bookandnovel Chapter 1.116
Chapter 1.116
chapter 1.116
the young griffon
three heroes came to me in the aftermath of alazon’s shameful defeat, and all three produced a letter written by a roman’s heavy hand.
sol had given each of them a destination to search when he first reached out to them through sorea. all three of them had rejected our grand mission in the aftermath of chilon’s story, but sol had given them the information anyway. he’d given them the option, as well as time to consider it. as it turned out, that had been enough for alyssa and kyno to change their minds.
it didn’t amount to much. the sword song and the heroic huntsman came back as empty-handed as the gold-string guardian, who had never left olympia in the first place.
kyno brandished the carefully folded slip of papyrus sol had sent him. to his right, elissa’s eyes slid away from me to watch two of alazon’s fellow competitors drag him cursing and struggling out of the olympic stadium. on the other side of the huntsman, lefteris stared hard at me. his own papyrus message was a cracked and crumpled mess, held in a white-knuckled fist.
“is this the truth?” kyno asked me.
not too long ago, i would have deflected that question without hesitation. now, i lowered myself to the pit sand and motioned for them to join me.
kino knelt obligingly, though even then he was taller than most mortal men. alyssa tore her attention from alazon’s retreating figure with the ghost of a smirk on her lips and sat cross-legged beside kyno. i waited a moment for lefteris to join us in the sand. he stood stone still, glowering down at me.0v3l.b11n.
i hummed, considering them each in turn. the sword song, the heroic huntsman, and the gold-string guardian. three heroes that i had claimed as my own, the same way that sol had claimed scythas, jason, and anastasia as his. three heroes that regarded me now as a dangerous unknown. had i not been every bit as truthful to them as sol had been to his heroes? had i ever once told them a lie?
my heart flickered in my chest. an answer, maybe. i ignored it.
“show me and i’ll tell you,” i told them.
kyno placed his letter on the sand in front of me. elissa followed his example, flicking her own missive across the space between us. lefteris clicked his tongue and threw his crumpled ball down last.
“elissa and i have spent weeks abroad, searching for mythical ingredients without any clue as to what those ingredients actually were,” kyno informed me quietly, dark eyebrows furrowing as he regarded me. he wasn’t quite angry. more discontented. the skinned crocodile he wore like a cloak looked furious enough for the two of them. “we could have spent that time preparing for the games. instead, we spent it helping you.”
“helping us?”
a muscle in my neck twinged when i tilted my head. i had shown alazon the difference between us, but i hadn’t come away from it unscathed. even the small movements were painful, more so as the moments passed and the numbing thrill of our fight seeped out of my body.
“you help yourselves,” i corrected him. “you have something you want, and you’re no longer certain the games are the clearest path to achieving it. you don’t believe you can win, not really. you don’t know that it would matter if you did. after all, what’s a laurel crown worth beyond the warmth you’d glean from burning it?”
i leaned forward, an elbow propped on my knee. “a cup of nectar, though? even if it’s less than a cup - even if it’s only a sip, its value is undeniable. worth more than any crown.”
none of them denied it. i turned and spat blood onto the sand.
“if it’s a lie, then he lied to me too.” i held up my own message from sorea, and though the exact details of it were different, the thrust of the message was the same. the gadfly, socrates, had deceived us. the ingredients needed to synthesize nectar had been known to him from the start - more than that, they’d been in the old wretch’s possession this whole time. the only portion that he’d been missing was the cup of mad wine that we’d retrieved from thracia.
now that we knew, we could search with clear intent. we could scour the nearest marks on the map with purpose, and we could comb through the wares of merchants traveling from the more distant destinations. and if all went well, if there was wine remaining after the first batch was brewed, we could take the gadfly’s knowledge and make a second for ourselves.
the benefits of nectar were the subject of myth and legend. immortality, divine constitution, advancement through entire mortal realms, and on and on it went. even if only a few of them were true, even if only one of them was reality, a cup would be a treasure worth any tyrant’s favor. a paltry sip would be more than equal to a lifetime of closed doors cultivation.
the possibilities were endlessly enticing. it was enough to draw even lefteris here, in spite of his misgivings. it was enough to draw any sane man away from this stadium in its pursuit.
“then you’d be coming with us?” elissa asked me.
“no.”
lefteris’ pneuma shifted dangerously. in my mind’s eye, i pictured it pulling taut like the string of a bow. ready to loose at the subject of his ire. me, naturally.
