Gather Me Into the Artifice of Eternity

A triumph was an honor bestowed on the conquering Rhatian generals of old, and it had been many centuries since any had been granted one.

In the old religion of the Rhatian Empire, before the King on High was worshipped alone, it had been one of the highest rituals of that pagan rite. Naturally, as the religious landscape of the Empire had changed, certain elements had to be adjusted.

Still, Valens rode through the streets of Aureliopolis in a golden chariot, in much the likeness of the king of Rhatia’s old gods. He wore a gold-trimmed tunic of the Imperial Porphyry, an extravagant purple dye which sumptuary law had long forbade to any outside the imperial family. Since Rhatia had shifted from a republic to an empire, this toga alone had made many emperors reluctant to afford the triumph to any beside themselves or their heirs, for its power to lend any would-be usurper the appearance of legitimacy. It was a display of supreme confidence, or supreme foolhardiness, that Alexios had granted this honor to the man his grandfather had usurped.

Aside from this, he wore a golden crown in the shape of a laurel wreath, another symbol that had come to represent imperial authority, hand had his face painted red. This, along with gold, was one of the two colors chiefly associated with the King on High, and this is what preserved this face-paint as an element of the ceremony; it had also been an auspicious color according to the old beliefs.

Two men rode in the chariot alongside Valens: a driver, steering the four horses, and one whose sole responsibility was to lean over and whisper in his ear. This element had been an early addition, when the kings of the city now called Urba Rhatia had been overthrown in an age remembered more in myth than in rigid history. A wave of republican egalitarianism had swept the Rhatian people, and their senate had seen fit to offset the elements of this ceremony that elevated the triumphant general to godlike status.

At every turn and every milestone, the third man in the chariot muttered in Valens’ ear, not in Aponephilic but in the Rhatian tongue:

“Memento homo. Memento mori.”

“Remember that you are a man. Remember that you will die.”

The chief ceremony of the triumph was a parade of all the soldiers whom the conquering general had led to victory, in Rhatia’s name, and whatever prisoners or spoils they had brought back. Valens’ army was scarce: Rufio, Atia, and Hadrian, all walking side-by-side behind his chariot. Of course, they were bedecked in the armor they typically wore, and not the scant raiment they had taken into the slaying of Chrysos. Atia would have caused a sensation and a scandal.

Petrus had noticed that Rufio wore the ancient legionary’s armor he had purchased as a much younger man, when he had thought he might be his uncle’s understudy in killing monsters and not his second in running an empire. At the time, it was some of the cheapest armor of its quality he could buy, but by now it might have gained value as a rare antique. The High Prefect had not wasted the opportunity to add to the symbolism of it all, to make the triumph into a promise of the Rhatian Empire’s restoration, and had completed the costume by replacing the set’s lost shield. Rufio carried a freshly-made shield, tall, rectangular, and painted with the imperial two-headed eagle sigil. It was no lighter than the antique the Leupin in Lyria had destroyed, and Rufio almost certainly cursed the name of Petrus the eunuch with every step.

The full treasury of Euphemios III, of course, could not be displayed. Petrus’ people had squirreled it away under Alexios’ nose, for his and Valens’ exclusive use, once their power had been fully secured. That was not to say the spoils of this victory were lacking: Each golden tooth from the monster’s lower jaw had been pulled and placed on its own cart, in procession behind the hunters, and bringing up the end of the parade with its own retinue of musicians and dancers was the upper skull of Chrysos, an enormous single piece of shining electrum alloy. The enormously heavy brain-case of the treasure-fish, even thin and hollow as it was, could not be carried on any conventional four-wheeled wain, and had to be moved through the streets on rolling logs. Along the sides of the parade column, long strips of the fish’s flesh were carried, for use in the final event of the ceremony.

Valens’ identity as the former emperor had at no point been formally announced to the public. He had been introduced only as a monster-hunter in the emperor’s service, as Valens the Blind. Word of which Valens this was, and the true capacity of his eyes, had gotten around all the same. Crowds lined the streets, chanting, “Valens! Valens! Valens the Leviathan-Slayer!” and sometimes honorifics with more of an an insinuation to them, like “Valens the Liberator!”. Occasionally some outright seditious sentiments came out, “Valens, our emperor!” and “Long may you reign!”

Historically, when a triumph had been held in Urba Rhatia, the parade ended at the Temple of Iovus, king of the gods according to the old ways– now thought to have been a mere man, memorialized and deified for leading the ancestors of the Rhatians out of slavery under the Nephiloi. Even from their earliest-remembered, most animistic heathenry, Rhatians had looked down on human sacrifices as a barbaric means of honoring the gods, and yet had occasionally practiced it in their highest and oldest rituals. Outside each of their temples in those days had sat an altar used for animal sacrifices, usually carved into the steps leading up to the entrance. At the end of each triumph, however, a victim would be brought forward, ideally a captured leader of whatever people the triumphant general had subjugated– a king, a prince, a rival general or a high cleric. This captive would be laid down on the altar, and together the general and the High Priest of Iovus would strangle them. They would not be butchered as sacrificed animals were, their organs used for augury and some cuts of meat burned and others given to worshippers for feasting, but would be left for the elements and the carrion birds, until whatever remained was unceremoniously dumped in the city’s river to clear the altar for the next regularly scheduled sacrifice.

