David White
Stories
4
Chapters
1,771
Words
1.0 K
Comments
0
Reading
5 m
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For a time I just leaned against that forward rail, basking in the afterglow of our survival while Sol wrangled the crew. My arms burned, throbbing painfully where I had torn the muscles while acting as an anchor weight. It felt as though my skull had been stuffed full of wool and buzzing insects, the effect only worsening the more I probed my memories in search of answers. Somewhere in that empty space between Olympia and now, my heart’s blood had been reduced even further. While Sol grilled his men…-
92 •
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Echoes. In the false light of a Roman pre-dawn, on the first morning of my married life, my wife took me by the shoulders and shook me out like an old toga. In the gray light of the coming dawn, I saw those schemes shining in her eyes and knew that I was lost. Her smile was devious, her braided chestnut hair and silken gown disheveled in a purposeful sort of way. She leaned in close, gripping my shoulders tight, and whispered as though she was sharing with me a terrible secret. What was it she’d said,…
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92 •
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“Look at what they did to us.” Jason sighed and turned back to his raft. Lefteris and Kyno stared at Scythas from across the beach, that same wariness to them as there had been in Elissa. Like he’d bleed liquid lead if they cut him. Elissa faced the waves that had claimed her blade, but he knew she was listening. “Look at us,” Scythas repeated, lifting his head and spearing them with a glare. “The favored champions of the great and terrible Tyrant Riot. The prodigies among the prodigies. We…
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92 •
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When Scythas woke, the sun had risen behind a curtain of ash. The Sanctuary City of Olympia had been reduced to an airborne miasma, a sickly yellow film that tainted the morning skies. It reminded him of the extra set of eyelids that some beasts had, thin enough to see through yet thick enough to smear. The film was thin enough to see the sun’s glow through, yet thick enough that he couldn’t feel its heat. The sand beneath his cheek was still hot, as if it had been baking all day long. He heard…
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92 •
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Selene had met more than her fair share of prodigies in her time as the Raging Heaven Cult’s would-be Scarlet Oracle. By the standards of most, she had known nothing Prodigies, one and all. At a certain point, the title lost its meaning. Everyone was a prodigy to someone, somewhere, in some way. Even the Raging Heaven Cult's abject failures had stood at the pinnacle of their communities once upon a time. For every peak, there was a greater height to climb. Or, as Bakkhos would put it, for every…
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92 •
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The day I watched my cousin’s golden mother die, a question had taken root in my mind. No matter how completely I’d tried to suppress it, utterly uncaring of my efforts, that uncertainty had remained - festering somewhere in the shadow of the soul that every man feared to shine light upon. Years had passed, and I had met Sol. I’d allowed myself to forget. Then I’d met Melpomene, the Tragic Poet of the Muses, and she had reached out through the Oracle of Broken Tides to remind me of the question…
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92 •
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I moved silently through their ranks, looking the sailors up and down. They stood frozen, waiting for something, the same thing that I was searching for in them. The closer that I looked, the more wretched that they seemed. Still too thin. Still too filthy and unkempt. All of them too crude, and not a single awakened soul to be found among them. "I told you not to come back," I said, and the man closest to me jerked back as if I’d slapped him. "But the eagle came to us-!" "And how far did he have to…
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92 •
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Cultivation. The race against mortality went by many names, depending on who was asked and where. The people of Rome knew it as the course of honors. The children of Helen called it the stairway to heaven, and the hollow Macedonians referred to it mournfully as the hitching of their stars. I had learned these terms, among others, from my mentor Aristotle. Others still I had gleaned from the men of my father's legion. The rank-and-file of the Fifth Legion were native conscripts, harvested like wheat from…
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92 •
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“Beware, cultivator. Your sins are set in stone.” Caesarion knelt upon the cool marble of a dead man’s dias, back straight and regally poised. His words were carefully measured, his voice a royal tone. Shadows of painted gold encircled both of his eyes, blending seamlessly with their outer rings - gold, where a common man’s eyes were white, and pure gray where a common man’s eyes had color - to create the illusion that his eyes were twice their true size. He stared wide-eyed and unblinking, his…
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92 •
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Niko stared at the burning nightmare that had once been Olympia's dock town, and not for the first time, he wondered where it was he’d strayed. Close to the clouds with their feet planted firmly on the deck of the Niko’s wife shuddered in his arms, her sleeping face twisting in agony. Iphys Aetos was tormented, even in her dreams, by a pain that Niko couldn’t comprehend. No matter what he’d tried, he hadn’t been able to cleanse the sudden agony that had struck her down in the light of that…
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