Surrender One's Pride

There were still dried flecks of blood on Kassandra’s knuckles as she pushed against the colossal doors beneath Delphi. The stubbornness of these unyielding doors tired her to the point of taking a break, and she glanced up at the columns on either side, decorated with conspicuous golden snakes. Malaka! To be taunted with this stupid imagery and ostentatiousness! To know that the Cult of Kosmos, ingenious in their machinations and secrets, were over-performative and obnoxious about their aesthetics to the point of bravado!

“These pediculous xanthodontous exophthalmic morsophs,” she sighed. 

Kassandra didn’t actually know what any of those words meant but ever since Sophocles had said it at the symposium and Herodotus had assured her that it was, indeed, an insult… she’d memorized it. There was a time and place to call someone a malakas. Plus, it brought a moment of levity to her, which she desperately needed. Even if she was the only one who heard the joke. 

(Because if she didn’t cheer herself up and keep herself distracted, she’d start thinking about what had happened. About what led to this moment. How she had failed.)

The Cultist doors would not budge.

Brasidas was dead. Her mother and brother were dead. Dead because she’d said the wrong thing, pushed Deimos away from her instead of pulling him closer. Why couldn’t he have stabbed her instead? Why couldn’t he have just…. Argh!!!! That fucking… fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Deimos was now rotting in an unmarked grave. She’d tried to find the strength to bury him in the family crypt alongside Myrinne and Lionedas. But it wasn’t proper. He’d fought for Athenians and regarded their heritage with such a callous attitude that it didn’t feel right. If it weren’t for Nikolaus, picking up the boy’s body, wrapped in tattered linens, and guiding her to a nice field outside of Geronthai… if it weren’t for Nikolaus, she would have let the corpse rot on Taygetos. Burying his wife and son was the first moment in twenty years that he’d acted like a pater, at least in Kassandra’s eyes. Didn’t really make her feel any better about her miserable failure to reunite her family, though.

Kassandra let out a harsh yell that startled the nearby peddlers and pilgrims, but in her moment of strength, the Cultist doors finally shifted open. With a groan that indicated it’d been a while since they’d seen use, scraping along the stone flooring. She inspected her fingertips. Dust. As expected, no one had been here in quite a while― Kassandra’s doing, of course. Forty-two of the damn bastards were dead, their blood spilled across the arid land she called home. Two yet lived; a simple farmer who only wanted to keep his people safe, and the woman who controlled the entire country.

The woman who had her own husband assassinated to further political goals.

The woman who helped reunite Kassandra with her mother.

The woman who fueled the known world into a chaotic, bloody conflict.

The woman who would gently pat Phoibe on the head, clothed her, sheltered her, fed her, and treated her far better than Markos ever would.

The woman who sought to control the blood running through the Eagle-Bearer’s veins, succeeding with her flesh and blood brother.

Kassandra closed her eyes and brought out her spear. This was only going to end one way. She had to… to… do what she did best. Take the only action she could think to take. Aspasia would die by her blade, just as all of Kassandra’s enemies had. 

Almost a decade ago, she had wandered these halls in disguise, listening to the rulers of the world with her eyes wide and her soul ignorant. If only Elpenor had not sought her out. If only she could have stayed on Kephallonia, running errands for a bumbling idiot and messing up the hierarchy of local warlord bandits. Ignoring the pain inside her so that Phoibe would think she was big and strong and god-like. 

It looked the same. A big, stupid snake hanging overhead. Barely any lighting. That horrid pyramid, glowing and humming with her mother’s voice. She would find a way to cave this room in and destroy it all. But first, she had to know the truth. Her hand reached out to the glow, to this artifact that could only be from the First Civilization, and the voice of her mater ceased its tormenting repetitions. 

Pythagoras warned her. Warned her of the history of the Cult and how it would survive despite her life’s work. Her heart thudded in pain, breaking as she watched visions of the world continuing to evolve and grow. People struggling, as she had, to fight off organizations boasting the likes of Kleon and Pausanius. Even as Greece as she knew it crumbled to dust and cities hosting curious contraptions and architectures rose. What… what was the point of it all? The image of Pythagoras flickered as he gave her one last smile, and vanished.    

The footsteps behind her were neither quiet nor loud. They were neither comforting, nor brought her anguish. They just were.

“I remember you telling me how the ‘Cultists are so enamored with their own mysticism’ long ago,” Kassandra sighs, not looking back. “Something about the caves of Mt. Zas, wasn’t it? When you had me thrown off your scent and chasing after Silanos.”

