Page 17 of Phoenix Chosen 3

“He’s good at what he does,” I admit begrudgingly.

“Some say he must be the bastard son of the hunting god himself.”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” I mutter with an irritated huff.

“How did you know him?” Tyler asks, his mouth full of fig.

I stuff a handful of dandelion stems into my mouth and crunch on the bitter greens. Tyler and Airos stare at me expectantly. I sigh and scratch my neck.

“It was over fifteen years ago. I was pilfering purses and the occasional lockbox from the high district in Athenos. Alyx was with me by then too, working as my partner. I was the only one who knew his true form. Everyone else knew him as my very reliable, very sneaky cat who was skilled at unlocking doors, and so on. Anyway, there was another boy, our best friend…”

I tell them about Lysander.

He was one of the younger boys in the gang, gentle in demeanor and overly trusting. He was not cut out for such a life, but circumstances left him without a choice. I’d done my best to take care of him, to keep him with me and even give him a split of my loot so he would have something to show at the end of the day.

Lysander was small and weak, but despite the cruelty the Gods had shown him, he’d never lost his kindness or pure spirit. I’d admired him for that. I guess that’s why I’d taken him under my wing. It was something worth protecting.

“Our gang was small,” I explain. “We mostly dealt in thievery, but Praxis pushed for more. He’d always been the group’s fist. Some called him the feral dog. Our leaders couldn’t argue with his effectiveness. He was bringing in more money than anyone else. The problem was he wasn’t sticking to petty street theft. He was taking work from the Athenosian dark market, slave hunting, making promises and agreements with the worst kind of criminals.”

Our leaders had encouraged it, but we were all just kids. We weren’t ready for the world that Praxis had gotten us roped into.

The event that pushed me to leave Athenos behind came without warning.

It’d been an ordinary day in early fall, begun with a morning meal I shared with some of the other boys, just like I was doing now with Tyler and Airos. Lysander had stolen some goat milk for Alyx to drink, and Alyx, uncharacteristically, had allowed him to pet his fur as he drank it. I still perfectly remember the way Alyx had glared at me, silently daring me to laugh, and the look of absolute joy that’d been on Lysander’s face.

That was the last time Alyx and I ever saw him alive.

Alyx and I had gone to the market together to make our rounds for the day. Normally, Lysander would’ve joined us, but something had kept him back at the hideout.

It’s been so long, I can’t even remember what it was anymore.

Maybe one of the leaders had instructed him to stay; perhaps he’d volunteered. Had he any idea about what was going to happen?

We’d only been gone for a couple of hours when word reached us that there’d been a raid on our hideout. Erpetosi bandits, we were told, out to retaliate for an encroachment on their domain. We returned to find our small corner of the slums destroyed—the makeshift mudbrick shelters most of our gang called home torn to the ground by frog tongues and set ablaze with their swamp tar—a foul concoction nearly impossible to douse once set alight. Some had managed to escape, but most had died trying to defend our territory. We found Lysander curled up beneath a smoking beam, not far from the space the three of us usually slept. Held tightly in his blackened arms was the small clay jar still partially filled with goat milk, like he’d been trying to protect it for Alyx’s return.

Our group was targeted because of Praxis. He’d tracked and stolen slaves from the Erpetosi bandits, thinking they would never be able to trace it back to him. He’d sold out every single one of us for a payout from buyers on the dark market. Our gang never recovered. The surviving members scattered. Most were absorbed into other, more dangerous groups.

“Praxis knew what he’d done,” I tell Tyler and Airos. “He had no remorse for it.”

“That’s so fucked,” Tyler says angrily. “I’m so sorry, Kalistratos.”

“A dangerous enemy to have,” Airos says. “I wonder… was he tapped by the Shadow Phoenix because of his connection to you?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “But if Alyx were here, I’m sure he would say that there are no coincidences.”

Airos gets to his feet. “And I would be inclined to agree with him. I would not discount the possibility he was chosen by Umbrios and placed in front of you all of those many years ago. The Gods play games on a scale we can’t comprehend.”

I sigh and press my fingers into the bridge of my nose. “Sometimes, all of this fate business hurts my head.”

“I think we should waste no further time,” Airos says. “I’m altering my plan. I don’t think it’s safe for me to enter the city now. I have to assume Praxis has all of our scents.”

“Maybe you got him with that stone cage?” Tyler suggests uncertainly. “Crushed him like a bug?”

“I think we all know that I didn’t. You saw the shadow trying to escape. Did you feel that his presence had been extinguished?”

Tyler considers this, then shakes his head. “No, I guess not.”

“Alright.” I stand and help Tyler up. “Then we depart now. But we’re going to need to get supplies somewhere. We should detour south and stop at Aelonos.”

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