David White
Stories
4
Chapters
1,771
Words
1.0 K
Comments
0
Reading
5 m
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“Bastard,” I snarled. “Vile old wretch. Low life latrine digger. I’ll put you on a “I’m sure you will,” Socrates said, unimpressed. My vitriol did not slow his stride a single pace, nor loosen his iron grip on the back of my neck. We walked in lock step down Kaukoso Mons. Socrates had evidently decided against a repeat performance of our rapid ascent, and with nothing else available I had no choice but to use as a cane the same spear that had crippled my left leg. Above, the immortal storm…-
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The Young Griffon When I was seven years old I called upon Nikolas to face me in the marble octagon. He was exactly twice my age at that time, and his cultivation was exactly one realm above my own. A Citizen of the fifth rank, challenging a Philosopher of the fifth rank. It was utterly absurd, and everyone involved had known it. Nikolas’ peers and his followers had laughed and urged him up. It was all a game to them, of course, a play fight between the elder and junior pillars of the Rosy Dawn. The…
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The Son of Rome We flew. There was no other way to describe it. The old man in his rags of unassuming filth held tight to my hair and pulled me up to heaven, faster than sound could travel. The city of Olympia grew small beneath us in the blink of an eye. No man can ever truly fly, of course. That had been hammered into my head long ago, as it had into every cultivator. It was the core conceit of those that pursued divinity. A natural desire, one felt anytime you looked up at a cloudless sky, or down…
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The Young Griffon “So, you just happened to cross paths after the funeral, and just happened to come to an accord on the topic of insurrection out of the goodness of your hearts,” Elissa said skeptically, throwing a wet towel at Kyno. He didn’t bother opening his eyes, reclined as he was at the edge of the hot bath, only grunting as the towel slapped against his face. “To think that you marked us all from the start,” Jason murmured, shaking his head. He had disdained the hot bath entirely,…
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92 •
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An Unkindness “Violence is an art.” The Heroic huntsman, clad in his midnight black rags, twitched and looked over his shoulder. As he did, he palmed another man’s head as easily as one would an apple. The hunting crow regarded the hungry raven on the right, lounging above, in a dip between two conjoined archways. The raven reached up, twisting his hand as if to grasp the moon the same way the hunting crow had grasped his unfortunate prey. As if to pluck it from the sky, like an apple. The…
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92 •
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Hero of the Scything Squall Slayer of monsters. Champion of humanity. Scythas hadn’t been either of those things in a very long time. These days, he hardly remembered what it felt like to be that man. The Tyrant Aleuas, as a venerated elder of the Raging Heaven Cult, enjoyed the privileges of his own estate at the foot of Kaukoso Mons. A winding series of cobblestone buildings with sloping clay-shingled roofs that flared out at the edges, with several courtyards and natural pools carved out of the…
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92 •
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The Son of Rome We parted ways after the immediate plans had been made for sundown, Griffon and Elissa heading back to the ruined residential streets while Jason and I made for the Raging Heaven. For the most part, Jason was quiet. Every so often he would ask me a question that I had no desire to answer, and so I wouldn’t. Questions about the demons of Carthage, about the campaigns against them, and about my role in those campaigns. I had offered both of them as much of the truth as I could stand to…
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92 •
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The Young Griffon As a child grew old in body and soul, walking that crucial transitory bridge between adolescence and adulthood, the first iteration of their identity finally cemented itself. In those formative years a human being laid the foundation for who they would be in their highest highs and lowest lows. Just as the bridges between realms were the most crucial for a cultivator’s development, so too were those formative years critical for the mundane growth that every human being…
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The Son of Rome Griffon and I made our rounds through the streets of Olympia, seeing what there was to see and balancing political intrigue with simple curiosity. The Half-Step City was a sharp contrast to Rome in almost every way. Especially when it came to the tongues spoken. My mentor had taught me the Alikoan dialect well. I hadn’t had much use for it in the legions, but my time as a slave had seen my grasp on it perfected. But that was only one language. There were dozens of tongues being spoken…
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The Young Griffon “Ho, so the young aristocrat slipped away from punishment after all,” I mused, walking through the streets of Olympia. “Leaving his subordinates to suffer the full consequences. How surprising.” The markets were stirring to full wakefulness as the dawn broke, society’s undesirables crawling back down their holes. For our parts, Sol and I had changed back into our daywear after a thorough cleansing at one of the city’s many public baths. The streets of Olympia were like home…
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