1.132

The Son of Rome

The first instant nearly killed us.

Polyzalus was the Rein-Holder, and he had proven that epithet well-earned when Dymas confronted him. Unspoken, yet plainly implied, was the fact that a charioteer only needed one hand to hold his reins. The other hand carried his whip.

Stripped of half his dominion and challenged in his own throne of power, the Tyrant still moved faster than any of his peers. I didn’t need to look back to feel the dread heat of his rising hatred. I could feel it on my back and in my tripartite soul, a burning brand that marked us all for death.

I called upon Gravitas for the second time that day, slapping us out of the sky as the Rein-Holder’s first whip cracked. I heard Selene gasp behind us as the captain’s virtue knocked the wind out of her. For her, that was the extent of it. For Griffon and I, my virtue flung us at a diagonal as it had Selene, and then it slammed us straight down as the Fifth’s displeasure made itself known.

The burning whip struck the city of Olympia and cut deep, drawing a molten line through the city that carried on into the horizon further than my eyes could see. The proximity heat and the blow back alone would have turned our bones to shrapnel and pulped our insides if not for our refinement. I knew immediately that we were not the only ones marked by its passing. How many had been fragile citizens? How many hadn’t been cultivators at all?

In less than a second, the First Son to Burn had killed hundreds of Olympia’s denizens. Perhaps thousands. All for a parting shot that he hadn’t even made the effort to properly aim. The reason for that was obvious enough – we survived that first strike only because he was already turning from us as he cast it out. The rest of his focus and his strength had been reserved for his peers.

Griffon and I plummeted straight down into the outskirts of Olympia, Selene soared over our heads, and the elders of the Raging Heaven Cult attacked as one.

Or at least, attacked at the same time.

I had spoken to four Tyrants in their mountain kingdoms during my stint as the Raven. From those encounters, and from my subsequent visits, I had gleaned the surface level implications of their power. Surprisingly enough, those direct encounters hadn’t been the only opportunities I’d had to gather information on them. Day in and day out, I had been hounded by lesser initiates of the Raging Heaven Cult’s various factions, and I had discovered something that I should have known already from my time in the legions.

Whether it was a commanding officer or an ancient king, subordinates loved to gossip. They bragged to me about their own elders, seeking to gain my favor on their behalf, and they disparaged the elders of every other faction towards that same end. They talked and talked and kept on talking, as was the way of Greeks – and patricians, if I was being honest with myself. Similarly, most of their words amounted to nothing in the end. But not all.

Each of the eight Tyrants acted faster than I could ever hope to track, levying techniques whose origins were as incomprehensible to me as the bisected corpse of the fallen sun god. Despite that, when things went awry at the moment of their joining, I had some idea as to why.

Their own words and simple common sense would have led anyone to believe the first strike would be seven against one. In reality, the alliance broke down the moment it was formed.

Drakon of the Broken Tide was a monstrous man, ancient even by the standards of his peers, and the members of the Broken Tide Cult had boasted more than once that Tyrants cultivated in pursuit of standards that he had set over half a millennia ago. The man known to his citizens as both Judge and Jury had sworn to me on the River Styx that he would stand against Polyzalus, if and when the time came. His first act just barely stayed true to that vow.

The grim lawmaker immediately sought to expand his domain, casting out a framework of imposed rule that echoed Socrates’ gossamer web of rhetoric, but writ far larger. The act threatened Polyzalus, to be sure, but it threatened the other six just as much. Everything caught inside his framework suffered a portion of what every citizen suffered within a Tyrant’s domain – the loss of their own soul’s agency.

Somehow, by means I still didn’t understand, Drakon could do this without challenging another Tyrant’s domain directly. He could bind them without fear of retribution, because for some reason they had no voice in the discussion. It was obvious enough why any Tyrant would be named Judge, but this ability was why the Broken Tide’s elder was called the Jury.

