Interlude 3.2 [Myron Aetos]

Interlude 3.2 [Myron Aetos]

The Little Kyrios

In the aftermath of his discourse with his eldest cousin, Myron realized something that should have been evident to him from the beginning. Actions had consequences. He’d been enlightened, that was true, but his parents didn’t see it in quite the same light that he did.

For an entire week, Myron languished in his mother’s care. He wasn’t allowed to see his eldest cousin, let alone speak to him or seek his guidance, and most of his time was spent in bed recovering from his wounds. The one time he had managed to catch his father while his mother was away and begged him for an escape, Stavros Aetos had only shaken his head and ruffled Myron‘s hair, fondly scolding him.

“If you didn’t want to be smothered like this, you shouldn’t have lost.”

The lesson was bitterly learned, but he had no choice. The youngest son of the Rosy Dawn accepted the punishment for his hubris and did what he could while confined to quarters. He studied manically and circulated his pneuma while pretending to sleep. As soon as he could prove that he was healed, he raced out into the central courtyards of the Rosy Dawn in search of fresh air.

He was promptly found by Niko, and before Myron realized what was happening his eldest cousin had thrown him over his broad shoulder like a sack of grain and leapt off of the eastern mountain range.

Myron hollered into the wind, first in terror and then in wild exhilaration. He stretched his arms out and spread his fingers wide, trying to catch the wind in his hands as they hurtled over the Scarlet City. In what felt like no time at all, and simultaneously an eternity later, the western mountain range rushed forward to meet them.

Niko exhaled sharply, the sound of it somehow piercing through the howling of the wind. And though they struck the mountain hard enough that Myron was certain it should have shattered like it did when Uncle Damon conducted the rites, their impact produced no sound and left no marks on the stone. Myron bumped sharply off his cousin’s shoulder, catching himself on his hands and rolling to his feet. It certainly didn’t feel like he had just flown across the full length of a city.

In the distance of a clear blue sky, he heard a faint rumble.

“Good afternoon, cousin,” Niko said, lifting up his left leg just enough to stretch out his ankle, then alternating and pulling his right knee up to his chest. He favored Myron with a wry smile. “Feeling well-rested?”

“I was rested six days ago,” Myron said, and then accusingly added, “You left me to rot!”

“Aunt Raisa was far too furious with me to approach you in your room,” the youngest Hero of the Rosy Dawn explained. “To tell you the truth, Uncle Stavros wasn’t exactly pleased with me either. When a Hero and a Citizen exchange discourse, it’s a very fine line between guidance and gratuity. I had no business being in that octagon with you.”

That wasn’t true, and Myron didn’t appreciate it being phrased that way for his benefit. They both knew that it was him that had no business being in that octagon with Niko.

“I’m the one who challenged you,” he insisted. Though he knew trivialities like facts hardly mattered to his parents when it came to him. Niko laughed and threw an arm around his shoulder, pulling him into a side embrace.

“That you did. But I’m the one that accepted.”

“I didn’t die, and I wasn’t crippled,” he muttered. It was petulant, beneath a young pillar. But sometimes he just couldn’t help it. “We’re cultivators, aren’t we? Why should it matter that you were stronger? No one is favored to win when they challenge the Fates.”

Niko blinked and looked down at him. “Who taught you to say things like that?”

Myron flushed. He’d said the words with confidence, but it was embarrassing to be called out on it. He had no idea how Lio made it sound so natural when he spoke like this.

He was saved from answering by the distant screams of his cousins, rapidly growing closer, and the rising sound of thunder on a cloudless day. One by one, Niko’s Heroic companions came crashing back down to earth with the other young pillars in their arms. Myron watched with some satisfaction as Heron and Rena sprawled onto their hands and knees upon landing - it was nice to know he hadn’t been the only one taken by surprise. Castor, being the most graceful of the five of them by far, managed to catch his balance after only a couple hopping steps, and Niko‘s wife held Lydia around the waist while she got her bearings before letting go.

“What was that!?” Heron gasped, coming shakily up to one knee. He looked to Niko, wild-eyed, and then to the tall, tanned hero in hybrid finery and weathered pirate garb - with a coarse black beard to match - that had carried him clear across the city. “You said it was within spitting distance!”

“It is,” the raggedly rich Heroic cultivator said, canted green eyes burning mischievously. He turned his head and pursed his lips, and with a sound like cracking stone he spat back in the direction of the Rosy Dawn.

Myron watched the spittle shoot through the air faster than an arrow from a bow and vanish into the distance. His upper lip twitched.

“Look!” The Heroine that had carried Rena exclaimed, slapping the noble sailor over the head. “Even the boy is disgusted with you!” He shoved her away, a challenging glint in his smile, and her long red hair shivered and rose up ever so slightly around her as her heroic flames burned.

“Now now,” Iphys Aetos chided, moving over to her husband and wrapping an arm around his waist, sandwiching Myron in between the two of them. “Behave in front of the children.” Even as she said it, she shared an amused little smirk with Niko. Myron got the feeling they had exchanges like this often.

“What’s going on, Niko?” Lydia asked, helping Rena to her feet. “Is this...”

