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—the food on display was obviously higher quality, elevated beyond the slops and stews that we’d been offered in the Scarlet City. The kykeon itself was the strongest I’d ever drank outside of the Rosy Dawn’s initiation rites.

All three of them treated it like piss water and drank it only under duress. It got them drunk enough, though.

Kyno, Elissa, and Lefteris told stories of the kyrios around a table covered with broad, shallow kylixes. Others did the same throughout the club. I brushed my awareness curiously through the bar, finding cultivators of nearly every realm. Citizens mingled readily with Philosophers, and even with a few other Heroic cultivators.

The usual hierarchy was only vaguely felt. This had the feel of a club frequented exclusively by cultivators, and if the abundance of indigo cult attire was any indication, by the Raging Heaven Cult, in particular. Civic cultivators traded stories and laughter and reminisced with Sophic cultivators as junior and senior, not lesser and better. The atmosphere was a stark contrast to the funeral we’d just left.

Cultivators told stories and drank deeply from their cups in the dead Tyrant’s honor. Watching them and listening to them talk, I found myself wishing I could have known the man myself.

“My grandfather met him once,” Kyno admitted after his third drink. Elissa leaned in while Lefteris smiled knowingly. “They were hunting the same beast, a chimera made up of half a dozen Heroic beasts. My grandfather found it first, and…”

I finished my cup and ordered another.

“My master knew him before he left the Raging Heaven Cult,” Elissa confided, later. Kyno and Lefteris were both visibly interested. This was a story neither had heard before. “They’d always been on friendly terms, but when my master decided he was leaving Olympia for good and severing all ties, the kyrios offered him a wager. A single sword exchange, no pneuma involved, and if the kyrios won, my master had to keep his faith. They squared off in an octagon of marble and gold…”

At one point, Lefteris got up and went to the marble bar along the far wall, inlaid along its edges with indigo inscriptions of drinking games. When he came back, he had a terracotta jar of wine half his height tucked under one arm and a game in the other.

“The kyrios loved games of all kinds,” he said, while Elissa rubbed her hands together gleefully and Kyno knocked back the rest of his cup in one shot, a haunted look in his eyes. Even his skinned crocodile mantle looked traumatized. “This one was his favorite by far. He’d offer every initiate at least one game with him during their time at the Raging Heaven, more if they were lucky. He believed its mechanics had ties to the Fates.”

It was the sort of absurd statement that I enjoyed hearing. I watched Lefteris spread the carved stone tiles across the table, linking them end to end. A grid of two-by-three and a grid of four-by-three, connected in the middle by a bridge of two single tiles.

“What’s it called?” I asked curiously.

All three answered at once.

“Ascension.”

“The rules are simple,” Lefteris explained, distributing fourteen pieces, seven on either side of the assembled board.

“Yet profound,” Elissa interjected, with the air of someone telling a bad joke ahead of time. Kyno chuckled.

“Exactly right,” Lefteris agreed without shame. “Each player is given seven pieces, and the objective is in the name. Move all seven pieces from the beginning”—he tapped two of the blocks, one in each corner at the bottom of the board—“to the end.” He tapped the two corners second from the top. “First one out wins.”

Each piece was cut from a different type of stone. When I picked one up, a smooth red jasper, certain portions of the stone caught the light of the oil lamps and shimmered.

The pieces followed a certain track on the board, which overlapped in the middle. The blocks that weren’t in the middle were safe havens for one player or the other, but those that did were combat zones where pieces could do battle. While inhabiting the upper or lower grids, outside the bridge, players could choose to have their pieces avoid conflict as they ascended. But there was no getting through the bottleneck without conflict.

If a piece was taken by an opponent, it was sent back to the pool of eligible pieces outside the board. A player could have all seven of their pieces on the board at one time, or they could have as few as one—it was a question of strategic preference. Movement and combat were decided by dice.

I was presented with two bone dice for the game, tetrahedrons with values carved into the corners of their faces. Lefteris offered me the first round as practice. The stories continued as we played.

“When I first saw that cursed mountain, I didn’t think I’d survive it. But do you know what the kyrios told me, that night before the rites?”