I hadn’t received an offer to enter the domain of the Brazen Aegis’ elder, but I had heard enough to understand why Solon pivoted before the first whip had cracked and locked horns with the Coast’s old Judge and Jury. The specifics of their clash were entirely lost on me – you lack context – but the effect was clear enough. Drakon’s framework lurched in place, ebbing and flowing like the tides, but never quite managing to fully encompass the mountain.

Midas and Ptolemy moved in accordance to their word, and each of them warped the world around them in their passing. The king of Alabaster Isles turned everything he touched to gold, including the dread essence of his rivals. Polyzalus met him with dozens of the same whips that had carved a trench in the world from horizon-to-horizon, and each of them turned to molten gold as they struck the king, melting to his skin in accordance with his will and forming armor that thrummed with Polyzalus’ stolen strength.

Ptolemy’s domain was something I still couldn’t intuitively grasp. Ptolemy the Savior was a Macedonian born and raised, and had ruled in Egypt when the Conqueror cast him off. He was as foreign to the Greeks as the Greeks were to me, and so all that I could understand of the glimpse my senses gave me was the fact that his hollow domain consumed everything it touched. Polyzalus cast hundreds of whips into his face, and in their hundreds they vanished without a trace.

Had that been the extent of it, the clash may have been decided then and there. Unfortunately, the moment the two kings had turned their backs, the king of the Spartans and the queen of the Amazons attacked their supposed allies without hesitation.

The Savior’s hollow domain unmade the Spartan king’s spear the moment it touched his skin, but Leonidas of Infernal Frenzies only roared and willed three hundred rust-bitten spears into that same empty space. Ptolemy’s bizarre domain ate those too, but it couldn’t get through them all before Leonidas ran him through.

Simultaneously, Thalestris of the Blind Maiden Cult loomed large in her domain and levied a bow the size of a ship at Midas’ back. She closed her eyes as she drew its colossal string back, and from her living flesh a near perfect copy of the queen rose, shining silver-bright and carrying a bow of her own. The copy aimed an arrow of pure onyx straight up.

Both visions of the Amazon queen loosed their arrows simultaneously. One struck Midas in the back and erupted as a golden arrowhead out through his chest. The other flew with no apparent target into the skies above.

The silver-bright queen’s arrow found its mark and the setting sun vanished, plunging the city of Olympia into starry night.

Distracted by treachery and forced aside, the task of Polyzalus’ execution fell to the first bitter king to join my alliance. The king of seers leapt entirely from his domain and dropped a screaming hurricane on Polyzalus’ head. Alone thought he was against the First Son to Burn, it still would have ended there. Selene’s father was weakened, his attention had been split between his enemies, and Aleuas Pyrrhos struck him with the full might of his concentrated rage at my betrayal and his hatred for his rivals. It was enough, just barely.

“Why?”

Or it would have been, had the Gadfly not tripped him up.

I crashed through the sloped stone roof of an art house, and the rest of the opening exchange was lost to me while I tumbled.

I tore myself free of a weaver’s half-made tapestry while shockwaves rocked Kaukoso Mons above, casting around for Griffon and finding him in a similar state of entanglement. I ripped away threads that he could have burnt to ashes with casual effort, grabbing him by the shoulders and shaking him roughly.

“Griffon. Griffon! You have to move.” If he heard me at all, I couldn’t see it in his eyes. They were glassy and unfocused. He stared at his bloody hands and the knife they were holding like they belonged to someone else entirely. I slapped him hard across the cheek and it did nothing but make his right ear bleed.

Seconds after our landing, Selene descended a stone’s throw further down the street. She was calling out for us as she fell, desperate and at her limit in more ways than one. I caught her in the middle of my stride, tucking her under my left arm while she choked and caught her breath.

I spoke before she could demand an answer I didn’t have to give her. Where are we going? What are we going to do? How can this be salvaged? There was nothing I could say to those.

No answers, and not a single moment to find one.

“Take him,” I told her. She reeled, and I cursed every second lost while she gathered herself.

