“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 in many ways—at least, home at its heights. Each day in the Half-Step City was a festival by the standards of Álikos, every street overflowing with enterprising merchants, musicians playing sweet songs, and of course, men both young and old hotly debating politics on every corner.

Each street was a new experience, and that alone was worth the trips up and down Kaukoso Mons.

“With all the issues these Tyrants are causing, the least they could do is their jobs,” Sol muttered darkly, tossing an apple in his hand as he perused a merchant’s wares. His nose twitched, and he absently brushed a thumb across it. “Favored by one should mean reviled by seven.”

“That would make too much sense.” I clicked my tongue, thinking of all the worthless sophists that languished underneath the Storm That Never Ceased, perpetually too fearful of a Tyrant’s reprisal to fully test their limits. Abruptly, I wondered how many initiates of the Raging Heaven had actually suffered an elder’s wrath and not merely the threat of it.

“Power and its privileges…” Sol took a bite out of his apple, dismissing the merchant and turning down the road. “Alazon was a Hero, I remember that much. Strong enough to confidently challenge three peers and an unknown cultivator with only one other Hero and a handful of Philosophers at his back. Well-connected enough to do it in the middle of a club.”

“He was a real asshole,” I agreed. Gray eyes flickered my way.

“I was going to say he reminded me of you.”

“What a coincidence,” I said pleasantly, tilting my head towards an old vagrant bundled in filthy rags, sitting vacantly on a street corner while men stood around him arguing over the next assembly’s vote. “I was just about to say the same of him.” Sol snorted and took two more bites of his apple before flicking the core at my head.

“At any rate, it’s safe to assume he has friends in high places,” I continued, deftly avoiding it. “He’ll come back to haunt us sooner or later, I’m sure. More importantly, how was the lecture itself? Insightful?”

“The first number, éna, is the origin of all things,” Sol recited dully, slapping a boy’s hand away from an oblivious citizen’s coin pouch. The boy scowled in outrage, saw our cult attires, and promptly took off running down a side alley. “The second, thio, is the feminine principle. Third, tria, masculinity. Fourth—”

“Tessera.” I snapped my fingers and the light of dawn rose to the tip of my thumb and caught fire. “Perfect natural symmetry. Justice.” Sol hummed in agreement. “The wise philosopher had a larger point to make, surely? Even Romans can count to four.”

Sol ticked off three fingers on his hand and then paused, eyebrows furrowing. I chuckled and threw an arm over his shoulder, gesturing with the other into the distance. Beyond the eastern limits of Olympia was a vast expanse of unconquered life, stark mountains and lush valleys that could be seen sprawling into the far horizon.

“There is purpose in all things, young sophist,” I said grandly. “From their placement to their posture, their organization, and all their component parts, how they proliferate and how they cease to be. Natural philosophers are those that dedicate their lives to unearthing these purposes and advancing humanity’s fundamental understanding of creation. Surely, a man of that caliber is competent enough to teach multiple lessons with only one lecture—one for the children, one for the students, and one for the scholars.”

Sol started to raise his fourth finger, hesitated, and then lowered it again. I grabbed the bent finger and forced it to fully extend. His eyes widened.

“You’re not funny,” I informed him.

“And neither are you,” he said easily, brushing my arm off his shoulder. “It did feel like he was building towards a greater point, admittedly. He referenced past lectures a few times as well. It was almost like the entire lecture was an extended tangent.”

“I wouldn’t doubt it,” I said. “Past a certain point of advancement, even the seemingly simple techniques are vast amalgamations of smaller pursuits.”

“How so?”

“Consider the man that gave you his virtue,” I said. “Picture in your mind’s eye the greatest feats that he accomplished with it, and now imagine how you would recreate them.” I gave him a moment, just long enough not to lose himself. Then I prompted him, “Now do it.”

“I can’t,” he admitted. He clenched and unclenched his hands, a considering look in his eyes. “But not for the same reasons that you can’t copy your father.”

I flicked the lingering flame off my thumb and briefly weighed the odds of my successfully pulling down a star from heaven.

Not today. Tomorrow, maybe.

“Humor me, then,” I said. “Every Hero and every Tyrant was once a Philosopher. To progress past the Sophic Realm a cultivator must internalize a thousand-thousand truths—the rules of nature that will serve as the framework for their cultivation going forward.

“When a Hero stands against a terrible horror and strikes it down with a sword made of iron, every truth of the world as they know it is behind that swing. It’s more than just a flick of the wrist. When a Tyrant decides he has no more use for a mountain and it suddenly ceases to be?” I gestured back the way we’d come, in the direction of Kaukoso Mons and its storm crown, but we both knew I was referring to the Rosy Dawn’s initiation rites. “The same principle applies. So tell me, Sol, how does Rome differ?”

I was honestly curious. My understanding of the Roman system of cultivation was even less developed than his understanding of ours. I had only ever heard disparaging speculation from Álikoans and stray comments from Sol himself made during idle conversation. I waited patiently while he considered the scenario, eyes drifting back to the home of the Raging Heaven Cult.

Finally, he said, “A Hero cuts down a great enemy with one strike. But that one strike is the product of a thousand-thousand truths.” Storm gray eyes flickered to me seeking confirmation, and I nodded. “So then, if a Hero can swing a blade with the same force as a thousand-thousand men, it’s fair to say that each one of those truths represents a single swinging blade. A Tyrant is the same but on a larger scale.”

“For the most part,” I agreed.

“One Greek arms himself with the rules of nature and uses them to do the work of many. A Hero swings a sword like he’s a thousand-thousand men layered over one another in a single skin and smites the monster. A Tyrant presses down on a mountain like he’s a million-million men and crushes it to dust.”

“And what does the Roman do to strike down the monster?” I asked, intrigued. “How does he topple the mountain that’s in his path?”

Sol hummed, remembering, and the riptide currents of his influence whipped out around him, buffeting me and those around us. I let it wash over me, but a pair of women walking our way suddenly stumbled towards him, dropping the bundles of food in their arms. He arrested their fall with the captain’s virtue, and we walked on without breaking stride.

Eventually, he smiled wryly.

“The Roman tells five hundred good men to go to work, and the monster falls to the prime cohort’s fury.”

“And what about the mountain?” I asked, amused.

“What about the mountain?”

“How would you topple it?”

He shrugged. “I wouldn’t.”

I nearly objected. It was a terrible response, and worse than that, it didn’t tell me anything about the Roman cultural zeitgeist. I opened my mouth to say that, in admittedly less polite words, and then I paused. Closed it. On the surface, both answers said nothing at all about cultivation. There was strength in numbers, that was common sense. And yes, rather than do something, it was also possible to not do it instead.

But he’d specified five hundred men, not a thousand-thousand. And as for the mountain—

I sighed. “You’d go around it.”

“I’d go around it.”

The literal answer, the tactical answer, and the strategic answer, all wrapped up in one. I supposed that was what I deserved for my comment before. I filed away my new insight into the military mentality of a Roman cultivator for later consideration. And then I spat at his feet.

“You could have just said you’re boring,” I said sourly. Sol nodded, simple satisfaction in the quirk of his lips.

“And you could have just said you’re Greek.”