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# Chapter Fifteen
The glittering city taunted him. It was a monstrosity of artifice. The pristine gardens and graceful bridges that spanned the inner seas of the vast caldera, held no more allure. Even the high towers which screamed the collective strength of the rigid progress of the Theran people seemed an excuse for the inexplicable wrong. The architects build upwards, towards the mystical point rather than spreading their power along the ground for all. Enlightenment of the Theran’s was as unreachable as the spires.
Kyros no longer visited the formal gardens, and the carefully planned forests of Thira. He lingered instead in shadowy doorways and watched people. Sometimes he would steal from them. Sometimes he would kill them. He was no good with the sword, with his hand missing, surrendered without a fight to the Silver Death. Yet, if he caught someone unaware he could drive it through their throat without the need for too much finesse.
But mostly he watched them. Under his gaze they’d exchange artificial formalities and try their best to restrain from passion or anger. He thought the people of Thira, one hundred times worse than those he suffered in Trefos. Of course things changed out of the light. To his surprise there was a thriving culture underground. The sunless depths held all the vices in Thira, except pride. The caldera was as deep as those spires were tall, maybe deeper. He had not traveled that far. Instead he’d found refuge away from the artifice of light in district they called Tafkoura Cavern. The whole Caldera was riddled with such spaces. The Zro, originally pulled from the sea, or crystallized out of the air (Kyros did not care for such details) was malleable to a shapers will. Over the millennia, various tribes for various purposes had carved their will into the very foundations of the city.
“It’s a metaphor...” said his new brother Lasos, who took another sip of Poppy’s milk mixed with wine “It’s like a maggot eating away the flesh, or the worm who burrows through the apple. So we riddle the city with tunnels and caves.” Lasos could not have been taking credit himself, Kyros had seen him shape, and he was atrocious. He wondered what defect of mind made one so singular bad at formulating an intention. Yet he kept his mouth shut and let the drunk continue to elaborate on the metaphor.
Kyros was here for one reason, and the constant ache in what was left of his arm, meant he could only go a few moments without his thoughts returning to it. Ever since he watched the Augur craft from the sphere of Zro an arm, and then animate it to his will, Kyros had been obsessed. He lay awake at night wondering if the Augur, in their supposed, infinite wisdom, intentionally conjured up such a shape at the sight of his deformity, or if was a passing fancy. Most nights he reasoned it was simply to spite the crippled lad.
As the days passed and he grew more and more disillusioned with the history he was being fed at the academy, the food and shelter it provided seemed to lose their appeal. He asked his pedagogues about the abilities of healers, and inquired after one who might fix his arm. He received no satisfactory answer, until he overheard a pair of men dressed in black rags with their faces marked with white paint, discussing magic.
The discussion was not of the theoretical sort he vaguely remembered Asclepogenia engaging in over the years. It was free from the coded language of the Orders teaching, and instead he gathered that both men were surprised as they described the flames they could conjure after just a few lessons. It took some time for him to gather his courage and approach the pair. Initially they were hostile, shoving him back and tell him to mind his own business. Their eyes flashed with the angry fire they claimed to have learned to control. He watched them like he watched the rest of the people in the city. When they’d had their fill of wine and each other, they slipped into the eternal night outside. Kyros followed them, at a distance, until his quarry lead him to the answers he sought.
It took some time, he returned often, and eventually he learned of who came and left, the hideout. It was these men he followed. To their haunts, or homes. If they made their way to a public house he did his best to engage them. The rhetoric of a radical came naturally to him. His being disgruntled at the state of the Empire needed no gilding. These radicals proved fertile soil for his tales of woe and hints of anger.
Eventually, after several nights of this he received his invitation. He learned they called themselves the Trode after the tiny creatures that lined the path to Thira. Therans would trample them to get into the city, to get to their magical heights, they would forget about them underfoot trying to establish root in whatever crack or crevice in the submerged cobble. If they grew to large they would be kicked or cut away. None thrived, merely survived.
Kyros learned that the Trode’s influence was wide reaching. The disenfranchised were not only to be found in the capitol but throughout the Theran’s Empire. Those that did not fit the mold of enlightenment, who refused to cower before the gods of the pantheon, or bend their spirits into submission to achieve whatever glory awaited a noble, restrained Theran.
It was said that the Theran mages abused their power, but not using it for their betterment. They horded their gifts. These talents, some said, should be used to take whatever one craved, from human or Theran, or any of the other lesser races of men.
He was among their number for some time before he met the High Priest of their Dis-Order. One day word came from above for a handful of able-bodied men. His initial act of volunteering was met with laughter, but when he put his blade through the hand of the one who laughed at him, the tone of the room changed and he was reluctantly offered a spot to replace the wounded comedian.
They were lead through the caves back to the surface. There number and dress garnered many looks as they made their way through the glistening streets. Across the carefully manicured landscape they traveled until the sun was low in the sky. Darkness was falling as they passed the carefully manicured gardens and found entrance into a walled courtyard of the modest tower rising from the surrounding buildings.
