Herakleia leaped to her feet, instantly awake, all the fatigue of the last few days draining from her limbs.


    “Wake up!” she shouted to the camp, as loud as she could. “Everyone wake up! We’re under attack!”


    No one stirred. Katranide, Smbat, Ashot, Simonis, Euphrosyne, Za-Ilmaknun, Jafer El-Hadi, Bob the Silent Seljuk Prisoner, and all the others continued to slumber. Even baby Hovhannes—who would wake up shrieking if his poor mother Angela so much as thought about him—remained asleep. All the refugees, drivers, and amazons slept silent and still in the dim flickering campfire glow. The horses were asleep, too. Only Miriai was awake—and she, too, was facing the two blue eyes floating in the dark.


    “Ach, it’s no use, dear,” Miriai said. “I already tried. It’s cast some sort of spell over the others to keep them asleep. Truth be told, I’m surprised you’re awake at all. It must want something from you. From us.”


    “What is it?” Herakleia said.


    “I told you earlier,” Miriai said. “It’s a daiwi. A demon. A monster.”


    Herakleia rolled her eyes. Obviously.


    “This city of yours,” Miriai continued, “you know, this Trebizond, the way it actually wants to help people, it’s a bit rare, wouldn’t you say? Its ideas are spreading, too. It’s gathering strength, and that means it’s also attracting all the monsters from around the world. All the evil, everything that stands to lose from workers and peasants and slaves and women and children being free, it’s coming here to fight us, to nip this blossom in the bud.”


    “That would explain a few things.” Herakleia thought of the death worm and the ketos, not to mention all the other strange creatures Alexios and the others had been fighting in their various adventures. Sometimes it seemed like the entire universe was conspiring against them. It was a miracle they had made any progress at all.


    Without looking away from the two glowing blue eyes, Herakleia moved closer to Miriai. “How long has it been here?”


    “Moments. Although now that I think about it, I suppose I’m not sure.” Miriai shrugged. “A few moments, a few eternities, what difference does it make?”


    “It wants something from us.”


    “It’s the ‘lo-mee-katsis-sakhit,’” Miriai said.


    “At least we finally found it.”


    They watched the blue eyes for a moment, and the blue eyes watched them back.


    “What do we do?” Herakleia said.


    “Ghosts and demons cannot speak unless spoken to,” Miriai said. “But to speak to one is dangerous. If you invite them into this world, they’ll possess you.”


    “What if we just ignore it?”


    “Can you really ignore this?” Miriai gestured to the eyes. “What are we supposed to do? Everyone’s asleep!”


    “Alright, I’m going in.” Herakleia had never looked away from the two glowing blue eyes, but now she addressed them directly. “What are you? Stop hiding, show yourself!”


    Another pair of eyes appeared beside the first. And another. Soon they were everywhere, even staring down at them from the sky and up from the ground, floating in the darkness around Herakleia and Miriai’s faces, close enough to touch, far enough to fall over the horizon, millions of them. Some were bigger than the moon, others were almost microscopic. They poured around Miriai and Herakleia in a blizzard so thick the two women were unable to see each other.


    A deep, booming voice thundered with laughter, and both women shuddered. Then all the blue eyes faded, save the two original ones hovering in the dark just beyond the fading campfire light.


    The eyes approached. A creature stepped into the glow of the pulsating flames. It was a lion, easily the size of a draft horse, but it had a man’s face.


    A sphinx.


    “Before you even ask us your riddle, I already know the answer,” Herakleia said, trying to sound confident. “It’s a man going through the various stages of life. We read the Oedipus trilogy in English class.”


    Miriai gave her a side glance. “What’s this you’re saying, dear?”


    “Forget it.”


    “Women do not belong here,” the sphinx growled, baring his teeth. He spoke Roman with a deep voice, and an educated Konstantinopolitan accent. “You have strayed too far from your proper place.”


    “What’s our proper place?” Herakleia said.


    “Anywhere but here.” The sphinx’s long strong tail flicked behind his back. “This is the wild. It’s dangerous. You might get hurt.”


    “So far we’ve done alright,” Herakleia said.


    “You are women!” the sphinx boomed, his voice loud enough to shake the ground.


    Miriai and Herakleia tensed up.


    “A mere variation of men,” the sphinx continued. “Ribs from Adam’s ribcage, each a comely helpmeet. You belong in your husbands’ homes, not in the wild—not playing warrior dress-up like children. Here you have been led astray.”


