The Son of Rome
After three days and four nights spent wandering the boundless lands of Thrace, we found our first true city. More than just a collection of brutal nomads and whatever burdens they could carry - like a haggar...
2022-03-02 20:03:33 +0000 UTC View PostThe Young Griffon
On the third day, we sent the sea dog home.
The lands of Thracia were an unmarked expanse of snow capped mountain ranges and lush river valleys, with civilized settlements slim to none. My own Scarlet...
2022-02-26 04:28:50 +0000 UTC View PostThe Son of Rome
The Thracian kingdom could hardly be called as such. In my time I had seen some truly dilapidated capitals, and borne witness to some heinously destitute kings, but they had always carried with them a sense o...
2022-02-23 02:34:56 +0000 UTC View PostThe Young Griffon
For the concept of a greater to exist, a lesser was also required to give it meaning. For a man to be notably tall, a distance notably far, a body of water notably deep, there had to be a ...
2022-02-21 16:23:19 +0000 UTC View PostThe Son of Rome
“The kyrios of the Raging Heaven was a Hero before he was the Tyrant riot,” Scythas spoke softly as we rode beneath the light of stars. “And before that, he was only a man. Dutiful, and later wise, but ...
2022-02-18 17:11:31 +0000 UTC View PostThe Young Griffon
Our objective in Thracia was clear. It was also nearly worthless.
A golden cup filled with spirit wine. That was all the Gadfly had given us, along with a vague marker on an endless charter of land to...
2022-02-17 15:54:33 +0000 UTC View PostThe Son of Rome
Thracia, otherwise known as the nation with no definite boundaries, was a barbaric land in every sense of the word. Its cultures were unrefined, its peoples were savages, and its treatment even of allies was ...
2022-02-16 04:41:30 +0000 UTC View PostThe Young Griffon
As a boy first learning how to sail beneath my father’s watchful eye, the Eos had seemed to me a daunting vessel. She was large for what she was. Not a trireme, not even a true war galley, but la...
2022-02-15 01:50:15 +0000 UTC View PostAthis
The Caged Dove
Life in the Rosy Dawn Cult was miserable.
Athis knew it was an ungrateful sorrow. From the very beginning, her prospects had been hopelessly bleak as a slave. That she had su...
2022-02-11 03:34:44 +0000 UTC View PostThe Son of Rome
We moved with purpose through the dock city. It was a good day for sailing, as far as I could tell - though admittedly I was far from an expert. The abundance of blue-backed tuna, mackerel, and vibrant dorado...
2022-02-08 06:21:25 +0000 UTC View PostThe Young Griffon
I collapsed onto my back in the sand, breathing heavily. My body ached fiercely, satisfying as it throbbed. I ran my tongue over my bottom lip and prodded the split flesh. Sol had given it to me good with t...
2022-02-02 19:53:07 +0000 UTC View PostThe Son of Rome
Having aired his frustration, Griffon seemed to shake the worst of his foul mood. Whether it was relief after admitting it, or irritation with himself for letting it show so clearly, he throttled his violent ...
2022-01-31 17:19:00 +0000 UTC View PostThe Young Griffon
Olympia‘s western dock town was as I remembered it, though it felt downright decrepit after weeks spent in the grandest city in the free Mediterranean. Stout wooden constructions were the standard out her...
2022-01-30 04:15:47 +0000 UTC View PostThe Son of Rome
Anastasia‘s shadow pulled away deliberately from mine beneath the wood-carved table, an active separation that was impossible to see and nearly impossible to feel. I nearly hadn’t noticed it at all, the s...
2022-01-29 04:30:46 +0000 UTC View PostThe Young Griffon
I leaned back.
Six Heroic cultivators crowded around the table alongside Sol and I. They had been at the furthest edges of the room when the story began, but now each of them leaned forward on elbows ...
2022-01-27 22:41:47 +0000 UTC View PostYoungest of the Convocation
Tribulation lightning.
There were as many explanations for it as there were thinking cultures on the earth. From the truly ancient civilizations of Mesopotamia and golden Egypt,...
2022-01-24 23:20:00 +0000 UTC View PostYoungest of the Convocation
“Move, boy,” Aristotle said, grabbing a fist full of my hair and dragging me bodily across the beach. “You’re no use gawking.”
“Old bastard, you’re no use at all!...
2022-01-20 05:59:43 +0000 UTC View PostYoungest of the Convocation
I danced through lashing coils of flesh and lowered my shoulder into the back of Gyro’s man. The lowly Civic cultivator’s head snapped back, but he held stubbornly onto his blade while I h...
2022-01-20 05:58:14 +0000 UTC View PostYoungest of the Convocation
The Raging Heaven had called for aid in Olympia’s name, demanding a resource that only institutions of greater mystery could hope to provide. I had wondered, when pirates were the greatest t...
2022-01-17 03:45:40 +0000 UTC View PostYoungest of the Convocation
Bursting from the sea and wailing in a woman’s voice, a monster took the stage. We watched without comprehension as it exploded upward and cast its shadow over the Eos.
Silver...
2022-01-14 18:06:55 +0000 UTC View PostYoungest of the Convocation
“Found you,” Damon declared with bone deep satisfaction, and my heart started hammering.
“Freedmen! Maintain the pace!” Gyro stood abruptly up from his bench, snuffing o...
2022-01-11 00:21:41 +0000 UTC View PostYoungest of the Convocation
“Lord Aetos-”
“Call me Anarygyros! Or Gyro if there isn’t time,” Gyro said, cutting off the slave he had brought along and freed.
“Lord Anargyros,” ...
2022-01-10 06:31:14 +0000 UTC View PostYoungest of the Convocation
“Pull!”
“The oars in-to your guts un-til the tides are gray,” Gyro sang, volume and spirit filling the gaps a poor singing voice left.
“Pull!” we bell...
2022-01-10 02:08:20 +0000 UTC View PostYoungest 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 clos...
2022-01-07 05:39:49 +0000 UTC View PostYoungest of the Convocation
“You did well, both of you.” Gyro paced a winding line through the sand, rhythmically easing his blade out of its sheath a sliver before dropping it back into place. “I couldn’t have f...
2022-01-07 05:39:31 +0000 UTC View PostYoungest of the Convocation
Dawn break my oath and cast me down, say all who walk in chains;
If turning wheels are what’s to come, I’d rather die in vain!
Lord take this son into your ha...
2022-01-05 07:34:41 +0000 UTC View PostThe Son of Rome
Griffon’s trio of Heroic cultivators stared at me without comprehension. The boys on either side of Lefteris leaned around their guardian to whisper to one another, confused. Anastasia, for her part, hummed...
2021-12-31 03:06:23 +0000 UTC View PostThe Son of Rome
We gathered in the home of the Sword Song, the first Heroine to respond to my unintended call on the night of the kyrios’ funeral.
She stood while the rest of us sat around a low table of carved mahog...
2021-12-31 02:44:22 +0000 UTC View Post