Virtuous Sons: A Greco Roman Xianxia

—

Then, in the morning, once again the sun will melt the frost.

—

The Young Griffon

On the day of my first Thargelia, when I was still young enough to fear the kiss of a burning flame, my father had broken with the Rosy Dawn’s traditions and allowed me to sit on his lap and watch the proceedings of the festival with him. I hadn’t understood why this was such a scandalous act at the time, but in retrospect it was obvious.

On this holiday above all others, the kyrios was both judge and jury. He was justice. Allowing a child to sit that throne with him had been hubris enough to have the cult’s most pious initiates eyeing the skies in search of lightning. My father hadn’t cared for their complaints, of course.

The Thargelia was a celebration of life and of beginnings, positioned as it was at the start of summer and the very first harvest of the year. It was a holiday held dear in every Alikon heart, though the unawoken didn’t know exactly why that was - namely, because it was a celebration of our very own scarlet faith. Our fallen sun god was dead, bisected and buried in the hearts of our mountain ranges without a name to mark his graves, but that did not mean he was entirely forgotten.

We honored him with the Thargelia, and we sacrificed in his forgotten name as we did for all the pantheon. In this particular case, we sacrificed ourselves.

The pharmakos were the most important part of the festival, scapegoats chosen to take the city’s vices and hubrises upon themselves and be punished for them all, so that the masses might be cleansed. Two were chosen every year, one by each of the Scarlet City’s Tyrants, and their punishment was carried out in the valley city’s Scarlet Stadium.

Each year, the circumstances of those chosen and their punishments changed. Sometimes it was for vanity - the ugliest of the city’s dregs brought forth and beaten down. Other times it was for retribution - the worst of the lawbreakers, profane murderers and the truly unhinged made to account for their crimes as well as the crimes of others. Depending on the criteria of those chosen, the severity of the punishments varied. Some years the pharmakoslived to dread another Thargelia. But only some.

The Tyrants of the Rosy Dawn and Burning Dusk chose their own scapegoat and presided over their punishment as they saw fit, but the manner of their punishment and the severity had to match. It had always been that way, even before my father’s rise to power. Besides that, the only other commonality was the stock from which every scapegoat was chosen.

Whether they were selected for vanity or for retribution, the pharmakos were always slaves.

That year, the pharmakos had been selected for retribution. The wretched pair of slaves marched out onto the sands of the stadium pit were criminals of the same kind, charged by Damon Aetos and Yianni Scala both for thievery. In the Scarlet City, the common punishment for theft was the loss of four fingers.

That was only for full-blooded citizens, though. For a slave, the punishment was at their master’s discretion. It could be anything, up to and including death.

That year, the Tyrants of the Scarlet City chose scourging.

The Alikon masses hurled ridicule and condemnation down from the stadium stands while the thieves were brought out and forced to kneel in the sand. It was tradition, naturally, and some embraced it more gleefully than others. The pharmakos were on trial for more than just their own crimes. On that day, they were on trial for us all.

Eight unawoken men holding whips surrounded the pharmakos, four to a thief, and at the Tyrants’ orders they began their lashing.

It took me no time at all to notice a difference between the two scapegoats.

Though they were both undeniably wretched existences, already bruised and battered long before they’d been delivered to the pit, their reactions to the scourging couldn’t have been more different. Though they were in equally poor shape, and though each of the city’s men did their level best to crack their whips with uniform strength, the slave from the Rosy Dawn endured his punishment with grace.

While the thief from the Burning Dusk cowered and begged for mercy, crying out sharply after every lash, the thief my father had selected rode his lashes out with as much restraint as any man in chains could hope for. It wasn’t that he couldn’t feel the whip. There were some agonized noises he didn’t have the strength to hold back, pained grunts and breathless groans. But there was something…

“You’ve noticed,” Damon Aetos had declared. “One man is afraid. The other isn’t.

“Do you know why?”

Naturally, I hadn’t.

“These men are thieves, and before that they are slaves. It is within my power to have them executed for their crimes. It is also within my power to spare them. The lash is an uncertain weapon - a half death. It can take a life as easily as it can spare it.”

That didn’t explain why one man was terrified and the other man resigned. Amidst the screaming condemnations of the citizens, my father had elaborated.

