Virtuous Sons: A Greco Roman Xianxia

Sol,

The Raven From Rome

The haggling carried on long into the evening.

Beyond the bare basics that every mentor of a young patrician was owed, Selene was to be my master in cultivation. That demanded more. Her hallowed status of Oracle, anointed or not, demanded more still. She was a Heroic soul, standing head and shoulders above my own Sophic soul, and yet I was the older one of the two of us. Pride, if not convention, demanded compensation for that as well.

My father had spent half a day and a full night establishing terms with Aristotle after my mentor sought him out. It had been amiable enough at first, but by the time the moon had reached its zenith, there had been hollering fit to wake the dead.

Ours was a family that hadn’t known want for generations, not for anything material at least, and my father was far from a miser. Aristotle’s price had simply been that ridiculous. Had he been any other man, approaching the captain of the Fifth and demanding a consul's ransom for the privilege of teaching his son, my father would have fit him to his foot like a new boot and gone marching. Aristotle wasn’t any other man, though. He was the man who knew everything, and my father paid his price in the end.

Selene’s guidance was every bit as valuable to me now as Aristotle’s had been back then, and not just because she was the only Heroic cultivator I knew that didn’t want me dead. She was unique, even for a Heroine, just as Aristotle had been unique among scholars. She likely had insight that even Aristotle couldn’t have given me, were he with us on the Eos and at all inclined to teach. Selene had grown up immersed in aspects of mystery faith that Aristotle had always scorned. In all honesty, I wasn’t sure a material value could be matched to her at all. Yet even so, a price had to be paid.

It was a different sort of frustration than what my father had suffered. If Aristotle was the hunting hound, Selene was the hare. Beyond food and water and a very good horse, she suddenly became a woman with no earthly wants worth noting.

It took Griffon stepping in on her behalf to negotiate, masking it as a series of brotherly jabs, to finally get somewhere productive. By the time she realized what he was doing, it was too late.

Only then, after negotiations were all but settled, did the daughter of the Oracle and the Burning Dusk throw false modesty to the wind and ask something substantial of me. Something more than substantial. A request so heavy, a part of me wondered if she had been playing coy all along, just so she could sink me with it in the closing.

Unfortunately, I had little time left to fill the gaps in my education, and nowhere near enough at that to keep looking for Aristotle. It pained me to accept her final offer, but that was how negotiations like this went. The terms were set and signed there on the deck as night fell.

Another day came and went before our first lesson.

“I’m surprised,” the Scarlet Oracle said quietly, once we’d settled into place atop the crow’s nest. “With how determined you were to set a price, I expected us to start this right away. Why wait?”

The crow’s nest was a spacious throne for a boy like Lync, more than wide enough to fit him and Selene comfortably whenever she felt like joining him. For me, though, it was a somewhat tighter fit. Selene sat on the rim of the wooden outpost, balanced precariously with a cultivator's casual grace, while I hunched down in the center of it. Griffon, for his part, lay stretched out across the mast’s uppermost royal yard, one leg idly skimming back and forth across the face of the sail.

I leaned back against my side of the crow’s nest, mindful of the weight I was putting on it. With my own legs crossed underneath me, I could just barely fit inside the glorified bucket. With the full weight of the Greek captain’s virtue and my own burning heart’s blood to buoy me, I could also avoid snapping the mast beneath it like a twig.

“The men were too frightened to sleep last night,” I answered just as quietly. “They wouldn’t have slept tonight either, if we hadn’t found a slower river vein to slip off to.”

Thankfully, we had found one of the Nile’s thinner veins, and managed to avoid the worst of the rapids on our way to it. For now, the men of the Fifth slept like the dead, put down by their own frayed nerves as much as by the ship’s gentle rocking.

“You act like they’d have fallen to pieces if left to their own devices for a lecture's span,” Griffon said, shifting his gaze from the starry skies just long enough to raise an eyebrow at me. “What does it matter if they’re asleep or at their oars? Our blood won’t stop burning on their behalf.”

I grimaced. “It wasn’t their fatigue that held me back.” Though that had played its part. “It was their ability to listen in.”

Another reason to regret setting Scythas against me. His ability to stifle conversations on the breeze had been convenient when I was only one man, alone in my disgrace. Now that I was a captain again, no matter how minor, it would have been an invaluable skill to have at hand.

