The Son of Rome

We parted ways after the immediate plans had been made for sundown, Griffon and Elissa heading back to the ruined residential streets while Jason and I made for the Raging Heaven.

For the most part, Jason was quiet. Every so often he would ask me a question that I had no desire to answer, and so I wouldn’t. Questions about the demons of Carthage, about the campaigns against them, and about my role in those campaigns. I had offered both of them as much of the truth as I could stand to tell. Eventually, he took my silence for what it was and subsided into solitary contemplation.

We passed through the gates of the Raging Heaven Cult unchallenged. Jason exchanged pleasantries with the men on guard, armored by bronze plates that clung to them like second skins, chiseled musculature carved into the metal itself. Their eyes followed me curiously, but they made no comment.

We were climbing the stone-carved steps up to the secondary levels where the respected initiates and future competitors kept quarters, when Jason finally asked the question he’d wanted to ask the whole time.

“These demons… They took something from you, didn’t they? Personally.”

I closed my eyes and quietly sighed.

“Would it matter if they did?”

“Of course it would!” he said, affronted.

“Why?”

“Why? Why? Because there’s a difference between doing what’s right for its own sake, and doing the right thing only if your heart demands it. What you’re planning here and now, would you do it even if your own feelings weren’t involved? Is it the right thing to do, or is it the right thing for you to do?”

Was I doing the right thing for the right reasons? Was my anger focused on the right thing, at the right time, to the right degree? I didn’t know. But Jason‘s life could depend on the answer.

“They took my city,” I finally said. “They took my wife.”

I’d told Anastasia. How could I not tell him?

Jason exhaled explosively. Overhead, the Storm That Never Ceased howled.

“I came here to compete in the Games, I wasn’t lying about that,” he said. I nodded, accepting that. “But the glory is secondary. The political influence, the money, it’s all nice. But that’s not why I’m here. That’s not why I have to win.”

I stopped, realizing that he’d fallen back three steps ago. He leaned against the stone face of the mountain, gazing up at the storm. I knew that look in his eyes.

“Have to?” I echoed. He nodded.

“I come from the Coast, Solus. I’m a sailor by breed. It’s what drives me, what’s always driven me, since I was a boy who couldn’t even tie a proper knot. It’s how I rose through the ranks of cultivation so quickly. I was born for the sea.”

“So why-”

“Why am I here? Up on this mountain, closer to heaven than high tide?” he asked bitterly. From the folds of his pale yellow and blue tunic he pulled a length of rope, and began tying it into knots.

Rome was never a maritime nation, and I’d never bothered to learn more than the bare basics of the naval arts. Watching Jason’s fingers nimbly fasten a dozen different knots in the span of a minute, each more complex than the last, I was struck by the absentmindedness of the motions. I fastened my armor the same way. With the surety of a thousand past experiences. Thoughtlessly.

His hands were shaking.

“When I turned twenty I was a captain of the Sophic Realm, captain of my own ship, and I decided to sail further south than I had ever ventured before. Against the warnings of my father. Against the heartfelt wishes of my mother. I was young, I was strong, and I was on the precipice of the realm of legend and myth. Every day, the wanderlust called out to me louder than before. And why not indulge it? I was invincible on the open sea, with my sworn brothers and sisters beside me.”

I reached out and gently took the rope out of his hands. It was a ruined ball of knots and strangled threads. Jason pressed shaking hands to his forehead, his eyes distant. Ocean blue flames flickered.

“Monsters in the shape of men,” he said, with as much reluctance as I had. “Demonic cultivators. We never found that far flung shore. But something found us.

“Maybe Griffon is right. A few years ago, I would have been the first to agree with him. All the world's greatest heroes are and have always been audacious souls. That much is undeniable.” His jaw clenched. “But that doesn’t mean that every audacious man becomes a great hero.

“I was audacious once,” he said, a quiet admission, and an even quieter entreaty to me. “That’s why I’m here. Those waves doused me. I seek the Olympic flame, because it’s the only thing I know won’t ever stop burning, won’t ever go out… And I’d rather die than sail again.”

“So die.”

Blazing blue eyes snapped up to meet mine, too shocked to be offended. So, this was what it was like from the outside looking in. How pitiful.

“They took your crew from you,” I said. Declared it, because I could already tell. “They took your closest friends, and they should have taken you. But they didn’t. And you ascended, even so.”

Jason stared at me.

“The heavens are never fair,” I said furiously, reciting the words of my first mentor. “Justice is the responsibility of mortal men. What happened to your crew, was that justice? Did they deserve what was done to them?”

The rage that came over his face at the mere suggestion was answer enough.

“Do they deserve justice?” I pressed. Watched that fury turn inward, upon himself. That familiar loathing. How fucking pitiful. “Do they deserve to rot at the bottom of the heartless sea, forgotten and unavenged?”

“No.”

“No to what? Justice, or oblivion?”

