Chapter Text
ALDIR THYESTES'S POV
The Warrior’s Wind, the ancient, sighing breath of the Cerulean Savanna, did not enter my humble abode—it invited itself inside like a veteran returning from war.
It permeated the very walls, a sacred and silent guest in every home of Battle’s End, the heart of the Thyestes Clan and indirectly of all the Pantheons.
Our windows stood forever open, unadorned by panel or shutter, not from poverty of means, but from richness of tradition.
It was an act of faith, a daily sacrament to the elements that forged us. For when the Golden Sun turned its fierce, unwavering gaze upon our lands, baking the azure-green grasses to a brittle gold and making the very air shimmer with heat, the Warrior’s Wind was our salvation.
To my eyes—eyes still untrained, still unworthy beside the seasoned veterans of my honourable Clan—this wind was not an invisible breeze.
It was a living tapestry. It poured through the square window as a visible, divine brushstroke, as if some talented artist of the Asclepius Clan had dipped a brush in the very essence of the sky and savanna.
It swirled into the room in rich, languid arches of orange, gold and a red so deep it spoke of the sun’s own hidden heart.
I watched it, a silent observer in my own meditation, as the currents intertwined like strands of mana, like a radiant, unspooling ball of Phoenix-fire given the freedom of the air.
It was a dance of light and energy, the soul of our homeland made manifest.
Then it found me. As the radiant tendrils washed over my crossed legs and still form, a transformation occurred.
The blazing solar hues gentled, cooling and deepening into shades of crystalline blue, pristine white and a sapphire so profound it seemed to hold the memory of the Panthalassean Ocean—the sea that wets the banks of the Leviathan race.
The heat that clung to my skin, a residual echo of the savanna’s fervour, was gently siphoned away.
A wave of refreshment moved through me cooling the simmering anxieties in my mind as surely as it did my body.
It was a blessing, a momentary benediction. And then, its duty to this lone son of Thyestes fulfilled, the dance gathered itself and streamed out once more, rejoining the greater symphony of currents that forever swept the plains.
I let the stillness settle back around me, though it was now a stillness touched by that coolness.
My three eyes were closed, my legs locked in the disciplined fold of meditation, my palms resting heavy and open upon my knees.
Within, I focused on the pulsing centre of my being: my mana core. It hung in the darkness of my inner self, a serene and steady white star anchored in the abdomen of my Preservation Avatar.
I contemplated the weight of its legacy. The mana arts of the Pantheon race were not only martial techniques imbued with the essence of magic and us Asuras. They were the accumulated wisdom of Epheotus itself, refined over millions of years, across generations so countless they blurred into myth.
They were the expression of our Force Identity, the Duhkha—the profound, intrinsic truth that separated us Pantheons from the other seven races of Asura.
The Force Identity, the Duhkha, the Insight of Might, the Duel Logic, the Pantheon’s Will and so many other names. It was the lens through which we perceived reality, the cornerstone of our very essence.
It shaped our formidable bodies, dictated our unique abilities and sang in the rhythm of our hearts. It was our sacred, individual approach to the four fundamental elements of mana and their deviances, the birthright that made us Asuras.
It was what differentiated Asuras from lessers, the ability to see, wield and use all aspects of mana no matter who you were in a unique way.
My own Identity felt like a coiled spring now, taut with potential and a dread I dared not name.
"Brother, shouldn’t you be resting?"
The voice, when it came, was a calm stream through the silence of the house.
It was Kordri, my younger brother. I opened my eyes, the lower two first, while the third on my forehead remained closed.
He was descending the stairs from the floor above, his movements as fluid and economical as everything he did.
Every family of Pantheons in the Clan shared such a home. They were built for total unity: great, open spaces spanning two or three floors where the life of a family unfolded in a continuous, shared tapestry.
There was no concept of privacy as the Dragons, in their pride, understood it—shut away in their majestic castles on Mount Geolus, with Indrath Castle looming as a monument to solitary power, visible by all across Epheotus, defying logic and space.
