1.50

The Young Griffon

The ideal of the institutions that we called the greater mystery cults was camaraderie in pursuit of greater understanding. These were learning places, yes, as well as fonts of overwhelming strength in times of strife. But their central purpose was not to uplift, nor to make war.

The mystery cults were a timeless reminder that every man was equally worthless under the sun.

“You’re certain that you can’t tell me anything about it, senior brother?”

“I can’t tell you what I don’t know,” my senior within the Raging Heaven Cult affirmed. His pneuma marked him as a cultivator in the eighth rank of the Sophic Realm. Yet even so, I had found him more than halfway up the mountain. A man of his standing would have enjoyed comfortable seniority within the Rosy Dawn Cult, but here in Olympia he was hardly fit for the second-rate estates – only the junior mystikos slept closer to the storm crown than him.

No, that wasn’t true. The ones that slept closest to the storm crown were the boys following me like lost ducks, their guardian, and the ugly philosopher that had dared to put his hands on my brother.

Still, it was a shame. A man of such advanced cultivation, and yet so little renown to show for it. I wondered what he could have accomplished by now, this senior of mine, if he hadn’t wasted his time vying for the approval of men that couldn’t care less about him or his life.

“Surely, there’s something you can tell me,” I pressed him. He frowned, shifting the bundle on his back – dozens of papyrus rolls tied by string, clay tablets wrapped in leather, and the whole lot of it bundled in a fisherman’s net of all things.

“I never made it past Sisyphus,” he said ruefully, raising his hand to shield his eyes against the glare of flashing light above. “Up there in the storm, the words your seniors used to comfort you lose all meaning. The thunder is so loud that you can’t hear yourself think. They urged us to go it alone, of course, but once the seniors were out of sight we all bunched up like sheep.”

“They don’t go with you?” I asked. Kyno had said that every senior mystiko within the Raging Heaven Cult was sent by their elders to guard the new initiates during their trial. The Rosy Dawn’s initiation rites were much the same. Everyone, even the pillars of the Aetos family, descended into the heart of the eastern mountain range together to behold the confounding sight of the fallen sun god.

“They do, but only so far,” he said, tearing his eyes away from the Storm That Never Ceased. He sighed and tousled the sandy curls of his hair. “For a man to prove himself worthy of the Raging Heaven he must bear its weight alone, even if only for a step. That is the final trial, the one that every hopeful initiate must surpass.”

“Only one step?” the little king asked, and I smirked at the disdain in his voice.

Fortunately, my senior was just as amused. “Only one,” he confirmed, chuckling. “And I’ve seen boys your age with twice your refinement fail, sulking all the way down the mountain because they couldn’t manage it.”

“Cultivation alone isn’t enough,” the little king declared, puffing out his chest and pounding it with his first. “Pyr and I will make it at least as far as Griffon. Farther, even!”

The little sentinel viciously smacked his younger brother over the head, at about the same time that the boy himself realized what he’d just said.

“You’ve already…” My senior looked sideways at me, his brow furrowed.

“I’ve already decided that I’ll reach the top,” I said, and understanding gentled his expression. That, and a nostalgic sort of mirth.

“Second rank of the Sophic Realm,” he said, fondly and a bit sadly, having gauged my standing just as I had gauged his. “I remember those days. I thought I would be competing in the Games by now, or perhaps pioneering a new field of natural philosophy. The possibilities seem so vast when you’ve only just reached the foot of the mountain.”

“You’re talking like an old man,” I said, knocking him sideways with my elbow. He laughed.

“I am an old man, by the Raging Heaven’s standards. And you’re not far behind me.”

“Is that so?”

“It is so,” he confirmed. “Out in the villages where men like you and I carved our names, captain of the Civic Realm is a rank worthy of respect. No man would hesitate to offer his daughter’s hand in marriage to such a citizen. Reaching captain of the Civic Realm before you’ve even reached legal adulthood? Your father would have to beat the suitors off with a stick.”

“I don’t recall saying that I grew up in a village,” I said, raising an eyebrow. He waved the hand not holding his bundle of texts, gesturing at my tattered cult attire.

