Sol,

The Raven From Rome

"You've seen it for yourself now," Selene spoke up from the central dais. She smiled. "Though you'll need context to make any sense of the why not that stands before you."

The Saint of Scarlet Hearts waved her hands invitingly, urging us back to the saltwater pool her tripod sat inside. Griffon and I shared a glance.

"We're filthy," I said, reluctant to make an even greater mess of the place.

"Some more so than others," Griffon said, eyeing the soiled chiton that I’d used as a rag with disgust. I slapped the broken bone jutting out of his arm, returning to the center of the platform while he cursed my city, my bloodline, and the dog I’d raised when I was child.

I sat at the edge of the pool and let the salt-water cleanse my feet. Griffon joined me a moment later, choosing the spot to my right so he could elbow me with his unbroken arm.

Selene waited patiently for us to gather our thoughts, smiling faintly at our back and forth. She had always been a living contradiction, since the day that I had met her on that indigo pavilion beneath the Storm That Never Ceased – simultaneously wise beyond her years and as childish as a girl could be. She was on the cusp of the rest of her life, eager to see all the wonders of the world, desperate to experience all the joys and the tragedies, great and small, that she had been denied by her father. That portion of the girl was all too similar to her brother. I had seen that side of her more and more as time went on—in the days she kept me company in the Tyrant Riot's underground estate, and during the weeks that we’d spent questing for a golden cup of wine.

But it was in these moments that I saw the other side of things—the woman that she had risen up to be, far before her time. There was a steadiness to her, seated on that tripod, a certainty in her soul. The girl who had stammered and huffed her way through the first repetitions of the combat training that Griffon and I had promised her was nowhere to be seen now. Griffon could have threatened to tear the pillars of her principles down and cast them over the edge right then and there, and I had a feeling she wouldn't have blinked. Neither would she have allowed either of us to lay our hands on anything that could make a mess of her cultivation. She was in full control of her heart.

It was that certainty more than anything else that quelled the worst of my concerns. Griffon was still furious—insulted on a personal level, and viciously defensive of a familial bond that was still newborn and fragile to him. But he kept his silence for the time being, kicking his feet idly in the pool and considering her honeycomb tripod with a frown.

"I promised you both the why not, in the absence of the how," Selene began. She gestured once more all around her, to the pillars of her principles. "Behold, the why not. These pillars that you’ve turned your noses up at in disgust," she said with amusement, "are the best example I can provide as to why I cannot tell you what comes next in the fourth step of your journey through the Sophic Realm. But that won’t make any sense without the proper context.

“First, you have to understand how I came to be this way. You’ll have to retrace the steps I took myself.”

Griffon tensed up beside me, leaning forward, and a moment later the tripod began to buzz beneath the Saint of Scarlet Hearts. From the ink-black darkness of the myriad honeycombs, smoke and vapor began to seep out into the open air. Every cone seemed to belch a different color of smoke, until the pavilion was swallowed up end-to-end by a riotous light show of smog.

I held my breath, uncomfortably reminded of a night I had suffered through a lifetime ago as a young man, caught out in the boglands of northernmost Britannia—naked and afraid, and higher than any upright son of Rome had any reason to be. I’d been out of my mind, then, under the influence of a bowl of mushrooms that my fellow soldier from Gaul had promised me were a Black Forest delicacy.

“Trust,” Selene repeated softly, and I reluctantly inhaled the vapors.

At once, the mountain range hanging above my head began to spin, and the saltwater pool started to bubble and churn around my ankles. It was a relief when the mist got thick enough to block out the sight of the mountains entirely — it settled my stomach and allowed me to ignore the fact that they looked like they were falling.

The buzzing grew louder, and Griffon lashed out with his unbroken hand, plucking a wriggling shadow out of the smog. I leaned over, and we both peered down at the struggling honeybee caught between his fingers.

“This part may hurt,” Selene said soothingly. “But I have faith in my ancient brother and the revenant’s ability to endure it.” Then, without a hint of duplicity or humor, she motioned like she was pinching a bee out of the air and jabbing her arm with its stinger.

Griffon rolled his eyes and, without looking, jabbed the bee’s stinger into my neck.

I made it halfway through the motion of dunking his head into the saltwater before the venom met the vapor somewhere inside my soul, and melted together to form a far more esoteric poison.

I blinked… and found myself looking at a girl with sunkissed skin and lively scarlet eyes, no older than ten, if even that.

