Rebirth 1.4
*
On the day of the ritual feast, I awakened at the first light of sunrise. I ate the first meal of the day with Mother and Father in the central room of the house. It was the usual fare of dried flatbread drizzled lightly in olive oil and dipped in watered wine.
Having had a modern palate, this wasn't so special to me, but Nevermore loved it. She would wait for me to dab the corners of my lips to wipe away the excess olive oil with small pieces of the bread and then swoop down to eat the discarded bread napkin. Paper was unfathomably expensive, and cloth too, after all.
"You have a bird," my father, Hector of the Troidae, observed. His eyes watched as Nevermore tore into her little meal, and his own hands slowed in tearing bread.
My raven tried to make noise, but she was too busy swallowing. A muffled sound emitted and if she had cheeks, she would have been blushing. I could feel my bird's embarrassment without even her making a sound.
"She is my familiar." I stated—I was guarded against my father, because I didn't know his motives or how he wished to use me.
This attitude seemed to surprise him, but he didn't remark on it. "A familiar? Is that a pet?"
"No, Papa." I shook my head, "she merely helps me with magic."
"Everything helps with magic." He nodded. "But the bird would be a poor choice to offer to the gods. How does this work? Penelope, is this a magic of your homeland I had not learned before?"
Mother shook her head in disagreement. "No, husband. Aisa's magic is her own. She keeps her secrets to herself, as you know, and she does not have any she could share it with even if she did."
Father sighed. "Yes, I am not in the house often, I know that, wife. I am back now, aren't I? With Sardis the way it is…"
Sardis was the city that held the local Persian power. The Satrap in that city, known to us as the Archon of Sardis, was the royal inspector of western Anatolia for the King of Kings. He was the royal eyes and ears, and was treated as if his words were the words of the King of Kings in this region. However, while Sardis should have been a seat of power, during the Ionian Revolt, the Athenians had razed the city and looted much of its treasures. "What happened in Sardis?"
"Are you curious, daughter? A monstrosity came in the night. Great, white webs that even blades cannot cut now weave all of the ruins of Sardis together. Any man who ventures within will find themselves wrapped in the soft silk, and wait in futile struggle, as the monster drinks his blood," Father shivered. He had seen some shit.
"This sounds… concerning." I muttered. I had thought the giant spiders were just making lair in a cave in the wilderness. If they had instead taken the ruins of a city, with easily seen roads leading to other settlements, then the monster could breed and spread further. "Shouldn't the King of Kings do something about it?"
Father spat. "Bah. He fought a battle in Greece. They call it the Battle of Marathon. He lost terribly, with more than twice the number. He will not bother… let us talk about your bird instead."
"Caw?" Nevermore hopped over and sat on my lap.
"I'm not going to let you sacrifice her!" I hugged her to my chest.
"I wasn't going to. She probably doesn't taste as good as a cow anyway." Father grumbled to himself, though he shared a smile with Mother. "It'd been, what? A whole year since we have sacrificed a cow to the gods. Finally, we can eat some good meats."
"What's wrong with fish?" Mother frowned. She liked to eat preserved fish, because it had a sort of salty flavor that few other dishes had.
"Nothing," Father replied, "if you like fish. Tell me, girl. You speak of magic. Do you know what you speak of?"
Mother sighed and placed her head in her hands. "Oh, don't start this again, Hector. I've been speaking with her enough, but she has such strange ideas. Just the other day, she asked me what the invoking of a god's name meant."
My father stared at her as his words failed him. His jaw worked, but nothing came out. Finally, he turned to me, "… how do you use magic without calling to the gods?"
"Oh no, not this again." I grumbled, mimicking Father's earlier action.
Mother seemed to delight that someone else was at the receiving end of my superior modern logic for once and added, "She treats magic like it is a tool, but she is so surprised that anyone can do it. When I asked her about it, she said she thought the slaves prayed not to the gods for help but to make themselves feel better. This is your daughter, Hector."
"She's yours too," Father retorted. He turned back to me and placed his hands on my shoulders. "I suppose I had neglected my duties as the father of the family and not taught you the magic of the house. The patrons of our line are Father Zeus the King in Heaven, Paean Apollo the Warder of Sickness, and Aphrodite Astarte the Warlike."
