Virtuous Sons: A Greco Roman Xianxia

Chapter 1.104

The Young Griffon

A man's credibility was his myth made manifest.

Through reputation, renown. From renown, credibility. In credibility, ethos. If a scholar dealt in logic and a champion in his passion, a conqueror dealt in credibility. He spoke not as an impartial observer nor a proxy protector, but as a nation in and of himself. He spoke for others. Not to them, nor in the defense. The conqueror spoke from a position of authority in all things within his domain, and no one questioned him when he did it - because he was not trying to convince through theory, nor appeal to emotion.

Damon Aetos was Damon Aetos. He did not need to convince the Scarlet City to listen when he spoke. He did not need to make them weep tears of sorrow and joy with his words to convince them of his views. He was above that, just as Bakkhos had been above that in the Half-Step City.

A theory could be argued. Emotion could be questioned. These things were portions of a man, but only portions.

To deny a man’s credibility was to refute all that he was. It was an open invitation, a slap to the face, and a mocking interdiction - You are not who you say you are, your soul is not what you claim it to be, and you have no right to speak for those that suffer under your yoke. I refuse to allow it.

Naturally, this was a difficult stance to take against a Tyrant in their domain. It rarely ended well for the accuser, after all. But assuming the Tyrant was not who they claimed to be, assuming they did not deserve to speak for those beneath them, those they had claimed as a portion of their domain, it was possible to tear the crown from their head. It was possible to depose them from their throne.

It was possible to unmake them. So long as they were not who they claimed to be. So long as they strayed from the framework of principles they had sworn themselves to, they could be disanointed.

If they stayed true to their domain, though? If they were who they claimed to be in all things, at all times, in all ways? Well. If you were lucky, and the Fates were kind, perhaps they’d leave your family an intact corpse to burn.

Sol was playing an outrageously dangerous game, and the hilarity was that he wasn’t even aware that he was playing it. Not really. The world seen through his storm-gray eyes was as cruel as it was ungrateful, though he wouldn’t put it in those words. As he saw it, a man’s credibility was a blown-glass statue. Unmarred and upright in the light of day, it dazzled all who looked upon it.

But under duress, upon failure, a captain’s credibility did not chip or crumble like stone. It did not bend like a willow tree, surviving though the storm pressed it down. No. As my foolish Roman brother understood it, a captain’s ethos was as dazzling as glass. And just like glass, it shattered before it shifted.

Because of this bleak understanding, because his credibility as a captain was glass shards scattered at his feet, Sol didn’t view his actions for what they were. He deluded himself into believing that all the world saw things as he did, and so he didn’t even consider the reputation that he was constructing for himself in the hearts and minds of those his actions reached.

It made perfect sense to him that the speech he’d given in the wake of Chilon’s story had settled the question of his standing, because he’d only really heard a portion of it - even as he himself was saying the words.

“The city of Rome is salted ash. The half of my soul that lives in Rome wasn’t enough to bring down the demons from risen Carthage. The half of my soul that is Greek will have to do the rest.”

I failed, admits the captain, and in Sol’s rigid framework of military expectation his credibility shatters like so much glass.

I survived, the Heroes and Heroines of Greece hear the captain say, And because they failed to kill me I will do alone what fifty thousand men failed to - because even half of me is enough. Even half of me is worth more than all of you.

Perhaps it was a cultural gap, or else a nascent sense of humor from the primal shard of Babel that translated discourse exchanged between cultivators. Whatever the case, he failed to realize that a Greek placed a greater weight on one sentiment than the other. And so he carried on, assuming they continued to follow him out of unspoken camaraderie and not because he weighed every word that left his mouth like the Father himself was listening in Raging Heaven. Not because he took the burdens of others upon his shoulders like it was an expectation as much as a courtesy.

He had been everywhere in the world that was worth going to, it seemed. He spoke the Conqueror’s name without a grimace on his lips, observed his ruined cities and spoke to the sorrows of the fallen Macedonian empire as if he was speaking from personal experience. Because, from his point of view, his city had been every bit as glorious as the Conqueror’s, and so her fate had been every bit as tragic.

He spoke of a Tyrant’s mindset as though he was simply giving his own opinion, because his great-uncle’s lessons and behaviors were sacrosanct to him. How could Scythas or anyone else listening mistake that deference to his mentors for anything other than what it was? Surely his intent was perfectly clear. Surely.

You spoke to a dead god, the Hero of the Scything Squall clarifies.

Maybe. But it was brief, and it ended in disagreement, the Roman says, irritated and covered in burns, bruises, and bleeding wounds. But alive. One of Sol’s earliest introductions to Greek mystery cults had been the Rosy Dawn’s own initiation rites. Then, in Thracia, he had seen Scythas speak to a lesser mystery as if the chthonic hero was a drinking partner.

If a lesser mystery could be spoken to, could be heard from, why not a greater mystery? What was the distinction, in the end? He had no frame of reference. It was all equally absurd to him.

