Virtuous Sons: A Greco Roman Xianxia

Chapter 1.16

The Young Griffon

Anastasia was what a charitable man would call dangerous. I’d known from the moment I felt the searing heat of her influence, and again the instant I’d seen the cruel amusement in her eyes while Sol battered a defenseless man in the club. She was the type to leave men pining endlessly for even the kiss of her heel.

Fortunately she wasn’t my type, and when lust was removed from the equation she became simply interesting.

“Sol is a brutal taskmaster,” I said in explanation of the broken bed frame. “Hardly gave me a moment to wake up before testing my pankration. Wouldn’t even let me stretch first.” It really was a shame. For Scythas especially. It had been a comfortable bed, feathered down and silk sheets.

“And the rest of the furniture?” Anastasia asked, arching a dark brow. Scythas grimaced, in part because of her lack of care for him as she brushed past him, into the room, and in part because we truly had made a mess of the place.

Sol said nothing, matching the Heroine’s smoldering stare and holding it as she approached him. Knowing him, the fool thought he was establishing authority.

“We may have had a cup too many,” I admitted.

“An understatement if I’ve ever heard one,” she said, rolling her eyes. Sol exhaled, satisfied that he’d won the ‘staredown’. “I’ve seen lesser men die from drinking in such excess.” The Heroine perched herself on the sloped headrest of Sol’s dining couch, stroking his eagle from tip to tail feather while he fed it scraps of his breakfast.

Evidently, I was the only man in the room with a voice. That suited me just fine.

“We’re cultivators. It’s our providence to exceed lesser men.”

“Even in your vices?” she asked, amused.

“Especially in our vices.”

“My master would call that hubris,” she murmured. “Even children know that vice is the inverse of virtue.”

“Yet the heavens strike down virtuous souls like the kyrios while men like me run wild,” I said, leaning a cheek on my hand as I reclined. I retrieved with pankrations intent the charts that Scythas had taken from me, forgotten on his couch when Anastasia broke down the door.

“The heavens may not be prompt,” she countered, “But their wrath is always felt in the end.” The fine details of her were dark and nearly menacing, smoldering green eyes and smirking red lips, framed by long midnight black hair. The contrast with her marble pale skin was undeniably enticing. A fine aesthetic.

I grinned sharply, meeting her gaze over an array of star charts.

“I hope so. The tribulations are the best part.”

For a moment she was honestly thrown. “What have you been teaching this one, Solus?”

“Not nearly enough,” Sol said flatly. I snickered, flipping through papyrus sheets. Scythas finally made a decision, forcing the heavy bedroom door back into its frame with another painful crunch of breaking locks.

“Tell me, Anastasia.” The Heroine hummed invitingly. “Did we trade life stories while I was drunk?”

“We did not.”

“Good. It would have been rude to ask twice.”

She chuckled. “My, my. Moving fast, aren’t you? Some women enjoy the direct approach, but I prefer a bit of courting first.”

“You think far too highly of yourself,” I informed her pleasantly. “I couldn’t possibly be less interested in you as a woman.”

For the first time since I’d met her the Heroine truly looked at me. The eddies of her influence brushed against mine, caustic and searching.

“Are you calling me ugly, cultivator?” she asked me softly. She was nothing of the sort, of course, but it wouldn’t do to give her that satisfaction. I was certain she got enough of that from her fellow initiates.

“I see a more attractive face than yours every time I pass a clear pool,” I replied instead. Scythas coughed, choking on a mouthful of white wine. Sol just rolled his eyes.

Viridescent flames and caustic influence pressed against me, lapping against the edges of my awareness. Then, all at once, it fell away.

“I like you,” Anastasia decided. “But I like your mentor more.”

“Understandable,” I said. “With a smile like that, who wouldn’t?” Sol favored me with a gesture that surely meant ‘Thank you, brother’ in legion-speak.

“The two of you are an odd combination,” Anastasia mused. “A wolf keeping company with a lion. What could have possibly brought a Roman and a scarlet son together?”

Scythas stiffened in my peripheral vision. “Roman?”

Very interesting.

“It’s a funny story,” I told her. “Tragic, too, as all the best ones are.”