I would have said something about the strange collection of the gods, but I thought better of it. My father's hands were worn from war and work, and they were each large enough to wrap entirely around my slender, white neck. Having him so close, with such a fanatical zeal in his eyes, snapped me into the reality that was now. This was a time where it was thought that everyone and anyone could call upon the gods, and that everyone and anyone could cause supernatural events. It was how the ignorant tried to explain away all the strangeness around them, but I didn't have every answer either. I couldn't just tell them that their gods were just figments of their imagination. I couldn't just claim there were no gods. "… alright? So how does magic work then?"
"It… it has to come from true desire. It cannot be simply conjured, daughter! But, seeing your mother, my wife, so full and happy, I cannot help but wish for a healthy son!" It was a spur of the moment thing, but Father didn't seem to mind that. He stood and looked on above at the still dim early morning sky, raised his hands up in supplication. "Oh, Aphrodite, Goddess of Great Beauty! Oh, Aphrodite, Protector of Mothers! Oh, Aphrodite, Astarte the Areia!"
Mother had stood and done the same, facing father. They repeated the three titles three times. Then they offered five different praises five times. Then they whispered of them own seven hardships that only this sort of fusion goddess could alleviate. In a sort of shorthand, this was chanted in repetition seven times.
Finally, with the great adherence to numerical symmetry completed, the first part of the mystery of invocation was complete. It was only at this time that Father spoke in his softened tone to his imaginary goddess of what he really wanted.
He wished for a strong son, he wished for a healthy wife, and he wished for prosperous lands.
At this end, he then concluded with eight gratitudes.
"Of course," Father said, after the prayer had ended, "Each family has their own means of worship, and their own gods. Cybele is the goddess of our city, for example. Or that Danne family, their patriarch Shimshon is protected by a powerful god named El."
"But we have three gods?" I did a quick mental calculation. Perhaps I needed to refine what I wanted to do—it was blasphemy enough, but if I misunderstood something or misrepresented something, then the interpreter—the Sibylline Oracle who was the conduit of Cybele—would say the wrong thing. I wanted the bad luck reputation to go away, not make things worse!
"It is an accumulation of our family. If not for the heroic deeds of your ancestors, we would not be watched so favorably by the gods," Father said. In a way, he was right. If not for the hard work of my ancestors, I wouldn't be the only daughter of this aristocratic family that practically ruled a city. "Now you know how to truly invoke the gods to cast your magic. This power must not be wielded lightly, only for the sake and safety of our family, you understand?"
"Uh." I wasn't going to be praying anyway.
Father took that as an affirmation. "Now, what was the trick you did before that you thought was magic?"
I had never showed my magic to anyone. Sure, everyone operated under the assumption that magic was all around them, but it really wasn't. Despite there being skeptics, people truly believed superstition and spirits, like this was the default state of society. Yet, so few of them actually saw the supernatural with their own eyes. "Are you sure you want to see?"
"We might as well," Mother smiled kindly at me, as if encouraging a child to do her first dance for some family members or guests. In a way, that wasn't too far off, especially considering I was physically, in this body, barely six years old.
"I could do with a laugh," Father added rather pompously, secure in the knowledge that his understanding of the gods was obviously superior to that of his daughter's.
Huh. Well, they asked for it. I tugged on the arcane energies that formed the Jolt cantrip. Rather than shooting it out at a specific target, the last five years of my life had inundated me in magic use so much that it was a simple thing to control it in different ways. It was like how I could weave a basket without putting skill points in Craft (Basket Weaving). Perhaps skill came with experience in a way that couldn't be so easily simplified and recorded onto a character sheet.
I raised my hands about a foot apart. It might have even looked like I was holding up a long sandwich, or I was going for a hug. Then, there was a spark. Jolt, despite being a simple cantrip, was not something I could just cast without any motion or chanting.
Those motions went with the wiggle of my fingers and I chanted under my breath. In truth, this wasn't ever going to be as impressive as the force lightning that Palpatine wielded.
It was just a simple, single, tiny streak of electricity that passed from one palm to the other, remaining in view for about two seconds. Then, after three more seconds, another streak shot from that other palm to the one that began it. Honestly, this was the best I could do without giving away the tricks I had planned for the night.
