching little Lio manipulate six hands of his intent as naturally as he would his own, striking at the rising smoke with clenched fists and snatching grapple motions, Niko hadn’t said a word. Yet despite that, regardless of the fact that he was silent while Myron and Heron whooped and tried to catch the floating hands, while Castor clapped and Rena cried out in wonder, and while little Lydia laughed in pure joy for her favorite cousin – in spite of all that, Niko knew he was by far the one most impressed by the accomplishment.

Lio had known it, too. He’d tried to smirk when they locked eyes across the fire, but a child prodigy was still a child in the end. When he’d seen Niko’s honest wonder, the smirk had given way to a toothy smile. His eyes had burned with satisfaction, with pride, and with renewed determination.

That was the image of his cousins that Niko kept closest in his heart. When he told stories of them it was the rosy glow of that night fire lighting up his mind’s eye. When he missed them it was their laughter and their joy that he recalled. When he thought of the Young Aristocrat, it was Lio’s smile winning out. Satisfaction overturning arrogance.

Nikolas Aetos had spent his years abroad flourishing and changing as a man, growing into his own and making his mark on the world outside his uncle’s island. Fool that he was, he’d decided somewhere along the way that he was the only one changing. He’d come home expecting to see those very same faces gathered around the fire. Older, to be sure, some of them closer to adults than children, but unchanged in all the ways that mattered.

Prodigy of prodigies they called him. Yet no matter how many times he was proven wrong, he just couldn’t make this lesson stick. What kind of prodigy couldn’t recognize what was right in front of his face? What sort of man didn’t take the time to know his own family?

No man at all.

Niko stood in the knee-high water of a pavilion fountain that had been scattered rubble just a few moments before, as distantly aware of his wife’s grip on his arm as he was the mayhem on the mountain, and stared blankly at a stranger wearing his little cousin’s face.

“My fault? My fault!?” Heron raged, still breathless and soaking wet from his dash into the Ionian. “You gave him free reign for months! You let him skip his lessons, turned away while he ran wild in the gymnasium, indulged him while he did anything and everything he wanted, and yet it’s my fault–”

“He’s your brother!” Stavros Aetos shouted, blue eyes blazing as he strained against the courtyard’s stone guardians that were holding him in place. The stone statues of past Heroes were unmoved, bolstered by a far greater force standing silent nearby. “Your younger brother. You should have taken action!”

“Months.” Heron stalked up and down the perimeter of the fountain, fists clenching and unclenching impotently. “You let him retrace all of Lio’s steps for months, and now you act like he’s been stolen. As if this could have gone any other way.”

He was nearly a man himself now, sixteen years old, and had grown half a hand taller just in the months that Niko had been home. He took after his father – and Uncle Fotios by proxy – more visibly every day. He’d grown into his frame, his Rosy Dawn silks clinging to him where they’d hung free before. He’d shed the boyhood fat in his cheeks to reveal a strong jaw that changed his demeanor entirely. His brow, too. He’d always had a heavy brow, but it was more pronounced these days. Or perhaps he simply glowered more.

Niko looked closer, searching for that boy who had regarded Lio’s rosy hands of dawn with such wonder. The young Heron that had looked up to Niko and Lio with unmarred admiration throughout their upbringing.

Niko’s eyes were sharper now than they’d ever been before. How was it, then, that he couldn’t see the faintest hint of that boy in his cousin’s face?

“He’s only ten years old, Heron.” Aunt Raisa’s burning eyes were pinched, her voice shaky with fear for her younger son and rage against the stone statues that held her back from sprinting into the sea. Still, she mastered herself as best she could. “If your eyes saw what ours couldn’t, why didn’t you say something?”

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Heron gnashed his teeth and looked away, and for the first time since they’d emerged from the heart of the mountain, Niko locked eyes with his younger cousin. The accusation in his eyes made Niko’s stomach clench.

“What was I supposed to say?” Heron finally said, turning back to his parents. “My younger brother by six years has surpassed me in cultivation, flown by as if he had wings, and you haven’t looked at me the same way since.”

“That’s not-” Raisa began. Stavros didn’t let her finish.

“This isn’t about you.”

“What could I have said?” Heron snapped. “Tell me the words that would have convinced you I was concerned for my brother and not resentful of his climb! Show me the action I should have taken against a child two ranks above me – too stubborn to listen and too quick for me to catch. Should I have wrapped him up in his sheets while he was sleeping? Beaten him ‘til he saw sense?”

“Heron!”

“What? That’s the way, isn’t it-”

“Enough,” spoke the kyrios of the Rosy Dawn, and it was like a spell had been broken. Niko blinked, perplexed, and tore his eyes away from his cousin to take in the state of the pavilion.

He saw that Uncle Fotios and Aunt Chryse hadn’t moved from the spot they’d been in when they received the news about Lydia. Uncle Damon had stopped them himself, gripping them each by the shoulder and forcing them to their knees in the ruined pool. Though the water bubbled and steamed beneath them, nothing else came of their wrath. The kyrios had smothered the worst of it at once.

Niko carefully pried Iphys’ fingers away from his arm, one at a time, and clasped their hands together instead. Glancing back, he saw that the rest of their companions were still with them, though they all looked like they’d rather have been anywhere else.

Iphys and their companions were proud Heroic souls in their own rights, but the twin eagles and their wives were Captains of the Heroic Realm. They’d spent weeks down in the mountain training and breaking bread together, sharing stories in the quiet moments that lingered between cultivation. Niko’s companions had grown comfortable with them, as he’d hoped they would, but perhaps too much so in the end. His wife and his friends had forgotten what his family was.

Their anger had reminded them.

“You knew,” Fotios spoke, glaring up at his eldest brother. Damon stared down at him, expression level. “You knew that this would happen-”

“Could happen.”