In this new age, however, the ritual of the triumph had been sanctified. The procession ended on the Aureliopolitan acropolis, at the new-built Cathedral of Sacred Beauty. Rufio quickly handed off his shield to one of the cart-drivers, and ducked into the holy place ahead of Valens and the rest as they processed in.

Much of the cathedral’s interior was still bare or covered in scaffolding, but the Sacrificial Flames roared under the dome as the important who’s-who of the city filed in for the structure’s inaugural Sacrifice of Atonement. This triumph, like those of old, would end with a sacrifice, but rather than strangling a bested enemy in placation to pagan gods, Valens stood over the flames as enormous fish-fillets were carried in and laid across the roaring fire, to rise as a sin-offering to the King on High. Chrysos’ aroma as it cooked was strong, but surprisingly pleasing, mild in its fish-odor and strong in richness like a fatty piece of whitefish frying.

Rufio stood behind a slab of wood on an easel. He had a special place in this ceremony: while it went on, he was to start writing an icon– writing was the formal term for creating one, because its ability to tell the viewer about the subject matter through complex symbology was every bit as important as the technical skill of the artist behind it. But, Rufio would not have been afforded this honor, with or without having struck the killing blow on Chrysos, were he not possessed of great technical skill. He made a Sign of Command, and went to work forming a wood-burn trace on which the rest of the image would be built.

In a slight deviation from the norm of depicting human subjects in icons with stylized, rather than realistic, features, this one would use Valens as a model, for a saint whose true features were only vaguely known, and would not have been wildly different from the monster-hunter’s.

This would be an icon of Saint Alexios the Dragon-Slayer: the namesake of the emperor from the house of Hypatios, but also the patron of both bodyguards and monster-hunters, a figure of special importance to Valens. The saint had served on the palace guard in Urba Rhatia, before the establishment of the eastern capital in Aureliopolis, and before his faith had become the state religion of the Rhatian Empire. Despite this, he regarded himself as a protector not just of the emperor, but of even the poor and the downtrodden of the Empire, and had undertaken a journey to a backwater village in his home province, abandoned by the local authorities, that had come under the terror of a dragon. In spite of slaying the beast single-handedly with only a horse, a few javelins, and a lance– a feat no monster-hunter since had matched– he eventually died by the hand of his own liege lord, martyred for his faith when a staunch worshipper of Iovus took the throne and conducted a purge of the palace.

After the Sacrifice of Atonement had been completed, Alexios and the guests of honor took their leave one by one, but Antoninos, the emperor’s historian, lingered near where Valens posed for Rufio to capture his likeness. His mouth, per its usual, was twisted as though laughing at some cruel bit of sarcasm.

“The emperor honors you highly, monster-hunter. He would not allow just any man to be set eternally in the pose of his namesake saint. Can you live up to it?”

Valens frowned. “Chrysos was not so much less fearsome than a dragon, was he?”

“That isn’t what I meant, and you know it, Valens Lyrios. Saint Alexios was mightier than a dragon, but what bested him was duty. He served his emperor and his faith, until the those masters came to be opposed. When the only way to reconcile the matter was to go to the headsman, he did it with a stiff upper lip. I know what would come to weigh on a man’s mind in the wilderness of Lyria, Valens. I know what you fear, and I know you mean to face it head-on. This is why, after sixty years, you’ve come to take back your throne.”

“Don’t accuse me of anything for which you do not have evidence, you–”

“I speak as a historian only, a… mostly disinterested observer, recognizing the patterns where I see them. There were many men like you in the Century of Crisis, who kept the Rhatian Empire in endless civil war, because they and only they were the one who could restore order to the Empire, protect it from the enemies who circled like vultures. Their hubris, their belief that they were chosen of the gods, was what led to its decline, and eventually its destruction.”

Rufio glared over the wooden panel where he traced a base-sketch for the icon. “We still have half an empire. With Valens and Petrus to lead it, the whole thing might well be restored.”

Antoninos laughed a cruel laugh, one that belittled with only its cadence and had a timbre of inevitability. “Nothing is ever truly restored. That icon you write will fade and flake and fall apart with time; another artist may attempt to restore it, but there will thereafter be as much of their style, their approach to writing an icon as yours. You can fly Valens’ banner of Catonium, if you wish, but it will not magic away the scars of pillage and occupation by the barbarians. Try as you might, you will never restore the Rhatian Empire to what it was; nor, I think, would you want to. The first emperors were heathens, slavers, and thieves, just as they were mighty warriors and bringers of peace; these features cannot be separated.”

Antoninos turned and strode from the cathedral, leaving the two monster-hunters alone in its center.

Rufio kept on with his work. “It doesn’t matter how well you fit the mold of Saint Alexios; we memorialize a whole host of saints, because there are as many paths to the King on High as there are men and women who seek Him. He does not want a second Alexios; He wants you. And you’re going to bring a little slice of His Kingdom to the world of Men, the Rhatian Empire restored not as it was, but as it is remembered in our most romantic moments; an idealized past that never was, made into a vision for a future that can be.”