“Away with you! Begone! I’ll suffer no more!”
An Unkindness
The children of Helen were still transfixed by the stark pillar of light bisecting the earth and skies when the tragedies began.
Across the Free Mediterranean, from the furthest colonies of the cardinal reaches - southernmost Egypt, easternmost Anatolia, northernmost Thracia, and westernmost Alikos - to the beating heart of ancestral Peloponnesia, the favored heroes of the Tragic Muse Melpomene collapsed in screaming fits.
Some were amongst peers, whose best efforts could not soothe their agony, and whose muses could offer nothing more to them than bright outrage. Some were amongst family, whose heartfelt prayers and promises of equivalent exchange went unanswered by the gods. Some were amongst Tyrants, whose eyes turned one and all to glare hatefully at the western horizon.
It hadn’t even been twenty years since the favored champions of Queen Calliope had suffered the very same fate.
As if those tragedies weren’t enough, a grim declaration soon followed.
There was no mistaking it. No man nor woman was deaf enough to miss it. No closed doors could contain it. Not even the tortured cries of Melpomene’s tragic Heroes were loud enough to drown it out. One and all, the people bore witness to the passing of a torch.
The voice of an era rang loud in every ear.
“THIS MAN TOO IS ALEXANDER.”
Pandemonium followed. Panic and terror and impotent rage, expressed in a thousand-thousand different ways throughout every enlightened city-state and humble colonial hovel. Among those old enough to recognize the voice directly, the old generation that had laid eyes upon the Conqueror in flesh, reactions to his heir were all the same.
One and all, they vowed that they would kill him.
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Anastasia, the Caustic Queen
She had known Solus long before the day they first met.
“A man will never love you as much as he loves himself,” her mother had taught her as a girl. It was a lesson every blind maiden learned sooner rather than later. “He will never choose to listen in a world where he can speak. He’ll boast about himself. He’ll boast about his friends. He’ll boast about his country and his idols. He’ll even boast about the men he hates, if it means he doesn’t have to hear your story.”
In many ways, her mother and her fellow maidens were terribly cynical. But at least when it came to that final sentiment, they weren’t wrong.
Anastasia had been promised to the son of a Roman captain in the middle of their siege. At her mother’s earnest urging, she had spent as much time as she could with the man chosen to be her husband. A legionary through and through, he’d been durable and stout, brazen as a bull with a soldier’s rugged charm - and utterly in love with the sound of his own voice.
He had told her tall tales about himself, about his comrades in the legion, about his father the captain, and of course about the General of the West, all of that before he even asked her name. Eventually, when talk of Rome and all its wonders had run its course, rather than asking her about the wonders of her home, of the great city-state his people were at that time invading, he told her of his foes.
Caesar’s campaigns had been extensive, and to hear her short husband tell it, he’d been there every step of the way. He had painted her a thousand pictures of routed barbarians, desperate clashes between legionary and beast, and even the solemn portrait of civil war. In every recounting, he prevailed. With every telling his voice became more impassioned. Until, inevitably, he had run dry of even bittersweet triumphs to tell her. At that point, she had thought that he would finally pass the reins of conversation her way. Surely, there was nothing left to say.
Instead, he told her of the chosen son.
With neither pride nor passion - but rather a simmering resentment - her husband had confided in her the story of the fifth captain’s son.
Though he had tried to paint her a bleak picture - and oh how he had tried - Anastasia had seen right through him. Her husband despised the wild child of the General’s Fifth Legion. The Fifth was an assembly of conscripted barbarians, a coalition lovingly referred to as Caesar’s feral dogs, and to hear her husband tell it, this Young Patrician had taken on the worst of all their failings. The lie was paper-thin.
Against his best efforts, Anastasia’s would-be husband had painted her the picture of a Roman who loomed larger than the rest. Younger than the prerequisite age for service, yet stronger than barbarians twice his size. Younger than her husband, yet twice and twice again better decorated in his service.
This young man - this boy - that had spent his formative years breaking bread with knuckle-dragging barbarians, was somehow always just a bit more cunning than his rivals in the ranks. It was a dim animal’s cunning, her husband had assured her, just enough for him to avoid reproach and claim glories not his own. She had found herself doubting him, even at the time.