Here, in Battle’s End, walls held up roofs, but they did not barricade hearts. Our home breathed with the life of three: myself, Kordri and our mother.
"I am resting," I replied, my own voice sounding distant even to me, filtered through the inward focus I struggled to maintain.
He padded closer and settled on the floor beside me, his posture relaxed yet attentive. "You are meditating, Brother. I am not blind." A gentle, chiding observation. "And no. Meditating does not equal rest. It is work of a different kind."
"My Rite of Yoke is tomorrow, Kordri." The words fell into the space between us, heavy and solid. "I shall not let anything obscure my mind. Not even weariness."
"And no one in the Clan is thinking about anything else, more than all you." He said.
He paused, choosing his next words with the care of a strategist, a wisdom that seemed beyond his years—a wisdom gleaned, perhaps, from standing at the left hand of Great Lord Thyestes during the gatherings of the Great Eight at Indrath Castle while at the right of the Great Lord of our Clan stood another young promise of my generation: Ademir Thyestes, nephew of the Great Lord.
"You were granted access to the Aether Realm to train, Aldir. A single day will not change anything if you train, but it could fortify you immeasurably if you spend it with your family."
The mention of the Aether Realm sent a familiar, awed thrill through me, quickly tempered by the immense pressure it symbolized.
"Did you hear this from one of the philosophical discussions between Great Lord Asclepius and Great Lord Vritra?" I asked, seeking the source of his insight, hoping to frame it as borrowed rather than inherently true.
"I did not, Brother," he said, his gaze steady upon me. "It is what I truly think."
His sincerity was a subtle weapon, disarming my defences. The Rite of Yoke was a universal passage for our people, a threshold every Thyestes crossed into adulthood.
Kordri, too, would face his own in time.
Yet his would be different, tailored to the warrior he was becoming, just as mine was forged for the path I was destined to walk. The knowledge of that disparity lay between us, unspoken but palpable.
For my Rite of Yoke was not merely a test of skill or courage. It was an audition for a sacred, terrible legacy. My performance would decide if I was worthy to learn the World Eater technique from Hoplite Hanuman himself—the greatest Hoplite of our Clan and the most influential elder after Great Lord Thyestes himself.
The World Eater was the ultimate expression of the Force Identity. It was the Duhkha made manifest.
A power so immense, so cataclysmic, that only one of each generation was permitted to bear its knowledge—a living, breathing failsafe for Epheotus, decreed by Great Lord Indrath at the dawn of the Great Eight.
I was the chosen vessel of my generation. The weight of that selection was a mountain upon my spirit. To fail would not be a personal disappointment.
It would be to fail every peer, every elder, every child who looked to our generation to uphold the Clan’s honour. It would be to fail Kordri, who watched me now with concern etched in the slight furrow of his brow.
"Our mother will be back soon," he said, his voice softening, layering another gentle weight upon my conscience. He rose then, a silent, graceful motion. "I am just saying this, but... you could really use some time with your family. Not as the candidate, or the warrior. Just as her son. As my brother."
He did not wait for a rebuttal. He simply turned and moved away, leaving me seated in the pool of fading savanna light, the echo of the Warrior’s Wind still cool on my skin.
In the end, I listened to my brother. And in doing so, I walked into the gentle, formidable gravity of my mother.
Saraswati Thyestes was a woman who defied the very categories of our Clan. To speak of her only as a warrior would be to describe the ocean solely as a thing of depth; it ignored the life within it, the moon-pull of its tides, its capacity for both terrifying tempest and profound calm.
She was a peerless master of all the Steps of Mirage Walk, a living archive of that treasured technique older than the World Eater itself, its millions of years of expertise flowing through her movements as naturally as mana.
Yet, she was also a sovereign of water-affiliated magic, her power not a roaring cascade but something deeper, more patient and ultimately more shaping.
It was often said that were it not for the venerable Hoplite Hanuman, my mother would be the current bearer of the World Eater technique. That knowledge was not a source of bitterness in her, but an understood fact—like the sun being hot, or the Cerulean Savanna vast.
