1.8

The Son of Rome

“… Truthfully, it’s impossible for someone like me to have known a man like him,” the heroic cultivator said, winding down his somber recollection. “In the end, all I can offer tonight is my gratitude for the kindness he showed me, in those few moments that we crossed paths.”

Griffon made some polite noises, said a few empathetic words, but he was looking at me out of the corner of his eye. His pupil shook faintly. Was it excitement or tightly leashed fear? The former, knowing him, though the latter would have been a more sensible reaction. The Heroic cultivator had spoken only briefly about his connection to the man of the night, but it had been enough.

Olympia laid more than just a Tyrant to rest tonight.

The kyrios of the Raging Heaven Cult was dead.

“What about you two? How did you know him?” the hero asked, gathering himself. His brow suddenly furrowed, the flames behind his eyes flickering. “No, before that. Forgive me, I’ve forgotten myself. My name is Scythas.” His name was bestowed, not gifted – with an expectation of return.

“Griffon,” said the former Young Aristocrat without hesitation. Scythas’ burning eyes turned to me.

“Sol.”

“Well met,” he decided.

“Agreed.” Griffon’s arm was somehow still slung across the young hero’s shoulder. He jostled him a bit as he waved between the two of us. “As for us, our paths crossed with the kyrios the same way yours did.”

“Is that so?” Scythas asked, with interest and skilfully masked suspicion. His ploy had been clear from the start, describing his own circumstances here in Olympia in only the vaguest of terms. Even his acknowledgement of the kyrios’ identity had been reluctantly given – and without a proper name. Something told me he’d only given up that much because he’d felt he had to.

To prove himself. It was a gut instinct, but Griffon had clearly come to the same conclusion. Scythas was feeling us out. Testing our legitimacy while proving his own. But why bother validating himself? A hero had no reason to justify himself to a pair of uppity philosophers. The difference in our standing was clear as day.

Unless it wasn’t.

“Don’t pretend you can’t tell,” Griffon chided. “It’s written all over your face – a challenger recognizes a challenger. We’ve come to take part in the games, just like you.”

It wasn’t a lie. Griffon didn’t tell lies. But that only made the statement more absurd. I clenched my right fist, the one not in the heroic cultivator’s line of sight. What did he think he was doing?

Scythas looked to me, searching. He didn’t deny Griffon’s guess. Not just a Hero, but an Olympic athlete in the making.

Griffon cocked an expectant eyebrow. Unfortunately for him, he was no longer the Young Aristocrat of the Rosy Dawn, and I was no longer one of his slaves.

“He is taking part,” I said, stressing the distinction. If he thought I’d play along with his schemes forever, he was sorely mistaken.

I only had a moment to savor Griffon’s irritated glower. Scythas actually relaxed a fraction after I answered, as if I’d just cleared up a discrepancy in the story rather than openly contradicting it. Griffon noticed it, too, irritation turning to satisfaction in a split second.

“Sol is too modest,” he assured Scythas. “He may not be competing directly, but I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for him.”

Worthless Greek.

“Your mentor?” Scythas asked, genuinely surprised. There was a wisp of sensation, that formless something that Griffon had been describing before Scythas interrupted us in the first place.

There had been too much happening when I ascended. Even looking back on it now, with my pneuma unfettered, it was impossible to separate any one sensation from another. Moments, seconds, minutes and hours. They all bled together. It had been a vague impression in the Rosy Dawn when the shackles fell away and I called upon the captain’s virtue. I’d felt its effect on the people around me more clearly than before.

Now, I felt the brush of a heroic cultivator’s influence against mine. Instinctively, I knew he wasn’t gauging my pneuma. He’d already done that from the start, and we’d done the same. He was looking for something deeper than what that spiritual handshake could convey.

I flexed the captain’s virtue once, experimentally, and watched in fascination as the grasping hands of his influence slammed to the dirt.

Scythas pulled back, staring at me.

I was implicated in that moment. Griffon radiated victory, and all I could do was pretend that my actions had been intentional.

“Stare into the sun and you’ll go blind,” I said mildly. Griffon chuckled. Scythas, for his part, shuffled in place. He smoothed out his cult robes in a nervous gesture.

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It was madness for a mere Philosopher to masquerade as a Hero. The gulf that separated them was the difference between heaven and earth. Even so, I stepped towards him, appraising him as if he wasn’t my senior in age and cultivation both.

“You haven’t been here long,” I said, looking him up and down. The soft sounds of mourning enveloped us. Men and women alike sobbed or spoke in low, solemn tones to one another. The kyrios had passed too soon. What were they to do without him? “This is your first time competing.”

“And if it is?”

His hair was too long. It curled around the nape of his neck, a shade of blond just darker than Griffon’s. My officer’s instincts stirred, buried beneath salt and ash, and rose to the surface of my thoughts. He was projecting all the wrong things. His hair, his posture, the state of his clothes. His pneuma didn’t lie – he was a Hero. But he was failing to truly show it.

I offered Scythas my hand and he didn’t hesitate to take it. I held back a wince when he crushed mine in his – he thought he was the junior here, the underdog that needed to establish himself. It was only natural that he would show me his strength. I met his eyes calmly, and just before the fine bones in my hand broke, I invoked this new whisper-quiet version of the captain’s virtue. Scythas jerked back.