“Hmm… yes. The presentation is all a bit garish. Making everyone believe that it was all in the name of Kosmos only works if you have something to fear. We were all afraid of each other, of our soldiers, of our own masks.”

Aspasia’s voice was calm. Too calm. 

“I really, really didn’t want this to be true. None of the letters openly stated your name. I pieced it together but I was desperately hoping that―”

“That it was Alkibiades? Demosthenes? Or perhaps some elderly witch who lived in the Parnes Mountains, hunched over piles of sacrificed bodies?”

“Yes.”

She finally turned to face the consort of Perikles, in fine purple robes and glimmering jewelry that reflected the flickering lights of the fire beneath the pyramid. Her hair was masterfully done, likely by a Kirrhan servant or slave, and her hands held each other with the poise and dignity unbefitting of someone who had just lost her monstrous grip on the entire world. That was it, wasn’t it? These two women were forsaken and alone together in this cave, having had their entire lives destroyed... having destroyed each other. 

It almost seemed as though the only difference between Aspasia and Kassandra was that the latter had a spear in her shaking hands, ready to strike.

“Hmm… I want you to give me a saccharine, rehearsed, perfected explanation that dilutes your role in all this to mistakes and mishaps. Tell me to my face that you never planned for Perikles to die, as I pull out a piece of parchment addressed to Kleon that says otherwise. I want you to promise and plead that Deimos was uncontrollable and I will show you a letter that says, right up until the end, you were lying to him about me. Those words would prompt him to stab my mother and attempt to kill me once and for all, written in your delicate Athenian script. You destroyed my life and I would love to hear your defense. Go ahead, Aspasia, I want you to do what you do best.”

There was a wavering. A hesitation. Aspasia closed her eyes, her poise dropping ever so slightly.

“I could. I could convince you that I have some grand plan to establish a good, ordered Republic from the ashes of the Peloponisian and Delian nations. I could continue to manipulate you until I had you burning down all of Greece, that we might rise again. I could weave lies that Athena herself would fall prey to.”

“Gods, I want to stab you.”

She hadn’t seen Aspasia in a long time, but Kassandra hadn’t forgotten the way the other woman’s smile always made her insides flutter. 

“I know. I told you the time would come when you would cut down every single Cultist. I knew this was coming.”

“Because you think that I’m a monster who knows nothing more than war and violence? Like Alexios?”

The spear glowed in Kassandra’s hands. She felt ready, her instincts already preparing the best strategy for killing this adversary. A quick step to the right, kicking her in the back of the knee and sending the Cultist of Kosmos, weakened like prey, to the ground. A slice of her dominant arm, the left one, to make sure she could not retaliate. Stepping on her neck (with the boots she’d pulled off of Podarkes still-warm corpse) and crushing Aspasia’s throat so that she would never again tell another lie―

“I came from a city far to the east, further than you have ever sailed. Miletos. To this day, it is still reeling over the onslaught of the Persians and filled with broken people. My family was poor but after the death of my mater...  my pater insisted that I become an educated woman, that I learn to fend for myself so that I could escape that life. He threw himself into indentured servitude to make sure I’d have the finances for the most wonderful Athenian education and training. I learned quickly that if I wanted to have the life my father dreamed for me, I would need to get people to listen to what I had to say. I learned quickly that, if I wanted people to listen to what I had to say, I would need to learn how to whisper into their attentive ears. I never realized so many people wanted to be whispered to. Wanted to be controlled and pushed and pulled like puppets.”

“You think people want that?! You think my family wanted our destruction?” 

Aspasia turned away from Kassandra and stared at the pyramid, “The Cult knows that people who are at their lowest, at the state where they are most vulnerable, make for easy targets. I think that I wanted people to want my manipulation.”

The tip of the spear of Leonidas rested in the small of Aspasia’s back as Kassandra’s hand began to stifle its shaking. Her resolve was as strong as the marble columns holding up the temple far above their heads. She was ready to kill this snake, the blade pressing into Aspasia ever so slightly to get her to talk. The other woman let out a soft gasp, almost unnoticed, and the misthios noticed that her wide brown eyes were beginning to water. From fear? From pain? From shame? Did it fucking matter?