    “I’d be home with my husband if I could be, believe me,” Miriai said. “I miss my sweet Zaidun more than you could ever know—”


    “Your place is not to speak, woman, but to listen!” the sphinx said. “You have upset the natural order. This explains your exhaustion and misery, the way you are practically crawling back to that abominable city of yours.”


    Herakleia leaned in, narrowed her eyes, and opened her mouth to speak, but the sphinx interrupted her.


    “Oh yes, I know all about that. I know all about your plans to turn everything upside down. It is all doomed to fail. Women can never hope to contend with men. Mentally you are weaker, physically you are weaker. Lesser. The greatest female athlete is nothing to even a mediocre male athlete.”


    What’s up with these talkative monsters? Herakleia would have said this aloud, but the sphinx forbade her to speak.


    “In the Hippodrome of Konstantinopolis,” it continued, “for a woman to compete with a man in the chariot races is unheard of! But this is to protect your dignity. It is a sign of respect, when everything is in its proper place. You are a mere appendage which deludes itself that it can think, feel, decide for itself, in defiance of all tradition, of all that is sacred, of science and knowledge. You should be having children for your husband, nursing them and nursing him, helping him in his labors, obeying him before he even asks, looking like nymphs all your lives—”


    “Ach, I’ve heard enough. He looks upon us with jealous eyes, slavering after slaves. To fight the evil eye, one needs eyes of one’s own.” Miriai lifted her right hand into the air, raising fingers and thumb toward the sphinx. To Herakleia’s astonishment, Miriai’s hand began to glow blue, until it became almost too bright to see. A blue eye appeared on the palm, surrounded by flowing geometric patterns, all in different shades of blue. Miriai, in the mean time, had closed her eyes, and was murmuring in a language unknown to Herakleia. The only word she could make out was “khamsa,” which meant five in Arabic.


    The sphinx snorted. “It will take more than a few magic tricks to stop the natural order. Don’t kill the messenger. I am here only to remind you of where you belong, and where your happiness truly lies. Let your back and muscle labor for your husband in the field, let your hands nurse him, let your body pleasure him—for he labors for you in turn, does he not?—and let him invest in your womb, let it bring forth an accumulated surplus of children—”


    “This is some of the most fucked up shit I’ve ever heard in my life,” Herakleia said. “Jesus, man, fuck off and go back to wherever you came from. We’re just trying to get home—”


    “You will submit to your proper place,” the sphinx said. “Or you will die. Your misguided ideas cannot be allowed to lead good women astray.”


    “I’d rather live.” Herakleia bent her knees and raised her fists. She had little desire to wrestle a man-faced lion the size of a horse, with massive claws and fangs—and she would have given anything for a long sturdy steel-tipped spear—but sometimes fighting was the only option. Fleeing for her life and leaving Miriai and the sleeping refugees, amazons, and drivers to the mercy of a sphinx was worse than getting mauled to death by the same creature.


    “I will take you both,” the sphinx said. “Your bodies will submit, even if your minds revolt. Your flesh knows the truth. It knows your proper place.”


    Herakleia rolled her eyes. “Give me a break.”


    The sphinx approached her, roared like a lion, and swiped her with his paw. Although Herakleia blocked this attack, the sphinx’s claws were sharp, his muscles strong. This single blow knocked her to the ground and tore bleeding welts into her arm, the game voice announcing that her health was down to 73/100. Her mêlée combat skills were only at beginner (2/10), so she was no match for this monster.


    Gasping hot breath into her ears, the sphinx held her down with one paw and ripped off her clothes with the other, tearing her skin in the process. Herakleia cried out in pain. Purring, the sphinx licked the lack of her neck. His tongue was sandpapery, like a cat’s.


    “Miriai!” Herakleia screamed. “Help!”


    “I call upon the alma d-nhura for aid,” Miriai was murmuring. “May the ‘utras help us, draw down the strength of the shkintas, may Manda d-Hiia help us! May Hibil grant me his armor of light!”


    As the sphinx’s jaws were yawning around Herakleia’s head, Miriai covered herself in blinding armor—helmet, cuirass, gauntlets, greaves, boots, everything—its edges long, razor sharp, knifelike. Only her hands were bare. Screaming, the old woman hurled herself into the sphinx, and her knife armor sliced into his flesh. The creature bawled and stumbled from Herakleia, blood pouring down his sides, the blue light in his eyes flickering.


