1.52 [Jason]

Hero of the Alabaster Depths

What distinguished a hero from a man?

[Leave it be, leave it be, leave it be.]

Back then, he’d been certain that he knew. Every time they took up oars, each of those among his crew, and heaved against the fickle waves. The tang of the air and the rolling of the ocean, randy sea shanties and laughter filling the sails. On days like those, he could have sworn that his epic was just over the horizon.

But all he’d found on the other side was black sails and howling whirlpools. Whatever had washed up to shore afterwards was no hero. It was hardly a man at all.

Jason had forgotten what a Hero was meant to be years ago – the alabaster sea had taken it from him. The demons had raked their claws through his soul and devoured what they found, and they’d hollowed out his heart. The man that the ocean had spit back out onto the shores of the greater Mediterranean could hardly remember the feel of an oar in his hands, let alone whatever it was he thought he had seen just over that far horizon.

Life at the Raging Heaven hadn’t helped. He hadn’t thought that it would, of course, hadn’t thought much of it at all outside of it being close at hand and within his means to join. He would have gone anywhere at that time, so long as he didn’t have to cross salt water to get there. But even a husk had eyes. And a hollow heart had twice the room for outrage when it came to the whims of rivalrous Tyrants.

Impotent outrage, that was. That was the most a man could ever feel towards the elders of the Raging Heaven. A mortal man or a Hero, it hardly mattered. They all fell in line. Jason was no exception. He fell. Fell in line, fell from grace. Fell, fell, fell to the bottom of the sea.

And then the Crows came.

Something changed that night. Nothing tangible, certainly nothing he could grasp. But ever since the Crows had nearly returned him to the Icarus on the night of the kyrios’ funeral, ever since he had been saved, the urge to fight had appeared at the corners of his vision. Gone whenever he turned to look, but always there.

The captain of the Icarus was still drowning, but his feet had started to kick.

And at times, times like these, he could almost imagine that whatever the sea and her demons had taken from him, whatever lay beyond that far horizon –

“This is justice,” my father told me. The bisected corpse of the fallen sun god reached up and laid its incomprehensible palm over my eyes. “Remember its face.”

– Griffon and Sol had come here to remind him of it.

A thunderous impact jarred him from the unearthly vision, along with Scythas beside him. They both watched in disbelief as the Gadfly staggered back into the room. Jason hurriedly stepped right while Scythas stepped left, each making space for him. The man that had defied the Tyrants of the Coast, lived to spit their own poison back in their eyes, gagged and gripped his neck.

Griffon had punched the Scholar in the throat.

“Socrates!” he greeted, arresting the momentum of his mad dash down into the heart of the mountain with thirty burning hands of his own intent. “Or should I say, master. I’ve come to thank you for your guidance!”

The Hero from the Rosy Dawn straightened up out of his striking stance, resting one hand negligently on the pommel of his sheathed blade. The Gadfly inhaled a single sharp breath, his expression murderous, and the scarlet son bared his teeth in a wild grin.

“Reckless, arrogant-”

Jason eased back another step, and – no. No. He wouldn’t run away. He wouldn’t spend another second drowning. He spat at the ground by the Gadfly’s feet and took hold of the blood burning inside his heart. Across from him, Scythas whistled a low note and his pneuma whirled.

“- children,” The Gadfly finished, his tone severe. “Who told you that memory was yours to share? Who told you that you were allowed in this place?”

“Ho, it seems the philosopher has lost his way,” Griffon jeered. Striding forward, towards the danger. As he had before and as he always did. Towards that far horizon. “Thinking I need anyone to tell me anything at all. Allow this humble sophist to educate you on the truth of things. Atten-”

Griffon stopped short, just outside of the doorway to the room. His pneuma flickered and vanished from the room, the grasping hands of his intent disappearing in an instant. Without a word, he dismissed the Gadfly entirely.

The Hero of the risen sun and the Scarlet Oracle stared at one another. Slung over Solus’ shoulder as she was, the Oracle was at eye level with the man. Face-to-face like this, hardly a foot apart, they almost-

Jason squinted. Scythas’ whistle faltered.

Sol tilted his head.

[Leave it be, leave it be, leave it be.]

“Sunkissed,” spoke the Scarlet Oracle. Griffon blinked at the holy woman that Solus had thrown over his shoulder like a bundle of tangled line. “You must be Griffon.”

A fist-sized chunk of broken marble broken off from a bust by Jason’s soul – in that split second that he’d allowed the anger and the shame to drag him back down to the Icarus – slammed into Griffon’s chest and threw him back out into the courtyard. The Gadfly slapped the marble dust from his palms, each clap an echoing sound.

“Look where they must not be, and there you’ll find them,” he said, irritated. “Which of them did you tell first, boy?”

Solus frowned, distracted.

“Boy.”

“Griffon,” he said, though whether it was an answer to the Gadfly’s question or a personal realization, Jason couldn’t tell. Surely, something like that…

“And how long did it take him to spread the news around?” the Gadfly demanded. He turned first to Scythas, who kept his grimacing silence.

Then the Gadfly rounded on Jason, and he was forced to invoke the only strength he could still trust.

Euterpe, he called, desperate as the weight of the wise man’s years was leveled against him. He reached for that joyful melody, the sound of the Muse’s flute and the brush of her flower crown against his brow.

He found nothing. His hollow heart stuttered in his chest.

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“Is that the face of a man with something to say?” the Gadfly asked, stepping to him and pressing him back a step with his barrel chest. Old man, they called him, as if the hoplite would never return. Salt and shifting winds, as if he’d ever left. “How did you get here? Who told you to come?”

Without a muse to inspire him, without a crew he could call his own, what separated a man from a hero? What made him anything at all? Jason’s focus wavered, and was drawn in by another. Solus drew his eyes as surely as a sail. He didn’t speak, but the storm in his eyes spoke for him.

[Leave it be, leave it be, leave it be.]

“No one,” he answered, defiance straightening his spine.