“A raven carries tribulation in its talons. It has ever been so, since the last of the bright birds brought the sun god word of his lover’s infidelity and were scorched black by his grief.
“One midnight messenger is tragedy enough. Any more than that is nothing but a curse. After a certain point, a pile of tragedies becomes its own cruel comedy.
“A gathering of ravens is nothing less than-”
An Unkindness
The city of Olympia, known to some as the Sanctuary and others as the Half-Step, is stirring from its four year slumber. The one hundred and ninety-ninth Olympic Games are in their starting motions.
The final day has come for the competitors to stake their claims on the chance to compete for Olympic glory. The sun is risen, and once it falls in fullness into night, the gates of the Olympic Stadium will close. Any would-be champions still outside of it after that point will have to wait another four years to try again.
Once this final night falls, the Heroes of the one hundred and ninety-ninth Olympic Games will spend a month in the shadow of the Champions that came before them. Thirty days and thirty nights they will spend in the pit, readying themselves however they can for the bouts that lay ahead.
There are ten events in total, each of them with its own gauntlet of heats and elimination brackets. Three sets of three, and one above the rest.
The marathon, first and most beloved of the games, is a journey around the stadium track that can and has killed those that strove to conquer it in the past. After that will come the sprints, where the distance between triumph and defeat is, at times, measured by the width of a single hair. The chariot races are third and final of the lot, and perhaps the most exciting of the three.
After the races come the tests of skill and precision. The discus, the javelin, and the ball. Distance and finesse are required in equal measures to prevail in any of the three.
The martial games require no explanation. Wrestling, boxing, and the blade each speak for themselves.
And of course, standing above them all is the king of close quarters. Pankration.
In just one more month, the names of an era will all be gathered in the city of Olympia to see the crowning of new glory. Over these next thirty days, the citizens of the city will revel in the attention of the Free Mediterranean. The aristocrats and scholars of mystery faith will join them in their anticipation and their festivals, and the far-flung dignitaries from the furthest reaches of the world will stage their own unofficial competition - a competition to see which of their relics and exotic treasures is most impressive to the sons and daughters of Greece.
Starting tonight, every day for the next thirty days will be a grand celebration.
At the end of the month, the stadium gates will open to those afforded a seat. The Olympic Flame will be lit up in the First Champion’s marble heart, and by its light the best athletes of the era will compete for one of only ten Olympic olive crowns.
If, and only if, one among them defies every expectation, takes every single glory for themselves, the Half-Step City will be made witness to something far greater than a ceremony of mortal honors.
If one amongst the lot can do the work of ten, the free world will be graced by the birth of a new Champion.
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West of Olympia and across the Ionian, the Rosy Dawn Cult of Greater Mysteries is coming alive in a very different way. Rather than the rekindling of a dormant flame, this is more like the agitation of a colossal hive of bees.
When the Young Miss comes sprinting up the brick road that connects the Rosy Dawn to the Scarlet City in the valley below, she draws more than a few curious eyes. When she barrels through any initiate that dares to be standing in her way, it strikes the hearts of all those around her with alarm. The Young Miss is infamously frigid towards the less sensible men of the cult, but even after the Young Aristocrat’s mad flight from the city she has never been cruel. That she runs into them at all is a sign of uncommon thoughtlessness. That she doesn’t stop to help them to their feet is entirely unlike her.
When Chryse Aetos’ eldest daughter sprints the full distance of the Rosy Dawn’s estates and leaps without hesitation off the other side of the eastern mountain range, her fellow mystikos have no choice but to follow her.
The spectacle draws even the eyes of a few of the cult’s own Philosophers, scholars granted a place of prominence within the cult similar to the Young Miss’ own. But though a few of them order their nearby juniors to accompany the Young Miss in whatever she’s pursuing, none of them care urgently enough to follow her themselves.
Only minutes later, they feel the sting of fierce regret when the fastest of the mystikos to follow Lydia Aetos over the edge come scrambling back up the mountain screaming themselves hoarse.
“The Young Miss has gone mad! Lydia Aetos has consigned herself to the sea!”
Her grief has been known to them all from the moment the Young Aristocrat deserted his family and left the girl behind. But grief is one thing. This? This is entirely another.
