Chapter Text
"Hear me, daughter of Zeus.”
Gale’s voice bounces off the marble temple, frantic and shaking above the carnage around them.
He scrambles to set the altar. Incense, wine, honey and silk. Every offering from shaking, sob-wracked hands that might stop this siege is laid out at Athena’s feet.
Another wall crumbles in the distance. Even under her gaze he cannot help wonder– are all the screams around him from sharp minds cut short? Would the bodies falling from their walls see the stars one last time?
And would the last thing they saw be the hubris of Cassiopea, or the chains of Andromeda?
“Y-You who–”
The lamb in his arms trembles with every word. A perfect, ash white little thing. In another life it might have sired a flock to run the Great Sea red. In this one, Gale cuts a portion its babe soft wool and burns it upon the altar.
He can feel its little heartbeat under his palm, wild as his own. How sick that the first morsel of his offering already smells just like the burning city beyond the temple walls.
“You- You who spy out all my ways…”
The sword against the little thing’s throat is a kindness. The bronze lion on its hilt stares him down. Do you think your teeth are sharp enough to set gleaming eyes alight, little priest?
The lamb looks to his shepherd.
The shepherd's hands tremble in the dark.
Two eyes, black and shiny as sea glass, bulge and blink as Gale brings the knife to his throat. He watches the trusting innocence in that gaze snap to a second of pure terror.
He is as kind as he can be. The battle rages on and the babe bleeds upon Athena’s boots. Let it take, stars above, let her hear.
Gale’s words are hot against his teeth as he prays. “Mistress of strategy, deciding hand of the lanceboard, aegis-bearing mother of owls in the dark–”
Slice, drip. His hands are so cold the lamb’s blood nearly scorches as it runs over his knuckles. He places the poor thing at the foot of the altar. The city is burning but he still takes a moment to set it in a curl, as if it were only sleeping between her feet. A habit of his old mortal hands.
Gale lets go. Athena, stalwart with her shield and spear, is his keeper now.
“Turn your eyes to us, turn the tides of battle,” he whispers. “I beg you.”
With that, he throws himself upon the golden feet of his goddess.
The sound of battle ebbs ever closer. An unstoppable tide, meant to devour all but those too high to reach.
Perhaps it’s wishful thinking when the city stills alongside the lamb on the altar. For a moment the only sound is the thick drip of blood upon the marble temple floors. Gale imagines the world halted by his goddess’ hand. Of dead Romans on white sand beaches with only their enemies to write of their demise.
For a moment he thinks he sees life in Athena’s eyes. Awakening. Reward.
But as Gale falls to his knees, alone in the temple in her great and terrible shadow, he sees it for what it really is.
It’s simply the fires outside, flickering between the columns of the temple. Orange fury across her grey eyes and gold armour. It’s nothing but an omen of death.
Gale is alone with his sacrifice. The temple smells of sandalwood incense and honey, but soon it will stink of nothing but smoke. At least he will burn upon the altar himself, he thinks, staring at the blood on his hands and the stains on the hem of his chiton. A fitting end for an alchemist, to be reduced to his bare components and returned to the earth.
But he has never been so lucky in life. Why should he be in death, of all things?
He hangs his head in prayer. He is no warrior– the knife in his hands is meant for trusting throats, not bronze and leather. The cold seeps in through his bare knees. The slap of thick soled sandals against marble sends such shockwaves through the temple Gale might call them a herald to the end of the world. The end of his world, at least.
Looming shadows of Roman soldiers card up the temple columns. Their spears are as tall as spindly trees and their shields are grand, great moons against the carved reliefs of Gale’s Gods along the walls.
He does not need to see their faces to know each one is the same as the next. Rabid men with Mars in the sharps of their teeth.
One approaches him from behind. He marches through his men’s shadow’s with the kind of slinking impunity that marks him above the common man. Their Centurion, Gale would guess, from the heft of his armour echoing off the walls and the click of a sword worn on his left.
“My. What do we have here?” His voice is light. Curious, though perhaps that is just a virtue of him speaking Gale’s mother tongue.
Pat, pat, pat. Those steps are louder than any of the carnage outside. They stop in the middle of the shining aisle and Gale can feel the gaze of the entire hungry Empire upon his back.