Hopefully, I could get rid of that reputation for bringing bad luck, and get a safe and quiet life once everything calmed down and I normalized everything this evening…
I knew I was probably a disappointment. It was tiny, like a single strand from one of those static electricity balls in museums made to impress little kids. I mean, I was pretty disappointed in myself too. I looked up at my parents and asked, "So, what do you think?"
Father dropped his bread, which was just fine because Nevermore was waiting for it anyway.
*
I fiddled with the electrum arm ring father gave me. It had belonged to my second brother, who was killed by the Persians. It was too big for my wrist, but it fit better around my bicep, though still loose—it was a thick, electrum band shaped into a coiling snake, but there was an opening so that if it was even a little bigger, I could have worn it like a torc.
Only people of great status wore electrum, golden, or bronze bracelets like these. They were signifier of a rich or noble family with great stature, more so than what signet rings could show. This sort of armlet was actually for men, so it was a surprise to me that father had given it to me of all people.
My parents, like most people, turned out to be great actors in acting like someone just didn't happen. It was like how if a mother had been screaming and beating her son one moment and then sweetly answering the phone the next—this sort of skill must have came with simply being a parent. What a powerful occupation.
Mother spoke with the ladies and gossiped as if it were any other day. There was no congratulation in becoming pregnant, because the true test was whether or not Mother could survive another childbirth. So while Mother's baby bump had become slightly visible, no one said much on that, other than noting that she might be spending more time praying to Cybele this evening.
Still, every so often, I caught Mother watching me when she thought I wasn't looking. There was a sort of hungry desperation in her eyes that I couldn't quite understand. It felt weird just being on the receiving end of it… had our relationship changed so much in such a short time?
Father, on the other hand, outright avoided me. Oh, he still laughed and pushed around with the other men of the festivities—he was the only giving the cow to be killed at the altar—but he otherwise acted as if I didn't exist. Maybe it was a man-thing? Most of the other men didn't acknowledge their daughters either.
I joined the other children at the rear of the pack. "Hello Eleni."
The older blonde perked up as her name was called, and the way she smiled caused the dimples on her cheeks to become more pronounced. "Aisa! Oh, look at you, is that a new bracelet? It's so big!"
"I wasn't trying to show it… how did you notice it so easily?" I grumbled as I tugged my sleeves lower.
"You usually wear such plain clothes, anything you wear stands out, little Aisa," she took my hand into hers, intertwining our fingers as we climbed the hill to the festivities. "Come, come! Look, there's the others!"
"Ugh," I grimaced.
"You don't like them?" She asked.
I shook my head. "It's not that. I just feel like there's no conversation to speak of."
Eleni giggled, while still swinging our arms forward with great vigor. "And here I thought you were one of those types who didn't talk to people because you secretly despised them in your heart! And it turns out you just don't know what to say!"
"Don't put words in my mouth," I pouted and tried to pull myself away, but it was a futile effort. My low strength couldn't do anything against the girl who grew up in a family of warriors. "I just don't want to hear Caleb, or your brother Alexander, say 'well, my father says...' or 'wait until I tell my father' again."
"They are rather infuriating in their little rivalry, aren't they? Well, that settles the ancient debate. Us girls are obviously superior." Eleni lifted her chin smugly.
"You're enjoying this too much," I observed.
"Of course!" She exclaimed. "Soph is too, well, Soph. And I don't have any younger sisters! I always wanted a younger sister! That's it, I'm going to treat you like a younger sister, Aisa. You can't stop me!"
… What was that saying about plans of mice and men? If she kept her grapple on me this entire time, I wasn't going to be able to get anything done! "That's… that's nice. Can you let go of my hand now?"
Eleni gasped in visible shock. "No! Why would I do that? What if you fall? I heard someone else fell in the dark before. Alex! Who was it that fell last time in the festival?"
"Huh? How would I remember that?" Her brother shouted back at us. "Also stop talking about that. It's bad omens."
"Whatever the case, I'm here for you, Aisa!" She then did the worst thing possible. She picked up the pace and started running.
Fucking cardio. Just kill me already.
*
The plan was simple. I tried to keep it simple because complicated plans tend to… fuck up.