“I’m listening,” she said simply. I shared a look with Sol. I understood his intent without any words being said. This was neither the time nor the place to be discussing our flight from the Scarlet City, and certainly Sol had no desire to share his personally tragic circumstances with two potential enemies of vastly superior cultivation.

I nodded minutely, letting him know that I understood, and he relaxed.

“We can trade,” I proposed, blithely ignoring the suffocating pressure of Sol’s murderous influence. “My cousin always said there’s nothing quite like trading stories around a fire.”

The rosy light of dawn crept from the cradle of my palm to the tips of my fingers, and I flicked a spark of my burning pneuma into a brazier mounted on top of a marble column. It caught the snow-white charcoal within and went up in a cheerful scarlet flame.

“A question for a question?” she asked, not committing one way or another. Scythas, having partly rejoined the group with forearms resting over the back of his lounge, didn’t look any more eager to share.

“Exactly.” It was clear that they needed some convincing, so I continued, “Let’s make it interesting - a king’s game. The winner asks the questions, and the losers answer.”

“How convenient. The one who never loses never has to answer questions,” Anastasia said wryly, tucking a ringlet strand of hair behind her ear. Scythas’ eyes tracked the motion unconsciously. “And I suppose you have just the game in mind.”

I splayed my hands invitingly. “Take your pick.”

The Heroine considered me for a moment. “There is a game I wouldn’t mind playing,” she finally said. “But we don’t have any knuckles.”

Sol wordlessly dropped a handful of knuckle bones on the dining table. They scattered across the dark wood, over a dozen of them, each rattling loudly.

“... where did you get those?” I asked.

“Don’t worry about it.”

Hn.

“We’ll need a drachma as well,” Anastasia said. Scythas reached for a pouch on a nearby wall-carved shelf. Sol beat him to it.

A single drachma fell to the table, chiming as it struck.

Sol leaned forward on his bench lounge with quiet anticipation. Of course, the offering of a game had convinced him easiest of all. “The game is knucklebones. The figures are Under the Triumphal Arch and Aqueducts. Heads ends the round. Twelves decide.”

With that said he took up the drachma and flicked it into the air, and all four of us exploded into motion.

Knucklebones was an even simpler game than Ascension, won and lost on physical dexterity alone. A single jack, in this case a drachma, was thrown up and the knuckles were gathered in hand while it fell, through various means depending on the figure being played. I’d seen this variant a few times in the Rosy Dawn, when Sol had been teaching it to the children in his care. Each figure had its own rules and win conditions, but the first round to decide the order was always the same. Smash and grab.

I snatched up three knuckles before Anastasia flipped the table with her foot and Scythas vaulted clear over his dining couch, heart flames raging as he blurred through the air. The golden coin clattered musically against the stone floor at the same moment the table shattered against the far wall. The drachma bounced and spun.

Gravitas struck the coin and pressed it to the marble floor. Heads.

“What was that?” Sol snarled.

“Do they not play it this way in Rome?” Anastasia opened her left hand, smugly presenting four knuckle bones. Somehow, she’d gathered them without rising from her seat. Scythas looked at the two in his hand with chagrin. “It’s hardly a challenge otherwise.”

A game like knuckle bones, based entirely upon reaction time, required no particular effort from a cultivator past a certain point of advancement. It was hardly a game at all if each player could grab every bone from the table before the jack started to fall. That being the case, an extra element of challenge was needed.

“Apologies for your room,” I told Scythas. He waved it off, having already come to terms with the damages. Surprisingly easygoing, compared to his usual temperament.

“Cheaters and thieves, all of you,” Sol said, disgusted, and dropped six knuckles onto the floor. Anastasia raised an eyebrow, impressed. Scythas stared uncomprehendingly.

“How often do you play this game?” I asked, amused. He sneered.

“I have the first question. Where do the good philosophers go?”

“Oh? So it’s like that,” Anastasia mused. She stroked the messenger eagle’s head thoughtfully. Scythas, for his part, crossed his arms in concentration, crouching by his dining couch.

Scythas snapped his fingers suddenly. “A philosopher is nothing but a man who can see the surface of all that he doesn’t know.”

“Who told you that?” I asked curiously. The Hero looked at me strangely.

“Solus did, last night. Have you forgotten even that?”

Sol looked about as confused as I felt.

