The second rank of the Sophic Realm felt much like the first.

The difference was enormous by the standards of a Civic cultivator, of course. My reservoir of pneuma—the sea of my vital soul—had deepened an outrageous amount. The saying went that one rank above was worth ten below, and though my perceptions were skewed by excessive blood loss and a staggering depletion of strength, that felt nearly in line with what I had experienced.

I had also grown in a less evident way, something I couldn’t quite pin down, but which instinctively felt clearer within me. I had a few ideas as to what it could be, but at the moment, I was in no state to be waxing theoretical about Sophic cultivation.

Instead, I chose to pay my wayward friends a visit and assure them of my good health. Alas, I misjudged my new strength, and rather than open the door to Elissa’s residence, I accidentally conjured thirty hands of pankration intent and tore it off its hinges.

There in the hall, I found Elissa and the rest of the group—as I had suspected I would—along with a pleasant surprise.

“Lefteris,” I said brightly, flashing my teeth in a friendly smile at the gold-string archer. “I’ve been looking for you.” For some reason, he flinched at my words—or maybe it was just the sight of me.

I noted a pair of boys peering out at me from behind Lefteris’ legs, each of them around Myron’s age by the looks of it. Their fiery red hair was mostly covered up by straw hats, but the bright, mismatched eyes were on full display. I’d ask about them later when I wasn’t feeling quite as murderous.

“Griffon,” Elissa breathed. “You’re alive.”

“I am,” I agreed, stepping inside and grinding the door to further splinters beneath my heels. My pankration hands flexed and grasped fitfully at the air around me, crackling still with the memory of lightning. They clawed at the walls around them, they pounded against the floor, and they wrenched the door apart. Others still reached out for the Heroic cultivators at the other end of the hall. The Heroes eyed them warily, pneuma curling around themselves protectively.

“Forgive me,” I said, grabbing a pankration arm with my flesh and blood hand and crushing it into formless essence. “These hands of mine are versatile, but at their core, they’re nothing more than a manifestation of my intent.”

“And that intent would be?” Jason asked cautiously, his hands resting at his waist, where several daggers were sheathed.

I grinned.

“Violence.”

The rosy light of dawn erupted upon the remaining twenty-nine hands of pankration intent in the hall, that curious weight I had noticed upon my advancement flickering in their palms.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Elissa scoffed, breaking from the ranks and crossing the hall. She tensed as she passed through the throngs of grasping pankration hands, but none of them touched her, naturally. “You look like you already have a foot in the Styx.”

“Two, actually,” I said, smiling faintly when she snorted in amusement.

“And I suppose you expect us to pull you out? Patch you up and ship you back out good as new, is that it?” She poked me in the chest, relaxing into the back and forth. “You’ll be replacing that door. And don’t even think about—”

“Why is the coward touching me?” I asked curiously. The Sword Song froze, staring hard at me.

“Excuse me?”

“I asked why you were touching me,” I repeated for her benefit, “with the mongrel finger you refused to lift when you were needed.”

“Be very careful about the next word you say,” she said, every syllable a threat. I leaned in close enough for the residual lightning in my hair to shock her.

“Coward.”

The Sword Song spat an oath and lunged forward, only to be jerked back in the same motion by Kyno, who hoisted her up with her back against his chest while she thrashed and seethed.

“Who gave you the right? Who gave you the right to ignore the reality of this city, to render judgment on us who have lived it? How dare you call me a coward, you arrogant scarlet bastard!”

“Ho, have I touched a nerve?” I taunted her, advancing forward while Kyno stepped back with her in his grip. “Does it anger you, to be confronted? Does it upset you, to face judgment from someone who isn’t broken and defeated?”

“What were we supposed to do against the Gadfly?” she spat, flames the color of desert heat blazing behind her eyes. The heat in her face overpowered the classical beauty of an advanced cultivator, allowing the scars to assert themselves in all their ugly glory. “What could we have possibly done to stop the man that plumbs the depths?”

“What could a group of Heroes do against a single Philosopher? Is that what you’re asking?” I repeated the question, continuing forward even as Kyno bumped back against Lefteris and Jason. I saw something like true steel enter the archer’s bearing, just for a moment, as my wandering pankration hands reached for the two boys hiding behind him. His influence struck out and nailed them to the floor in a wordless invocation of will that sent lances of silver pain through my soul. Good. Good. Give me something.

“Not a philosopher. The philosopher. He set the standard. We named it the Scholar’s path after him. Crows and bleeding carrion, you can’t possibly think it’s that simple.” Elissa jerked against Kyno’s grip, but unlike at the funeral, he decided against letting her go. She snarled in frustration. “Socrates has had centuries to walk his path, further than any of his kind. How long have we had? How long have you had?”

“Eighteen years.”

The cultivators in the hall stared at me in flat disbelief. Anastasia tilted her head, farthest down, merely leaning in the doorframe to the next room and watching. I shot her a challenging look. She smiled apologetically.