Her husband had never told her this bastard child’s name, calling him instead a dozen epithets, each more inflammatory than the last. He had, however, described the bastard’s face.
“When our paths converge again, you won’t need me to point him out. He’ll be the surliest face in every crowd. The only man still glaring, even at a wedding celebration - like the bridegroom killed his dog.”
Of all the lies he had told her about Caesar’s favored soldier, that one alone had proven to be true.
“Stop him!” Thalia cried.
At least, she had thought that until today.
Her Flourishing Muse had no laughter in her voice now. Thalia’s teasing smile was nowhere to be found. The Muse of Comedy and the Muse of Tragedy had always been close, intertwined as they were by their mystiques, and Thalia’s rage had eclipsed all her sisters’ when the Tragic Muse was stabbed.
Anastasia burned her heart’s blood and wove cleansing flame along her javelin, dueling without restraint, and still at every turn she was pushed back.
Until today, she’d been certain that Solus was every bit the man her husband had assured her he was only pretending to be.
Her hunting hounds broke their caustic teeth and ripped out their own burning claws as they tried to bring her quarry down. They couldn’t even break his stride.
Until today, she had been certain he was the mighty Legate of the triumphant Fifth Legion. Envied by men that consider themselves his peers. Beloved by his people. Strong enough to stand apart from his legion and fight as though he wasn’t, a feat not even her husband’s father could match.
He advanced. The golden fire in his eyes tracked her every motion, unbothered by the shadows. She had nowhere left to hide.
Until today, until now. Until he had run from the consequences of his machinations, until he had confessed to them his weakness. Until he had admitted, until her grandmother had asserted - until Thalia had confirmed - that he was nothing more than what he appeared to be. A young man in over his head. Half a junior Philosopher, and half a worthless captain of a long dead legion. Until that moment, Anastasia had thought her husband a liar. But somehow, despite everything that had transpired since the kyrios’ death, her would-be husband had been absolutely right about Solus.
The Revenant struck her javelin aside, stomping its tip into the earth when she tried to sweep the weapon low.
At least, she had thought that for a moment.
He punched her in the chest.
Anastasia’s ribs exploded into shrapnel.
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Elissa, the Sword Song
What was it, exactly, that made a Hero’s heart unique?
The scholars had debated the topic for centuries before she was born, and likely would for centuries more to come. Elissa had never had time for such sophistry. The answer was self evident, or at least it had seemed so to her.
That nebulous excellence, so coveted and yet so rarely found, was the same property that made Elissa so much quicker than the other children in her city, lighter on her feet and more deft with a blade. It was the same phenomenon that allowed her to advance five ranks in the time it took her seniors to move a single step. It was the burden put upon her by the Fates the moment she was born - the burden of promised power.
Elissa had known from a young age - known, not believed - that she would do great things in her time. Her ascension to the Heroic Realm had been inevitable. Because of that, she had never bothered herself with the squabbles of mediocre men.
“Master, what makes a hero’s heart unique?”
She had only asked the question once, and only then because she’d been certain the returning answer would match her own.
Song Yu had looked upon her sadly instead.
“Nothing, little oriole. Nothing at all.”
Then he’d given her another scar, so she would always remember. She still carried that scar.
Somehow, she’d forgotten anyway.
The fair-faced coward from the Hurricane Heights descended like an executioner from heaven, harvesting her patron Tyrant’s last breath as he fell. The storm split along the obsidian edge of his scythe, pouring into it and enveloping him in a ferocious mantle of gale-force currents. Hazel flames poured out from his eyes. His pneuma grew and continued growing, expanding endlessly.
Before today, Elissa would have sworn steadfast that she would advance long before the Hierophant’s adopted heir. It was a fact of life that most Heroic souls, despite their excellence, never progressed past the first rank. Scythas and his ilk were those sorts of Heroes - the type to flee and fly, not follow and fight. She had known it in her bones.
Before today, she had been certain of a great many things.
The eighteen year old Philosopher with eyes like golden flames laughed delightedly as an ascending Hero swept down upon him. Griffon - Lio Aetos? - flourished his arms and all of his pankration hands, welcoming Scythas back to the fight.
