The Young Griffon
Half a year had come and gone since the day I stood alone in the center of the Scarlet Stadium and accepted every laurel crown the Daylight Games could offer me. Standing tall and proud, as unfulfilled as I was triumphant, I had understood something crucial about the nature of my father’s city and its people - of Alikos entire.
They were all slaves. Every single one of them. And so was I.
This city was the chain.
T...
2022-05-27 19:54:45 +0000 UTC View PostThe Son of Rome
The day that we boarded the Eos and set sail for distant Thracia, Griffon and I had been of one mind. It was the Gadfly’s intent to keep us busy - to keep us safe from ourselves and the higher powers we had provoked with our unkind marauding. Mostly, it was to get us out of his sight. Griffon and I had understood that, and we had afforded that sentiment about as much respect as it deserved.
We’ll do it all at once. That had been our si...
2022-05-18 16:02:54 +0000 UTC View PostThe Little Kyrios
He had done his best.
It was a cold comfort, he knew, but it was what he clung to in the end. In the business of cultivation the results were all that mattered - the tribulations were hardly worth mentioning, so long as they were overcome. Hubris unending was permitted, so long as one advanced forward in the end. And in that same vein, no amount of well-meaning virtue would make a difference in a man’s final judgment if he succumbed to the unfo...
2022-05-11 09:36:32 +0000 UTC View PostThe Young Griffon
It was said that there were as many paths to heaven as there were stars in the night sky. That platitude was one that countless cast-off sons and daughters of Helen clung to every day, assuring themselves of its absolution as soon as they awoke and seeking its cold comfort in the fleeting moments before Hypnos delivered them to rest. The sentiment was appealing, there was no arguing that.
Cultivation favored the bold, and it was the nature of bol...
2022-05-10 06:29:31 +0000 UTC View PostThe Son of Rome
As a melting pot of Greek culture, the city of Olympia celebrated more holidays and religious festivals than even the twice-lauded Coast - it was said that a citizen of the Half-Step City worked about as rarely as a slave enjoyed a day off, and that statement wasn’t all too distant from the truth.
Over the course of my year as a servant in the Rosy Dawn’s estates, I was offered two holidays of rest. Naturally, Griffon stole the first of them fr...
2022-05-08 04:43:30 +0000 UTC View PostThe Young Griffon
Not everyone is made of iron, Griffon. For some, the fire only burns.
“Griffon?” A woman’s welcome voice woke me from my dozing. I opened my eyes and smiled languidly up at the Heroine standing over me, incredulous at the sight of me. “What are you doing here?” Above her, the marble columns of the indigo stadium jutted up into the clear blue skies, winding like vines up a formless tree and reaching vainly for heaven.
The ...
2022-05-07 02:09:35 +0000 UTC View PostThe Son of Rome
The storm-crowned mountain was divided nine ways - eight grand estates acting as envoys for the greater mystery cults, each with its own Tyrant ruling in their consolation domain, and the rest of the mountain serving as the truly neutral ground that the Raging Heaven Cult’s otherwise unaffiliated initiates called their own.
When night fell and the Elders sent out their scavengers, there were few truly safe places for the independent cultivators o...
2022-05-06 04:04:58 +0000 UTC View PostChilon
The Obol Orator
Every institution had its daily routines - the underlying maintenances and mechanisms that an outsider looking in might not necessarily see. Naturally, the more prestigious the institution and the grander its scale, the more opaque it became. There was appeal in a veil of transparent silks, as there was mystique in the shifting silhouettes behind a cloth curtain. What, then, lurked beyond the marble wall? A mystery....
2022-05-05 04:01:15 +0000 UTC View PostAfter a brief existential crisis, we are officially back on track. I've unfortunately burnt through the six chapter backlog over the last couple weeks while struggling with an extended writers block, but I'm over the worst of it now. Hoping to build it back up ASAP. For now, hope you enjoy the chapter.
To all of you, my patrons, I want to thank you again for your help and let you know explicitly here for those that don't know my usual policy - if I make a promis...
2022-05-04 04:27:39 +0000 UTC View PostThe Hurricane Hierophant, Aleuas Pyrrhos
When the kyrios came for Aleuas, he was dressed in nothing but shadow and rags.
That had been over five hundred years ago. Five hundred and fifty-four years to be exact. In fact, two months from now it would be five hundred and fifty-five.
In the course of his years, time had loosened its grip on Aleuas - as a child, so long ago now that entire civilizations had risen and fallen in the intervening centuries, a year ha...