The scholars cast aside their tablets and scrolls while the warriors sheathe their blades and spring from their sparring circles. Soon enough, the entire sprawling network of estates are in an uproar. Slaves, citizens, and philosophers alike are caught up in the press. Most race down to the beaches and leap into the waves to search for the Young Miss. Others make for the city. Some retreat into tight corners and huddled groups within the halls, whispering amongst themselves about what has happened and what is to come.
What will become of the Young Miss, and perhaps more importantly - no, without a doubt more importantly, what will become of them when the eastern mountain range cracks open once again?
What are they to do when Fotios and Chryse Aetos emerge from behind closed doors and discover their daughter had taken her own life?
They receive an omen of that ill fate when the Young Miss’ brother and sister are drawn out of their rooms.
The young men and women of the cult that are gathered at the docks, those unable or unwilling to dive into the Ionian themselves, can only turn their heads away to hide their own helpless tears while a young Rena Aetos collapses to her knees at the edge of the beach and wails in abject despair.
When the flighty middle child of Fotios’ trio of children discovers what’s taken place, he goes searching through the cult. And when he finds what he’s looking for, a wise man in the realm of philosophers, he asks him if he’d seen his sister crest the mountain. His eyes are not wet with tears when he does it. He is not weak with grief like his younger sister.
However, when the honored philosopher admits to seeing her pass, and upon further prompting admits he’d sent his students after the Young Miss rather than disrupt his work to follow her himself, the fair and flighty Castor draws his blade and runs the wise man’s writing hand through. When the philosopher screams and tumbles off his seat, turning tail and running from his junior, Fotios’ fairweather son vaults the marble bench and pursues him. Shouting obscenities all the while.
No matter how hard the elders of the cult try to get through to those behind closed doors, they cannot budge the mountain stone nor pierce it with their cries. The pillars of the Aetos’ family, along with their nephew and his guests, might as well be in another world entirely. Once sealed beneath the eastern mountain range, no one but the kyrios can hope to disrupt them. Alas, Damon Aetos was the first of them to close his doors.
The chaos spreads down either side of the mountain, spilling out over the beaches and fields as well as the Scarlet City itself. The elder philosophers are forced to split their attention between scouring the Ionian for the Young Miss and managing the chaos atop the mountain. They hardly have time to address the people of the city. In the Rosy Dawn’s absence, the Burning Dusk sends its own cultivators down to appease the citizenry.
It is almost a cruelty when the mountain heart cracks open in the Rosy Dawn’s central pavilion, and Nikolas Aetos comes marching out along with his aunts and uncles and Heroic companions.
They could have remained down there for weeks longer, if not months. Yet they emerge at the peak of the hysteria. Soon enough after the incident that Heron Aetos is still breathless from his race down and back from the beaches when he explains it to them in a rush. Soon enough that Rena Aetos is still sobbing fresh tears while her senior sisters try and fail to comfort her. Soon enough that Castor Aetos still has breath left in his lungs and heat left in his heart to chase the Sophic bystanders through the Rosy Dawn’s estates, bleeding them with his blade and battering their egos.
The pillars emerge sooner than any of them had expected.
But too late all the same.
Every awoken soul on the island feels it when Lydia’s parents are told the news. The sensation is muted by the Tyrant’s hand, its full impact mitigated such that it only knocks them off their feet and sears their eyes blind for a moment.
They feel it once again when Stavros and Raisa Aetos discover their youngest son is nowhere to be found.
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The Hero of the Scything Squall is first to answer the call.
The initiates of the Howling Wind Cult have always skirted the line of the Father’s first and firmest mandate. Every cultivator knows the heavens are off-limits to a mortal man, no matter his allegiance. Flight is the providence of gods and beasts alone. The sons and daughters of the Hurricane Heights understand this, and so they do everything they can to defy this divine mandate without drawing tribulation’s eye.
The greatest of them are successful. For a time. The Hero of the Scything Squall is one of their best, but he has no illusions as to his ultimate fate. Lightning clips every wing eventually.
But for now, he soars.
Scythas races over top of the Half-Step City like each tiled roof is a stepping stone, and as though the vast distances between them are each a short hop along a river path. Every leap forward lasts longer than it should, the winds carry him higher and cradle him at the apex of every jump, and every time they hold him as long as they possibly can before letting him fall again.
The Gadfly had flung himself up over the city, as if fired from a war machine, the day he’d called their band of midnight marauders out as they were exiting a bath. What Scythas does now is every bit as belligerent. He glides upon the winds, and in this way pursues the eagle of Rome.