And of course, when the mentor of his mentor’s mentor, the teacher he shared with the kyrios of the Rosy Dawn Cult, slams into the side of our ship and is pulled burnt and half-dead from the sea, what does the captain do? Does he shy away from the wrath of the Tyrant Polyzalus, First Son to Burn? Does he heed the fierce commands of the Scholar himself to turn the ship around and sail far, far away? Naturally not. How could he?

This was his responsibility, after all. How could he run in any direction but towards it? No, Sol doesn’t turn away from the Tyrant on the shore. He vaults the rail and marches toward him. He tells Scythas what he intends to do, and when Scythas allows him to do it, he assumes it’s because Scythas has faith in Aleuas’ benevolence.

Scythas thinks he’s off to offer terms as an equal.

The problem with manufactured reputation, of course, was that eventually, someone challenged you. Some time, some place, as inevitable as the dawn that followed after dusk, credibility had to be proven. At some point, you had to be the man that everyone thought you to be. Otherwise, your ethos suffered. It might not shatter, not like glass as Sol saw it, but it would crack. It would crumble. And finger length by finger length, hand by hand, it would be made less.

And in the same way that failure weakened ethos, triumph made it even stronger.

“He did it,” Scythas whispered, golden wonder burning behind his eyes. We were at the furthest edge of the Raging Heaven Cult’s boundaries, crouched in the shadows beside the stairway to heaven, but that didn’t hinder the Hero. We were on Kaukoso Mons, and while Scythas was on the mountain, the wind carried every spoken word to his ear. The Hero turned to me, whispering in fierce excitement, “Griffon, he did it! Aleuas agreed!”

“The terms?” I murmured, brushing the raven’s midnight cloth away from the path of his shifting feet.

The Hero hurriedly relayed them to me. They were about what I’d expected. Sol had come to this mountain expecting a fight like none he’d ever faced alone before, and so he’d kept his demands simple and succinct. Aleuas would stand with us against Polyzalus if and when the need arose. In exchange, he’d return to the Hurricane Hierophant his favored Hero - eventually. He’d refrain from harassing the Howling Wind faction on Kaukoso Mons.

And someday, if and when the opportunity arose, he’d murder the Eye of the Storm and cast him down from his Hurricane Heights. On that point, we both agreed.

They were the best terms Sol could hope for, given the circumstances. It was simply misfortune that he was operating under a false premise, and reaching out for allies that he had no business speaking to as a result.

“Has the Gadfly made a mess of things yet?” I asked. Scythas shook his head, frowning even as his eyes flickered and went distant. He listened intently, but couldn’t hear anything.

“I can’t hear him. But… that doesn’t mean he isn’t there.”

Socrates was many things, most recently a fool, but he wasn’t an idiot. Our surgery had made him whole again, but he needed time to mend and he knew it. His mad dash back to Olympia had torn open enough of our surgical threads as it was, and he’d lost more blood in the last few hours than most mortal men had in their bodies to lose. He was weak. He was vulnerable. And though he would surely step in anyway if he felt Sol needed the help, he wouldn’t make things more complicated than they needed to be.

For now, Sol had made his case. And in so doing, he’d further cemented his credibility in Scythas’ mind.

I laid the back of my head against the mountain and contemplated the immortal storm crown above.

“You admire him,” I said, and Scythas blinked owlishly down at me.

“Solus?”

I hummed, confirming it.

“And if I do?” The Hero’s brow furrowed, his influence lapping like low tide at the edge of my perception. “Are you saying you don’t? He’s your mentor.”

My mentor. A truth, technically. Sol had taught me more than any of the old men assigned to me as tutors in the Rosy Dawn, directly and indirectly. I considered him a master in the fields that suited him best, because I’d never met a soul with greater resolve than his. But did that make him my mentor in the spirit that the term was meant?

“I have a question,” I declared. The Hero rolled his eyes.

“I thought you weren’t ever going to ask me anything again.”

“Until we died or each ascended,” I agreed. And we had died, each of us in a way. Our current predicament was the product of Selene’s spirit marble statues crumbling to pieces, because for a brief moment the two of them had stepped out of the land of the living and into the dark land of the dead. Sol and I, on the other hand, had died a much more literal death - with each turn of the wheel, we had felt that last scarlet thread of life leave us. It had been a true lived experience, even if it hadn’t been exactly ours.

My heart flickered in my chest, a bare murmur to my new Heroic sense. I frowned faintly up at raging heaven, contemplating the distinction.

All this time, I’d been more than happy to stoke the flame of misconception and that which resided between truth and a lie.

“How did you become a Hero, Scythas?” I asked. The fair Hero’s heart stuttered in his chest.

“... I already told you-”

“You told us you threatened the Eye of the Storm in his own domain,” I overrode him, watching lightning flash a dozen times in the span of a bare heartbeat. There was something about the Raging Heaven’s estates that blunted the noise of the storm, but it was always there. Impossible to ignore.

