Virtuous Sons: A Greco Roman Xianxia - Chapter 1.123 [Libertas]

Chapter 1.123 [Libertas]

Hero of the Scything Squall, Scythas

He raised the pewter cup to his lips-

And paused before it could touch them. He stared down at his golden reflection in the nectar.

“Hero?” Urania’s remnant statue whispered, puzzled.

The roads ahead of you are long. Drink of my drink, young Scythas, and be strong.

Spiraling beyond the Muse’s stone cage, five starlight paths still shimmered in his mind’s eye. Some parallel, others below – none higher than his own place on the mountain.

“May I borrow this cup?”

Urania’s stone lips curled.

—

Though you are a god, you were not deterred by any fear of angering the gods.

—

The Young Griffon

Where did I stand?

It felt like an eternity that I had been waiting. Waiting for someone to ask me that question and for them to truly mean it.

The Titan Flame posed the question with knowing dread. He suspected my answer, perhaps could see it in my soul before he’d even asked, and he understood the scope of it. It worried him. I could see in the tightening of his eyes and the clenching of his jaw that it agonized him to see his children take such an outrageous stance. I could feel his concern in the pounding of my own heart.

That didn’t change my answer. My virtuous heart may not have been adamant-wrought, but its convictions were immutable all the same.

Sol and I tilted our heads to regard each other at the same time, seeking each other’s answers and realizing at that moment that we both already knew. I smiled brightly while he snorted and failed to hide his smirk. In synchronicity we reached up, up to the towering statue of the amethyst-eyed Champion that we had both cut our teeth on stories of as boys. Up, to the golden blade Herakles had brandished challengingly at the skies in his final moments.

It was nearly too tall to reach without jumping, but reach we did. Straining, I laid my hand against one edge of the blade just above its hilt. Sol laid his hand against the other side, and as one we drew our palms sharply down. A swift line of burning sensation, and the skin of our palms parted without any jagged edges. Two clean cuts.

Prometheus had cleansed us of our myriad filths and brushed away our scrapes and bruises like he was smoothing over wet clay. Now we had only a single wound to mark our passage through the storm, even more stark for its singularity.

I held my bleeding palm up to the Titan Flame, and my brother did the same beside me.

“I stand against any existence that would rather press downthan lift up,” I spoke clearly, staring up into the menacing light of twin suns. “Whatever their reasons may be, they are not good enough.”

The Titan Prometheus was a uniquely reviled existence. Traitor to his brothers the Titans for siding with the Father in his cosmic Titanomachy, and later a traitor to their usurping sons the Olympians in his theft of heavenly flame. Despised by Titans. Despised by gods. Forever cursed to suffer for his care, and forbidden even the coldest comfort of fond remembrance by those he’d given up everything for. They’d taken everything from him. From us.

We’d forgotten his name.

It was the uncertainty that killed a man. My father had taught me that lesson long ago. A man could suffer forty cracks of the whip without breaking down if he knew that forty was all he had to bear. By that same measure, a cultivator could watch lightning fall from a clear blue sky and ignore the terror of his animal instinct if he knew that it would fall. If he knew that advancement lay on the other side of tribulation, he could do more than weather it – he could seek it out. He could relish it.

To pursue the heights was to tempt the Fates, every man knew that. But he did it anyway, because he knew there was something far greater than any pain at the peak of the mountain. That was why we defied the Fates. That was why the Muses sang stories in our names.

That was how it was meant to be.

But now the peak was out of sight, shrouded by storm clouds and its highest paths buried in ice and snow. I had spent the entirety of my life wondering why no one acted in accordance with their own words, why the platitudes of cultivating virtue so rarely moved in step with the actions of supposed cultivators. I had only begun to understand the scope of it upon leaving my father’s city. I had only begun to suspect the existence of a universal ailment, a sickness of the earth inflicted by the heavens, upon my induction into the Orphic mysteries.

It was only here and now that I finally saw the root of that disease. This world was lesser than it should have been, little more than a flickering shadow on the wall, and people clung to that shadow because they knew nothing else beyond it. Not because they had no interest, no. Not because they lacked hunger. They had no choice.

“They took your name from us,” I told Prometheus, and though my heart felt like it would burn me to ashes in its wrath, I couldn’t help but laugh. “They hate you! Because you elevated us in the smallest of degrees! Because that was enough to make them wonder!”