Scythas flickered and vanished, by all appearances swept off by the storm. Somehow, though her own senses couldn’t track it, Griffon turned and drew his burning blade sharply up to block.
Chipped obsidian chimed against tempered iron, the sound preceding the sight of their clash. She saw it for just a moment, the whirling cloak of grass-green silks, and then he was gone again. Griffon smiled ferociously, pivoting on his heel and parrying another strike just so.
What made a Hero so much stronger than their lessers? Of course, there was their burning heart. Just the same, though, there was their Muse. In a struggle, if one party had the voice of high heaven guiding them to glory and the other party did not, all other things being equal, it was obvious which of the two would win.
Griffon and Scythas traded blistering blows, the scything winds cutting to pieces anything and everything within their reach. Elissa forced herself back, raising a useless hand against the current when it came too close. Another weeping cut was drawn across her palm.
The difference between a Hero and a Philosopher was as the difference between heaven and earth. One of them divine, the other tethered by fate. It wasn’t the burning heart alone that was to blame for this. The heart was just the symptom. Even the muse’s help was not the sole deciding factor. Otherwise, what threat would Tyrants be?
Griffon danced wildly through the storm, carving through it with his burning blade. Scythas’ pneuma was growing stronger by the second. Yet even so, the cadence of their dance was shifting before her eyes.
Every Tyrant had once been a Hero themselves. Even the lowliest Tyrant had once been the best of every Hero, just as the least powerful Hero had been the best of every Sophist. That difference could be felt, like the warmth of a summer sun. A Tyrant stood above a Hero. A Hero stood above a Philosopher. The reason why was endlessly debatable, but the reality was not. Even her master hadn’t transcended that truth.
Scythas hissed an oath a moment before Elissa saw his mistake. His obsidian scythe swept out wide, drawing blood from Griffon’s neck, but the cut was too shallow to kill. The Scarlet Son stepped into the scythe’s reach and brought his blade down in a severing strike.
So why was this happening?
As the blade fell, the spectral image of a woman flung herself away from Scythas, her starlight teeth grit in horrible frustration. The sophist’s bright smile mocked her as she fled.
Tempered iron struck polished stone. Griffon’s eyes went wide.
This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.
In Heavenly-Urania’s place, the stone statue of a woman had risen up behind Scythas and caught the falling blade on her forearm. As Elissa watched, as they all watched, the sword bit deeper into the stone, devouring it as it had devoured everything else. The marble beauty made a grinding sound of agony, but she held firm against the blade.
“What are you?” Griffon asked - wondering.
His foe whistled a piercing note.
Cutting winds drove Griffon back, and Scythas took him to harvest. Great rending cuts split the Philosopher’s tan skin and cut his mended silks to tatters. The Young Aristocrat of the Rosy Dawn drew his pankration hands around himself to guard, blood burning bright, but he’d lost control of their exchange. Scythas tore him apart, growing stronger all the while.
The reaping wind passed over Griffon again and again, taking from him flesh and silk. The fair-faced Hero moved through the coalescing hands of his pankration intent, weaving a perfect line at speeds too swift to believe. He flayed the Young Griffon one slice at a time, and whenever the Philosopher managed to bring his blade between them, the stone woman took the blow in Scythas’ stead.
The killing note wasn’t a whistle from the Hero’s lips. It was the whistle of a harvesting scythe, and by the time Griffon began reacting to it, Scythas was already behind him with the curve of his scythe pressed against the philosopher’s throat.
Scythas twisted at the hips, ripping the scythe around-
The Roman struck him like a charging bull, driving his shoulder into the Hero’s gut and slamming him down to the earth. Griffon jerked his head back, letting the scythe’s edge graze his cheek, and let out a breathless whoop. He was having fun.
Scythas flickered and blurred the moment he hit the ground, vanishing into the wind once more, but in response the Roman simply followed him to the ground and dropped an elbow onto his neck. The impact cratered the earth.
Griffon’s golden-bright eyes shifted, searching. Seeking new struggles.
Settling onto her.
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Lefteris, the Gold-String Guardian
His boys were dead.