2022-04-30 00:37:30 +0000 UTC View PostThe Son of Rome
At some point in our journey through the Orphic faith, the raven’s mantle had changed.
The furthest outpost of the Howling Wind Cult estates on Kaukoso Mons was manned by a Sophic cultivator near the peak of his realm. He was an imposing figure, likely chosen for his stature as much as his advancement, with scars and a permanent scowl to accent the controlled malice in his dark eyes. In the faint light cast by his iron lantern’s flame, he looke...
2022-04-25 17:48:27 +0000 UTC View PostThe Young Griffon
Sorea returned before the sun fell, wheeling above the coastline off our starboard side. The virtuous beast shrieked once to make sure he had our attention and then dipped, diving back over the seaside hills and vanishing from our sight.
“Stop,” Sol commanded, and every oar froze. Scythas’ favorable winds went out of the Eos’ sail like a hitching of breath. Our humble sea dogs awaited their orders with grim resolve. “We’re getting off...
2022-04-25 01:20:03 +0000 UTC View PostThe Stark Blade, Nikolas Aetos
Don’t come back. Not until you’ve found something worth sharing - a wife, companions. Your passion.
Niko’s companions had harbored their fair share of doubts and misgivings leading up to the wedding, his wife included among them. They had readied themselves for a fight, gathered up any material advantage they could get their hands on, steeled their hearts and grit their teeth as the Eos braved the Ionian Sea again for ...
2022-04-20 06:28:10 +0000 UTC View PostThe Son of Rome
There and back again in just under two weeks. All told, it was one of the faster expeditions I’d been a part of.
It had taken us three days to sail around the southern tip of the Peloponnesian landmass where Olympia resided, and north up the full length of the Aegean Sea to the unmarked lands of Thracia. It had taken us four more days and four more nights of horseback riding and chthonic wandering to find our infernal drink and return to the Eos ...
2022-04-11 23:41:06 +0000 UTC View PostThe Young Griffon
“You’re a Thracian,” Sol said, the pieces falling into place in his mind as they were in mine.
“I was born in Thracia,” Scythas corrected him, with the weariness of long practice. “I was raised in the Hurricane Heights. Since the day I stood under my own power, I’ve refined myself in the Greek style. In every way that matters, I am Greek.”
I began to understand. “And yet.”
“And yet,” Scythas murmured, “To the...
2022-04-07 02:08:16 +0000 UTC View PostThe Young Griffon
Scythas and Sol’s quiet conversation abruptly ended when I joined them at the front of the ship. The Hero glanced at me uncertainly, having no doubt overheard my conversation with Selene - as he overheard most all things that he cared to. Sol acknowledged me with a nod and twisted to lean an arm against the ship’s rail, looking out over the waves pensively.
I stepped through the gap that separated the two of them and climbed up onto the Eos...
2022-04-07 02:06:47 +0000 UTC View PostThe Young Griffon
By sunset we had returned.
The lands of Thracia were vast, and we had traveled them for long days and longer nights. Cultivators of our stature could have made the trip on foot in better time, Heroic cultivators like Scythas and the Scarlet Oracle’s daughter even faster than that - a day, perhaps two. When a refined man wasn’t burdened by a horse’s fragile constitution, much could be done. A mundane horse, that was.
Kronia and Atlas r...
2022-04-04 20:54:03 +0000 UTC View PostSon of Rome
Wrathful hands seized me by the neck. They gripped fistfuls of hair that I had allowed to grow far too long, palmed my face, hauled on the white cloth of my chiton and dug their fingers into the gaps between my skin and the beaten bronze breastplate given to me by the Gadfly. My own shadow took me in its hands, and it dragged me down. Down, into the depths.
Down, to my knees.
Fight. Until the last man falls.
I plan...
2022-04-03 01:24:19 +0000 UTC View PostA guttural crack split the silence of the sunset domain in the Raging Heaven Cult. The Tyrant Polyzalus, reclining on a feather-down bed with his comatose wife tucked against his side and breathing rhythmically, returned to full alertness in an instant. He sat up abruptly, staring in disbelief at the far corner of the room. Another crack wrenched away the sunset silence.
And then, all at once, the marble statue of the Heroine Selene broke apart and tumbled in pieces to the floor.
...
2022-03-30 23:15:08 +0000 UTC View PostSelene
They panicked.
