Virtuous Sons: A Greco Roman Xianxia - Chapter 1.121

Chapter 1.121

The Young Griffon

A Titan is to an Olympian as an Olympian is to a Man.

The Titan Prometheus was larger than anything I’d ever seen with my own two eyes. Large enough that it almost seemed like I could reach out and touch him, despite the dizzying distance that separated Sol and I from the peak of peaks on Kaukoso Mons. Greater than any Tyrant could hope to be, a hundred hands to the Heroic Orpheus’ twenty-five. He could have wrestled the monstrous dragon spirits of the Brothers Aetos’ epic as easily as I had the Heroic Huntsman’s crocodile familiar, and wrung them out each like bloody rags.

He looked like a man writ entirely too large, but there was an uncanny beauty to his proportions that I understood only belatedly. His frame and its features, they were all perfect.

Though the Titan hung from the peak of Kaukoso Mons, left arm and both legs suspended by chains of cruel adamant, he did not appear frail. Though his hair was tangled and slick with sweat, like curling rings of smoke plastered to his forehead, it did not appear unkempt. The tightness around his eyes and the clenching of his jaw, the impotent pain, it did not make him seem pitiful. It was as if in every shifting moment he had been chiseled out of the mountain by a sculptor’s loving hand – an artist’s idealized depiction of a suffering man rather than the living reality.

Larger than life was not a meaningful descriptor. A mortal mind was incapable of constructing a framework capable of containing the Titan Flame. He defied description. He existed in spite of all common sense.

He was looking at us.

Prometheus opened his mouth to speak and the world held its breath to hear him. His teeth and his tongue were stained by glittering liquid gold.

“Captain of salt and ash,” spoke the Thief of Flame, with dark and weary humor. His voice shook the blood in my veins and bid every muscle in my body to clench. It made the flashing lights of the storm crown burn somehow brighter all around us. “Where have your legions gone this time? You’re ever a sorry sight without them.”

Sol stared up at the Titan, stricken beyond words. Prometheus chuckled weakly, and the mountain stone rumbled beneath our feet.

“What a terrible expression. Am I truly so ghastly? No, don’t answer that – my grief is overwhelming as it is.”

Those burning eyes shifted and the full weight of the Titan’s attention struck me like a comet. There was no pneuma, no influence, no flicker of the heart that any of my refined senses could detect. Prometheus looked upon me plainly and it was like I’d stepped into the sun.

“And you must be-”

Surprise flickered in the light of twin stars.

“Young blood?”

“High-minded son and brazen thief of flame – against my will and yours, I must bind you with chains of adamant which no one can remove to this cliff face.”

Scythas, Hero of the Scything Squall

Scythas ran with no hope of true escape.

The alchemical furnace was an overwhelming weight in his arms, its contents far heavier for their significance than the stone furnace itself. He was forced to run like a drunkard through the Storm That Never Ceased, lurching and stumbling without grace as the lightning pursued him. If he moved the way his body knew how to move, he’d surely spill the brew.

Take it.

He’d die before he spilled a drop.

As the seconds passed and drew their scars across his heart, the fire behind his eyes burned brighter and brighter. Scythas knew that death was not far behind him.

The initiation rites of the Raging Heaven Cult were unlike any other in the Free Mediterranean. They were dangerous to every cultivator that dared undergo them. Standing made no difference. Family ties, political power, refinement of the soul – in any other mystery cult, these things mattered. Anywhere outside of Olympia, high standing was its own assurance of success.

The storm crown did not care.

When hopeful initiates of the Raging Heaven Cult stepped into the storm, they were only obligated to take a single step away from their peers. One step, one transgression against the heavens, was proof enough according to the kyrios. They were joined each year by their would-be seniors, advanced Philosophers and Heroic souls that had burnt their hearts’ blood in search of glory.

The intent was for their seniors to pierce through the storm crown ahead of the new prospects and clear a path for them to climb. If not to make it easy, then at least to make it possible.

Yet each year, those senior Sophists and Heroic souls were some of the first to come racing back down the mountain. Wild-eyed and with their hearts in their throats. Senselessly terrified, every one.