Kyros could tell that something had changed about this place as soon as he entered. The stately tower that appeared like all the rest, now took on a twisted charred appearance once through the walls of the courtyard. The air was damp and plants overgrown. Gone was the orderly ways of the Theran. He felt like he was home again, tromping through a wild forest. They were lead into the darkened tower, through rooms scattered with rubble and vines and puddles of rainwater. The Zro was broken and cracked, abused and stretched beyond the glittering forms of the city outside. If the Zro responded to a shapers will, then this building could only come from a twisted barbaric mind.
Oxyathes, he was told, waited for them in a throne room. Kyros and the others were lead to a large room better repair than labyrinth they’d come through. Yet the space was still distorted, radically different than the other buildings of Thira. The very walls seemed to throb with a bizarre purpose.
As they entered, weak and sickly avatars of light swarmed them, they darted into their faces like hungry insects. Kyros swept them away with his hand, preferring to let his eyes adjust to the shadow that crouched at the opposite side of the room. A throne of broken stone erupted from the floor and held in it’s grasp the Wizard who had summoned them.
Oxyathes was a long, slender man. Not frail, Kyros noted as the man unfurled. His face was gaunt and half shrouded in an unkempt beard. Grey streaks spoke of age, as did the deep set eyes, but his voice seemed to come from a man possessed of great strength and tireless vigor.
“Welcome, my Trodden Children.” He cooed, and waved them close. He studied the assembled in silence and then said, “There are some in your number I do not know.” He stared at Kyros. “But I trust if they can stand the presence of the Trode, then they hate the Therans as much as we.” He filled the room with deep laughter. A few of the Trode chuckled along awkwardly.
“I have a task for you, that will send you on a great adventure far from the Capital. For some of you this will be your first time out in the world, for others, you may find yourself returning home.” Oxyathes stood and the avatars fluttered from the corners of the room towards him. The high priest dropped the hood and revealed a shock of grey hair encircled by a silver crown. “This was once a job simple enough for Watchers, but now the countryside lives in fear of a Silver Death. If any of you have not yet drawn blood, then tonight will be your introduction. If the thought of this is abhorrent to your sensitive ideals, please make it known now.” None of the assembled made a sound. “Excellent.” said the priest and beckoned them to follow him.
He lead them to an armory of sorts. There were black leathers covered with sigils, swords and daggers. These he recognized. The other objects laid out in on the large table were alien and throbbed with dark magic. Before them spread a sphere of metal, no bigger than an apple, and an simple amulet on a leather cord. A few of the men, including Lasos, picked up the amulets familiarly and slipped them on. He nodded to Kyros who he spotted watching.
“These are harmless trinkets, but vital to get you where I need you to be and vital for you to return home. If you lose them out in the world, you’ll have to make the long and dangerous road back to Thira, or better yet, die by your own hands so you can be spared my anger.”
“The task I have for you is simple. I will send you to a town, you are to rape and pillage to your pleasure, but do not let any escape. These spheres of metal, hunger for blood. They will respond to your simple desires as long as you wear the trinkets. Your desire should be to kill every man, woman and child you encounter. Leave no one alive, the Zro must multiply.
Only when all are dead will you be returned to Thira. Gather all you need and ready yourself for the journey.” Oxyathes spread his hands over the assembled weapons and gave the men a few moments to slip into the leathers.
Once Kyros was laced up and the sword and sphere awkwardly held in the same hand, Oxyathes wandered by and said “You are flawed.. He motioned to the missing limb. How do I know you?”
“Your Silver Death took my arm.” Kyros suggested.
“And you’re not eager to strike me down.”
“Would that I could.” Kyros confessed. “But no, you didn’t cut it if, a woman did.”
Oxyathes grinned and nodded at his attitude. “If you return alive, I may find it in my heart to restore to you what I inadvertently took.” and then he turned slightly and addressed the entire room, but kept his gaze on Kyros. “I will be watching, perform very well and you’ll be rewarded. Now, it’s time to leave.”
There was a furious sound and a flash of light that left Kyros blind and deaf for a moment. He winced and screwed his eyes shut. The purple smear stained the inside of his lids. When he opened them again he had to blink away the pain. Just as they had stood in Oxyathes presence, they stood now under an open darkened sky. Familiar oak forest, much like the kind that cradled Trefos, Kyros thought. Then he saw the curve in the road, and the familiar stones. His heart leapt, at first in nostalgic unbridled joy before drowning in a moan. He was home.
Writing Journal: DUN DUN DUN! What a twist. I love it. Kyros is part of the attack that destroys Trefos. What a jerk! Today, I set out to write the continuation of Chapter 14 today, and did! But then as I closed that chapter I remembered I had promised to begin to insert some of Kyros’s POV into the tale. So at the closing of Chapter Fifteen I slammed on the brakes, and immeidatly started work on Chapter 14.5... which has been re-titled 15.
I’ll need to do a bit of revision as to the last encounter of Kyros and Asclepogenia… also this isn’t in chronological order at this moment. 15 should go before her desert fight in Chapter 14. So it's really 13? The events that are unfolding for him take place just before their last encounter, it solidifies his place among the Trode, and has introduced us to the big bad, and puts Kyros in a place of no return. After he helps massacre his own village there is no real coming back. It's an effective chapter with a bitter twist at the end! I couldn’t be happier.