Virtuous Sons: A Greco Roman Xianxia

Chapter 1.87

The Young Griffon

We descended the last few tiers of benches, brushing past the aghast souls of long dead Orphic initiates.

Orpheus sat on his own ivy covered tomb. There was room on either side of him, but Sol disdained the implicit offer to sit side-by-side. Instead, he pulled an ivory stool from the same place he had pulled his lyre, which was to say nowhere, and sat directly across from the Augur with his back to the stands.

Not to be outdone, I manifested every hand of my violent intent and built myself a shadowed throne of thirty open palms. I crossed my legs and propped my chin up in a hand of flesh and blood while Sol adjusted the strings of his lyre as if they weren’t made of shadow and illusion.

The Augur’s smile deepened a shade at our unspoken refusal.

“Welcome to my home. My name is Orpheus, keeper of the strings. What are yours, friends?”

“Griffon,” I answered.

“Sol,” the Roman replied.

“Ah, I see. We make quite a set, don’t we?” The late Hero leaned back, one arm bracing him while the other idly tapped the golden neck of his instrument. “Three men named, and three names discarded.”

Sol’s fingers went still over his shadow strings.

“Orpheus isn’t your real name?” I asked curiously.

“It’s as real as yours,” the Hero replied. I inclined my head, conceding the point.

“Why Orpheus?”

“I was the product of an unfaithful union,” he explained. “When my father discovered the truth of things he cast me out. The name Orpheus denotes an orphan. Though I had been raised with a man I called my father, and though in time I came to know the ones responsible for my birth, I knew from that moment of exile that I was and would always be a child without his parents.”

He spoke with the ease of a man who had long since moved past his hardships. I suppose that was fitting. The concerns of the living hardly mean much to the dead.

“I was raised Lio Aetos,” I said, returning truth for truth. The keeper of strings chuckled.

“I suppose the name speaks for itself. Tell me, then: Sol has made his questions known. What brings you to my humble home?”

“We’re here for a good cup of wine.” It was the proper answer. The reason we were here, after all, was to find a golden cup of spirit wine for the Scholar. We had sailed the full length of the Aegean Sea and traversed the frozen lands of Thracia for this purpose alone.

One week had passed since we set sail from Olympia, one of only twelve. If we found our divine reagent here now and returned to the Eos with all possible haste, we might be done with the first of the Gadfly’s errands after a week and a half. It was a slower pace than what I desired. If we were to traverse these ten destinations and find every infernal component of the late kyrios’ nectar before the competitors were required to show for the Olympic Games, we would have to be faster. Even now, every moment that passed was one that I could not afford to spend.

But even so. Despite the fact that Kronos was against us, I couldn’t stop myself from uttering the words that came next. I couldn’t stop myself from wondering.

“What did you mean a moment ago? How has my brother made his questions known?”

That faint smile deepened again.

“The two of you are young.” It wasn’t a question. Sol nodded shallowly, confirming it anyway. “There are a multitude of discoveries that lie ahead of you. A thousand revelations that have yet to shake your hearts - experiences that can only move a man once. It’s enough to make me jealous.”

My eyes rolled behind my veil. “A meaningless response.”

The chthonic Hero stood.

It was a truth universally known that the line between mortality and divinity was drawn at the precipice of the Heroic Realm. Before that, every man and woman was equally frail in all the ways that truly mattered. When a man was born the Fates waved his destiny and swaddled him in it - the progression of his soul, the events that would define him, the pinnacle of his growth and the degradation of his health. Everything. All of it. Height, beauty, temperament and disposition.

Whether you were the lowest of the low Citizenry, or a captain of the Sophic realm, the ceiling was the same. Your reality was fixed. Predetermined. It wasn’t until - unless - a cultivator reached beyond their mortal standing and grasped the first handhold of their brazen epic that the constraints of fated humanity could be defied.

Beloved by the Muses. Reviled by the Fates. A Hero was an existence that was larger than life. Every deed done and every rank advanced only emphasized that fact. My father and my uncles stood taller than any mortal man could hope to grow. The disgraced kyrios of the Burning Dusk was much the same.