And it was this legacy, this river of potential that ran in her veins, that undoubtedly made the Clan look upon me, her firstborn, and deem me worthy to be tested.
As we walked through the streets of Battle’s End, she led, and Kordri and I fell into step behind her, two planets drawn into the orbit of a vibrant, scarlett-haired star.
Her Preservation Avatar was a testament to her dual nature: tall and lithe, possessing an agility that spoke of the Mirage Walk, yet with a fluidity in her posture, a suggestion of yielding adaptability, that was the hallmark of her water martial arts.
She moved like a stream given Pantheon form—unhurried, inevitable, carving its own path. Her long hair, the colour of scorching fire, was braided at its end, a complex plait that seemed to catch the light of the Golden Sun and to absorb it, to drink it in and glow from within.
She walked through our District—the Blue—with a proprietary ease that belonged to a fundamental part of the landscape.
In Battle’s End, no one truly owned anything; all was held in common trust, a principle born from our warrior communal spirit.
Yet, my mother carried herself as if the very dust of the Blue District was kin to her. The district itself was a symphony of its namesake colour: banners of azure and cerulean, drapes of sapphire and twilight, and all manner of fabrics hung from the simple stone and wood houses, fluttering like pieces of the sky above.
Battle’s End was divided into seven such Districts, each a Colour, a team in the great, constant game of Pankration—the honourable duels that were our race’s favourite passion, a war without death, a conflict without lasting grievance—and other sports.
Walking these coloured streets, my mind, despite my intentions, drifted back through the layers of our history.
When Great Lord Kezess Indrath had finally woven the tapestry of peace and unity across Epheotus, our Thyestes Clan, the last to lay down arms, had waited for the axe to fall.
We had fought the dragons for millennia, our culture a forge tempered in the fires of opposition. It was obvious, we thought, that we would be made to pay.
The victor dictates the peace. And yet… the axe did not fall.
Kezess Indrath, in a move that still stirred a complex cocktail of awe, gratitude and a deeper fear in the collective, did not strip us bare. He let our Pankration continue. He did not ban the World Eater, only sheathed it in limits.
Most astonishingly, He invited our clan, His former enemies, to sit among the Great Eight. That forward-looking generosity was not a pardon; it was a challenge, or so He made us believe. A test of our worthiness in an era of peace.
And now, generations later, I had to prove that the Thyestes Clan remained worthy of that gamble. The weight was a cold stone in my gut. My hands, swinging at my sides, involuntarily clenched into fists, the knuckles bleaching white.
A warm, firm palm connected with the back of my head. The touch was not a strike, but a deliberate, grounding interruption, like a keystone settling into an arch.
"Kordri told me how your mind is clouded, soldier!" Mother exclaimed. Her voice was bright, commanding, and her grin, when I turned to see it, was a radiant event capable of overshadowing even the Golden Sun itself. It was a grin that disarmed armies and melted anxieties.
"So I am taking command of this expedition! I am going to assault your mind with such pressing matters that you won’t have room to think about the Rite of Yoke anymore! Like a tactical diversion!"
Beside me, Kordri subtly shifted his stance, a faint, knowing smile on his lips as he prepared himself for the familiar, wonderful onslaught of our mother’s attention.
"Where are we going?!" she demanded, her tone making the question a joyful imperative, an assertion disguised as inquiry. She didn’t wait for a fumbling answer. "3! 2! 1!"
The countdown was fired like a volley of arrows, her words faster than the punch of a master of rapid combat styles, leaving no space for my brooding thoughts to regroup.
The conditioned response, drilled into Kordri and me since childhood, kicked in. Just before the dreaded, game-ending "0" left her lips, I barked my answer into the middle of the dusty road, my voice louder than I intended, startling a passing trio of junior warriors.
"The Breadsmith!"
