Page 78 of The Villains of Winter

What was happening was blatantly evident. Professor Ilaria was orchestrating another one of her machinations. At best, she was trying to slither herself into James’s good graces by any means necessary. She was publicly attempting to reconcile with him. She even managed to convince the cabalistic college to suppress the homicide scandal before the firestorm of the media could learn that Lucien was killed. The homicide was reframed instead as an act of symbolic self-sacrifice. The glory of the winter solstice.

The very divinity of the ritual.

Lucien Montclair would be seen as the most devout ritualist of them all.

There was a third letter welcoming Elliott to a banquet in Elliott’s honor on behalf of the theater department. To commemorate his survival. All at once, James recognized the swirling, grandiloquent handwriting of the letters. He confirmed who had sent the letters. She was watching James. Behaving as though she were a deity who saw all.

“No, Elliott. You’re not going back.”

“I have to return–” Elliott insisted. “I sabotaged the hibernal ceremony–”

“You’re not returning to the College. You’re not going to that banquet. You will refuse.” James ripped apart the letter and he snatched his woolen coat off of the door hinge. He was going to murder her. “You’re not exposing yourself to the public. If I have to row you to a foreign country, I will.”

Elliott persisted, “Think of the spring recitation of the Peloponnesian War.” Sickeningly, Elliott sounded exactly like the letters that wrote of the great historian Thucydides. Exactly like her. “Think of The Rise of Alexicacus, when the Athenians fell ill throughout the Plague of Athens–”

“Listen to me, Elliott.” James held onto his shoulders, tightly. He had to make himself clear. “I am not Apollōn. I am not Alexikakos. You are not an infantryman in the Peloponnesian War. You will not attend.”

For years, Elliott and James had poked fun at Professor Ilaria bestowing James with the epithet, laughing whenever she referred to James as Alexikakos in reverence. The hypocorism was murmured in endearment and idolatry. She even referred to herself as his Athena–the goddess of wisdom, craft, and war. As always, he was Apollōn himself. The diverter of evil.

However, what Elliott didn’t understand was that Professor Ilaria actually believed that she was mythical and powerful, interfering with the lives of everyone around her.

She’d devised Elliott’s execution.

She plotted the cold-blooded murder of Finch.

She was the conductor of torture.

The academe of Æscwulf was a breeding ground for tyrants, exploiters, paraphiliacs, and reprobates. All of it was concealed in a surreptitious cabal that lured vulnerable young men, like Elliott. They were psychological tormentors.

James was lured after an incident of vehicular manslaughter.

Elliott was lured after an incident of ritual homicide.

They weren’t welcomed out of altruism, they weren’t mentored from a place of philanthropy, it was draconian manipulation.

In Professor Ilaria’s deplorable mind, her power was divinely given. She was wise Athena granting mercy to her protégé–her Alexander the Great.

In Antiquity, Alexander the Great carried the head of Athena on his gold staters. Alexander the Great financed the temple of Athena by the architect Pythius. He dedicated himself to Athena. He worshipped her after his victory at the Granicus River.

Professor Ilaria was not his wise Athena.

She was his subjugator.

James parted his mouth to finally mention that he was initiated into a cabal that conducted dark human research and forbidden alchemy. However, he struggled to find words to explain it wasn’t about the alchemy, it was political extortion. It was to blackmail the students early in life before their future political path, and thus retain power over them. Keep them reined in. Thus, if the students were willing to engage in dark interests with the cabal members, then they could be trusted to remain silent on illegal invasions, foreign government interference, and economic corruption. Thereby, the system remained anatomically intact. The pledges even damaged their own bodies in order to prove their fealty and to be inaugurated in their illicit league.

Everything else was pretense. The Greco-Roman and Anglo Saxon rites and traditions were bastardized with impunity. Winterthur was not Anglo Saxon in origin, but rather Old High German. Ƿinterfylleþ was the word for winter full moon by the Anglo Saxons, never a deity. The Ancient European histories, cultures, and rituals were solely to lend legitimacy to their degeneracy. Beneath it all lied the flawed belief of eurocentricity as the epitome of civility. All of it was a mirage of aesthetics and nomenclature in order to maintain the appearance of erudition.

The mentees were recruits.

The mentors were handlers.

The cabal members were perpetrators.

The concurrent cabal archons and polemarches were the leaders.

All of the explanations bulked against his teeth. Instead of the two young men airing everything between them, all the secrets and omitted lies, they held their tongues. James could see how dearly Elliott missed him in his eyes, how innocent he still was, and it tore him apart. “Never mind.”

James set down his coat. He poured two glasses of champagne and toasted to Elliott.