“Oh, look at that. Two little lambs left upon the altar.” The Centurion's laugh sends a chill down Gale’s spine.
There’s a ripple of anticipation through the commander’s dogs, no doubt waiting to sink their fangs into yet another soft philosopher. The lamb’s eyes, once so full and trusting, have gone dead as a fish’s. Gale stares at the stark open canyon of blood on its snow white wool and cannot help but feel the same fate heavy on his head.
“We seek the cities’ magus,” the commander says, the teasing gone from his voice. “A man who can conjure fire and other such sorcery. Sound familiar?”
“I have nothing for you. I am but a priest, praying for a turn in the winds,” he says. By some blessing from the warrior Gods, his voice rings out clear. He stares up at the altar. Guide me, wise one. “It seems it’s you that have won her favour.”
The commander hums, boredom seeping into his voice. “We never lost it.” It’s true. Gale doesn’t dare turn from her gaze. “So. Little virgin of Athena, that’s all you are? I don’t believe it.”
Somewhere in the streets, Gale hears a curdling scream cut short. His mind is filled with images of blood splattered against the rolling hills of white stone buildings. Of bodies in the rolling hills where grapes grow fat on the vine. Of salted earth and the end of times.
Gale shifts on his knees. He holds the knife in his lap– despite the way it catches the fires and moonlight around them, the soldier’s hadn’t even asked him to drop it. Was he really such a lamb to them?
Athena. The Centurion’s tongue had curled around the name as if it were coated in the dust of an old storybook.
“...You call her Minerva, do you not?” Gale ventures.
“That we do.” The commander chuckles, unhurried. “What comes of it, priest? Shall we embrace as brothers?”
The gentle slide of his sword through sheath says otherwise.
“Brothers? I don’t make a habit of lying down with wolves. Cousins, perhaps.” He offers, battle ready on his haunches.
Gale takes a deep breath, balling his hands at the hem of his chiton. His words carry the cadence of a prayer.
“We sing the same songs, Centurion, it is only the chords that change. We both know of spilling blood in a shrine. The wisened one may not have punished your Neptune nor my Poseidon, but you? Ichor does not run through your veins.”
The next ripple through the pack of soldiers are a few murmured grumbles, swallowed up by the carnage they’ve already caused. It’s worth nothing by weight, but Gale glares at them all the same.
“My. Such knowledge with your eyes glued to your Goddess.” His mysterious Centurion speaks once more. “How, praytell, do you know for certain? You have yet to turn your gaze towards me.” That voice bounces around the temple, as if he is slinking in the shadows silent unheard in his silver and skirts. “Oh.” – to his left, this time, “Are you frightened I might be too much for your little mortal eyes?”
Gale falters, catching his cheek between his teeth. The soldier’s voice isn’t gruff; it isn't dug up from the red gravel of Mars. It’s almost… teasing. It’s young, too. A little brother trickster playing with his food.
“Would Herac– Hercules need a legion 7000 souls strong?” Gale ventures. He smiles just from the joy of chasing the logic, before stifling it for his own greater good. “Would a true child of Olympus allow such impertinence from a priest on bended knee?”
The commander merely chuckles. “Questions answered with questions with poetry. Quite a little philosopher we’ve caught unawares.” He clicks his tongue. “I suppose it can’t be helped. I so detest these islands.”
Gale is on his knees for the Gods. He will not be cowed by youthful threats, he tells himself, though his hands have not stopped shaking. “Ah, yes. Even if I were tending oxen I’d pontificate on the poetry of their huffs and snorts. I am a scholar and a poet to the very end. I’m afraid it’s in my blood.”
The commander’s cackle makes him wince. “And yet you know nothing of our Magus. What use is your blood, hm? If you are such a scholar, surely you know fear spoils the kill.”
His words are sharp, but hackled. Shrill with spiked hair and bouncing around the temple walls like an insolent child. It comes from his right this time. Gale can almost picture the bronze chestplate and pteruges splayed out as he leans against the holy walls. A princely Centurion perched upon a statue of Athena’s bowed knee.
“And that, priest, makes you a rather poor sacrifice for the altar.”
Give me bravery, Athena, still my brow, Gale thinks, sneaking a hand to his satchel. He only needs a moment.
Pat, pat, screech. The commander saunters forward and drags his sword idly against the moonlit columns that lead to the altar. Sparks burst behind Gale but he keeps his eyes stalwartly upon Athena.
