Virtuous Sons: A Greco Roman Xianxia

Chapter 1.25

The Son of Rome

As much as Griffon had tried to rope me into it, I had never been a member of the Rosy Dawn. Not truly. There were certain duties that a slave simply could not ignore, no matter the attire they wore or the company they kept. As much as Griffin was the Young Aristocrat of the cult, second only to one in many ways, he was second.

I only ever met Damon Aetos twice. The second time during the initiation rites that his son had dragged me through, in the impacted cavern where the bisected corpse of the fallen sun god lay in eternal rest. As rosy light had bloomed in that corpse’s palm, the sun rising, the kyrios’ eyes had drifted from his son to me. And though I hadn’t sensed anything at the time with my senses dulled by iron shackles, I had known then, as I had known from the beginning, that every breath I drew within the Scarlet City was a breath that he had allowed me.

The first time I met Damon Aetos, my wounds were still bleeding and my ears were still ringing from the thunder of war.

He’d commanded his captain and soldiers to leave, and then his brothers. Then he sat silent, while I knelt on that marble floor, patiently waiting. Night fell, and the moon rose. Sounds of conversation and combat and simple life drifted through the open terrace of his office. He didn’t fidget. Didn’t move.

Finally, as the dawn broke over the eastern mountain range, the Tyrant of the Scarlet City spoke to me for the first time.

“You failed.”

For a moment, I didn’t realize the words had been spoken out loud. They’d been echoing in my mind for hours already.

I finally looked at him, then, and he gazed upon me without pity nor contempt. Nothing at all but expectation.

He wasn’t surprised in the slightest.

“The city of Rome has fallen,” he continued, unbothered by my vacant stare. “Her legions are scattered and gone. You are all that remains.”

He stood from his desk, and he towered. His stature was reminiscent of the hulking Goths of the western front, sans their hulking frames and grotesque features. He could have stood eye to eye with the demons of Carthage. Rounding his desk, he walked out onto the terrace and watched the light spread through his city.

“Your provinces won’t mourn your passing,” he told me. “Those conquered won’t weep for the conqueror. All that you are, all that your ancestors have wrought, will be gone in a decade. Nothing will remain. And the children of Aeneas die with you.”

And so I spoke my first words to him.

“I know that. I know all of that.”

My fists clenched, unable to grasp the captain's virtue. As if it would have mattered. It hadn’t then, and it wouldn’t now. I slammed my fist into the floor anyway. The marble cracked.

“Your cloak was white, once,” he said, as if I hadn’t spoken. The filthy rag miraculously still clung to my shoulder, but it had long since been stained an earthy red by blood and muck over the course of the campaign. Even so, it remained what it was. The mark of a Roman legion’s senior commander.

I snarled and tore it off my shoulder.

“It’s too late for that.” He rendered judgement without hesitation. Blind as I was to Pneuma and virtue, I still felt it as it slammed down on my head. Forced it to bow. “You accepted that mantle and you failed the men that it placed beneath you. There’s no escaping that.”

A Tyrant's judgment was absolute. Blood sprayed from my clenched teeth, marring the Tyrant's spotless floor. I heard the rush of thunder in my ears and saw the darkness creeping in from the edges as I forced my eyes up. Up.

Damon Aetos turned from his terrace and met my eyes again. Expectant.

“I never deserved it,” I said, every word forced out into the open air, every syllable exacerbating the wounds that those dogs had given me. If I kept talking beneath the weight of his influence, I would die. “I failed them. My men. My mentors. Rome. I don’t deserve to call myself a legionnaire, let alone a captain. Nothing you say could possibly make me hate you more than I hate myself. No judgment of yours could ever be as brutal as what I deserve.”

Damon Aetos considered me for a long moment. Then he nodded, and the weight of his judgment fell away from me. I snarled again and slammed both mangled fists against the marble.