It occurs to him, as he lands on the twenty first step of the stairway to heaven and braces his weight on the stone, that he hasn’t set foot on Kaukoso Mons without a veil since the day he gave himself up to Solus. For a fraction of an instant he considers this, taking the time to coax a veil around himself, and slows down enough to maintain it.
The breeze carries the sounds of a Roman’s struggle to him and he explodes up the stairway and passes the pair of philosophers guarding the entrance to the Raging Heaven cult.
He can’t feel the weight of a Tyrant’s gaze the way that Solus can, but he can see the hurricane hierophant’s reaction to his arrival in the raising of his banners as he passes.
Up and down the portion of the mountain carved out for the Howling Wind cult’s faction are dozens upon dozens of vibrant green banners. They’re mounted to standing poles, they dangle from the tassels of enormous wind chimes, and proudly wave atop every home in Aleuas’ estate. As Scythas surges by them, his passing threatens to tear every banner out of its place, whipping them around in a frenzy.
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When in the next instant every banner smooths and billows out in his direction, tracking him as he ascends, Scythas knows the hurricane hierophant is behind them. When the Tyrant himself calls out his name, the winds that carry it are frantic. He knows he must stop or face his father-in-law’s wrath later.
But by the time his juniors sweep out of their quarters in pursuit of him, he is already beyond the Tyrant’s reach.
Scythas reaches the precipice before the storm crown just in time to see Sorea dive into a cave with talons outstretched. He follows the bird and has only a moment to process the scene inside.
The Scholar, Socrates of Brazen Aegis and Broken Tide, backhands the virtuous beast out of the air and sends the eagle shooting back out of the cave mouth. There are lines of blood left on his forearm and hand left by the eagle’s talons, but they are little more than an annoyance.
The Gadfly’s other hand holds Solus up by his neck, each finger an immovable vise around the Roman’s throat. The muscles of the arm that holds the Roman up are strained to the limit, veins pressing up against the old man’s newly transplanted skin like they want to tear themselves out. Like Socrates is holding up the weight of the world with one hand.
Both of them are bruised and bloody. In that frozen moment, Scythas can only guess as to how the two had come to blows. He can only marvel at the fact that Solus hasn’t torn the whole mountain apart in his wrath. He wonders at that moment why the Legate is still holding back. Even here, in a cave that no Elder can perceive beneath the storm that never ceases.
Then he sees the stone furnace. He understands.
The wind carries him forward, into the reach of the man that the coast could not kill. The Gadfly turns a baleful glare upon Scythas, the full enormity of his influence rising like a thousand screaming voices in the agora. Terror urges the wind to change - to halt his momentum and toss him back, to deliver him from this certain death.
Scythas whistles a note so loud and shrill it could have shattered glass and whips his sword out of its sheath in a crescent arc that ends at a point beyond the Scholar’s neck.
Socrates strikes him with one thousand unspoken truths, and Scythas’ eyes blaze as he burns his heart’s blood and cuts through them all. His blade acts as a conduit for the tragedy of his ascension. It cuts through everything it touches like so much worthless chaff. Like a scythe-
At the last moment, the Gadfly leans back to avoid the scything blade. Before Scythas can arrest his own movements, the old wiseman reaches for him.
Sol snarls and brings both feet up against the Gadfly’s chest, kicking off-
Scythas hits the cave floor and tumbles once before slamming into the far wall. Bleary understanding returns to him along with his vision - Socrates had abandoned his attempt to snatch him out of the air when Solus capitalized on the imbalance in his stance from leaning back. Instead, the Gadfly had only backhanded Scythas into the ground like an unruly slave.
Though his vision is still a blur, and the axes of the world are tilting all around him, the hero of the scything squall forces himself up onto hands and knees, while the Gadfly stomps the Legate through stone.
“Patience!” the Gadfly roars, his lips pulled back from his teeth in fury. He stomps Solus deeper into the stone floor of the cave. “All I’ve asked of you, all that I have ever asked of you, is for you to be patient! Not forever. Not even for long. Arrogant child, the world will not end if you give it time to breathe.”
Though every stomp of the old man’s filthy, calloused foot drives him deeper into a living grave of stone, Solus suffers the indignity without lashing out in return. And Scythas knows exactly why. There is something worth more to the Roman than his pride in this cave. There is something he can’t afford to destroy in his anger.
A basin full of blood red liquid, bubbling over a steady flame. A basin that was now closer to Scythas than it was the two of them.
