1.16

The Young Griffon

Anastasia was what a charitable man would call dangerous. I’d known from the moment I felt the searing heat of her influence, and again the instant I’d seen the cruel amusement in her eyes while Sol battered a defenseless man in the club. She was the type to leave men pining endlessly for even the kiss of her heel.

Fortunately she wasn’t my type, and when lust was removed from the equation she became simply interesting.

“Sol is a brutal taskmaster,” I said in explanation of the broken bed frame. “Hardly gave me a moment to wake up before testing my pankration. Wouldn’t even let me stretch first.” It really was a shame. For Scythas especially. It had been a comfortable bed, feathered down and silk sheets.

“And the rest of the furniture?” Anastasia asked, arching a dark brow. Scythas grimaced, in part because of her lack of care for him as she brushed past him, into the room, and in part because we truly had made a mess of the place.

Sol said nothing, matching the Heroine’s smoldering stare and holding it as she approached him. Knowing him, the fool thought he was establishing authority.

“We may have had a cup too many,” I admitted.

“An understatement if I’ve ever heard one,” she said, rolling her eyes. Sol exhaled, satisfied that he’d won the ‘staredown’. “I’ve seen lesser men die from drinking in such excess.” The Heroine perched herself on the sloped headrest of Sol’s dining couch, stroking his eagle from tip to tail feather while he fed it scraps of his breakfast.

Evidently, I was the only man in the room with a voice. That suited me just fine.

“We’re cultivators. It’s our providence to exceed lesser men.”

“Even in your vices?” she asked, amused.

“Especially in our vices.”

“My master would call that hubris,” she murmured. “Even children know that vice is the inverse of virtue.”

“Yet the heavens strike down virtuous souls like the kyrios while men like me run wild,” I said, leaning a cheek on my hand as I reclined. I retrieved with pankrations intent the charts that Scythas had taken from me, forgotten on his couch when Anastasia broke down the door.

“The heavens may not be prompt,” she countered, “But their wrath is always felt in the end.” The fine details of her were dark and nearly menacing, smoldering green eyes and smirking red lips, framed by long midnight black hair. The contrast with her marble pale skin was undeniably enticing. A fine aesthetic.

I grinned sharply, meeting her gaze over an array of star charts.

“I hope so. The tribulations are the best part.”

For a moment she was honestly thrown. “What have you been teaching this one, Solus?”

“Not nearly enough,” Sol said flatly. I snickered, flipping through papyrus sheets. Scythas finally made a decision, forcing the heavy bedroom door back into its frame with another painful crunch of breaking locks.

“Tell me, Anastasia.” The Heroine hummed invitingly. “Did we trade life stories while I was drunk?”

“We did not.”

“Good. It would have been rude to ask twice.”

She chuckled. “My, my. Moving fast, aren’t you? Some women enjoy the direct approach, but I prefer a bit of courting first.”

“You think far too highly of yourself,” I informed her pleasantly. “I couldn’t possibly be less interested in you as a woman.”

For the first time since I’d met her the Heroine truly looked at me. The eddies of her influence brushed against mine, caustic and searching.

“Are you calling me ugly, cultivator?” she asked me softly. She was nothing of the sort, of course, but it wouldn’t do to give her that satisfaction. I was certain she got enough of that from her fellow initiates.

“I see a more attractive face than yours every time I pass a clear pool,” I replied instead. Scythas coughed, choking on a mouthful of white wine. Sol just rolled his eyes.

Viridescent flames and caustic influence pressed against me, lapping against the edges of my awareness. Then, all at once, it fell away.

“I like you,” Anastasia decided. “But I like your mentor more.”

“Understandable,” I said. “With a smile like that, who wouldn’t?” Sol favored me with a gesture that surely meant ‘Thank you, brother’ in legion-speak.

“The two of you are an odd combination,” Anastasia mused. “A wolf keeping company with a lion. What could have possibly brought a Roman and a scarlet son together?”

Scythas stiffened in my peripheral vision. “Roman?”

Very interesting.

“It’s a funny story,” I told her. “Tragic, too, as all the best ones are.”

“I’m listening,” she said simply. I shared a look with Sol. I understood his intent without any words being said. This was neither the time nor the place to be discussing our flight from the Scarlet City, and certainly Sol had no desire to share his personally tragic circumstances with two potential enemies of vastly superior cultivation.

I nodded minutely, letting him know that I understood, and he relaxed.

“We can trade,” I proposed, blithely ignoring the suffocating pressure of Sol’s murderous influence. “My cousin always said there’s nothing quite like trading stories around a fire.”

The rosy light of dawn crept from the cradle of my palm to the tips of my fingers, and I flicked a spark of my burning pneuma into a brazier mounted on top of a marble column. It caught the snow-white charcoal within and went up in a cheerful scarlet flame.

“A question for a question?” she asked, not committing one way or another. Scythas, having partly rejoined the group with forearms resting over the back of his lounge, didn’t look any more eager to share.

“Exactly.” It was clear that they needed some convincing, so I continued, “Let’s make it interesting – a king’s game. The winner asks the questions, and the losers answer.”

“How convenient. The one who never loses never has to answer questions,” Anastasia said wryly, tucking a ringlet strand of hair behind her ear. Scythas’ eyes tracked the motion unconsciously. “And I suppose you have just the game in mind.”