I squinted, wondering why the girl looked so familiar.

“The Civic Realm,” Selene said, with a younger voice to match her younger frame. Yet that ageless certainty was still there, marking her as she was. “The first stage of refinement, or as some call it, the prerequisite to providence. The first step, and no step at all, depending on who you ask. This is the phase of a cultivator’s life that defines their struggle, but it must be said that the obstacles involved aren’t quite as… spectacular as what follows in the higher realms.”

The young girl reached through the mist and pulled from it a cup of kykeon. She took a sip and then let it go. It hung there, suspended as if on strings, while she reached out again to pull an olive from the miasma.

She went on like this for a while, explaining between bites and sips. “The consensus on the Civic Realm—if there can be any consensus at all—is that it is the time for preparation. Natural treasures are thought to have their greatest impacts on a cultivator’s development if consumed and internalized during their formative years. Habits, both good and bad, are ingrained deepest in this stage of life. It is in some ways the least important stage of a cultivator’s development, and in others… well, there aren’t many races where it hurts to have a running start.”

When she finally stopped reaching for treasures, there were hundreds of them gathered around her, a cloud of riches nearly as thick as the vapors themselves. Enriched food and drink, precious herbs, and priceless powders—bounties that I only recognized from my time abroad on campaign, and many more that I couldn’t even begin to guess at.

“There are other considerations as well—far more, if you have the good fortune to be born into a wealthy household. For example!”

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The young girl hopped to her feet, balancing on the tripod and flourishing her arms. “We exist both body and soul, and thus even a sedentary existence like an Oracle’s daughter must properly temper her body if she is to have any hope of advancement.”

Balancing elegantly on the tips of her toes, the girl began to glide through the liquid choreography of a dance routine. The scarlet vestments of her station had not shrunk down to match her smaller stature, but she danced so smoothly that the voluminous silks weren’t any hindrance at all.

“Despite what you might think, violence is not a requirement for a cultivator to progress,” Selene said with careful consideration, not looking at either of us while she said it. “Exercise is a universal good, and far less demanding than the martial path. The more strenuous the tempering early on, the better the foundation in the end.

“I would have spent my youth swimming if it had been up to me, but my father didn’t trust the other Raging Heaven mystikos outside of his domain, and the pools were so rarely empty. So instead, I tempered my body through dancing.”

The young girl paused in the middle of a dizzying heelspin, glancing sidelong at us and grinning impishly.

“It wasn’t as thorough a tempering as some of the more barbaric methods, admittedly. But you might be surprised by the strength and flexibility required to meet Donna’s exacting standards. If nothing else, I honed my reflexes to a keen edge while avoiding her sandal.”

The girl settled gracefully back into her seat, inhaling and exhaling steadily.

“The other primary consideration, for those fortunate enough to be concerned with such things, is the development of a proper pneumatic scripture.”

Selene inhaled at a precise cadence, measured and slow, and the many-colored mists began to swirl around her, mimicking the motion going on inside her body. It was a visual display entirely at odds with the ever-turning, ever-burning wheel that Griffon and I had internalized during our trip to the Orphic House. The Hunting Bird’s Breath wasn’t any closer a comparison either.

This was a smoother thread—not in the sense that the other two were less refined, at least as far as I could tell, but more in the progression of it, the movement of the pneuma through her channels.

The Hunting Bird’s Breath was a breathing technique that caught and stored pneuma within the hollowed-out bones that gave the scripture its name. It sat there, and it waited, under pressure as the user gathered more and more and more, until it became an impossible thing to contain—and was released, in a single explosive outburst of vital energy and devastating force.

On the other hand, the wheel was a constant, grinding agony. Its benefits were meted out alongside that agony in equal proportion. It was a steady technique, but I couldn’t say that any part of it was smooth.

Compared to those two, the rhythm of Selene’s breathing technique – her pneumatic scripture – was almost hypnotic to watch, whirling round and round through the vapor currents. After watching the completed circuit a few times without any further input from Selene, I caught the pattern she was trying to show us. The motion of the completed circuit was a perfect match to the dancing forms she had just performed atop the tripod.

“Which came first?” Griffon asked. “The breathing technique, or the choreography?”

I couldn’t see him by my side—the vapor was too thick—and a part of me wondered why that was, when the space between Selene I was so clear by comparison. The more I thought about it, the louder the tripod’s buzzing grew, so I set the thought aside for the time being.

