1.14

The Young Griffon

I’d come to the sanctuary city of Olympia to convene with the Oracle. Instead, I found myself in a rowdy club, accompanying my new Heroic companions to an after-funeral drinking wake of sorts. As the first lights of the dawn peered through the bronze doors of the club, I decided I didn’t mind.

My fellow sophists shed the worst of their bleak mood once they had some spirit wine in them. The club was a more refined take on the thermopolia that Sol and I had visited the previous summer – the food on display was obviously higher quality, elevated beyond the slops and stews that we’d been offered in the Scarlet City. The kykeon itself was the strongest I’d ever drank outside of the Rosy Dawn’s initiation rites.

All three of them treated it like piss water and drank it only under duress. It got them drunk enough, though.

Kyno, Elissa, and Lefteris told stories of the kyrios around a table covered with broad, shallow kylixes. Others did the same throughout the club. I brushed my awareness curiously through the bar, finding cultivators of nearly every realm. Citizens mingled readily with Philosophers, and even with a few other Heroic cultivators.

The usual hierarchy was only vaguely felt. This had the feel of a club frequented exclusively by cultivators, and if the abundance of indigo cult attire was any indication, by the Raging Heaven Cult in particular. Civic cultivators traded stories and laughter and reminiscence with Sophic cultivators as junior and senior, not lesser and better. The atmosphere was a stark contrast to the funeral we’d just left.

Cultivators told stories and drank deeply from their cups in the dead Tyrant’s honor. Watching them and listening to them talk, I found myself wishing I could have known the man myself.

“My grandfather met him once,” Kyno admitted after his third drink. Elissa leaned in while Lefteris smiled knowingly. “They were hunting the same beast, a chimera made up of half a dozen heroic beasts. My grandfather found it first, and…”

I finished my cup and ordered another.

“My master knew him before he left the Raging Heaven Cult,” Elissa confided, later. Kyno and Lefteris were both visibly interested. This was a story neither had heard before. “They’d always been on friendly terms, but when my master decided he was leaving Olympia for good and severing all ties the kyrios offered him a wager. A single sword exchange, no pneuma involved, and if the kyrios won my master had to keep his faith. They squared off in an octagon of marble and gold…”

At one point Lefteris got up and went to the marble bar along the far wall, inlaid along its edges with indigo inscriptions of drinking games. When he came back he had a terracotta jar of wine half his height tucked under one arm, and a game in the other.

“The kyrios loved games of all kinds,” he said, while Elissa rubbed her hands together gleefully and Kyno knocked back the rest of his cup in one shot, a haunted look in his eyes. Even his skinned crocodile mantle looked traumatized. “This one was his favorite by far. He’d offer every initiate at least one game with him during their time at the Raging Heaven, more if they were lucky. He believed its mechanics had ties to the Fates.”

It was the sort of absurd statement that I enjoyed hearing. I watched Lefteris spread the carved stone tiles across the table, linking them end to end. A grid of two-by-three and a grid of four-by-three, connected in the middle by a bridge of two single tiles.

“What’s it called?” I asked curiously.

All three answered at once.

“Ascension.”

“The rules are simple,” Lefteris explained, distributing fourteen pieces, seven on either side of the assembled board.

“Yet profound,” Elissa interjected, with the air of someone telling a bad joke ahead of time. Kyno chuckled.

“Exactly right,” Lefteris agreed without shame. “Each player is given seven pieces, and the objective is in the name. Move all seven pieces from the beginning,” he tapped two of the blocks, one in each corner at the bottom of the board, “to the end.” He tapped the two corners second from the top. “First one out wins.”

Each piece was cut from a different type of stone. When I picked one up, a smooth red jasper, certain portions of the stone caught the light of the oil lamps and shimmered.

The pieces followed a certain track on the board, which overlapped in the middle. The blocks that weren’t in the middle were safe havens for one player or the other, but those that did were combat zones where pieces could do battle. While inhabiting the upper or lower grids, outside the bridge, players could choose to have their pieces avoid conflict as they ascended. But there was no getting through the bottleneck without conflict.