I splayed my hands invitingly. “Take your pick.”

The Heroine considered me for a moment. “There is a game I wouldn’t mind playing,” she finally said. “But we don’t have any knuckles.”

Sol wordlessly dropped a handful of knuckle bones on the dining table. They scattered across the dark wood, over a dozen of them, each rattling loudly.

“… where did you get those?” I asked.

“Don’t worry about it.”

Hn.

“We’ll need a drachma as well,” Anastasia said. Scythas reached for a pouch on a nearby wall-carved shelf. Sol beat him to it.

A single drachma fell to the table, chiming as it struck.

Sol leaned forward on his bench lounge with quiet anticipation. Of course, the offering of a game had convinced him easiest of all. “The game is knucklebones. The figures are Under the Triumphal Arch and Aqueducts. Heads ends the round. Twelves decide.”

With that said he took up the drachma and flicked it into the air, and all four of us exploded into motion.

Knucklebones was an even simpler game than Ascension, won and lost on physical dexterity alone. A single jack, in this case a drachma, was thrown up and the knuckles were gathered in hand while it fell, through various means depending on the figure being played. I’d seen this variant a few times in the Rosy Dawn, when Sol had been teaching it to the children in his care. Each figure had its own rules and win conditions, but the first round to decide the order was always the same. Smash and grab.

I snatched up three knuckles before Anastasia flipped the table with her foot and Scythas vaulted clear over his dining couch, heart flames raging as he blurred through the air. The golden coin clattered musically against the stone floor at the same moment the table shattered against the far wall. The drachma bounced and spun.

Gravitas struck the coin and pressed it to the marble floor. Heads.

“What was that?” Sol snarled.

“Do they not play it this way in Rome?” Anastasia opened her left hand, smugly presenting four knuckle bones. Somehow, she’d gathered them without rising from her seat. Scythas looked at the two in his hand with chagrin. “It’s hardly a challenge otherwise.”

A game like knuckle bones, based entirely upon reaction time, required no particular effort from a cultivator past a certain point of advancement. It was hardly a game at all if each player could grab every bone from the table before the jack started to fall. That being the case, an extra element of challenge was needed.

“Apologies for your room,” I told Scythas. He waved it off, having already come to terms with the damages. Surprisingly easygoing, compared to his usual temperament.

“Cheaters and thieves, all of you,” Sol said, disgusted, and dropped six knuckles onto the floor. Anastasia raised an eyebrow, impressed. Scythas stared uncomprehendingly.

“How often do you play this game?” I asked, amused. He sneered.

This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

“I have the first question. Where do the good philosophers go?”

“Oh? So it’s like that,” Anastasia mused. She stroked the messenger eagle’s head thoughtfully. Scythas, for his part, crossed his arms in concentration, crouching by his dining couch.

Scythas snapped his fingers suddenly. “A philosopher is nothing but a man who can see the surface of all that he doesn’t know.”

“Who told you that?” I asked curiously. The Hero looked at me strangely.

“Solus did, last night. Have you forgotten even that?”

Sol looked about as confused as I felt.

“If a philosopher is simply the first blind man to know he’s missing his sight, where does he go to see?” Anastasia posed, sounding the problem out. For the moment, any enmity between the Hero and the Heroine was forgotten as they pondered the question.

“I think he just wants to know where the Sophic cultivators spend their time here,” I said. I was rewarded with disdain, and two superior cultivators looking down their noses at me. Ah. So this was what it felt like.

“How pitiful,” Anastasia said.

“Do you take everything at face value?” Scythas added.

“Forgive me,” I demurred. By this point Sol had closed his eyes, solemn face a mask of deep consideration and weighty expectation. In reality, I could tell that he was trying not to snap.

“If it’s a question of belonging-”

“Under the Triumphal Arch,” he declared, cutting them off and taking up the coin once more. He pressed the tips of his index and middle fingers against the blue-veined marble, forming an arch. We each followed suit, Anastasia leaning precariously over from her seat on the dining couch.

The coin flipped and knuckle bones flew.

The objective of Under the Triumphal Arch was to flick as many knuckle bones through the arch of one’s fingers as possible before the jack fell. Depending on the placement of the bones from the previous figure, as well as the actions of the other players and the trajectories involved, the difficulty of the game could change. Of course, for cultivators of Anastasia and Scythas’ standing, it was hardly worth playing. Unless they cheated.

I flicked a knuckle bone with one hand and sent it flying through the arch that my other hand formed. However, just before it could pass through, a whistling projectile struck it from the side and sent it flying off course. Another projectile struck a knuckle next to my arch before I could even attempt to flick it through. In an instant, the room became a whirling storm of flying bones.

Anastasia smiled innocently at me, caustic green flames burning merrily in her eyes.

“I count twenty-three through mine,” she reported at the end. There were only twelve knuckle bones in total, meaning she was a liar or she had flicked multiple sets in the time it took a coin to fall.

“Eight,” Scythas reported sourly. I didn’t bother vocalizing my null score.

We looked to Sol, and beheld the sight of him silently flicking bones through the arc of his fingers while the golden drachma hovered just above the ground, spinning lazily in the air. Anastasia and Scythas both lunged for the nearest knuckle, stabbing their fingers back to the floor hard enough to crack the marble.

Sol released his virtue’s hold on the coin and it fell cleanly with heads facing up.

“Forty.”