“You don’t trust them?” Selene asked, saddened.

“It isn’t a matter of trust. It’s a matter of expectation, between an officer and the legionaries he commands. Whether or not they realize it yet, they have expectations of me as their captain, responsibilities to me, and the same is true of me to them.”

She frowned. “Solus…”

“Is legion morale so fragile that even the plainest truth can shatter it?” Griffon mused. He smirked up at the stars, sensing my irritation. “They know you aren’t a god, fool. Not yet. They know you’re still climbing, and they had half a day to overhear us talking terms. Is your opinion of them so low? Or are you just that greedy?”

"Neither."

"Go on."

"It’s one thing to know that the captain is only a man. It’s another to see it for yourself." I shrugged. "They know that I have just as much to learn as they do, and now they know the lengths I’ll go to in order to fill those gaps. There’s some value in that, knowing you’re not the only one toiling. But they don’t need to see it."

"You’re afraid they’d see you fail," Griffon realized.

"No, I am certain they would see me fail. They have worries enough without adding that burden to the mix. Knowing your superiors toil just as you do, that’s a comfort. Seeing them struggle and fail firsthand? That’s a curse."

My brother hummed. "I can’t tell if that’s an admirable sentiment or the most arrogant excuse I’ve ever heard. Either way, it’s paper-thin."

"Welcome to the legions," I said blandly.

It was enough for Selene. She relaxed, turning and watching a squat midnight crawler of a ship drift past the Eos. The further from the heart-vein of the Nile we got, the more prevalent other ships became. Tonight, the river was aflame with torchlight and bobbing skiffs, all of them heading deeper inland towards the Old Kingdom. Raucous shouts clashed with the oppressive drone of an Egyptian jungle at night, and every now and then the late-night revelry won out. It was only the smallest sign of things to come, I knew.

When Selene turned back to regard me, she had the mantle of an older woman wrapped around her like a cloak. She favored me with a small, knowing smile, and in that moment the crow’s nest became a temple.

I dipped my head.

"Why have you come here, cultivator?" the Scarlet Oracle asked of me.

"To seek your wisdom."

"And what have you brought me?"

"Open ears."

"And an empty head," Griffon chimed in. Selene didn’t rise to it. She only nodded and raised a single finger.

"First, tell me something: What is the first virtue?"

Gravitas.

Justice.

"Freedom," Griffon and I spoke at the same time.

Selene considered us both, scarlet flames burning bright behind her eyes. "I’ll need to know the full story."

Griffon and I shared a look. Up on high, the moon rose steadily among the stars. Thirty ship-lengths down the river, there came a splash and a swell of laughter. The night was young. There was time enough to tell it.

So we did.

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Throughout it all, Selene maintained a composure well beyond her years. Her smile never strayed from that soft sympathy, and the flames behind her eyes never once dimmed.

When it was done, she leaned forward and clasped my right hand in both of hers.

"Solus," she spoke my name solemnly, with the echo of an Oracle’s majesty in her voice. "Hear me now, and know my word is truth in heaven—your mentor was a bastard, and your uncle didn’t help. We’ll have to start from scratch."

Griffon chortled until he choked.

Griffon,

The Risen Flame

It was refreshing to see someone else suffer in vain for a change, trying and failing to civilize the son of Rome. Doubly so when it was my haughty junior sister heaving the boulder uphill.

Selene sighed softly, kneading her temples. I lent her a few hands of my violent intent, massaging her skull and shoulders. She glanced wryly my way, smiling thankfully.

"You are the reason why most cults won’t let their civic cultivators leave their city until after foundations have been established," she told Sol frankly, knowing him well enough to not waste time trying to soften the blow. "You’re the only Roman I know, Solus. The Greek half of your foundation I can guide, and some aspects of refinement are universal, I’m sure, but the rest… I could cripple you beyond repair, introduce you to a technique that’s anathema to the Roman soul without realizing it and send the whole structure tumbling down. This schism…"

"Ignore it," Sol offered.

"You can’t ignore any portion of yourself if you wish to move forward, let alone half of all that you are. It won’t go away."

