Virtuous Sons: A Greco Roman Xianxia

Chapter 1.46

The Young Griffon

“Lio! Teach-”

I slapped the little king upside his head. He yelped.

“When did I say you could call me that?”

“Griffon,” he amended, rubbing at the spot where I’d struck him. “Teach us.”

“I refuse.”

“What- You can’t refuse!”

“And why not?”

“Because he’s the king,” his older brother said, doing his best to impart authority through a ten year old’s voice. “When the king makes a demand, it comes from two mouths. The mouth of the man and the mouth of the kingdom.”

I smiled faintly. “Then I refuse him twice.”

The two boys shouted in outrage and leapt on my back, clinging like monkeys while they hammered punches into my side. I locked them in place with pankration hands and reached back, digging knuckles of flesh and blood into their fire-branded hair and rubbing viciously. Their battle cries turned to shrieks of pain in an instant.

I let them go, leaving them to roll on the ground and rub at their heads while I walked through the vast storm-carved gates that separated the Raging Heaven Cult from the city of Olympia. Unlike most metropolitan constructions of this scale, it had no men to guard it. Any unfortunate soul that tried to slip past the cult and through these unmarked gates would have their labor laid out for them. The cult guarded this side of the city, that was universally known, and any that came down the mountain would of course be welcome in Olympia.

The Stairway to Raging Heaven that connected the Half-Step City to Kaukoso Mons was no less bombastic than the rest of the cult. Upon each step a man’s name was carved, inlaid with precious gems that burned even in the pitch dark night. Titles and nicknames were present just the same. Each name was a living soul within the Raging Heaven Cult. Each name was a man or a woman standing at the foot of the mountain, casting defiance up at the stars.

But that wasn’t the most interesting thing about this stairway. What had first drawn my eye, and what still did now as I approached, was how the names changed.

Lambros. Nikitas. Lyko. Three steps, and a name for each, each glowing with a progressively brighter blue light as the steps ascended. But my eyes drifted, and when they drifted back, the names were changed. Mideia, Annita, and Flora.

Every step leading from Olympia to the hallowed grounds of the Raging Heaven Cult was inlaid with a mystiko’s name, and at the same time, the stairs were inlaid with every mystiko’s name.

There were forty-one steps on the stairway to heaven. One for every rank and realm of cultivation. And each step proudly proclaimed the names of every mystiko who shared that rank.

“Wait!” The little king and his sentinel bounded up the steps after me, stepping over the names of the civic cultivators within the Raging Heaven Cult - children of senior initiates, those lucky enough to be born into an institution that otherwise only accepted the best.

“I won’t,” I declared, but manifested pankration arms obligingly when they jumped on my back again. This time they simply hung on and peered over each of my shoulders.

“Theri said we weren’t to leave the house,” spoke the sentinel that called himself Pyr, though his heart wasn’t in it. The boy’s nose scrunched, eyes roving intently over the entry to the grandest institution in the free world. His younger brother didn’t even bother pretending.

“We’ve never been up this way before,” spoke the little king that called himself Leo. He set his chin on my shoulder, peering down at the steps curiously. “Whose names are those? Past members?”

I shook my head, stepping onto the first rank of the Sophic Realm - someone named Vaso. When I raised that foot, the name was changed to Kovos.

“These are existing cultivators, your rivals and friends,” I explained. “The Raging Heaven Cult keeps a living account of their members, along with their standing among heaven and earth.”

“How do you know?” the little king asked.

I stepped up onto the second rank of the Sophic Realm, the name Griffon disappearing beneath my feet, and when I moved on up the name was unchanged. The boys’ eyes drifted over the step without pause. As I had suspected, the stairway to heaven would always show you your place among your peers, but others wouldn’t necessarily see the same thing.

“A hunch.”

“So you don’t know,” the little king concluded. Ho, was that scorn?

I continued up eight more steps and then fell into a crouch on the tenth step of the Sophic Realm, looking down at the next step where mortal man became legends. The boys tensed on my back, and the little sentinel reached across my shoulders to shove his little brother.

“Apologize,” he hissed.

“Why should a king apologize?” I asked, and they both relaxed. I smiled faintly. “I expect an answer.”

