Virtuous Sons: A Greco Roman Xianxia
Chapter Chapter [2.15] Unsanctioned Salvation

Sol,

The Raven From Rome

The world went dark, so abruptly that I feared the poison had knocked me out. In the next moment, however, the sea of clouds surrounding the platform of Selene’s heart flared to life once more—brighter than before, and with a narrow focus.

Many-colored vapors still hung heavy in the air, but they drifted in purposeful streamers that blocked off the mountains overhead like vast psychedelic curtains. I could see Griffon sitting beside me again, and I could see the center of the dais even more clearly than before. In fact, the lights and the vapors drew my eyes towards it.

In the split second that the darkness had overtaken her heart, the scene had changed. The honeycomb tripod was gone, and where there had been one young Saint of Scarlet Hearts before, there were now three.

Each of them was Selene, but it was clear that they all intended to play a different role.

The first of the three was the only one to not have visibly changed anything but for her location in that shifting of scenes. She was still the same younger version of the woman I knew, swimming in her sunray silks. She stood tall and proud, her sacred spear held tight in her right hand. Her expression was calm, but her stance was just a bit too rigid, and the knuckles of the hand holding the spear bled white, giving away her uncertainty.

The second Selene was a quivering mess, slumped over on her knees and clinging desperately to a lonely limestone column that was riddled with stress-line fractures. Her fingers were bleeding, and her tattered Raging Heaven attire was so mudstained you could hardly see the indigo in it. She wore a theater mask of the same young woman’s face that I had seen carved into the surface of that very limestone pillar. The mask was frozen in a singular moment of betrayal realized.

The third and final Selene lounged on a plush couch, one hand propping up her head while the other idly swirled the contents of a golden cup round and round its rim. This third Selene was dressed the most ostentatiously of the lot, and it wasn't close. She wore a many-layered robe of amethyst and gold, and every one of her ten fingers was heavy with the weight of rings and the gemstones set into them. This Selene wore a mask as well, but it had no features at all—only a flat, blank surface.

Griffon leaned forward eagerly, and I found myself being drawn into the anticipation of the atmosphere myself. The Saint of Scarlet Hearts had set the stage, and now the play was ready to begin.

"It is an oracle’s sacred duty to ease the burdens that heaven heaps upon the hearts of mankind," spoke the Selene that wore no mask, save for a younger version of her own face. She didn't move, not yet, and neither did the quivering wreck of a woman clinging to an unsteady pillar. Only the blank-faced lush moved at all, and only then to swirl the drink around in her cup.

“Mortals and cultivators alike seek them out for succor, offering up the bounties of their lifetimes in exchange for just a few moments of an oracle’s time. They lay bare their broken hearts, their battered spirits, their befuddled minds, and their blasphemous hungers. It is not necessarily the case that every visit to an oracle bears fruit, but rather that some fruits can only grow amidst the holy smoke.

“The oracles are not what they once were, or so the oldest of them tells me,” the unmasked Selene continued, still motionless beneath the glaring lights. “But a sanctified oracle still has her little majesty. She's capable of things that an ordinary cultivator is not. She cannot always make miracles, but she can soothe the scarlet hearts brought before her–if she so desires.”

The scarlet light emanating from the clouds pulsed, and Selene sighed.

"But I was never sanctified, and I have never been taught the lessons that every oracle must teach her daughter before passing on her mantle. The others did what they could to help raise me, but even then, there are some lessons that only the Scarlet Oracle can teach her successor. I was no Scarlet Oracle then, just as I am not now—not in the ways that truly matter."

Finally, the stage shifted into motion. The quivering wretch clinging to the pillar suddenly lurched forward, collapsing to the scarlet marble and retching black bile all over herself.

"But that did not stop them from coming to me with their troubles," the unmasked Selene whispered, and somehow the acoustics of her heart made it echo. "It did not stop them, and in their desperation, they showed me such terrible things. Cultivators in the second and third realms, men and women that were decades my seniors—the specifics mattered not. They all groveled at my feet and begged me for a salvation that I had no way of providing them. I was only a girl, but the children of the sun hadn’t lost their need for an oracle when my mother fell into her coma.”

Selene abruptly cast her spear aside, rushing to the collapsed cultivator’s side and gathering her up in her arms. She wiped the bile from the painted lips of the tragic theater mask, pulling from a fold in her oversized silks a draught of healing honey, which she poured carefully through the gap in the mask’s lips.

"I tried to help them anyway," she explained as she poured. "Oh, how I tried. Every day I secreted away little treasures that my father had given me to nourish my cultivation, anything and everything that I thought might soothe a cultivator’s broken spirit. I poured fortunes down their throats, offered up to them untold riches in the hopes that it might cure what ailed them."

The young woman of the Raging Heaven cult thrashed herself out of Selene’s arms, spewing up the healing honey and all four of her humors in addition, dying loudly and messily, like an animal, while the young daughter of the Scarlet Oracle watched in horror.

"Nothing worked. Nothing. There was nothing I could do."