Scythas knew this, because he had been the first of the Heroes to turn back when his turn had come. One step alone into the storm crown and no further. He’d taken that first step, realized he could no longer hear the whispers on the wind, and he turned away in naked terror. Jason had come lunging out just a split second after him.

Their peers had named them cowards for it later, accused them of abandoning their juniors, and Scythas hadn’t been able to deny it. But though they hadn’t been wrong, they also hadn’t been much better. Every one of their Heroic peers had fled the storm crown before the last of the initiates, when they were meant to be the shepherds from the beginning to the very end.

They had all failed. Scythas had simply failed first and most profoundly.

“Pathetic,” the Hurricane Hierophant had branded him, the most disappointed that Scythas had ever seen the man. The Tyrant’s daughter had looked upon him with tears in her eyes, so disappointed was she in her future husband.

“Pathetic,” the kyrios had agreed the next time they spoke. “Though the king has little room to talk. One step alone is more than he’d ever dare transgress.”

The scholars of the Raging Heaven Cult did everything they could to distinguish themselves so that they might earn a place to sleep that was further from the storm. The Heroic souls that hoped to one day challenge the Fates themselves could only measure their time within the storm crown in seconds before they each turned back in shame. The Tyrant Elders of Olympia wouldn’t even look upon the storm. The reason for all three behaviors was the same.

A clap of thunder and howling wolves threw Scythas from his feet. Tumbling, he clutched the stone furnace desperately and raised it up. He twisted and allowed his body to be battered while he caught the sloshing red liquid out of the air and returned it to its basin. He whistled frantically, burning his heart’s blood, and cutting winds blasted out from him in every direction.

A hound of seething lightning caught a wind scythe in its teeth and bit down. A strand of tribulation’s light arched through the air between them, tracing Scythas’ pneuma back to him and striking him over his heart. His back arched in helpless agony.

Urania! he called out, but his plea went unanswered.

The storm crown didn’t care where you stood. It only cared to tear you down. It only sought to unmake you,

And it would not cease until its work was done.

Tucking the furnace under one arm, Scythas drew his sword with the other and buried it in the hound’s skull when it lunged for him.

The dog did not die, but it was flung away in an explosion of concussive force. Scythas fared no better He let the blade go careening into the storm clouds and wrapped his numb arms around the furnace, curling his body around it and whistling a prayer to the wind.

The further he cast out his pneuma, the more eyes within the storm he drew. Even this much was tempting the Fates, but he had made a promise to himself and a promise to Solus. He would take the risk.

The wind caught every drop of nectar that the explosion had flung into the air and returned them to the furnace. The storm dashed it from his control a split second later.

Scythas slammed into an upright column of stone and bit halfway through his tongue. He slumped down, bleeding from his mouth and only seeing half the world through glassy eyes. He wasted precious moments like that, fighting for control of his senses as the storm saught to finish what the Gadfly had begun.

When a woman’s familiar face leaned down into his blurred vision, Scythas was certain that he was only seeing stars. Yet as his eyesight slowly cleared, she grew more prominent in his view instead of less. Not a fleeting trick of the storm’s light, nor the nearly transparent constellation that he had known her as since his ascension. The woman leaning over him, peering out from a cage made up of suffering men and women, was carved entirely from stone.

“I am with you, hero,” the statue of Urania assured him, stone lips curling impossibly into a fond smile as she regarded him. “Now as ever. Here until the end.”

“Far from all mortal men, where you will never hear a human voice or glimpse a human shape.”

The Young Griffon

A dead man looked down on me with sly eyes, leaning over the edge of the balcony, his place of prominence inside the Orphic House.

“Tell me-”

“Young blood,” the Titan Prometheus said again, a low murmur that threatened to deafen me. He raised his right hand to cover his face, abruptly disoriented. “No, that’s not…”

I traced the dangling chain that hung from the manacle around his right wrist. The manacles were made of the same material as the chains, a dazzling synthesis of ruby and sapphire and amethyst joined. Unbreakable adamant.