The location was at an altar to Cybele about an hour's walk away from the city. The Troad was built atop a hill overlooking plains, so we went to a steeper, taller hill that was practically a small mountain. There was a mountain cave half way up this mound, which is where the festivities take place. It wasn't actually atop Mount Ida, that was too far for a single day's journey.
Father led the cow, both because it was his cow and because he was the one who would make the deciding cut after the priestess finished their mysteries. The ceremony itself would take anywhere between half an hour to a full two hours, all things depending on the mood of the priestess. After the cow was offered, we would slaughter it and start roasting it. This would start around lunch time and by sunset, all participants of the festival would have something to eat.
Those were parts of the ritual that our house had direct participation in. The entire sacred mystery had parts that weren't allowed for the children or for the non-priesthood women to watch. There were many rules about these things, but I didn't know if I could enter the same time that Mother was there directly and loudly praying.
I had higher expectations… I had thought I needed to toss around fireballs and lightning bolts in order to get father to recognize me in some manner that resembled respect. I didn't expect bouncing the half-formed energies of a simple jolt cantrip was enough.
It really put things into perspective for me.
After all, people made such a big deal out of Criss Angel doing a levitation trick that was little more than a camera trick and illusion. It wasn't even really magic. And there were others who believed in faith healing as if it were real, and there were people who believed all sorts of, well, frankly things I didn't believe… just like how I didn't believe in these Greco-Anatolian deities. And those people weren't even in this ancient era, they were from an era of science and reason and mass information.
It boggled my mind that I forgot simple tricks could have been more than enough to do what I had originally sought to use multiple spells—prepared with many crude scrolls—to do. I told myself to remember the goal here; I still feared death. I still feared pain. I was a coward. I didn't want them to see me as someone to be sent away… I wanted a comfortable life, damn it.
Being known as blessed or something of that nature would have been enough for me. I had the spell to pull off this trick too.
Dancing Lights had a range of around 120 feet for me, and a duration of one minute. It could create multiple torches or whatever, but it could also make one faintly glowing, vaguely humanoid shape, which could move however I desired without any drain on concentration. The shape could be almost any humanoid size, how it glowed could be modified, and most importantly, it was a cantrip that I could keep throwing around if I needed.
So my plan was simple. I wanted to use this spell to impersonate Cybele.
The trick was in implementation.
Nights were unpolluted with electrical lights, so even faintly glowing forms were practically torches, especially if we were so far away from the city. The problem with this spell was that it seemed to conjure a limited amount of light—impressive from a physics perspective, but otherwise dull—so by making the form larger, it became less bright. I couldn't get it to even a 60 foot tall humanoid, hell, by the time it reached 30 feet tall, its lights could be outshone by the primitive torches that we had.
Furthermore, when the night grew too dark, we would leave and return to our homes. There was nothing that could be done about this, as the darkness was seen as vastly more dangerous than most other things. This meant that I had a limited time table to work with. The spell itself could only be visible to all participants of the Sibylline ceremony after the sun had already set, but that would already be at the tail end of the day's events.
And where this illusory form came from mattered. The Mountain Mother was said to be the mother of all living beings. She could come from two places: the sky or the earth. If this form rose from the ground, then the connotation was that she was subservient to the King of the Sky. If she came down from the skies, then it could cause an interpretation that she was the queen of the gods—a belief that wasn't exactly extinct either.
That was a one dimensional look at things. At the moment my fake Cybele walked the Earth, it would already have been after much of the ceremony finished. See, approximately two hundred people would be joining the immediate ceremony and getting a piece of beef. Of those, only about fifty were our city's upper crust, and they would be the initiates who entered the cavern and got to commune with the Mother Goddess.
My own mother wanted this specifically for that reason. She wished to implore the Goddess of Fertility for a strong son, and to survive child birth. The implication was that my birth had not been… easy on Mama.
But to the point of the Dancing Lights, if the illusory figure came from outside the cavern, rather than inside the cavern, this would have similar political repercussions. How I had not seen this before Father's talk with me, I didn't know. But now that I had these things in perspective, I could see that any of these minor actions that might as well have been me scratching my ass was more than enough to cause great upheaval.
So even though the plan was simple, I was… anxious. Not fearful, not yet, not after experiencing death, but this wasn't a feeling I liked. I didn't like the thought of unknowns to come.
