“Florian!” Her irritating screech pierced through the door at the end of his bedchamber. She banged against the wooden door. “Open this door right now!”

Florian Vulcan Aventus opened his eyes lazily, the world slowly materializing in front of him. The fire in the hearth had long extinguished, now a heap of ash. A warm breeze drifted in from the window.

More banging. “Florian!” His aunt Donna had such an annoying voice, whether she was angry, bored, or even happy. Her laughter was even worse, like a harpy in heat. “Have you barred this door again?”

He had forgotten about that. He was in no mood for his aunt’s tantrums today. A piercing headache shot into his skull like a knife, robbing him of a good start to the day. He belched. The stink of wine clung to his breath.

“Coming.” He untangled himself from the sheets, accidentally bumping the naked girl sleeping next to him whose name he could not remember. A fair skinned Araetian beauty with blonde hair that shone like sunlight. She must have had some northern Trondic barbarian blood in her, Florian thought, because she fucked like a savage. “Sorry, sweetling.”

She opened her eyes slightly, yawning, and mumbled a response, but Florian didn’t hear her. The incessant banging continued. For a moment he thought his aunt would end up smashing the door down with a battering ram. Florian removed the bar from the door, and it shot open in an instant.

In came his raging aunt Donna. An aging woman who desperately clung to the memories of old beauty. Her hair dyed fresh black, wrapped up in a bun. Saggy flesh fell from her upper arms, wrinkles lined her face. Before she had even said a word, she emptied a glass of cold water over him. “You open that fucking door when I tell you to!”

He sighed, wiping the water off his face, and shaking it out of his hair. “Will that be all, Donna?”

“No,” she snarled. “That won’t be ‘all.’” She said it in a way to mock his voice, which only left him more irritated. “Your tutor has been waiting in the atrium all morning, and you’re still nowhere to be seen.” Donna noticed the girl in the bed behind him and scoffed. “Fucking another whore after your drunken evenings, as always. If you would consort with the pigs, then sleep in the sty!”

“Hey!” Florian snapped. “She’s not a whore…” He turned around, looking at the girl now resting on her shoulders with an awkward expression on her face, covering herself with the blankets. “Are you?”

The girl scowled at him and shook her head.

Donna went over to the dressing table, snatched the white tunic, and threw it at the girl. “Dress yourself and begone!”

The girl hastily clothed herself.

“Farewell… uh… Helen?” Florian said, scratching his head. “Or Meda?”

The girl shot him a vicious glare before rushing out. She looks pretty when she’s offended, Florian thought, trying not to laugh. He did remember a Meda though, the girl with the silver streaks in her hair, from a couple of weeks ago in the alehouse. Now, she was a pretty one. Florian had tried to warp fate and bump into her by chance in the alehouses around the lower city for a while after he met her, but she was nowhere to be seen.

But now he had another woman to deal with. A much less attractive one. “Lagus is waiting for you. Make yourself presentable and go to him.”

“Ugh…” Florian moaned, slumping back onto his bed and shutting his eyes. “Tell him to fuck off… not in those words,” he took back. “You know, just give him the day off. I can’t stand his tedious rambling. And still a little drunk.” He scratched his head. “I think.”

There was silence for a moment. Unbroken silence. Florian thought he may actually get some sleep until the footsteps came racing back and a fresh splash of icy cold water hit his face.

“Oh would you leave me alone, you old bitch!”

His aunt’s slap left his cheek hot and red.

“You’re lucky your uncle is so soft on you, because I’d have thrown you to the dogs by now.” A few of her hairs had fallen in strings out of her bun, and now lay across her face, which went redder by the minute. “To be an age of five and twenty, wasting your days away getting drunk with rogues and whores. Rhea’s son is the legate of the eleventh legion! Your own father was a legate by your age! And what are you? You can’t even get out of bed!”

“I’m a student of philosophy, don’t you know?” He turned away from her, trying to shut his eyes again. But he was wide awake by now.

“Well start acting like it. Get up and stop wasting your life away.” Donna left the room, smashing the door shut behind her.

Florian got up, but wasting his life away was something he did not intend to stop doing today. How is a life of happiness, joy, and laughter a waste? He was born to a noble, prestigious family and had plenty of money. Why not enjoy it? Is that not what the gods wanted of him? What was the point of slaving away doing things you didn’t want to do all your life?