"I wouldn’t say that," came the voice of the third and final actress on the stage.

The voice was so sharp a contrast to Selene’s own voice, that for a moment I forgot where I was entirely. I leaned forward with my elbows planted on my knees, enraptured.

It was an exact match to the voice that Scythas had called up with his unique mimicry when we were in Thracia. The voice of a dead man. A mad man.

The blank-face mask of the Tyrant Riot tilted sideways to regard the dying woman.

"There were many things you could have done, even then," he spoke, and while his blank mask of a face gave nothing of his feelings away, the tone of his voice made them clear—faintly amused, faintly disgusted. Disinterested above all.

"But I didn't want to just do something," the unmasked Selene replied hotly, kneeling back. "I wanted to help them. More than that, I wanted to save them. I wanted to do more than just soothe them for a moment. I wanted them to be able to walk free of that place with their hearts made whole again."

The Tyrant Riot chuckled, and I marveled at Selene’s ability to reproduce such a sinister sound, even here in the confines of her own heart.

"And they say I was greedy."

The Tyrant Riot beckoned her over with one hand, and raised that golden cup to the spot where the mask should have had lips, tipping it back. Wine that shimmered in the spotlight with a faintly metallic sheen slid off the smooth surface of the mask and splattered onto the marble floor, mingling with the dying cultivator's humors.

"But I don't hate the sound of it. So bring me the body, and that spear of yours too. If you have the stomach for it, I'll show you a little something."

"Will it help her?" the unmasked Selene asked hopefully, dragging the body over to the couch and scooping up her spear along the way.

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“I suppose you’ll find out, won’t you?”

"It was a foolish thing to try. I'm not so naive that I can't acknowledge that," the unmasked Selene confided to the crowd, while the Tyrant Riot helped her adjust her grip on the spear, poking and prodding at her until she had assumed the proper position, with the tip of her bronze spearhead angled just so, hovering over the mystiko's heaving chest. "But I’ve never claimed to be made of stone. I couldn't bear the thought of spending my life watching others come apart at my feet. It was too much tragedy for a girl my age to bear."

"Don't hesitate," the Tyrant Riot advised her. "Even a total eclipse only lasts a few seconds."

The unmasked Selene breathed deeply, until the white faded from her knuckles. She looked down into the death mask of a woman with no hope left of life, and I saw the first spark of that ageless resolve kindle in her heart.

With a sharp exhalation, she thrust her ornamental spear down through the cultivator's heart, and a fourth actress erupted up out of the marble beneath the fractured pillar.

The fourth actress wore the same costume as the deviated cultivator, with a few key differences. She wore a crown of thorns where the deviated cultivator wore a crown of leaves. Rather than mud, her Raging Heaven attire was stained by blood and the rancid juice of overripe fruit. And most notably, her theater mask was not set in a rictus of pain and betrayal, but one of demonic hate.

She clawed her way up out of the floor like some nightmare undead, ripping through the marble like it was wet-rotted wood. The pillar of the dying woman’s principle tilted dangerously as the heart demon forced its way free of the foundation, all but upending the principle on its way out.

The creature wasted no time on pleasantries, lunging at Selene with a shriek of pure hatred.

The half-dead cultivator tackled her out of the air before she could reach the young Saint, and the two mirror images rolled across the floor, ripping into each other like wild animals.

“I gave you everything!” the cultivator half-sobbed, half-screamed. “I worked harder than anyone on that mountain! I went without a thousand times while others were feasting, passed by a thousand opportunities and struggled through a thousand sleepless nights, all so I could feed you!”

The young woman rolled them until she was on top, straddling her heart demon, taking its head between her hands and slamming it down against the scarlet marble with all her waning strength.

“I sacrificed everything so you could grow!” Crack. “I gave you more than all the other pillars of my heart! More than all of them combined!” Crack. “And still it wasn’t enough!” Crack. “Why wasn’t it ever enough!?”

Half-dead and delirious, the heart demon still managed to get her own hands wrapped around her creator’s head.

“Because you promised me fruit,” the demon hissed, and stabbed her thumbs through the young woman’s eyes.

They screamed and screamed, the two of them, in hatred and in rage. They were so consumed with killing one another, neither one noticed the young slip of a girl creeping up on them. They certainly didn’t notice her spear.

“I was just barely prepared for the rigors of the Sophic Realm,” the unmasked Selene narrated while she crept up on the murderous twins. As before, despite speaking in the lowest tone possible, I heard her as clearly as if she had been whispering her lines into my ear. “I had no business matching myself against the heart demon of an experienced Philosopher’s heart demon. If she hadn’t flung herself into its path from the start, it would have killed me in an instant. It was luck that defined my journey that day.”

She cast a wry look over her shoulder.

“Luck, or the careful consideration of the most careless man in the world.”

“I’m sure I have no idea what you mean,” spoke the Tyrant Riot.

“I’m sure you don’t.”

