The city-state of Arcadia was considered one of the first modern societies. If you were to question any of the citizens, they’d tell you that their little island in the Mediterranean had just about everything one could ask for from their country. The day sky was without a cloud, though it never grew hot enough to burn, while the nights were cool, but never were they cold enough to freeze or hurt. The fishermen who lived off the vast sea around the island would never return to its shores without fish. Nobody needed to starve as long as Arcadia stood.
Now, if you were to then ask, “Why is your nation so prosperous?” any Arcadian you would get one of two responses. Arcadia had a rather specific quirk about it, where the credit for the nation’s success relied upon your religious thoughts or rather, the lack of religious thoughts.
Like many places, Arcadia was no stranger to the odd religious sect or bizarre cult, but in its later years, when its success was more apparent, one cult, in particular, sprung up that was of peculiar devotion. To this date, many credit it as being the only example of monotheism with Zeus as its singular deity. Day after day, this Cult of Zeus would make public displays throughout the city, loudly decrying that it was the responsibility of their wise and noble god. Now, while not everyone of a religious edge was a member of the cult, they did find it odd that their king, Lycaon, did not subscribe to the belief that they owed their success to the gods.
To counter this, the less religious citizens of the island felt as though they owed their success to the king himself. Lycaon was the sort of man who surrounded himself with thinkers and makers. Ancient physicians and atheistic mystics. As for the fish, they had discovered that if you were to catch and keep certain varieties of fish, you could breed them to produce more eggs and then release the resulting spawn into the wild to repeat that. It was for that accomplishment alone, that Lycaon felt as though he did not owe the survival of his nation to the gods. That did not stop the Cult of Zeus from sending representatives into his home from day to day, to try to create a grey area between the logic of his rule to the impossible rule of Zeus.
He sat on his throne, day after day as representatives of the cult came to him.
“My lord,” they’d say. “ You are not a religious man, you do not attend the temple. You do not dedicate yourself to Zeus.”
I want to say that Lycaon was a good man. A good king, even. Every part of me wishes it was true. Every person who lived in Arcadia and thought of it as a paradise wanted it to be true. They wanted the man at their helm to be a just and noble man. Such men do not get to become kings. Lycaon had heard this speech more times than he could recall. Every day since his ascension to the throne, they would come to him, asking him to at least acknowledge the gods, and every day, they would be met with this:
“No,” he’d say. “I do not believe in your gods. I believe that should such beings exist, we would be mad for allowing them to have any say in our lives. In truth, cultist, life is dictated not by the will of an invisible sky father, but by the will of men and the strength of their steel.”
It remained a kind of cruel routine that the king and the cult would play out every day, until one day when Lycaon delivered it with more venom than the devout were used to. He chased his usual speech with an angered howl and fixed the robed man with his gaze.
“It is by the steel and the mind that all things are won and lost. Nations and men get butchered and fed in equal measure.”
With that, the cultist left. His entire body felt as though it was animated by a kind of fear that most only have after being cornered by a wild animal. That night, he and many of the following gathered in the Temple to Zeus and talked about Lycaon.
“I mean to say is,” began the cultist. A funny little fellow by the name of Don. “It was the first time, I had ever seen him like that. He felt…too big somehow. Like you know when you’re trapped by a dog and it feels bigger than you as it growls?”
His fellow devoted nodded along. “He felt dangerous, didn’t he? He thinks he is the only power in the world simply because of his birth and his thinkers.”
“I suspect he probably will remain this stubborn,” said another cultist.
Don and the others nodded, “If we want real change in the world, we will have to offer something to Zeus, to guide us through what we must do next.”