Yet, he dried his hair from his aunt’s assault and got dressed, going to do something he didn’t want to do, just to prevent another one of her tantrums. His philosophy lessons were such a chore. He didn’t understand what the old skeleton of a tutor was speaking of half the time. And the times he did understand, he didn’t care. But still, studying in Pyrridon wasn’t all so bad. It was his family's way of exiling him rather than trying to build him a future, he knew.

He had been banished from his family home in Orisium for losing more of his family's money than he cared to count on back street dice games, to the delight of the game masters. That, and for slitting the throat of a game master whom he had suspected of cheating with funny dice. Those dice never fell on the numbers he needed, no matter how many times he tried to catch a streak. Florian never intended to kill the man initially, but the scuffles turned to a fist fight, a knife was drawn, and the rest was history.

Taking loans from several prominent creditors in an effort to return to the games and win his money back also didn’t help him much. He was certain that luck would catch up with him eventually, and help him turn his twenty thousand gold vennae into one hundred thousand… and then he lost it all. When news of this reached his mother, she only said, “My son, you had better be gone before your father comes back from duty and hears of this.” Florian agreed. To wound the pride and honour of the great Rodevicus Vulcan Aventus, a general of Orisium and governor of High Rodevia, was a deadly sin. The man cared more for his pride than his own blood. What sort of person takes the name of the land he rules? Florian thought. A cunt. And since Florian bore his name as a son, anything he did reflected on his father.

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And so he came to Pyrridon. To study. Study, while anyone else of importance in Orisium was doing anything else.

To waste my life away.

Dressed in his red tunic, lined with black and yellow decorative patterns, he walked through his uncle’s villa to the atrium at the front. In the atrium, Lagus waited patiently. The man looked well over a hundred years old. With a few wisps of thin hair on his spotty scalp, few teeth remaining, and saggy old flesh hanging from anywhere it could. He wore a tattered brown robe that left his right shoulder and breast exposed.

“Ah, Florian.” Lagus strained to stand. “Good day to you, though it seems our lessons will begin a little later than usual.” His voice was coarse with age, as though eroded by time itself.

All he could think about was his headache. “I was up late last night.”

“No matter.” The old tutor brushed himself off. “We can begin and end as it please us.”

As it please you, more like. Florian would have liked to end right now, and go back to bed, or drink some wine.

“Though I feel like it would be a shame to waste such a nice day locked up in the study, don’t you?” Lagus said.

I couldn’t care less. “Of course.” Though Florian found it curious how the ancient man seemed to have more energy to go out for a walk than he did right now.

The front door of the atrium took them outside, where the sun sat high in the clear blue sky. It’s light glazing him with warmth. Their village sat on a hill on the outskirts of Pyrridon, a distance from the city on horseback. All of the villas were spacious with their own gardens and plenty of space between, a home for wealthy Araetians or foreigners who wanted a scenic escape and a peaceful life. Though Florian had come to the wrong place, evidently, because each start to his day in that infernal village was hell, in the form of his nagging aunt.

Below, down the grassy valley, he saw the grey-brown stone maze of Pyrridon. To his back, an enormous range of snow-capped mountains loomed as far as the eye could see, stretching for miles in every direction.

In the gardens around him, slaves picked fruit from orchids, or carried baskets of vegetables or dead rabbits. Some of them got whipped and screamed at by some fat old man for not doing something correct.

The pair strode on a small dusty path that led to a scenic walk with a view of the lush rolling meadows and the mountains behind them. Bees and flies and small birds flew all around him.

“For today's lesson,” Lagus said, strolling along the path as birds whistled around him. “I have chosen a topic relevant for the times, that is, recent events.”

“Mhm.” Florian nodded, looking around absent-mindedly.

“We will discuss the philosophy of anti-conflict. Based on the teachings of the school of Dorotheus. Throughout many of the great wars of history, from the conquests of Menedemus The Chosen One through to the Chenean War between Orisium and Yarikhad, many noble and wise men have voiced strong sentiments of peace and non-violence…” He continued to drone on about wise philosophers and how much they hated war for some time. Florian only looked up at the mountains, thinking about where he would get drunk tonight. Maybe find that Araetian girl again, if he could only remember her name. Mayhaps that big winehouse in the upper city…

Stop wasting your life away… Donna’s words rang in his head. And funnily enough, all that talk of peace only made him think of his father, the most militaristic man Florian could think of, the conqueror of High Rodevia and scourge of the Rhotari.