I considered the first step of the Heroic Realm while they exchanged hurried whispers. The higher up the stairway you went, the fewer names you would see. That was common sense, given how few managed admittance to the Sophic Realm, let alone those of heroes and tyrants. I swept my hand across the time-weathered stone, watched the name carved into its face inexplicably shift.

Periklis, Wave Dancer, became Amalia, the Breeze. The Breeze became Haris, Wind Weaver.

The Wind Weaver became Elissa, the Sword Song.

“The only time a king should apologize is to his people,” little Leo decided. Pyr nodded in firm agreement.

“Under what circumstances?” I asked, passing my hand over the Sword Song’s name, and revealing Kyno’s in its wake. “Does the citizen have a right to the king’s apology whenever they desire it? How about the metic, or the freedman? What of the slave?”

“Of course not!”

“And why not?” I asked curiously.

“A king doesn’t owe a slave anything, any more than he owes an enemy,” Pyr said at once. “His duty is to his citizens and his soldiers, the men that owe him everything because he’s given it to them. The only time a king apologizes is when he’s failed his kingdom.”

“Are the metics and freedmen included in that kingdom?”

He hesitated. “Here, in Greece, they are.”

“They are,” the little king said firmly.

“So freedom is the deciding factor,” I mused. “A king should apologize only if it’s a free man he’s apologizing to, is that it?”

“That’s part of it,” little Leo agreed.

“And if he does otherwise, he ceases to be a king?”

On that, neither boy hesitated to voice their agreement.

I considered that for a moment, along with the next step on the stairway to heaven.

“Do you know why they built this stairway?” I finally asked. “Can you see its significance?”

“You said it was to keep an account of the initiates,” Pyr said.

“Beyond that.”

They joined me in staring down at the first step of the Heroic Realm as I passed my hand back and forth across it, watching the names shift and glow.

“You have to step on them.”

The little king realized it first.

“Go on,” I encouraged him, but his brother spoke next.

“These are initiates of the cult,” little Pyr said. “These are their names, their pride, and yet…”

I passed my hand over the step one more time, and in its wake, the name Eleftherios, Gold-String Guardian remained.

“Theri,” the little king breathed. His sentinel leaned back, clinging to my shoulder while he looked down the steps and counted under his breath.

“Twenty-one,” he finally said, once he’d reached his guardian’s step. His eyes widened. “These aren’t steps.”

“That’s exactly what they are.” I corrected him. “That’s exactly what cultivation is. A Stairway to Raging Heaven.”

That was why this structure that connected the city of Olympia to the Raging Heaven Cult was only wide enough for a single man to walk it at any given time. That was why the steps were engraved with the names of all those that cultivated virtue beneath the wrathful crown of the Storm That Never Ceased.

“What am I supposed to teach you boys, hm? I’m climbing these steps the same as you. I’m grasping for understanding the same as you are. And I, lowly sophist that I am, am striving to become stronger in the same way that you are. You’re closer to me in rank and standing than I am to your guardian. What can a second rank Philosopher teach you that a Hero cannot?”

“Theri said you’re lying about your rank,” the little king said at once. “He said you’re hiding things, and that’s why he left the other day. That’s why he hasn’t come back yet. He’s looking for answers.”

“That sounds like something you weren’t supposed to tell me,” I noted.

“We’ve already crossed that line,” the older boy said wearily. I patted his head.

“Your guardian says a lot of things, and a few of them are even true,” I said. “But what’s more unbelievable? That my companion and I infiltrated the nexus of the free Mediterranean posing as philosophers and immediately outed ourselves to your guardian and his friends, or that we are simply the best philosophers this world has ever seen?”

“The latter,” the young king said at once. I laughed.

“And yet here we are. You said before that operating on a hunch, a gut feeling, was the same thing as not knowing anything at all. But that’s just it. We are all of us operating on instinct and the greater intuition, more and more the higher we ascend as cultivators.

“Since we forgot the names of those that came before us and their faces were scoured from our holy places, everything beyond the realm of Tyrants has been unknown. The path is unmarked. A Tyrant, then, is a man following his gut to divinity, for lack of all other guidance. That is why we associate them with the hunger.

