From beneath the crimson shadows of his hooded cloak, he appeared to still be scanning the room, assessing it. Though he said nothing at all, his presence was akin to seeing a ghost. His garb was strange, unfamiliar, and too elegant; the soldier must have been sent down from Rome. He had to be. And that could only mean trouble.
Most recently, and especially since the empire’s troubles became known, stories of Roman soldiers raiding rural towns, even within the Roman Empire, were not unheard of and were almost commonplace. And this soldier standing in the doorway, whoever he might be, had the aura of death about him.
The mysterious arriver finally flicked back the hood of his cloak and revealed his face. Foreign as well, the man was too pretty to be a soldier, prettier than any man should be. His blond hair was as bright and as golden as the dragonheads on his armor and was perfectly flapped across his forehead. His face was strong yet mostly hairless. With high sculpted cheekbones, he was a boy that was barely a man. Pale-skinned with thin, steely-blue, azure eyes; he looked more Norse-Gaelic than Roman. His lips were stern and thin. And he looked around the tavern with serious, narrowed eyes but still looked like he was lost.
Within the tavern, some of the drunker and more-weary patrons sensed danger and stealthily grabbed at the knives they brought with them. Others just slid the tavern’s knives into their palms and down to their sides—just in case. And though the stranger wasn’t looking at them or anyone in particular, he seemed to be sense the tension as well, and then he also slid his armored hand over to a weapon, onto the hilt of the sword—just in case.
The tension was snuffed out just as quickly as it was ignited. “My friend!” shouted the old man. Jumping out of his seat, he was quite nimble for a white-bearded drunkard. “My friend! There you are,” he called out again, now weaving through the tavern. Darting around the drunken patrons and hopping over and around the spilt cups, wool sacks, the two tavern-mutts, and the one passed-out drunkard that were littered across the tavern floor; he made his way over to the eerie, elegant man.
The old man again yelled out again. “My friend! My praetorian friend, it is so good to see you again.” Finally arriving with a skip and a smile, the old man slung his arm around the strange soldier. Neither man gave any regard to the old man’s ale-soaked sleeve now slopped over the soldier’s shoulders. Before guiding the man over to his seat, the old man announced to the tavern, “Relax my friends! All of you. You can relax. This our new praetor, the new magistrate, sent from our great Emperor Titus, to see about the restoration of this great town. Bar maiden! Where is the roasted goat and flagons of wine we ordered?” The old man gestured towards the dazed and elegantly dressed soldier then slapped the golden dragonhead on the man’s chest. “Courtesy of our new praetor here,” he said, smiling. Pausing for a moment, he then added, “And courtesy of our dead emperor Nero as well. May he… rot. Rot in peace, wherever the gods decided to leave his body.”
The tavern erupted in laughter and cursing. Someone spit at the ground and cursed Nero, and the old man laughed heartily. “Certainly, a slimy worm if there ever was one. So let us feast, courtesy of the dead Emperor Nero, for dead men don’t need silver.”
“But we do!” hollered a patron. The old man laughed, pointed to the man, and flipped a silver coin to him. Then when others began shouting similar quips, the old man flipped coins of silver at them as well.
With his arm over the soldier’s shoulder, the old man guiding him over to his table. Smiling with happy squinting eyes, the old man whispered into the soldier ear, “Watch this,” then announced, “for the glory of Rome!”
And as expected, the tavern erupted. “For the glory of Rome!” they echoed, and all the tension was gone. The old man guided the soldier onto the bench next to him. Rightfully so, the centurion was weary of the guest, a soldier like himself—who apparently was a praetor or magistrate, maybe. Still, it was clear that the man was someone whose station was clearly superior to his own. But after the old man calmed his nerves, the centurion stayed and stayed seated where he was.
“Praetorian Imperium,” said the centurion. “Thank you for allowing me to stay, and to engage you and your friend in drink and discussion. He is quite the story teller.”
The old man laughed and slapped the stranger on the back. Stiff and disoriented, the stranger only said, “Yes, he certainly is.”
“Apologies for my presumption to leave. I was only assuming that my company would be considered fraternization and would, ah, just be frowned upon. I was presumptuous. My apologies.”