Myron looked between their other three cousins as best he could with his face sandwiched between two powerful thighs, uneasy. Among the three of them, Rena would be the most sympathetic by far to the agreement to pursue that Lydia and Myron had made with Niko. Castor would almost surely betray them to their parents, and Heron - well, he didn’t want to think about how his older brother would react.

This couldn’t be the private tutoring that Niko had promised them, then. Could it?

“I’ve been thinking,” Niko began.

“Impossible,” the Hero that had carried Castor said at once. Niko rolled his eyes, ignoring him.

“What does that have to do with the Burning Dusk?” Heron asked. They had progressed past the outer estates now, coming up on the central pavilion with its heroic sentinel statues and grand fountain. The Burning Dusk Cult was a mirror image of the Rosy Dawn in nearly every way, down to the statue of a man standing in the center of the pavilion’s fountain, filling it with a steady stream of water from its palm. The only difference was that it was the opposite hand from the one at the Rosy Dawn’s fountain.

“You’re all impatient to grow, some more than others,” Niko said. Lydia looked away. “And I understand that. I’ve stood in your place. But before I can watch you all tumble off the side of the cliff with a smile and a wave, I have to be sure that it’s your own restlessness driving you. Not our uncle’s.”

Myron sat up ramrod straight on his cousin’s shoulders.

“What are you saying, Niko?” Lydia asked him, razor focused.

“Manufacturing prodigies is something that every great civilization has tried to do since we were first molded from formless clay,” he explained. “It’s never worked on a grand scale, of course, because cultivation is a journey of the soul, and every soul is unique - its own star in the boundless sky.”

“But,” Myron said quietly.

“But,” Niko allowed, “while manufacturing the talent needed to advance is a fool’s dream, manufacturing discontent is not.”

“Not for the kyrios,” Iphys said, her voice hushed. The rest of the heroes exchanged tense looks.

They reached the central pavilion, impossibly deserted for this time of day. The sun was still high in the sky. Niko strode purposefully up to the central fountain in the pavilion.

“Not for Uncle Damon,” he agreed. Then he reared back and kicked the lip of the marble fountain.

The young pillars of the Rosy Dawn stared, aghast, at the shattered remains of the Burning Dusk’s central edifice, and the gaping maw of a tunnel beneath it.

“Did you know,” Niko said conversationally, moving deftly over the rubble, “that the Rosy Dawn and the Burning Dusk used to mingle with one another during their initiation rites? Instead of one day being devoted entirely to the trials of hunger, spirit, and reason, initiates spent one night contemplating the mystery of the dawn, and they spent another night contemplating the dusk.”

They ventured down into the tunnel, so familiar and yet so strange, and only now did someone finally dare to confront them. Myron looked back just in time to see the Heroic pirate in his finery heft a chunk of rubble the size of a chariot in his hands and slam it into place behind them, just as Gianni Scala himself came sprinting down the steps of the main estate towards the pavilion.

“The practice ended after centuries of precedent, when our uncles returned home from their adventures and Uncle Damon took the Rosy Dawn in his hand.” Niko raised his own hand and scarlet flames erupted in his palm, illuminating the mosaics embedded in the walls of the mountain tunnel. “He separated the two cults entirely and forbade them from sharing in their rites. I was able to visit this place once before I left, but only because your fathers smuggled me in.”

Myron had never even heard of such a practice. Looking at the faces of his brother and cousins, he knew that they hadn’t either.

“Why would he do that?” Rena asked weakly.

“There’s a lot that goes into pursuing virtue,” Niko said, prompting a round of firm nods from his companions. “Especially for those of us privileged enough to take part in the cults of greater mystery. These mysteries define us. They make our virtue what it is.”

Niko had said he wanted to make sure that their restlessness was their own.

The bisected corpse of the fallen sun god was only one half of a body.

“What happens if you only see half the mystery?” Myron asked, though he had a sickening feeling that he already knew.

In the scarlet light of his rosy palm, Niko’s smile was bleak.

“They say the father split us at our conception, that every human being is only half of a greater whole. That’s why we seek out companions. It’s why we marry.” Iphys squeezed his hand tight. “It’s human nature to seek completion. It’s only natural to be restless when you only have half of the full picture.

“How can you possibly solve a mystery when you’ve only seen half of it?”

They descended into the cavernous tomb of another bisected corpse from the same fallen sun god, and as they reverently watched the dusk fall into its incomprehensible palm, Myron felt something slide into place within him. Some primal itch that he had never known he needed to scratch until this very moment. He felt his entire soul relax.

And he knew.

Lio would never be satisfied, no matter how far he ventured, no matter what sights he saw. Because a part of him, however large or small, would hunger endlessly for this. For something the outside world couldn’t provide him. Something he should have had from the start. All because of their uncle.

Lio’s father had starved him.

Myron’s pneuma surged, doubling and redoubling as his soul advanced to the eighth rank of the civic realm. It was enough to break the spell the bisected corpse had over the young pillars of the Rosy Dawn, make them turn to him in shock and confused elation. The Heroic cultivators, by contrast, were entirely subdued.

“Are you restless, cousin?” Niko asked with that quiet intent.

Of course, he already knew the answer was yes.