He was a legate at your age. Commanding a whole legion, leading five thousand men into war, winning spoils, riches, and prestige while he was at it. Crushing tribe after tribe.

“My father might disagree with these wise men,” Florian said eventually.

“And so he should.” Lagus nodded. “Where would we be as a people if we could not disagree with one another? He is an accomplished soldier, your father.”

“As my family so often reminds me.” Florian frowned.

The old man raised a brow. “It upsets you? Are you a follower of the philosophies of peace?”

“No, no, it’s not that…” Florian scratched his head. “It’s just… no, it's nothing.”

“I never took you for a man of peace. Kings breed kings, soldiers breed soldiers. Perhaps there's a military man in you.”

Florian tried to stifle a laugh. “My father conquers with fire and steel, slaying savage warriors who’ve been fighting since they could walk. But my sword dangles between my legs, and my conquests are far better looking and much less ferocious.”

Lagus chortled, his laughter followed by a brief coughing fit. “If only we could all be young men again. So much promise and adventure ahead of us, if we would only reach out and grab it.

“But to get back to the matter at hand, I chose this topic today as I heard most concerning tidings from the newsreader at the plaza yesterday. Orisian legions attacking Dumori villages south of the Tane river, the Dumori tribe repaying them in kind with steel and blood with the help of Yariki cavalry.” Lagus rubbed his chin as he stared across the meadows. “The tinders of war seem to blow on the horizon.”

Florian sat on a rock under the shade of a pine tree to rest his legs. The little energy left to him in the morning had long gone. “Well, knowing my father, he will not let such a slight go unpunished.”

“You tired already, young man?” Lagus chuckled, stretching his arms and legs.

“I told you, I was up late last night. Lessons are not usually conducted on a walk.”

The old man smiled. “And what an instructive lesson this can be. Were you in general Rodevicus’s shoes at this present moment, how would you resolve this diplomatic scuffle? Violence or peace?”

“I feel like there's a correct answer here.”

Lagus shook his head. “No right or wrong, just what you would do.”

As Florian pondered anything but that question, thinking about wine and women and which dice games he would try out later tonight, he found no answer to his tutor’s question. He just didn’t care. A hawk flew high overhead, and Florian noticed he was keeping the tutor waiting. “War then. In my experience, the only language universally understood by man is violence. It transcends language and creed and tribe. We can mince words about who is right or wrong, but when someone takes out a blade and ends the other's life, then the previous disagreement doesn’t mean much, does it? Might is right.”

“Might may be right in practice,” Lagus said. “But is that very state of being in and of itself right?

“I don’t know,” Florian moaned. “Does it matter?”

His tutor sighed. “Perhaps, perhaps not. Maybe that is a question for wiser men than us.” He whacked Florian’s leg with a stick, prompting a grunt from him. “Up now, let us continue walking. You shame yourself being beaten by an old man in this manner.”

They walked the rest of the trail. It curved at a grassy hill further up, crossing over a small glistening stream, and went back down to the villa. “Whether war is right or wrong,” Lagus said. “One thing is certain. In times of war and chaos, even the lowliest of us can rise to greatness.”

“I’ll be sure to tell that to every plebeian and slave I meet.” Florian picked up a long blade of dried grass, crushing it in his fingers. “They’ll be thrilled to hear it.”

“My legs are weary and your attention seems to be elsewhere, Florian.” Lagus stretched his back, his spine cracking from top to bottom. “I think we will cut our lesson short today. I bid you farewell.”

It was the best thing he’d heard all morning. Florian bid the old man farewell and wasted no more time.

The sun still beamed high as he headed into the city and got to the first wine house, and burned warmer still by the time he was stumbling awkwardly to the next. He drank with freeswords, gambled with thieves, got in a few scuffles, and spent the night in one of the more luxurious pleasure houses in Pyrridon, effectively robbing himself of the month’s allowance. The next morning, his head throbbed with dull pain yet again, and his first instinct was to pour another cup of wine, and wake the delightful olive-skinned woman next to him so he could conquer her a second time.

He half expected aunt Donna to come crashing through the red velvet curtains of his rented room screaming, “Stop wasting your life away!”