The centurion tried hard not to stare at the visitor and kept his eyes aimed down at the table, but it was difficult. The stranger’s eyes were the bluest sapphires he’d ever seen, and the golden dragonheads on his shoulders and chest were hypnotic and seemed to come alive the longer when he stared at it. Rome’s blue-eyed dragon, thought the centurion.
“No apology is needed,” said the stranger, the blue-eyed dragon. “My visit was quite… unexpected.”
While the centurion remained on edge while speaking to his superior, the old man was oddly and overly casual. Laughing, he wrapped his arm over his friend’s shoulder and slapped his armored chest. “Unexpected? My friend here is just being polite. Our visit was expected—always expected… sooner or later. My friend here, he is just fatigued, groggy. You just woken up after all, right?”
“That is true,” said the blue-eyed dragon. “I have just woken up. My journey has been… strange and eventful. Busy.”
The barmaid came strolling by, tending to another table, and stranger gave her a strange look. As she came back past him, he tugged on her arm to stop her. “Ma’am, bring me a drink, please. Three-parts boiled water—cooled—and with one-part fresh wine.”
Smiling, she agreed, nodded, and left, and this time she was solely focused on the stranger and didn’t give a fleeting glance at the centurion; which, to the centurion, was of no concern. But the old man saw and found it funny and grinned.
“Praetor, you do not want to partake?” asked the centurion.
“Not particularly,” he replied. “And the water has a scent, and the sterility of the wine is questionable, at best. Still a three-to-one balance should provide an adequate blend and provide the necessary sterilization.”
The old man laughed and nudged him. “My friend, oh I have missed you so. It has been a while.” He nudged him again. “Hey. My other friend here, the centurion, he said that some people are saying that when Vesuvius erupted, they saw a great red dragon emerging, from behind the plumes of black smoke.” He nudged him again. “You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you? Would you?”
A particularly odd question, it still got a laugh out of his friend, and he suddenly became less stoic. “No, certainly not. My guess is that it was just an optical illusion—from the smoke. It can play tricks on the mind—and the heat has been known to affect the eyes as well.”
The old man laughed heartily and slapped his friend’s back, sending his glossy black cloak fluttering. “Well said, my friend. Smoke and ash can play tricks on the mind—and on the eyes. Most certainly, there was no red dragon. And most certainly there was not one that climbed out of the bowels of the underworld and through the rivers of fire spewing out of the mouth of Vesuvius. Certainly not.”
A moment later, the barmaid returned with the blue-eyed dragon’s odd drink request then refilled the centurion’s wine and the old man’s ale. A few minutes later, she returned with the roasted goat that the old man ordered. And as she set down the platter, the old man once again stared at her chest while over-tipping her, again. And while the barmaid again appreciated the one gesture, she still did not particularly like the other. Nonetheless she smiled and did her job.
The three men continued talking. Mostly small talk, the blue-eyed dragon discussed politics and peculiars of the Roman Empire with the other two, and he almost seemed human. Still, something was off about him, and the elegantly armored man was slightly stiff and occasionally odd, just
like the old man was himself.
Despite the oddities, he remained polite. Even when approached by the other patrons, even when they were drunken and disorderly, he was polite enough and would say things like: “Your concerns are noted,” or “Emperor Titus is sending provisions and grain as we speak,” or “As we speak, the Senate is establishing efforts to clean up the ash deposits resulting from the eruption at Vesuvius,” or “As we speak, the survivors of Pompeii and Herculaneum are getting treated for their injuries, and relocation efforts are underway,” or one of a thousand different little white lies. There were no survivors, and the man did not know of any relief efforts, certainly none worth speaking of. In fact, he wasn’t even really a praetor. He was a god.
The evening went on without a hitch, until it hit one. As the praetor bit into a piece of the freshly delivered and freshly roasted goat, it tasted bitter and metallic on his tongue. So, politely and discretely, he pulled it from his mouth and flicked it onto the floor—and the tavern mutts had a new treat. He could tell that while though the meat was tainted, it wasn’t deadly. But he realized that the town’s worries of black-lung were not unfounded, and that was deadly—in the long term at least.