Jason slammed a clenched fist against the mountain behind him, and the amethyst veins of jewels running through its stone face flashed bright as the sun for a moment before fading to their usual lustre.

“No! They don’t deserve what I lead them into! They don’t deserve what happened to them, what should have happened to me. The captain is supposed to go down with his ship!”

A captain leads from the front, I spoke to him in the voice of my soul, and his eyes flew wide open.

“You-”

“We are who we are,” I told him, my own resolve hardening with every word. Some things were just too painful to accept unless they were staring you in the face, and some of those things didn’t show up in a mirror’s reflection. They could only be seen in others. “What we want is inconsequential. What we fear is even less so. Until we’ve burnt our enemies to ashes and salted what remains, how can we do anything but keep moving forward?”

“You…” he said again, “you’re not like Griffon at all, are you?”

I smiled mirthlessly. “Griffon pursues the heights because they’re what he’s always desired. I pursue them because there’s no other way.”

Jason… snorted. He shook his head, and he chuckled. It was a bleak, hopeless sound, but his hand no longer shook as it covered his face. “Of course you do. Of course you do. Heroes chase their passions until they have nothing left. But men like you…”

The Hero of the Coast straightened and clapped his hands together, the sound booming. His expression turned fierce. “Fine then! I understand! For as long as you’ll have me, until I meet my story’s end, I’ll stand with you against the night. This lowly sophist offers his greetings to the master.”

I stared at the legendary Hero and former pirate captain.

“I don’t know what you did last night, but I know those old men wouldn’t have sent just one Crow after me, especially one that weak,” he explained, inclining his head respectfully. “Including the night of the funeral, I owe you my life twice over. And now I owe you my heart, too, for showing me that I’m not alone. That even men like you can suffer the consequences of hubris. So I’ll repay you however I can. Until the scales are balanced and for as long as you need me, I’ll stand faithfully by your side.”

The soft applause of a solitary spectator saved me from having to respond to that. I looked back down the mountain path and saw a familiar face, inviting dark features and burning green eyes. Anastasia smiled deviously as she ascended the steps behind us, clapping all the while.

“A moment like that belongs on a stage,” she said when she’d drawn close enough to tease, with laughter in her eyes. “I wonder, will Griffon be jealous? He doesn’t strike me as the sharing type.”

“Good morning, Anastasia,” I sighed. “Jason-”

When I turned back, I saw him sprinting up the steps, already halfway up the mountain. Faithfully by my side, eh?

“I have that effect at times,” Anastasia admitted without regret.

I rolled my eyes and gestured for her to walk with me. “Do you have anything for me?” I asked quietly, beneath the cover of thunder.

“I think I might,” she hedged, procuring her javelin and twirling it as she walked. “But in exchange, I want the truth.”

I glanced at her and her whirling javelin, silent. Her eyes danced.

“You’ve been hunting, haven’t you, Solus?”

“I have.”

“And you haven’t invited me once,” she said with utter despair. “After all we’ve been through, and all that I’ve done for you since that tender bath we shared-”

My influence flicked against hers and she abruptly giggled.

“This isn’t a game,” I said, as if I was her elder in anything at all.

“Of course not.” Her smile grew. “But I still want to play.”

As crows flew freely through the Raging Heaven Cul, searching for the hungry ravens that had been devouring their fellows, four Heroic cultivators were stolen from beneath their sheets. They each resisted, but only for a moment.

All of them had known what to expect, and even so, they were unnerved.

“You said you were hunting the crows,” Elissa said, voice hushed and accusing as she knelt beside her peers in the light of the moon. She watched mistrustfully as the raven on the right paced around them, unfastening coils of iron thread from their wrists and pulling dark hoods from their heads.

“We are,” spoke the raven on the left. Distant and unsettling.

“Could have fooled me,” Kyno murmured, rubbing at his wrists. “If it looks like a crow, and it talks like a crow-”

“It’s a raven.”

“It’s not a bad look on you,” Anastasia mused, tilting her head as she regarded both ravens. Smoldering green eyes trailed along the crimson lines of the bare-chested shadow’s tattoos, and the eerily undulating cloak of his partner. “Not at all in line with a proper crow’s uniform. I like it.”

“So you’ve put us through the song and dance,” Jason muttered, edging away from Anastasia once his hood was pulled free. “What’s next? Going to put us through the rites?”

“Something like that.”

That said, each of the hungry ravens reached into their shadows. Four Heroic cultivators watched, wide eyed, as their arms plunged into the ether, and pulled from it tunics and hoods of midnight cloth and weapons of burnished bronze.

“I didn’t know crows could do that,” Jason whispered.

Kyno frowned. “They can’t.”

The Heroines each reached for a weapon presented by murky pankration hands, and the Heroes hurriedly followed suit. Four Heroic cultivators and two hungry ravens gathered beneath the light of the rising moon. In the distance, an eagle cried.

“After you,” the caustic crow invited.

The hunt began.