You have to take aim, Polyhymnia near urged him.
His boys were dead, and their killers were walking free.
Nock the arrow! Let me guide it!
His boys were dead, and it was his fault that they’d died. In his greed, Lefteris had allowed himself to be swayed from his convictions. Beckoned by the bounty of divine nectar, he had strayed away from his purpose as a guardian. Sure enough, he had rationalized it in his heart - the nectar was for the boys. He’d only taken a sip to see if it would work.
Give me the arrow. Give me the string.
His boys were dead, because Lefteris had allowed himself to forget the revenant’s nature. He had known. Curse him for a coward, he had known and done nothing.
Listen to me!
His boys were dead, because Lefteris had chosen to work for a man that shared a mentor with Damon Aetos and the Conqueror.
Hero-!
HIS BOYS WERE-
ALIVE!
Lefteris returned abruptly to reality, bleeding and battered in a cloud of lightning limbs. He didn’t know where he was. He didn’t know how long he had been fighting. He couldn’t have possibly cared less in that moment.
What did you say!? Polyhymnia!
The boys are still alive!
Lefteris’ heart lurched in a dozen directions at once. He didn’t feel any one emotion in that moment. He felt a vast array of them, every one conflicting with horrible intensity.
Why didn’t you tell me?
Because-
Like a bolt from the blue, Griffon lunged through the cloud of the lightning hands with golden murder in his eyes. Lefteris drew an arrow of his intent and loosed it on instinct, imbuing it with pursuing, overtaking, and the serpent. The arrow swerved eerily through the air, coiling away from the burning blade and striking for his heart.
The daughter of the Oracle lunged out of the lightning, thrusting out an arm to catch the arrow’s tip. She cried out in pain.
Griffon followed through and stabbed Lefteris in the chest.
Polyhymnia gasped in pain, and then she was gone.
“Wait,” he choked out, reaching weakly out to grab her. His fingers couldn’t reach. “Tell me where to go! Show me the way-!”
“As you wish,” Griffin intoned, and flung him off the blade.
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Kyno, the Heroic Huntsman
In all his life, this was only the second time Kyno had felt a fear like this one.
He’d been hunting with his father, which meant that he was safe, no matter how many times his father warned him not to assume such a thing. Every hunt he’d ever been on with his father had been a swift success, and this one was no different. They had set off down the Nile with their client’s well wishes and a promise of a greater reward if they returned in three weeks instead of four. They had their beast skinned and bundled away before the first week, not attend.
The hunt itself has been a breeze. The fear had come after. On their way back down the Nile, following a route they had taken a dozen times before, his father had abruptly frozen in mid-step.
Kino had stared at father, while his father stared at the riverbank, and the naked horror on the grizzled hunter’s face was like a freezing waterfall crashing on his head. He’d been so terrified, then, that he almost hadn’t had the strength to follow his fathers gaze. But he did.
Across the river, half entombed within the mudbank, there was an egg. It was an odd egg, unlike any Kyno had seen before, and that alone was alarming. Worse than its jagged shell was its size. It was large enough for Kyno to fit inside it. Large enough for his father to crawl in with him.
Worse still, there was a crack in its exterior. A crack that was growing wider.
In the years that followed, despite everything he had seen, and all the horrible creatures he had hunted, Kyno had never felt that fear again. Not until today.
You have to burn them out! Erato screamed while the world came apart beneath his feet. You have to kill them now!
The city of Olympia, or what remained of its corpse, was a distant grave behind them. Griffon and Solus and the Scarlet Seer Selene drove them back again, and again, turning their techniques back upon them and cutting through to their souls. The young seer was a constant threat, thrusting for their hearts with her ornamental spear, but she wasn’t suited to this madness and it showed.
Griffon and Sol, on the other hand, were. They were more than suited to it, in fact. Despite their wounds and their dwindling hearts, the Revenant and the Scarlet Son were thriving. Even as they reached perilously beyond their station, dancing hand in hand with death - no, because of it. They were growing stronger.
