strokinit Chapter 1.91 [An Unkindness]
Chapter 1.91 [An Unkindness]
chapter 1.91 [an unkindness]
an unkindness
“you don’t know,” the raven known as solus said dully. he knew he shouldn’t have been surprised. socrates, the scholar himself, hadn’t had an immediate answer for him. why should this faceless man? there were even odds that there was no man at all, just a figment of his deceptive imagination, but even if there was a man in the business of handing out golden cups of wine, who was to say he’d also be handing out the secrets to greek cultivation?
the raven had used up all his good fortune early in life. from here on, it would be struggle. going forward, he knew he couldn’t hope to be given what he desired - what he needed. he would have to take it.
“are you a greek at all?” he asked. the raven had assumed that whatever he encountered in this place would be cut from the same cloth as the cult whose rites sent him here, but that wasn’t necessarily the case. aristotle had warned him that true answers to ill-formed questions were at times more detrimental than lies. the gadfly had hammered into him the practice of asking until the proper question was found.
“i am a son of raging heaven.”
thunder rumbled in the shadowed grove.
“how did you come to be the man you are today?”
try, and try again. until the proper question was found.
“i was born. i’ve lived. soon enough, i’ll die.”
another. substance could be found even in the vagueries of greek thinkers. as a young man, the raven had scoffed and turned his nose up at the barbarians accepted into his father’s legion when they had leveled that sentiment towards rome. these days, he empathized with them just a bit. to a gaul, a roman’s diction might have seemed nearly as frivolous as a greek’s was to a roman. that did not mean they had nothing to say that was worth hearing, though.
“you inherited your strength?”
“what strength?” the man asked, amused. “what have i done that seems strong to you? offered you a drink and called you greedy?”
the raven considered the words carefully before he spoke them. “the further a man advances, the more he becomes.”
“more of what?”
“himself. everything. he becomes greater and more terrible, in a way that can be felt by the world around him. by the greek standard, a civic cultivator could stand out in a crowd of a hundred crude souls. a sophic cultivator could bend the minds of a hundred citizens. a heroic cultivator could blind a hundred philosophers. and a tyrant could take a hundred heroes into their hand.”
“and? what comes next?” the man behind pressed him, expectant in the way a parent was expectant of their adolescent child. amused, knowing they wouldn’t get a proper answer, but willing to be pleasantly surprised. “who stands above a hundred tyrants?”
“i don’t know,” the raven named solus murmured. “you haven’t told me your name yet.”
the man laughed delightedly. the heat on the raven’s back grew hotter.
“you’re making an outrageous assumption, greedy raven. can you justify it?”0v3l.bin.
“to a citizen, a philosopher is a profound existence,” the raven explained himself, cognizant of the unspoken threat and the fact that his fellow scavenger still hadn’t moved or contributed a word to the conversation. “to a philosopher, a hero’s presence is an overwhelming glory. to a hero, a tyrant’s focus is an unspeakably heavy burden. the gap between a single realm is substantial enough. if the contrast is greater than that?”
the divide between an unrefined greek and a newly ascended philosopher was stark enough for a crude fisherman to offer the bounty of his full day’s work in exchange for a pithy word of advice from a sophic cultivator. i had experienced for myself the overwhelming pressure of a tyrant’s unrestrained focus when damon aetos had rendered judgment on me the day i arrived in his city. even shackled and chained, deaf and blind to pneuma, i had felt that weight as a physical thing.
“i am a philosopher of the first rank,” the raven continued. “i have weathered the ire of barbarian kings and cruel kyrioi, met their disdainful glares with my own and shrugged their notice off my shoulders. but i can’t bring myself to look back while you’re sitting there behind me. being this close to you burns.”
whatever it was that sat behind the raven from rome, it wasn’t a tyrant.
“true statements,” the man admitted, “but not one of them is proof. if you’re going to make that sort of assumption, you need to prove it. you still haven’t done it.”
he still wasn’t asking the right question.
the raven closed his eyes.
“carthage must be destroyed,” the raven from rome asserted with his soul, with weight behind every word. “until i’ve done unto them what they did unto me, i won’t be able to live. not until i’ve burnt their legions to ash and salted what remains.”
the man behind him sighed.
“do you know why it is that we call a gathering of ravens an unkindness?”
“no.”
“because each of you is a grim messenger. you bring about grief and misfortune, always. whether it’s news of infidelity, the death of family or the loss of a friend, a raven carries only sorrow in its cruel talons.”
“the truth is often cruel.”
“it is,” the faceless man agreed. “and cruelty can be necessary. but in its proper place, and at its proper time. one tragedy is enough to last a man months, years, even a lifetime. a raven on the roof is a reality that no man can avoid forever. we all suffer our own sorrows.
“however.”
for the first time in their brief conversation, the man behind the raven spoke in wrath.
“anything more beyond that is senseless inhumanity. carthage wronged you, so you’ll burn them to the ground. fine. that’s a tragedy, but perhaps a necessary one in the end. but that isn’t where you’ll stop. that isn’t all you’ll do, is it?”
the raven from rome lifted his chin. he lifted his lip and bared his teeth behind his burnt and twice-blackened veil, though he knew the man behind him couldn’t see it.
“it isn’t. i’ll salt the city that begot them, too, just as they salted mine. i’ll wipe them from this earth and all of its histories.”
“why?” the man asked, though he already knew.
“so nothing can ever grow there again.”
the same tanned arm as before reached out, into his peripheral vision, and placed a second golden cup of wine next to the first.
“an eye for an eye.” he sounded disappointed.
“no.”
tragedy for tragedy wasn’t enough. an eye for an eye was too little. vengeance for himself was only a fraction of what was owed. the raven’s name was solus.
he was all that remained.
“i am roman, and i am greek,” he said, the realization stirring his soul. his pneuma rose. “my story is not mine alone. i am a man, and i am three thousand men as well. i am one, and i am legion.”
alone, a grim messenger. but together?
“i am a raven. and i am an unkindness.”
driven by the weight of an ideal, a principle discovered and internalized, the raven advanced.
the raven known to some as lio aetos and to others as griffon blinked and abruptly turned away from the delusions of his dream as his brother’s pneuma surged. doubling and redoubling again. advancing from the first stage of the sophic realm to the second, to join him on the twelfth step.
his heart lightened. joy banished the false heroes from the corners of his eyes. he turned to regard his brother.
“worthless roman, it took you long enough-”
his breath caught in his throat.