Virtuous Sons: A Greco Roman Xianxia

The Tyrant Riot

Their feud was ancient.

With their finest days so many years behind them, it was easy for an outsider to forget that the elders of the Raging Heaven Cult had once been the hands that shaped the free world. The fact that they could be called elders at all, each one marked by the same indigo brush, was itself a damning sign of their decline. They had been unique existences once. They had been triumphant, and terrible.

Even before the high bastard of the Raging Heaven Cult had stolen them from their thrones, they had despised one another. It was often said that a monarch inherited their nation’s riches alongside its scars, and that every son bore the burden of his father’s sins. For existences like theirs, inheriting nations from fathers and mothers that had ruled for countless mortal generations, the weight of ancestral enmity was overwhelming.

Tearing each of them down from the seat of their power, breaking their crowns and discarding their fragments - that has been insult enough. The kyrios could have killed them then and there and they would have spent an eternity cursing his existence in the underworld. But, of course, that hadn’t been enough for the Free Mediterranean's least satiable hedonist. No. He’d wanted more from them.

The elder Tyrants of the cult hated the mad kyrios for usurping them. But they reviled him for forcing them to band together.

Time together had done nothing to mend the wounds inflicted by their predecessors. There were not enough centuries, could never be enough thread on the loom, for their enmity to be put to rest. Shared company only made it worse. Naturally, though he waxed poetic whenever challenged on the subject, the kyrios had known this would be the result.

He’d thought it was funny at the time

Now, their joining brought ruin to his city. They destroyed it all - the monuments built in his name, the monuments that he had built himself, and all the bright-eyed examples of the young generation’s budding virtue. All of it crumbled in the face of eight Tyrants’ ancient malediction.

Cosmic laws were overwritten, repealed, and overwritten again at a rate that mortal man could hardly even conceptualize, let alone perceive. Their clashing destroyed the world around them in a thousand different ways, sparing nothing but the enduring amethyst that wound through and bolstered Kaukoso Mons. Free at last to vent their anger, they unmade everything the Tyrant Riot had built.

They found no catharsis in the act. In fact, it only stoked their fury. No matter how much of his life’s work they unmade, they couldn’t destroy the portion of him that still lingered in the marrow of their bones.

No matter what they took from the kyrios’ accursed legacy, they couldn’t shake the feeling he was laughing at them still.

They fought alone against seven, each of the kyrios’ would-be usurpers, but the word brawl could not have done it justice. Even the concept of a battle was not enough. Regardless of their current circumstances and no matter how disgraced - when a Tyrant fought, they went to war.

The war for the indigo throne had begun the day the Tyrant Riot died. They had waged it cold, searching through shadows and cats’ paws for the moment where the stars aligned to strike. Each of them had desired a different version of this day, but the fact that it would come had never once been a doubt in their minds. The kyrios had throttled eight lions, chained them each to one other, and left them all to starve while vultures circled overhead. How else could it have ended?

In circumstances like these, they had no choice but to eat each other. Four of them had been deceived into a vagabond’s alliance, but their careful vows hardly mattered here - the Tyrants of Howling Wind, Scattered Foam, Broken Tide, and Waning Wax had sworn to stand against the First Son to Burn, that much was firm. But they hadn’t sworn to stand together. Nor had they sworn to spare the rest of their rivals in the joining. The raven had changed things, but only just.

Without his ethos, the Tyrant Polyzalus was not an insurmountable threat. By all accounts, the fracturing of his foundations should have rendered him a complete non-entity when the war began in earnest. Yet somehow, his wrath was more than enough to match their dominions. That wrath, and the Gadfly’s incessant fucking buzzing. They dealt horrific blows to one another, violence on a scale that made Polyzalus’ earlier clash with his Butcher look like a child’s squabble, but soon found themselves trapped in a terrible equilibrium.

If the raven’s alliance had been made of horn rather than ivory, the war might have been won in an instant. If any of them had been capable of tolerating even one more rival to the indigo throne, even just until the day was done, they might have been able to turn that tide as two. But it had been centuries since any of them were capable of such compromise - these days, they would only act together if they had no other choice. So instead they waged eight wars alone, and not a single one was winnable.

Until suddenly, one of them was.

When a pillar of stark light rose up from the earth to drill through starry heaven, their disbelief warped the air around the mountain. Some of the elders were far older than others, but none of them were young enough to have been spared the scars of this particular purpose. They couldn’t have forgotten it if they’d tried.

This far from its origin point, the touch of its hunger was a faint and distant thing. Uncaring of their efforts to keep it that way, the King’s Curse gnawed away at them. Sliver by sliver, undeterred, it devoured their dominions. The Conqueror’s blade cast its hungry shadow over the entire city, enshrouding all their souls but one. Not even the bastard spawn of Rosy Dawn that had drawn it was spared.

The only man the King’s Curse spared was Ptolemy, and only then because it had claimed his soul long ago. Had that been the extent of it, though their immediate priorities would have surely shifted, the war would not have changed. But it wasn’t, and so it did.

Like the rebirth of a star, the Hollow Satrap drew strength from the coronating light that had shrouded them in shadows. He lit up from within, the yawning hollow of his eerie domain giving way to stark light and overwhelming purpose. His body swiftly followed suit.

The Tyrant once known as the Savior had been emaciated for centuries, starving worse than any of his peers. It was unheard of for a Tyrant’s body to disobey their idea of themselves, yet Ptolemy looked closer to a corpse than he ever could a king. It could be seen in his hair, white with age and thinning out. It could be seen in his sunken cheeks, ever without color. It could be inferred from his dim eyes, their spark long dead. He still possessed a Tyrant's stature, but it was difficult to tell when he could no longer stand up at his fullest height. He’d been hunched and hollowed out by his crimes. It had been that way since before the kyrios came to collect him, and his condition had only grown worse with time. It was the only reason why the Tyrants of the true Greek city-states tolerated his existence.

