Chapter 1.2 [Nikolas Aetos]

Chapter 1.2 [Nikolas Aetos]

Slayer of monsters.

It was a title he’d been given the day he ascended, a title most cultivators within the Heroic Realm received, sooner or later. A natural consequence of the lives they lived. He took pride in it, as he knew his wife and their companions did. The life of a hero was fraught with dangers, both internal and external, but that was what made it so rewarding.

Celebrating success was important. It wasn’t always the case that the monsters lost, after all. He’d seen that particular reality for himself. Lived it, since he was a boy.

There were some monsters that even heroes couldn’t slay.

Damon Aetos stood in the gaping entry to his office. His door had been kicked cleanly off its hinges. The force of the conflict that had taken place in the hall had carried through the open entry, shattering the dining couch and table entirely. The contents of the wall-carved shelves were scattered around the room - some had been blown clear off the terrace, into the central pavilion outside.

The Tyrant of the Rosy Dawn stepped into his office and righted his desk. It had been thrown up against the back wall, but unlike the other furniture it had weathered the blow. Lacking a proper seat, he leaned back against it, arms crossed.

“Enter.”

Niko entered the ruined office with his bride at his side, a bracing hand on the small of her back. She was tense, understandably so. The initiation rites were an interesting experience, even to a cultivator of her stature, and the mystery at the bottom of the eastern mountain range baffled the mind no matter where you stood among heaven and earth. Niko had wondered, as they descended, whether it would be different now that he’d reached the same realm as his aunts and uncles, if there would be any greater clarity. But no. It had been just the same.

Then they’d exited the mountain, reeling from the mystery of the bisected corpse of the fallen sun god, and found the cult in chaos. It hadn’t been hard to guess who was behind it.

Niko’s stomach sank as his cousins slunk into the office like beaten dogs. They had the marks to match their posture, too. Bruises, split lips, and black eyes abounded. The entire right side of Heron’s face was already darkening into an ugly purple bruise, leftover from a vicious backhand. Poor Rena’s left eye was almost entirely swollen shut. Castor gingerly cradled a broken wrist, and Myron walked with a noticeable limp.

Lydia was the worst by far. She had escaped with the least physical damage, but her expression was haunting. She looked utterly lost. As the five of them knelt in front of the kyrios, she was the only one who didn’t look shamefully at the floor. She stared straight ahead.

“What happened here?” Damon asked. His voice was level. Iphys inhaled quietly, circulating her pneuma. Niko shook his head. She glanced at him, hesitated, but released it.

If it came to that, it wouldn’t matter anyway.

“I saw Lio leave the pavilion,” Myron said. The other three cousins that were paying attention to the conversation visibly relaxed. “He’d been acting strange since Niko arrived, so I followed him. He went looking for Sol-”

“Sol?” Damon interrupted. Myron swallowed.

“The slave, uncle. The one that Lio sponsored for initiation.”

“Why do you know this slave by name?” Damon asked.

“We used to spend time together, the three of us,” Myron admitted.

“And why were you spending time with a slave?” It was asked with no particular inflection. Even so, the dread it invoked was palpable. Heron grit his teeth, warring with himself, but he was beaten to the punch before he could speak up on his younger brother’s behalf.Ñøv€l--ß1n hosted the premiere release of this chapter.

By Myron himself. “He’s skilled, uncle. I tried to ambush him when we first met and I couldn’t touch him, even in chains. He’s wise, too. He and Lio helped me get through my bottleneck over the summer. And... Lio acted like he used to, when he was with Sol. It was fun.”

Not for the first time since returning home, Niko marveled at the boy his youngest cousin had become in just a few short years. Only nine years old and already facing challenges that his elder cousins balked at. He was growing at a prodigious rate, and it was clear that it hadn’t gone to his head. Though perhaps there had been another hand involved in that.

“I see,” Damon said. His nephews and nieces waited nervously. “Continue.”