“Eighteen years old,” Jason muttered. “Even for Solus’ student, that’s—”

“Lying again.” Elissa’s eyes narrowed. “I didn’t ask you how old your disguise was. I asked you how old you were. Griffon, the Olympic competitor.”

“And I answered you,” I said, pushing them back into the adjoined room. There were several lounges around the edges, and a warm hearth with a few crumbling logs burning away inside. A table next to two of the lounges had several empty jugs on it, one still half-filled with kykeon. It seemed they’d had a long day of sitting around, drinking, and feeling sorry for themselves.

“Still with this? Even now?” she demanded. “We threw in with you against all reason, but you still won’t tell us the truth.”

“That’s twice you’ve called me a liar. My virtuous heart won’t tolerate a third.” My pankration hands strained to the limits of the range that I allowed them, clawing at the air in strangling motions. Elissa’s pneuma rose in response.

“Be reasonable, both of you,” Kyno said firmly, holding the Sword Song still with an arm around her throat and holding the other out towards me, palm flat. “She makes a good point, Griffon. How can you expect us to see this through if we continue to hide everything significant from one another? The stakes in this game are too high to be playing against each other on the side.”

“And why would I ever entrust my secrets to this cabal of cowards?”

Kyno met my eyes and did not waver. “We aren’t you. The Oracle was right when she judged you. You say all the things a man in your position must not say, you do all the things that you must not do, and as far as I can tell, you are the way you are for the thrill alone. Most men aren’t made in your image. And if you want to work with us, you’re going to have to live with that.”

We stared hard at one another while I bled out on the Heroine’s floor. Finally, I tilted my head.

“That day, before we went to see yours, you told me to seek the Scarlet Oracle,” I said. He nodded. “When was the last time you saw her or knew someone to have seen her?”

The Heroes exchanged looks.

“Recently,” Kyno said at length. “Why?”

“During my brief stroll through the Storm That Never Ceases,” I said, drawing my pankration hands back within myself with some effort, “I spoke with each of the Oracles.”

“You… what?” Jason asked. Anastasia hummed in interest.

“Seven in all,” I continued, “but when I reached the eighth, the oracle of my own home, I found her broken and battered in a crater of melted stone. Can any of you explain that?” By this point Elissa had stopped raging, a pensive frown settling onto her face, and Kyno slowly lowered her to the floor.

Anastasia spoke for the first time since I’d arrived. “That’s a question you’d have to ask her successor. Or your master, perhaps.”

“Of course.” I rolled my eyes and turned, striding back down the hall.

“Wait!”

“You’re leaving in that state?”

“Absolutely not.”

I glanced down at the marble white hand gripping me by the elbow and holding me in place. On my best day, a Heroine’s strength was something I couldn’t have shaken. As I was now? I may as well have tried to pull heaven and earth along with her.

“What do you think you’re doing?” I asked Anastasia. If the body was weak, then presence would prevail in its place.

Unfortunately, she wasn’t fazed. Caustic green eyes burned as they roved up and down my body, and with a distasteful click of her tongue, she pulled me back into the room. I allowed her to do it because my only other option was to resist and fail. She sat me down on one of the lounges next to the table, and I grabbed the remaining jug of spirit wine and downed it in protest.

“‘What do I think I’m doing’, he asks,” Anastasia muttered, shaking her head in disbelief. With deft movements, she wound her hair into a simple braid and shrugged out of her fine onyx robes, leaving her in a simple peplos that fell to her midriff. “As if I’d let you walk out of here in that state just so you can die. Solus would never forgive me.”

I opened my mouth to say something appropriately harsh and shut it just as quickly as she laid her hands on my chest, searing heat sweeping through my body. I jerked back, but she only leaned forward, guiding that heat through the vital channels of my body where the Rein-Holder’s marrow dwelled.

So, this was purity.

“You’re a healer,” I mused, tracing her pneuma as it wound through me, burning away the impurities that it found and cauterizing internal wounds that my rosy hands of dawn couldn’t reach.

“That’s one of the things that I am,” she agreed, her usual conniving smile replaced with focus and intent. In this moment, more than any other that had come before, I bore witness to the Heroine that was Anastasia.

“Teach me,” I said.

The Heroine blinked, her pneuma faltering in my veins, and glanced up at me.

“Medicine isn’t something that can be learned overnight. It’s not some fighting stance to add to your inventory after a few days’ practice.”

“That’s fine,” I said. “I’ll master it all the same.”

“Why?” Jason asked, sitting on the couch opposite the table and leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, visibly forcing himself to lean closer to Anastasia so he could watch her work. “You never struck me as the type. You break, you don’t build.”

“I am whatever I desire to be,” I said. “As for why, this morning has made it clear that I can’t rely on others to mend me when things are dire. If I had known how to do it myself, I wouldn’t have had to turn back at the precipice of the peak.”

“The peak of the mountain?” Elissa cut in.