I really was a coward.
*
When everyone got their cut of the cow that had been sacrificed to Cybele, Eleni approached me with eyes filled with curiosity. She was like a cat with a new toy and she didn't let go so easily. "Why are you standing apart from everyone else?"
"Wouldn't you like to know?" I couldn't do seductive, but I could do teasing. It was just stupid to try, considering my circumstance. My palms were sweaty… I almost didn't want to go through with it. Talking to her was just another way to procrastinate. Look at me, the introvert resorting to social activities to procrastinate!
"That is why I asked." Eleni responded with a slight look of confusion. The exact implications of the phrases didn't translate well, and neither did the lack of background information.
"I stand away from everyone else, because… I am different." I stated to her.
Eleni thought I had told a poor joke, so she humored me with a soft chiming chortle. "Aisa, do you wish to become a priestess? I'll tell you now, it's not so easy a life as the boys make it seem. Sure, you have power over people, but the cost is very great. There are many rules, and breaking any of them means you are to be put to death."
She didn't get it. I understood. I seemed like a delusional fool. Or a child playing at something greater. Nothing I said would have mattered. The only thing that could matter was action. So I raised a hand and pointed into the night sky. The moment I started, my worries washed away. "Behold."
Dancing Lights didn't limit the specifics of how the lights moved or how many lights were cast once sufficient understanding was achieved. What mattered was that there was a limit to the intensity of lights, as it was ultimately a zeroth level spell.
I called the form illusory… but this wasn't a spell from the illusion school. It was a spell from the school of evocation—it wasn't tricking minds into seeing something, it was manipulating the creation of light into showing minds something.
It was possible to string together the vague humanoid form in such a way that most of it was actually invisible, and only specific spots on the form glowed. In this way, lining vaguely up with the stars, I could make it look as if the stars in the sky (or at least, 120 feet above me) fell. I could then string them together into a vague humanoid form reminiscent of the Mountain Mother seated atop her Earthen Throne.
The relatively massive form of the twenty-something foot tall form of the Cybele rested above me by about a few meters, but it should have been evident to all that was gathered here that I wasn't some cursed child if she offered me such favor.
More than one person's knees dropped, though curiously, supplication did not mean kneeling when it came to worship. The closest men who saw the dim form raised their arms and started screaming their praise—much like father did.
This was their 'mystery of invocation' it seemed.
By this moment, almost one minute had passed.
I faded the form and recast the spell.
This time, light coalesced behind my head. While it was a flattened sphere of white-gold light, it was also my impersonation of a halo. Slowly, taking my time and making sure I didn't fuck this up (though that would have been hard considering my intellect modifier), I sank the light into me and gave it the vague form of myself.
Now I was literally walking around like my everything emitted light. There, take that, you fucking rumormongers. Now none of you will call me a fucking cursed child anymore, and you have no reason to send me off into the ass end of nowhere!
It was all coming together now. I felt like Daenerys Targaryen after she had just hatched dragons from the pyre of her dead foes. Victory would be mine!Rebirth 1.5
*
Days passed and I was left to my own devices. What I wanted, I got, so much so that I could even make scrolls out of papyrus now. I should have felt calm, but with the challenge just on the horizon growing, I couldn't feel safe at all.
Perhaps it was because everyone around me tried to accommodate my wishes, but I was starting to feel a tad twitchy. I had swapped out the more utilitarian cantrips that I used every so often that was Prestidigitation, for permanently having Detect Poison on my roster. I was using that spell three times a meal now. Every time I entered a room, I would cast Detect Magic, where before I only prepared it for special occasions.
Of course, I kept Jolt on. I saw regular bugs enough, and I had taken to zapping every buzzing critter I could see. More than one spider had fallen, but they were just regular sized things that I could have crushed just as easily in my palm. I haven't gotten experience from killing them after reaching level two.
With my high Spellcraft and intellect scores, it wasn't long before I had all of the listed zeroth level spells on the list and started to modify them where I could. Successful modification yielded about half as much experience as learning the spell itself, and I had taken my experience pool to just over half of what was necessary to reach level three. By then, days had turned into weeks.