“Take-?” Her eyes flickered, and her expression twisted when she caught sight of Griffon on my other side. Given hours and Orpheus’ own guidance, I couldn’t have identified half the emotions in her heart then, let alone untangled them from one another.

“Why?” She finally asked after entirely too long. “Did he break something?”

“He’s in shock.” The arm that Selene was not tucked under held Griffon up as best as I could while running at full speed through an erupting warzone. I wasn’t dragging his full weight, but I wasn’t far from it either. His legs worked listlessly, moving on pure physical instinct and stumbling as often as not.

“Help me,” I entreated the daughter of the late Scarlet Oracle – the girl whose mother I had just helped take away. The taste of bile and the Fifth’s phantom scorn momentarily overwhelmed the oppressive smoke in the air. I forced it back down into its depths. “Please.”

Selene’s heart flames flickered between Griffon and I, steam from vaporized tears trailing in her wake. She clenched her eyes shut, shuttering the light, and inhaled a trembling breath. What came over her then was as profound as any oracle’s majesty. For a girl of only sixteen years, maybe more so.

“Very well,” she whispered. Her eyes opened, and her scarlet glare burned with her heart’s resolve.

I heaved both of them forward as hard as I could. Selene twisted with a dancer’s grace and slipped underneath Griffon’s arm, slinging it across her shoulders like a yoke and steadying him with one hand on his wrist and the other around his waist. When their feet touched the road she took off without missing a beat, carrying forward the momentum of my toss into a swift run.

Thus unburdened, I surged past them and pulled my celestial spear from my shadow. There was no time to convey my gratitude properly. No time to do anything at all but seek safer shores.

“Follow me,” I told her, Prometheus’ golden ichor pounding a steady drum beat against my channels. “I’ll clear a path forward.”

Some things were easier said than done. Others couldn’t be done at all. I gripped my bronze armament tight and forced that thought aside. I had no room for it.

The Sanctuary City of Olympia had been battered and bruised the night Griffon and I fled the Rosy Dawn, wounded on the surface and also deep within its heart by the passing of the Tyrant Riot. Mastercraft architects and the tireless efforts of thousands had mended the surface level damage in the months that followed, rebuilding homes and repairing broken roads at close to a legion’s pace. Unfortunately, their restoration had only ever been skin deep. The rot within the heart had been left to fester and spread, more disastrous by far, and now it unmade all their efforts.

We fled as fast as we could, but it wasn’t nearly fast enough to outpace the cataclysm of eight Tyrants clashing. Towering architectural monuments flew apart like they’d been struck by a giant’s hammer, man-made rivers and fountain pools boiled over like neglected cooking pots, and the very earth heaved and lurched like some horrible serpent was writhing just underneath the city. Every construct of flesh and blood that wasn’t already a corpse screamed and begged for salvation not forthcoming – men, women, children, and even the livestock and pets. None were spared.

I struck the flying shrapnel from the air with my spear and rushed through heaving streets like a sailor lost at sea. All the while, my mind raced out ahead of me.

Each option was bleaker than the one that came before it. Turn back, fight to topple them all, and die. Turn back, fight to preserve my alliance, and die. Turn back to save Socrates. Turn back to save our companions. Turn back to save the innocents on the mountain. Fight. Die.

With the setting sun shot out of the sky, and the city’s hearths scattered or buried beneath the rubble of blasted out homes, the greatest sources of light besides the stars were the echoes of warring Tyrants. Lights of myriad color and intensity flared behind us without end, byproducts of elders sinking fang and claw into one another with an intensity not meant for mortal frames. The molten scar left behind by Polyzalus’ first whip crack glowed a sullen blood-orange, throwing off light and sulfurous heat while it grew steadily wider, steadily consuming everything in its close proximity. The last and greatest source of light, of course, came from the Heroes.