    Herakleia put her torn clothes back on. The sphinx circled Miriai, but it was impossible to attack without hurting himself.


    “My dmuta is too strong,” Miriai said. “Too bright for the daiwi of ruha.”


    “What is this nonsense?” the sphinx said.This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.


    “Let the shuba glow.” Miriai looked up to the sky and raised her arms. “Let the trisar glow, and reveal the kushta on Tibil! Let life be victorious! Beings of light and darkness, we bring forth life and love it, we hate death and do away with it! We are the life in death, the death in life!”


    The planets were glowing brighter as she spoke—red Mars, yellow Jupiter and Saturn, white Venus, even Mercury shining a beam into the night like a searchlight beneath the horizon. The constellations were shining also, wind was sighing in the pines, the ground shivered, and the sphinx was retreating into the darkness, glancing back and forth, the blue light fading in his eyes. Miriai followed.


    So this is one of her famed smackdowns, Herakleia thought.


    “Death is nothing to life!” Miriai lifted her arms, her voice growing loud enough to wake everyone who was sleeping. “We open our doors to life, and glory in its abode—shutting you back into death! The ground will burst with vines, the soil that gives life will also live, the air and water, land and sky, the bones of the dead and the seeds of all those yet unborn, all will quicken and breathe as we do, and killers will be cast away into the void of death!”


    As the sphinx shook his head, Miriai threw her arms forward. Both her hands glowed blue, and they were covered on every side with eyes, big and small, all bright and swirling blue.


    “Chain the ones who chain us,” Miriai said. “Bind the ones who bind us, force the ones who force us, exploit the exploiters, evict the evictors, make landless the land thieves, gang up on the gangsters, destroy the destruction. If you like marriage so much, we will marry you! Come here and marry me, sphinx!” She gestured for the beast to approach, and her sharp armor rang. “Your spouse shall be death, and your parents and grandparents also, let your children be death, your friends and relatives, everyone you know and even those you don’t, let death surround you forever!”


    The sphinx pleaded with her to stop, but it was too late. Thorny green vines burst from his flesh all over his body, blossoming with enormous red roses before his eyes—from his eyes—their petals soaked in dew and blood as the tendrils stretched out and swirled like tentacles, growing and thickening. Screaming as sharp flowers poured from his throat, the sphinx collapsed into the ground, and was soon no more than a rosebush, one quivering with his last movements.


    “Thus does life come from death.” Miriai wiped her hands. “And death from life. Thus are light and darkness bound together, the one giving birth to the other, as night gives birth to day, and day to night, the watchful Horus eyes of moon, sun, and stars whirling above and below the land and water, the river and its banks, the creation of Ptahil the Demiurge. What is day without night, or night without day? What is life without death, or death without life?”


    She took a deep breath, and the sharp armor folded back into her body, as the blue light and eyes faded from her hands. Miriai then approached Herakleia and helped her stand.


    “Are you alright?” Miriai said.


    “That was amazing,” Herakleia said. “How did you—”


    “We Nasoreans are the ones who know,” Miriai said. “And in the soil of minds our seeds of knowledge grow.”


    “Uh, okay,” Herakleia said.


    “‘Okay,’” Miriai said. “What is the meaning of this word you use sometimes, dear?”


    Za-Ilmaknun staggered over to them with the help of his mequamia, yawning, rubbing his eyes with his free hands. “Did something happen? It feels as though a great weight has been lifted from my shoulders. What did I miss?”


    “Ach, everything,” Miriai said. “You slept through everything again, as always!”


    “I can take the rest of the watch if you want,” Za-Ilmaknun said. “I doubt I’ll get back to sleep—strategos!” He took her bloody arm. “You’re hurt! What happened?”


    “Almost got eaten by a fucking sphinx,” she said.


    Za-Ilmaknun pulled off his backpack, washed her wounds with his usual water, wine, then water again, rubbed a salve on them, and then bandaged them.


    “Yes,” he said as he worked. “We have trouble with such beasts in Aethiopia sometimes. They are a terrible nuisance, particularly to women who ask too many questions, to say the least.”


    Herakleia and Miriai looked at each other.


    “The kingdom has had its own amazon revolts now and then,” Za-Ilmaknun continued. “Its own queens, princesses, and other assorted goddesses who tired of doing all the work all the time. On occasion the men fought back alongside sphinxes. For what is a man, truly, but a sphinx?”


    “Which side did you fight on?” Herakleia said.


