The Son of Rome

“There are four stages to this synthesis. Four that I’ve observed, at any rate - four phases that the kyrios could compress into a single pour. We’ll have to use a furnace.”

Socrates hadn’t wasted a moment. As soon as I’d surrendered the golden cup of wine to him, he’d pulled a squat stone furnace from a fold within his rags and heaved it down over an open flame.

“Greater men than you and I have tried and failed to make reason of this drink. The kyrios shared it only sparingly, and those he shared it with could hardly be counted on to pull a list of ingredients from their experiences. If such a list did exist, he likely took it with him to the Underworld. We venture now into uncharted waters.”

The man they called the Scholar had spent years in the Half-Step City, serving as the Tyrant Riot’s personal advisor - for whatever that position was worth to a man like Bakkhos. From what I’d come to learn of the man, it seemed more likely that he enjoyed Socrates’ company and kept the philosopher around for his own amusement rather than any desire for advice. Regardless of the reason, Socrates had enjoyed a place of prominence in the mad king’s court for decades.

He’d seen Bakkhos brew his nectar countless times, and he’d heard him speak of it in those rare moments when the Tyrant Riot tended towards generosity. His insight was the next best thing to a recipe.

“Before the blackening, we must first rinse our cup.”

The Gadfly had first drawn a bronze jug from the pile of reagents on the cave’s floor. He’d dipped a white cloth into it that emerged silver-gray and wet, shimmering in the low fire light. Then he’d scrubbed the basin of the furnace until every portion was coated by the metallic substance.

“The kyrios’ thirst was an infamous thing - whether it was for gambling, games, or drink, there was little he wouldn’t do to have his cravings satiated. At the points where those individual desires converged, he became truly rabid. There was little he wouldn’t give to someone who could satisfy all of his desires at once, even if it was only for a moment.

“Each year when it came time to conduct the Raging Heaven’s rites, the kyrios would lay a wager at the feet of all his Elders. The terms were the same every time: A would-be initiate only had to venture a few steps alone into the storm crown to secure their admittance to the cult, that was the standard practice. However. If any of them could reach the peak of Kaukoso Mons, and if they could bring back proof that they’d done it, he would make a hero of them. He would reward both them and their faction’s Elder with a cup of purest nectar, to drink or give out as they wished.

“As long as I’ve been here, I’ve never seen anyone accomplish it. Each time when it became clear that their candidates had all failed yet again, the kyrios would offer his Elders the privilege of attempting the challenge for themselves. When they all refused, he’d venture up himself. Each time he’d drain his cup before vanishing into the storm.

“And each time he would return, his cup brimming to its edges with liquid lead.”

The first material needed to begin the synthesis -

“Prima materia.”

- was liquid lead.

The bronze jar of liquid metal had been a gift from the Gadfly, though he wouldn’t tell me what the gift had been given for nor when the kyrios had given it to him.

When the fire beneath the furnace had reached the lead, bubbling it and throwing off unpleasant vapors, the Gadfly had carefully poured a portion of the golden cup of wine into the stone basin. Then, before the lead and wine could fully mingle, he’d added a handful of coal black salt to the mixture.

“Now begins the first phase - the blackening.”

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He’d pulled a lead spoon and a glossy black feather from his rags and used the spoon to stir the foul mixture while the feather balanced on the furnace rim. And then he’d settled in to wait.

And wait.

[Raven.]

“... You said the kyrios could compress this into a single pour.”

“I did.”

“How?”

“If I knew, I’d have done it that way already.”

Finally, after an untold number of hours and days watching the dark mixture simmer, adding more salt and wine as it reduced down, the Gadfly had declared the color close enough and moved on to the next phase of the process.

“Now the whitening.”

Milk came next, and a pure white feather that I had known at once we’d never get close to in color. The brew was a vile bubbling black. No amount of milk would lighten it to that extent. Yet even so, the Gadfly had poured into the basin milk from the cattle plains east of Olympia. Over time, he’d added honey from the coastal caves of Aornum. And intermixed with that, healing herbs and silver coins of every kind.

“We’re meant to drink this?”

“Mad, isn’t it? That was my thought the first time I saw it. The second and third times as well.”

[Swan.]

The mechanisms of the alchemical furnace were a mystery to me. There were no markings on it that I could see, no delicate moving parts that might hint at a more complex function than what we seemed to be using it as - a particularly hefty cooking pot. Yet somehow, over the course of hours and days, the bubbling black mixture had been turned bone-white by the addition of milk and honey.

Against all common sense, things were proceeding as the Gadfly had said they would. The only issue was how long each phase was taking.

Socrates didn’t trust me. He’d made that clear time and again since the day that I’d met him.

“The yellowing will take time. Watch this until I’m back. Stir the mixture with this spoon, and this spoon only. Don’t take your eyes off it, not even for an instant.”

Unfortunately for the master of my master’s master, I was not the full sum of his responsibilities. He’d had no other choice but to leave a portion of its care to me. The Gadfly had crushed a chunk of brittle yellow sulfur the size of my fist and sprinkled its fragments into the mix, placed a golden feather on the rim, and stalked out of the cave without another word.

When he’d returned in the predawn hours of the next morning with the faint scent of smoke lingering on his skin, I had offered him the lead spoon back without prompting. It was the first of several such exchanges.

I watched, and I trained my body while I waited for the brew to develop. When I slept, the Gadfly kept his vigil. When the Gadfly went out, I kept my own. Eventually, the mixture turned a deep and vibrant yellow.

[Eagle.]

Only one phase remained.

“The reddening.”

The overtures from the Raging Heaven’s Elders had grown more brazen by the day. The Games were close now, the city coming alive beneath us as spectators flooded in from all across the Free Mediterranean. In just a few short days, every Hero in contention for an Olympic crown would be inside the city’s walls. In a month, the kyrioi would join them.

The Elders were running out of time.

The last of the ingredients were cinnabar and a vibrant blue flower called the Water-Lily of the Nile. The Gadfly had mixed them in and then wrapped himself in his rags of anonymity, making for the cave’s exit as usual. There had been no feather placed along the rim this time. He’d assured me I wouldn’t need it to know.

So I’d settled in for another dull night, watching shadows dance along the cave walls while I stirred my listless spoon.

And then, faintly at first, I had heard it.

The strumming of a lyre.

[Phoe-]

[MY FELLOW SOLDIERS]

I staggered out of the cave and into the seething light of the Storm That Never Ceased and the looming dawn. I couldn’t hear the thunder over the ringing in my ears. I inhaled until it felt like my ribs would crack, filling every one of the channels burnt into me by starlight marrow, and I roared.

“SOCRATES!”

Back inside the cave, the furnace’s contents simmered blood red.