Virtuous Sons: A Greco Roman Xianxia

Chapter 1.59 [Stavros Aetos]

Youngest of the Convocation

“What does this have to do with sailing?” Gyro asked curiously, having arrived late to the entire tangent.

Sitting as they were, side by side and cheek to cheek, even a close acquaintance could have mistaken them for twins like Fotios and me. Clear blue eyes swept over Damon’s designs, deep brown curls that he always wore longer than the elders preferred spilling past his shoulders. They had the same nose, the same strong jaw and the same ears that sloped up into a slight point.

“We’re decorating the ship,” Damon said, and Gyro nodded as if that explained everything.

“Asking nicely, looks like.”

“This is why people don’t talk to the two of you,” I said. Gyro laughed and Damon hid a smirk behind his fist.

“I’ll be clear, then, for the boys that chose the champion’s path over the scholar’s. As captains of the Sophic Realm, I understand that your skulls are already filled to bursting with the ten meaningful thoughts you were forced to think.” Gyro’s boisterous laugh turned to an ugly chortle while Fotios and I offered him a sacred Aetos gesture - the bird.

“As philosophers, we invoke myriad truths in order to amplify ourselves and the world around us,” he explained, wrestling down his mirth. “We live by certain principles, and we impose our own lived experiences onto others. Each of these things is a crucial element of a thinking man -”

“Those aren’t elements,” the old man interjected.

“Pardon, Aristotle. It was just a figure of speech.”

“It was flowery rhetoric.”

“Gods forbid and we say a thing just because it sounds good,” Gyro said, rolling his eyes. Aristotle snorted and laid the back of his hand across our brother’s temple, knocking his head into Damon’s. “Point being, there are three aspects that make up a philosopher’s cultivation, just as there are three aspects of the soul. Is that much fair to say, honored elder?”

“The tripartite soul,” Aristotle said distastefully. “Shall we give them a lecture on the Forms while we’re at it?” The father of rhetoric sneered and turned his head to spit over the side of the ship.

“Master,” Daemon said, his eyes distant as he considered his lines, “you’re being obnoxious.”

Aristotle sighed and waved a hand. “Fine, fair enough. Take the Broad and his rule of threes.”

“I thank the master,” Gyro said. To us, he continued, “though some have concerns with his model, we look to the Broad and his theory of the tripartite soul as cultivators of virtue. We strive to refine our reason, our spirit, and our hunger, while we cut a path up to heaven.

“And as we do this, we look for that tripartite reflection in other things. We ascribe reason to the Philosopher, because the Scholar was the most rational of us all -” To this point, even Aristotle had no objection. “We ascribe spirit to the Hero, because the Champion’s heart flame burns eternal in the Olympic torch. And we ascribe hunger to the Tyrant, because the Conqueror devoured everything east of the free Mediterranean. We associate these concepts with physical organs as well- our brain, our heart, and our gut.”

“It’s human nature to seek patterns in all things.” Damon leaned back from his work, Gyro’s back bumping against a vertically mounted beam that would serve as the ship’s mast while our elder brother used him as a cushion. “It’s how we’ve advanced to this point as human beings, it’s how our culture has advanced further than that to become civilized, and it’s how the four of us will advance further than any that came before us.”

“To the peak,” Fotios and I murmured, like a prayer.

“To the peak,” Gyro affirmed, gazing up at the cosmic glory. He continued, “that pattern of three exists within each of the greater realms. We attach reason to the Philosopher, just as we imagine him walking the Scholar’s path, but it isn’t always so simple. A philosopher is still a man, and a man can walk any path he chooses to.”

Gyro raised three fingers, one after the other. “The philosopher can reason, the philosopher can have passion, and the philosopher can hunger. He must do all of these things if he is ever to advance past frail mortality.”

“We have three core abilities that we’ve nurtured and refined since ascending to the Sophic Realm,” Damon explained, raising his own three fingers as he did. “As mentioned before. Invoking the rules of nature, living by principle, and imposing our lived truths onto others.”

Reason. Spirit. Hunger.

Fotios and I took that in, let it simmer in our minds. Things always seemed to make more sense when it was Damon or Gyro saying them - when they cared enough to draw back the curtains on their rhetoric. Infuriating bastards.

“Then this decoration is a philosopher’s reason,” I ventured.

“And what led you to that conclusion?” Aristotle pressed me. I grimaced.

“Invoking the rules of nature,” Fotios jumped in, thankfully. “Invoking. Appealing to a higher authority- the unmoved mover that you mentioned before. That’s what we’re doing when we call upon truth as a source of strength.”

“Good,” Aristotle said, satisfied. “How would you appeal to a superior in your cult, or a man with greater cultivation? How many ways can a man appeal to a higher power?”

“As many ways as there are stars in heaven,” Gyro answered. “Whether it’s a fine sculpture or a persuasive argument, strength or guile or beauty. What matters is that it’s pleasing.”

Damon waved a hand at the section of the boat that he’d scarred with flame. “All that matters is the aesthetic.”

Made up of dozens upon dozens of winding lines and finger carved pharaohs, an eagle’s head had been burned into the uppermost bones of the ship. Closest to the figurehead, the wooden maiden reaching both hands wantonly for the sea.