So, the cult set out to make preparations for a sacrifice, while up on the top of the hill, in the palace of Arcadia’s king, Lycaon and his family carried out their own rituals at night. You see, for all his logic, Lycaon was a man of superstition as well, he carried out small rituals and personal games that he felt could be used to interpret reality. So, when he first assumed the throne he set about constructing a test for his future brood. He thought of it as The Cube. It was a maze of interlocking hallways and rooms that stretched out throughout the lower levels of his family’s palace. Every single one of his children who met his standards had found it easy to move through the labyrinth by themselves. They all thought of it as sating mental hunger in order to work themselves into the relief from physical hunger that awaited them in the rooms. Only one of his children was incapable of navigating The Cube. Callisto. She found the endless halls and the rooms that stunk of copper to be both unnecessary and unappealing. Were it not for her being Lycaon’s daughter, she might have ended up as one of the many unfortunates who ended up in Lycaon’s home in the night.
In the temple, the cult laid down their sacrifice. Don had hauled it up the stairs and placed it before a statue of their god. Its limbs were bound and beside it, a fire had been started. After all, they found the notion of Zeus coming down from Olympus to eat their sacrifice to be a ridiculous notion. In the palace, Lycaon and his children wandered around the calls, calling out to each other in the dark to see how close the other was to one of the rooms.
Don took a long knife and split the sacrifice open, while his allies began to rend the bones and meat from it. The smell of the flesh being placed on the fire aroused hunger within them before the smell of lamb flesh turned to a coppery charcoal smell.
The derelict heard the king and one of his daughters call out to him as he ran down the halls.
"Come here," said the king.
"Come here!" echoed one of his daughters. Probably Dia. She'd always had a habit of mirroring anything Lycaon said.
He burst into a room to see the king and his child, both grinning at him with bloody mouths. The girl was the first to speak. The derelict ran further down the hall, but The Cube's acoustics made it to where the sounds of feet on stone and voices sounded as close together as they were far apart.
"You can escape," he said. "I believe you can. Prove me right and you can be free, Perses."
The derelict turned his back and for his trouble, another one of the king's children, the quiet and precocious, Titanas, clubbed him in the back of his head with a rough stone. Caving in part of it.
"Well damn, I suppose you weren't up to the task, said the king.
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The next day, he was met by city representatives, local politicians, and traders from neighboring cities, but there was no Zeus cultist in sight. Not one. This pleased him, as he believed that he had finally worn them down. That he could finally know peace without having the religious tax his patience.
In Arcadia’s temple to Zeus, the cult was hard at work. They burned the body of another goat. Sending its body to the he-himself to act as a feast.
Three days following the cult’s ritual, a man collapsed as he ascended the steps to Lycaon’s home. He was dressed plainly in grey sackcloth, while on his back he held a bundle of sticks that weighed down his ancient frame. Lycaon himself saw this unfortunate, laid out on the steps of his palace, and took his own pity on the old man. He approached him and helped him to his feet.
“Steady on old man,” he said. “Are you alright?”
“Better now that I am here, King Lycaon,” said the old man. “Could I trouble you for some water?”
The king gestured at his servants and brought the aged traveler water.
“You’ve come a long way, I know many of the old men of my city, but your face is a stranger to mine,” said Lycaon.
“Indeed. My name is Iovis,” said the old man.
“Why did you ascend to my palace, Iovis? Surely you could have found shelter in the city.”
“Sometimes, an old man is in want of intellectual conversation. I heard tell that you rule in the fashion of dearly departed Oedipus of Thebes. A government of logic, of sorts, yes?”
“Indeed,” said the king with a smile. “The unpleasantness of King Oedipus’ relations aside, I have always used his logic and style as my fashion of rule.”
“Brilliant,” said Iovis. “ I hate to be a burden to you further, my king. But as the day grows late, can I ask for one final favor?”
“Anything, Iovis. It’s rare to have learned company outside of my sons.”
“Might I trouble you for food and bed tonight?”
Lycaon thought he saw something youthful in the old man’s eyes. Something like lightning. He brushed it aside. “I would be happy to allow you to live in my home, old sir.”