The heavens had stripped us of our greatest shining stars and dared us to climb the mountain in darkness. It was the uncertainty that killed a man.

All any man ever needed to succeed was an example. All he had to know was that it could be done.

Prometheus was one of those examples. Here he was, here was proof that heaven was not infallible. The Titan hung as a living example of heaven’s impotent rage – and it was impotent, for all its grandeur. The chains of adamant, the stone-carved monuments to man’s hubris, and the immortal storm crown in its entirety. None of them changed that Prometheus had won. If only for an instant and in the smallest of degrees.

Heaven could lash Prometheus until the end of time, but it could not take back the flame he’d stolen in our name.

I remembered that now. I’d never forget it again.

“And you?” the Titan asked heavily of my brother.

Sol’s answer was succinct.

“No dogs under heaven.”

Then in hunger, this dog of heaven shall devour you.

The answer only made sense to me because he’d told me how his world had ended, back when we fled from the Rosy Dawn. It would have been nonsense to anyone else, but he seemed to think Prometheus would understand. And why not? He could reach out without placing a finger on our brows and rebalance us, refine us as cultivators as simply as brushing out the imperfections in a clay sculpture. Why wouldn’t he be able to reach into our memories as well?

My nose wrinkled, lips twisting at some half-imagined taste. What was the point of all the work if it could be undone or done better by a higher power? Where was the security of a sound mind if mortal memory could not be trusted? If all it took was sufficient standing to reach in and change what should have been immutable to all but its owner’s intent-

“You’ve only just begun to understand the forces arrayed against you,” the Titan Flame told me like he was answering my question, and with sudden cold fury I realized he was. Prometheus smiled that same bleak smile he’d worn when he first laid eyes on us. “And only the barest sliver of their powers over you. Even their gifts are a pox upon your souls – Heaven is cruel even to those that it wishes well. If you stand against it with purpose, you will suffer. You will be hurt in ways your fellow man could never think to hurt you. Ways you can not possibly understand.”

I was tired of being overestimated and looked down upon at the same time. Gathering up the eddies of my influence and boiling them with the mad flames of the Orphic House’s initiation rites, I struck out with the truth of my lived experience. My comprehension of Heaven’s cruelty.

I had seen Zagreus suffer in the Mother’s hands. For a brief moment, I had been him.

“I understand more than you think,” I told the Titan Flame. Sol grunted his rough agreement beside me.

For the first time, though, the target of my Orphic experience was not shaken. Prometheus only pounded his unshackled fist against the cliff behind him.

“You understand nothing. You don’t even know his name.”

“Zagreus,” Sol said. The Titan shook his head helplessly.

“Then who?” I challenged.

The Titan corrected us both.

[ ]

What?

[ ]

Worthless titan, why move your lips if you aren’t going to speak-

[KING OF NOTHING]

My vision went white. Over the roaring in my ears, I heard Sol exhale like he’d been punched in the gut.

[KING OF NO ONE]

How much had we forgotten?

[TWICE-BORN HEIR TO RAGING HEAVEN]

How much had been lost before we were even born?

[TWICE-CURSED BASTARD OF FALLEN STARS]

How much more did they plan to take from us?

[TWICE-NAMED AND TWICE-FORGOTTEN]

“Dio-” the Titan Flame spoke two syllables of a name, each one ringing my tripartite soul like a bell, and then his breath hitched in his throat. The twin stars of his eyes blazed in sudden alarm, and he looked up at the storm crown. “Already?”

In the furthest distance, a pinprick of light appeared. It was a different shade than the lightning, and where the lines of tribulation vanished as quickly as they came, this light lingered.

Prometheus’ alarm gave way to terror.

“Go,” he said, and when neither Sol nor I moved he roared, “LEAVE!”

“Why?” I couldn’t hear my own voice over the ringing in my ears.

“Too soon, it’s too soon!” The Titan shook his head and clenched his eyes shut, quenching their lights and leaving only the illumination of lightning and the steadily growing glow above. I traced the trajectory of the Champion’s golden sword and realized it was leveled directly at the blooming light.

“Too soon for what?” Sol shouted, but Prometheus wasn’t listening. He groaned in despair and lurched against his adamant bonds, wrenching fruitlessly at his manacles with the hand that Herakles had freed.