If a piece was taken by an opponent, it was sent back to the pool of eligible pieces outside the board. A player could have all seven of their pieces on the board at one time, or they could have as few as one – it was a question of strategic preference. Movement and combat were decided by dice.

I was presented with two bone dice for the game, tetrahedrons with values carved into the corners of their faces. Lefteris offered me the first round as practice. The stories continued as we played.

“When I first saw that cursed mountain I didn’t think I’d survive it. But do you know what the kyrios told me, that night before the rites?”

It was folly to pack the board with all seven pieces at once. There wasn’t nearly enough room to maneuver.

“I had just wasted a month of my life in closed doors cultivation only to achieve nothing at all, and who do I see when I open the doors?”

Focusing on only one piece at a time wasn’t much better. The elimination mechanic favored the player with more pieces on the board.

“I’ve taken the monster with me, because what else was I going to do, and so the entryway is covered in blood and offal. Elder Solon is furious, the junior is nearly dead and won’t stop vomiting blood over my back, and just as I’m about to lose my patience, who arrives but the kyrios?”

The kyrios had lived a full life from the sounds of it. As they reminisced, drinking and laughing, smiling wistfully in turns, we continued to play the game of Ascension. After my first couple practice games the victor’s rule was imposed. The winner kept the board while the loser gave way to a new challenger.

I cycled through a couple times, getting a feel for the rules and various play styles. Even among my companions, Kyno, Elissa, and Lefteris all employed wildly different strategies. Aggression, prudence, and pure brazen luck were present in varying proportions among the three of them. Poor joke or not, it really was a simple game with a surprisingly profound strategic depth to it. And the introduction of luck as a mechanic meant that it could never be fully solved.

I found myself enjoying it more than I thought I would. Once I had firmly grasped the rules and core playstyles, I slowly built out my own over the course of several games. After the first couple times that I was washed out, first by Lefteris and then by Elissa, I started to win. And I didn’t stop.

“You said he tied the Fates to this?” I asked offhandedly, somewhere around my sixth game in a row. Another table of Raging Heaven cultivators had noticed us playing and wandered over, pitching in to the conversation as well as the rotation of games. I was currently playing another Philosopher, eighth rank. He wasn’t very good.

“The kyrios was a firm believer in the Pythagorean school of philosophy,” Lefteris explained, watching us intently as we played. “Isopsephy as well, among others. Depending on the results of your rolls, when you roll them, where your piece ends up and if it’s in conflict with an opponent, there are countless interpretations. Even which of your pieces it is. There are some whose entire cultivation journey revolves around the study of this game.”

I couldn’t think of a more boring life than one spent analyzing a board game. Still, it was fun to play.

I glanced wryly at Lefteris as I set my piece over my opponent’s piece at the bottleneck, taking it. “Ho? And what do these dice have to say about me?”

I continued to play, and I continued to win. My control of the board was absolute, unchallenged among heaven and earth. Eventually Lefteris jumped back in as my opponent, and when he lost and another cultivator tried to take his place he waved them off. The Civic cultivator protested for only a moment. Lefteris gave him a look that sent him scurrying to the other side of the club.

“You’ve never played this game before today?” he asked me suspiciously, resetting the pieces.

“Never in my life,” I said easily. “Perhaps I’m simply gifted.”

“The kyrios was like that,” Kyno mused. “It was as if any craft he picked up was something he’d been practicing for decades already, after only the briefest period of introduction. They say he only ever lost the game of Ascension once.”

“His first,” I guessed, rather than make the obvious joke.

“No,” Elissa said. “It was a game he lost after centuries of play, less than two decades ago.”

“Is that so?” I asked, interested. “Who beat him?” Elissa and Kyno shared a look across the table.

“Damon Aetos,” Lefteris said, and tossed me the dice.

“You’re a liar and a cheat!” Lefteris accused me, slapping the table furiously and spilling our stone pieces off the board. Well, his stone pieces. Mine had already ascended. Kyno and Elissa watched in mixed amusement and disbelief. Wide cups of spirit wine and ivory marbles used for betting covered the table.

We’d drawn something of a crowd.

