It is exquisite pain being here.
His mother, Rabiah, named him after a city. As if her boy would bring many victories in his life. She named him as if he was her son. Her prophesy was right. Cairo has had many victories upon the battlefield. He is a prized Arete warrior but, so far, the only victory Cairo has ever had that means anything at all, is the victory of replacing his mother’s first and only son.
Rabiah and her husband, Amset, travelled to Novus with their lady Marcisa who was due to to be wed to a king. They brought with them their only son. The boy was the pride of Amset, he was skilled with sword and spear and his father’s pride was bountiful. Yet the desert cares nothing for legacies or happiness.
On their way across the wilderness of Solterra their small group was set upon by a teryr. Rabiah and her son are injured. The party manage to kill the beast but their victory is short-lived as the boy begins to perish. Rabiah’s grief is whole, her wound is not fatal and she cannot face her years childless - for by then her childbearing years were over.
They find an open teryr’s nest just around the corner from their attack. Within it lies three eggs, two great and the other small, broken open, a child lying gasping within. Rabiah’s cries are full and earnest, believing the teryr to only be protecting her young. And now the child has no mother to raise it (though the child within the egg is avian, he is no teryr. His eyes are sun bright, his body equine). She makes her husband bring the orphan child home. In her grief for her true son. She tends the orphan boy and claims herself as his mother.
Yet Rabiah’s husband never accepted the loss of his son. He never grew to love the boy his wife brought home instead - the spawn of the creature that killed his one true son. Yet for love of his wife, he vows to raise Cairo as his own.
Amset has no love for the boy he is made to raise. He trains him cruelly, forcing him into war as his brother had been. In every way Amset tries to force this imposter son into his true son’s image. But Cairo never fits, he grows brittle and angry. He never fits for he becomes a more talented soldier than his father’s first son. How his father loathes him for it!
Eventually, when Cairo was coming of age, his first season of war emblazoned in scars across his sculpted body. Rabiah eventually perishes. A victim at last to the wounds of the teryr attack. At once Amset throws his imposter son from his home. At last he can pretend he only ever had one son, who died on his journey to Solterra.
Cairo consumes himself with the Arete. He skips from house to house without ever a home of his own. He warms the beds of others just to have a roof over his head at night. He sleeps beneath teh stars with his best friend and watches as Zayir grows ever more regal, ever more golden. Cairo hurts with the sight and throws himself into battle, into girls and men to escape his pain, escape his lack of belonging.
Until, until one day there is magic. A magic so poisonous it is a curse. It entombs him and his fellow Arete, deep, deep underground. They are left with the bones of the dead, defeated, trapped and yet undead.
Cairo waits to rise; a city raging from the ashes.
~~~