“The die is not yet cast. The clay is still wet, the world is still unwell – the wheel is still turning.” The Titan fell into broken ramblings, and the light above grew steadily brighter.

The sound of Sol rushing out from under the Champion’s statue was what finally tore my eyes from the light. I whipped my head around and watched him sprint away from the Titan, fleeing back down the mountain.

He got halfway there before I struck him like a javelin, tackling him to the stone and sending us both tumbling.

“Worthless Roman!” I shouted furiously, rolling up into a crouch and bringing each of my pankration limbs to bear. “Where do you think you’re going!?”

Sol rolled to a stop in a trench carved by his own overbearing weight and propped himself up with one arm, glaring balefully at me. Without a word, he reached into his shadow with his other hand and pulled a golden cup of wine from it. I stared at it. It was full to the brim.

“You had two-?”

Sol drank deeply from it, ignoring my outraged cry, and then dunked the half-emptied cup into the liquid lead pool of prima materia he’d been heading towards when I tackled him.

Ah.

Above our heads, the light had grown blindingly bright and spread further through the storm, suffusing the clouds with shades of crimson and gold. Prometheus’ eyes snapped open, staring up into it, and he bellowed in sudden defiance. It was the loudest thing I’d ever heard in my life, louder than any noise mortal ears were meant to hear.

And then it became the second loudest sound I’d ever heard, as a cry came down from on high and utterly overwhelmed it.

—

You gave men honors they did not deserve, possessions they were not entitled to.

—

Stone Sirens of the Storm

Among the dozens of statues that languished unseen within the immortal storm crown on Kaukoso Mons, eight alone stood out above the rest. It had been nine, before, but all that remained of Calliope now was rubble. Still, eight. Eight muses carved from hallowed stone, each of them protected from the storm by rings of stone-carved supplicants.

Time was a semantic concern at the peak of the mountain. No sun to rise and fall, no moon to wax and wane. Days passed as readily as years and as easily as centuries. Throughout it all, the statues of the Muses remained untouched. They were untainted by the passing of ages and unmarred by the grim light of tribulation.

The dull passage of eternity was its own unkindness, of course. It was rare for them to receive any company at all this far up the mountain. For all of them to receive a visit within the same day was a nigh unprecedented treat, and one they’d remember for ages to come.

That it had happened once made this a good decade already. That it had happened again not even a month later, that had made this a grand decade. Brief as it was, the conversation livened the holy women of the storm crown. It returned them to the earth from their high heavenly musing. Grounded them.

When a third guest rounded the mountain to pay their respects within that very same year, the stone sirens experienced a brief glimpse of emotion that they had not experienced in many many mortal lifetimes.

Excitement.

For four of the eight sirens, there were yet more curiosities in store. Bedraggled and near death, four little glories nonetheless found their way to the Muses that had marked their hearts just minutes after the third guest had departed them. Each of the four sirens were in such high spirits after their third visit that they didn’t even mind the pitiful sight of the fourth. That they had made it this far up the mountain was enticing enough.

“Welcome to my humble home,” Terpsichore the Dancer sang to the flickering little glory as they dragged themselves into the safety of her cage. A slender-faced young woman, though of course all of her kind were young to the siren, the little glory was ravaged by scars both inside and out.

The flame behind her eyes was dim, hardly more than warm coals as she collapsed to the ground at Terpischore’s feet. The little glory mumbled deliriously, static tremors causing the individual hairs on her haid to rise up apart from the rest. The fingertips of the hand that held her bronze sword were burnt black.

Terpsichore leaned in and watched the little glory as it watched her, dull eyes the color of desert heat flickering in hazy half-recognition. The young woman whispered a name in wonder, and Terpsichore giggled.

“I wonder, should I be offended or amused? Even if my face is carved from stone, confusing me for a man is simply too cruel – surely this ‘Song Yu’ isn’t nearly as beautiful as me.”

As she said it, a dim remembrance of the men known in the East as the Song of the South flickered in the flame behind the little glory’s eyes, close enough to the surface for the siren to see it. The Dancing Muse blinked stone eyes, pleasantly surprised.

“That is a lovely face,” she murmured appreciatively. The siren cupped her stone chin, then after a moment nodded decisively. “Very well, I’ll forgive your confusion.”