“Anybody can become angry. That much is easy.” Two broad, calloused hands wrapped around my wrists, tighter and far more unyielding than the iron manacles. The kyrios dragged me to my feet. “But to be angry with the right person and to the right degree, and at the right time, and for the right purpose?”

He pressed without particular force, and I slammed down into a chair. He leaned back against his desk, obscuring three of the four warriors carved into its front face.

“That is not within everyone’s power,” he told me. “And it is not easy.”

My strength was fading. The echoes of the fifth were growing louder by the minute. I’d be joining them soon.

“What is your name?”

I stared vacantly at the light on the horizon.

“Solus.”

“The last son of Rome,” he mused. “King of salt and ash. I suppose this is all that remains.” The kyrios snapped his fingers and a man that bore his age with tempered grace entered the office immediately.

“Mend him,” Damon Aetos decided, “and put him to work.”

The old man bowed his head at once, but then raised it, and asked the Tyrant, “As a slave, Damon? Are you certain?”

I would later come to know this old man as the first among servants within the Rosy Dawn, oldest by far. But to this day, I still didn’t know how he’d had the gall to question a Tyrant where all others would have bowed their heads in supplication. More than that, I didn’t know why the Tyrant had allowed it. Damon Aetos hadn’t lashed out in anger at the slave’s audacity. He had only turned away, dismissing us both as he returned to the business of ruling the Scarlet City.

“Whatever he may have been before, Carthage took it from him. He’s nothing now.”

For all that Griffin had tried to include me in the daily life of a true initiate, for all that he had sponsored me himself through the rites, his word came second to his father’s. And Damon Aetos had decided from the very beginning that there was no place for me within his domain.

I’ve never been a peer amongst those seeking answers beneath the mysterious light of dawn, that was the simple fact of things. But I had worked among them and observed the things they did.

The people of Greece were in many ways exactly as my childhood mentor had described, and in many ways they were more. More vibrant, more academic, more boisterous and free spirited, more arrogant and frivolous in their pursuits. They were as alien to me as the Goths, the Britons, and the Celts. In more ways than one, I didn’t know what it truly meant to be an initiate of a Greek mystery cult. But I knew where to start.

The stone steps carved into this particular section of Kaukoso Mons served as a half theater, it’s surface crowded by mystikos of the Raging Heaven cult. Boys, girls, men and women, they gathered as individuals and in small groups both with tablets and empty rolls of papyrus in hand. Nearly a dozen varying shades of indigo and its component colors abounded in their attire.

At the foot of the steps, on a circular platform that jutted out over the southern face of the mountain, a philosopher conducted his lectures.

He was a young man in appearance, broad shouldered and tan, only the bare wrinkle of crow's feet around his eyes and the gray hairs on his chest giving lie to his apparent age. His hair was still full and dark, his beard thick and curly. He spoke with the weight of years and the confidence of someone that knew they were the smartest in the room.

Philosophers lecturing junior initiates had been a common occurrence in the Rosy Dawn. It was the primary method of advancements for those too young and weak to challenge their peers in the octagon or on the track. The early years were the most formative, as well, and so the young ones especially were presented with as many ideas and as much knowledge as they could fit in their heads.

All too often, the virtue that a man pulls from the sea of his soul was not the work of any one mentor. It was an amalgamation of a thousand different moments, words, and impressions. It was the natural way. The right way, many would say.

It was a question I couldn’t answer myself.

The topic being covered here this afternoon, high up on the southern face of the mountain where junior initiates without experience abounded, was numerology. Pythagoreanism specifically. It was a commonly known fact that the mystery cults of the free Mediterranean were some of the finest institutions in the world, and if Griffon and Anastasia were to be believed, the Raging Heaven stood above even them in the quality of its instructors.

As I reclined with my elbows propped up against the stone steps behind me, listening, I found it somewhat hard to believe.