“You painted us a picture of a Philosopher on the brink of glory, but you didn’t light the flame. The kyrios of your cult backed down, in the end. So what drove you over the edge? How did you become the Hero of the Scything Squall, and how did you end up here in Olympia while the brother you risked everything to protect languishes alone in the City of Squalls?”

Scythas bit his lip, wavering between knee-jerk denial and his heart’s desire to speak the truth of things. I gave him the final push he needed.

“The morning after the funeral, in that drinking club.” A quiet intonation. The fight went out of him. “I told you Sol had come from afar to visit your city for a taste of true culture. Do you remember what else I said?” We both knew that he did.

“You said that he was fighting demons,” Scythas whispered.

“Demons, on the western front,” I echoed. “Anastasia didn’t react to that statement at all, in any way that I could see at least. Maybe she already suspected. Jason was surprised, but not half as much as you.”

Demons on the western front, I’d said gaily, and Scythas had turned to regard my Roman brother like a drowning man regarded an approaching ship.

“There is a gap between the day you spit in the Eye of the Storm and the day you first climbed this stairway to raging heaven,” I concluded. “What took place within that gap?”

If I’d asked the question a week ago, he wouldn’t have even considered answering. But Thracia had changed things. For all of us.

“The kyrios…” Scythas eventually said, and the tone of his voice made it clear he wasn’t talking about Bakkhos. “He couldn’t stand the sight of me after that day. He didn’t want anything to do with me, but he couldn’t admit why because it would weaken his image. So he entrusted me with a task suitable to the Howling Wind’s prodigious son. Something that anyone could agree was of vital importance.”

“That being?”

“Expansion,” he said, and his eyes turned west. Haunted, in a way that was all too similar to Sol’s when he reminisced on his legion days. “The land that houses the City of Squalls used to go by another name - the Breadbasket. Before the winds tore the crops out of the earth like a thousand-thousand scythes, it was a nation of plenty. Every year was a successful harvest. Hunger was a distant, impersonal threat.”

“Until the hurricane,” I mused.

“Until the hurricane. Since then, the lands have been destitute and the City of Squalls has been dependent on the imports of its more prosperous neighbors for the basic necessities of grain and wine. That dependence is a weakness. But what else can we do? The storm is there to stay. What else is there to do but expand?”

“And your kyrios chose to expand west, across the sea,” I realized.

“Why not?” Scythas smiled mirthlessly. Shrugged. “There’s nothing across the Ionian but scarlet sons, barbarians, and stades and stades of lush land just waiting for the touch of a civilized hand. The Eye of the Storm gave me a band of my brothers and sisters within the cult to accompany me in my expedition, for appearances sake and to rid the cult of those fondest of me and my brother, and he told me not to come back until I’d secured a sustainable colony for his city.”

The Hero tilted his head, looking knowingly down at me once more.

“Do you know what we found on the western frontier, Griffon?”

Salt and ash, and howling on the wind.

“How many of you made it back across the sea?” I asked. The Hero stared silently down at me. “Ah.”

The truth of the Hero’s journey was the tribulation was a certainty more than it was a threat. Tragedy came for us all at one point or another. The only question was whether it came at the beginning or the end.

Damon and Anargyros Aetos had ascended to the Heroic Realm in glory.

Scythas had ascended in tragedy.

“... Why do you ask?” Scythas pressed me after a long beat. On the horizon, the first slivers of dawn were beginning to make themselves known.

“You admire Sol,” I said, because it needed to be said again. When Scythas rolled his eyes and made to speak, I waved him silent. “You’ve decided to throw in with him, and that’s fine. So long as you know what you’re throwing in with. So long as you’re prepared for what comes next.”

“What do you mean?” he asked, puzzled.

“Sol has decided he’s going to help you murder your Tyrant, and so we’ll see it done,” I declared, and my heart did not waver at the truth of it. “But are you prepared to stand beside him, as he’s prepared to stand beside you?”

“Of course-!”

“Are you?” I pressed, rising to my feet and leaning in close. I didn’t harry him with pankration hands, or leer as I might have before. I stared intently into his eyes. After a moment, he found his grit and glared right back.

“I am.”

“Good,” I said, my eyes narrowing. “Because when all is said and done, he isn’t going to sit himself down on this city’s indigo throne and content himself with Bakkhos’ laurels. He’s going to take everything he can get his hands on, he’s going to throw it all across his shoulders like a yoke, and he’s going to march across the Ionian while he sings a legion song.”

Scythas’ jaw clenched. But to the Hero’s credit, he did not look away.

“You both escaped the demons once,” I said in quiet warning. “But Sol will never be content with just surviving. If you’re with him, you’re against the western horde.”

Scythas turned his head, finally breaking our staredown -

And spit on the amethyst veins that lined the Raging Heaven’s mountain.

“Good.”

I felt myself smile.

This world was iron. Its Heroic souls were battered and dim, made less by Tyrants and their tragedies. It was a shadow of what it should have been.

But it didn’t have to remain that way.