Virtuous Sons: A Greco Roman Xianxia

Chapter 1.42

The Young Griffon

I wondered what Sol was up to.

”I swear by the Physician, and all the gods and goddesses as my witnesses, that, according to my ability and judgement, I will keep this oath in this contract.“

I laid my hands in Anastasia’s, the backs of my hands pressing into her open palms. She stared into my eyes and I stared right back in hers. She was uncharacteristically serious, the somber glow of her caustic green eyes casting shadows on her black-haired features.

I recited the oath of the first physician, Hippocrates.

”To hold she who taught me this art equally dear to me as my parents, to be a partner in life with her, and to fulfill her needs when required; to look upon her offspring as equals to my own siblings, and to teach them this art, if they shall wish to learn it, without fee or contract; and that by the set rules, lectures, and every other mode of instruction, I will impart a knowledge of the art to my own sons, and those of my teachers, and to students bound by this contract and having sworn this Oath to the law of medicine, but to no others.”

As I spoke the words, I didn’t feel anything in particular. There was no rising tide of sensation or meaning within me, no profound heat where our hands met. Of course, I hadn’t expected it to be that easy. The worthwhile things in life never were.

“I will use those dietary regimens which will benefit my patients according to my greatest ability and judgement, and I will do no harm or injustice to them.”

As if I would do such a thing, regardless of an oath.

“I will not give a lethal drug to anyone if I am asked, nor will I advise such a plan; and similarly I will not give a woman a pessary to cause an abortion.”

Assassination via poison killed one man and cursed the world with a coward. Prescribing poison for suicide cursed the world with two. Another promise that I would have fulfilled anyway.

But now came an interesting line.

In purity and according to divine law will I carry out my life and my art, so said the oath of the physician.

“In justice will I carry out my life and my art,” I swore instead, and Anastasia‘s breath hitched. I smiled faintly and continued on before she could cut the oath short.

“I will not use the knife, even upon those suffering from stones, but I will leave this to those who are trained in this craft.

“Into whatever homes I go, I will enter them for the benefit of the sick, avoiding any voluntary act of impropriety or corruption, including the seduction of women or men, whether they are free men or slaves.”

I raised a suggestive eyebrow, and the caustic queen rolled her eyes, exasperated.

“Whatever I see or hear in the lives of my patients, whether in connection with my professional practice or not, which ought not to be spoken of outside, I will keep secret, as considering all such things to be private.

“So long as I maintain this Oath faithfully and without corruption, may it be granted to me to partake of life fully and the practice of my art, gaining the respect of all men for all time. However, should I transgress this Oath and violate it, may the opposite be my fate.”

There was no flickering of pneuma, no rattling of chains around my heart as the earth was sealed to my soul, but I suppose that the words were profound enough alone. And whether or not the Fates would bind me to them, it hardly mattered. I had given my word, and so I would keep it.

“I told you what to say,” Anastasia said accusingly, withdrawing her hands from mine.

I shrugged. ”I am who I am, as you are who you are. Medicine is an entity all its own separate from the physician, so what does it matter if I practice it through the lens of my virtue instead of his?” Instead of yours?

“We haven’t even begun our first lesson yet and already you defy me. How does Solus put up with you?”

“I’m incredibly charming,” I said modestly. She scoffed.

“Incredibly cheeky, more like. But fine. Are you comfortable with the theories I've taught you?”

The Hippocratic Oath was taken only at the precipice of a physician's first work. Anastasia had warned me that she wouldn’t show me a single thing until she was satisfied with my grasp of the theory behind practical medicine, and so we had spent the last several weeks immersing ourselves in the conceptual side of human constitution.

Fortunately, my education as the young aristocrat of the Rosy Dawn had overlapped significantly with the contents. In a way, cultivation as it related to the body was simply a man practicing medicine upon himself. I knew the workings of the human physique better than most physicians in this world - if not from their particular perspective.

But Anastasia was my senior in both cultivation and medicine, and so, even if she was a coward, I would afford her the respect that the master was due. Given that I had demanded her time, it was the least she was due.

“Black bile, yellow bile, phlegm, and blood,” I recited dutifully. “The four humors that make up every liquid in the body. Their combinations and ratios determine a man’s health as they approach the perfect balance, eukrasia.”

“And the temperaments?”

“Four natures, which can show up wholly or fractionally in a man’s personality. Phlegmatic, choleric, melancholic, and sanguine. Each of them corresponds to one of the humors.”

“And which pairs to which?”

“The yellow bile forms a choleric temperament and breeds aggressive, viciously ambitious men.” I thought of Sol, and saw that thought reflected in her. “They are also notoriously short-tempered.”

Anastasia rolled her wrist, urging me on.

“Black bile is the culprit for a melancholy nature, deep thinkers and deep feelers. Phlegm leads to a phlegmatic man, as inconsequential in his presence as the dominant humor in his body. Which leaves only one.”

I stood, stretching mightily and dragging fingers through my hair. “Blood, the domain of sanguine men. Charismatic, social, risk seeking-”

“Talkative,” Anastasia finished, rising to her feet. I chuckled.

“The correspondence between the temperaments and the humors is simple enough,” she said, “but if you had to place them each in a cultivator’s realm, how would you do it?”

I hummed, considering that as we progressed deeper into the wilderness that lay beyond the eastern walls of the Half-Step City. There was a thick, sprawling valley forest within a few hours of walking at a Citizen’s pace. We had set a light pace and covered it in half an hour before swearing my oath. Why the Heroine had chosen this as the site of my first practical, I couldn’t say. Perhaps an animal would be my first patient.