“Within nature there is a guiding principle, a thoughtful design which makes itself apparent to anyone who cares to seek it out,” the Philosopher lectured, brandishing a hand and pointing two fingers up to heaven. “The observance of these designs allows us to fill in the empty spaces that have been left behind in the natural world. We use numbers to represent concepts beyond traditional comprehension, and in so doing we pave the way for understanding of our future. Something as monumental as the passage of stars can’t be predicted intuitively. But it can be distilled down to numbers. And numbers can always be predicted.”

The Philosopher led his audience through a primer, something I remember learning about when I was still too short to punch a man in his jaw without jumping. Some of the gathered initiates seemed equally disinterested, but others were scribing with focused intensity.

The Philosopher transitioned after a while into specific examples, ticking the fingers of his other hand off, one at a time.

“Before the manipulation of numbers, there is meaning in the numbers themselves. The Broad’s model of the soul tells us that we exist in three parts. We ascend through four mortal realms, and within each we take ten ranks upon ourselves. There is meaning in every number, as there is meaning in every blade of grass and every shifting grain of sand.”

He looked up at us all with patient expectation. “Somebody tell me the significance of the first number, éna.”

“Victory,” called a girl in dark maroon robes. The Philosopher inclined his head in acceptance.

“Another.”

“Survival,” a young man in a soft purple-blue tunic proposed, only for one of his fellows sitting beside him to immediately suggest the exact opposite.

The Philosopher cut in before an argument could ensue. “Both equally correct answers- and both lacking. You could all suggest a different meaning, and each would contain a portion of the truth, but none would be fully complete, because above all éna is-”

“Unity,” spoke a voice from above, and every mystiko in attendance turned to watch a new arrival descend the stone steps. “One is the origin of all things. It is to numerology as numerology is to nature. All aspects of the world can be broken into numbers, and all numbers can be broken into éna.”

“Exactly right,” the Philosopher said, annoyance at the interruption warring with a visible fondness for the young man hopping down the steps. “Come again to steal my students from me, Jason?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t dream of it,” the Hero said, to the quiet disappointment of most in attendance. He winked at a group of particularly vocal young initiates nearby, hopping down the steps three at a time with the eerie grace all advanced cultivators moved with. “I just thought you might like an assistant. It never hurts to have a second set of-”

Burning blue eyes met mine and Jason stumbled. A pair of girls with flowers braided into their hair cried out as a Hero twice their size stepped into them and sent them sprawling to the level below, into the laps of a group of boys.

“Jason?” The Philosopher asked, pneuma rising in concern.

“My mistake,” the Hero said, catching himself in the next moment and offering both girls a hand. He lifted them back up to their seats and apologized to both of them, smiling indulgently at their starstruck expressions. “Actually, I think I’ll sit in for this one. I suppose I have been acting the mentor too often lately. I’ve still got plenty to learn, eh?”

With that he leapt back up the steps. He somehow managed to lannd in a casual sprawl that covered three levels as if they were a cushioned lounge, claiming for himself one of the many empty spaces in the rows most distant from the lecturer.

It placed him only a few scant feet away from me.

“What are you doing here, Sol?” he murmured, once the Philosopher had returned to his lecture and Jason had shooed the mystikos’ wandering eyes away from him.

“Learning,” I said blithely. Jason snorted.

“Right, and I’m the king of Egypt.”

“Far from home,” I observed. His lips twitched towards a grin, but he muscled it down.

“But really,” he said, “is this about the other night?”

The Philosopher gestured down on his platform and conjured wisps of flame the color of honey, carving into the air as if it was a clay tablet. He traced geometric shapes in the wind, labeling their sides with exacting and espousing the meanings behind their pairings.

“I came here for him,” I said, and it was even true. I hadn’t had the privilege of personally attending lectures at the Rosy Dawn, but I’d caught enough in passing and remembered enough of my mentor to know that they were my best chance at piecing together the Greek style of cultivation.

I was here to find my mentor, that was true above all. But I had to acknowledge the possibility that I wouldn’t find him here. Until I knew one way or another, I had to make the best of my time here. I’d seek him out as soon as I knew where to go. Whether that was across the city or across the continent, it would be done.

