Virtuous Sons: A Greco Roman Xianxia

Interlude 2: ???

You are nothing.

Liquid purpose burns a trail down your throat, melting through fragile linings of tissue and sinew. You’ve always been proud of your constitution, in those quiet moments of honesty you believed yourself to be truly strong, but your body can do nothing but give way to this force. The marrow burrows through your body, following channels that do not yet exist in your unrefined body. What can not be found is created instead.

You fall to your knees, choking. You hack and spit, and when that does nothing for you, you jam your fingers down your throat. You gag. You heave. But nothing comes up.

You reach desperately for your companion, but too late. He took the marrow into himself a mere instant after you did, and now he stumbles back, falling into the soiled pool beneath the feet of the thunderer. You try to rise, but the marrow is in your spine now. Your limbs lock up and you fall, fall, fall.

The last thing you notice is the smoke. Cypress, dilute but unmistakable. You hold on to that sensation, desperately, reaching for the accompanying meaning, but your thoughts slip away from you like that self same smoke. The marrow courses up your spine and into your brain. In the end, your own thoughts slip away from you.

The Rein-Holder takes you in hand.

[The cawing crow lives for nine generations of men in their prime]

You are no one.

The marrow makes a domain of your semblance. It rises through porous skin, bubbling up inside the lines of your newly painted tattoos. Spirit olive oil with its midnight tint gives way to shining crimson script. The olive oil burns away entirely, clouds of steam billowing up around you.

Your companion reaches desperately for you, but the pain has already knocked you back. You fall through the stone dias at the feet of the cloud-gatherer, the stone as porous as your own flesh, and into the olive oil pool. It flash boils in an instant.

You bare your teeth in naked threat, though no one is there to see it, and focus your strength inward. You scour your own blood, turning your vital breath against your body. You burn away arteries, vital organs, and inevitably, you turn upon the branching paths of light within your spine-

But the marrow has beaten you there. You stop breathing. Your pneuma howls and fades. You try to snarl, but you don’t have the control for even that. You track the marrow as it winds up the contours of your spin, unable to do anything but hate it, and then it’s in your brain and you’re unable to do even that.

The Rein-Holder brings you to heel.

[The cawing crow serves nine generations of tyrants in their domains]

You are nothing, king of no one.

The city of Rome has fallen, and demons did the work. You remember the snarling faces of the wolves that salted your city. You remember how they fought, impossibly, like men in formation. You remember their tactics. You remember they can cultivate. You remember that your father-

Your father. You remember your father. You remember Gaius. Your last mentor, the first being-

You remember your first mentor. You remember his rhetoric, and the years that he walked the streets of Rome. You remember that he taught you the language of the Alikoans, which served you well when you were… bound. Bound in slavery. Bound to Greece.

You remember that Damon Aetos’ men drove back the demons. You remember that Damon Aetos took you into his estate.

You remember that Damon Aetos knows of the threat, and he has not spoken of it.

The Rein-Holder beckons you.

[The cawing crow serves nine generations of tyrants and their purposes]

You are no one, king of nothing.

The Cult of the Rosy Dawn has finally rid itself of you, and you did the work yourself. You remember the scowling faces of the aunts and uncles that hated your existence. You remember how they spoke to you, poisonously, when no one was around to hear them. You remember their contempt. You remember their resentment. You remember their fear of you, their fear of your resemblance to your father-

Your father. You remember your father. You remember Damon Aetos.

Damon Aetos is your father.

Starlight marrow flickers for a bare moment, and then it explodes through your brain and back down your spine, the tree of your life, and it burns all that it touches.

The Rein-Holder condemns you.

[The cawing crow eats nine generations of men in their passing]

Your companion is condemned.

Rise. Your legs are unsteady, but they are stronger than before. The marrow has burnt new channels through you, connected points of light within you that had until now sat as islands in the dark. You are stronger than you were a moment before. A moment from now, you’ll be stronger still.

You step through the gemstone mosaics that decorate the pool. You see your companion, dying in the boiling olive oil. The tattoos he’d painted on himself are blood red where before they were black, and they seethe with a visible heat that vaporizes any oil that touches them.

His face is closed off from you by his midnight veil. In a way, he’s already dead. This is simply mercy. You raise your celestial spear and drive it through his heart.

… You raise your celestial spear and drive it through his heart.

You raise your celestial spear-

Listen to me.

[The cawing crow dies]

You are condemned.

The marrow spreads through every inch of you, and it burns. It melts and it sears. Your blood boils within your veins. The marrow alights upon the fine threads that spread like roots from your spine, burning them away one by one. Your gut, your heart, and your brain are encircled.

Your stomach dissolves, devoured by its own biles. Your heart bursts. Your brain shuts down, thought by thought, until all the lights in the sky of your soul have flickered and gone out.

You were the son of Damon Aetos. Now you are dead.

… Now you are dead.

Now you are-!

[The cawing crow-]

You stab your companion. You stab your companion who you’ve always despised. You stab your companion that had the gall to lecture you about your city. You stab the son of the man that enslaved you. You stab him. You stab him. You stab him.

Kill him.

[The crow-]

You stop moving, and you die. You lay back down in the pool, and you die. You stop smiling. You die. You die. You die.

[...]

YOU STOP EATING ME

[The raven grows old in the lifetime of three seers]

The tomb of the father is silent but for the haggard breathing of two young men. Cloaked in shadow and shrouded by sin, they have no faces to look upon. No voices to hear. And yet, they are more than simple crows.

The hungry ravens catch their breath. For a moment, all is still. Something silent passes between them. A beat.

They vanish into the night.