The three men’s conversation continued, and the stranger smiled and nodded along with the other two. All the while he’d periodically sip his odd drink of boiled water-and-wine while sloshing it around in his mouth—as discretely and politely as possible as he hoped to rid himself of the charred, metallic taste of the tainted goat. It didn’t work, and the foul taste stuck to his palate like the stench of poverty in the slums of Rome. That wasn’t what irked him. Darting looks at the tavern owner, the stranger somehow knew that the tavern owner already knew. He’s serving the tainted meat, on purpose. That was what irked him. Though the metallic taste was barely noticeable to the others, it was as inexcusable as a chipped contour on a marble statue. An irregular inclusion on his delicate palate.
After the episode with the tainted goat meat, the evening was all downhill from there. Drunker, louder patrons started to come by more frequently, bumping into and slurring words at the blue-eyed dragon. One spilt a drink on his cloak as he came stumbling up to him. Though the ale beaded off the cloak and left it untainted, the incident seemed to ignite the stranger’s irritation.
The straw that broke the camel’s back came next. A gangly man stumbled over and drunkenly reached for the man’s sword “just to take a look.” And the camel’s back broke. The blue-eyed dragon was not pleased at all, and his politeness was gone.
“Mind yourself and mind your hands,” he snapped at the drunkard. Crushing the gangly man’s dirty hand within his own, he calmed down enough to not crush the man’s hand completely and instead flung it aside. “You are a clumsy drunk that stinks. Perhaps you should go home and sleep it off.”
Staring into the eyes of the blue-eyed dragon, the gangly man’s own eyes turned blank. His face turned blank, empty, and he seemed to agreed—nodding slowly and robotic at the stranger. Monotone and emotionless, he said, “My apologies. I am drunk. Perhaps I should go home. I should sleep it off.” And he did.
And as man left the tavern, he coughed into his hand—blood catching in his throat. Then as he stumbled down the street, the man coughed again, and his chest hurt. Then it hurt worse, and he grabbed at it—pawing at his heart. He was stumbling, stumbling down the street of dirt and ash, and he could feel the thumping of heart. It was banging against his ribcage and hurt, like his chest had suddenly became a war drum. Thump… thump… thump… It was palpitating, harder and faster. Twenty steps later, the gangly man collapsed and died in the street.
Inside the tavern, the blue-eyed dragon closed his eyes and smiled to himself—as if he somehow knew that a gangly man with the grabby hands just got what he deserved, knowing that he had collapsed in the streets and died. He did know, and the thought almost seemed to cheer him up.
His moment of cheerfulness was short-lived, and his moment of serenity was interrupted by more drunken hollering. And when he opened his eyes and saw the platters of half-eaten goat resting on the table, he knew that serenity would not find him again, at least not tonight.
Moments later, and after dealing with another drunken visitor, the blue-eyed dragon had had enough and suggested that the centurion leave. And with the same blank stare as the previous man, the centurion agreed. And after saying his pleasantries, the centurion took his leave.
The old man took notice of his friend’s irritability, and after giving him a strange look, he laughed loudly at the stranger. “Oh my! You are so irritable,” he bellowed, seemingly amused by the whole night of ordeals. He slid onto the opposite side of the table, where the centurion had once sat and opposite his friend. “You are so irritable this night—and cranky. You’re still tired and groggy, aren’t you? And I don’t want to be critical, but you seem quite thin-skinned as well—and fairly prickly.”
“Quite so,” sighed the praetor. “But it is done and destroyed… the old relic, the leftover from the Third Age. It was a crystal statue—the Lion.” The Golden Lion of Elysium. The stranger shook his head. “A poor excuse for a god.”
“The old Lion or the new one?” the old man asked without thinking. He took a sip of his bitter ale and curiously looked around the tavern before looking back to his friend.
The blue-eyed dragon gave him a sideways look. Seriously? The Third Age.
The old man thought and tried to remember. “Oh, the Third Age—the old Lion. How’d he look?” the old man joked, grinning all the while.
“Dead.”