The little glory visibly forced her mind to clear, biting the inside of her cheek and blinking her eyes rapidly to clear them. Her gaze became searching, flitting up and down the siren’s form and lingering on her crown – a pair of wavy ram’s horns that looked almost out of place on her brow, so perfectly suited were they to act as the arms for a lyre.

“Terpsichore?” her little glory whispered.

“Erato?” rasped another, halfway around the mountain, hunching over to fit within the Lovely Muse’s cage while he cradled a mutilated crocodile in his arms.

“Polyhymnia?” wondered yet one more inside the Sacred Poet’s cage, leaning on his longbow like an overburdened cane when his broken legs refused to support his weight.

“Thalia?” gasped the last of them between panting breaths, slumping back against the stone cage and spending pneuma as fast as she inhaled it to mend her many wounds.

“The very same,” each siren answered, and each of them regarded the hearts that their other selves had claimed with naked curiosity. “Tell me, hero,” each of them bade, “what brings you up the mountain?”

Their answers varied in composition and intent, but each of their desires was the same.

Nectar.

Nectar for strength to walk the silk road, nectar for love and the bridging of its gaps, nectar for another’s anonymity, and nectar for a cure. Each of their desires were laid bare before the sirens, and each one alone was compelling in its way. Yet their actions were not matched to their ambitions, and each of the four sirens found themselves disappointed.

Perhaps it wasn’t fair of them. They’d received so much exceptional company recently, they’d become spoiled again. It was impressive enough that these little glories had made it to them at all. They’d earned themselves a touch of favor, the sirens decided.

And even if they hadn’t, it would be far too cruel for them to disregard their third guest’s wishes after he’d fought so hard to see them fulfilled.

“You’re in luck, little sword,” Terpsichore said, eyes crinkling cheerfully, and reached into her stone silks.

“Have hope, lover.” Erato pulled a drinking cup of flawless pearl from her stone robes, and held it up to the battered glory and his mangled crocodile.

“Rest easy, young shepherd,” Polyhymnia comforted the archer as his grip slackened on his bow and he sank down to his broken knees. She pressed her cup into his shaking hands.

“Look no further, sly bird.” Thalia the Joy winked, curling stone fingers over the cup of blood red brew she’d pressed into the breathless healer’s hands.

Each of the four sirens chipped away a small piece of themselves and dropped the slivers of stone into their cups. And though each of the sirens envied their sister for her choice of glory, they still smiled as their own little ones watched with bright-eyed wonder as the crimson poison in their cups turned to liquid gold.

“Drink of my drink and be strong,” they urged their guests. When their little glories thanked them desperately, emphatically, the sirens waved their gratitude away. Because they had only done the easiest of the work, and an eternity trapped in stone was no excuse for poor manners. “Don’t thank me. Thank the man that filled my cup for you.”

“What-”

“Someone was here-”

“When did they-”

“Who?”

Wistfully, the stone sirens answered.

“A hero.”

—

Because of that, you will remain on guard, here on this joyless rock, standing upright with your legs straight, and you will never sleep.

—

Jason, Hero of the Alabaster Depths

“A siren’s toying with the heart, I left beneath the sea!”

Through frigid rain and roaring thunder the captain of the sunken Icarus trudged along a mountain path in search of anything at all. He’d wandered for so long and endured so many hurts that he’d accept anything. Ideally the nectar, yes, but a friend would do just as well. A peer, failing that. Really, at this point he’d be thankful for another suffering statue.

“Let it be, let it be, let it be – I’ll find another better one!”

He dodged unnatural tendrils of grasping lightning, though by smaller margins every time. Every step forward dulled his reflexes just a bit more.

Jason came upon a fork in his path and hesitated. One branch continued on up, closer to the peak. The other lead down, retreating from the storm crown and returning to fresh air and sweet safety. Jason wavered between them.

The first and last time he’d set foot inside the Storm That Never Ceased, he’d only made it a single step. One step into the storm, and a second that he’d abandoned halfway.

Jason growled and turned away from the downslope, continuing up the path.

“A fine young heart of wanderlust, I didn’t mean to leave!”

He couldn’t sing the shanties he’d rowed along to with his crew. His lips just wouldn’t form the words, no matter how he tried to force them. Instead, he sang something new. The verses weren’t as catchy as they could have been, and he’d occasionally choke on the lyrics when his wounds asserted themselves, but it centered him.

It lacked the magic of Sol’s marching songs, failed to lighten his steps or steady his breath, but that was to be expected.