“You strut through the premier cult of the free Mediterranean, waving down senior initiates as if it’s only natural that they give you their time and insight, all while wearing the colors of a cult that you can’t possibly be from,” he said. The odd sensation of being pitied and supported at the same time washed over me. “In a way, the trial of the storm crown is much like the experience of stepping into Olympia after a lifetime of shoveling shit on a farm.”

“I think you’re projecting, honored senior.”

“‘Honored senior,’ he says, while sneering in my face.” The older cultivator lashed out with his free hand, a slap to the back of my head that the boys didn’t notice until the clap of flesh against flesh made them jump.

My senior stared curiously at the pankration hand that had intercepted his own just before it struck me. Without the Rosy Fingers of Dawn to render it visible to the naked eye, he instead observed it with his sophic sense. Unlike the aggressive overtures I had often encountered since unlocking my Philosopher’s eye, his influence felt less like a wave and more like the waterfall currents that fed a bath. It coursed over my pankration hand, flowing into the gaps between its fingers and the creases left behind in the skin when those fingers curled and uncurled.

The older philosopher squeezed the hand of my intent, and I squeezed back. He let go.

“I meant no disrespect,” I said honestly. He hummed.

“You may have been right. Perhaps I was projecting. Certainly, my intent was nothing like that when I was a newly minted Philosopher. How long have you been refining that ability?”

“How long has any man been refining the use of his hands?” I asked in turn.

“Fascinating,” he murmured. “I take it next you’ll tell me that you really are from the Rosy Dawn.” I smiled faintly, and he shook his head. “Right, right. That aside, being stronger than I was at your rank doesn’t mean much on this mountain. I said it before, but a captain of the Civic Realm is only impressive in the settlements that can hardly be said to have citizens at all. How old were you when you reached the peak of that realm?”

“Seventeen.”

“Which would put you somewhere between twenty and twenty-five years old now, if you were fortunate while bridging the gap and didn’t waste a moment in your studies.”

I said nothing, and thanks to the little sentinel’s quick thinking, neither did the little king.

“A secret, is that it?” We both watched the little sentinel grapple with the little king, one hand planted firmly over his mouth while the other struggled to fend off his brother’s fists and elbows. “What a sad day, when a junior can’t trust his senior with something so basic.”

“Ah, but you already have me at a disadvantage.” I conjured burning hands of pankration intent between the two boys, separating them, and then when they both simply glared at one another I drowned them in a flurry of slaps and light punches. The little king and his sentinel let fly their battle cries, pneuma surging, and began to fight back against the hands of my intent.

“How’s that?” My senior asked, eyes tracking the now visible limbs with keen interest.

“You’ve seen a manifestation of my soul,” I said, conjuring another pankration hand in front of his face, close enough that his eyes crossed as he looked at it. I flexed and waved the fingers of dawn, contorting the limb this way and that so he could observe it. “You’ve also heard my name, though it was given to you secondhand. And I still don’t know yours.”

“Chilon,” he said, his eyes not wavering from the pankration limb even as he offered his free hand to me. When I clasped it with fingers of flesh and blood, he seemed almost disappointed. “I didn’t notice it before, but in the light…” His eyes flickered, tracing the shadows cast by the rosy light of dawn – the faint silhouette of an arm beyond the flaming hand. “There’s more to it that can’t be seen, isn’t there?”

“You have a keen eye, Chilon,” I complimented him.

“And what illuminates it? It’s not quite a flame, but it’s more than simple light.”

“It’s called the Rosy-Fingered Dawn.”

He exhaled heavily. “Of course it is. Nonetheless, it’s an interesting technique. You can control the heat and the intensity of the light?”

“I can.” Behind us, fighting for every step against flurries of pankration hands just bright enough to distract the eye and just hot enough to let them know they’d been burned, the boys were proof enough of that. In contrast, the hand hovering in front of Chilon’s face was burning bright enough to blind a Civic cultivator.