    “It all happened long before I was born, strategos,” Za-Ilmaknun said. “Sphinxes are, thank god, a rare enough sight in this day and age. Many of the beasts of myth and legend have faded into the background, retreating into caves and shadowy forests, as man has entered the foreground—for man is the most dangerous, the most terrifying beast of all.”


    “He can be an angel or a devil,” Miriai said. “Or both at once.”


    Za-Ilmaknun continued as though Miriai had said nothing. “But sometimes I think about all these monsters coming here to make their last stand, joining the forces of reaction to stop us. They will not go peacefully. Indeed, they would rather destroy the world than lose it to us. For if we triumph and conquer not only the empires to the east and west, north and south, but also nature itself, what room will there be for creatures—whether mystical or made of crude flesh and bone—that prey upon the weak?”


    “Ach, he just goes on and on like this,” Miriai said. “It’s so annoying.”


    “It was a rhetorical question,” Za-Ilmaknun said. “I was finished.”


    “Finally,” Miriai said. “I’m so old, I don’t have time for all this talk. One of these days I’m going to turn into a corpse in the middle of one of your endless speeches. Then you’ll see!”


    “I hate when you talk about how old you are,” Za-Ilmaknun said. “There’s much life in you yet.”


    Recalling Miriai’s transformation, only moments ago, into a goddess armored in razor-sharp light—with glowing blue eyes in her hands—Herakleia was forced to agree.


    “There is no sense dwelling on how close we are to death,” Za-Ilmaknun said. “For such dwelling will spoil the little life that remains. Who is not close to death? One whiff of miasmal disease is often all that separates us from the beyond.”


    “I’m going to head back to sleep if that’s alright.” Herakleia was struggling to escape this conversation, especially now that Za-Ilmaknun had finished bandaging her wounds. Her clothes were also ripped, but she would have to wait until the caravan reached Trebizond to find replacements.


    Miriai and Za-Ilmaknun kept each other awake that night by bickering in low voices, while Herakleia rolled herself back up into her blanket, thinking that she was glad Miriai was on their side. Alexios had warned about the old woman—which might have helped to explain why Za-Ilmaknun had the hots for her. As one grew older, one’s perspective changed. Miriai had white hair, and her skin was spotted, leathery, sagging, but she also possessed an energy, an undeniable attractiveness that went beyond appearance, filling her limbs with strength, turning the heads of men a third her age. Sometimes they would even look away from younger women to watch Miriai instead.


    She’s a GILF. Herakleia laughed to herself.


    Miriai was so unlike the vast majority of people. Where they took, she gave. Where they talked, she listened. Where they hurt, she helped. She was a teacher, a learner, one still hungry for knowledge, but funny and especially kind, in the sense that she was intolerant of abuse, embodying the Cynical maxim that the only right place to spit in a rich man’s house was in his face.


    Children liked her. None needed to be forced to talk with her. She herself would also talk with almost anyone. There was none of the fatigue of life. Herakleia was forced to admit that she had misjudged Miriai, assuming that she was just like old people in the old world. So often they stood in the way of progress, making excuses for the inexcusable, enforcing in any conceivable way the system which had granted them so much wealth at everyone else’s expense. Cool ones had existed in these generations once—people like Miriai—but by the 2020s they were almost all dead, in prison, or in exile. With rare exceptions, only the worst among them had survived into old age. Poor people tended to die young. And too many young people were as backward as these holdovers.


    Miriai was different. The powers she possessed, granted from years of studying ancient texts and applying their ideas, mixing theory with praxis, it all made her attractive.


    In the morning, when Herakleia got up, everyone was packing their blankets and tents into the carriages and finishing their breakfasts. It was sunny and warm. The clouds were continuing to take their break from their usual incessant rain or mist, and Herakleia began to wonder if early spring was ending, and if the famously beautiful Euxine summer was on its way. Sleepy Za-Ilmaknun and Miriai were lying in a carriage to either side of Jafer El-Hadi, who still looked tired and depressed. Baby Hovhannes was once again crying as though he was being prodded with molten steel, even while everyone—including his mother Angela—handed him back and forth, singing to him, hugging and kissing him, talking with him, playing with him, asking him what was the matter.


    Prince Hovhannes, Herakleia thought, yawning and stretching. Anything to keep my mind off of Ay?e.


    Yet Herakleia nonetheless wondered what had happened to the Seran princess. Was she even still alive?


