Chapter 1.9

Chapter 1.9

The Young Griffon

The thunder of funeral drums drowned out all else. Around us, men and women of lesser constitution cried out soundlessly, gripping their ears and collapsing in the streets. It was a pitiful sight. Idly, I dragged two fingers across my right ear, frowning when they came away bloody.

“This seems excessive,” I told Scythas. He looked at me like I was simple, waving his torch at his own ears and shaking his head. “What sort of worthless cultivator can’t read lips?” Scythas gestured at his ears again, frustrated.

A calloused, marble-white hand planted itself against my chest, and the woman I’d been in the process of greeting shoved me aside. I felt the stone of the street crack beneath my feet, Scythas sent staggering as I went skidding back. The cultivator walked right past us, mouthing something to Scythas. He couldn’t read lips, of course. But I could.

Out of my way, trash.

I couldn’t physically hear the crack of my pankration hand slapping her face, but my imagination filled in the gap.

The woman went deathly still, her face turned only a fraction to the side by a blow I had used to throw a pirate clean off his ship days prior. Scythas looked between us, leaning on his back foot and gripping his torch so tightly I could see the shaft of it splinter. The drums changed their cadence as if by my own design, rising to a kinetically charged pace. Boom, da-da, boom, da-da, boom da da da boom.

You dare? The woman mouthed. Something told me even if the drums were gone, it would have been impossible to hear her. It was that sort of deadly whisper.

The Heroine finally gave me her full attention. She was marred by deep scars, from her sandaled feet to the tips of her seemingly delicate fingers. They were a shade lighter than her skin, which itself was marble white, to the point that they looked nearly translucent. Each scar was a smooth line without any jagged edges. One, curving from the nape of her neck up to the bridge of her nose, was currently creased by a furious expression.

I felt danger as she advanced on me. Her eyes were the color of desert heat, an earthen shade approaching orange that was backlit by the flame of her soul. Her heroic spirit was raging.

I strode forward to meet her. She tried subduing me with her presence alone at first. Two of my pankration hands struck out at the eddies of her influence, parting them like a swimmer parted the waves. The fire in her eyes rose and her left hand settled on the pommel of a blade that hung naked at her hip, made entirely of bronze.

No, I spoke, silent beneath the drums. Furious desert-flame eyes read my lips. You dare. Laying your mongrel hand on me, as if you were worth the time it would take to kill you.

Her grip on her sword shifted. The hairs on the back of my neck rose.

You don’t know who I am, do you? she asked. As if it was the most natural thing in the world that I would. We were close now, at her preferred sword striking distance if I had to guess. I leaned in, staring her down. I whispered an oath in the mad thunder of the funeral drums.

You’re the woman who ruined my favorite shawl, I told her. You could break your back working for the rest of your miserable life and it wouldn’t amount to half this relic’s value.

The Heroine looked down at the golden shawl that an old woman had given me an hour ago. There was a small tear in the fabric where her nail had caught it while shoving me. She stared at it for a moment, and I felt the currents of her influence ripple around it, examining it.

It’s a rag, she said confidently. It only took her most of a minute to realize.

I sneered. You have eyes. Tell me, then, where is Olympus Mons?

I noticed Scythas backing away in my peripheral vision, his eddies pressing against me in a wordless warning. I shrugged it off as I had before. On the other hand, Sol’s influence was not so easily shaken - more a riptide than a current. I forced it away with a few hands of pankration intent. Obnoxious Roman, I could handle myself.

In the moment between drum beats, the Heroic cultivator drew her blade and lashed it at my face.

The palm strike hit her in the center of her chest, sending her skidding back. Her feet dug furrows through the stone. Her teeth grit, realization in those desert-heat eyes. I’d given her first careless shove right back to her. Heroic pneuma rose. I inhaled deeply, blood thundering through my veins.

Sol struck her with Gravitas, and through the lens of my new Sophic sense it was like a tidal wave simply washed her away. She went flying through the crowd, howling a curse that I suddenly realized could be heard in the absence of the drums.

For a moment I didn’t move, frozen in my stance. I felt eyes on me, but not as many as there might have been. The drums had stopped, but most of the people around us were still dazed in their absence. Overeager Philosophers and arrogant Citizens who had flown too close to the sun huddled on the ground, hands clapped over their ears in agony. I straightened up, exhaling slowly. I felt good.

I threw Sol a sly grin as he walked over. He had that storm in his eyes, the one that meant something exciting was coming.

“I thought I’d have to twist your arm,” I told him, swiping a thumb across the cut on my cheek. It wasn’t deep enough to scar. Somehow that was disappointing. “But you’re starting the fights for me.”

“I’m not the one who slapped her,” he said, annoyed. His gaze was distant, focused on things I couldn’t see. “For this next one, there’s a new technique I want you to practice.”

“Ho? By all means, master. This lowly sophist is here to learn.”

“It’s an ancient virtue, passed down to me from my father, and to him from his father.”

Despite myself, I was interested.

“This one awaits your wisdom,” I said formally. Sol hummed, measuring his next words with that riptide gravity.

“It’s called diplomacy.”

I snorted, shoving him away from me. He glanced at me with storm-gray amusement, before focusing fully on the cultivator currently approaching us. The Hero wearing the crocodile. I flexed all twenty-two of my hands. The two flesh hands stung, bleeding slowly from shallow cuts. The twenty of my soul’s intent stung too, and I spat the taste of their blood from my mouth.

“You didn’t draw your sword,” Scythas muttered. He was looking out over the crowd, in the direction the Heroine had been sent flying, but the words were for me.

“Of course not,” I said, ignoring the fact that I’d almost died three times. I laid a bleeding palm on the pommel of my uncle’s blade. It hummed like lightning. “She wasn’t worthy.”

The giant of a Hero emerged from the crowd, stepping over a cringing family of cultivators all wearing matching indigo tunics and huddling away from the lingering echo of the drums. His skin was lightly tanned, but weathered. His jaw was square, chest broad and strong. His hair was nearly as dark as Sol’s, but longer and shaggier. He wore ocean blue robes beneath his crocodile cloak, bleached nearly white by the sun.

Unlike the Heroine, he made no move to attack. He considered Sol and I, and Scythas beside us.

“It’s rude to start fights during a funeral,” he finally said.

Sol and I shared a look. He mouthed ‘diplomacy’, as if I’d been the one to call them to us.

“Agreed,” I said, offering him a bloody hand. He took it. He was only about a head taller than Sol and I, but his hand dwarfed mine. And the strength of his grip matched the size. I matched him grip for grip, smiling cheerfully through the pain.

“My name is Griffon, and this is Sol. What’s yours, friend?”

A chant began in the center of the agora. The smoke and embers gathered there rose into the sky, taking the form of colossal fingers. An ashen hand reaching futilely up to heaven. The funeral entered a new phase.