Nervousness coursed through me. I should have felt victorious. Uncle Leomedon had not visited in ten days. No one talked about sending me overseas anymore. What was this hollow feeling inside?
Most of them kept their distance, not that it mattered. I wasn't exactly close to anyone before.
"You're brooding again," Eleni poked her head into my room.
"I'm not," I denied.
She laughed and poked my cheeks, making my pouting worse. "You really are. What is bothering you? You seem to get anything you want these days. Even first servings of the sweet cakes made of honey! That is a luxury, don't you know?"
"If you like it so much, then why don't you take it all and choke on it," I grumbled, but then I paused and sighed. "… sorry, that was, uh, you didn't deserve that."
"I know. So as a favor, tell me what seems to be the problem?" Eleni sat down beside me.
"Why are you being so… nice, anyway?" I tried to divert her attention.
She reached over and clasped my hands into hers and stared into my eyes with a sort of earnestness that was lost to adults who were so consumed by their lives. It was only in that moment that I noticed that her hands were shaking too. "I… I said I'd take you as my little sister, didn't I, Aisa?"
I looked over her shoulder, and I saw no slaves or citizens watching. My raven gave a similar indication, as if none had been there. "Does your parents know you are here, Eleni?"
"… yes." The blonde smiled sardonically. "Mother pretends you do not exist, but my father is… faithful."
"Did he ask you to become closer to me?" I wondered.
"Is that so bad? I wanted it anyway." The corners of her lips twitched upwards, but she couldn't bring herself to give me that sort of sunny smile she used to hold before I had unveiled a fraction of my powers in the Sibylline ceremony. It felt like I had lost something that day I couldn't replace.
Still. Nevertheless, I was lonely. Mother used to be warm, but now she kept a deferential distance from me, always bowing her head slightly when I entered the room. The other children kept away from me. It was almost as if having a reputation as a bringer of bad luck meant they could tease me, but now that I had higher stature, they couldn't approach me. "I suppose not… but it is discomforting. You understand?"
"Ugh. You think I wish to do anything my parents want of me? But there is always duty to our kin, and there is always something else. Honor, love, all those things." Eleni deflated after her small rant and leaned against me, shoulder to shoulder. "I rushed over today to tell you something you might want to know."
I leaned against her too. Perhaps a lack of contact with my mother had left me yearning for warmth. My eyelids felt heavy. "What is it?"
"The son of the King of Kings had ventured forth. He is camped east of Sardis in the lands of Lydia. They call him the magnificent King of Heroes, Xerxes." Eleni nudged me again so that I awakened and paid attention to her words. "Word has it that he had gathered five hundred companions and he seeks to save the city of Sardis."
"… what does this have to do with us?" I muttered, suddenly feeling wide awake. I wanted nothing to do with the man or the city of Sardis. I just wanted to bury my head in my pillows.
"He has heard of your, ah, feats. He will summon you," she added.
"Why didn't my father tell me this?" I asked. Oh no. No.
Eleni huffed. "He's acting silly. They all are. Really, yes, it looked like the stars fell from the sky to hug you, but… I shouldn't even be saying this to you. Maybe it really was Cybele? How would I know? They want me to tell you because I'm the only one you'd talk to these days."
"That's not true," I tried to argue, but there was no fire in my words. There was only a cold pit in my belly as I figured out what was about to happen. "I talk to plenty of people. I just spoke to them this morning during the early meal…"
"That's not conversation. You just ask for things… sometimes I forget you are so young." Eleni brushed a hand against my hair.
"I'm old enough," I swatted her hand away. I felt irritated. Couldn't she understand what was going to happen? There was no way I could refuse a summons by the son of the King of Kings. If he was already camped in Lydia, then he was already close by as Lydia was the entire region of western Anatolia. He was most likely camped at one of the Greek colony cities such as Smyrna, which was halfway between Sardis and Troad. "I know what's going to happen."
"Oh? Will you tell me?" Eleni asked, a hint of amusement returning to her now infuriating tone.
"I will go to this Xerxes. He will be impressed. He will then take me with him to Sardis." I could see it all happen. This was my worst nightmare! I had escaped getting sent to Greece for this?!
Eleni clapped her hands together and giggled. "I'm surprised. Usually, you're rather lacking in knowing what is to be. I guess I should be proud as your older sister, that my younger sister is growing up in the ways of the world."