When Sol and I were standing, we saw eye to eye with one another. We were both nearly twenty hands tall, a height that put us noticeably above most mortal men. When Orpheus stood, he towered over us. Even if Sol had stood from his ivory stool and I had risen from my throne of shadowed palms, the Hero still would have dwarfed us. Twenty-five hands tall at least. Perhaps more.

This was a Hero’s stature. That our companions still existed largely within the boundaries of mortal measurement was a reflection of their lack. They should have loomed over us in every aspect. They should have towered-

“Take my seat,” Orpheus told me. I blinked, looking up at him strangely. Though he couldn’t have possibly seen my expression behind the midnight veil of the raven, he seemed to infer it anyway.

“Take my seat and give me yours,” he bid me again. “You want to be center stage, don’t you?”

I stood. At my full height, the crown of my head only just reached the Augur’s collarbone. He was as tall compared to me as my father would be compared to him. He sat unceremoniously on the throne of my pankration hands, and I took his place atop his tomb. The ivy rustled and shifted as I sat down on it.

I wondered idly if the tomb was empty in this shadowed reflection of the Orphic House. Above and all around, hundreds of spirits stared at me in rapt displeasure.

“How does it feel?” the Augur asked me. I hummed, considering their glares and simmering disdain.

“I’m not against it.”

“You can stay there, if you’d like,” he offered, and I saw dozens of long dead souls visibly bite down on their protestations. “The lyre is properly tuned, and there are picks hidden in the ivy if you prefer to use one. Play us a song.”

I picked up the golden instrument, weighed it in my hands and considered its scarlet strings. I tucked the tip of my finger beneath one, pulling it back. What sound would the lyre make, I wondered, when it was a Philosopher plucking the strings instead of the Augur?

Rather than release it, my finger slowly returned the straining scarlet string to its original position. I pulled my hand away without it making a sound.

“I can’t,” I decided. “Not like you.”

“Why not? You have everything you need, do you not?”

My head tilted.

“You’re sitting in a Hero’s seat,” Orpheus explained. Familiar eyes of scarlet flame danced as he leaned back and made himself comfortable in my pankration palms. You have a Hero’s instrument at hand, and you bear the mark of higher power’s blessing. That should be enough to do what I do, shouldn’t it?”

The founder of the Orphic mysteries raised an eyebrow when I didn’t reply.

“Is it not enough?” he asked me knowingly.

“How long have you been listening to us?” Sol asked him.

“Since you plucked that first cord.”

“Liar.”

More than one restless spirit came to their feet in the stands and elevated balconies, their outrage clear to see. Orpheus raised a hand without looking back, forestalling them.

“What did you call me?” he asked Sol.

Rather than repeat himself, the raven from Rome returned his fingers to the smoke serving as his lyre’s strings. Sol played three simple cords, the sound traveling to every corner of the singing house, carried by its fine acoustics. The sound of them was shrill, more so than the first song he’d played to grab the Augur’s attention.

Orpheus leaned an elbow onto the open air, scarlet flames burning behind his eyes, and laid his cheek against a loosely clenched fist.

“That’s twice,” he said, though Sol hadn’t spoken a word. “Call me a liar in my own home one more time.”

“Can you really understand my intent to that degree?” Sol asked. He sounded like he wanted to disbelieve it, but couldn’t quite bring himself to. When Orpheus nodded, he sighed. “What about Griffon? He only spoke once between my first cord and your invitation to take the stage, and that was just to call me rude. You’re the Keeper of Strings, you can hear the words the lyre says in my place, fine - but he hasn’t plucked a single string in this house. What voice spoke for him that you could hear his underlying intent?”

“This voice,” Orpheus spoke, and laid his unoccupied hand over his heart.

“Is this a joke?” I asked incredulously. “You heard my heart speak?”

“It wasn’t as if I had a choice. It’s all but screaming.”

“Your myth didn’t mention an ability like that.” Sol’s veiled head turned to me, seeking confirmation. I shook my head. “Is that a chthonic ability?”

“No,” Orpheus said at once, but decided against it a moment later. “Well, it shouldn’t be. These days, though… maybe so.”

My heart and Sol for a straight answer.

“Where do the two of you stand?” Orpheus abruptly asked, spearing first me and then Sol with pointed expectation.