It was folly to pack the board with all seven pieces at once. There wasn’t nearly enough room to maneuver.

“I had just wasted a month of my life in closed doors cultivation only to achieve nothing at all, and who do I see when I open the doors?”

Focusing on only one piece at a time wasn’t much better. The elimination mechanic favored the player with more pieces on the board.

“I’ve taken the monster with me because what else was I going to do, and so the entryway is covered in blood and offal. Elder Solon is furious, the junior is nearly dead and won’t stop vomiting blood over my back, and just as I’m about to lose my patience, who arrives but the kyrios?”

The kyrios had lived a full life from the sounds of it. As they reminisced, drinking and laughing, smiling wistfully in turns, we continued to play the game of Ascension. After my first couple practice games, the victor’s rule was imposed. The winner kept the board while the loser gave way to a new challenger.

I cycled through a couple times following ties, getting a feel for the rules and various play styles. Kyno, Elissa, and Lefteris all employed wildly different strategies. Aggression, prudence, and pure brazen luck were present in varying proportions among each of them. Poor joke or not, it really was a simple game with a surprisingly profound strategic depth to it. And the introduction of luck as a mechanic meant that it could never be fully solved.

I found myself enjoying it more than I thought I would. Once I had firmly grasped the rules and core playstyles, I slowly built out my own over the course of several games. After my first loss, at Lefteris’ hands, I began to win. And I didn’t stop.

“You said he tied the Fates to this?” I asked offhandedly, somewhere around my sixth game in a row. Another table of Raging Heaven cultivators had noticed us playing and wandered over, pitching in to the conversation as well as the rotation of games. I was currently playing another Philosopher, of the eighth rank. He wasn’t very good.

“The kyrios was a firm believer in the Pythagorean school of philosophy,” Lefteris explained, watching us intently as we played. “Isopsephy as well, among other curiosities. Depending on the results of your rolls, when you roll them, where your piece ends up, and if it’s in conflict with an opponent—even which of your pieces it is—there are countless interpretations. There are some whose entire cultivation journey revolves around the study of this game.”

I couldn’t think of a more boring life than one spent analyzing a board game. Still, it was enjoyable to play.

I glanced wryly at Lefteris as I set my piece over my opponent’s piece at the bottleneck, taking it. “Ho? And what do these dice have to say about me?”

I continued to play, and I continued to win. My control of the board was absolute, unchallenged among heaven and earth. Eventually, Lefteris jumped back in as my opponent, and when he lost and another cultivator tried to take his place, he waved them off. The Civic cultivator protested for only a moment. Lefteris gave him a look that sent him scurrying to the other side of the club.

“You’ve never played this game before today?” he asked me suspiciously, resetting the pieces.

“Never in my life,” I said easily. “I suppose I’m simply gifted.”

“The kyrios was like that,” Kyno mused. “It was as if any craft he picked up was something he’d been practicing for decades already, after only the briefest period of introduction. They say he only ever lost the game of Ascension once.”

“His first,” I guessed, rather than make the obvious joke.

“No,” Elissa said. “It was a game he lost less than two decades ago, after centuries of play.”

“Is that so?” I asked, interested. “Who beat him?” Elissa and Kyno shared a look across the table.

“Damon Aetos,” Lefteris said and tossed me the dice.

“You’re a liar and a cheat!” Lefteris accused me, slapping the table furiously and spilling our stone pieces off the board. Well, his stone pieces. Mine had already ascended. Kyno and Elissa watched in mixed amusement and disbelief. Wide cups of spirit wine and ivory marbles used for betting covered the table.

We’d drawn something of a crowd.

As per the rules we’d established early on, the loser of a given match had to down an entire cup of kykeon without pause. This was a fairly benign rule when the intention was for the loser to then cede the table to someone else and not stubbornly remain to lose over and over again.

For a Heroic cultivator, it would take several cups to make a dent in their prodigious tolerance.

Lefteris had the deeply rosy cheeks and glassy eyes of a man that had had far too much to drink. The sun had risen fully through the dawn, and I had won quite a few games. I was on my third cup of wine at the moment.

“Careful, friend,” I said, propping my chin on one hand and smiling wickedly. “My virtuous heart won’t tolerate such an accusation.”

