Interlude 3.1 [Myron Aetos]

The Little Kyrios

The first day after Lio left the Rosy Dawn was the longest, and the most difficult. There were tears, anguish, frustrations, and above all else a horrible fear. After that first day, they stifled their tears and hid their anguish, putting the fear for their cousin out of their minds as best they could. The second day was not easier, but it passed quicker.

The third day was even quicker than that. Finally, they made it through the first week. And then, in no time at all, two. Suddenly three.

It helped to have a goal.

Myron ducked beneath a senior mystiko’s lashing strike, the wooden practice blade whistling over his head. From an early age he had been taught to leverage every advantage that his body provided, no matter how old he happened to be, or what size his body was. Against an opponent like this, nearly twice his height, his stature allowed him to dodge certain attacks more easily. His speed allowed him to maneuver through the older cultivator’s guard.

And child or not, he still carried the strength of a seventh rank Civic cultivator within his soul. Myron spun into the opposing cultivator’s guard rather than away from his sword, and drove every ounce of his momentum and the full force of his pneuma into an elbow to the kidney.

The senior cultivator, an eighteen-year-old in the sixth rank of the civic realm, dropped his practice blade and collapsed, wheezing. Myron caught it out of the air and tossed it from hand to hand, changing grips until it felt comfortable enough to use. The opponent before this one had fought with his fists, and so Myron had done the same upon beating him. Now, he would try the blade.

“This lowly sophist thanks you for your guidance,” he said formally, bowing to the gasping mystiko. He offered him a hand.

He took it and rose, holding his side. “And I thank the little lord for his instruction.” Myron rolled his eyes at the nickname, and the older cultivator chuckled, patting his shoulder and staggering out of the marble octagon.

Myron turned to regard the gymnasiarch and his audience, a collection of boys his age as well as older cultivators that had been drawn first out of curiosity, and then by the novel prospect of trading discourse with a young pillar of the Rosy Dawn. He waved invitingly, and after a moment another young man with his arms and hands wrapped in scarlet bandages took to the octagon.

The gymnasiarch leaned his elbows on the edge of the octagon, the upraised platform standing nearly at chest height for a grown man. He raised an eyebrow at Myron.

“Are you sure, son? You’re due a break.”

He mastered his impatience, brushed damp curls of hair from his eyes, and nodded firmly.

“I’ll be fine, sir.”

He’d only fought a couple dozen times so far, and most of those early on had been boys his own age. Uninspiring opponents, if he was being honest with himself, though he hadn’t said that to their faces. They had given him all they had and didn’t deserve such a blow to the ego.

Myron could keep going. Myron had to keep going. He knew that Lio could have fought this entire gymnasium without faltering. And he would have won every time.

“I offer my greetings to the little lord,” his opponent said, bowing his head deeply. Myron rolled the blade of wood in his hand and nodded.

“Raise your head and greet the dawn.”

His opponent flashed him a grin and they both erupted into violence.

A minute later, maybe two, the older cultivator flew off the side of the marble octagon, a straight thrust that would have skewered him through the heart if it had been a live iron blade instead pushing him firmly out of bounds. Myron caught the leading edge of the wrap on his right hand as he went, unraveling it from the cultivator’s arm and wrapping it around his own. He tossed the practice blade aside.

“My thanks,” he said again, exchanging polite words with the mystiko, who seemed caught between indignation and amusement, before turning once again to regard his audience.

Cultivation is the sum of lived experiences. Lio and Sol had told him that almost a year ago, and it had been exactly what he needed to learn at the time. Now he found himself falling back on that advice, searching out new opponents, new weapons, new styles of fighting. Anything it took, he would do. Lio had shown him the difference between heaven and earth on the night of Nikolas’ wedding. If they wanted to bring him back, Myron would have to bridge that gap.

But they were so weak.

“Cousin,” a deep, concerned voice said to him sometime later, breaking him from a trance he hadn’t noticed himself slipping into. Myron panted for breath, dragging a hand down his face and coming away with so much sweat it was as if he’d dipped it in a pool. At his feet, two cultivators of the fourth and fifth Civic rank respectively lay crumpled and beaten.

Myron looked at the blunt daggers in his hands, each forged of rounded bronze, and dented from the impacts of his attacks. They clattered to the surface of the marble octagon as he knelt to help his opponents to their feet.

Only once they were shuffling off to the baths on the other side of the gymnasium, their arms slung around each other’s shoulders, did Myron turn and greet his cousin.

“Niko.”

“How long have you been at this?” the new young aristocrat of the Rosy Dawn asked, approaching the octagon with a frown. Mystikos hurriedly parted from his path, gazing with naked admiration at the sight of a truly heroic body. Niko still had a tunic wrapped around his waist, but he made for an impressive sight nonetheless. Myron sized him up, compared his physique to Lio’s, and then to his own.

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His father had always said that the body was a divine reflection of the soul. That every chiseled muscle was the work of countless hours in the gymnasium and on the battlefield. Lio had the physique of someone who had put in far more hours than Myron, who had cultivated his soul in earnest for longer than Myron had been alive. Niko was a level beyond even that.

Niko waved a hand in front of his face. Myron blinked, realizing that his mind had been wandering. How long had he been in the gymnasium, anyway?

He glanced at the gymnasiarch in askance, and the old man shook his head in stern disapproval.

To Niko, the gymnasiarch said, “He’s been here since this morning.”

“This morning- Myron, it’s nearly dinner time,” he said, the concern redoubling. Behind him, closer to the baths, Myron spotted his cousin’s male companions, currently in the process of bathing while initiates of the Rosy Dawn drifted around and worked up the courage to speak to them.

“I’m fine,” he said belatedly. His limbs felt heavy and weak, and he still hadn’t quite caught his breath, but he could keep going. Griffon would have kept going.