“Look,” I hissed. The lightning limb that Sol had claimed reached up and grabbed the back of his neck, forcing him to look down.

That the Titan could move his right hand at all should have been impossible. The chain meant to hold his right arm tight against the cliff face hung free instead, swaying with the motion of his arm and terminating at a single broken chain. Who could have done such a thing? No one. It was an impossible question, because it had no answer – adamant was immutable once forged.

The impossible answer stood beneath Prometheus’ feet, immortalized in tribulation stone.

Barring the Titan Porphyrion, it was the tallest statue on the mountain. It was a man, if such a thing could be believed, both broad-shouldered and heavily muscled even for his size. The clothing carved for him from stone was a humble contrast to the fineries of the Tyrants that languished in the storm. Heaven’s hand had chiseled for him only a tunic of plain cloth and the monstrous pelt of a lion.

The statue had been carved out of a single moment, the man’s shoulder length hair blowing wildly behind him. His head was tilted back, a savage grin carved into his lips. Twin jewels of cut and polished amethyst glimmered in place of eyes, narrowed in firm defiance.

The statue of the Champion held the other broken end of Prometheus’ chain in his right hand, and with his left he pointed a golden blade at the skies above. Of all the shameful, suffering souls that I had found within the storm, the immortal memory of Herakles alone stood defiant.

“Is it ivory or is it horn?” Prometheus whispered, and we couldn’t help but overhear him. “How long could it have possibly been? I feel as if I’ve only just closed my eyes, and yet…”

“And yet?” I called when the Titan trailed off, tearing my gaze away from the Champion’s statue. My heart stuttered in my chest and ice shot through my veins when I saw that the fingers of Prometheus’ right hand had parted, and he was staring down at us through the gap.

“And yet here you are already.”

“You know us?” Of all the myriad impossibilities, that one should have shocked me least. The Titan had clearly recognized Sol, or at least seemed to think he did before laying eyes on me. He’d seen my brother and expected me to be someone else.

“Of course I do. I must. It was my hand that molded you from clay, my hand that stole for you a spark.” The Titan was trying to convince himself as much as he was us. He sounded bewildered and fatigued. His free hand dragged down his face, smooth nails digging into his own flawless skin. “I may not be your Father, but you are my children all the same. I know you all. I carry you all with me, here.” His hand settled over his heart, and my own thrummed inside my chest like a struck gong.

Sol caught me by the shoulder and it was only then that I realized I had fallen. I staggered, fine hairs prickling on my skin and cold sweat dousing me like rain water. I cursed my sudden infirmity and forced pneuma through my legs to brace them.

Vital strength flooded my limbs and I nearly slammed my head into Sol’s chin as I exploded back to my feet. Sparks danced in my vision as I was all but overwhelmed by the sudden surge of vitality. My lungs felt overfull – no, not overfull. Overfull implied pain, implied a lack of space to hold my breath. This feeling wasn’t that. This was something pure. It felt as though my body was not my own, and yet more my own than it had ever been.

My breath flowed freely, utterly unobstructed. Like I’d been born anew.

“What was that?” Sol finally found his voice, and used it to demand answers of the Flame. “What did you do to us?” Us?

My nose wrinkled, and I looked down at myself in disgusted understanding. It wasn’t sweat that clung to my skin, but something fouler. A dark, vile substance that smelled awful in a hundred different ways and refused to part from my skin. I saw the same noxious liquid clinging to Sol’s exposed skin and seeping through his tunic, sticking to his face and neck like mud.

Scarlet flame rose up from my soul and scoured the taint from our skin. Sol tensed but allowed the flames to pass, grimacing at the fumes that rose up around us as it burned.

“Impurities,” I said roughly. Tracing my own pneuma as it flowed through my body, I realized it was more than that. “Our humors – he balanced us.”

My body felt more my own than it ever had before, and it was because an outside force had changed it.

“Why?” I asked.

Prometheus clenched his eyes shut, blocking out the light of the sun, and when he spoke his voice was distant. As if his mind was elsewhere, chained up just as his body was here. He shook his head.