“It is by my judgment that these thieves will be given forty lashes each, delivered by mortal men with plain leather whips.” My father had raised a finger and pointed at the Rosy Dawn’s thief. “The only difference between the two of them is that I told that man how many lashes he’d receive.”

At the time, it had felt like a contradiction. Forty lashes was enough to kill a man, depending on the strength behind them. I had puzzled over it while they received their seventh, eighth, and ninth ones. Scourging wasn’t an uncommon punishment for a slave and often ended well short of the mark my father had set. The slave from the Burning Dusk didn’t know what the number of lashes was, but that could have been a boon. For all he knew, he might only have ten in store - the man my father had chosen knew that he had thirty-three, thirty-two, thirty-one more cracks of the whip until he was done. Shouldn’t that have been the far heavier source of dread?

We’d watched, together, as the thief from the Burning Dusk continued to moan and weep after the fortieth lash was done. And we’d watched as the thief from the Rosy Dawn had simply slumped forward into the sand in weary relief, knowing that his suffering was over. Damon Aetos had nodded as if his point had been proven, and explained.

“The whip is agony. The uncertainty is worse.”

—

This never-ending burden of your present agony will wear you down, for the one who is to rescue you someday is not yet even born.

—

I took Prometheus’ chain in my hands and wrenched at it with all my might.

The adamant links were enormous, each one longer than my torso and thicker around than my arms. I braced my feet against the cliff face that the Titan Flame was shackled to and strained with all that I had against one of the links holding his left arm in place. I gnashed my teeth, rosy flames and tribulation lightning pouring off the twenty-nine hands of my pankration intent.

“A hand, slave?” I called out in a strained voice. There came a crack of lightning and a shock of bright white sensation on my left cheek. I stared at Sol in disbelief.

“You slapped me with my own hand?”

“Anything for the Young Aristocrat,” he said without a hint of mirth, tucking my lightning limb away and bracing himself on the other side of the adamant link. He wrenched at it with all the strength he’d taken from the Orphic House.

“Don’t call me that,” I said, horribly offended.

He snorted, and I let my own smile break free.

“On pull, then - pull!”

It was at this point that Prometheus came to.

“What are you-? Stop!” the Titan’s alarm was intense, seemingly enough to snap him fully from the throes of his suffering. He reached down for us and my heart did its best to leap out of my chest. His hand was enormous, longer fingertip-to-palm than I was tall. Again, I was struck by the staggering difference between Titan and man.

“Pull!” I shouted, and Sol and I heaved back on the adamant chain with all that we were worth. The Titan’s hand hesitated just a few feet from us, fingers flexing. I inhaled sharply. “Pull!”

The adamant held. An unbreakable chain wrought by higher powers, crafted to bind the only one among them worth admiring. I snarled, steam erupting from between my clenched teeth. Lightning flashed behind Sol’s eyes.

“That’s enough!”

The Titan Flame brushed us off. Try as we might, Sol and I couldn’t resist him - though he moved us like we were made of thin and brittle clay, Sol and I might as well have tried to hold the sun back from rising. We were both flung away from the Titan, tumbling across the stone and settling at the feet of the Champion’s statue.

“These chains are heavenly law,” Prometheus urgently warned us. “It’s impossible to break them. You endanger yourselves by even trying!”

I reached up and rapped my knuckles against the Champion’s own hand, the one holding a broken link of adamant.

“Not impossible,” Sol said, putting it to words.

There was grief in the Titan’s eyes, sorrow in his sonorous voice when he replied, “Not for him. But the Champion’s time is long past, my own time longer still. Strength alone is no longer enough. In this world of tarnished iron, adamant is immutable.”

“Then why hesitate?” I challenged him. The weight of the Titan’s stare was staggering, but I had been raised by a higher power of my own. I had long since learned to take it in stride. “You could have brushed us off immediately, but you didn’t. You hesitated. Why?”

I expected the Titan to lie or ignore the question entirely, perhaps lash out at me for daring to question him when I was infinitely his lesser. Instead, he told me the truth.

“For a moment, I hoped I would be wrong,” the Titan Flame admitted.

There was no deceit in the burning suns that were his eyes. Only an ancient weariness.