“What does my heart say?” I asked blithely.

“It says it’s disappointed. It says it aches to burn. Mostly, it despairs that the brightest souls are the ones that are smothered first. It’s been saying that since I first started listening. So, again - where do you stand?”

“… Sophic Realm. Second rank.”

“Sophic Realm, first rank,” Sol chimed in.

“I thought so. Tell me, what do the two of you think a Hero is?”

Sol and I shared a look through veils of raven shadow.

“There are no wrong answers,” Orpheus said invitingly. I grimaced. Was he a liar that had been listening to us in the underworld all this time, or was it sheer coincidence? To what extent was my virtuous heart betraying me?

“More,” I said. If he was telling the truth, it was all that needed to be said.

Once more, Sol turned to his lyre in place of words. The song he drew next from the smoke was slow and somber, each cord a bittersweet pleasure. Chthonic souls leaned forward on their benches and over the rails of their balconies to listen as it dragged tortuously on. I saw the late Ptolemy watching raptly, his sister-wife listening with her eyes closed and her back pressed against his chest.

Sol curled his fingers against his palms when the last string was plucked, scraping them as if to rid them of a residue that he misliked.

“So that’s it,” Orpheus murmured, as if he really had heard the full explanation in the intervening beats. “That song, was it your own creation? Or does it have a name?”

“The Trojan Marches Home,” Sol answered. A song about Aeneas, then. Fitting choice, for a Roman.

“Thank you,” Orpheus said genuinely. “I’ll remember it.” Sol inclined his head, and this time a few scattered applause came down from the stands. He didn’t look back. “To the prior point, however, I think I’ve spotted the issue. You’re both horribly confused and unsure of how to proceed with your lives as they stand, and you’ve come here in search of clarity using gold and wine as your thin pretense. Not uncommon, as these approaches go.”

“If our hearts’ desires are so transparent to you,” I said, the raven’s distortion veil doing nothing to hide my irritation, “Why don’t you humor us, and fulfill them?”

“Why should I?”

“Sol played you a nice song.”

Orpheus chuckled. “That he did. He even brought his own instrument to perform it.” The Augur leveled a finger at me. The ivy vines enshrouding his tomb shifted in response, digging against my skin where I touched them. “You, on the other hand, refuse to play the one I loaned you myself. How am I to suffer such disparity in my own home?”

“So if I play you a song,” I said slowly, “That would be enough?”

“It would.”

I tapped the face of his lyre thoughtfully. The gold chimed every time my nail struck it.

“I still refuse.”

“Just play the man a song,” the Roman raven snapped, as if I was one of his toy soldiers to command. “Don’t tell me the young aristocrat doesn’t know how to strum a lyre.”

“Of course I do.”

“Then play.”

“No.”

Sol threw down his ivory lyre in disgust. Rather than rebound off the wooden stage, though, it simply fell into his shadow and vanished. Like a broken ship subsumed by wine-dark waters.

“You know you won’t do it justice,” Orpheus surmised. Or perhaps he’d heard it in my heart. Who was to say? “An alternative, then. You lack the required finesse in your strings, but what of your voice?”

“There isn’t one better in all the world.”

“Oh?” Scarlet flames flickered, amused. “And under it?”

“Not there either.”

“Oh ho. That’s a claim I’d love to hear proven.” The Hero Orpheus made a beckoning motion with one hand, and ivy vines entangled the golden lyre, dragged it out of my lap. I watched, nonplussed, as they grew across the gap between Orpheus and his coffin to hand over the instrument. “Lend me your voice, Lio Aetos, and open your heart. I’ll supply you the lyrics.”

Before I could ask him what exactly he meant by that, the Augur began to play. It was as lovely as his earlier play, but this tune didn’t flow placidly through the undercurrent of conversation like the one before. These cords were not content to be spoken over. They thrummed, bright and proud, echoing through the rafters of the high house. They seized the ears of every spectator in the odeon.

They seized me. And not unlike the first time I had felt the brush of pneuma on my cultivator’s sense, not unlike the first time I noticed the thrust of rhetoric with my sophic sense, I felt something beat against my chest. Something directly outside of the cage that contained my heart. Something that wanted in.