As the old man took his rest in one of the rooms of Lycaon’s palace, a woman paced about. she was Callisto, the wise and keen-eyed daughter of Lycaon. She had her thoughts on the matter. She believed that it was no coincidence that this odd old man should show up not three days after the Zeus Cult’s ambassadors ceased bothering him. There was something that didn’t fit right with the old man. Even outside of his oddly learned nature and plain clothes. The man reminded her of a shadow puppet. It was like she wasn’t seeing Iorvis the man, but something meant to represent him.
“You do see it, don’t you?” the girl had said to the King. “The way he moves is unnatural, somehow.”
“You’re being ridiculous,” was said by her father and parrotted by all forty-nine of her brothers.
So, being proud, Callisto took her leave of the palace for the night. Choosing instead to go out drinking and did not return until the next day’s afternoon.
That night, as dinner was prepared, Lycaon made a mistake. He thought long and hard about what his daughter had said about the old man. Deep inside, he knew that there was something odd about his arrival, but he never considered that there was anything unnatural about him. Instead, he came to the conclusion that Iovis was a spy, sent by the cult to learn about the secret nature of The Cube. Fortunately, The Cube had been productive. So, he decided that he himself would handle the meal preparations for the evening.
He sat out a leg of meat in the kitchen, carefully peeled away the skin,s and set it out on a grill over coals. The air inside the kitchen building was hot, Lycaon was unaccustomed to it, but he was not unfamiliar with the task. He’d taken to this manner of work every so often. He’d found after trial and error in his gastronomic experiments, that he enjoyed the flesh of the thigh most of all. But he dabbled in offal, for he found entrails to be not too dissimilar in taste to octopus. But he could not help but to have his mouth water as his seasoned meat filled the air with life.
That night at dinner, there were no servants. There was simply Lycaon, Iovis, and Lycaon’s fifty sons. They set the table and served them great steaming bowls of steaming meats, wine, and vegetables. Iovis and Lycaon’s brood ate greedily of the king’s labors. Iovis never broke contact with Lycaon throughout the meal. It was there that the king could see it clearly. Lightning in the dull blue of the old man’s eyes. The cult had sent forward, a conjurer to torment him.
“Do you enjoy your meal, Iovis?” said the king.
The old man wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Even though he was a short, lean figure. He felt impossibly big. Bigger than Lycaon. Bigger than the world. Perhaps, even larger still.
“I am, Lycaon. It makes me almost nostalgic,” said the old man.
“Nostalgic?” said the King. “I’m afraid I don’t follow.”
“There was a time. When I was young. It was a time when gods and men were crueler. There were more meals like this then,” The old man took a piece of meat and sunk his teeth into it, pulling it apart. Lycaon could see the little strings of flesh pull tight before snapping as it vanished down the man’s mouth.
“You’re eating human meat,” said Lycaon.
His sons fell silent. They knew what they were eating, but not one of them in their number expected their father to admit to the derelict. To his shock, this did not deter the man.
“I know, Lycaon. Do you think me stupid?” Said the old man. “You said it yourself, I’m a learned man. But, I suppose to describe me as a man is generous.”
The old man’s physical body grew and did not stop growing. His gigantic frame was curled and hunched as it sat in the room that did not suit it’s new shape. His eyes were like balls of white hot light and with his mighty hand, he blocked the door.
Lycaon felt it in his face first. A horrible sensation that was like lightning dancing along his nerves as the bone and the muscles reshaped themselves into an animal’s muzzle. No one had ever heard what sound a bone makes when it stretches. All who were there could identify what sound his limbs made as they broke and snapped into their new shape. You might imagine from there, that his body erupted in fur as the first werewolf came into being. But that was not the case. Such things were later developments. Lycaon stood before his sons. Their minds were blank and their voices were taken from them as they watched the twisted, hairless form of their father. The beast that once called itself Lycaon howled and set upon his own offspring. As they were ripped apart, their dying thoughts were of this mess of skin and teeth, and how it had once been their father.
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