Of all the Tyrants left in Olympia after the kyrios’ passing, the First Son to Burn had emerged as the clearest present threat. However, that was as they were. Had each of them stood at their fullest prime, it would have been a different one that threatened seven. And it wouldn’t have been close.

Ptolemy’s skeletal frame abruptly expanded and filled out, like some unseen colossus had been inhaling his every essence for centuries and was just now finally exhaling. Iron cords of muscle surged beneath his skin, bringing color and healthy definition to his frame. He straightened his back and rose to his full height, his spine cracking and popping grotesquely with the motion, and when he was done he stood taller than even the towering Queen of the Amazons. His cheeks filled out, accentuating a strong jaw that before had made him look like half a corpse. His thinning hair fell out entirely, was forced out, as dark curls of hair burst forth from his skin. A full head of dark and wavy hair sprung up from his head as if it had always been there, stripping away his oldest years in an instant.

Ptolemy inhaled his first full breath in centuries, the decrepit robes that had hung limp off his body for so long now straining to the limits of their threads as his barrel chest expanded. Though each of his rivals had stopped dead in their tracks at the appearance of the coronating pillar, they were forced to turn away from it as a second beacon of stark suffering lit up the plateau of the indigo cult.

The source of the horrible resonance, the linking hand in the shape of a man, took all the wind from his first full breath in centuries and used it to roar.

“DEFILER!”

The Macedonian’s pneuma exploded from him in a torrent, no longer consuming mindlessly as his hollow domain had for so many years. The rest of the seven matched themselves against it, at first only with a portion of their efforts - Aleuas tried to divert it with his hurricane’s current, Solon attempted to remake it, and Midas tried to turn it all to gold. They attempted to block, to steal, to make their own, or even to ignore. Very quickly, they realized not one of those methods would be enough.

Ptolemy thrashed them all, more than twice the man he’d been a moment ago, and less than half the man he’d be a moment later. The light of shining stars poured out from his soul, glowing brighter by the second and gathering around his head in a coalescing crown. He overwhelmed their sickly domains. He broke the weapons in their hands. Hit them with clenched fists that struck like falling stars. All the while, he raged at the presumption of the newest scarlet son, whose hands had dared to grasp above his station.

Every second he grew stronger, and every moment more enraged. In the latter sense, he was far from alone. The instant that that coronating pillar had drilled up through the heavens, every Tyrant on the mountain knew the golden raven had to die.

Unfortunately, that shared resolve would do them little good if Ptolemy tore them all to shreds before he went and killed the boy.

They fought to flee, but he would not let them regroup. They fought to distract, but he would not be swayed from his new purpose. They fought to survive, but the Conqueror’s mad dog had gone centuries without a meal and it was time for him to eat. He took them all in hand, and the world around them warped as the distant roar of marching feet and the screaming of war horses loomed loudly in his soul. A long-repressed nightmare brought terror to their empty chests. Their intent faltered and slipped from their fingers, leaving just the empty dread.

By the time the Macedonian froze up again, the plateau was all but won. His right hand had Leonidas by the neck, strangling the Spartan king and all 300 of his infernal Heroes. His left hand had palmed Thalestris’ skull like a discus and wrenched her head back so that she formed an arch worthy of a bowstring, a finger buried into each of her eye sockets. His heel ground Midas deeper into the mountain than any of their attacks had cut thus far, breaking the Tyrant’s golden spine like so much brittle clay. The remaining four of seven were hardly any better off.

In no time at all, the balance of the indigo war had shifted entirely out of their hands. The Savior’s abrupt hesitation was the last chance they’d ever get, each of them knew. Yet not a single one of seven Tyrants moved to take advantage of it.

When the voice of an era returned from the East, heaven and earth and all those in between stood still to hear him speak.

“NO.”

Their horror would have stopped their hearts if they still had one between them.

“NEVER NOTHING. NEVER NO ONE.”

It echoed through the city and far, far beyond it. Further than even their perceptions stretched. It carried over the mountain ranges. It carried across the seas.

Leonidas fell wheezing to the ground. Thalestris crumpled in a bloody, blinded heap.

Ptolemy the Great looked towards the stark pillar of the north with shock and silent hope.

“THIS MAN TOO IS ALEXANDER.”

The Conqueror named his heir with pride, daring all that heard it to deny him, and the chorus of heaven raged impotently in response.

“Alex,” Ptolemy breathed. His outrage vanished, gone like it had never been. They heard a skipping beat inside his chest. They heard - his heart. He had a heart. “My brother!”

Ptolemy the Great discarded all his rivals like forgotten trash, the star crown on his brow blazing with salvation’s light. He left the seven of them there on the brink of bitter oblivion, like the bounty of their souls wasn’t worth the harvest. Like they meant nothing to him at all.

“My king!”

He shouted out, and rushed away with soaring hope.

“I’m with you! I’m here! I swear to you upon the Styx, I’ll never stray again!”

Their feud was ancient, their egos unsurpassed. Even when opportunity had come and hammered down their doors, offering up the crippled king of Burning Dusk, their hatred of each other hadn’t allowed for a single moment of true cooperation. It was simply what they were. Even the death of Polyzalus wasn’t worth the insult to their ethos. Since the day the Tyrant Riot died, they’d each resolved to never share their strength again.

The moment Ptolemy the Great turned his back on his rivals to join the king of kings, they ran him through with seven swords of all their strongest powers. They struck him down together.

The Savior died with kingdoms in his eyes.

His final breath scattered Olympia to the wind.

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