His senses are still shaken by the blow, but when the breeze delivers to his ear the Legate’s rasping command, Scythas doesn’t hesitate.
“Take it.”
He lunges across the cave and snatches up the stone furnace with its nectar. The Scholar’s fingertips brush against his trailing silks as he spirals past, and then Scythas is out in the open air again.
“Don’t!” Socrates shouts.
Scythas races away while the world spins wildly around him. By the time he realizes which direction he’s headed, it’s already too late to change course. The wall of thunderous noise and lightning shocks him to his senses as Scythas plunges up into the storm crown. He has a moment to plant his feet, a moment to gather himself and begin to turn back.
Then the Gadfly’s hand punches through the storm wall, grasping for him, and Scythas escapes the only way he can.
By plunging deeper into the storm.
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The other five Heroes marked by the raven’s wings make it halfway across the city before Scythas disappears from their view overhead. Without the wind to guide them, none of them knows where Solus actually is on Kaukoso Mons. When they turn to the young Griffon to ask him, they find he’s not among their number anymore. Each of them digs in their heels, casting around for the scarlet son.
They’ve just started debating going back versus continuing towards the mountain when Griffon shoots over their heads, racing along balconies and rope-strung banners put up for the first of thirty evening festivals to come. Five heroic cultivators trade startled looks and leap up after him, tapping into as much of their potent penuma as they can without breaking the city around them.
They race past the young Griffon in no time at all.
“What are you waiting for!?” Jason shouts back at him. “A second note written in his blood!? Hurry up!”
The young Griffon ignores him, scarlet eyes set on the distant pillar of the storm crown as he runs.
“You can’t be serious,” Elissa says, understanding and profound irritation wrinkling the scars on her face. “Even now?”
“Solus needs you,” Anastasia urges him, her glossy black hair whipping in the wind behind her as she runs. “Just this once, just until we know what’s happened, surely he wouldn’t begrudge you a moment of the truth!”
Each of the five heroic souls urge him to keep up, to run faster than any mortal can. To at last reveal his true self and let his heroic heart flame burn.
The young Griffon runs without slowing, but neither does he speed up to match their pace. His eyes never stray from the peak of the raging Heaven cult.
When he speaks, his voice is deathly serious.
“I am what I am.”
No matter how much they press him after that, no matter how many times they call him a liar, he doesn’t say another word.
They make good time, but every one of the five knows they could have made it there faster if he’d only stopped pretending he was a philosopher for a moment when it counted.
If only, just for a moment, the young Griffon had been truthful, each of them is certain as stone that they would have made it before everything fell apart.
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The raven’s unlikely alliance boils up the mountain in the wake of the scything squall’s passing. The portions of the mountain not maintained by a living Tyrant’s will are ravaged by his passing. The winds tear trees out by their roots, rip the tiles off the roofs of the communal buildings closest to the path, and send dozens of Raging Heaven initiates tumbling nearly clear off the mountain.
It is a hero’s privilege to come and go and do as they please, but this is a special brand of disregard. Cultivators bearing the mark of Howling Wind stream up the mountain first. But not far behind are members of the Broken Tide, Waning Wax, and Scattered Foam.
In crowds of green, blue, yellow, and fuschia, philosophers race up the mountain to see what has been done. The commands of their elders drive them forward. Whatever is happening, it is happening out of their sight. For those with a vested interest in the actions of the raven, this is unacceptable.
They are not the only ones to send forth prying eyes. Members of the Raging Heaven with no ties to any of the other factions pour out onto the path in bewilderment as their peers race by. And although the sun is risen, the shadows in the groves and mountain crevices are alive with the shifting cloaks of crows.
No one knows what the hero of the scything squall was chasing. Everyone has their own idea of what it could be.
Not one of them is even close.
It’s only natural that a gathering of four factions would draw the attention of the other four on the mountain. It’s even more natural that a gathering of so many prideful cultivators from opposing cities, such a riotous confluence of cultivators that have spent the last several months of their lives jumping at every shadow, would collide at the slightest provocation.
It hardly takes a spark. Some of them trip and stumble as they scramble for the peak. Some are shoved while others are plainly insulted in the mayhem of the press. Spit in the face of a rival, blood in a junior’s mouth.
Up and down the mountain paths carved into Kaukoso mons, in pockets of two and three that spread like runaway flames, the crowds pursuing the hero of the scything squall devolve into brawls that spill over the primary paths and into the groves, the bath houses, and even the quarters of those not yet involved.
