Interlude 2.2 [Old ‘Zalus] [Olympia Arc Part 1: END]

Old ‘Zalus

The room was large but modestly furnished, barren by the standards of most made men. Its floors were polished marble, pure and unblemished by gemstone veins. What furniture that there was, a massive cypress bed frame and side tables of the same wood, was all finely kept but notable for its lack of adornment. There were no paintings, no statues or sacred treasures. It was as humble a home as any man could have.

And yet, that did not change what it was. The lack of overt majesty made it no less potent. No less his. The response to intruders here was just the same as in the most palatial estate.

“I’m going to kill you, Gadfly,” Polyzalus promised the man intruding upon his place. It was an insult that no tyrant worth their title would tolerate. After all.

A Tyrant’s domain was the throne of their soul.

“Good evening to you too, Zalus,” Socrates said, brushing the weight of a Tyrant’s displeasure off his shoulders. “I’ve come to bargain.”

The Gadfly, pest among pests, strode into Polyzalus’ domain as brazenly as he did everything else, passing by the bed and side tables without a second glance on his way to the wide open terrace. That he didn’t hesitate even for a moment is the only reason Polyzalus didn’t kill him where he stood.

But the urge was strong. It always was.

“I have nothing to give you, and you have never had anything worth wanting,” the tyrant dismissed the philosopher.

Idly, in another place and another part of himself, the Rein-Holder listened through the ears of his faithful shadows as they left to do their dark work. These aspects of himself, the shards of the Tyrant that was Scarlet Polyzalus, existed in his perception in the same way that the shadows they epitomized did. Silhouettes without true detail. Impressions and whispered half-truths.

It was enough to know when his crows were on the hunt. The rest would be revealed to him when the shadows of himself were re-gathered to the whole. Assuming, of course, that they were not devoured first.

“Fortunately for the both of us, nothing is exactly what I came here to bargain for,” Socrates said, sitting cross legged on the marble floor with his back to the stone rails of the terrace.

“Deal, then. Now leave.”

“That’s no way to treat a guest.”

Polyzalus paused in his work, and in his far seeing as well, and leveled the Gadfly with the pressure of his authority. Socrates met his eyes just long enough to make his worthless point before allowing his head to bow.

“You haven’t been my guest in over three hundred years,” the true tyrant of the Burning Dusk said, and his conviction made it so. Within these plain walls and upon this marble floor, the word of the First-to-Burn was natural law.

And yet Socrates found it within himself to reach outside of that new natural order, and make a nuisance of himself as always.

“What would our father in heaven think, to hear you cast aside xenia so callously?”

Night was falling, casting shadows in the room. Polyzalus reached out with the crystallized purpose of his ravenous soul and from nothing declared something, burning out of non-existence several sunset lanterns that drifted like fireflies into his domain. With his hands, he dipped an unstained cloth into a basin of water and twisted it, gently ringing out the bulk of the moisture.

“There are no gods left to punish such things,” he said, taking her arm in his hand and setting to his work with the damp cloth.

“Is that so? Is that what you truly believe?”

“Near enough.”

These days, it made little difference.

“Then disregard the pantheon,” Socrates said, unwinding sash after sash from around himself and casting them to the wind. “What would you think, three hundred years ago, to see yourself now? To hear your own voice uttering such foul sentiment?”

“I wouldn’t think anything meaningful at all. I never did, in those days.”

“If not the gods, and not the you of yesterday, then is the you of today truly the sole arbiter of morality? How can you know that the ‘Zalus of tomorrow won’t disagree? If all the world tells you-”

“Not today,” Polyzalus said simply, and leveraged the weight of his purpose. Outside of his domain, he would have had to manifest his pneuma for this. But here, seated upon the humble throne of his soul, all he had to do was desire it.

And it was his.

The Gadfly shut his mouth, and it was worth every ounce of ethos that Polyzalus had invoked to achieve it. He dipped his cloth back in the basin of water, wringing it once more.

Alas, it didn’t last. “I’ll be brief, then.”

“Will you?” The first son to burn mused, brushing back golden hair the same shade as his own and wetting her forehead. “Even in my own domain, I never thought I’d see the day.”

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“I’ve taken on a boy.”

He sneered. “Spare me your personal details.”

“I’ll be overseeing his development for the near future, so expect to see him around the Raging Heaven. I don’t want him pulled into the current schemes.”

The damp cloth stilled, resting against her right cheek.

“What is his name?”

“He calls himself Solus. But his companion calls him Sol.”