The Son of Ro
“... Truthfully, it’s impossible for soone like 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 , in those few monts that we crossed paths.”
Griffon made so polite noises, said a few empathetic words, but he was looking at out of the corner of his eye. His pupil shook faintly. Was it excitent or tightly leashed fear? The forr, 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 flas behind his eyes flickering. “No, before that. Forgive , I’ve forgotten myself. My na is Scythas.” His na was bestowed, not gifted - with an expectation of return.
“Griffon,” said the forr Young Aristocrat without hesitation. Scythas’ burning eyes turned to .
“Sol.”
“Well t,” he decided.
“Agreed.” Griffon’s arm was sohow 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 sa 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 acknowledgent of the kyrios’ identity had been reluctantly given - and without a proper na. Sothing told 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 co to the sa 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 co to take part in the gas, just like you.”
It wasn’t a lie. Griffon didn’t tell lies. But that only made the statent 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 , 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 sches forever, he was sorely mistaken.
I only had a mont 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 ntor?” Scythas asked, genuinely surprised. There was a wisp of sensation, that formless sothing 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. Monts, 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 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 sa. He was looking for sothing deeper than what that spiritual handshake could convey.
I flexed the captain’s virtue once, experintally, and watched in fascination as the grasping hands of his influence slamd to the dirt.
Scythas pulled back, staring at .
I was implicated in that mont. 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.
It was madness for a re 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. n and won 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 ti 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 his strength. I t 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.
“Apologies,” he murmured.
“I’ve been in your place before.” It was even the truth. I set my shoulders, nodding when he unconsciously mimicked . “Stand proud. You’re strong.”
His spine straightened and his spirit - the ever-present fire that burned in the eyes of all Heroic cultivators - flared in pleasure. I knew imdiately that he wasn’t a man with many friends in this city. He reminded of so of the younger legionnaires in the fifth, the ones who’d joined up because they had nowhere else to go. In fact, if he cut his hair…
No. None of that.
“Why haven’t I seen the two of you around the cult?” Scythas asked, lingering suspicion warring with genuine curiosity. He glanced at Griffon, sizing him up as a competitor now where before he’d been a potential… threat? Imposter? Was this even an exclusive event? It seed like every cultivator in the city had turned out for it.
“I couldn’t stand my own cult’s politics,” Griffon said, shrugging one shoulder. “I’d rather not trade one for another.”
“You- what!? Are you out of your mind?”
“He is,” I confird. “In fact-”
My nose wrinkled.
Griffon said sothing in response to my comnt, feigning offense, but I didn’t hear it. I inhaled slowly. What was that scent? It was faint, cloyingly sweet, like campfire smoke drifting on the wind. But there was sothing about it.
I held my breath and pinched my nose, ignoring the looks Griffon and Scythas gave . The perating stench of city scum and sweat brought by the crowds vanished.
The sll of sweet campfire smoke remained. I could taste it on my tongue.
“You don’t sll like mint either,” Griffon told , and this ti he actually did look offended. Scythas turned his head discreetly, sniffing his cult attire.
“Is sothing burning?” I finally asked. It wasn’t a funeral pyre. It tasted like burnt cypress. Griffon and Scythas shared a look. Scythas held up his torch. “Never mind.”
Griffon took it in stride, returning to the topic of the Raging Heaven Cult and his decision not to join its ranks. Scythas had already been led to believe that we’d been offered initiate status but declined it, and Griffon was happy to follow him down that path. What resulted was a heated discussion about the pros and cons of the greater mystery cults. He was thoroughly caught up in Griffon’s rhythm now.
I listened with half an ear, responding to leading comnts Griffon made about the Rosy Dawn but otherwise tuning the rest of it out. Scythas was as vague with the details of his ho cult as he was with the Cult of Raging Heaven, though he was easing out of his wariness towards us mont by mont. Instead, I focused on that smoke, tracing it as it wound through the crowd.
It didn’t follow the breeze like true smoke. There was intent behind it, and that beca obvious as I followed its path with my own senses.
Where the smoke gathered, my Sophic sense grasped n and won of power. Smoke cycled around them in such dense clouds that I was surprised they could even breathe. It settled into their pores, leaving remnants of itself before moving on through the crowd in search of other powerful cultivators. When I reached for Scythas with my Sophic sense, I found nothing different about him. But the remnant of that scent was there. Not on Griffon, though, and not on . Whatever this smoke was, it was marking Heroes in the crowd.
Scythas stopped mid-debate with Griffon, glancing curiously at .
Ah. He’d felt it.
I’d just tagged every notable cultivator within shouting distance.
“It’s true that there are benefits to joining an institution like the Raging Heaven,” I said, carefully resisting the urge to start running. “Socialization, for one. There are certain things a peer can teach you that I never could.”
“See? Your ntor agrees,” Scythas added, smirking victoriously at Griffon. I could feel the question Griffon wanted to ask , but instead he tilted his head in acknowledgent. Scarlet eyes flickered in the light of his Rosy Fingers.
“I suppose getting to know the competition wouldn’t hurt,” he mused in mock reluctance. He leered at Scythas. “What do you say, friend? Care to introduce this lowly sophist to the others?”
“No need,” I said.
In response to their wordless confusion I let my Sophic sense, my new influence, settle on their shoulders like a pair of Griffon’s pankration hands. It urged them both to turn west, and when they did they saw a woman pushing her way through the crowd towards us. Her otherwise flawless skin was riddled with deep scars, like a master had sculpted her from a block of marble and then handed the chisel off to a child.
Further beyond and further west was a man approaching at an even faster pace. He was massive, his stature alone clearing people from his path, and wore a skinned crocodile as a mantle and cloak over his cult attire.
There were others, converging on us from every direction. Converging on .
“I took the liberty of gathering them myself,” I said blandly, committing to the act. My mories of the ntor that had done his best to make an upstanding man of an arrogant young patrician were faint, but I would never forget his tone.
It was a hunch, but I was confident in it. They were Heroes, all of them, wearing cult attire of varying colors. Not native citizens of Olympia, and not afraid to shoulder past those who were. They were young, strong, and raring for a fight.
After all the grief I’d given Griffon, I was the one who’d cast us to the wolves. Naturally, Griffon’s expression lit up as he realized what I’d done. Sohow, that made it worse.
Griffon stepped forward to et the scarred woman as she shoved through the last few Sophic cultivators between us, pulling Scythas along with him. The wariness that had all but faded from the shorter Hero was back in full force as they greeted one another. Whatever was said, though, was drowned out in the next mont by an echoing boom.
The funeral drums began to beat.
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