    Should have taught her the farr. It was too early to know if she was ready. People can’t learn how to use it until we’re sure that they’re on the right side—that they’re Frankensteins, not Draculas.


    The draft horses neighed as they ate their feed and the drivers led them to a mountain stream to drink, passing the rose bush that—only hours earlier—had been a sphinx, one that had leapt over entire mountains and horizons.


    “Was that rose bush there before?” Simonis said.


    “What a stupid question,” Euphrosyne said.


    “It’s not a stupid question at all.” Herakleia climbed to her feet and rolled up her blanket. “It’s a long story. But the rose bush wasn’t there last night.”


    “See?” Simonis said to Euphrosyne. “Told you.”


    “So a rose bush just wandered into our camp and settled down while everyone was asleep?” Euphrosyne said.


    “More or less,” Herakleia said.


    “Unusual behavior for a rose bush,” Euphrosyne said.


    “Miriai took care of it.” Herakleia nodded to the old woman, who was trying to convince Jafer El-Hadi to have some food. “It was a pretty nasty one. Ever heard of Ovid’s Metamorphoses?”


    “We’ll make sure to keep our distance,” Euphrosyne said.


    Soon enough, the convoy got underway. Before noon, Umm Musharrafa—who was on scouting duty that day—came riding back to let everyone know that she had spotted the first fire tower at the edge of Trapezuntine territory, and signaled them with a mirror. Everyone cheered at this news—except baby Hovhannes, who was still crying, and Bob the Silent Seljuk Prisoner, who kept silent.


    The convoy rounded one bend, then another, passing valleys that sometimes rose up to grassy mountaintops where the occasional boy with a crook could be seen herding a flock of bleating goats. Dirt paths led away from the road through forests that obscured the mountain villages where these children’s families lived, the huts made of mud and uneven rock, the roofs only as tall as your shoulders. In the spaces between each hut—they could hardly be called streets—Roman, Armenian, Kurdish, Turkish, Jewish, and Laz children played with the manure that had yet to be brought to the fields. Those fields were being plowed at this time of year by oxen teams, the bells around their necks jangling.


    To live in a mountain village, Herakleia thought, knowing nothing of the outside world. Time marked by sunset and moonrise, the changing of the seasons. No knowledge of maps, calendars, books. Even the priest in the little church, the imam in the little mosque, neither one can read. Neither place of worship has books. The only one who can read is the rabbi at the synagogue, and he only reads and writes ancient Hebrew, which only a few Jews understand. The Jews are mostly dyers, tanners, silkweavers, not bankers. That’s their economic niche in Byzantium. So what worries you, living in your ideal mountain village? That one night, you’ll be attacked by wolves or bears. No guns means it’s not easy fighting them when they get hungry in the winter. Your young children might also get sick and die. It might either rain too much, or not at all. That’s it. For century after century. If the village is far enough from the roads, and obscured by a decent forest, you might not even have to worry about raiders or tax farmers. Not to idealize a life of ignorance like that, with so many women dying in childbirth, patriarchy firmly in place thanks to the presence of agriculture, and medical knowledge limited to “rub manure on it,” but it’s not all bad.


    As Herakleia was thinking about this, the road rose above the tops of the pine trees, skirting alongside a vertiginous drop past jagged cliffs. One wrong step from the horses, and her carriage would plunge over the side and into the distant depths, hurtling end over end until everything exploded against the boulders below. But neither the horses nor their drivers showed any concern. The refugees kept as far from the edge as possible. Parents held their children’s wrists, forbidding them to step out of line.


    The road descended again, and then the refugees gasped with relief, pointed ahead, and exclaimed that they were saved. From this distance the fire tower looked just like a lump of rock lost in the haze, hardly different from a natural formation sculpted by the wind. Yet it marked the convoy’s return to home and safety. Anyone—anything—which wished to attack would also have to contend with Trebizond from now on.


    Umm Musharrafa signaled the tower with her mirror, and the tower responded, asking if they needed assistance.


    We have one wounded, Umm Musharrafa signaled. In stable condition. He lost his leg.


    Who is it? the tower signaled back.


    Jafer El-Hadi.


    After a pause, the tower said: We will alert Trebizond. They will be ready.


    Soon the convoy was close enough to spot the two amazons who were on duty at the tower. One had already signaled the other fire tower to the north.


    “We have good news, strategos!” the other amazon shouted, her voice echoing among the cliffs. “After your departure, more cities sent embassies to join us! All Romanía will soon be on our side!”