Virtuous Sons: A Greco Roman Xianxia

Chapter 1.88 [???]

???

You are born.

Your infant cries herald the end of endless spring and the first dawn of the summer sun. The sun beats warmly down. Your mother seeks shelter for you in the shade, while the first seeds are planted and the seasons begin the first of their tireless revolutions.

The wheel begins to turn. The world is silver-bright.

You are betrayed.

[Bring that golden lyre, yes, bring it.]

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

The oldest generation takes the youngest generation in their hands. You are torn apart, limb by limb, before you speak your first word. You scream in a voice so loud that their ears bleed and the heavens shake in their frame, but it is not enough to rouse your murdered mother. It is not enough to stir The Mother’s wrathful heart.

The Titans consume you one limb at a time. They bite into your organs and split them like overripe fruit. They crack your bones open and suck out the marrow therein. They crush to pulp the lungs in your chest to silence your wailing.

It’s almost a mercy when they finally deprive you of your senses. They take your ears, and you no longer have to hear the sound of their chewing. They take your nose, and you no longer have to smell their fetid breath and the stench of your own exposed innards. They take your tongue, and you no longer have to taste your own blood. Of course, even in their unavoidable kindness they are cruel.

They take your eyes last of all, so that you have to watch until the very end the feast they’ve made of you. The Titans devour you in the Fall, and your father who is The Father doesn’t notice until they’ve eaten everything but your heart.

Heaven rages. Lightning scours the earth and turns every Titan to ash. You alone remain, a senseless beating heart. Salt water falls from the clouds above. The Father mourns you as the world grows cold and the first winter digs its frigid fingers through the earth.

You die.

The wheel turns.

[But leave that string of blood out.]

You are born. Again.

The world is less than it was before, but still silver-bright. You grow to speak your first word. For a hundred years you grow alongside the other children. When you are finally a man, you venture into teeming fields and cultivate your first vine. The first grape you pick is sweet and ripe. It pops between your teeth, and you taste in it the labors of every man to come before you.

The Mother sees you one day as you tend your fields. She finds you as unsightly now as she did before. She curses the men and the women you shared a childhood with. In their madness, they tear you apart limb-by-limb and consume you. You beg them to stop until you can no longer form the words. You beg them with your eyes until those too are taken.

When nothing remains but your senseless beating heart, lightning scours the fields and salt water falls upon the ash that’s left behind.

You die. Again.

The wheel turns.

[Bring a cup of versing rules.]

You are born. Again. Your friends are long dead.

The world has lost yet more of its silver luster. Holy women take you into their arms and hide you away in mountain caves. They feed you milk and honey until you are grown. They feed you milk and honey to make you strong. In time, they teach you the nature of the world and reveal to you its mysteries. They tell you stories of the golden souls that came before you.

They warn you of your fellow men.

You venture out from your mountain cave and discover for yourself how a foreigner is treated in a dim, irreverent world.

The Mother hardly has to lift a finger to see you to your end this time. The King of Earliest Dawn is mad enough already. By the time you realize he’s tainted the food and drink offered under guest right with ivy poison, you’ve already ingested far too much of it. In your delirium and your sickness, you hardly feel it at all when the mad king’s dogs tear you limb from limb.

Senseless heart. Raging heaven’s wrath. A kingdom reduced to ash, and a deluge of saltwater grief to wash it all away. Your father, The Father, floods the world and starts anew.

You die. Again.

The wheel turns.

[Oh, and mix some metres in it.]

You are born. Again.

It was your father’s sin, not yours, but The Mother doesn’t care.

The world is cruel and growing crueler. No longer bright, no longer silver at all, but now a burnished bronze. Its men are merciless and strong, carved from ash trees and well-suited to war.

There are more mad kings than sane, now. The king that rules over the land of your birth is no different. The Mother whispers the truth of your origins into his ear, and he locks both you and your mother into a trunk and consigns it to the sea. No matter how loudly you wail, there is no one on the open waters to hear you but your mother. When she dies, there is no one to hear you at all.

When your trunk finally washes up on shore and you are found in the embrace of your mother’s bloated corpse, you’ve become a bit mad yourself. The woman to find you is no holy spirit, no priestess of your father, but she is kinder than most. She raises you in a field, and reminds you of the man you used to be one day at a time. You cultivate another field of vines, and though their grapes don’t taste as sweet as they did before, the memory is fond enough.

War finds your humble farm before The Mother does. The woman that raised you is violated and murdered. The men responsible disdain your howling rage and lash your limbs each to a different one of their horses. They pull you apart. They burn your vines and salt the earth.

You die. Again.

The wheel has ten spokes.

[I will sing, then I’ll be dancing.]

You are born. Again. You die. Again.

It goes.

The world is burnished bronze, and so you make war. You are a stranger in every land, a foreigner no matter where you go. You do not belong and The Mother makes certain you are never wanted. So you force yourself upon the world. You live in it regardless. Out of spite.

Defiant.

You march, and you fight. You gather men of similar minds to you, and you make that war together. As far as the Indus River, where The Mother takes on a native woman’s form and urges them to repel you. You fight, and you conquer, and you thirst. Every vine in every land bears less tantalizing fruit than the last.

Your father looks upon your works and despairs at the man you’ve become. He scours the world away in saltwater floods. Another deluge. Another death.

Turn.

[Not a drop of sense left in me.]

You are born again.

The world is… better.

No longer dimly lit by cruelly burnished bronze, it’s lit by defiance of noble souls. The lands are defined by great men and great women, cultivated as you cultivate your vines. Among them you find friends. Among them you find brothers.

One among them is your favorite.

The Mother hates him nearly as much as she hates you. She curses him with madness, as she cursed you, and breaks his back with labors. He suffers these tribulations with greater poise and grace than you ever did. He stands tall. He struggles on behalf of those that suffered before him, and those that will suffer after. He is a Champion.

You have nothing you can give him in support but your own senselessly beating heart, and so you do. He takes even that, and improves it. While it beats in his chest, it burns. It takes on his shade. It becomes something glorious. It becomes something triumphant.

For the first time, you feel something in the senseless beating of your heart. You experience passion.

And then your little brother is cut down.

You feel it in your heart now. The pain is worse because of it.

The wheel groans.

[I will dance to horn and zither.]

You exist.

The world is iron now.

Every vine you cultivate bears tainted fruit. The grapes fester and grow bitter, and when you bite into them you understand what the Titans must have felt when they devoured you. The juice drives you mad if not first diluted. You treat it with spices and herbs, with milk and honey, but it’s never quite the same as it was before. Even the memory is bittersweet.

These days, every king is a tyrant. You are no exception.

When The Mother finally dies, all that you feel is a dim satisfaction. You gather your followers and your slaves in the fist that isn’t busy holding your cup, and you go to her grave and revel over her corpse.

You drink until it finally kills you.

The wheel-

[Crying out the cries that wine makes.]

You are born.

The world is… golden-bright?

[Bring that golden lyre, yes, bring it.]

Yes.

The world is gold.

[Oh, but leave that string of blood out.]

Twin ravens, twice-anointed in twice-born faith, sit together in a shadowed grove of sweet delusion. Eventually, they come to their senses. Eventually, they realize they are not alone.

“You look parched, brother. Here. Have yourself a drink.”

From behind the hungry ravens, from a direction neither can turn their head to look, a voice sounds and a hand reaches out. Offering a drink to quench their senseless thirst.

A golden cup of wine.