“Why have I ever needed a reason? Some things exist apart from explanation. Some truths are plainly known.”

Lightning flashed overhead and the Titan Flame grit his gold-stained teeth in pained frustration.

“My children are freezing. My children are blind. What else was I to do?”

“The sun’s hot rays will scorch and age your youthful flesh.”

Hero of the Scything Squall, Scythas

“Join me. Quickly,” the Muse bid him, drawing back into her cage of stone sufferers. Scythas lurched after her on hands and knees into the cage. Moments later, he heard a crack and felt the heat of striking lightning behind him.

He turned and fell onto his back, clutching the alchemical furnace to his chest, and watched with wide eyes as a hound made entirely of lightning struck the stone cage and was torn apart. A shrill yelp was the last sound it ever made before dispersing into sparks.

“You-” Scythas choked and turned his head, coughing violently. He’d inhaled a strand of blood from his mangled tongue. Clearing his throat, he looked up through steaming eyes at the statue of the Muse.

“You saved me,” he croaked. “Thank you.”

The statue of the Muse tapped a stone finger on the crown of his head.

“I haven’t saved you yet,” Urania corrected him. “What brings you to this place?”

Scythas furrowed his brow. Not once since the day he’d advanced to the Heroic Realm had Urania asked him such a question. She always knew why he was where he was when he called upon her. She always knew exactly where he needed her to be.

“You don’t know?”

“The Urania that exists within you is a Urania beyond my time,” the statue of the Muse informed him, allowing her stone hand to trail down from the crown of his head, cupping his chin with care. “I can see her mark on your heart, and it tells me that you’re mine. But I can only guess as to why she chose you. And I can only help you if you tell me why you’re here – and what you need.”

There had been no response when he first called out to the Heavenly Muse, and Scythas realized this must be why. He’d thought that landing at the statue’s feet had been her way of answering, and perhaps it had – but it hadn’t been his Muse responding to the call. Not quite.

“Where is my Urania?” he asked. She shrugged, an uncanny shifting of stone that was made more bizarre by the fact that the carved silks were not silks at all. They did not shift with the motion the way they should have.

“With the rest of her sisters, I imagine,” Urania answered. She waved a hand vaguely at the world outside her cage. “Anywhere but here.”

Scythas caught himself before he could pursue that further, cursing his wandering mind. He didn’t have time for questions. Solus had entrusted him with something worth more than any answer the Muses could give him. Every moment Scythas spent here was another moment that the Gadfly could use to find him. Had he pursued Scythas into the storm at all? Had Solus gone in after him? Scythas didn’t know, and that was an inexcusable lack.

He had grown so accustomed to having the wind on his side that being here, cut off from the whispering breeze, left him feeling worse than blind.

“Can you guide me through the storm?” He asked the Heavenly Muse, and whether she was his or some other Urania from an age long past, she smiled just the same.

“Which path do you seek, young hero?”

“Socrates,” he said at once. “Show me the path to Socrates.” If he knew where the Gadfly was, he could go anywhere else to avoid him. The only thing keeping Scythas trapped inside the storm crown was the threat of the Scholar waiting for him just outside of it.

The statue paused, then shook her head.

“I don’t know anyone by that name,” she said apologetically. “None that go by it exist within the storm. I can only guide you inside of its boundaries.”

Scythas sighed. It wasn’t the answer he wanted, but it was information nonetheless. Socrates hadn’t pursued him.

“Would you like to know who did?” Urania asked, reading his mind as she always did. Before Scythas could respond one way or another, she cast her hand out and splayed her fingers wide.

Starlight bloomed within the immortal storm crown.

Scythas traced seven distinct constellation lines, five branching along the mountain parallel with his elevation or beneath it. Two paths alone arched straight up towards the peak, so close they intertwined at points. His heart flew up into his throat.

“Who are they?”

The statue of the Muse considered him thoughtfully. “It seems you already know.”

He needed confirmation. “Show me Solus.”

