Chương 81: 1.54

The Young Griffon Emerging from the heart of the mountain was a slightly less pleasant experience than going in. My late uncle's sword made for a poor walking stick, and using pankration hands to steady my body was a drain just severe enough to be noticeable. The Reign-Holder's starlight marrow was doing its best, but Socrates had put some proper force behind his throw.

For now I could only endure and do what I could with the knowledge Anastasia had given me, guiding my pneuma to the parts of my body where it was most needed - which, contrary to what one might expect, wasn't always where the wounds were. I raised a hand against the light as I stepped out. The mystikos standing guard at the entrance to the subterranean estate looked me over, visibly pausing at the ugly bruise on my chest where the old philosopher had thrown a rock at me and shattered my ribs.

"I take it the Gadfly was down there," one of the guards said sympathetically. I grunted.

"Well, at least you found him."

"Did you learn anything?" the other guard asked, mirth at war with pity.

"A few things," I said, brushing past them.

"Griffon!"

"How did it go?" The little king and his sentinel dropped the branches they'd been sparring with in a nearby mountain grotto and sprinted my way. The guards had been reluctant enough to let me through under the supposition that I was seeking Socrates, a man that I apparently had good reason to be searching for. The boys, unfortunately, hadn't had a chance. Now they made up for it by peppering me with questions and jumping at my shoulders.

I staggered back a step as they hit me, the little king rolling his eyes at my theatrics. It wasn't the first time I had pretended they had more sway over me than they did, after all. He became slightly more concerned when I hunched over and coughed, splattering my blood across the mountain trail.

"You're hurt! You're actually hurt! Was it the Gadfly? Is he chasing you?"

"Get off him first," the little sentinel hissed, yanking his brother down off my shoulder. The two boys circled worriedly around me, casting wary glares back at the entrance to the center of the mountain. Then Sol stepped out, both guards wordlessly parting as he passed. The boys edged behind me.

"Is that…"

"The revenant?" Ah, right. That's what Lefteris called him.

"Boys," I said once I had stopped spitting blood. They looked up.

"Can you find your guardian?" They exchanged a startled look.

"We told you, he's-""I won't tolerate a lie, and I'm running out of patience for misdirection," I said roughly. The little sentinel bit his lip. The little king gazed back in defiance for as long as he could. Sol came to stand behind me, looking down on him neutrally. Little Leo flinched and looked away.

"We can," he muttered, and reached for a golden thread tied around his left wrist. Sol and I watched, fascinated, as the golden thread unraveled from around his wrist and then snapped taut, as if an invisible hand was pulling the other end of it. It swiveled and pointed southwest down the mountain.

"Go," I commanded them, and both boys visibly fought the desire to tell me no. It had been one thing for them to tag along when they thought they wouldn't get caught. Then, when Kyno and his crocodile had caught them out, they'd comforted themselves with the knowledge that at least I'd be there with them when Lefteris found out. But here and now, I was telling them to track him down themselves. Alone. There would be no softening the blow if they did, and they both knew it.

"You offered to face the Gadfly with me in exchange for my tutelage, and I told you it wasn't enough," I said, swallowing back blood as I knelt in front of them.

"Have you realized why yet? It's because you wanted to do that. It would have cost you nothing. If the two of you truly want to be my students, go find your guardian and tell him what you've done. Stand tall when he rages. Do not falter. And bring him back to Elissa's home by any means necessary. Do that, and I'll teach you mongrel children a thing or two about justice." It was interesting, watching them work through the dilemma of their circumstances with one another.

I wondered, distantly, if Socrates had felt this way when Sol and I faced him in his cave. They reached a decision. Leo inhaled a deep breath, offering his brother the back of his fist.

"With me?"

"Always," Pyr said, rapping the back of his own fist against it.

"We'll have him back by sundown," Leo promised, gripping his golden thread tight. With that, the two boys turned and went bounding down the mountain steps, their guardian's thread leading the way. Sol frowned.

"What was that?"

"There's a vast expanse of things you don't know, Sol," I said. He rolled his eyes as we both turned down the mountain.

"And even more that our companions have kept from us. Out of fear, out of paranoia-" A soft whistle in the wind heralded the breaking of a veil once the guards were out of sight, and Sol's toy soldiers stepped out of the open air beside us.

"-and out of shame," I finished, glancing sidelong at Scythas and Jason. The wind walker glared but didn't utter a word, while the disgraced captain of the seas avoided my gaze entirely. For a moment, I tried to imagine Nikolas in their place. A Hero cowed by a pair of lowly Philosophers.

"What's so funny?" Scythas grit out. I shook my head, fighting my good humor. As I was currently, laughter would only lead to me spitting more blood.

"Nothing," I said, smiling.

"Just you."

"Scythas, Jason." Sol said. The Heroes bit their tongues and sheathed their rising ire.

"Can you find the others? We need to talk."