“I said what I said,” he said, doubling down. Lefteris looked to Elissa and Kyno for validation, ignoring the jeers and taunts of the cultivators standing around the table. They had drachmae riding on these games and were obviously biased. “He’s doing something to the dice, I’m sure of it!”

Elissa hummed, twirling her finger through her wine and flicking a clump of the impure lees at a target on the far wall. It struck dead center, and a cheer went up from a nearby table. She shot them a quick grin before answering.

“It does seem like something he would do,” she agreed, in such a way that made it clear she disagreed. She was still a bit sore over our introduction but was coming around.

Kyno just patted him on the arm. “The only thing worse than a loser is a sore loser.”

I came to a decision. “Let’s see, then,” I said, sweeping the stone tiles and pieces to the side of the table, leaving only the dice. “Is it strategy and good fortune, or am I a fraud? We’ll let the heavens decide. I’ll even close my eyes.”

Lefteris considered the dice doubtfully.

“If you’d rather apologize, I’ll accept it,” I told him graciously. The Heroic archer scowled and snatched up the dice, shaking once and letting them fly across the table.

Snake eyes.

Laughter rippled through our little audience. I closed my eyes and rolled. When I opened them, I saw Lefteris’ furious glare, and on the table—a one and a two.

“That’s one,” I told him breezily. “How many rounds would you like to try?”

“First to four,” he spat, sweeping up the dice. He rolled again. A four and a three, this time. There were three sets of numbers on each corner of the dice, each ascending by a factor of ten. In this case, a four, forty, or a four hundred accompanied by a three, thirty, or a three hundred.

The distinction hardly mattered here. I let the dice fly with a lazy flick. When I opened my eyes, I saw a three and a four. Tie.

Lefteris shook the dice like they owed him money, Kyno and Elissa watching with poorly masked amusement as bone tetrahedrons bounced across the table. One and two. I rolled without fanfare and got the same result. Again.

“Impossible!” Lefteris snarled. I saw sweat beading on his brow. In a way, I supposed tying was more stressful than losing outright. “It’s the dice. There’s something wrong with the dice!”

“Are you accusing the owner of giving us weighted dice?” I asked, raising an eyebrow. The owner in question shivered in quiet fear, hovering over by the bar.

“We’ve been here countless times, Lefteris,” Kyno chided him. “You know Timon wouldn’t do that.”

“Something he’s doing, then,” the drunk archer insisted.

“Or perhaps,” I said slyly, “the Muses love me more than you.”

It was a benign comment but with a challenging undertone—a thinly veiled way of saying that my cultivation was superior to his. It was a less common taunt among the lower realms but still present. Undeniably, it hit harder once one reached the Heroic realm and their lives became the subject of Epics.

When it became clear that Lefteris was too angry to roll, I took it upon myself to lead the next round. The dice clattered against the wood top, amidst cheers and calls for either my victory or Lefteris’, depending on who was betting.

Twin twos. I leaned back and watched as Lefteris made the most focused cast of his life. I knew as they fell that it wouldn’t be enough. Victory was a certainty in my heart.

Twin fours. I frowned.

I took the dice again when he gestured, accepting the change in order. A win to a win, and two ties. I let fly my dice and nodded when a four and a one resulted. Lefteris breathed deeply and cast again.

Twin threes.

Something…

I rolled one more time, the heavens yielding a three and a two. Lefteris was confident now.

Twin threes, again.

“You’re cheating,” I said with certainty. “My mentor would crucify you for that.”

“Who’s the sore loser now?” Lefteris asked smugly. “I’m throwing the same dice as you, fellow sophist.”

“You are,” I admitted. “But you’re not throwing them fairly.”

“It’s unfair now that the winds are blowing my way, is it?”

“No. It’s unfair because you’re timing the dice.”

It was the purest form of cheating among cultivators, utilizing the enhanced dexterity and perception granted by cultivation to manipulate exactly how the dice would fall. Such was a Heroic cultivator’s alacrity that he could do it blind drunk and be correct every time. In fact, it was only because he was so drunk that I picked up on it at all.

Lefteris met my stare unflinchingly. “You’re wrong.” The crowd was quiet. The tension in the air became thick and cloying.