Myron exhaled. “He went looking for Sol. When he found him, he broke his manacles. I asked what they were doing, and he said...”

“Olympia,” Lydia murmured. “He said he was going to Olympia.”

Since he’d first ascended to the Heroic Realm, Niko had been walking on glass. He was still acclimating to the changes in his tripartite soul, still worried even when interacting with his cousins who were all deep into the Civic Realm. They still felt like baby birds in his hands. He couldn’t trust himself to rough house with them like he used to, let alone truly spar. He’d become far too strong in too short a time.

Was that how a tyrant felt, to look at a hero? At what point did the entire world feel as if it was made of glass?

“Nikolas.” Niko straightened. There was something in his uncle’s eye. “I’m sorry. He took your father’s sword.” Iphys looked back at him, concerned. She knew the story, of course. He’d told her.

“I see,” he rasped.

“That impudent child,” came a voice from the hall. The twin eagles of the Rosy Dawn and their wives entered the office. Niko’s aunts went to their children at once, raising their faces and checking them for serious or disfiguring injury. Stavros Aetos placed a hand atop Heron’s head, his expression a storm as he locked eyes with his brother. “We warned you for years. Years, Damon! How many times has that boy spit on the name of the Rosy Dawn while you sat back and watched him fondly? How many times has he shirked his duties as heir? And now this?”

Damon’s eyes narrowed. “You want to do this now?”

“He took Iskander’s blade.” Fotios Aetos stood beside his brother, rigid with outrage. “He beat our children like dogs and discarded my daughter three months before their marriage! We’re doing it now!”

“What would you have me do?”

“I want him disowned!” Fotios snapped. Niko had never seen him so furious. Watching Aunt Chryse attempt to console Lydia, still slumped on the marble floor, he found it hard to hold it against his uncle.

“Never,” Damon said immediately. Fotios’ expression darkened, and Niko wondered if this was the day he’d see a tyrant fight. But Stavros clamped a hand on his brother’s shoulder, stopping him before he could say something he wouldn’t be able to take back.

“Disinherited, then,” Stavros said. When Damon didn’t immediately respond, he went on, “Look at our children, brother. Look at what your son has given them in return for their love. A kyrios’ hands didn’t leave those marks. This isn’t justice.”

Damon stared at his younger brother for a long moment.

“Chryse. Raisa. Take the children, please.”

Niko’s aunts looked worriedly between their husbands and their brother-in-law, but ultimately complied. Niko whispered assurances to his cousins as they passed, squeezing Rena’s shoulder and pulling Castor into a quick one-armed hug. Then it was only the pillars and them. Niko decided that was still two too many, and quietly ushered Iphys towards the door.

“Stay.”

He looked back, confusion and a low dread in his gut. “Uncle?”

“My brothers demanded we do this now, so we will.” Damon said. And then, simply, as if observing the weather, he declared, “As of now, my son is disinherited. I have no other children, so the burden of the kyrios falls to the next best candidate among my nephews and nieces.”

The dread rose.

“What does that have to do with me?” Niko asked, though he already knew.

Damon smiled faintly. “Congratulations, nephew.”

Niko looked to his other two uncles for help. Both of them had sons, surely they’d rather one of them take on the role? But no, while Stavros and Fotios were both scowling ferociously at the blatant snub, when they met his eyes they only nodded in agreement. No, no, no. He didn’t want their blessing! He didn’t want this!

In that moment, he understood perfectly what his little cousin had been feeling. And he decided he was going to do exactly the same thing about it. As soon as his uncles entered their closed door cultivation, he was going to jump in his ship and sail far, far-

“Niko!” Philon shouted, his voice carrying from outside. The fastest of their companions leapt up and through the gaping hole in the eastern wall of the Aetos estate, sliding down the hall in the blink of an eye and catching himself roughly on the door frame. He was heaving for breath, his eyes wild. The heroic cultivator held up a length of severed rope.

“They took the Eos.”

Son of a bitch.