"All of us," I added.

"We can," Scythas reluctantly said. Sol considered the shorter hero. He sighed.

"Go." The Hero of the Scything Squall nodded wordlessly. The two vanished, stepping once more into the wind.

"What are you playing at, Griffon?" Sol asked me as we descended the stairway to heaven.

"I could ask you the same thing." A gaggle of children, no less young for the fact that each of them were in the Sophic Realm, eyed us curiously as we stepped off the stairway and through the arched gateway separating the Raging Heaven from Olympia. They waited for us with veiled impatience - the stairway to heaven was only wide enough for one man to walk it at a time. Once I had passed, and then Sol behind me, they went bounding up the steps - each chasing the other's heels. Sol and I watched them go.

Finally, my worthless Roman brother spoke the words that were on both of our minds.

"I want to know."

"Want to know what?" I asked blithely, as if I wasn't suffering the same desire. We continued on into the Half-Step City, into grand streets wide enough for three drawn carts to pass without fear of collision. The city was alive as it always was, the muted noise of the Storm That Never Ceased giving way to the thunder of humanity, hundreds of men and women doing hundreds of different things wherever you happened to look.

Within minutes of leaving Kaukoso Mons I spotted a man hawking swill and calling it spirit wine, more than a dozen hetairai beckoning men and women alike from their balconies and perfumed shops, and even a group of street performers with drums and flutes and, for some reason, a snake slithering along to their beat. The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

"A subordinate of mine once told me that a man is entitled to his own demons, if nothing else," Sol said as we passed beneath an arch of tangled boughs, the product of two trees on either side of the road reaching out to one another.

"Whether you're a soldier or a mystiko, or just a man trying to provide, there will always be superiors and dependants vying for your time, your attention - and your secrets." I hummed, watching a pair of street rats edge towards a man selling fruit. The boy's skin clung to his ribs, outlining each one, and the girl's cheeks were devoid of the fat a child her age should have. Without breaking stride, I manifested a hand of pankration intent and snapped its fingers loudly beside the merchant's ear.

The man flinched and whipped around, cursing at a nearby loiterer. The urchins lunged out of the shadows and grabbed as many figs and pears from the baskets at his feet as they could carry, dashing into a nearby alley with their spoils.

"Every man deserves at least one secret, is that it?" I asked. Sol grunted affirmation.

"But you want to know them anyway."

"I do." Beside me, he drank in the city with his eyes. There was wonder beneath the thick veneer of Roman contempt.

"Aristotle told me stories of Greece, at times - its great Heroes and the arts they inspired, as well as its Tyrants."

"And? You've met my father, and more Heroic souls here than whores in a symposia. Has it been everything you thought it would be?" Unconsciously, against his better efforts, Sol sneered.

"Your father is exactly what Aristotle warned me a Tyrant could be," he said.

"But the heroes we've met are wrong. And there's a part of me that can't help but wonder-""If our companions aren't what they're meant to be, because the Tyrants in their lives are." I finished his thought for him, because it was my thought as well.

"That part of me wants to know," he said, "even though it has no right." We passed through the grand agora, citizens and philosophers of all ages parting unconsciously from our path as Sol's riptide influence guided them out of the way. I held out a hand and let it pass through the eerie currents of the fountain where we'd recruited Jason and Elissa weeks ago, streamers of water simply falling up into the sky before returning to the earth.

"What right do we need to seek the truth?" I asked, flicking the moisture from my fingers and watching it spiral up into the air to rejoin with the fountain.

"What right do we need for anything at all, so long as we can take it for ourselves?"

"These aren't knuckles in a game of dice," Sol said, irritated.

"There's no reward for taking everything you can from the world around you. These are real people, living and breathing just like you. If they want to keep the worst of their suffering to themselves, why shouldn't we let them?" I scoffed, and he glanced sharply at me. Worthless Roman, if you wanted me to reassure you that your first impulse was just, all you had to do was ask.

"Because if I observed such pitiful courtesy, you'd still be a slave in chains," I told him, and saw his relief in the ebbing of the storm.

"This is different," he said, because nothing could ever be easy with him.

"You're not doing this for them." I threw an arm across his shoulder, knocking the side of my head against his.

"And who said any of this was for you?" I asked him airily, slapping aside his halfhearted attempt to push me away.

"You and Socrates both, lecturing me as if I don't understand the difference between a man and a mound of clay. What does it matter that my actions are selfish at their core if they're what the other party needs?"

"The intent doesn't matter," Sol mused.

"Not when outcome is king," I agreed. He inhaled sharply and nodded.

"Right. Then if we're going to do this, we have to make certain we leave them better off than we found them."

"Will that absolve you of your guilt?" I asked him, raising an eyebrow.