Orpheus the Augur- no. Orpheus, the Keeper of Scarlet Strings, matched his beat and the scarlet flames in his eyes to the rhythm and heat of my own heart. Through that resonance, he spoke to me.

He spoke through me.

My voice rose to sing a hymn I had never heard before this moment.

Zagreus I call, loud-sounding and divine, fanatic vine-keeper, a two-fold shape is thine:

Thy various names and attributes I sing, O, first-born, thrice begotten, Bacchic king:

Rural, ineffable, two-form'd, obscure, two-horn'd, with ivy crown'd, euion, pure.

Bull-fac'd, and martial, bearer of the vine, endu'd with counsel prudent and divine:

Triennial, whom the leaves of vines adorn, of Thunderer and Kore, occultly born.

Immortal dæmon, hear my suppliant voice, give me in blameless plenty to rejoice;

And listen gracious to my mystic pray'r, surrounded with thy choir of nurses fair.

The stands erupted into cheering ovation. I hunched forward, panting - abruptly breathless. Such a short hymn shouldn’t have taken anything noticeable out of me to recite. But it had. I gasped for breath while Orpheus set down his golden lyre and joined the rest of the dead souls in applauding me.

Sol’s hand was a firm support as it settled on my shoulder. His voice was colder than ice when he spoke to the Augur, made more unsettling by the raven’s grim distortion.

“What did you do?”

“I said a prayer.” Orpheus shrugged lightly, unconcerned by the raven’s rising pneuma. “The two of you are strangers in my home, and so I have treated you well despite the insults you’ve offered me. You wear the colors of an old and dear friend, and so I’ve decided to answer your irreverent questions. But make no mistake. You are not my friends. And if your bodies can not handle the answers your hearts have requested, that is your hubris repaid.”

“I’m fine,” I wheezed, bracing a hand on my knee and clapping Sol’s bicep reassuringly. “I can-“ I gagged. Forced myself to speak through the sensation. “-feel it now. It’s-”

“I’d suggest catching your breath,” Orpheus interrupted. “The first time is-“

I jabbed a finger at his face. “You. Augur. Shut up.”

In an instant, the goodwill my singing had garnered me in the stands evaporated. More than that, though, for the first time since our arrival I saw the Chthonic Hero himself grow angry.

“Excuse me?”

I sucked in a long, whistling breath that felt like it would never fill my lungs. Until it did, and the breathless spell passed. I slapped my chest and the winding scarlet tattoos that the raven’s mantle brought to the surface of my skin flashed briefly.

“You’re too loud. I’m trying to listen,” I explained. The Augur’s anger subsided.

“Listen to what?” Sol asked quietly, still gripping my shoulder.

“To the heart.”

With a sense I hadn’t known I had until Orpheus forced it upon me with his prayer, I felt it. A warmth, and a beat. A deathless phenomena entombed in poisonous ivy.

The Orphic mystery.

Drink.

My brow furrowed.

“The heart? What heart?”

Drink.

“Griffon?”

Drink.

I shook my head. No.

Drink.

I refuse.

“He won’t stop,” Orpheus said knowingly. He was standing, now. At some point my pankration hands had flickered and vanished, leaving him without a seat. He didn’t seem concerned by it. “He’s always been that way. Best to just drain your cup and be done with it.”

DRINK.

I grit my teeth, gripping my head for all the good it did. Obnoxious tyrant. Be silent.

D R I N K

My knees hit the floor. Moments after discovering it, my new sense was overwhelmed by the entombed beat. I was blinded, deafened - disheartened.

Sol gripped my jaw, forcing my mouth open, and poured the horn’s contents down my throat. It was sweet and nothing but. Utterly lacking in any of the underlying burn inherent to alcoholic beverages. I had seen the same liquid in every ivory cup, in every drunken spirit’s hand.

Milk and honey. It was only milk and honey.

Where was the wine?

The last thing I saw before the world fell out from under me and all of my senses spiraled away was the sight of Sol shifting his midnight veil aside to down the contents of his own horn cup.

The last thing I heard was Orpheus’ voice.

“Enjoy the rites, boys.”