“If a philosopher is simply the first blind man to know he’s missing his sight, where does he go to see?” Anastasia posed, sounding the problem out. For the moment, any enmity between the Hero and the Heroine was forgotten as they pondered the question.

“I think he just wants to know where the Sophic cultivators spend their time here,” I said. I was rewarded with disdain, and two superior cultivators looking down their noses at me. Ah. So this was what it felt like.

“How pitiful,” Anastasia said.

“Do you take everything at face value?” Scythas added.

“Forgive me,” I demurred. By this point Sol had closed his eyes, solemn face a mask of deep consideration and weighty expectation. In reality, I could tell that he was trying not to snap.

“If it’s a question of belonging-”

“Under the Triumphal Arch,” he declared, cutting them off and taking up the coin once more. He pressed the tips of his index and middle fingers against the blue-veined marble, forming an arch. We each followed suit, Anastasia leaning precariously over from her seat on the dining couch.

The coin flipped and knuckle bones flew.

The objective of Under the Triumphal Arch was to flick as many knuckle bones through the arch of one’s fingers as possible before the jack fell. Depending on the placement of the bones from the previous figure, as well as the actions of the other players and the trajectories involved, the difficulty of the game could change. Of course, for cultivators of Anastasia and Scythas’ standing, it was hardly worth playing. Unless they cheated.

I flicked a knuckle bone with one hand and sent it flying through the arch that my other hand formed. However, just before it could pass through, a whistling projectile struck it from the side and sent it flying off course. Another projectile struck a knuckle next to my arch before I could even attempt to flick it through. In an instant, the room became a whirling storm of flying bones.

Anastasia smiled innocently at me, caustic green flames burning merrily in her eyes.

“I count twenty-three through mine,” she reported at the end. There were only twelve knuckle bones in total, meaning she was a liar or she had flicked multiple sets in the time it took a coin to fall.

“Eight,” Scythas reported sourly. I didn’t bother vocalizing my null score.

We looked to Sol, and beheld the sight of him silently flicking bones through the arc of his fingers while the golden drachma hovered just above the ground, spinning lazily in the air. Anastasia and Scythas both lunged for the nearest knuckle, stabbing their fingers back to the floor hard enough to crack the marble.

Sol released his virtue’s hold on the coin and it fell cleanly with heads facing up.

“Forty.”

“But that’s-” Scythas protested. Sol stared at him, daring him to finish the statement. He didn’t.

“Where do the good philosophers of the Raging Heaven go?” he asked this time, leaving nothing to the imagination.

It didn’t help.

“So that’s your game,” Scythas said, massaging his jaw. “Juniors and seniors. The wandering philosophers of the free mediterranean versus the scholars of the Half-Step City. A physical place, after all.”

“Nothing so simple as that,” Anastasia countered. “The divide itself is the question. We may break bread in the light of the divine storm, but is it really the case that we are the seniors, and wanderers like Solus are the juniors? What makes a junior a junior and a senior a senior among philosophers? Age? Standing? Or perhaps virtue?”

“None of the above,” I disagreed, all too happy to further derail the question while Sol silently despaired. “Among philosophers, rhetoric alone is king.”

“So it’s a question of who among us has the best rhetoric.” Anastasia, still bent over the lounge’s headrest, twisted and leaned one arm against the cushion beside Sol, resting her head on it as she thought. “A dangerous question, especially now. The Raging Heaven Cult may soon be at war with itself. You never know who might be listening, or when.”

“There isn’t anyone,” Sol said, his voice dull. Ah. He’d given up.

Anastasia looked up at him, startled. “What?”

“Nobody is listening to us right now,” Sol repeated. “I’d smell it.” As before, at the funeral, a Heroic cultivator balked at something Sol had presented as a simple observation. Scythas, for his part, just shook his head in wonder.

“My, my,” the Heroine said softly.

“You’re free to speak your minds,” I prompted them. Deep contemplation was the response. Free from the paranoia of another party listening in, they devoted their full attention to the prospect.

“The best rhetoric in the cult,” Anastasia murmured.

“Where blind men go to see,” Scythas continued.

They both reached the same conclusion.

“The baths.”

Sol swallowed back a mouthful of blood.

