1.39

The Young Griffon

The second rank of the Sophic Realm felt much like the first.

The difference was enormous by the standards of a Civic cultivator, of course. My reservoir of pneuma – the sea of my vital soul – had deepened an outrageous amount. The saying went that one rank above was worth ten below, and though my perceptions were skewed by excessive blood loss and a staggering depletion of strength, that felt nearly in line with what I had experienced.

I had also grown in a less evident way, something I couldn’t quite pin down, but which instinctively felt clearer within me. I had a few ideas as to what it could be, but at the moment I was in no state to be waxing theoretical about Sophic cultivation.

Instead, I chose to pay my wayward friends a visit and assure them of my good health. Alas, I misjudged my new strength, and rather than open the door to Elissa’s residence I accidentally conjured thirty hands of pankration intent and tore it off its hinges.

There in the hall I found Elissa and the rest of the group, as I had suspected I would, along with a pleasant surprise.

“Lefteris,” I said brightly, flashing my teeth in a friendly smile at the gold-string archer. “I’ve been looking for you.” For some reason, he flinched at my words – or maybe it was just the sight of me.

I noted a pair of boys peering out at me from behind Lefteris’ legs, each of them around Myron’s age by the looks of it. Their fiery red hair was mostly covered up by straw hats, but the bright, mismatched eyes were on full display. I’d ask about them later when I wasn’t feeling quite as murderous.

“Griffon,” Elissa breathed. “You’re alive.”

“I am,” I agreed, stepping inside and grinding the door to further splinters beneath my heels. My pankration hands flexed and grasped fitfully at the air around me, crackling still with the memory of lightning. They clawed at the walls around them, they pounded against the floor and they wrenched the door apart. Others still reached out for the Heroic cultivators at the other end of the hall. The heroes eyed them warily, pneuma curling around themselves protectively.

“Forgive me,” I said, grabbing a pankration arm with my flesh and blood hand and crushing it into formless essence. “These hands of mine are versatile, but at their core they’re nothing more than a manifestation of my intent.”

“And that intent would be?” Jason asked cautiously, his hands resting at his waist, where several daggers were sheathed.

I grinned.

“Violence.”

The rosy light of dawn erupted upon the remaining twenty-nine hands of pankration intent in the hall, that curious weight I had noticed upon my advancement flickering in their palms.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Elissa scoffed, breaking from the ranks and crossing the hall. She tensed as she passed through the throngs of grasping pankration hands, but none of them touched her, naturally. “You look like you already have a foot in the Styx.”

“Two, actually,” I said, smiling faintly when she snorted in amusement.

“And I suppose you expect us to pull you out? Patch you up and ship you back out good as new, is that it?” She poked me in the chest, relaxing into the back and forth. “You’ll be replacing that door. And don’t even think about-”

“Why is the coward touching me?” I asked curiously. The Sword Song froze, staring hard at me.

“Excuse me?”

“I asked why you were touching me,” I repeated for her benefit, “with the mongrel finger you refused to lift when you were needed.”

“Be very careful about the next word you say,” she said, every syllable a threat. I leaned in close enough for the residual lightning in my hair to shock her.

“Coward.”

The Sword Song spat an oath and lunged forward, only to be jerked back in the same motion by Kyno, who hoisted her up with her back against his chest while she thrashed and seethed.

“Who gave you the right!? Who gave you the right to ignore the reality of this city, to render judgment on us who have lived it!? How dare you call me a coward, you arrogant scarlet bastard!”

“Ho, have I touched a nerve?” I taunted her, advancing forward while Kyno stepped back with her in his grip. “Does it anger you, to be confronted? Does it upset you, to face judgement from someone who isn’t broken and defeated?”

“What were we supposed to do against the Gadfly?” she spat, flames the color of desert heat blazing behind her eyes. The heat in her face overpowered the classical beauty of an advanced cultivator, allowing the scars to assert themselves in all their ugly glory. “What could we have possibly done to stop the man that plumbs the depths?”

“What could a group of Heroes do against a single Philosopher? Is that what you’re asking?” I repeated the question, continuing forward even as Kyno bumped back against Lefteris and Jason. I saw something like true steel enter the archer’s bearing, just for a moment, as my wandering pankration hands reached for the two boys hiding behind him. His influence struck out and nailed them to the floor in a wordless invocation of will that sent lances of silver pain through my soul. Good. Good. Give me something.

“Not a philosopher. The philosopher. He set the standard, we named it the Scholar’s path after him. Crows and bleeding carion, you can’t possibly think it’s that simple.” Elissa jerked against Kyno’s grip, but unlike at the funeral he decided against letting her go. She snarled in frustration. “Socrates has had centuries to walk his path, further than any of his kind. How long have we had? How long have you had?”

“Eighteen years.”

The cultivators in the hall stared at me in flat disbelief. Anastasia tilted her head, furthest down, merely leaning in the doorframe to the next room and watching. I shot her a challenging look. She smiled apologetically.

“Eighteen years old,” Jason muttered. “Even for Solus’ student, that’s…”

“Lying again.” Elissa’s eyes narrowed. “I didn’t ask you how old your disguise was. I asked you how old you were. Griffon, the Olympic competitor.”

“And I answered you,” I said, pushing them back into the adjoined room. There were several lounges around the edges, and a warm hearth with a few crumbling logs burning away inside. A table next to two of the lounges had several empty jugs on it, one still half-filled with kykeon. It seemed they’d had a long day of sitting around, drinking and feeling sorry for themselves.

“Still with this? Even now?” She demanded. “We threw in with you against all reason, but you still won’t tell us the truth.”

“That’s twice you’ve called me a liar. My virtuous heart won’t tolerate a third.” My pankration hands strained to the limits of the range that I allowed them, clawing at the air in strangling motions. Elissa’s pneuma rose in response.

“Be reasonable, both of you,” Kyno said firmly, holding the Sword Song still with an arm around her throat and holding the other out towards me, palm flat. “She makes a good point, Griffon. How can you expect us to see this through if we continue to hide everything significant from one another? The stakes in this game are too high to be playing against each other on the side.”

“And why would I ever entrust my secrets to this cabal of cowards?”

Kyno met my eyes and did not waver. “We aren’t you. The Oracle was right when she judged you. You say all the things a man in your position must not say, you do all of the things that you must not do, and as far as I can tell, you are the way you are for the thrill alone. Most men aren’t made in your image. And if you want to work with us, you’re going to have to live with that.”

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We stared hard at one another while I bled out on the Heroine’s floor. Finally, I tilted my head.

“That day, before we went to see yours, you told me to seek the Scarlet Oracle,” I said. He nodded. “When was the last time you saw her, or knew someone to have seen her?”

The heroes exchanged looks.

“Recently,” Kyno said at length. “Why?”

“During my brief stroll through the Storm That Never Ceases,” I said, drawing my pankration hands back within myself with some effort, “I spoke with each of the Oracles.”

“You… what?” Jason asked. Anastasia hummed in interest.

“Seven in all,” I continued, “but when I reached the eighth, the oracle of my own home, I found her broken and battered in a crater of melted stone. Can any of you explain that?” By this point Elissa had stopped raging, a pensive frown settling onto her face, and Kyno slowly lowered her to the floor.

Anastasia spoke for the first time since I’d arrived. “That’s a question you’d have to ask her successor. Or your master, perhaps.”

“Of course.” I rolled my eyes and turned, striding back down the hall.

“Wait!”

“You’re leaving in that state?”

“Absolutely not.”