Every constellation but one flickered and went out. The one that remained was one of the two that arched above their heads, leading to the peak.

“I’m going.” Though he dreaded even saying it, the Legate’s will was clear. Solus had decided that even the shadows beneath the storm crown were no longer entirely safe, and had sought refuge in the one place that even the Gadfly wouldn’t dare tread. If he could suffer the storm, his standing being what it was, then Scythas had no excuse at all. He forced himself up onto one knee.

“Why?” the statue of Urania asked him. He had to remind himself that it wasn’t a playful jab or an invitation to reconsider. This version of the Muse simply didn’t know.

He hefted up the stone furnace in lieu of a response, searching through the storm around them for hounds. There were none in sight for now. He could only hope the stars would guide him around them-

“You’re going to poison him?” Urania asked, and Scythas froze.

“What?”

“Or is he going to poison someone else?” the Muse murmured, tapping a stone finger to her chin in thought. “If that brew is meant for him, you should know that it’s entirely more than is required. You’d be wasting a maul on a mouse. There are easier ways-”

“No!” Scythas blurted. “No, I’m not- this isn’t-” He held the furnace up helplessly. “This is nectar.”

“It’s poison,” the Muse said simply, and Scythas couldn’t find any trace of mischief or lie in her stone face. He nearly dropped the furnace as he thrust it out as far as he could away from his face. How long had he been inhaling the fumes? How much damage had been done already?

“But that’s not…” Scythas clenched his eyes shut. His head was still pounding, worse now than before. Nothing made sense. Nothing ever made sense. “We followed the Gadfly’s instructions to the letter. He said he knew. He said he’d seen it done with his own eyes, brewed by the kyrios’ own hand. He said it would work! What are we going to do?”

Unbidden and against his will, images of his brother danced behind his eyelids.

What am I going to do?

Cool stone fingers gripped his chin again and lifted it. Scythas opened his eyes and through their blurry vision saw Urania’s kind eyes.

“I never said it was wrongly brewed,” she told him gently. “I only said that it was poison.”

“That’s not what it was meant to be!”

“Are you certain?”

Scythas was silent.

“The man that you call kyrios has had ages upon ages to grow desensitized to his own brew,” Urania explained. As she did she reached somehow into her stone robes, parting them like real silk as she searched through them. “Poison for thee, not for He. You did nothing wrong, but you lack the constitution required. An iron stomach is needed for a drink like this.”

From her robes, Urania drew out a wide-rimmed cup made entirely of polished pewter. A bright silvery skyphos, of the same make as the crown of stars upon her head.

“Whichever path you plan to follow, the storm will break you down. You must rest. You must regain your strength. Until then-” The muse withdrew her hand from his chin and cupped both palms beneath the wide pewter cup. She held it out and favored Scythas with a beautiful, dimpled smile. “Kind hero of my heart, won’t you offer me a drink?”

What else was he to do?

Scythas poured Urania a cup of blood-red poison from the furnace and watched her raise it to her lips, tipping it back and drinking it dry in one long pull.

He waited for her to say something, to wrinkle her nose in disgust or make a sound of some appreciation for the taste. Anything. Instead, the statue’s stone cheeks puffed out as she swished the poison back and forth in her mouth. Then she gave him a wink.

Urania spit their poison nectar back into her cup, and somehow, impossibly, what had gone in the color of spilled blood came out the color of liquid gold.

Scythas watched the glittering liquid fill her cup, entirely lost for words. When the Muse offered her skyphos back to him, he could only stare.

“The roads ahead of you are long,” spoke Urania of the Storm. “Drink of my drink, young Scythas, and be strong.”

“The day I met you,” Scythas eventually said, “you told me that you could only ever help me help myself. Show me the way, but never help me walk it.” Somehow, it was the first thing that came to mind.

“Then I lied to you,” the statue of the Muse said with regret. She didn’t take back her offered gift. Beyond their cage, the storm raged on.

Scythas took the pewter cup in hand.

“For you, the sparkling stars high in the sky at night will hide those rays and offer some relief.”