The ivory gates had spat them out into an underground tomb, a beehive tholos with only the central coffin and its ivory shroud to fill the space. Scythas rounded on the gates and wrenched at them again as soon as he realized what he was looking at, and Selene turned to help him. The gates fought and groaned, but they got them open again. Hero and Heroine slipped back through the same way they’d come.
Instead of stepping back ...
2022-03-25 22:00:04 +0000 UTC View PostSelene
It was a pitiful truth that a person’s demons resided within as often as they did without.
Selene had learned this truth early on, internalized it within herself and built the monument of her soul around it. Humanity was its own worst enemy. From the grandest scale of war between nations of thousands and millions, all the way down to the tragic conflict of a single tortured soul. She was only sixteen years old, a blink of an eye by the standards of people...
2022-03-24 21:55:32 +0000 UTC View PostAn Unkindness
“You don’t know,” the raven known as Solus said dully. He knew he shouldn’t have been surprised. Socrates, the Scholar himself, hadn’t had an immediate answer for him. Why should this faceless man? There were even odds that there was no man at all, just a figment of his deceptive imagination, but even if there was a man in the business of handing out golden cups of wine, who was to say he’d also be handing out the secrets to Greek cult...
2022-03-23 21:31:58 +0000 UTC View PostAn Unkindness
Through horn, truth. By ivory, lies.
The motif was a quirk of the Aeolic Greek dialect and nothing more. That was what the raven from Rome had been taught. Aristotle, his mentor and the Father of Rhetoric, had explained it in this way: The Greek word for ‘horn’ struck the ear nearly the same as the Greek verb ‘to fulfill’, while the Greek word for ‘ivory’ sounded almost identical to the Greek verb ‘to dece...
2022-03-23 05:11:20 +0000 UTC View PostAn Unkindness
Horn is fulfilled. Ivory deceives.
Two ravens and two Heroic souls had entered the Orphic house through gates of ivory - or perhaps it was horn. In the empty stands and shadowed rafters, the ravens had heard the echo of a lyre where the Hero of the Scything Squall had heard nothing at all. And thus they had ventured into the true singing house, immersing themselves in chthonic shadow that a crow could only briefly traverse.
Prior to that, two i...
2022-03-20 04:32:43 +0000 UTC View Post???
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 O...
2022-03-13 22:23:56 +0000 UTC View PostThe Young Griffon
We descended the last few tiers of benches, brushing past the aghast souls of long dead Orphic initiates.
Orpheus sat on his own ivy covered tomb. There was room on either side of him, but Sol disdained the implicit offer to sit side-by-side. Instead, he pulled an ivory stool from the same place he had pulled his lyre, which was to say nowhere, and sat directly across from the Augur with his back to the stands.
Not to be outdone, I manifest...
2022-03-13 08:24:11 +0000 UTC View PostThe Son of Rome
I’d never cared for the lyre before meeting Aristotle.
As the Young Patrician of a notable family, I was raised under a certain set of expectations. It was a given that I would be educated. It was all but guaranteed, looking back at my father and my great-uncle’s careers, that I would serve my time in the legions and make the climb up the cursus honorum. How far I progressed in the end was something no one could predict, but it was a safe bet t...
2022-03-11 03:07:38 +0000 UTC View PostThe Young Griffon
First, we mingled.
There was a certain etiquette that even a dead man could be expected to follow. In a theater, it was common sense that the stage belonged to those performing. A spectator could heckle if the act warranted it, but you never joined the actors on the stage unless you were first invited. In a symposium, although the lounges might be arranged around the room with equal prominence, a partygoer did not approach the organizer of the ev...
2022-03-09 18:39:45 +0000 UTC View PostThe Son of Rome
“If we’re going,” Scythas said, when the story had been told and the last strings plucked, “this is the time. And the hand guided me here, Solus. I promise you, if the reagent the Gadfly needs is anywhere in this nation, it’s here.” There was an undercurrent of desperation to the words. He wanted me to believe him, to believe in him, and worried that I wouldn’t.
From the beginning, I had seen a downtrodden reflection in him. A soldier...
2022-03-08 03:13:13 +0000 UTC View PostThe Young Griffon
The Conqueror’s polis was not entirely abandoned.
The husk of a city - what Sol insisted had once been a military colony - was all but rubble now, nearly every structure bearing scars and infirmities. There was not a stone column remaining without a few cracks or missing chunks. Every wall was at least partially collapsed, every door torn down or left hanging morosely in its frame. Decorative carvings had been scraped away. Murals had been scou...
2022-03-06 00:37:23 +0000 UTC View Post