sunslammers

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 throug...

1.24

The Young Griffon

One of the better indicators of a person‘s character was the way they treated their juniors. The hunger for standing was a natural element of every human soul, and the temptation to abuse that standing ever with us. Not always for its own sake, perhaps, but all too often opportunities presented themselves just out of reach, and all too often there were other people, subordinates or friends or even family, positioned just right to act as stepping ston...

[Interlude 2] The Rein-Holder

???

You are nothing.

Liquid purpose burns a trail down your throat, melting through fragile linings of tissue and sinew. You’ve always been proud of your constitution, in those quiet moments of honesty you believed yourself to be truly strong, but your body can do nothing but give way to this force. The marrow burrows through your body, following channels that do not yet exist in your unrefined body. What can not be found is created instead.

You f...

1.23

The Son of Rome

“That went differently in your head, didn’t it,” I said, eyeing the ink-black pile of bones and bile that Sorea had vomited into my open palm. They were warm, warmer than they should have been. Scorching hot, even by a cultivator’s standards.

“You just ate it,” Griffon said, addressing my bird with incredulous disgust. “How did you digest the second one that fast?”

My eyes rolled. “It isn’t a real crow. We have no...

1.22

The Young Griffon

It had to be said. For all of my accolades and for all of my majesty, for all that I was the only man that could ever be me, I was not perfect. I had my failings. And even more egregious than that, I was not all-knowing. In some respects, I was not even particularly well-informed.

My father had always done things in his own time, and the Scarlet City had regulated its pace to match his. For all that I was myself, I was no different in that regard...

1.21

The Son of Rome

“Is it always like this?” I asked the girl in the sun ray silks. I waved vaguely, encompassing the entirety of the lounge pavilion. Her lips curled down, the only facial feature not obscured by her golden veil.

“To greater or lesser degrees,” Selene said, sighing softly. “It usually isn’t this egregious outside of holidays and celebrations. The death of the kyrios has left everyone on edge.”

I watched a pair of bare-chested men ...

1.20

The Young Griffon

It paid to have friends in high places, after all.

The temple of the Oracle was an eerie edifice. Frankincense and myr hung thick in the air, stifling the senses and making the eyes burn. Walking through the gilded archway, past the Heroic cultivators of the Broken Tide Cult that guarded the Oracle with their lives, I could hardly see a foot in front of my face.

The winter winds of the Mediterranean were hardly worth mentioning for a cultiv...

1.19

The Son of Rome

Anastasia drew attention as a matter of course. It was a consequence of her status and appearance both - men couldn’t help but steal what glances they could when she was nearby. But as she choked and coughed and hammered her chest, the other mystikos in the bath looked openly our way. She mastered herself quickly, setting her cup aside, but the damage had been done.

After a night of hunting Crows and a full day of drinking the following day, it h...

1.18

The Young Griffon

The Oracles were divine messengers, sent down to us lowly men from the heights of Olympus Mons. They transcribed the words of immortals, writ large upon the world, and gave them to us in a form we could understand. If their tongues were the thread, the words they produced were the tangled weaves of destiny itself.

For time immemorial the Oracles have guided the greatest Heroes on their paths to glory and prophesied the fall of the vilest Tyrants....

1.17

The Son of Rome

The Raging Heaven Cult was a series of connected estates and valence communities, growing like weeds around the foot of Kaukoso Mons. Similar to the Rosy Dawn in its construction, the various estates were connected by winding paths of stone carved into the mountain itself. Walking paths, staircases, and even arched bridges of stone could be found within its boundaries.

In an inversion of the Rosy Dawn, the most influential members of the cult lived...

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.

“So...

1.15

The Son of Rome

I woke up and immediately regretted it.

Remnants of the funeral drums echoed behind my eyes, an unbearable throbbing that turned my stomach. My body ached down to the marrow of my bones, and my mouth was drier than a day at the Senate. I shifted, grunting. Even the soft brush of silk sheets was intolerable. I cracked an eye open.

Luxury. It was a sparsely decorated room, but what was there was of an undeniable quality. The floor was smooth st...

1.14

The Young Griffon

I had come to the sanctuary city of Olympia to convene with the Oracle. Instead, I now found myself in a rowdy club, accompanying my new Heroic companions to an after-funeral drinking wake of sorts. As the first lights of the dawn peered through the stylized bronze doors of the club, I decided I didn’t mind.

My fellow sophists shook their bleak mood once they had some spirit wine in them. The club was a more refined take on the thermopolia that...

1.13 [The Young Miss-tocrat]

The Young Miss-tocrat

She didn’t know what to do.

After Lydia’s uncle dismissed them from the study, her mother and Aunt Raisa took the five of them back to Raisa’s suite within the estate. The two Heroic women sat them down on lounging couches with large painted cups of spirit wine, sweet and warm and heavily spiced. They asked them, gently, to go over the events of the night again, in greater detail.

Heron, in contrast to when Uncle Damon had been as...

1.12

The Son of Rome

In the time it took my heart to beat twice, Scythas had covered a distance that contained hundreds of citizens and lesser cultivators. I followed as fast as I was physically able to, but the difference in our cultivation was undeniable. Two more heartbeats passed, and I reached the mouth of the alleyway.

Scythas was already rounding a corner, piercing deeper into the unlit bowels of the sanctuary city. I plunged into the darkness myself, the scream...

1.11

The Young Griffon

Sol and Scythas vanished down an alleyway in pursuit of a kidnapping. A beat passed.

“You’re not going after them?” The cultivator with the bow asked me. He was less cautious now, tension easing out of his posture in Sol’s absence. I glanced at the Heroine and the cultivator in the crocodile skin, and saw them relaxing as well. My nose wrinkled in irritation. I’d done all the work, yet in their eyes I was just another competitor. Meanwh...

1.10

The Son of Rome

If the chanting was any quieter than the funeral drums, it was impossible to tell. Eight voices carried as one from the center of the agora, at a volume that was difficult to believe. In all my life I’d only ever experienced a few things as loud as that concert of voices.

I couldn’t understand a word they were saying, of course. For all that my childhood mentor had taught me the smallest intricacies of Alikoan, he had neglected to mention that ...

1.9

The Young Griffon

The thunder of funeral drums drowned out all else. Around us, men and women of lesser constitution cried out soundlessly, gripping their ears and collapsing in the streets. It was a pitiful sight. Idly, I dragged two fingers across my right ear, frowning when they came away bloody.

“This seems excessive,” I told Scythas. He looked at me like I was simple, waving his torch at his own ears and shaking his head. “What sort of worthless cultiva...

Virtuous Sons 1.6

The Son of Rome

“You’re an observant one, Solus.”

“Thank you, uncle.”

“I wasn’t finished.”

“Sir.”

“A keen eye is a virtue, but only if you know where to look. What to look for. Some things won’t reveal themselves to wandering eyes. And some things reveal themselves only through the observation of others.”

“Sir?”

“If you want the truest measure of...