“You were saying about my age?” I prompted him, when he continued to run the streams of his influence and most of his attention over the pankration hand. I dismissed it and he blinked, returning to himself.

“Right. Well, whatever age you are, and whatever backwater town or Island in the Sun you came from, the fact remains that you’re a grown man and only a Philosopher of the second rank. Am I right about that much, at least?”

“You are.”

“Then the circumstances hardly matter,” he said, conviction returning to him as he lectured. “Even the strongest ant in the colony is still an ant. In the world that I grew up in, Sophic Realm by the age of twenty was a feat worth celebrating. Worth telling stories of, as if I had skipped the second realm entirely and jumped straight to the third. But the city-states of the free Mediterranean are a different world entirely, and their standards are tailored to match.

“When I was offered an opportunity at the trials leading to admittance in the Raging Heaven, my family threw a party. And when the leading men of our little town found out about it they scolded my father for not telling them sooner. They declared a festival then and there in my honor, and neighbors and distant relatives that I had grown up doing chores for hoisted me up onto their shoulders, each of them in turn, so they could parade me through the town. As if I was Heracles himself. Children that I had shared lessons with, boys that I had considered my rivals and girls that I had pined over, showered me with praise and begged me to remember them when I was gone.”

Chilon stopped short at the next step, his fishing net full of papyrus and clay tablets thumping to the steps by his feet as he dropped it. He tilted his head fully back, gazing unimpeded at the curtain of furious tribulation that forever darkened the Raging Heaven’s door.

“I hadn’t even been accepted yet,” he whispered, as if he still couldn’t believe it. “I had only been given a chance – but to these people that I had known all my life, I may as well have caught lightning in my hands.”

“But you were accepted,” I observed. He inclined his head in the slightest nod.

“I was. And when I joined the others beneath the Storm That Never Ceases, resolved to go as high as any of my fellow initiates, I realized something. I was the oldest among them by far.”

The little king snarled in effort, one of my pankration hands writhing as the little sentinel gripped it with both hands as well as his teeth. The older of the two boys held it steady while the younger bent back its middle finger with all of his strength. Both boys scowled and drew up their shoulders, weathering the slaps and punches of the rest of my pankration hands. The faint taste of blood appeared in the back of my throat as the middle finger of my pankration hand broke with an ugly crack.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

Lefteris’ boys shouted triumphantly, and I rewarded them for their tenacity with another ten hands.

“I was twenty years old, in the first rank of the Sophic realm,” Chilon said. “Of the rest of my peers, only three of them were as weak as I was. None of the three were old enough to grow hair on their chins. But that wasn’t the worst of it.”

“Your seniors,” I guessed. He laughed. It was a different sort of hopelessness than the kind I had encountered in our Heroic companions. This was something he had long made his peace with. My ire stirred in the boiling red depths of the Rein-Holder’s marrow.

“My seniors, yes. There were dozens of them there that day. At any given time, it’s natural for half of the Raging Heaven’s senior initiates to be away from the cult, either on elder business or pursuing whatever they pleased. Only the initiation rites can bring them all back. When it comes time to face Raging Heaven, every indigo son comes home to stand beside his new brothers and sisters in solidarity.

“Among all of those cultivators, none of them were below the fifth rank of the Sophic realm – the turning point where a man is closer to a legend than he is a mortal. Captains of the Sophic realm abounded, some of them too young to be married. Even Heroes took time from their epics to support us.

“I saw a Hero that was younger than me that day,” Chilon said, disheartened and awed at the same time. “He was making his rounds through the crowd, like many of the seniors were, but where the seniors were encouraging us, he was encouraging the seniors. Preparing them for another trip up the mountain. Another bout against tribulation.

“It’s different, you know.” Chilon glanced sidelong at me. “Nothing can truly prepare you for the Storm That Never Ceases, not even someone that has lived it before. But when a Hero says the words… Even in the middle of the crashing thunder, when sound has lost all its meaning, those words remain. A senior Philosopher may have seen the lightning with his own eyes, but a Hero has felt its touch. And he’s survived for the Muses to sing of it.”