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Torn God: Watcher of Deep Places (Web Novel) - Book 5: Chapter 22 The Lion [Part 1]
Book 5: Chapter 22 The Lion [Part 1]
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Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet.- Aristotle.
At first, he had been stunned by his own death. He remembered it, the logical fact of it. But still, shock churned into displeasure, and displeasure ignited into anger. Finally, weary acceptance settled over him like a shroud. He, the so-called “Megas,” had truly died. Once, he was Alexandros, conqueror of nations, a man destined, by his own reckoning, to march to the very edge of the Earth. How hollow that title felt now, echoing in his mind like a distant drumbeat: Megas. If he were truly so great, why had his soldiers faltered? Why had they turned back, longing for hearth and home, leaving him short of the world’s end?
He should have met his fate upon a foreign battlefield, shoulder to shoulder with his men, not in some strange bed far from the hall of war. At the end, his so-called physicians, unworthy of Apollo’s grace, claimed his humors were imbalanced by a mere fondness for drink. He had scoffed at their counsel. What was a man without the ambrosia of the gods in his cup? In the lulls between battles, in the hush before new stratagems took shape, wine was his only solace. And in those quiet hours, he had dreamed mighty dreams, before death claimed him in the most unworthy of ways.
Yet the hereafter brought no Elysian Fields, no comforting domain of Hades. Instead, he awoke in a land so strange it made his old world seem a child’s fairytale. Its denizens called themselves the children of the gods—fae folk with pointed ears, so enchanting that even their homeliest would outshine the beauties of mortal men. Nymphs of wood and mountain, he first thought, or some cousin to the spirits of river and field.
But the greatest surprise came when he discovered he was one of them. Not reborn as a babe, but as a youth on the cusp of manhood: taller, lither, more supple of limb but lacking the sculpted muscles that had once made him formidable. His ears tapered to a proud, delicate point—features out of a story he might once have dismissed. His face bore only a faint echo of the visage he had once worn in life; even Olympias, his own mother, might not have recognized him.
In those first days, he learned this was not Hades, nor any realm he knew. The world itself felt both alien and curiously vibrant. A particularly attractive elven woman named Arimea corrected him in his beliefs, patiently explaining that this was no Elysium but another plane altogether, a place of magic and miracles. She was a vision of gold-spun hair and sky-blue eyes, unearthly in her beauty but with sorrow’s shadow always lingering. She taught him this new world’s language and lore, awakening his mind to the mysteries he now faced.
Arimea was kind and methodical, nurturing him as one would a small child. But death had not dulled Alexandros’ great intellect. The intellect that had founded one of history’s greatest empires had not withered with his mortal coil. In half a year, he absorbed what would have taken others an entire lifetime. He remembered Aristotle’s most precious lesson: not what to think, but how to think. In this strange land, Alexandros refused to waste a single moment. Time, after all, was a treasure too dear to squander.
And yet, dark questions haunted him when nights grew still. Had his legend endured after his ignominious end? Did his statues yet stand? Had his final, fevered days sullied the memory of his conquests? A man’s death could define him as keenly as his life. But Arimea had no answers; even she seemed oddly troubled when he pressed her on such matters. Still, at least he had escaped the Asphodel Meadows. If any mortal's deeds could ward off mediocrity, surely his would.
According to Arimea, the gods had plucked him from death to halt a looming calamity that threatened existence itself. Alexandros did not entirely trust the words of these elves, or even Arimea—no matter how sincere her tone, he tasted a faint bitterness beneath her assurances. When he challenged her, her voice turned hollow, all hint of jest or clarity gone. She would only repeat the same refrain, quietly and insistently. Deceit or truth, it mattered little to Alexandros in the end. The gods had granted him new horizons to conquer, a fresh dream to chase—was that not enough?
It was more than most men ever got.
And this world had magic, real magic. No simple illusions or tricks of the mind, but true, wondrous power that could shape flame and bend the elements. At Arimea’s urging, he tapped into what the elves called “God-gift” or Mana, coaxing fire forth from his very soul. In this, too, he saw opportunity—another weapon, another means to achieve dominion. The principles of war never changed; only its tools.
Like a man possessed, Alexandros studied. He read as ravenously as he once did under Aristotle’s tutelage. The process of learning new knowledge sharpened his wit.
The elves, with their centuries of life, believed themselves above all others, moving through the world in slow, measured strides. Alexandros, seizing each hour as precious, found that every new volume he devoured honed his mind further. Curiously, his mastery of magic seemed to grow in tandem with his understanding. Arimea assured him this was only natural: a quick mind was fertile soil for the seeds of Mana.
His martial prowess returned with startling speed as well. Though reborn into a sleeker body, muscle memory, tempered by decades of real warfare, soon made him the equal of many Elven warriors. Even those elite soldiers who bore the Mark of the Mantis offered only a modest challenge; their training halls were far too safe of an arena for a man who learned the bloody dance of blades on true battlefields. Lorsan, Arimea’s friend or servant, sneered that the Mantis trials had grown lax in modern times. Alexandros almost laughed, pleased that curmudgeonly old warriors were the same in every world.
But if the majority of the elves lacked the brutal edge that war had given him, they excelled at something far more subtle and terrifying: the arcane arts. They did not merely pray to their gods and hope for favor; they measured the world in lines and runes, rendering mysteries into formulas and numbers. Magic, in their hands, was both science and devotion—an ever-shifting tapestry of energies requiring constant vigilance. Alexandros, for all his genius, found parts of this discipline opaque, but he pressed on. Elven scholars deemed him the equal of a “journeyman mage,” yet he hungered for more, determined to see how far these new powers could carry him.