Selene smiled, pleased. “Good question. In my case, the choreography came first. When I found out how much easier it would have been to learn those steps with prior knowledge of the accompanying breathing technique, I was very cross with Donna. But Bakkhos told me it was for the best that I’d done things in that order. Learning the proper steps ahead of time gave me a better understanding of why

I had to breathe the way that I had to breathe. And that was a far more valuable instinct to have than the reverse.”

“And you’re certain that wasn’t another one of his passing humors?” Griffon asked, and I didn’t need to see him to see the scowl on his face.

Her smile widened. “If you had known the two of them, you would understand how extraordinary it was for Bakkhos to speak up in defense of any decision she made. The fact that he didn’t immediately feed the flame of my irritation with her is all the proof I need that he was telling the truth. And knowing what I do now, I can see the logic behind it for myself.”

“Ho?”

“If you were forced to choose between, say, a sublime body tempering technique, and total mastery of a pneumatic scripture, you would be better off picking the scripture ninety-nine times out of a hundred. Maybe more. We exist both body and soul, and a well-matched breathing technique nourishes both. Though well-matched is the key to remember.

“There are as many pneumatic scriptures as there are blades of grass upon this earth, and each one has its high points and its lows. It isn’t a mistake that the best of these are passed down from father-to-son and mother-to-daughter, hand-in-hand with the family’s mystery arts. In a way, a proper breathing technique is its own lesser prerequisite for future advancement. Some scriptures can’t be cultivated at all without a compatible breathing technique. Others are rendered half as effective, even with twice the effort devoted to mastering them.

“Such a thing closes as many doors as it opens. That’s why it’s so important to carve the channels best suited to your goals.”

“How can you tell?” I asked intently. “Which doors it opens, and which it will close?” I traced the passage of the vapor through that burning channel inside my soul, the wheel and all ten of its spokes.

Selene’s answer was swift, if sympathetic. “The only sure sign is the source. If you have no one to guide you, the method used to require it is the surest place to start.”

I thought back to the two formative events that carved that wheel out of my guts. The starlight marrow and the mad-honey milk. The raven, and the ever-turning, ever-burning wheel.

“What next?” I asked, resigned. What’s done is done. I’d tear that wheel out by hand, offal and all, if it became an obstacle in my future.

Selene hummed, rocking back and forth on the tripod. “Perhaps a thousand other things, and perhaps none. The scholars of the Free Mediterranean are hopelessly divided on the topic of a proper progression through the Civic Realm. The Broad was more interested in defining the realms that came after, and that left the matter of the Civic Realm to the squabbling of lesser sophists. They haven’t made much headway in the centuries since. Or, at least that was the case amongst the sophists Bakkhos allowed on his mountain.”

The girl shrugged, the motion swallowed up by her oversized silks.

“In the end, this was how I prepared for my advancement to the Sophic Realm,” she said, tracing a circle in the air to encompass the lingering currents of her pneumatic scripture, the echo of her body-tempering routine, and the refining treasures that still hung in the air around her.

Then she snapped her fingers, and all of it vanished—replaced by a single bee. It bumbled through the air, landing clumsily on the tip of her outstretched finger and settling down as if to sleep.

She curled her finger back slowly and ran her thumb gently across its fuzzy thorax.

“Advancing to the Sophic Realm requires the internalization of an ideal. The first thought worth having, as the Broad so famously put it. My father likened it to striking a spark, the first of many needed to catch and light a Hero’s heart flame.

She smiled wryly. “Bakkhos called it the first sip, but I think that was more a mockery of my father than it was any true belief of his. Still, no matter what you call it, the underlying truth is this: a cultivator’s first step into the Realm of Philosophers is an act of creation, the construction of a load-bearing column inside your soul. It’s the establishment of an ideal.

“You could ask a thousand philosophers if this was the case for them when they took that first step, and all of them would have the same answer. You could ask a thousand-thousand, and it would still hold true.

“But if you asked me…”

Selene smiled sadly down at the docile bumblebee resting between her forefinger and thumb. Then, so suddenly that the bee didn’t even have time to struggle, she pinched her fingertips together and crushed it.

“My ascension to the Sophic Realm,” she said softly, “was not the striking of a spark. It was not an act of creation at all. It was a burial. The first of many to come.”

The vision of a girl lifted scarlet burning eyes to meet mine.

“Every single one of the pillars you see before you belonged to another cultivator before they belonged to me. And all of them but one were stolen at the tip of my spear.”