No matter where he went or who he brought with him, Sol remained himself. As for Jason?

What was a captain without his crew?

“Let it be, let it be, let it be – I’ll find another better one!”

A howl up ahead warned Jason of the threat before he saw it. A hound of coalescing lightning bounded down towards him in flashing leaps that burned his eyes and happened so fast the creature seemed to be springing through gaps in reality itself. Too fast to avoid. Too fast to escape. It braced again, close enough to count its crackling teeth, and he knew the next leap would be the last.

Jason exhaled raggedly and dragged the hound beneath the waves.

His pneuma flooded out with his breath, catching the hound in midair when it leapt and delivering it to the bottom of the sea. The hound made a strangled sound as his pneuma sought to crush it, but rather than cave in on itself as a real dog would, it burst apart and dispersed through his pneuma like water.

Jason had tried avoiding what came next, by physical and spiritual means, but it had never worked. This time he just braced himself as the lightning hound dispersed through his vital essence, through him, and through his feet into the mountain. He wavered like a drunk, tasting ozone and feeling as though he should be spitting blood, yet nothing came out of his mouth.

“That siren’s deaf beneath the waves, at least to all my pleas!”

Inside the storm crown or out of it, that fact hadn’t changed. Euterpe had nothing to say to him.

“Let it be, let it be, let it be…”

Another hound. No, two this time. He crushed them both and lurched forward as their currents flowed through him. This time the blinding light only cleared from one of his eyes. He squinted through the rain, searching for anything but another hound.

A crackling growl was his answer. If nothing else, he felt grim satisfaction as that growl turn to agonized baying. Then the lightning reached him.

“I’ll find another… better one…”

Blind and bleeding from within, the Hero of the Alabaster Isles fell.

Strong arms caught him before he hit the ground.

“Gah-!” Jason flinched, flailing weakly in their grip. Only now did he realize how badly the lightning had ravaged his muscles. Every contortion was agony, like a knife grinding against his bones.

“Easy,” came a low and soothing voice. He shouldn’t have been able to hear it over the cacophony of noise within the storm crown, but it reached his ears all the same. “Drink this.”

“Who- drink what?” No matter how many times Jason blinked his eyes or how tightly he clenched them shut, his vision didn’t return.

“You can’t see it?” the voice asked after a startled beat.

“No,” Jason rasped. Another part of him lost forever. Another failure. Turn back or continue on, neither choice had mattered in the end. He was still the captain of a sunken ship. Worthless. Worthless-

“Open your mouth.”

Jason blinked blind eyes. “Ha-?”

Boiling hot liquid poured into his mouth, and Jason had already swallowed twice in reflex before the taste of it exploded in his senses. It was the sweetest, spiciest, bitterest and most sour thing he’d ever tasted in his life. If kykeon was to wine as wine was to water, then this was the next step above – no, this was beyond that. There was more there, depth and immensity of flavor that his tongue had yet to unravel. It was so far beyond delicious it felt like an insult to describe it as such. The more he thought about it, the more he became convinced that trying to describe it with any word would be an insult.

Jason realized he could see again.

His savior looked down on him, their full lips pursed in concern, and with reluctance pulled the pewter cup back when it was half-depleted. They shook their head once, long blond hair whipping around and sticking to their cheeks.

“That’s all I can spare, I’m sorry. We’ll find you a physician later-”

“Scythas?” Jason exclaimed, just barely remembering to swallow the last of the golden brew he’d been given before he spoke.

The Hero of the Scything Squall breathed a sigh of relief. “So it did clear up your eyes.” His lips smoothing out into a faint smirk. “Or you finally recognized my voice.”

It had done more than clear his eyes up. Jason looked up at Scythas and saw him with greater clarity than he’d had before marching into the storm crown. When he desired it, the flames behind his eyes could illuminate the dark corners of rooms or the shadows between trees when he desired it. This, though? This was something else entirely. The world as he saw it was aglow, vibrant and thrumming with energies he’d at times been able to perceive but never so vividly see.

His vision wasn’t the only wound that had been mended. The golden liquid coursed through him, burning like good wine if wine were a thousand times more potent, and everywhere it went it healed him. Then it refined him. And then… then it kept going. It wound its way through him and everything it touched was rebuilt, then broken down and rebuilt better still.