“Good,” agreed the old man, his lip curling contemptuously. “I always hated the old Lion… although I’m not particularly fond of the new one either. The Golden Lion of Elysium? What a pretentious name. You should have let me kill her—and her brother too.”
“She’s young and she isn’t a threat—her brother either. And if you had your way, you’d kill off gods the way Rome kills off its emperors.”
“Only the ones worth killing,” the old man snapped back, grinning and nodding.
“Why would you even want to kill the new Lion? Why even bother? She’s young—young and powerless. She’s barely made it through, what, two… three Cleansings? I don’t know.” The blue-eyed dragon sighed. “Nonetheless, the relics of Vesuvius are gone. Gone and destroyed. Though I do wonder: how did they get missed in the first place?”
The old man shrugged. “So many cycles, so many Cleansings… so many worlds. Things are bound to go missing from time to time. But you took care of it. That’s good. Don’t want the mortals snooping around again, jumping to conclusions. Next thing you know, they’ll be back to praying to golden statues of bulls and birds and misshapen stone ones as well—praying for immortality, magical powers, to become gods.”
“Quite right. But your pets were properly fed?”
“Oh yes.” The old man resounded, coming alive yet again. “Using the eruption of Vesuvius as cover, it was quite clever and considerate. It was perfect. Thank you. But yes, my pets. They were fed and filled, and they have now gone to ground.”
“I should hope so,” said the blue-eyed dragon. Still irritated, he sniffed at his cup of wine-and-water. It stank, to him at least. He scrunched up his nose as the faint aroma of vinegar crept into his nostrils. After another sniff, he jerked his head back. Then he sighed and dumped out whatever was left out onto the tavern floor. Sighing again with exhausted frustration, he said, “I hope your new pets are better than the last ones, the ones you used during the last cycle, and the one before it. I swear, those last ones were particularly atrocious—effective but remarkably atrocious.”
The old man laughed hard. “And yet you emerged as one of them. The great red dragon? Yes, I am well aware that you did not approve of my last cycle of pets. That was why I put them to ground, permanently. Did you know that their blood was once the tint of liquid gold? But now, long dead and in the ground and with their bodies returning to the dust some time ago, their blood… their blo
od still remains—buried beneath the rocks and dirt. I mean, it’s certainly not the same as it was. Now, it’s thick and black and viscous. But when I put them to ground—deep underground, I forgot how many of them there truly were. Once they were magnificent, atrocious killers that ruled the world. But now… now, they’re just giant pools of thick black liquid.”
“But!” the old man exclaimed, now jabbing a finger at his friend, “I’ll tell you this much though, that black blood of theirs, it can still kindle a flame like no other.”
The blue-eyed dragon had to chuckle. Yawning, he rubbed at the golden dragonhead on his chest. Regretful of his prior words that seemed to have somewhat hurt the old man, his friend, he said, “Sorry. They weren’t all bad. They just seemed to burn everything to the ground.”
Again the old man laughed. “Yes, they did. That’s what they were supposed to do—burn the world to the ground. Though I will admit, their execution was lacking, and their efforts were quite crude. But this batch, I think you might like this batch.”
“Yes, we’ll see.”
“Yes, and the Wolf, he will see as well. Such a coward, to sacrifice so many of his pack to protect the few. A cowardly and foolish act… and ugly. How can so many species of wolves all be so hideously revolting? Tunnel wolves, man-wolves, the tree-leapers… the ice-divers.” The old man huffed and shook his head.
“Tree-leapers?” his friend pondered. “I don’t remember the tree-leapers. Which age was that?”
“Which age?” The old man waived a lazy hand in the air, dismissively. Who cares? “Who can remember? It was the one with the large trees, where the trees were as tall as the mountains of now. The fifth or sixth age, I suppose, if I had to guess. The tree-leapers, giant wolves with long, curled talons. Supposedly, some of them lived without ever touching the ground. They just lived in the trees all their lives. Of course they never really needed to—feeding off the other tree-dwelling creatures and the long-dead mega-birds of the past.”
The Awakening of the Gods (Forgotten Ones) Page 3