"I never agreed to be your younger sister!" I huffed. "You agree with me?"
"Oh, uncross your arms. For all you know, the Persian Prince might not even be impressed." Eleni said, but her heart wasn't in it.
I wanted to bury my face in a pillow and scream. Failing that, my hands ran down my face like a mimicry of the painting, The Scream. I groaned and turned back to the older girl. "Fine. Fine. Alright, if you want to treat me as a little sister, then you can come with me." Suffer with me, Eleni!
Rather than recoil or drop her joyous demeanor like I expected, Eleni instead grasped my hands and grinned widely. "Oh, I thought you'd never ask, Aisa!"
*
Smyrna was situated as a port city in the Aegean Sea as one of the northern most cities of the Ionian subregion. The settlement was well protected holding the gulf of the region by mountains, rivers, and plains such that nearby cities like Pergamon and islands like Lesbos relied on Smyrna for inland trade.
When I arrived riding beside my father on his cart (Eleni rode with her father as was proper), the first thing I saw was the state the walls of the city were in. They had, in some parts, better walls than the Troad in that they didn't just use large boulders and mush things between them, these were bricked walls. However, much of the city seemed to be in a state of disrepair, and many of the holes of the walls were plugged by wooden stakes.
Furthermore, many tents had been set up outside of the walls, denoting that there was little space within for professional soldiers to rest. Compounded with the state of the roads, I realized that perhaps my own knowledge of Smyrna and the wider Ionian region was perhaps out of date.
"I thought this place was supposed to be wealthy," I muttered as I took in the sights from the other end of the plains and saw the details of the city.
"It was," Father replied under his breath. "When I had been here as a young man with my father, it was already falling, but not this bad. Its peoples were rich and decadent, but in their lapse they allowed their rivals conquer and sack their city."
"Blaming it on degeneracy sounds rather Athenian of you, Father," I looked over at him.
He shifted uncomfortably. "It is how I see it."
After that, we fell into another lull in our conversation. It was much like this for the five days' journey that we rushed south. There wasn't much I could do about that; one couldn't simply refuse the summons of the son of Atossa and Darius.
Only the outer ring of tents were not dyed. As we reached closer, I saw that there were men dressed in dirty and muddy armor, the sort of reinforced cloth, dyed with differing colors. Their tents were almost uniformly blue, and the one at the center had embroidery of gold.
When we arrived at the edge of the encampment, Father announced us to someone who was probably a herald in whispers I didn't hear. The effect was clear in that we were first brought to a place to park our carts and water our horses, and then we were brought bread and watered wine ourselves.
At the very least, I mused to myself, Persians were great hosts.
It was a paltry consolation prize.
I was getting everything I didn't want! I didn't want the attention of the Persians. I didn't want to go anywhere near the giant spiders. I was probably going to get both! The obsessive side of me wouldn't allow a less than stellar performance. It wasn't a matter of pride, I just never liked hiding what I had.
Well, no, I wouldn't show everything, but I never let go of a chance to impress. I had to have some cards hidden, after all, but… I tried to see the silver lining to this too. If my abilities were impressive enough, then maybe I could get some kind of royal patronage. Then I could build an ivory tower that I'd never leave, and everything would end up well, wouldn't it?
So lost was I in my thoughts that I didn't even notice it until we were at the entrance of the grand tent that was made with such beautiful cloth that the accumulation of all of Troad's wealth couldn't afford it.
A herald cried, which brought me out of my reverie, "You are about to witness the son of the King of Kings, who is son of the Great King, the prince of the many provinces with many tongues and many gods, son of King Darius the Achaemenian who rules all of this great earth."
Wide-eyed and grasping the sides of my skirt tightly—without mother being there, no one stopped me from bunching it up—we walked into what was clearly a war tent. Guards stood by the sides of the flaps, and more people patrolled about outside.
It felt more like something I would have expected from a Roman encampment, if not for the difference in clothing and wares. All the men wore a sort of chest piece made of bronze scales sown together, and they had more reinforced cloth for armor under tanned leather than metals, but the amount denoted that no matter what, this was a camp of heavy infantry.
