Quoted By:
Now Tydeus, purple-faced with frenzy and pacing furiously to and fro, interrupts your kingly speech with an insane torrent of venom:
<span class="mu-r">”You will give it back, you will! Not if iron ramparts surround you, not
if Amphion, heard to sign anew, should whip you up walls
triple-thick – not sword, not fire can save you: you <span class="mu-i">will</span>
pay for your brazen acts and, with your diadem captive
under our guard, you’ll claw the dust as you die – just
what you deserve! But these men I pity: you drag them away
from their wives and children to hideous fights, massacres where their
blood’s cheap, good King! O Cithaeron! How many dead will
roll down Your slopes, and into Your bloady shoals, Ismenos!
Is <span class="mu-i">this</span> piety, <span class="mu-i">this</span> your fair word?
“Well, I’m not surprised
At crimes of your clan. Your bloodline was sired by one such,
Your forebears law in incestuous beds. But records deceive:
Oedipus had only one son – <span class="mu-i">you!</span> and that’s the reward
You get for your wicked ways, blackguard! <span class="mu-i">We claim our year.</span>
But I’m wasting my time.”</span>
And with that, the blonde prince abruptly whirls, sprinting out of the throne room and shouldering masses of petitioners out of the way. He hurls his olive branch – the sacred sign of diplomacy guaranteeing the protection of the immortal gods – against the stone wall above the benched nobles, and it shatters into fragments. Pandemonium erupts – shouting, vile insults thrown at the Caledonian’s back as his boarskin cloak vanishes from sight. The Theban nobility themselves dissolve in quarreling bunches, arguing with each other - Tydeus' uncouth address having broken open old fissures.
You manage to restrain yourself from adding to the stream of invective, but only just… And then your eye finds a scrap of olive wood, having bounced from the far wall. It rests just before your elite guard - a splinter of the larger branch borne by Tydeus.
<span class="mu-i">Ah.</span> you think.
<span class="mu-i">Now here is some weakness to crush.</span>
<span class="mu-s">End Interlude</span>
