Chapter 1.102

Chapter 1.102

The Son of Rome

At some point in our journey through the Augur's Orphic faith, the raven’s mantle had changed.

The furthest outpost of the Howling Wind Cult estates on Kaukoso Mons was manned by a Sophic cultivator near the peak of his realm. He was an imposing figure, likely chosen for his stature as much as his advancement, with scars and a permanent scowl to accent the controlled malice in his dark eyes. In the faint light cast by his iron lantern’s flame, he looked menacing by any man’s standard.

He flinched when I stepped into his lantern’s light.

The ravenous shadows of the raven’s mantle had taken on different shapes for Griffon and I, back when we first consumed and internalized the Rein-Holder’s starlight marrow. Griffon had chosen to wear the rags carelessly around his waist like he did his own Rosy Dawn attire, and so as a raven his midnight cloth pooled around his feet and merged with the shadows of the night. It made it seem as if he was waist-deep in shadow wherever he went - like he had come from Tartarus itself, and a portion of him still resided there.

Though it hadn’t been a conscious decision at the time, I’d donned my mantle like a legate’s cloak - draped over one shoulder, bisecting my body with shade. On the second night of our hunting, Griffon had laughingly remarked that I looked like I was peering out from around a corner, no matter where I happened to be. Both of us had covered our faces with shrouds, obscuring our easiest identifying features.

That was before we had our second taste of madness. Now, the raven’s mantle was changed. The man on guard was my senior in cultivation, yet he took three steps back as I stalked further into his light before finally overcoming his unease. He clenched his empty fist and set his feet, standing up straight while I closed the remaining distance.

“Stop,” he commanded. I took two more steps. “Stop.”

His pneuma rose and his influence clenched into a white-knuckled fist. I stopped just inside of his reach. He was an imposing figure, nearly as tall as me and more heavily muscled. It didn’t mean much.

Before, the raven’s mantle of midnight cloth had appeared to an untrained eye as if it was made of pure liquid shadow. The raven’s ability to store and retrieve items from our actual shadows had lent itself to that illusion. That was all that it had been, however. An illusion.

It was an illusion of a different kind, now.

I reached into the liquid shadow of my raven mantle. The guard tensed, ready to lash out. The attack never came.

The grizzled night guard stared in bafflement at the olive branch I had pulled from my cloak and held out to him. The entire limb was made of ivory.

“What is this?” he asked, looking up at the shadowed void of my veil. “Why are you here?”The origin of this chapter's debut can be traced to N0v3l--B1n.

“A peace offering,” I replied. “I’ve come to speak to Aleuas.”

“You’re out of your mind.”

I waited patiently. In the distance, an eagle’s cry echoed alongside the Storm Crown’s thunder.

“You took from me again.” A third finger. “Stole my own heir out from under me, stole my daughter’s groom-to-be. Stole my hero.”

I had thought long and hard about my approach to this conversation, while we waited tensely on the Eos for Sorea to return with Anastasia. I had spent the trek back to Olympia refining that approach, cementing it in my mind’s eye. If things went the way I intended them to, I would leave this opulent chamber with an ally to match against the First Son to Burn.

Otherwise, I would die.

“Fourth and finally,” Aleuas intoned, the threat of death in howling wind. “Having done all of that, you come to me now with a shrouded face and ask me to thank you for the privilege.”

I placed a foot against the back of a plush leather lounge and kicked it aside, sitting down in the now empty space on the floor. The Tyrant’s pressure slammed down onto my shoulders. It was more of the same.

“Is my furniture not to your liking, scavenger?” he asked me mildly.

“It wouldn’t carry my weight,” I answered, crossing my legs and settling my elbows on my knees.

“So you cast it aside and make a mess of my domain?”

My face was covered, so I made a show of twisting my head around to regard the hurricane suite’s controlled chaos.

“My mistake,” I said at length, and helding the ivory olive branch out again. “I apologize - four times for before, and a fifth for kicking your couch. I’ve come to bargain.”

“To bargain. Tell me, then, boy. What could a raven possibly hope to offer this king?”

We stared at one another, each of us behind a veil.

“Your son,” I told him.

After a long and heavy silence, during which not a single wind chime stirred, Aleuas reached out with a hand of focused wind for my offering of peace. Of course, it was the same branch that I had offered the man at the estate’s outpost - an ivory deception. It wasn’t real. It wasn’t something that mortal hands could grasp.

The Tyrant in his domain plucked it from my hand and carried it back through the viridian curtain on a current of wind. His silhouette twirled it between his fingers.

“Bargain,” he commanded me.

Now came the difficult part.