David White
Stories
4
Chapters
1,771
Words
1.0 K
Comments
0
Reading
5 m
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The Young Griffon Anastasia was what a charitable man would call dangerous. I’d known from the moment I felt the searing heat of her influence, and again the instant I’d seen the cruel amusement in her eyes while Sol battered a defenseless man in the club. She was the type to leave men pining endlessly for even the kiss of her heel. Fortunately she wasn’t my type, and when lust was removed from the equation she became simply interesting. “Sol is a brutal taskmaster,” I said in explanation of…-
92 •
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The Son of Rome I woke up and immediately regretted it. Remnants of the funeral drums echoed behind my eyes, an unbearable throbbing that turned my stomach. My body ached down to the marrow of my bones, and my mouth was drier than a day at the Senate. I shifted, grunting. Even the soft brush of silk sheets was intolerable. I cracked an eye open. Luxury. It was a sparsely decorated room, but what was there was of an undeniable quality. The floor was smooth stone that reflected the light of the sun, shot…
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92 •
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The Young Griffon I’d come to the sanctuary city of Olympia to convene with the Oracle. Instead, I found myself in a rowdy club, accompanying my new Heroic companions to an after-funeral drinking wake of sorts. As the first lights of the dawn peered through the bronze doors of the club, I decided I didn’t mind. My fellow sophists shed the worst of their bleak mood once they had some spirit wine in them. The club was a more refined take on the thermopolia that Sol and I had visited the previous summer…
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92 •
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The Young Miss-tocrat She didn’t know what to do. After Lydia’s uncle dismissed them from the study, her mother and Aunt Raisa took the five of them back to Raisa’s suite within the estate. The two Heroic women sat them down on lounging couches with large painted cups of spirit wine, sweet and warm and heavily spiced. They asked them, gently, to go over the events of the night again, in greater detail. Heron, in contrast to when Uncle Damon had been asking, supplied most of the details. Castor and…
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92 •
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The Son of Rome In the time it took my heart to beat twice, Scythas had covered a distance that contained hundreds of citizens and lesser cultivators. I followed as fast as I was physically able to, but the difference in our cultivation was undeniable. Two more heartbeats passed, and I reached the mouth of the alleyway. Scythas was already rounding a corner, piercing deeper into the unlit bowels of the sanctuary city. I plunged into the darkness myself, the screams and wails of injured citizens and those…
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92 •
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The Young Griffon Sol and Scythas vanished down an alleyway in pursuit of a kidnapping. A beat passed. “You’re not going after them?” The cultivator with the bow asked me. He was less cautious now, tension easing out of his posture in Sol’s absence. I glanced at the Heroine and the cultivator in the crocodile skin, and saw them relaxing as well. My nose wrinkled in irritation. I’d done all the work, yet in their eyes I was just another competitor. Meanwhile, Sol was my perceptive and dangerous…
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92 •
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If the chanting was any quieter than the funeral drums, it was impossible to tell. Eight voices carried as one from the center of the agora, at a volume that was difficult to believe. In all my life I’d only ever experienced a few things as loud as that concert of voices. I couldn’t understand a word they were saying, of course. For all that my childhood mentor had taught me the smallest intricacies of Alikoan, he had neglected to mention that the Greek cities each had their own dominant language, and…
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92 •
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The Young Griffon The thunder of funeral drums drowned out all else. Around us, men and women of lesser constitution cried out soundlessly, gripping their ears and collapsing in the streets. It was a pitiful sight. Idly, I dragged two fingers across my right ear, frowning when they came away bloody. “This seems excessive,” I told Scythas. He looked at me like I was simple, waving his torch at his own ears and shaking his head. “What sort of worthless cultivator can’t read lips?” Scythas…
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92 •
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The Son of Rome “... Truthfully, it’s impossible for someone like me to have known a man like him,” the heroic cultivator said, winding down his somber recollection. “In the end, all I can offer tonight is my gratitude for the kindness he showed me, in those few moments that we crossed paths.” Griffon made some polite noises, said a few empathetic words, but he was looking at me out of the corner of his eye. His pupil shook faintly. Was it excitement or tightly leashed fear? The former, knowing…
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92 •
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The Young Griffon Sooner or later in life, you ran up against the feeling of being unwanted. Some time, in some place, by some person. It was only natural that man could not please every soul among heaven and earth. Even a man like me. Especially a man like me. It was a palpable sensation, something that could be felt if you had the sense for it. A formless blade that could slip between your ribs alongside a smile and pleasant conversation. Humanity was infinitely complex. Our little interactions…
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