“Is that-?” Jason asked, but cut himself off with a grimace. “Thank you. That’s twice you’ve saved me now.”

“It is,” Scythas answered his first question, wearily amused. “And twice is a stretch. I’d say Solus saved us both in that alley.”

That may have been true, but it had been Scythas’ hands that pulled him free of the crows. Jason bit down on those words, though, focusing on the first thing Scythas had said. Not an acknowledgement of his thanks. An answer to his question.

It is.

Divine nectar, in all its golden glory.

Jason laughed breathlessly. “The Fates are kind after all.”

Scythas raised an eyebrow.

“My eyes are better than they ever were before, and I still can’t see more than a few feet in front of my face,” Jason explained, grinning. “What are the chances that you’d stumble onto me, here and now, in the midst of all this chaos with a spare cup of nectar in your hand? Seems the weavers decided I was due a break.”

Scythas clicked his tongue. “If only.”

Jason blinked.

“If the Fates were on our side, I’d have gone with my gut and tracked you down first instead of wasting time looking for your Muse. I should have known better.”

Several questions came to mind at that moment. Jason voiced the loudest of them.

“You tracked me through the storm? You can do that?”

“Of course not. I had help.” His bright eyes flicked up.

In Jason’s new sight, the pewter crown of stars upon Scythas’ brow glowed silver-bright.

—

You will often scream in pain and sorrow.

—

The Young Griffon

The Broad’s theory of the tripartite soul was universally known among cultivators of the modern age. Even the furthest reaches of enlightened civilization understood that a man existed in three parts, reason and passion and hunger. It was a given. Like the color of the sky and the progression of numbers.

Less ubiquitous, but only just, was his theory of Forms. Centuries ago the Broad had proposed the idea of another existence, another state of being that existed apart from us. Above us. A realm of higher existences, of perfect existences, that our sunken earth could only imitate in the clumsiest sense.

The Broad insisted that every idea under the sun existed in this perfect realm. That the household pet you called a hound because it walked on four legs, barked, and came when you called it, was only a pale imitation of the real thing. That there existed a higher power, a perfect Hound, whose image every lowly dog was shaped in.

Anything that you could think of, anything that had ever been or ever would be, their Forms had their place above ours. Everything. Even a man. Such was the theory of immutable Forms.

Or, as I had come to understand them, Ideals.

The source of growing light shrieked, drowning out the storm crown’s thunder and Prometheus’ roar both. I clapped both hands over my ears and along with all of my pankration hands and it did just short of nothing for me. I listed sideways, the world wavering around me, and collapsed onto my side. Through bleary eyes, I saw Sol follow suit beside me.

I shouted a warning that neither of us could hear and reached out with the limbs of my intent, but they swayed and slapped into each other like drunkards. I could do nothing but watch as the golden cup of wine and liquid lead slipped out of Sol’s hand and fell, splattering its contents across the stone.

It only took Sol a moment longer than me to steady himself, winded as he was by the additional weight of thirty men falling along with him. It was still too late. He lurched out of the crater he’d made and caught the golden cup as it bounced.

Empty. The color drained from his face. He looked to me, and there was nothing I could say.

“LEAVE!” Prometheus shouted down at us. I felt the word more than I heard it.

The nectar, Sol mouthed in bleak denial.

Prometheus’ jerked in his chains, looking down at us with wide eyes.

“The what-”

The clouds broke and burnt away above our heads. I looked up, and I saw-

Light.

The story goes that as punishment for his betrayal and his hubris on mankind’s behalf, the Father had ordered Prometheus bound and left to rot forever more. The Father cursed him to isolation without end, and because that was not enough, He plucked an eagle from the heavens and commanded it to tear the captive Titan’s liver out and eat it while he watched. He demanded the eagle return the next day, once the Flame’s body had been made whole again, to do it all again. And every day after.

What emerged from the storm crown above was no eagle.

It was living light that came plunging through the Storm That Never Ceased, a creature of scarlet flame nearly the size of Prometheus himself and free of binding chains. Larger than any beast that walked the earth, large enough to catch a whale between its talons and lift it from the sea. Outrageous. Indescribable.

In his moment of distraction, Prometheus was left unprepared for the attack. The eagle of the caucasus, the phoenix, struck him like a comet. Every amethyst vein in sight, along with the Champion’s gem eyes, flared pure white. The phoenix shrieked and sank its enormous talons into the Titan’s flesh.