“Close your eyes,” I ordered. “As I did.” Lefteris obliged without hesitation, confident in his innocence. Or confident in his ability to continue cheating. He held out a hand, and I pressed one of the dice onto his empty palm, its point jutting straight up. His expression remained serene.

Then I placed the second tetrahedron directly on top of the first, balancing it precariously on the tip, and his smile vanished. Kyno chuckled, a low rumble in his chest.

Heroic cultivators were existences far beyond anything a Philosopher like myself could imagine. I didn’t doubt for a moment that Lefteris could feel the impressions of the marked dice against his palm, and I also didn’t doubt that he could use that knowledge to time it completely blind.

But he couldn’t cheat the second die.

“What will you do?” I asked him. “You can fix one of the dice, but heaven will have its hand on the other.”

“What are you accusing me of, junior?” Lefteris asked me quietly, rather than throw. His eyes opened. Kyno and Elissa considering us both speculatively.

“Who says I’m your junior? I’m accusing you of being shit at dice… and a sore loser besides.”

“It’s like that then!” His heart flames ignited at the insult. “I think it’s time you and I exchanged discourse, Griffon!”

“I have a better idea,” I said, grinning fiercely. I slammed my elbow down on the table and offered him my open hand. “The Muses have abandoned you. Let’s see if your body has too.”

The club devolved into hollering chaos as I arm-wrestled the archer for all that I was worth. He pressed down on me with every ounce of strength in his Heroic body, but for all that he was stronger than me by an incomprehensible metric in terms of our tripartite souls, it was not necessarily the same story when it came to our bodies. He was an archer, a ranged warrior. His body, though far beyond anything an archer in a lower realm could possess, simply hadn’t been tempered the same way mine had. We were built differently.

My body was superior. And admittedly, he was incredibly drunk.

He cheated, of course, but this time so did I. As soon as I saw the flames in his eyes flare up, I seized his hand with all twenty of my pankration arms and drove it down onto the table.

The club erupted with deafening cheers, and Kyno held Lefteris down while Elissa and I poured cups of spirit wine into his open mouth. Somewhere in the mayhem, the bronze doors of the club swung open and admitted a group of cultivators.

There were six of them, and as I brushed over them with a casual eye, I saw them staring directly at us. Two had the fires of Heroic cultivation in their eyes, while the other four were deep into the Sophic realm. Without hesitation, the sharper of the two Heros sauntered over to our table. Three Philosophers followed on his heels, while the other Hero and one of the Philosophers went to the bar.

I saw the Hero’s eyes flicker to our empty chairs, vacated while we held Lefteris down and administered his punishment for cheating. Sensing what was to come next, I grabbed the chairs with three hands of pankration intent and pulled them back before he reached them. Something ugly swept across the faces of his entourage. The Hero smiled faintly.

Kyno cursed under his breath when he spotted them, righting Lefteris in his chair. Elissa turned cold, staring silently at the Hero and leaning on the table next to the bronze blade she’d laid across it. Lefteris sputtered and slapped as much wine out of his robes as he could.

“Greetings, Philosopher,” the Hero insulted me. “You’ve taken my seats.”

I felt a powerful sense of déjà vu.

“I don’t see your name on any of them,” I replied.

His eyes flared, but instead of attacking or responding the way I’d expected him to, he simply nodded at the chairs.

“See for yourself.”

There was a name carved into the back of each chair that hadn’t been there before. Alazon.

Heroic cultivators were nothing but swagger and bad attitudes.

“Unfortunately, I didn’t come here to read,” I declared. Lefteris laughed, evidently too drunk for a proper cultivator standoff.

“My, the junior initiates are bold these days. Hardly in the Sophic realm and you dare talk back to a Hero?” Alazon’s voice was deceptively mild, while his pneuma radiated threat. Was this what it felt like? No, I was far more fun than this, surely.

“My mentor always said I was a precocious child,” I said, only realizing as I said it that the three behind me would assume I meant Sol and not the old man that had taught me the quadrivium.

“A common affliction,” Alazon said understandingly. “Fortunately, that is what senior initiates are for. Come, brother, allow me to guide you on your path to virtue.” He spread his hands invitingly, and a monstrous pressure swept through the club.