“He threw you that far?” Kyno asked.

“No,” Lefteris answered for me, frowning my way. “Based on the trajectory, you couldn’t have landed more than a third of the way into the storm.”

“That’s true.” I acknowledged. “My great-great-grand-master didn’t have the courtesy to send me all the way up, so I had to travel the rest on foot.”

“You went up the mountain?” Elissa hissed. “Alone?”

“Not alone. I made some friends along the way.”

“When the Raging Heaven sends initiates up into the storm for their rites, they send all the cult’s senior mystikos to guard them,” Kyno said with a grave sort of wonder. “There are things in that storm too treacherous for a single cultivator to walk alone.”

“The hounds aren’t so bad.” I lifted my left shoulder in a shrug because the right had stopped functioning hours ago. “Any dog can be disciplined.”

“You’re serious,” Lefteris said. He looked from me to Elissa to Kyno. “He’s serious?”

“This is what we were talking about,” Kyno said wearily, rubbing at his temples. “So, you braved the trial of tribulation. Official or not, that earns you a right to admittance to the Raging Heaven Cult.”

“I didn’t make it to the top,” I pointed out.

“That just means you wouldn’t be inducted as a senior initiate on your first day,” Elissa said.

“The higher an initiate makes it up the mountain before breaking or being broken by the storm,” Jason explained, “the higher their standing when they first enter the cult. It’s a point of pride, as well as their peers’ first look at what they’re made of.”

And I hadn’t made it all the way. How annoying.

I sighed. “I suppose I’ll have to make up for it when I return with Sol.” A beat of uncomfortable silence, punctuated by the crackling hearth.

“Solus… We can’t be sure that he’ll be coming back,” Kyno finally said.

“And why is that?” I asked mildly.

“Look at yourself,” Elissa said, gesturing at my admittedly gruesome appearance. By now, she seemed almost too tired to be angry with me. “The Gadfly goes where he wants and says what he wants, and the tyrants of this world allow it, where they would subjugate any other philosopher. Solus may be beyond us, but he certainly is not beyond Socrates.”

Anastasia frowned but didn’t look up from her work. Jason spoke for her, seeming just as troubled.

“It’s not impossible,” he said, gripping the upholstered edge of his couch. “Together, under the right circumstances, if we could find him. I owe it to him to at least try. I made a promise that I’d stand by his side.”

“And you broke it in under a day,” I said, manifesting two pankration hands to clap. “Impressive.” He scowled and looked away.

“Enough,” said Anastasia, digging fingertips painted black into the juncture between my ribs. I exhaled slowly as an enduring pain in my chest was burned away. “We hesitated, and that was our weakness. It won’t happen the next time.”

“This is madness,” said Lefteris. Sitting beside him, the two boys and their straw hats were staring at me with open curiosity. I stuck my bloody tongue out at them, and they both flinched. “I won’t be a part of it,” he insisted, beseeching Kyno and Elissa. “And you two shouldn’t either. More likely than not we’d be going after a dead man, challenging the Gadfly over a corpse. We might as well go charging straight into Tartarus and save ourselves the detour.”

The beating of wings sounded from outside the door, cutting the archer off before he could get a full head of steam. Elissa cursed.

“The door.”

But what swept through her entryway wasn’t an ink-black crow, rather a great messenger eagle. Sorea glided into the room, his wings brushing either side of the hall, and he settled himself on the back of my couch with an expectant trill. Lefteris inhaled sharply, recognizing the bird, while his boys stared in wonder. Anastasia, for her part, immediately ceased healing me in her delight.

That delight died a quick death when the messenger eagle disdained her reaching hand, beating his wings and shrieking in her face. She drew back, hurt.

“The bird is wise,” I said, holding out a palm. Sorea snapped his beak and heaved, vomiting a handful of black bones as well as a roll of papyrus into my hand. I inclined my head in thanks and opened the message, something primal easing in my chest as I saw Sol’s tight, militant script.

I read two lines before I was smiling.

“What does it say?” Jason demanded, leaning over as far as he could to see. I went back to the beginning and read it for the room to hear.

Griffon,

I hope this letter finds you in one piece. You’ve been due a smack in the mouth, but I won’t be able to enjoy it until I know you’ve survived to be reminded of it. Sorea will wait for you to send back a reply—don’t keep him long after you’ve read this.

I can’t rejoin you just yet. I’ll be fine where I am so don’t come charging after me. I came to this city looking for Aristotle and found his master’s master instead. It will have to do. Socrates has identified an aspect of my cultivation in need of improvement, so while he advises me, I’ll be behind closed doors in the late kyrios’ estate.

Try not to be yourself until I get back. You can tell the others I’m alive, but don’t give them the full details. Things have become complicated enough as it is.

Ever,

Solus

“Ah,” I said, looking from the assembled cultivators’ expressions back to the last paragraph. “I suppose I shouldn’t have read this out loud.”

The room erupted.