Prometheus screamed.

I lurched up to my feet, eyes painfully wide, and stared up at a beast above virtue.

The living flame pinned Prometheus’ only free limb with one foot, talons each the size of the Eos cutting trenches in the Titan’s wrist and cauterizing them in the same instant. The talons of its other foot stabbed straight through the Titan’s thigh, anchoring the predator to him while he thrashed and screamed in agony.

If it truly was as the Broad’s theory insisted, that there hung a higher realm above our own where the best of our ideals existed in unmarred perfection, then the question of cultivation was changed. It ceased to be a question of if, and instead became a question of how? Not if a man can ascend, but how.

So long as there’s a place to go, a path there can be found. And if no such path exists, it can be made. All that’s needed is a goal. All that any man needs is a dream to aspire towards.

If the Broad’s theory was accepted, then it followed that a perfect Man existed somewhere above and apart from us, a higher power that we could emulate. That was the basis of cultivation, in the end. Refining ourselves, purging ourselves of our impurities and imperfections, the portions of our body and soul that stood out in ugly contrast to the ideal.

If that was true of man, high-minded and complex as he was, the same must hold true for beasts. And how did the baser creatures of the earth cultivate?

They ate.

Without preamble or remorse for its prey, the eagle of the caucasus dipped its head and tore Prometheus’ innards from his stomach.

Liquid gold sprayed out of the wound and fell like rain down on our heads. Prometheus howled, eyes bulging and mouth opened wide enough to crack his jaw. The phoenix tilted its head back in a cruel mirror motion to the Titan, snapping its flaming beak as it swallowed down a chunk of flesh the size of a horse. All the while its existence spread through the eye of the storm crown, bathing everything in its gold and scarlet glow and warming all the world around it.

The creature’s savage majesty almost seemed to push against the storm itself – no, not seemed to. It was. Before my eyes, its gold and scarlet glory pressed against the edges of the eye and pitted the phoenix’s might against the storm crown’s. The storm shifted, began to give.

A bolt of tribulation lightning fell from heaven and struck the phoenix between its wings. Another struck before the first could find its thunder. Then a third, a fourth, a dozen and a hundred and a thousand after that. A thousand-thousand, and a thousand-thousand of those, all of them centered on the eagle of the caucuses.

Lightning enough to scour any Tyrant from this earth hammered down on the living flame, and in response it cried out a single mocking note and spread its wings wide. Lightning struck every finger width of them, no less concentrated than before, and the phoenix ignored them all as it dipped its head and tore another chunk out of Prometheus’ side.

Standing awash in scarlet heat and golden glory, I beheld the manifestation of a higher ideal. Staring up like my savage ancestors before me, I saw a creature unfettered by the chains that bound me to this earth. A beast unbothered by heaven’s wrath. I saw now what they had imagined then, the purest truth to their hollow-boned imitation. A perfect Form.

Freedom’s wings.

“Libertas,” Sol named it with the voice of his soul, and in my heart it was so.

“BOYS!”

Sol and I jerked as if from a dead sleep, cold water sensation dousing our wonder. My eyes shifted reluctantly from the phoenix, from Libertas, and met Prometheus’ gaze. The Titan’s face was eerily statuesque even in this moment, strained as it was by suffering. He groaned loudly through clenched teeth as Libertas shifted its footing and dug its talons deeper into him.

Somehow, the Titan retained his focus through it all. If anything, his urgency had redoubled.

“Catch it!” Prometheus shouted, his voice rising in agony part way through as Libertas took another chunk of flesh from him. “Before it hits the ground! Catch it in your cup!”

Catch-?

“The blood,” the raven in Sol’s shadow snapped at mine, and for the first time since the phoenix’s arrival I looked down at the mountain.

Golden ichor fell like rain in fat droplets, and heavier from the wounds where the Titan’s life blood flowed thickest. Yet somehow, in spite of that downpour, there wasn’t a speck of gold to be found on Kaukoso Mons. Nothing but overflowing pools and rivers of liquid lead.

As Sol rushed forward to catch a golden drop in his empty cup, I saw one the size of my fist hit the ground beneath the Titan’s feet and turn instantaneously to lead.

Prima materia.

Impossible, my common sense protested. I smothered it to silence and raced after my brother.