I heard Selene gasp behind me as lightning briefly lit up the night sky. It fell without warning, thunder, or passing clouds, descending not from the mountain’s storm crown but from the clear skies over the Olympic stadium. Lights like hundreds of blazing torches shone through the gaps in the spiraling tiers of statue columns that made up the Olympic Stadium’s outer walls. Those lights were soon joined by the physical sensation of glory and the rising volume of a heavenly chorus.

Lightning struck again, three times in quick succession. Then, only moments later, five more times in a tighter grouping. The light reached higher with every bleak bolt, and each time the heavenly chorus gained more voices. Heroic cultivators that had gathered in the hundreds to compete for the title of Champion ascended one by one in response to the madness, and for a moment I felt hope.

But only for a moment. The Olympic stadium loomed large ahead of us, growing larger as we sprinted towards it. The closer we got the more confused I became. The lightning didn’t lie, and neither did the chorus – the athletes in the stadium were advancing, just as the Butcher had advanced. Yet I saw no Heroes flinging themselves up to Kaukoso Mons in opposition to cruel reality. Through the gaps in the stadium walls, I only saw…

Each other? Selene mouthed in silent disbelief as I pivoted on my heel and sprinted away from the stadium.

I hadn’t seen any Heroes leaving the stadium because I had been looking up. There were plenty leaving, sure enough, but they weren’t taking the fight to the Tyrants above. They spilled out of the stadium like bees from a kicked hive, powerful pneuma radiating from their souls as they took off in every direction. Some rode on the backs of virtuous beasts, some tapped into movement techniques or camouflage and vanished from my senses, and more still simply ran at breakneck speed. As they left, lightning continued to strike inside of the stadium.

For reasons that I suspected but hoped I was wrong about, the chain-breakers and monster-slayers remaining in the Olympic Stadium had turned on one another. They were tearing each other apart, and the victors were advancing in their multitudes – only to then be torn down by the next competitor in line.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

Some of the cultivators running away may have been taking the fight to the Tyrants on Kaukoso Mons. Some of the cultivators fighting in the pit may have stayed behind to protect their peers from the predation of would-be gladiators. I didn’t wait to find out.

Turn back to the mountain, fight, and die. Carry on to the stadium, fight, and die. Flee east, flee north, flee south. Fight. Fight. Fight.

Die.

Die.

“Die a captain’s death!”

There was no path forward. My mind raced in search of something, anything that could light our way, but all it found was salt and ash. In place of paths forward, I found a thousand-thousand golden roads fanning out behind me.

Every hollowed out home, every crumpled up corpse, every shining light of a Hero’s misused glory – each of them was a path I could have taken. Each miserable tragedy and all of the city’s most contemptible cowards were elements that I could have taken into account. They were strengths that I could have made my own, or weaknesses that I could have cut away before the final hour. My treacherous mind seized upon everything I saw and thought back instead of forward, building brick by golden brick a thousand-thousand ways that I could have done this right. Paths that a greater man – Caesar – would have marched down without hesitation, paths that a wiser man – Aristotle – would have navigated around to avert this calamity entirely. It did me no good at all. All of it useless, wasted effort.

A grand stoa buckled just up ahead, like an overburdened spine, and caved in on itself entirely as another Tyrant’s strike rocked the earth beneath us. The stone statuary decorating its roof tumbled and fell away like so many stone soldiers. One of them, a man in hoplite armor with a helmet but no face, was in pieces before it hit the ground. The rod it had been holding spun through the air and sank tip-first into the garden lawn surrounding the building.

I blinked and stared through smoke and miasma heat at the standard perched proudly atop it. The iron eagle’s wings were spread wide, as if it was about to take flight. Its head was turned to the side, its talons curled tight around a laurel wreath. The eagle standard of Rome stared balefully back at me while the city fell to ruin all around it. While my city fell. While Rome…

I ripped the rod out of the dirt as I passed it by, smashing it against the fractured steps leading up to the stoa. The standard at the end of the rod, not an eagle forged from iron but a raven chiseled from marble, shattered to pieces.