"Dragging their demons out of them, unearthing whatever it was that made them this way to satisfy your own curiosity - will you be able to justify it if they walk away hating you? So long as they're stronger for having suffered it?" For all that the last son of Rome sought refuge in apathy, he couldn't fool me. And whatever his intent had been when we stepped off the Eos and into the sanctuary city, the outcome was attachment.

Against his best efforts, Sol had grown fond of these destitute Heroes and their troubled cult in the weeks since we'd met them. Whether it was sympathy or camaraderie hardly mattered. He had claimed them within himself, consciously or not, and that meant claiming their troubles as well. How could I know that? It was obvious. I'd done the same exact thing.

"They'll hate us regardless once they figure out what we really are," he said wearily.

"The least we can do is give them some peace in exchange for their turmoil."

"The least we can do is nothing at all," I corrected him.

"That is the least of what we will do. And personally, I have no intention of stopping there." He glanced at me in askance.

"My cousin was a Philosopher when he left the Scarlet City, and he was alone. When he came back to wed his woman he was a Hero. Do you remember how many companions they brought with them?"

"Six," he said promptly, having been one of the slaves to prepare their accommodations at the time.

"Eight in all."

"Eight in all, each of them Heroes." I nodded.

"Something you couldn't possibly have known as a slave is that three of those companions were there for his wife, and three were there for him. Two groups of four joined by their union."

"Get to the point."

"Impatient wretch," I said, tightening the arm around his shoulder into a headlock.

"Why do you think it is that all the best stories are about parties and crews? Even the Muses know it's better that way. For every Hero that can stand alone against a Tyrant, there are three more that can only do it together.

"There's strength in numbers. Strength in justice," I added, raising fingers one at a time.

"My cousin carved out his name with a crew of four. Tessera - that's justice. His wife did the same with a party of the same size, and that's justice as well. In their union they created a covenant of eight Heroic souls, justice twice over. Something far greater than the sum of its parts." The muscles in Sol's jaw flexed. Of course, there was no grand realization on his part. Just as I had known all along what he was thinking, so too had he known my intentions.

"Scythas, Jason, and Anastasia," he said, reciting the names of those he'd claimed as his own.

"Elissa, Kyno, and Lefteris," I responded in kind.

"What makes you think they want that kind of arrangement? What makes you think they'd be able to stomach one another even if they did? We have no idea what it is they're here to accomplish, only that they've come from every corner of the free Mediterranean to compete for it. For all we know, success for one could mean death for the other five."

"We know that four of them despise their elders enough to take up arms against their crows," I said, reminding him of the unkindness that had led to our meeting with Socrates.

"We know that Scythas is more eager to help you now than you ever were to help me as my slave." Sol's eyes rolled.

"And Lefteris?"

"What Lefteris wants hardly matters," I said slyly.

"Because he'd put his boys above it anyway."

"And you have them eating out of your open hand." He sighed.

"What is the story behind them? They don't look nearly enough like him to be his children."

"I only have suspicions."

"But you know he values them over his own desires," Sol observed. I hummed, confirming it.

"So you'll blackmail him into joining you, using his dependents as leverage? There's a word for men that do that."

"I won't do anything to his boys," I said, waving off the thought.

"But if the little king and his sentinel decide they want to tag along, I have no reason to refuse them. Besides that, Lefteris has an attachment to Elissa and Kyno as it is. If they go, of course he'll want to follow. And if the boys are in his ear, begging him to join them too?"

"All of this, just to have some fun?"

"Worthless Roman, I told you before - a thing can be good more than once. Everything I do is for my own enjoyment, as it should be, but that doesn't mean my fun can't also serve a greater purpose. You think you're the only one that's paid attention to these pitiful Heroes and their rotten, sinking cult? You're not. Who said my pursuit of the heights had to be at odds with my pursuit of happiness? Why shouldn't a man be smiling when he catches tribulation lightning in his teeth?"

"I'll keep that in mind when my journey reaches its end," he said, dark Roman humor asserting itself in his bleak smirk. I laughed, my internal and external bruises throbbing painfully as I did.

"You should! I can't think of anything more terrifying than a Roman with a smile on his face. The dogs won't stand a chance." He snorted.

"There's still a flaw in your grand design."

"Ho?"

"You want to form a Heroic party, but we're not even Heroes yet." Ahead of us, a man visibly past his prime cursed as the press of the crowds forced him into Sol's path, shoulders knocking together. He stumbled back, and a Philosopher's influence washed over us as his pneuma rose in outrage. A Philosopher of the third rank.

"Bastard-!" he seethed, catching his balance and squaring his shoulders. Sol stared steadily at the man, and I raised an eyebrow beside him. The man faltered. The eyes on us grew in number, citizens stopping to take notice of a brewing conflict, and I allowed my violent intent to manifest itself without the flames to make it visible. The Philosopher flinched.

"Watch yourself," he spat, and Sol allowed him the token attempt at maintaining some standing. The senior cultivator stalked away as fast as he could without running. I glanced at Sol.

"Does it matter?"