“It doesn’t matter. Whether or not it’s possible, regardless of if you’re ivory or if you’re horn, you’re here too early.” The light that he was casting grew brighter, harsher and more stark - everything bathed within that glow seemed to sharpen and grow more vibrant.

Sol and I were no exception.

[ ]

In the Temple of the Father so many weeks ago, Sol and I had consumed the starlight marrow of a Tyrant and been forced to match our souls against it. The Rein-Holder’s will had attempted to break us down and make us slaves within ourselves, and until the day I died I would never forget the sensation of it burning through my body. It had been an enemy until I made it mine. It had fought me bitterly, furiously, until the very end.

The moment I felt the influence of another, warm beneath my skin, I inhaled sharply and brought all of my pneuma and my influence and my will to bear against it. Beside me, I heard Sol do the same. No matter how unjust the Flame’s punishment may have been, no matter if slipping into another’s skin was the only way he’d ever be free, it wouldn’t be one of us that made the sacrifice. I refused. I wouldn’t allow it.

It was like throwing a punch with all my strength behind it and hitting nothing but the open air.

The warmth of a steady hearth seeped into me and immediately joined itself to my will, shaping itself to my image without a fight. No, it was more than that. The Flame’s essence was helping me incorporate it into myself.

Everything the golden glow touched was made better than it had been before. I was abruptly reminded of the sensation of Anastasia’s caustic pneuma burning through my body, cleansing and mending me in a way that I’d considered to be sophisticated at the time. This was so far beyond that, calling it healing felt like a disservice.

Whatever he’d done to us before to balance our humors and expel the excess impurities from our bodies, it had happened in an instant and had only been noticeable in its passing. This was a mending of a different sort. The myriad bruises and bleeding abrasions that Sol and I had suffered on our way to the peak were made well before our eyes. The warmth stayed, added itself to our own vital heat and bolstered us with its presence. And when it was clear that we had it in our control, the Titan relinquished it to us without a fight.

The necklace I’d stolen from the Aetos family’s filial pools reflected the golden glow, its scarlet gem burning like an ember against my chest. With a start, I realized even the ragged silks of my Rosy Dawn attire had been made pristine again.

How do you mend what can’t be mended?

“It’s you,” I realized. I looked up at the Titan Flame with certainty in my soul. He was the cure. “Teach me.”

The Titan shook his head. “I can not.”

“I’ll break those chains myself,” I promised him. “I’ll finish what the Champion started and deliver you from your torment. On the Styx I swear I’ll see it done!”

“You scarlet sons are all the same,” Prometheus murmured, looking at me with pity.

Looking down at me.

“Griffon,” Sol warned, gripping my shoulder tight. I fought for control of thirty pankration fists. Somehow, the Titan’s bolstering essence didn’t make it any easier. Damn it. Damn it. I couldn’t stop my mind from racing, envisioning all the wrongs that could be made right if an existence like the Flame still walked the earth.

Since the day I’d left the Scarlet City, I had spent every day searching for the fireside legends whose stories I’d been raised on. In the months that I’d spent in Olympia and distant Thracia, the only evidence I’d found that those legends were ever true at all had been dead men. It had been enough to make me wonder. It had been enough to make me doubt.

A man could endure the whip for half an eternity if he knew that it would stop. He could brave the most treacherous mountain path so long as he knew it would lead him up to heaven. Could overcome ten of heaven’s most harrowing labors if only he knew that the tenth was where it ended.

It was the uncertainty that killed you.

Crouched beneath the Champion’s towering statue and looking up at a living relic of a golden era, I finally saw the flame that cast the shadows in the cave. Here was something real. Here was something pure.

Here was what this world of iron needed-

“Tell me something, boys,” Prometheus spoke, though he almost seemed to dread the answer. “Where do you stand among heaven and earth?”

I stared up at the Titan in disbelief.

Even you?

“Philosopher, second rank,” I said numbly, after Sol had given his own answer. I should have known. More fool me, I should have known no one was above the ladder. We were all of us condemned-

“No, you’re not listening,” Prometheus said, slashing his free hand through the air to dispel our answers and buffeting us both with gale winds. “I asked you where you stand.”

The Titan Flame lifted his head up to the black skies above.

“With the heavens?”

His head dipped back down, piercing both of us with the light of twin suns.

“Or against them.”

—

This is your reward for acting as a friend to human beings.

—

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