"I’ll manage it," the Son of Rome said, meeting her gaze with stoic resolve. "Let it be for today, and do what can be done. What is the Greek portion of my soul lacking?"

"Common sense," I suggested.

"I’d accept that from a corpse before I took it from you."

"Says the wretch that drank fermented offal and called it spirit wine."

"I was twelve years old, and it happened once."

"And how many times did you douse your rations with it after that?"

Sol gave me an ugly look. "Garum is delicious. You’d enjoy it with lamb."

I sneered. "That sounds repulsive. Show me."

Selene rolled her eyes as Sol struck me with a lived experience, nearly knocking me off my perch in the process. I licked my lips, contemplating the phantom flavor of seared lamb doused in fish sauce.

"... it is good," I admitted. "But you’re still a fool for drinking it."

"Your foundations are set in stone," Selene cut in, shifting her golden veil away from her face and silencing us both with a stern frown. "I can tell you what I know of the Sophic Realm, and I will, but I didn’t experience it in the way that most do. I can tell you the nature of each labor a cultivator must perform to advance from one stage to the next, but you both already know what that entails—"

"I don’t," Sol cut in. Selene’s lips parted.

"What do you mean you don’t know? You’ve advanced a dozen times, Solus—transcended an entire realm. That doesn’t just happen." She paused, biting her lip. "Unless this is another Roman conceit. Griffon, did you really never bother explaining the fundamentals to—?"

Her voice trailed off when she looked my way and saw my face.

"No," she said in disbelief. "You? You don’t—? Your father is Damon Aetos."

My silence echoed.

I knew of the Champion’s labors, of course. I had seen the truth of the eleventh with my own eyes, exchanged words with the titan flame Prometheus, and I had been made witness to a perfect ideal made manifest in an imperfect world of iron. The eagle of the Caucasus, the Phoenix that flew on freedom's wings—

Libertas.

Yet I could tell that my sister had a far more specific set of standards in mind when she referenced the labors. A set of expectations, a charter that I had never been given, let alone taught to read.

Not for the first time, I wondered if it had been like this for Nikolas when he set foot in the wider world beyond my father’s Scarlet City. How much had been withheld? For what purpose? I held a blood-stained hand up to the sky, and I wondered what it would have looked like in a world where I knew exactly what came next.

Imagine a Nile river that runs as red as it does rapid, and seas that stink of iron instead of salt. Chisel into your mind’s eye that hand of yours, cleaner than marble and untainted by sin. And all the world a bloody stain to contrast it.

As always, my dead ancestor chose the worst possible moment to make himself known, and the worst possible sentiment to put words to.

The spirit scoffed, sprawling upside down on the ship’s mast in a mirror image of my own posture, heedless of the natural forces that should have sent him tumbling to the deck.

You can hardly stand the smallest portion of this life, parceled out to you in these creeping moments. What makes you think looking ahead would give you any succor?

A dead man couldn’t possibly understand.

Would that a living man could.

"The two of you really are mad," I heard my sister say and lurched up from my sprawl. Selene wasn’t looking at the specter of the Aetos ancestor, though, nor the scarlet gem around my neck that anchored him to me. Her eyes flickered between Sol and I, vexed and wondering at the same time.

"What gave it away this time?" I asked curiously. Sol snorted.

Selene was quiet for a long time, peering down the Nile and the night-lit ships drifting along with its current. Finally, she answered my question with a question of her own.

"If I asked you to explain the Civic Realm to me in only one word, what would you say?"

"Duty," Sol answered at once. Selene hummed, neither approving nor rejecting the answer. "Griffin?"

I thought back to my life in the Scarlet City, as the young aristocrat of the Rosy Dawn, one and only heir to the tyrant Damon Aetos. I recalled the roar of fifty thousand cheering slaves, felt the sand between my toes, and the itch of laurel leaves against my skin.

"Discontent," I decided.

"Two very different answers," Selene mused, "and both of them different from mine. Yet… what if I asked you to define the Sophic Realm instead? One word."

"Reason," Sol and I answered at the same time. Selene smiled faintly and rolled her wrist.

"What of the Heroic Realm?"

Again, neither of us hesitated. "Spirit."

"And finally," Selene said, "the realm of tyrants."

We answered as three.