The waves of Alazon’s influence crashed against my own and only broke after some effort on my part. I smiled coldly. I could feel the difference between this one and Elissa. His temper was shorter, and his pneuma was even more densely vibrant. He wouldn’t waste time on warning blows or choreographed moves. I could see the intent in the curve of his smirk.

He intended to shatter my ego. And I wasn’t strong enough to stop him.

“Enough of this,” Kyno said, stepping up beside me. His massive hands flexed threateningly, and— Was the crocodile skin glaring? “We’ve been here all morning, Alazon. Find another table.”

“Of course, I’d be happy to trade discourse with you as well, brother,” Alazon said obligingly. “In fact, I’m sure my juniors here would be honored to see your virtue in action. Perhaps you could advise them?” The three Philosophers with him fanned out around us, and in my peripheral, I saw the other two returning with their drinks, coincidentally placing them behind us.

“Six on four is hardly fair,” I pointed out. “Arguably, Lefteris is drunk enough to count against us.”

“Perhaps it’s best you took him home, then,” Alazon suggested.

Evidently tired of the wordplay, Elissa grabbed her bronze blade and drove it through one of the chairs, splitting it down the middle and kicking both pieces across the floor. Alazon stopped one with his sandaled foot, letting the other skitter by and shatter against the far war. His expression shuttered, and the tension in the room crystalized. I inhaled.

A cultivator’s influence washed over the club.

Every able body stiffened as the waves swept over them, examining them, urging them beneath its surface. It was a challenge to fight. A riptide pull. I started to chuckle. Alazon, who had whipped around to stare at the bronze doors, turned back to me just as quickly.

“What are you laughing at?” he demanded furiously.

“You.”

Gravitas blew the bronze doors off their hinges, and Sol stalked into the club, dragging a cultivator dressed in black rags and a hood behind him. He had that storm in his eyes, and there was a dark weight to them that made him look twice and twice again more menacing than usual. From past experiences, I knew that dark weight was exhaustion. He was all but dead on his feet.

But they didn’t know that. Three cultivators walked through the ruined entryway behind him, Scythas as well as a man and a woman I hadn’t seen before. A cursory glance at their pneuma revealed that all three were of the Heroic realm. The hooded cultivator, too.

Sol threw the struggling Hero down onto the floor and stomped them through it when they tried to rise. The woman in his group laughed lightly, laying a hand on his shoulder. There was a cut there, angry and red, and it was mirrored on the other side of him.

“Careful,” the Heroine said playfully. “This is the last one. We need them intact.”

“I pay my respects to the kyrios,” he said, ignoring her. His voice was as darkly strained as the rest of him. “For maintaining order in a cult full of animals.” The last word came out as a snarl. The cultivator raised his arms up over his face, and Sol hammered them down with Gravitas. The man cried out in pain and fear.

A Hero cowered at Sol’s feet. The context, doubtlessly, was not as impressive as the image here and now. But that hardly mattered. I fought to contain my smile and lost. Worthless Roman, I really was going to have to pretend he was my mentor after this.

“Who are you?” Alazon asked, confused and wary. No doubt his senses were telling him the truth of things—that Sol was only a Philosopher…and barely at that. But his eyes were telling him something else entirely. And if nothing else, the status of the three Heroes flanking him were undeniable.

I couldn’t resist.

“Master,” I greeted him cheerfully, “where have you been? You look terrible.”

Sol looked, saw me standing by a table covered in cups of wine and a dice game, and his lips peeled back from his teeth. Lefteris’ chair scraped loudly against the floor as he edged it back, away from my ‘mentor’. Elissa’s hand tightened to a white-knuckled grip on her blade. Kyno’s jaw flexed.

“Your master?” Ah, there was the uncertainty. You tried to Young Aristocrat the Young Aristocrat, Alazon. It’s only natural that tribulation would follow. “I’ve never seen either of you before.”

“We’re new arrivals,” I explained truthfully. “I came to compete, and Sol came for a bit of culture before he goes back to fighting demons on the western front.”