It wasn’t the direct flourishing that Scythas was experiencing, his advancement to the second rank of the Heroic realm elevating his pneuma to staggering heights even as he pressed against its limits. No, Kyno’s muse had assured him of that. Despite all appearances, Griffon and Sol had not advanced a single step beyond the third rank of the Sophic realm. Their heart’s blood was a puddle compared to a Hero’s coursing river, and they were burning it away at a mad rate just to keep pace. Kyno didn’t even have to win this fight. He just needed to draw it out a few minutes longer. They were all but dead already.
And yet. There was that terror, clear as crystal in his heart.
Was it the paradox of their existence that unnerved him? A Philosopher with a Hero’s burning heart. No. Was it the Remnant’s invisible hand, shifting the axis of the world as it pleased him? No. It wasn’t even the Conqueror’s blade. It was all of these things but none of them at the core.
Griffon and Solus met the five of them blow for blow, pushing them back towards the sea so fast they might as well have been sprinting, and every exchange refined them further. Their hearts were burning out. The full wrath of the free Mediterranean was descending on their heads. The docks that they were pushing towards were a blasted out, burning ruin. They had no path to escape. They had no hope.
And yet they flourished. The closer they got to guttering out, the brighter that they burned. In the span of five seconds of blistering combat with Elissa, Kyno saw Griffon pick apart and internalize thirteen separate sword forms as they were used against him, and in the next second turn them back upon the Sword Song. In that same amount of time, he saw Solus shift the world around like it was a puzzle box, catching every technique sent his way in the current of his virtue and crushing them to pieces in the air - only to reform them, break them down again, and combine them with each other.
You have to burn them out, Erato whispered. The Loving Muse clung tightly to his neck, her voice thick with grief. You have to, hero. You have to…
Sah-Bakari plunged out of the counter-current, golden teeth shining as the crocodile spun. The Scarlet Seer was caught flat-footed, unable to avoid the virtuous beast’s open maw.
Griffon fell from high heaven, nailing the great crocodile’s mouth shut and pinning it to the earth with his burning blade. Then, for the first time since he’d drawn it, he let the blade go.
Left to its own devices, the Conqueror’s sword fed with gusto. Sah-Bakari spasmed and thrashed, hissing in visceral agony. Kyno rushed forward, knowing he was running headlong into a snare as he did it.
Griffin straightened up and reached with burning hands into his shadow. Each one emerged holding a stolen sword, and as one they buried the blades into the earth around Griffon and Sah-Bakari. Eight lines, each connected to another.
The scarlet son of Damon Aetos beckoned Kyno wordlessly into the octagon. Every muscle in the huntsman’s body locked up, urging him to freeze. Just as he’d frozen that day.
Until the day he died, Kyno would never forget the sight of that horrifying egg cracking open. He’d never forget the look in that creature’s hungry eye, peering out at him - the first thing it had ever seen.
It was one thing to endure through hardship, to prevail in spite of it all. It was another thing entirely to feed upon that struggle. These weren’t Sophists they were fighting. This wasn’t a Hero beckoning Kyno into his octagon of blades.
These were monsters being born.
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Myron, the Little Kyrios
Myron heaved the deceiver up out of the burning waves, tossing him up against one of the few stone breakwaters, still largely intact. The red-headed boy immediately began to heave, smoke sick and half drowned. While he retched, Myron turned and dove back beneath the waves.
The flames went deeper than the surface. Molton globs of heat boiled the Ionian as they sank down to its depths. Blasted out ships and their broken sailors burned blood orange as they drifted down, the flames consuming them unbothered by seawater.
Myron spent the contents of his second pneumatic chamber, diving through the boiling depths.
When he broke through the burning surface again, he had no vital breath remaining in his chambers. He inhaled the smoke and salt, eyes watering, and only hours of practice prevented him from choking on it.
Myron dumped a second body onto the rocks. The deceiver dragged himself across the breakwater, reaching for his brother and pulling him to his chest.
“Pyr?” he croaked. “Pyr?” His brother didn’t respond. The deceiver turned to Myron, slumped against the rocks with numb despair. “He’s not breathing.”
Myron grunted and dropped his fist like a hammer onto the unresponsive one’s chest. Pyr lurched up, choking and spitting up seawater. The deceiver exhaled a shaky breath, squeezing his older brother tight.