“In order from Civic to Tyrannic,” I eventually said, “phlegm would be the first.” Anastasia nodded, absently pressing branches and swaying vines out of our path, the limbs burning and withering away at her touch. It was an obvious first choice. The useless humor for the least of all realms.

“Next,” I mused. I gave it another moment of thought, crystallizing the order, and then nodded. “The philosopher’s yellow bile, the hero’s black bile, and the tyrant’s blood.”

“Wrong.”

“Ho? Then enlighten me, master.”

“You confused the last two,” she said, hopping absentmindedly over a deep ravine. I braced myself, and with thirty pankration hands flung my body over the gouge in the earth to land beside her. “The yellow biles lend sharpness and intelligence to the soul, which fits easily enough into the realm of philosophers.

“However, blood is the naïve humor. It lends belligerence to the soul, simplicity of the spirit. We heroic cultivators are simple-minded, and in the face of the ancient rules of nature and the unwavering domains of tyrants, a hero’s virtue is our simple, naive defiance of forces that should be greater than us in every way. The black bile, by contrast, lends constancy to the soul. It belongs to the realm of tyrants, those timeless few that reign unchallenged by the rules of nature and lesser men. Constant, always, in their designs.”

I listened intently as she spoke, took her answer in and gave it the consideration that it deserved. I examined it against my own, her reasoning and conflict with mine, and caught a withered leaf as it fell in her passing.

“I disagree.”

Anastasia glanced back at me over her shoulder, a dark eyebrow rising. “Do you now?”

“The black bile is constancy, that’s true enough,” I said, crushing the withered leaf in my fist. And when I opened my hands a moment later, the cast off was still intact, against all common sense. Held in place by my own pneuma. “But it is also perseverance. And what is a hero, if not someone who perseveres in the face of unlikely odds?”

Anastasia tilted her head. “And the blood?”

“Simplicity and naivety,” I said, letting the ruined leaf drift away on the wind in pieces. “A tyrant might take offense to you saying it, but how can they be anything less than naïve?”

Anastasia stops walking.

“We are all naïve to some degree, we cultivators of virtue,” I mused, walking past her. I had no idea where I was going, but I assumed she would stop me if I wandered off in the wrong direction. “Just as we all have blood in our bodies, to one ratio or another. But a tyrant is most naïve by far, don’t you know?”

A philosopher understood the rules of nature, and guided them to suit his ends. A hero defied those laws, and all others, existing as a monolith unto themselves. Given that, what more could a tyrant possibly be?

“The tyrant is the only cultivator that dares to think his mandate supersedes that of heaven and earth.”

A tyrant established their own laws.

Anastasia appeared in step beside me, a considering look in her eyes.

“That school of thought,” she murmured. “My, my. You really are in an irreverent one, aren’t you?”

I smiled faintly. “The temperament aligns as well. A sanguine nature is king among tyrants.”

“Not choleric?”

I thought of my father. “For a tyrant, charisma trumps ambition every time.”

Slowly, after long minutes of silent introspection between the two of us, she smiled. “An interesting answer. I like it.”

“I thank the master.”

Anastasia flicked me with a pale finger that singed the hairs on the side of my head. I laughed and returned the favor thirty-fold, raining the rosy embers of dawn upon her.

A sharp spike of pneuma in my awareness, off to the east, cut our battle short. I perked up, reaching out with the waves of my sophic sense for its source. Anastasia made a pleased sound and promptly sat down once more, cross legged on the forest floor.

“Here comes your first patient.”

The source of the pneuma made a beeline for us, and within moments a philosopher in ragged indigo attire came hurtling down from the tree line, plowing through dirt and fallen trees. He knelt in front of Anastasia, more of a controlled collapse than anything else, and heaved for breath.

He looked to be a bit older than me, with a full blond beard and a few scars around his forearms and biceps that spoke to combat experience. He wore a bronze breastplate beneath his cult attire and it was as ragged as the cloth, torn nearly apart by what I assumed was the same creature currently slung over his shoulder.

The mystiko of the Raging Heaven dumped his catch onto the ground, a mountain cat twice his size with golden claws and teeth to match. Its claws were covered in the cultivator’s blood, and aside from the spear lancing through its chest, it looks like it had given far more than it had taken in their exchange. Alas, quality had prevailed over quantity this time around.

“This lowly sophist,” the ragged hunter said between gasping breaths, bowing his head, “greets his senior sister. If it pleases the honorable heroine, I’ll just be returning to the cult.”

“It does not please me,” Anastasia said smoothly. I watched the battered philosopher tense, his eyes flickering possessively to the virtuous beast’s corpse. But it was only a momentary thing, and then the fight went out of him. He slumped and bowed his head further.

Ah. I knew what this was.

“How may I serve the heroine?” he asked, defeated.

“Take off your armor,” Anastasia commanded, and I watched the light go out of his eyes as he complied. “Your tunic as well.”

This was a shakedown.

“Now come here,” she said when the man was naked and destitute. “And tell us where it hurts.”

Or so he thought.

“What?” The Sophic cultivator asked, baffled and just barely hopeful. His eyes flickered to me, for the first time since he’d arrived, and I saw the question in them. I could have drawn it out, made a suggestive comment to give him the wrong idea, but it was difficult to tear a man down when he was naked and all but broken already.

“Come,” I said instead, beckoning him forward, and summoned the arms of my intent. “Stand before these healing hands.”

The relief nearly knocked him out cold, but the mystiko of the Raging Heaven managed to find his feet and approach us.

“Keep your pneuma to yourself this time,” Anastasia instructed me, that same cool seriousness from before settling over her spirit. She laid her hands upon the mystiko’s chest and closed her eyes. “Follow my light, and see if you can learn something. Attend.”

I laid thirty pankration hands over the man’s mangled body and did just that.