“Aqueducts,” was all he said, pressing the tips of his four longest fingers to the floor, creating three arches where there had only been one before. The aim of this figure was to complete as many sets as possible, one set being a knuckle flicked through each of the three arches of the aqueduct in sequence. The coin flipped up into the air, and pneuma flooded the room.

This time, all three of us kept an eye on the coin to make sure it settled completely to the floor, and Scythas unveiled a trick involving what I was certain was a manipulation of the wind itself. Sol, having been thoroughly demoralized, didn’t participate at all. The coin landed tails up this time, leading to another flip and an extended round. By the end of it Scythas had collected thirty-seven sets of three, while Anastasia had taken nineteen, and I had taken eight.

Triumphantly, Scythas leveled a finger at Sol. “I have to know, Solus! Where do you stand among heaven and earth?”

I inhaled the heavy, expectant silence. Pneuma flooded my veins, coursing through my blood in spiraling threads and heating it nearly to the boiling point. My muscles shivered and tensed unnoticeably in anticipation. It had happened sooner than I’d hoped, but later than I’d expected. I supposed this charade was always doomed to fail.

While I prepared myself for the fight of our lives, Sol calmly answered.

“Legate.”

Ah. So that was what they called him.

“Legion commander?” Anastasia looked up at him through narrow eyes. “How old are you really, Solus?”

“That sounds like another question.” Sol offered the golden drachma to Scythas, who after a moment took it.

“I have another question, so I’ll be winning again,” he declared. “The figure is Aqueducts, once more.”

“That’s a mistake,” I said lazily. “I never lose the same game twice.” The Hero scoffed and flipped the coin.

My pankration hands filled the room.

Fingers of my purest intent drove through the marble floor, five hands creating nineteen arches, each lined up end-to-end in a grand aqueduct that I immediately filled. The remaining fifteen pankration hands blurred across the floor, flicking and intercepting knuckle bones at every possible opportunity. Whistling blurs shot through the arches of my aqueduct, and were fired back just as quickly by pankration hands waiting on the other side.

With my flesh and blood hand I caught the golden drachma and slapped it against the back of my other true hand. Heads.

“Would you like to know how many that was?” I asked. Scythas spat on his own floor in lieu of reply. “Anastasia?”

“No need,” she said, satisfaction in her eyes as they traced the invisible lines of my violent intent. “I’ve just had one of my questions answered.”

“Ho, is that so? Then it’s only fair if you answer mine - you’re here to compete, aren’t you?”

“I am.”

“In which event?”

“That’s two questions,” she admonished me. “And you already knew the answer to both. You have eyes, don’t you?” The javelin, then.

“And you, Scythas?”

“That’s three,” Anastasia said, with some real annoyance this time.

I shrugged and flipped the coin. “Twelves.”

Sol flicked a finger, a pulse of his virtue sending all twelve of the knuckle bones flying into the air. He didn’t move beyond that, still abstaining out of spite. This was the simplest figure - the goal was to catch as many of the flying bones on the back of your hand as possible. Twelve arms of pankration intent caught the bones while the rest slapped aside Scythas and Anastasia’s reaching hands.

“And you, Scythas?” I asked again, smiling pleasantly.

The Hero scowled. “The sprints.”

“Twelves,” I repeated, flipping. Heroic spirits flared and wind and flame raged throughout the room, burning furniture to ashes and tearing silk sheets to shreds. It was all in vain.

“The javelin, then,” I mused, returning my attention to the Heroine while my pankration hands rolled the knuckle bones around on the backs of their palms. “But you fight with it as well, so which came first? Was the martial path a consequence of the athlete’s desire, or were the games an escape from your troubled past?”

There was less humor in her eyes now. “Neither.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Twelves.” I felt phantom agony in fingers that I didn’t truly have as the Heroic cultivators turned their pneuma upon my pankration hands in their frustration. They were petty strikes with no real heat behind them, but that was by a Hero’s standards.

Still, they lost.

“How did you know Sol was from Rome?” I pressed her.

“He was singing a Legion marching song when I found him.”

Sol refocused on the conversation, looking narrowly down at her. “When you approached me, you said that I was a wolf after all. You knew what I was from the moment I called out to you.” Anastasia was a much better actor than Scythas, that much was certain. But she wasn’t better than me. I saw her frustration clear as day.