“if this was real, you’d happily abandon your time in the pit for it. not ask us to do it in your stead,” he said tightly. the flames behind his eyes brightened. “you have as much to gain from this as we do.”
i considered that.
“do i?”
they didn’t know me. not well enough to say one way or another.
in the end, they didn’t care enough to ask.
kyno, elissa, and lefteris took back their marching orders and left me in the pit. off to do the raven’s work, regardless of how much it chafed them to waste time running errands with the games on the horizon. i hadn’t lied in my goading. they valued the nectar more than they valued their slim chances at an olympic crown.
as for why that was the case? of course, i couldn’t know. none of them would tell me.
“griffon...” chilon laid a careful hand on my shoulder. “breathe.”
i obliged him.
the irritation remained.
i became something of a novelty to the heroes in the pit after my scrap with alazon. i supposed that in their eyes, that had been my crucible overcome - it was a grand triumph for a lowly second rank sophist to overcome a hero in even the most controlled environment. as far as they were concerned, i’d earned myself his place in the pit.
that didn’t make me a competitor, of course. but i was interesting enough to have around until the true games began.
i broke bread and exchanged words with more heroic cultivators in the days that followed than most people would ever see in their entire lives. some of them wore the colorful silks that marked their mystery faith allegiance, but most didn’t bother. some of them were kind, offering kernels of their expertise to the young upstart. some were flippant, calling me over to parade around their peers and daring me to try on them what i had done to alazon.
it was behavior i’d seen before, in the mountain trails and sparring halls of the rosy dawn cult. they were senior to me, and so my actions didn’t truly matter to them.
i amused them. nothing more and nothing less.
elissa was the first to return with ingredients in hand.
of the three heroes i’d claimed, i had met elissa first. sol’s wandering eye had called them all to us through the funeral crowds, but it had been my hand that slapped the sword song’s face. by my notice alone had she been condemned.
she was known as the sword song because her master had been the finest blade to grace olympia in generations, and under his guidance she made every blade she touched dance. the sword she carried with her was pure and undecorated bronze. she was less brazen with its use than our first meeting had led me to believe.
elissa was kind to her juniors in action if not word. she was quick to anger, and biting in her rage. her master was gone in search of something she wouldn’t speak to, and he hadn’t taken her with him.
her eyes were the color of desert heat. her marble-pale skin was marred by ugly scars uncommon for someone of her standing. she wore the fuchsia silks of the scattered foam cult in egypt.
it was information i could have gathered from any number of loose-lipped sophists on kaukoso mons. it was all i knew.
elissa brought me milk in an ornate jug carved from white-gold electrum and sealed by a lid of the same material that interlocked with its container when twisted. the milk was from the cattle plains beyond the mountains boeon, just east of olympia. it was thick and rich, coating my tongue like sweet cream when i dabbed a drop of it on my tongue.
while i admired the taste of it, she dropped a chunk of brick-red cinnabar the size of my clenched fist in the sand.
“cream from levanta’s sacred cattle, and quicksilver mined from giza,” the sword song declared.
“egypt and back in three days?” i asked, impressed.
she snorted. “to the agora and back in three hours. the cream was the more difficult prospect of the two - i had to milk the damned cow myself.” her eyes swept over me, and her nose wrinkled. “you look vile.”
“i had help.” he patted the tail of his crocodile skin, and the creature’s reptilian eyes glinted. i might have mistaken it as a sunlight reflection if not for the fact that we were both sitting in the shade.
“does it have a name?” i asked. for some reason, kyno seemed surprised.
“sah-bakari.” an egyptian name.
“you met in egypt,” i said, the pieces coming together in my mind.
“i met the crocodile in egypt, yes,” kyno said, smiling faintly. i waved a hand.
“no, not the beast. you met them in egypt,” i said, pointing to elissa and lefteris as they dueled. kyno winced and said nothing.
i frowned, considering his silence. perhaps they’d only bonded over it. how long had it taken them to form their current camaraderie? how much of it had been forged beneath the storm crown in olympia, and how much of it had developed in the south? had they been in egypt recently?
had any of them been there to see sol mount a roman flag atop the conqueror’s lighthouse?
“kyno-”
“another time. it’s not my story to tell.”
the burning hands of my intent dug furrows in the sand around us, forming a molten octagon. i stood and offered the larger cultivator a hand up.