While Selene turned her attention away to banter, the heart demon was winning. It was part of the performance, I knew—a play-acting tactic to raise tension in the audience. Of course, knowing what she was up to didn’t stop my gut from clenching when the heart demon bit down on her counterpart’s throat and made to rip it out in one savage motion.

Then the demon jerked, stopped short by a wet, sucking sound. Her snarling mask stared down, and the deviated cultivator’s mask stared up, both of them in shock, at the spear jutting out of her chest.

“Whether by luck or by design, I prevailed that day, and took my first step into the realm of scholars and skeptics,” Selene said.

“Not yet you haven’t,” the Tyrant Riot chided her from across the stage, waving that empty golden cup like a whip. “I told you not to hesitate, girl. You know the work’s not done.”

Selene’s shoulders slumped, and with a whispered apology to the half-dead wreck of a woman moaning on the floor, Selene hoisted the demon up and over her shoulder, dangling it off the edge of her spear like a fisherman’s prized catch. Then, without looking back, she walked across the stage and kicked the leaning pillar fully from its foundation. It toppled over with a boom, and the cultivator let out her ugliest scream yet. Her voice gave out not long after, and she sagged against the stone like a puppet with its strings cut.

Selene crouched beside the toppled pillar, rocking it back and forth with some effort, and then, with a sharp inhalation, rolled it onto her palm and heaved it up onto her shoulder. She wobbled dangerously, on the verge of falling over the edge of the stage and into the sea of clouds, but the heart demon on her right shoulder was just barely able to balance out the weight of the pillar on her left shoulder.

Exhaling, she rose and walked back across the stage, stepping over the unconscious—or dead—body of the cultivator, approaching the couch that the Tyrant Riot lounged upon and waiting expectantly.

“Naturally, it isn’t enough to kill the little wretch,” the Tyrant Riot said, head tilting curiously, and idly flicked the demon mask. It fractured like glass—or more appropriately, like the pillar balanced on the Saint’s opposite shoulder.

“Doing so provides the cultivator a brief respite, but it isn’t as though the deviation has been addressed. The demon will simply come back. It’s what they do.

“There are easier ways to purge a heart, naturally. Proper ways. A sanctified woman can suppress the demon long enough for the cultivator to address the root of things themself. Depending on the circumstances, a seasoned oracle like my leathery oldsea witch can even assist directly in the mending of a pillar. This is how a heart demon is meant to be purged.

“Proper, grueling effort, put in by the incompetent who gave the demon life. It builds character.”

The Tyrant Riot held the golden cup out under the demon’s fractured skull, letting its tainted blood drip down into the chalice. The fracture was severe, and the cup didn’t take long to fill. The Tyrant swirled the demon’s blood around the rim of the cup thoughtfully, raising it up to the portion of the mask where a nose should have been. Then, after a pensive moment, the Tyrant shrugged and knocked it back.

“Tragically, the right way wasn’t good enough for this girl,” the voice of the Tyrant went on. “Absurd little creature that she was—and is—she wanted all of the gain with none of the suffering it demanded. She wanted an instantaneous cure, and she wanted it for even the most undeserving of her visitors. And to that end, there was only one path forward that I could see.”

Selene walked past the lounging Tyrant and straight over the edge of the stage. I was halfway out of my seat before she appeared mid-stride on the other end of the platform, continuing on as though nothing had happened.

While I settled back down into my seat and swept my eyes across the stage, I realized that the broken body of the young woman had vanished, along with all of her blood and bile. The Tyrant Riot was still lounging at the far edge. And when Selene paused at a particular spot on the stage, the Tyrant tossed the golden cup at her head.

“Any time now.”

“If I couldn’t kill the demon in any way that mattered, and I couldn’t soothe the source the way a proper oracle could,” Selene explained, narrowly ducking the cup, “then it seemed clear to me that a third option would have to serve instead. In the end, I simply had to steal the source of the deviation itself.”

That said, she hefted the heart demon’s corpse off her shoulder and flicked it off her spear onto the marble floor. Abruptly—like the caught fish she’d treated it as—it flopped to life and lunged for the edge of the platform and the open sea of clouds beyond it.

With a sharp huff of effort, Selene heaved the fractured pillar off her shoulder and dropped it into place, crushing the heart demon underneath it.

There came a rush of meaning through the multicolored mists, then, and the scarlet clouds brightened like the rising sun as the actress on stage ascended to the first step of the Sophic Realm.

As she did, the vapors billowed and drew back, converging onto the stage and then parting to reveal the original platform, with all ten of its columns—the first of which jutted up proudly from the very same spot the unmasked actress had just planted it.

“Thus concludes the first of our young heroine’s many thefts,” Selene declared, bowing good-naturedly while Griffon whistled and I applauded.

“Now comes the first of our planned intermissions: a lesson, a brush with metaphysics, and a short demonstration for the crowd.” She winked. “Before we begin, does anyone in the audience have a question?”

Griffon raised his unbroken arm.

“Where am I meant to piss in this place?”

“On yourself,” Selene responded pleasantly, and began the intermission.