“Divinity exists apart from us,” Damon said quietly. “We appeal to it the only way we can. By creating beauty worth regarding. By living lives worth speaking of. Gyro misled you - this design is a philosopher’s reason, yes, but it is also passion and hunger. Each one of these lines was drawn with a rule of nature in mind, by a man living in accordance with his principles, and imbued with the light of his lived experiences.”

“But why do we have to add our marks to it as well?”

He smiled faintly. “Because this is more than just my ship. It’s ours.”

“Leave your mark however you see fit,” Gyro advised us. “Your own truth, your own principles, your own lived experiences. So long as it fits.”

“So long as it’s appealing.”

Fotios and I exchanged a look. Already, we each knew what we’d be contributing to the ship. The Young Aristocrat, head of the young generation, had left his mark with an eagle crown. Gyro, the predator with his hunting blade, would doubtlessly leave his mark as a set of talons. Leaving Fotios and I to stand in the middle between them.

What else could we be, if not the wings?

“It’s going to be a long night,” I said wearily. Though I couldn’t deny a bit of excitement. Our ship. It was, wasn’t it?

“We’ll sleep when we’re at sea,” Fotios said, grinning and heaving himself over to the other side of the frame to stake his claim on a quadrant of unburnt timber.

“Won’t be long, at this pace,” Gyro mused. He glanced down at Damon. “You’re not wasting any time.”

“The sooner it’s ready, the better.”

I rolled my eyes. “You keep saying that, but you’ve yet to tell us why. Where’s the fire?”

The bright concentric rings whirling in the Young Aristocrat’s eyes froze for a moment. I blinked, and they resumed.

“I don’t know,” he admitted.

“Then why are we rushing at all?” I asked, irritated.

“Respectfully,” Fotios added, as disrespectfully as he could.

Damon shrugged. “I have a feeling.”

In the end, I supposed that was all we’d ever needed to hear.

“Lord Aetos! Lord Aetos!”

“Hngh!?” I jerked upright, leftover cloth that hadn’t made it onto the mast falling away from me. Fotios thrashed awake on the adjacent rowing bench, cursing like he was a sailor already as he reached into his tunic and pulled a trident out of a fold in the cloth.

I followed his example, reaching into a fold in my own scarlet cult attire, a fold in logic -

The next sentence is true. The previous statement is false.

-and pulled from it my spear.

I was halfway through a javelin-style toss over the side of the Eos when I recognized who it was shouting up at us from the beach. I squinted blearily down at an ugly slave with a broken nose, his features partially blocked by the arms he was holding protectively over his face.

“Wait!” he shouted, panicked. “It’s me! Don’t-!”

“Thon?” I demanded. “What are you doing here?”

“The kyrios received word from Olympia this morning!” Another slave whose name I didn’t know tossed a roll of papyrus up to us.

Fotios groaned, catching it. “Gods damn you, Dymas. Was it really so important that you had to wake us at this unholy hour?” The slave, Dymas apparently, glanced up at the cheery skies above. The sun was just passing its zenith.

“Apologies, Lord Aetos,” he chose to say. Wise. “See for yourself.”

My twin grumbled and unfurled the missive, the seal having already been broken. I leaned over from my own rowing bench and read it over his shoulder.

Oh.

“Damon!” Fotios called, wide-eyed. “There’s trouble in the Ionian!”

“The kyrios is in talks with Yianni Scalla,” another slave I had never seen before hurriedly explained, already climbing up onto the deck. He rushed to Gyro, who was stretching himself awake at the aft of the ship. “He wants to see you all as soon as he’s back at the main estate. Quickly, Lord Aetos! We have to move!”

“No need,” Damon said, already up and with a line of rigging in hand, and with a vast rushing sound of falling cloth the Eos let fly her sails for the first time. The wind filled them at once, the ship straining as the eagle we’d burnt into her bones struggled to take flight.

Then the ship jerked beneath our feet, nearly throwing Fotios and I over the side, and we looked over to see the fourth slave that Damon had chosen silently heaving the ship towards the cresting waves. For a slave to have such strength was -

Wait. “Where are your chains?” I asked the slave. He didn’t bother looking up from his work, even as Thon and Dymas rushed to add their own shackled strength to his efforts in launching the ship.

But he smiled in his efforts, and answered.

“Lord Damon set me free.”

We looked to the Young Aristocrat, each of us young pillars of the Rosy Dawn Cult. Our eldest brother favored us with a rare grin.

“There’s trouble on the Ionian,” he said with fierce conviction. “Olympia has called for our aid. Who are we to ignore her?”

We’ll need eight, he’d said, to each of us so long ago. Eight oars sat ready and waiting on the Eos’ deck, eight empty benches waiting to be seated.

“Just a feeling,” I muttered incredulously. Fotios laughed and leapt to his oar as we plunged into the sea. I reached over the side and helped Thon and Dymas up while Damon’s freedman inhaled sharply and leapt straight up onto the deck.

Well, whatever it was, some things never changed.

Life was always more exciting with my brothers.