Elders with heroes at hand send them out to put the riot to rest. At first, it seems like it will work. After all, even an army of philosophers would be nothing to a single determined hero. They pierce through the crowds with ease and break up fights without fear of harm, scattering and reforming crowds like happy hounds.
This lasts all the way until a heroine from the Brazen Aegis takes issue with the force a hero from the Broken Tide uses to break up a dispute involving her juniors.
The words exchanged are short and ugly. The heroic souls were each born of the coast, but on opposing sides. They hate each other more than any other faction possibly could. When they clash, there is no higher power present to break their fight apart.
The amethyst veins that wind throughout the mountain burn brighter than a flame.
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The Gadfly hurls Solus so viciously from the cave that if he had been a normal weight, he would have flown clear off the side of the mountain. As it is, he drops like a boulder and crashes through the mountain path like it’s finely ground sand.
The rosy hands of dawn halt him in his tracks. The son of Rome hacks and spits bloody phlegm and glares up the mountain with bloodshot eyes.
Five heroic cultivators fan out around him, the young Griffon a bracing hand at his back. They stand wary but as one while the Gadfly stalks down the mountain.
He stops ten feet short of them, matching Solus glare for glare. Then, without breaking that contact, he addresses the six behind the son of Rome.
“Have any of you ever been to war? Step forward if so.”
Sol bares his teeth in naked defiance and forces himself to one knee. Pankration hands grip his shoulders tightly. Griffon looms behind his back, holding him steady.
Above their heads, the immortal storm crown rages.
Only one of them steps forward. Anastasia holds her head high.
Socrates raises his eyes from Sol’s for just a moment, meeting the caustic queen’s gaze. There is no visible change. No clash of pneuma that any of them can feel. The heroine’s legs simply give way and send her to her knees. Her eyes fly open like a cornered cat’s.
The Gadfly turns his glare back on Solus, and goes on.
“There are evils in this world,” he says with quiet anger. “Demons in the hearts of every man. We pursue excellence within ourselves to overcome those evils. We strive to better the worlds within ourselves, to battle those demons in our hearts, so that we can do the same for the world outside ourselves.
“For a time, we’ve managed that. For centuries before any one of you were born, we have been at peace. But do not for a second think that we have won.”
Socrates steps forward and Anastasia flinches back from him. He doesn’t spare her a glance. His eyes remain locked on Solus’.
“You have not seen the evils that result when Tyrants go to war,” he asserts. “You think that you can fathom it but you can not. The suggestion of it would turn your legs to mush. It would bring tears to your eyes. As it should.”
The Gadfly finally breaks his glare with the Son of Rome, ceasing his onslaught of the same lived experience that had driven the Heroine to her knees. His eyes turn away in disgust.
“Only one of you has any idea at all what could come of this crisis of succession and it’s the one railing hardest against the efforts of his elders - the one among you with least of all to lose.”
“I’m trying to fix this,” Solus says in a voice like salted gravel.
“The brew is bad.” The philosopher sounds almost tired. “I don’t know where we erred, but it hardly matters now. Polyzalus wouldn’t let it touch his wife’s lips even if it was good. A dozen times I’ve tried to convince him and a dozen times I’ve been denied. He doesn’t trust it. He doesn’t trust you. A thousand cups of nectar won’t change that. I’ve told you this again and again, and yet still you refuse to listen.”
“You told the girl you had a cure,” Griffon accuses.
“I was wrong. I lied. Pick whichever suits you best.”
The Gadfly steps past them, down the mountain, and in moments he is gone.
Solus rises slowly to his feet. An eagle’s weak cry completes the image, and Sorea swoops down on unsteady wings to land upon his shoulder. The virtuous beast’s talons scrape against his bronze breastplate as the wounded eagle fights for purchase. Solus steadies the bird with one hand and reaches down to Anastasia with the other, pulling the Heroine to her feet when she takes it.
“Solus,” Jason ventures first. “What-?”
The Son of Rome cuts him short.
“Scythas has the nectar.”
He looks back and Griffon sees that storm there in his eyes.
“Where?” Kyno asks, though all of them suspect already.
Two lowly sophists and five Heroic souls plunge up into the mystery phenomenon of the Raging Heaven’s immortal storm crown, in search of their wayward eighth and the bounty in his stolen furnace.
A cup of scarlet glory.