"That's what I was talking about!" Mother’s triumphant exclamation seemed to make the blue banners around us flutter in agreement. Her smile, I swore, ignited the very air. "You heard your brother, Kordri! To the Breadsmith!"
"Yes, Mother," Kordri replied, his politeness a perfect, calm foil to her exuberance. Watching them, a familiar wonder stirred in me. They were two melodies from different songs—one a flowing, powerful river, the other a deep, steady drumbeat.
And between them, where did I fall? A son of water and a candidate for the ultimate technique of force? A question for another time, I silently repeated, following as my mother charted a buoyant course through the Blue District.
The Pantheon race, in truth, did not possess a culinary culture as ancient and intricate as the Phoenixes with their artful gastronomy, the Leviathans with their oceanic feasts, or the uncontested rulers of Epheotus’s cuisine, the Hamadryads.
Our history was written in steps and strikes, not in sauces and spices.
Yet, the art of baking bread was a sacred, universal constant among all Pantheon clans, a humble craft that spoke of shared meals and simple, earned sustenance.
The Breadsmith—the main bakery of Battle’s End—was a place not defined by sight, but by sound.
It occupied one of the many narrow streets in the bustling heart of the village, and long before its modest stone facade came into view, the air thrummed with its unique music.
It was not the sound of crowds, though there was always a steady, patient line of clansmen and women. It was the sound of creation, of struggle and of tradition.
The source of this symphony was Chapati Thyestes, the head baker. The peace brought by the Great Eight had gifted us with wonders: the miraculous Grancorn from the Hamadryads that made our flour nutty and rich and the ever-burning Cookfires from the Phoenixes of the Avignis Clan that heated our ovens with flawless, magical heat.
But the soul of the bread, the very method of its birth, remained purely, irrevocably Thyestes.
As we entered the aromatic alley, the sound clarified.
Thump-WHAM-whirl-CRACK.
It was the sound of battle. Baker Chapati, a Pantheon of slightly less than average height but with the same dense, athletic grace endemic to our people, was engaged in his daily war with the dough.
His eyes—all four of them—were serenely closed in total focus. He was using the Immobile Step of Mirage Walk.
To the uninitiated, it looked like a man simply kneading bread with preternatural speed. But I could see it.
The Immobile Step was the foundational application, the state where a warrior’s mana achieved perfect resonance with their core and Force Identity and with the ambient, rooting them to the earth while allowing explosive movement from a fixed point.
Chapati was transmitting the rooted power of the earth, the stability of stone, through his hands and into the substance.
His arms were a blur, moving with the rhythmic, devastating force of a hundred rolling stones. The dough itself was no simple paste; it was a tough, living hide, harder than the skin of many savanna beasts, made that way by the magical Grancorn and pre-hardened by Phoenix fire.
Each slam of the dough onto the heavy stone counter was a CRACK that echoed off the walls. Each fold and pull was a WHIRR of controlled, immense torque.
He was a warrior, and the dough was his opponent. And he was winning, not by destroying it like one would do with a real foe, but by perfecting it.
"Chapati!" Mother’s voice cut through the rhythmic combat, a clear, friendly trumpet.
Baker Chapati, deep in his trance, did not open his eyes. He acknowledged her with a slight, precise nod in our direction, his hands never breaking their relentless, beautiful rhythm.
He was clad in a heavy, immaculate white uniform that covered him from neck to ankle, a garment of startling elegance and precision.
Such attire was a gift of the “new” era—designed by the artistic Asclepius Clan and woven from the incredibly fine, strong wool of sheep raised by the Dragons of the Somath Clan on Mount Geolus’s slopes.
Mother turned her radiant gaze upon me. "Come on, Aldir! Your brother and I are in need for sustenance here! The troops are getting hungry!" She winked at Kordri, who, with masterful discipline, suppressed a chuckle, though a bright gleam of amusement lit his eyes.
I stepped forward, approaching the stone counter. The heat from the Phoenix-fed oven washed over me, a dry, pure warmth. The smell was intoxicating: the deep, nutty perfume of baking Grancorn, the scent of scorched stone, and something simpler—the smell of home.