For his part, Jason’s heart flames redoubled behind his eyes, and his lips parted in understanding.

“So he is conspiring with Alazon. I suspected, but I should have known.”

I quietly sighed.

“Don’t jump to conclusions,” was all I said. Jason nodded fractionally, eyeing the Philosopher below with carefully masked suspicion.

“Of course, we’ll have to play this carefully. But if you’re right, and I think you are… we could prove beyond a doubt that Alazon was involved that night.”

I resigned myself to this new reality, frowning at the implication of what he’d just said. By my vague memories of the funeral, I remembered a young man cast from the same mold as Griffon, but forged from inferior materials. A young aristocrat without the grit to back up his gall. Scythas had told Griffin and I the following day that he’d been implicated by the Crow we captured. He’d all but admitted to it himself, the bastard, running off like he had.

But it seemed he’d made a convincing case for himself. Or, perhaps more likely, someone had made it for him.

“What about you?” I asked quietly. Jason blinked, adjusting his robes a bit and looking faintly embarrassed.

“These lectures… Depending on who’s giving them, they have a tendency to drift.”

I raised an eyebrow. Jason coughed into his fist.

“The initiates are still impressionable this far up the mountain,” he explained. “Still naïve and dazzled by the sanctuary city and it’s grand plateau. Many of them still barely know what rhetoric is, let alone how to steel themselves against it.”

My eyes widened as I realized what he was getting at. I watched the philosopher craft meaning out of thin air, carve it into the air with the shimmering flame, and watched the mystikos in attendance drink it in like a desert oasis.

It made sense when I thought about it. Rhetoric was a tool like any other. A Philosopher could use it to convince as easily as they could to explain. If Griffon had been right in the temple of the father, resisting its influence could even be a question of comparative cultivation.

“They’re recruiting the children.” Assembling factions. Turning them against one another.

Jason nodded, a dark look in his eyes.

“These are the moments that are meant to provide for new cultivators,” he said quietly. “Many of these initiates are so exceptional that they gained admittance to the cult before cementing their virtue. Lectures like these provide a wider foundation for them to draw upon when the moment comes. When they’re delivered in good faith.”

More maneuvering. My eyes narrowed.

“So you offer your assistance in lecturing as their senior in cultivation.”

“An impossible thing to refuse,” he agreed. “And if I happen to steer things away from one particular topic or another, who’s to say there’s any intent behind it?” Because accusing him of such a thing would mean implicating themselves.

“Spitting in their eyes and daring them to blink,” I said without any particular inflection.

Jason smiled bleakly, tilting his head back and gazing up at the ceaseless storm.

“What can I say?” he murmured. “Defying Tyrants is a Hero’s virtue.”

The scent of burnt yew assaulted me. It whirled around Jason, marking him, as he’d been marked the night of the funeral. I was beginning to understand now. The Crows were targeting Olympic contenders as the elders angled for influence within the cult, but that wasn’t the whole of it.

“Where’s your room?” I asked him, and Jason answered without hesitation. Too trusting. I swallowed down the bile in my throat and looked back at him with heavy intent. “Stay there tonight. We’ll talk tomorrow, at the agora.”

Jason smiled fiercely.

Three crows came in the night for the Hero of the Alabaster Isles. Each of them was a lesser existence to the great Hero, but they hadn’t been tasked with extraction. Tonight, they were the rusted blades in the dark.

If they shattered, it wouldn’t matter. So long as they buried their poison in the Hero’s heart first. Death was an acceptable consequence, so long as it claimed all parties. Two of the Crows crept through the cerulean-veined halls of the Hero’s quarters, while the third scaled the mountain up to his window.

The hungry ravens fell upon the two in the hall before they could scream, and the third Crow crested the edge of the Hero’s terrace only to find him waiting inside, blue eyes burning in the dark.

Jason caught the crow by its throat and dragged it inside.