As per the rules we’d established early on, the loser of a given match had to down an entire cup of kykeon without pause. This was a fairly benign rule when the intention was for the loser to then cede the table to someone else, and not stubbornly remain to lose over and over again.
For a Heroic cultivator, it would take several cups to make a dent in their prodigious tolerance.

Lefteris had the deeply rosy cheeks and glassy eyes of a man that had had far too much to drink. The sun had risen fully through the dawn, and I had won quite a few games. I was on my third cup of wine at the moment.

“Careful friend,” I said, propping my chin on one hand and smiling wickedly. “My virtuous heart won’t tolerate such an accusation.”

“I said what I said,” he said, doubling down. Lefteris looked to Elissa and Kyno for validation, ignoring the jeers and taunts of the cultivators standing around the table. They had drachma riding on these games and were obviously biased. “He’s doing something to the dice, I’m sure of it!”

Elissa hummed, twirling her finger through her wine and flicking a clump of the impure lees at a target on the far wall. It struck dead center and a cheer went up from a nearby table. She shot them a quick grin before answering.

“It does seem like something he would do,” she agreed, in such a way that made it clear she disagreed. Still a bit sore over our introduction, but she was coming around.

Kyno just patted him on the arm. “The only thing worse than a loser is a sore loser.”

I came to a decision. “Let’s see, then,” I said, sweeping the stone tiles and pieces to the side of the table, leaving only the dice. “Is it strategy and good fortune, or am I a fraud? We’ll let the heavens decide. I’ll even close my eyes.”

Lefteris considered the dice doubtfully.

“If you’d rather apologize, I’ll accept it,” I told him graciously. The Heroic archer scowled and snatched up the dice, shaking once and letting them fly across the table.

Snake eyes.

Laughter rippled through our little audience. I closed my eyes and rolled. When I opened them, I saw Lefteris’ furious glare, and on the table – a one and a two.

“That’s one,” I told him breezily. “How many rounds would you like to try?”

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“First to four,” he spat, sweeping up the dice. He rolled again. A four and a three, this time. There were three sets of numbers on each corner of the dice, each ascending by a factor of ten. In this case, a four, forty, or a four hundred accompanied by a three, thirty, or a three hundred.

The distinction hardly mattered here. I let the dice fly with a lazy flick. When I opened my eyes, I saw a three and a four. Tie.

Lefteris shook the dice like they owed him money, Kyno and Elissa watching with poorly masked amusement as bone tetrahedrons bounced across the table. One and two. I rolled without fanfare and got the same result. Again.

“Impossible!” Lefteris snarled. I saw sweat beading on his brow. In a way, I supposed tying was more stressful than losing outright. “It’s the dice. There’s something wrong with the dice!”

“Are you accusing the owner of giving us weighted dice?” I asked, raising an eyebrow. The owner in question shivered in quiet fear, hovering over by the bar.

“We’ve been here countless times, Lefteris,” Kyno chided him. “You know Timon wouldn’t do that.”

“Something he’s doing, then,” the drunk archer insisted.

“Or perhaps,” I said slyly, “The Muses love me more than you.”

It was a benign comment, but with a challenging undertone – a thinly veiled way of saying that my cultivation was superior to his. It was a less common taunt among the lower realms, but still present. Undeniably, it hit harder once one reached the Heroic realm and their lives became the subject of Epics.

When it became clear that Lefteris was too angry to roll, I took it upon myself to lead the next round. The dice clattered against the wood top, amidst cheers and calls for either my victory or Lefteris’, depending on who was betting.

Twin twos. I leaned back and watched as Lefteris made the most focused cast of his life. I knew as they fell that it wouldn’t be enough. Victory was a certainty in my heart.

Twin fours. I frowned.

I took the dice again when he gestured, accepting the change in order. A win to a win, and two ties. I let fly my dice and nodded when a four and a one resulted. Lefteris breathed deeply and cast again.

Twin threes.

Something…

I rolled one more time, the heavens yielding a three and a two. Lefteris was confident now.

Twin threes, again.

“You’re cheating,” I said with certainty. “My mentor would crucify you for that.”

“Who’s the sore loser now?” Lefteris asked smugly. “I’m throwing the same dice as you, fellow sophist.”

“You are,” I admitted. “But you’re not throwing them fairly.”