Baker Chapati finished his latest round. With a final, echoing THUMP, he leveled the defeated, now perfectly elastic dough.
Then, in a motion so fluid it seemed to be an extension of the Mirage Walk itself, his wrist flicked. The massive lump of dough sailed through the air, spinning gently, and landed with a soft, exact puff on the prepared stone slab already within the glowing oven.
He finally opened his eyes—all four—and looked at me. His gaze was dusty with flour and deep with a timeless patience. He did not speak. He merely waited, his hands pausing for the first time, resting on the flour-dusted stone.
“Three Whitebreads, Baker,” I said, the request feeling suddenly profound. “Two filled with auroch meat for my mother and me, and one empty for my brother.”
The words were simple, yet in that moment, they felt amazing.
I was not declaring my fitness for a world-ending technique; I was ordering lunch for my family. Baker Chapati offered a single, solemn nod—a man of immense, silent focus, for whom speech seemed an unnecessary expenditure of energy when his hands could communicate so much more.
He returned to his work, his four eyes closing once more as he summoned a fresh mound of dough, his entire being funneling back into that sacred, strenuous rhythm.
“What a good little general we have here!” Mother exclaimed, her voice a warm sunbeam cutting through the bakery’s resonant noise. “To remember the precise tastes of his battalion. Don’t you agree, Kordri?”
“Indeed, Mother,” Kordri calmly affirmed, the ghost of a smile playing on his lips as he watched Chapati begin his alchemy.
The process was mesmerizing. With movements honed over a lifetime, Chapati took the pre-prepared dough—already tempered by Phoenix Cookfire and humming with the dense vitality of Hamadryad Grancorn—and subjected it to its final, transformative trial.
His hands, empowered by the Immobile Step, became instruments of sublime pressure. The thump-crack of dough on stone was the heartbeat of the place. In less than a minute, the three flat, perfect discs of Whitebread were ready, each one a testament to his silent, violent art.
Two were deftly slit and filled with rich, shredded auroch meat that steamed fragrantly, its savory scent mingling with the earthy aroma of the baked crust.
“Many thanks, Baker,” I said, accepting the warm, hefty parcels.
His only reaction was another faint nod, his attention already seized by the next customer, a dutiful soldier in the endless campaign to feed the Clan. As we stepped aside, my mind briefly wandered to the stories of the elders.
Once, before the Great Eight, before Kezess Indrath unified the currency of power, Baker Chapati might have asked for aether stones.
Those faintly glowing perfectly round crystals had been the lifeblood of inter-clan commerce, a physical token of the ambient magic only dragons could truly command, but which all Asuras could use to refine their own strength.
My access to the Aether Realm was an honor not just for the differential flow of time within, but because it was a bath in that pure, potent energy—the very currency of the Epheotus of old, now made a common right by the Dictator’s will.
The obsolescence of the stones was a quiet reminder of how thoroughly Kezess Indrath had reshaped the fabric of existence.
My mother, with a graciousness that brooked no argument, gently insinuated us past other waiting patrons, her smile disarming any potential irritation.
Once back in the coloured alley of the Blue District, she fell into a strange, contented silence, broken only by the sound of her tearing into her Whitebread. Kordri and I exchanged a glance—a silent conversation born of years of brotherhood.
In unison, we looked at her. She was utterly enchanted.
The Whitebread was a Pantheon’s feast. Crunchy and formidable on the outside, its crust was a challenge designed for our strong jaws, a edible echo of our resilience.
To eat it was a miniature battle: you had to commit to the bite, overcome the resistance, and were then rewarded with the soft, warm, steamy interior—and in her case, the savoury flood of auroch.
She was lost in this simple, primal pleasure, a woman who could walk on water completely disarmed by a piece of bread.
Her momentary retreat left Kordri and I in a bubble of quiet companionship. “Do you want to head to the Apella?” he asked, his voice low.