The flap opened to another, smaller flap, and within were not guards, but attendants. Slave girls hurried to and fro with plates of dishes. At the center of it was what looked like a massive gathering of hungering men.
"Announcing the arrival of Hector the Troidae, Chief of the Troad, son of Illus the Troidae." He spoke in a twisting tongue and then in accented Greek and then a third one, as if speaking to more people who weren't present, and servants pushed us forwards into the many folds of the tent. "His daughter, Aisa the Troidae, and companions."
The man who sat atop the wooden throne looked nothing like the strange looking creature from the movie 300. Instead, I saw a latte-skinned man in his early thirties from the look of it, with a thick beard that reached his collar and long, very curled hair that was held back by a blue, cylindrical hat. One foot was on his throne while the other idled, and he rested a cheek on his palm as if bored.
No one spoke up, and an invisible tension was palpable in the tent. I took that moment to study my surroundings, and I saw that everyone's eyes were on the man on the central chair. There were other men, looking similar to him, most were a little older, though a few were younger. They seemed to all look slightly different, dress slightly different, as if they each represented a different tribe—and come to think of it, that was probably the case.
Well, at least I wasn't marrying any of these middle aged soldiers. I thought to myself. It was a small relief, but… if I didn't please this prince, then would I return to where I started?
A jolt of fear pranced through my spine, and I studied these men more carefully.
While they wore different clothes, their armor were all the same. For this era, to have uniformly heavy armor in the way that these men did, I couldn't help but think that they were similar to the nigh-mythical Persian Immortals, though much of what those were had been historical fantasy. What I saw before me were disciplined men dressed with the same scale chest armor and similar disposition. Furthermore, it must have cost much to outfit a whole camp—some five hundred men—with the same type of gear like this.
Peering towards the central table that all the men were seated at, I could tell that they were in the middle of a feast when we washed the dust of the road out of our mouths and prepared ourselves for this audience. Some of them were still eating, while giving us curious sidelong glances.
The prince, for he could be no one but the prince, sighed atop his throne. He spoke in an accented Phrygian, "I came to find glory in slaying a monstrous beast, and we only see the devastation caused by the machinations of the Athenians. Perhaps we have time to slay the Sardisian Spider yet, my friends. Come, guests, welcome to my table. I am Xerxes in your tongue, and as my name denotes, I am master of heroes."
"I'm Aisa," I walked up to the table and drew out a seat for myself, except suddenly everyone was quiet. I looked around and saw that my father's jaw dropped in a face aghast, and even Eleni looked like she didn't know what to do. "What? He said we are welcome."
"Rightly so! Good, good, so you are the child said to have grasped the power of Almighty Zeus' lightning bolt?" Xerxes lost that look of boredom immediately, but he didn't stand.
I raised two fingers and allowed a sliver of electricity to course between the tips. "No, I never claimed that."
"Ho! What else can you do?" He asked.
Huh? "Well, many things."
The prince nodded to himself. "I see, I see. And your gods are Zeus, Apollo, and Aphrodite, yes? Then tonight, we shall offer a tribute to each of the three gods. Someone take that order down!"
A servant walked out of the tent after acknowledging the order.
I was feeling… overwhelmed. Sure, the other men acted on Xerxes' word, and looked at me as if I were a curiosity, but that was it. There was nothing more to that, and no one knelt like they did in Troad.
Actually, that was the first time someone saw magic and just asked what else I could do. I had prepared myself to shock and awe everyone whom I met, but instead, I was just met with… interested but cool indifference?
No, I couldn't take that lying down. I was impressive, damn it! More than that, if I didn't impress him, what would happen if I returned to Troad? Would I be sent off to Greece to marry some man thrice my age? No! I couldn't allow it! My Mage Fingers reached over and took his cup, and I downed it myself. The panic in my heart alleviated, and I shouted the first thing that came to mind. "I hold dominion the forces of the great mysteries! Magic lives at my finger tips! Tell me what you wish, and I shall achieve it!" And I very nearly added for these mortals to tremble and to fear me too, but I had just realized what I blurted out.
To this, Xerxes clapped and a shark-like grin adorned his face. He slapped his knee and chuckled with the other men, all the while father's face grew white beside me. "Very good! Very good! I shall bring you along in the hunt for the Sardisian Spider!"
… what have I just done?