"Hunger."

"There are several reasons why the Akadēmía states that the true journey begins at the second realm, and this is one of them," Selene explained, shifting on the edge of the crow’s nest and drawing her sunray silks tight around her. "We exist as both body and soul, but we are three before we are two. The Broad identified this delineation and labeled it the tripartite soul. Just the same, it was the Broad that named the realms of philosophers, of heroes, and of tyrants. Which of those came first is a subject of debate among sophists to this day.

"At first glance, these realms might seem a perfect match to the partitions inside our souls. It’s a tyrant's nature to starve, after all, just as it is a hero's nature to burn and a philosopher's nature to wonder. It would be reasonable to look at the Broad’s framework and conclude that these realms exist to hone our soul in three turns.

"Or perhaps, that they should serve as gatekeepers to divinity. If reason is all that a philosopher is, why should they bother stoking their spirit? Why suffer their hunger? Neither one is necessary to progress. Not until the higher realms are reached. Reason is the philosopher, spirit is the hero, hunger is the tyrant."

"If," I said simply.

"If that were true," Selene agreed. She tilted her head, the sunburst stitched across her golden veil shifting in the breeze. "Is it not?"

“Of course not.”

“Why?”

"Because cultivation doesn’t change our nature," Sol said quietly. "It only makes us more of what we are. Some men are born starving, but no man is born a tyrant. If desire is the brand upon your soul, the world won’t wait for you to advance to the proper realm to make it known. You’ll starve as a citizen. You’ll seek knowledge to blunt your hunger as a sophist, reach for ever greater glories as a hero."

"I agree," Selene said, warmth briefly overtaking vexation. "The Broad gave us the realms as we know them to make sense of the world outside ourselves. On the other hand, he gave us the tripartite soul in an effort to describe the worlds within ourselves. External and internal truths. Never one without the other."

"Three by three," I said, eyes widening as another piece fell into place. Selene turned to me at once, though she did an admirable job of restraining her excitement.

"Three by three what?"

"Three steps by three steps. Three labors by three labors. We refine ourselves both body and soul, not one over the other. A philosopher refines their reason, that much is known, but that alone isn’t enough. They have to refine their spirit and their hunger as well. Sophist, hero, or tyrant, that won’t change.”

The backdrops might shift, depending on where you stood, but their nature stayed the same. Ten ideals, ten glories, ten domains.

Ten.

"That leaves one," Sol said, voicing my thought. "Ten steps to a realm, but only nine combinations. An outlier. The question is, which one?"

Rosy light bloomed above our ship, forty hands of my pankration intent grasping and clawing and jabbing at the stars above. The abrupt light show set off a wave of hooting and hollering from the ships nearest to our own. I ignored them, leaning forward with my elbows on my knees.

"The day we met, I was a ninth-rank citizen," I told Sol, brandishing ten of the forty limbs. "I could manifest ten hands of my violent intent, never more, and only less if I desired it. The day I advanced to the 10th rank and became a Captain of the Civic Realm, that number didn’t change. It wasn’t until four months later that I became a first-rank Sophist, and ten became twenty. When I advanced again, twenty turned to thirty. Now I stand on the third step of the Sophic Realm, and I have forty for my troubles.”

"The first nine labors refine us bit by bit, both body and soul. You’ll have a hundred hands at the ninth rank of the Sophic Realm," Sol mused. "Which means the last step is the outlier. To what end, though?"

"Consolidation," Selene’s answer was as simple as it was succinct, and more than that, it was right. I felt it in the marrow of my bones.

"Three labors for the Sophist, three labors for the Hero, and three labors for the Tyrant," I said. "Finally, a tenth to tie them all together, and ready the ship for the higher realm to come."

Sol and I shared a look, the air between us charged with anticipation. We both had eyes enough to see the line Selene had drawn for us from one point to another. Far from being disappointed, I could feel my spirit soaring. If this was the only thing my precocious little sister ever gave me, it would be far more than I’d ever expected to get.

“What comes next?” I asked her intently. “What does the fourth labor look like?”

The daughter of the Oracle unfurled the fingers of both hands, palms to the night sky, and lifted them as if coaxing up an early dawn.

“I have no idea.”

The old ghost chortled until he choked.

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