“The Cult gave me a home when Athens wouldn’t. A way to get people to finally listen to me, when they refused simply because I came from a different land. The leader before me was one of the Pythias, the one who operated before Praxithea. She was not their puppet like the others. She was… she just was. Charismatic. Smart. Unafraid, even in the face of someone like King Leonidas. She was who I wanted to be, and in the desire to transform to her image, I let myself become a snake that would take over the Cult and poison it.”

“Don’t flatter yourself, the Cult was made of venom long before your lips drank from its cup.”

Kassandra knew her voice was harsh, her words struggling to escape through gritted teeth. A tear fell down Aspasia’s cheek as the spearpoint started to poke a hole into the back of her peplos. 

“Why do you hesitate?”

“I… I don’t know.”

The last thing Kassandra wanted from her greatest enemy was a response of silence. The notion that neither of these two women, one of whom was masterfully trained in the art of debate, could muster up words to fill the chasm between them. Aspasia was ready for her execution, it seemed. Unarmed and unprotesting in her defeat. 

“When Phoibe was murdered… was that one planned?”

The sharp turn of the other woman’s head startled her, causing Kassandra to raise her spear in defense as the Cultist stared her down with tear-stained eyes.

“Of course not! I… I used Phoibe, yes,” she stammered. “I had her aid you on your little adventures, and in the same breath had her deliver letters to Cultists that hindered your progress. I would have taught her the ways of Kosmos in the hope that she would join the Eyes, perhaps, or even act as a Sage someday. But you are a fool to believe that I would want her dead to further any goal! Her death was a tragedy.”

“But other people’s sons and daughters were of no consequence? The throats of Spartan hoplites and Athenian polemarchos were fair game to be slit? Those that you could not welcome into your ranks because they were not as manipulatable as a small child?”

Aspasia looked angry. Angrier than she’d ever seen her. 

“Sokrates has taught you well. Your talent for debate has improved over these last few years.”

“I just lost my mother after being separated from her for most of my life. I lost my brother because I could not free him from the fog that Chrysis wrapped around his eyes like Hypnos himself. My life’s work will be for nothing, if that pyramid has indicated anything, and some version of this Cult or another will rise up... again and again. I am trying to help you give me a reason to spare your life,” Kassandra sighed. 

“I cannot.”

The bowl was only ten or so feet away. Kassandra gently pushed Aspasia towards it, the consort unsure of what would happen. She took the other woman’s hand, smooth and unweathered from harsh reality, and used her spear to make a cut across the palm. A small trickle of blood dripped into the bowl and the misthios held up her own hand with a similar shaped scar. 

“I never made the blood offerings. I was never... formally present at the meetings. I would hide in the shadows and watch,” Aspasia whispered, looking down at the bowl, caked in dried blood. “Even when Deimos killed Epiktetos to frame him as the traitor that murdered Elpenor, I remained the ever-elusive Ghost while the others cleaned up the mess.”

Kassandra gripped the bloody hand in her own, squeezing as tightly as she could, pressing her thumb into the cut across the other woman’s palm. More blood dripped down as a result of the pressure. Her battleworn hands were shaking again. Like the ebb and flow of the waves, they would calm, then begin to tremble once more in fear and anger. Aspasia’s wounded hand did not move at all, not even in response to the pain.

“If I hear anything about this Cult ever again, I will hunt you down.”

Aspasia’s eyes closed.

“If you so much as breathe in the direction of another king, general, or statesman, I will hear about it. You will not whisper in any ears, nor will you manipulate another soul ever again. You are done. I will give you your life, but your freedom was thrown to the wind by your own hands, you understand?”

Kassandra’s words were quiet and controlling. A voice that could cry across the battlefield, now deadly soft and befitting of an assassin. The eyes of the courtesan opened, determined and understanding of the threat. Aspasia took in a deep breath through her nose and leaned forward a few inches, gently kissing an old scar on the mercenary’s cheek. 

“I don’t deserve this,” the Cultist whispered, her breath hot on Kassandra’s neck.

“You do not.”

“Thank you.”

Kassandra pulled away and smirked, “I’m not doing it for you. I’m doing it for myself. And for our friends, who put their lives on the line to help you the day we escaped Athens.”

With that, she separated herself from the grasp and strode up to the pyramid. The spear raised into the air like a bolt of lightning before crashing down. A moment of silence throughout the chamber, then the sounds of shattering and the strange crackling that always came from First Civilization technology permeated the air. The device broke into a dozen or so pieces, little metal bits that clattered on the floor. 

And The Eagle Bearer walked away.