As I rushed across the lead-slicked stone, I reached into my flickering shadow with pankration hands and brought forth each of the ingredients our companions had gathered for our cause. Chunks of sulfur and cinnabar, a fistful of black lava salt and three more of herbs and spices. A cupped hand full of honey and another full of milk. Coins of silver and coins of lead. A single vibrant blue flower, its petals burning at their edges.

Sol planted his feet and raised his cup to a thin stream of falling ichor. I slid to a stop beside him, heart pounding wildly in my chest.

We still needed the wine.

I inhaled sharply and punched Sol in the gut as hard as I could. He was watching the falling string of ichor above, utterly unprepared, and the blow folded him over my fist. The Roman gagged once and vomited Orphic wine into my cupped pankration hands.

I reached up and guided his cup while he recovered, catching the falling strand of golden ichor out of the air and twirling the cup to catch it again when it sloshed out. As I did, I added the ingredients for each of the four phases in a continuous cascade. Solus had described it as a process of slow burning days to progress through the blackening, whitening, yellowing, and reddening of the brew.

Here and now, the strand of liquid gold turned to black, then white, then a bright yellow as quickly as I could dump the ingredients into the cup. Sol sucked in a breath and straightened as the last of the reagents were added in and the tail end of the falling string hit the cup.

Sol snapped his wrist sharply around, catching the stray drops kicked up by falling ichor and stirring the mixture with the motion. The whirlpool darkened as it slowed, and when the surface settled the cup was filled and it was done.

Start to finish, all of it in a single pour.

I looked to Sol, grinning in wild excitement, just in time to see him follow through and bury his fist in my stomach with the strength of thirty men behind it.

When I finally stopped dry heaving, I gave the smug bastard a filthy look.

“Worthless Roman. I punched you for a good cause.”

“So did I.”

We glared at each other while the world fought not to come apart above our heads, while crashing thunder and endless falling spears of lightning fell upon the phoenix of the caucasus as it gutted Prometheus alive. I cracked first, lips curling against my will, and that cracked Sol in turn. He didn’t smirk. It wasn’t a faint gesture of distant amusement.

For the first time in all the months I’d known him, Sol smiled in excited wonder. In pure and honest joy.

Reaching up, I caught a falling string of golden ichor in the hand I’d marked with the Champion’s blade. It pooled in my cupped palm, mingling with my blood, and it burned hotter than any flame I’d ever held before. I considered it thoughtfully, Sol watching me with expectant curiosity as I did.

But rather than drinking from it myself, I offered my cupped palm up to my brother. He stared at it. Then me.

Prometheus had warned us both that we stood no chance against the wrath of heaven, and the truth of it still raged above our heads. We were all of us alone when we challenged the Fates, and what man could face this on their own? It was the grim indictment that every cultivator accepted the moment they began the climb. It was simply the way of things.

Every man faced heaven alone in the end.

As if I’d accept that.

“No dogs under heaven,” I vowed, and the last barrier fell. Sol reached up with the hand he’d cut with the Champion’s blade and caught his own stream of golden ichor in hand. He offered it up to me as I had offered mine.

“No more higher powers,” he vowed in turn, and from each other’s palms we drank of the Titan Flame’s ichor. It burned beautifully, more potent than any kykeon could possibly be, and I felt each portion of my tripartite soul seize greedily upon it.

The next thing I felt was the notice of an otherworldly predator.

Libertas stared down at us, head cocked to the side. Curiosity, or perhaps faint surprise. It hadn’t known we were here, or we hadn’t been worth its notice.

Not until now.

The phoenix of the caucasus beat its wings once and tore its talons free of the Titan Flame, rounding on us and swooping down-

A titanic hand marred by burnt lacerations wrapped around the phoenix’s left leg and heaved it back. Libertas shrieked furiously and Prometheus slammed it against the cliff face in response.

“GO!” the Titan Flame roared, the sound of it turning swiftly from frantic rage to horrible pain as Libertas battered him against the stone with burning wings and turned its talons upon him once more. Still he held it fast, even when it tore out his throat. Even when it gouged out his eyes.

Sol and I turned and sprinted back into the storm crown. We bounded back down Kaukoso Mons, terrified and exhilarated and enlightened.

It felt like flying.

—

For the Father’s heart is harsh, and everyone whose ruling power is new is ruthlessly cruel.

—