“If it wasn’t the cadence, but the call itself,” I pondered, “then what was it about my good master’s influence that evoked thoughts of Rome? Past experience, perhaps? Something to do with that javelin of yours?”

Anastasia stared at me, silent for a long moment. Finally she nodded, conceding.

“I was right to worry after all,” she said. “How did you know which game I would pick?”

“I didn’t.” Satisfied, I tossed the coin into the air and waved a hand invitingly. I poured myself and Sol another cup of wine while the two heroic cultivators fought over the airborne knuckles. It was sweeter than the usual affair at the Rosy Dawn, light and faintly tart on the tongue.

“What about you?” Anastasia asked, balancing seven knuckle bones on the back of her hand. Dark hair pooled around her head as she looked upside-down at me. “Which golden frond do you desire, Griffon of the Rosy Dawn?”

I leered at her over the rim of my drinking cup. “Isn’t it obvious? I want them all.”

“Every event?” Scythas asked in disbelief. “Are you out of your mind!? Where do you stand?”

“That’s two questions,” I admonished him, flashing my most charming smile.

“I’ve decided I like you less,” Anastasia said. I placed a hand over my heart, wounded. She laughed. “Much less.”

The Heroine twisted and rose to her feet, brushing down her cult attire and giving the messenger eagle one last affectionate scratch. She was close enough to Sol that their noses would touch if he tilted his head just a fraction.

“That’s enough games for me, I think. Shall I escort you to the place where good philosophers go, Solus?”

“After you,” he said, unbothered by her close proximity. She looked into his eyes a moment longer, slowly smiling, before turning and heading for the door.

“I have another question,” I called, while Sol forced the door out of its broken frame. Anastasia glanced back at me, raising an eyebrow. “What is the first virtue?”

Caustic green eyes glittered.

“Purity,” she said, and then to me, “Where do you stand among heaven and earth?”

“You have eyes, don’t you?” I asked mockingly. “I’m nothing more than a Philosopher of the first rank.”

“Liar,” she scoffed. Anastasia walked out the door and Sol followed her.

Scythas, myself, and an eagle stewed in the silence they left behind. Eventually, Scythas set about salvaging what he could from the room, slipping items and articles of clothing inexplicably into the folds of his cult attire as he worked. I drank and shuffled through his star charts, gathering my thoughts.

“So. Anastasia?”

Scythas threw his things down in disgust and stalked out of his own room.

“It’s just you and I now,” I informed the great messenger eagle of Rome. It cocked its head at me. I offered it a bridge of pankration palms, and after a moment it fluttered up onto the first and hopped across them to my outstretched arm. Its talons curled easily around my forearm, and the kiss of their edges was sharp against even my tempered skin.

“You’re no mere bird, are you?” I asked it. It looked at me expectantly. I offered it a scrap of my own meal, the skin of a swordfish. The eagle snapped it down. “That’s been clear since you found us on the Eos. Now, even more so. No mundane bird would be able to detect my pankration intent.”

The virtuous beast ruffled its feathers, either unable to understand or unwilling to care. Perhaps it only spoke Latin.

“You’re Sol’s companion, that’s clear as day, but that worthless Roman hasn’t even given you a proper name. You’re certainly worthy of that much.”

My pneuma rose, washing over the bird and urging it to submit. Its talons dug painfully into my arms, drawing fine lines of blood, and it spread its wings wide in defiance. The virtuous beast shrieked in my face, unwilling to bend beneath my strength.

I laughed. “Sorea you shall be.” The lost eagle of Rome. I offered it a roll of papyrus that I had torn from one of Scythas’ star charts and written a quick message on with a formless hand while observing the bird.

Rather than offer a leg for me to tie the missive to, the virtuous beast simply darted forward and snapped the roll up in its beak, swallowing it without hesitation.

“Disgusting,” I said fondly, flicking my arm and dislodging the creature. “Be gone from my sight, mongrel bird.”

Sorea took flight through the balcony terrace with one last parting shriek, beating its wings and shooting up the mountain at a dizzying speed.

I stood up from my lounge, stretching mightily. I sighed, relishing the myriad pops and cracks of my body unwinding. Pankration hands massaged and dug into the tight muscles of my shoulders and neck, coaxing the tension out of my flesh.

Now then. Where was that Oracle?