Chapter 1.111

Chapter 1.111

The Son of Rome

The day that we boarded the Eos and set sail for distant Thracia, Griffon and I had been of one mind. It was the Gadfly’s intent to keep us busy - to keep us safe from ourselves and the higher powers we had provoked with our unkind marauding. Mostly, it was to get us out of his sight. Griffon and I had understood that, and we had afforded that sentiment about as much respect as it deserved.

We’ll do it all at once. That had been our silent agreement, spoken through the ravens in our shadows. At first I’d disagreed with him, but the return of the Eos and her irreverent sea dogs had convinced me. Leveraging the experiences of our ship’s worldly crew, as well as our Heroic companions’ connections, we would travel the Free Mediterranean and the greater boundaries beyond as outlined in the Gadfly’s map. We’d walk in-step the same path that Bakkhos had walked before us, and we would discover as he had discovered the reagents to divine sustenance.

That had been the plan. And then, on our very first stop, we had been afforded a glimpse at the Tyrant Riot’s true nature - the company that he had kept, the foundation that he had established, and the virtue at his core. Griffon and I, and to an indirect degree Selene and Scythas, had each drank from the Mad Tyrant’s cup and suffered a portion of his mania.

We had been humbled, each in our own ways. The decision to turn back to Olympia after all had been grudgingly made, but there was too much we didn’t know. There were too many mysteries to solve them all in a bare handful of weeks, and Griffon was still as adamant as he’d ever been about being in the Half-Step City when the Olympic Games began.

So we had returned.

And the Gadfly had betrayed us.

Now here I stood, trapped beneath the immortal storm crown that hung over Kaukoso Mons. Entangled by the infernal web of the Raging Heaven Cult’s politics. An unwitting, unqualified participant in a great city’s conflict of succession.

Again.

Stranded though I was beneath the storm, I wasn’t entirely deafened. As surely as the breeze, Sorea carried the words I couldn’t say to the cultivators that needed to hear them and delivered each of their responses faithfully back to me.

Solus,

The road to Lacedaemon is long and treacherous with Spartans - I’ve never seen so many Infernal sons in my life, and I think I was a happier person for it. This morning alone I’ve seen three separate exchanges of “discourse” between scholars of this rusted mystery faith, and two of the three ended in death. The third would have as well, had I not stepped in to save the losing party’s life.

Would you believe that the miserable wretch had the audacity to spit on my silks and accuse me of obstructing his refinement? These dogs would rather die than be humbled even one single time. I swear to you, it took every drop of temperance within me not to stomp his fool head through the earth. These roads are bad enough, though, and he’d already been mauled so savagely that a kiss on the cheek might have killed him - let alone a kiss from my boot.

Anyway. Your eagle is giving me an ugly look, so I’ll get to the point.

I’ve searched these mountains and their valleys and paced up and down the city’s coasts. I’ve learned just shy of nothing and found even less. There are an endless number of merchants ready and willing to sell me wine along with its various reagents, and a disappointing proportion of them are just as willing to lie to my face and claim that they have the key to nectar itself hidden in their moth-bitten bags. But there are vanishingly few who actually knew of Bakkhos and his exploits here, and none at all who knew him personally as far as I’ve found.

I’m sorry, Solus. If it was Naxos I’d have found the damned reagent already. Maybe... if you sent Scythas south my way, along with Sorea, I could guide him through the Isles. Even if I can’t be on the ship myself-

At any rate, I’m just outside of Krokos now. I’ll wait here until the eagle comes back.

Might do some hunting in the meantime. I haven’t found any thousand year old grapes, but there are more virtuous beasts skulking around these roads than there are men with sense. Just yesterday a traveling metic swore to me on his father’s ashes that he’d seen a feral stallion break a brown bear’s back and eat its beating heart. I’d be lying if I told you I wasn’t interested in seeing a creature like that with my own two eyes.

Hope all is well on your end. Take care.

Jason

I skimmed it once, quickly, and then combed through the missive line-by-line a second time while Sorea tucked his head under his wings in the darkness of my cave dwelling and went to sleep. He deserved it, with the miles I was putting him through.

After my fourth pass through Jason’s letter, I sighed and stood.

“‘Go here and find me a golden cup filled with spirit wine,’” I echoed his words from a month before, the orders he gave us the day he banished Griffon and I from the Half-Step City. “‘Return it to me without spilling a drop. I, your grandfather, will handle the rest.’”

“You were listening after all,” Socrates said, his irritation rising along with his pneuma. “Tell me, then, boy. Why did you wait three weeks to give me this? Why waste the time?”

We had failed to find a single other ingredient we were confident enough in to risk ruining the wine we had with incorrect reagents. We had been too naive, hadn’t given ourselves enough time to see it through. Each of our Heroic companions had known Bakkhos, but none of them had known him like the Gadfly had known him. Jason’s letter, the last of the bad news carried by Sorea back to me, had been the point proven.

I couldn’t justify abandoning this quest in full, no matter how much I wanted to. Not when Selene hadn’t emerged from the Rein-Holder’s sunset domain even once since our return. Not when her mother still lay comatose.

Not when I could see it through.

“All that a liar gains by falsehood is suspicion when they tell the truth.” It was another quote. This time, a quote from my true mentor - Aristotle. One of the lessons he’d hammered into my skull as a boy, though with mixed results.

Socrates scowled. “Make your point.”

I drew the raven’s midnight veil up from my face and met his glare with mine.

“You call us fools at every opportunity and handle us accordingly,” I said flatly. “You build a maze around us with nectar at the end of it, because you don’t trust us to do the right thing unless a higher hand has guided us to it. And you wonder why, when I return with a treasure you didn’t actually believe I’d be able to find, I don’t immediately offer it up to you?

“You treat us like children - you treat me like a child. When I was ten years younger and far more deserving of it, Aristotle never treated me that way - he was wise enough to know that if he did, I’d treat him like a minder more than a mentor worthy of my confidence.”

I sat down heavily, the weight of thirty men pressing ceaselessly down. Looking up at the Gadfly, I spread my hands in supplication.

“You’ve made it clear I’m no student of yours,” I said, lifting my lip. “Nothing to you, and no one at all but a nuisance to be led away from trouble. Fine. But just this once - one time, here and now if never again, spare me the noble lies and tell me the truth.”

With every word I spoke, the Gadfly’s expression grew colder and harder. Like stone.

His voice was like a falling blade. “Ask a proper question if you want to hear the truth.”

I obliged him.

“You gave us a map with ten markers on it yet only one ingredient to find. You didn’t withhold the other nine from us because you were unsure of what they were - if your ‘conjecture’ was really that weak, you wouldn’t have given Selene that false hope to begin with. You knew what we’d need, and you knew where we’d have to go to find it.”

The Gadfly waited silently for the full thrust of my question.

I folded a single finger of my supplicating hands.

“We’ve given you one of ten. Of the nine ingredients remaining for the synthesis of divine nectar, how many are stowed away in your folded logic cloth?”

No one believed a liar, even when they told the truth. I wouldn’t believe him, no matter what he said. He’d broken that trust. So he answered me with action instead of words. The Gadfly reached into a fold within his filthy rags and twisted it, pulled as if it was a bag he was turning inside out-

And poured a river of precious metals, vibrant herbs, and coal-black salt onto the cave floor.

With slow deliberation, Socrates placed the golden cup of wine down in the center of the pile.

“Ten.”