“pankration,” was all i said. kyno nodded and took my hand. i heaved him to his feet.
then i hooked my heel around his and dropped him straight back down to the sand.
three days before the gates were to be shut for the final month of training, chilon offered me a furtive gift while kyno, elissa, and lefteris were occupied.
three papyrus scrolls, each of them with a different image painted on their outer surface. one of them was a bow with a golden string. another was a bronze blade clashing against a flute. and the last of them a crocodile with its maw opened wide.
for a moment, i could do nothing but stare down at the recorded tales of the gold-string guardian, the sword song, and the heroic huntsman in utter disbelief.
“you’ve been spending so much time with them,” the senior philosopher said quietly, tying shut his fishing net of myths and legends, “i thought you might like to know their stories.”
“what makes you think i don’t already?” i found the words to ask. chilon only clapped a hand to my shoulder and rose.
“don’t take it so personally, junior. they live in a different world than we do. be thankful they’ve taken the time to train you. it’s more than most sophists will ever get from a hero.”
with that he took his leave from the pit for the night, leaving me with that foul sentiment ringing in my ears and a bundle of priceless papyrus cradled in my hands. each of them was a story i’d been trying to draw out of my companions directly for weeks, months. each of them was a hero’s labor put to paper. and, if i was fortunate, each of them would be an answer to the question i’d been asking them from the very beginning.
what are you afraid of?
these were the answers i’d wanted all along. these were the stories elissa, kyno, and lefteris refused to tell me, no matter how many times i prodded them or what i offered in exchange. chilon had given me the gift of their origins.
rosy burning light bloomed in my cupped palms. the edges of the papyrus blackened and curled.
two days before the deadline, scythas came to me with his and jason’s share of the reagents cradled in a jar in his arms. he upended it, and a cascade of lead and silver coins poured out onto the sands.
i ignored the coins. when he went to announce them, i cut the hero off with a question.
“would you have told me your story if sol wasn’t there with us?”
“what?” scythas’ brow furrowed. his heart flickered in my perceptions. “you mean-?”
“on the eos,” i clarified. i’d separated myself from elissa, kyno, and lefteris, but a few curious eyes turned our way as i pressed him. “if sol wasn’t there. if it was me, and me alone. would you have told the same story?”
our time in thracia had brought many things to light. it had given us common ground.
scythas sighed.
“you already know the answer to that question, griffon.”
i did.
the final day before the deadline, i shattered chilon’s ribs. it only took a moment of distraction for a fight to turn sour, and my mind had been elsewhere for days. it was an unforgivable lapse in concentration.
while i was fighting his body’s natural inclination to let him die, anastasia came to me with a jar of honey and her own healing hands.
“who are you, really?”
as if the answer mattered.
“not everyone is made of iron. for some, the fire only burns.”
i’d known it since the day i ventured through the storm crown. from the moment that i tore down that door and stalked into elissa’s home in blood and wrath and named them all cowards for backing down from the gadfly, i’d seen it in their eyes. whether or not they believed that my standing was as it appeared, that made no difference.
from that day on i was an enemy to them. an enemy they could work with, perhaps. an enemy they could trust, in some sense. but never a friend. never what sol was to his trio.
i’d thought that bond was made of iron. but in the end, i’d only burnt it to ashes and scattered them to the wind. i’d left nothing left to mend.
“if we can kill what can not die, what's to say we can't also mend what can not be mended?”
the dawn broke over the back of a dead moon night. at the end of this day, any would-be champion outside the city of olympia would be barred from participation.
as the first rosy fingers of morning light reached out past the writhing pillar of the storm crown, sorea came hurtling out of the sky and struck the sand like a javelin. the eagle shrieked, beating its wings and flinging sand around it in a cloud. before i knew it, i was surrounded by heroic cultivators, all crowding around the bird.
“sorea?” anastasia reached out, concerned, but the bird only snapped at her fingers.
“what is it!?” scythas asked the bird urgently.
“take the message!” elissa hissed.
the virtuous beast kept on shrieking, making no move to vomit up a scroll. the only thing of note it was carrying was a scrap of torn white cloth in its talons. it took me a dozen pankration hands and several filthy curses to pry it from the bird’s grip. as soon as i had the cloth in my hands, the eagle beat its wings and shot back up into the sky. off towards the storm crown.
“what does it say?” jason demanded. behind him, silent but intent, kyno and lefteris leaned in for a closer look.
the message was a single word scrawled hastily on the cloth.
come
we ran like we had lightning in our heels.