“You’re here for the Games?” the third member of Sol’s companions asked, surprised. He glanced at Sol. “That’s… not what I would have guessed.”

“Seems almost too tame,” the Heroine agreed, twirling a bloody javelin in her hand. Steam drifted away from it as I watched, the blood superheated by something invisible to the eye. The waves of her influence were scorching hot as they brushed up against mine.

“Demons?” Scythas asked, edging in close. “Is that true, Sol?”

I could visibly see the last thread of his patience snap.

The downed cultivator gagged as Sol picked him up by the throat and ripped the hood off his head. He would have been handsome, I was sure, and some of it could still be seen beneath the blood and swollen bruises, but it was difficult to appreciate now. He coughed and weakly spat, to his credit at least attempting to be defiant in the face of the storm.

Sol headbutted him as hard as he could. The crack of their foreheads slamming together and the way the Hero’s head snapped back made it seem as if his neck had broken, just for a moment. The cultivator’s eyes quivered, dazed.

And then they settled, for just a moment, on Alazon. They moved on at once. But it was too late.

“You!” Sol snapped, throwing the cultivator to the ground and stalking towards the Young Aristocrat. Alazon took a step back, an unconscious reaction. It doomed him. “Tell me how many there are and the names of their targets. Now.” For all that he had resisted my charade at the start, Sol was an exceptional actor. If he was acting, that was. I leaned back against our table, impressed enough to let it play out without any interruption.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Alazon replied, denying any involvement with the events that had sullied the funeral, of course. “I don’t even know that man.” Shadow politics were perhaps an inevitability in an institution like this, but being linked to those unpleasant dealings was something else altogether.

Alazon’s loyal companions slowly distanced themselves from him, each trying very hard not to catch Sol’s notice in doing so. Scythas and the other two were watching them intently, though.

“How cold of you, Alazon,” the Heroine with the bloody javelin said disapprovingly. “I’ve seen you and Alexios here exchanging discourse on more than one occasion. Surely, you recognize him—the bruises aren’t that bad.”

The captain’s influence pressed down on everyone in the club. I held my breath. I could see how close Sol was to collapsing. If they called his bluff and attacked, we had enough Heroes on our side to win the ensuing brawl. But he wouldn’t necessarily survive it.

Luckily, Alazon was something that I have never been, even in my days as Young Aristocrat of the Rosy Dawn.

A coward.

The Heroic Young Aristocrat exploded into motion, away from Sol and the rest of us, vaulting the bar and disappearing through the back of the establishment. The Heroes that had been in the club but not taken any sides up until that point took off in pursuit of him, open collusion being the line that they apparently could not abide being crossed. The rest of Alazon’s entourage tried to follow suit in escaping, but the Philosophers were swarmed by the other cultivators in the club, and Scythas and his friend took down the second Hero of the group with punishing force.

In the riotous haze of pneuma, Heroic spirits, and virtuous techniques tearing through the establishment, I nearly missed the crow that exploded out of the robes of the cultivator that Sol had dragged in.

The bird looked like it was made of squid ink instead of flesh, whirling liquid shadow in the shape of a crow rather than the creature itself. It shot through the air like an arrow from a bow, narrowly avoiding a dozen different techniques and shooting through the open doorway. It cawed mockingly as it vanished from view.

Abruptly, that caw turned to an odd, whistling shriek.

A Roman messenger eagle swooped into the club and landed on Sol’s shoulder. The crow construct struggled weakly as the eagle snapped down on its throat one bite at a time.

Sol approached our table in a controlled stagger, taking my seat and my cup of wine too, draining it in one pull. He ignored the chaos currently resolving itself in the club, the shouts and struggles of men individually capable of crushing stone and leveling buildings. He surveyed the table and the game of Ascension clustered to one side of it. The Heroine with the javelin leaned on the back of his chair, stroking his eagle and cooing softly to it while it preened.

“You’re playing dice?” he asked roughly.

Elissa and Kyno shared a look, and slowly, slowly, they sat back down in their chairs. Lefteris, having been too drunk to stand in the first place, eased his back up to the table.

“We were,” I said, smirking. Lefteris paled. “Before my new friend over here cheated.”

Sol’s eyes narrowed to slits.