“Where’s the ship?” the deceiver asked him. Myron pointed wearily at the burning surface of the sea.
“We have to-“ Pyr choked halfway through the words, derailing into a wet hacking fit. The deceiver held him steady through it, expression tight as he looked over the beach.
It wasn’t a beach anymore. It was molten glass and burning flame as far as Myron’s eyes could see. As the second passed, the fire spread further and the glass sank into the boiling sea.
“We’re trapped,” the deceiver said quietly.
“The king has eyes.” Myron turned onto his back. The piled mound of rocks that made up the break water were heating up like cooking stones. “So tell me, where is-“
Myron sat straight up, his eyes going wide.
“Look,” he breathed. Then louder, “Look!”
There was a ship coming into shore. More than that, it was a ship that Myron recognized. One he had seen before, impossibly and against all common sense. Yet there it was.
The Eos sailed implacably through the burning wreckage of the dock city and its break waters, and not a single lick of burning flame marred her stern. Through the smoke and haze of heat, Myron saw the grim silhouettes of ten men at her oars. They focused grimly ahead, bellowing in time with one another as they heaved at their oars.
In the crows nest above her scarlet sail, a boy about their age was perched with an enormous eagle on his shoulder. His flinty eyes roved over the wreckage from above, and every time he barked a word the man at oars roared in unison and shifted the ship’s course. In this way, they navigated the graveyard of molten glass and burning break waters, sailing steadily to shore.
Myron was howling before he knew it, leaping to his feet, and waving his arms like a fool.
“HERE! OVER HERE!” He screamed. The deceiver and his brother joined him a moment later, crying out across the waves.
Just when he was beginning to think the distance was too great for them to hear, the boy in the crows nest, turned his head their way. His flinty eyes swept across the wreckage, then back - and finally, settled squarely on Myron. The relief nearly knocked him off his feet.
“Help us,” Myron mouthed.
The boy in the crows nest sneered and turned back to his vigil, dismissing them entirely.
The deceiver and his brother slumped back down to searing stones in limp despair. Myron, for his part, stared at the distant shape of the Eos in utter shock.
Then came the rage.
“Hey!” Myron shouted furiously, picking up a hot stone, and flinging it as hard as he could at the distant ship. It fell just short. He tried again. “BASTARD! That’s my cousin’s ship! HEY! I know you can hear me!”
He ignored them like they’d never been. Myron seethed, chest heaving in rage. In half the time it usually took him to fill one pneumatic chamber, he filled two to bursting.
“Fine,” he hissed, settling into a diver’s crouch. The deceiver jerked up an alarm. His brother, Pyr, reached out to grab Myron’s ankle.
“Wait-!”
“Don’t!”
He’d do it himself.
Myrom dove into the burning Ionian, eyes set on the distant Eos.
Only to be caught by a firm hand.
The deceiver and his brother cried out in relief, but Myron fought like a cornered animal as the steady hand hoisted him up. The Eos drifted further and further away, sailing through the flames. Lio could be on that ship. Lio had to be on that ship. He had to catch it!
“Let me go!” Myron snapped, twisting in the stranger’s hand and stabbing at it with one of two daggers.
The dagger skittered across the man’s flesh like it was solid stone, not even drawing a scratch. The man’s eyes burned as he raised Myron up to their level. The flames behind them were blue, but a deeper blue than Niko’s. Darker, and frayed.
“I won’t,” the Hero denied him sharply. “I’ve seen enough children die today.”
Myron thrashed and fought with all his strength, but in the end he could do nothing but be carried. The Hero leapt up from the breakwater, soaring clear over the dock city and its glassed beaches. They landed in a forest of fir trees and prickling undergrowth. The moment the Hero set them down Myron made a break back for the shore.
He never felt the blow that knocked him out.
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While the Scarlet City descended once more into fresh chaos, sparked by the collapse of Stavros Aetos and the Conqueror’s thundering decree, Damon Aetos sat out on his terrace and watched the stark light split the heavens.
Bright rings of concentric light spun slowly in the kyrios’ eyes, black now where they’d been sky blue before.
In the shadow of it all, no one saw his smile.