“I’m sure Lefteris has done his best to teach you the ways of the world, and I would be surprised if a little king and his sentinel had not received the best education money could provide before you ran away from home. But what you fail to understand, what so many fail to grasp, is that cultivation is not a solved system.”

“What do you mean?” asked the little king. Ah, there it was. Finally, the look of someone ready to learn.

“We ascribe reason to Philosophers, spirit to Heroes, and hunger to Tyrants, because centuries ago a man followed his intuition into the darkness of uncertainty and pulled from it a theory. He observed the world around him, and though no one had ever spoken to him before of the tripartite soul, although he had received no mandate from heaven on the subject, he decided that it fit. And so he tested his hunch. And he was right.

“Now, I speak of the tripartite soul and you nod along as if our father in the sky spoke the words through my own mouth. But he didn’t. And he never will. Do you know why?”

Both boys shook their heads, wide-eyed and intent.

“Because cultivation is refinement of the self. And heaven has no need for a man that can’t make it up on his own. The father has no need for a man that’s afraid of the dark. You want me to teach you how to flex your pneuma and strike like a fighter, but those are worthless if you don’t have the proper mindset to develop them further once I’m gone. Before strength, you need perspective.

“A cultivator of the Raging Heaven is someone seeking divinity,” I said, and the words rang true in my beating heart. This cult was soft, rotten from the inside out, but it hadn’t always been that way. Its foundations were still strong - carved from the mountain and embedded with amethyst and gold. “The path to heaven is only one man wide, and all the world is clamoring to reach the top. So how do you make the trip? Do you wait for all of those in front of you to make it there first, follow the path that heaven carved from stone just for you?”

“No,” the little sentinel said quietly.

“You step over top,” said the little king, steel in his mismatched eyes. “On the shoulders of the men who came before you.”

“And when there are no more men in front of you? When all that's left is darkened steps and howling chaos?”

“You keep running. You let your intuition guide you.”

“The king can learn,” I said approvingly. And with that, I bounded up the remaining steps while the boys hung on for dear life, laughing and whooping.

Heroes and Tyrants vanished beneath my feet, and I landed adroitly on the forty-first step - whatever had been carved there once now faded and worn away. I planted my hands on my hips and looked up at the proper path that wound through the raging Heaven cult, the steps widening to the point where a group of eight rowdy drunks could stumble up it after a hard day’s drinking. The storm gates here were a mirror of the ones at the foot of the stairway to heaven, but these were guarded.

I waved pankration hands at the senior philosophers standing guard at the entrance to a cult I was most certainly not welcome in, and after a moment they waved back.

“What’s your name, friend?” one of them called.

“And your business with the Raging Heaven Cult?” the other asked. On my back, I felt the boys shuffle and try to hide themselves. I snorted.

“My name is Griffon, and these are my students,” I replied, smiling brightly as my pneuma coiled and surged within me. Crows could be anyone in the light of day, bereft of their shadowed veils. Even gatekeepers.

The guards exchanged a look and immediately stepped aside, holding their shields to their chests and slamming the butts of their spears against the stone.

“The Raging Heaven welcomes you,” the one on the left declared.

“And pities you,” the other on the right said. I blinked.

“And why is that?”

They exchanged sly smiles.

“The Gadfly is known for many things, some of them even good,” the gatekeeper on the left explained.

“His treatment of his students is not one of those things,” finished the gatekeeper on the right. Rest assured, all of us here envy the insight you’ll surely gain under his guidance.”

“But we wouldn’t trade places with you for all the gold in Egypt.”

Both men chuckled, and I tilted my head.

“So, Socrates has claimed me as his own.”

“It’s an honor few have ever enjoyed. Stand proud,” The gatekeeper on the left said, laying a friendly punch into my shoulder as I passed. I returned the gesture, slapping each of them on the back with hands of formless intent, Lefteris’ boys clinging silently to me.

“Ah, a moment!” the one on the right suddenly said. I glanced back, raising an eyebrow, and the guard waved a hand, as if to say ‘what can you do?’ “We’ll still need to know the purpose of your visit, for the records.”

“Recuperation is the standard response,” his fellow explained. “That or lecture.”

I hummed, considering.

“Neither.”

Their brows furrowed. “Then…?”

I turned back up the mountain.

“I’m here to punch an old man in the throat.”