The Apella. The heart not just of our village, but of our entire race. I nodded. “Sure. Just be careful Mother follows us.” I tilted my head toward her, still blissfully engaged in her culinary duel.
The narrow, colour-drenched streets of the Blue District finally opened, and the world fell away into the vast, sobering expanse of the Apella.
It was like stepping from a vibrant, bustling artery into the silent, solemn chamber of the heart. The plaza was the only place in Battle’s End that breathed freely, an elliptical sweep of worn, pale stone, its shape mirroring the great brass shields our Titan allies had forged for us since time immemorial.
But it was the center that commanded the eye and the spirit.
Thirty poles, each taller than the last, rose like a petrified forest of spears. This was where the thirty Pantheon clans met in conclave, each clan head standing upon their respective pole.
Once, they had been of roughly equal height, a symbol of our fierce, fractious equality. Now, one dominated the skyline—the pole of the Thyestes, raised higher than all others.
It was a monument to the new order.
Great Lord Kezess Indrath expected adaptation. To defy the hierarchy of the Great Eight was to defy Him. Our elevated position was not a trophy of victory, but responsibility, a constant, visible reminder that we were now part of the architecture of power, not its adversary.
It was here, upon this storied ground, that my Rite of Yoke would begin tomorrow.
The weight of that knowledge pressed the air from my lungs. This stone had witnessed the climax of our history. Every Pantheon child knew the tale: Kezess Indrath, after the final battle that saw our forces utterly defeated, standing upon the central pole—this very earth—not as a conqueror in chains, but as a Dictator offering a paradoxical gift.
He did not ask. He did not offer. He ordered us to accept peace and a place at the table of the Great Eight. It had been a show of infinite strength that still acknowledged our own, a move so strategically magnanimous it had disarmed millennia of conflict.
He had looked upon our defeated but unbent pride and had seen not an enemy to be broken, but a weapon to be honed and placed in his arsenal.
“Mother!” Kordri’s sharp call shattered my historical reverie.
While I had been drowning in the echoes of the past, my mother had spotted a disturbance. She was already striding, her posture shifting from contented to predatorily fluid, toward a tall, horned figure—a Basilisk in his Preservation Avatar.
“In front of me?! In front of the mightiness of the Vritra?!” a loud, pretentious voice sneered, dripping with a venomous pride. “The only reason you still breathe is the mercy of Great Lord Indrath, otherwise this village would be ash!”
The words were a blasphemy, a poison-tipped arrow shot into the sacred quiet of the Apella. Every Pantheon in the plaza—warriors, elders, mothers with children—froze and turned as one.
The collective gaze was a physical pressure, focusing on the speaker.
He was unmistakably a Vritra, young, likely of my generation. Tall and broad-shouldered, with thick, jet-black horns that swept from his temples and curved wickedly forward, each adorned with a garish collection of metal and gemstone rings.
His obsidian hair was shaved at the sides, pulled into a severe ponytail—a style that uncomfortably mirrored our own warrior fashion.
But it was his clothes that struck a deeper, more offensive chord. Beneath a flashy, arrogant red robe, he wore the simple, grey training uniform of the Thyestes Clan.
My blood turned cold, then hot. He was looming over a young Thyestes boy who had likely done nothing but exist in his path. And my mother was walking toward them, not with a sprint, but with a terrifying, deliberate calm.
She was more than capable of reducing this upstart to a puddle of regret, but the consequences… a diplomatic incident sparked not by pride, but by her unyielding sense of righteousness, could ripple all the way to the Great Eight.
The scene froze, a painting of impending violence. The Vritra boy stared down at the Pantheon youth, his Decay Identity beginning to coil in the air like a visible miasma—a creeping, greyish aura that promised only entropy.
But before any other Pantheon could intervene, before Mother could reach him, her hand shot out.
She didn’t grab his shoulder. She caught his raised wrist, her fingers closing around it with the unassailable finality of a river stone. She stood behind him, her Preservation Avatar blocking the Golden Sun’s rays, casting him in her shadow even though he was slightly taller.
She leaned in, her voice a low, carrying murmur, the last of her Whitebread still held casually between her teeth.
“Taegrin is far from Battle’s End, Vritra,” she said, invoking the Basilisks’ grim, volcanic homeland. “You lost or something?”
The Vritra’s face mutated into a mask of pure ire. The clash was now tangible—the insidious, decaying pressure of his Identity against the immense, fluid, unbreakable presence of my mother’s.
No one moved to intervene. To do so would be an insult to her capability. Duels of honor were still woven into Asuran culture, even if death matches were forbidden. This was a duel of wills, and the entire Apella held its breath.
Then, the Vritra flinched. He didn’t move, but his arrogance crumbled from within, replaced by a sudden, icy rigidity. A new voice, smooth as worn leather and calm as a deep lake, cut through the tension.
“Kiros.”
The name was spoken and it acted as a command. Kiros’s Decay Identity snuffed out like a candle. He recoiled, retracting his arm from my mother’s grip, his whole posture folding into subservience.
“I left you alone for a second, and you pick a fight with our allies?” Khaernos Vritra, son of the Great Lord and heir to the Vritra Clan, stepped into the circle.
He first addressed his clansman, his tone lightly chiding. Then, to the shock of every onlooker, he bowed. Not a shallow nod, but a deep, formal bow from the waist, first to my mother, then to the young Pantheon boy who had been accosted.
The air in the Apella seemed to crystallize. For the heir of a Great Clan, second only to the Indrath in perceived power, to bow so deeply… it was unprecedented. Humbling. Terrifying in its own way.
“My most sincere apologies, Lady Saraswati,” Khaernos said, his voice carrying clearly in the stunned silence. “My clansman forgets his place and our purpose.”
Khaernos’s own Preservation Avatar was a study in refined control: tall, slender, with pale grey skin and the characteristic red eyes, long, straight black hair that now brushed the stone as he bowed, and short, U-shaped horns.
His right hand was firmly on the back of Kiros’s neck, forcing the younger Basilisk into an equally deep, stiff bow of contrition.
“Lord Khaernos,” my mother replied, her own voice measured, the warrior receding. “Please, it is below one of your position to bow.”
“I fear I must disagree, and offer a rebuke to your rebuke,” Khaernos said, a faint, elegant smile on his lips as he straightened. He turned, and his eyes, pupils like vertical slits in a dawn sky, found me. “But that is not the reason for me being here today.”
He took a few steps toward me, Kiros following like a chastised hound. “Aldir Thyestes, am I right?” he asked.
A fresh ripple of surprise went through me. We had crossed paths briefly on Mount Geolus, but I was one face among many aspirants. For the heir of the Vritra to remember my name…
“Yes, Lord Khaernos,” I replied, forcing my tone to remain level, neutral.
His smile widened, though it did not quite reach those calculating eyes. “It will be my pleasure to represent my Clan in assisting your Rite of Yoke tomorrow.”
My third eye blinked. “I don’t understand, my lord.”
“I am not, strictly speaking, supposed to convey further information,” he said, his voice dropping to a more confidential register, though it still carried. “But I believe in cooperation and Unity above all else. The Elders of the Thyestes Clan, as well as esteemed Great Lord Thyestes, have requested the cooperation of my Father for your Rite of Yoke.”
As the word “Father” left his lips, a shiver, cold and precise as the sharpest sword, traced its way down my spine.
If Great Lord Kezess Indrath was the most respected figure in Epheotus, a power so vast it bordered on the theological, and Great Lord Mordain Asclepius the most admired for his wisdom and artistry, then Great Lord Vritra was the most profoundly, universally, feared.
This was the inescapable truth. The Great Eight spoke of equality, with the Indrath as the symbolic chief. But in the quiet, unspoken understanding of every Asura, there was a triad that held the world in balance: Indrath, Asclepius and Vritra.
Nirvana, Samsara and Avidya.
And now, for my rite, for my proving, they had called upon Avidya.