Wait. The echoes belay he’s behind him, now, as if he were some light footed child of the wind. The man was to his right just a moment ago. He… how could he…?
And Gale Dekarios is many things, but he is never wrong.
“Where is your magus? A shout, bared fangs and a sword unsheathed.
Gale swallows. “Forgive me, it’s been some time since I took leave in Rome. Magus?”
He has no time for theory. Not against a voice booms with the power of a demigod and a sword that scours marble deep enough to scar. He has time to win.
He recalls the stories– he’d be a fool not to. Cazador’s Legates. Well-known whispers in the city states when they thought they were safe. Sons and daughters, he calls them. They’ve spilled enough blood to share in his blessings. Gale tries to push it down. Tales for tavernas and nothing more.
“Oh, you’re not familiar? What a sweet little lamb you are.“ The commander continues, blind to Gale’s plight. “I’d wager with Fortuna herself that you taste of more of mutton, though.”
Their spirits still whisper to him, though. They are unnatural. Unstoppable. Whipped up with harpy blood or worse.
No. This is no Emperor’s son. This is some crazed Centurion who draws blood not for gold nor the glory of Rome, but for his own sick pleasure. He is a plebeian with a standard issue sword, with a poor wife waiting for him on poorer land.
And yet as the man stalks around him, Gale holds the worn leather strap of his satchel like a lifeline at sea.
“Tell me, priest. Shall we bleed you and find out?” Gods above– that voice. Smooth and soft, like it’s never barked an order. “Oh, shall we put you out of your sad, limping misery and see if your Goddess shepherds you home?”
I hear they carry the blood of Tantalus, with hungers unsated by beast or bread.
Yes, Gale is no warrior. But he is blessed with a quick skip mind and the steady hands of an alchemist. He is still prostrated under Athena’s gaze and it seems his Goddess has silvered his tongue tonight.
How heavy it casts his mouth, though.
Son or not, Gale knows the Emperor’s wolves thrive in the dark. It’s a bid he loathes to use but– he’s heard tell, beyond ghost stories, of how passively they earned their posts. And he’s walked down the temple’s aisle enough times to know exactly how many steps it takes to lie down at Athena’s feet.
“You’re wrong. Come closer, Centurion,” Gale prays it’s the right title. His voice smokes down to fine, heady incense. He grips the knife like it’s his last resort. “See how Grecian life has fattened me sweet.”
There’s a moment, a shuffle behind him. Gale holds his breath. Has he gone too far?
But then, with a slap of leather on marble too loud to be accidental, the death march resumes.
The moment the commander is close enough, his fist closes around the clay in his satchel. He runs his thumbs along the seam and prays to find a target other than the temple floor. Athena, guide my javelin, and I pray– forgive me for fires in your temple.
It happens fast. Clay shattering on marble. The whoosh of oxygen drained from the air in favour of fire. The acrid, unknowable smell of pitch and liquor. Burning hair and, gods, the scream.
Gale scrambles up from his knees and runs.
He shields his face from the sudden explosion and feels the hairs on his arms singe. He knows Athena’s warfire will cling to the skin, to the sweat and salt of a man, and yet he runs all the same. Cowardice, perhaps. Let him live another day to convince the Gods it was wisdom instead.
He takes no pleasure in the screams, in the way the man frantically pats at his armour as he’s burnt up by unrelenting blue flame. It’s horrific but his home burns beyond them and no soldier's weep for it. Gale runs past him and–
The tunic. The helmet. The simple gauntlets pawing uselessly at pitch-hot fire. Gale is halfway to freedom when his mind’s eye catches it.
Those were no mantles of a Centurion, but of a simple footsoldier.
It makes him slow. Slow enough for a hand to dart out from between the marble columns shadows and yank him back by the hair. Gale collides with the hard golden breastplate he had moments ago expected to see flickering with fire.
Gold. Oiled leather. Plumes of Phoenix feather and the stance of a soldier unafraid of death.
No mantles of a Centurion in turn. It is a Legate of Cazador who has his claws in him. A soldier of legend. A son.
“You think yourself a clever little witch, don’t you?” that liquid fire voice growls in his ear. “Not. Clever. Enough.”
He must think. Gale still has the sacrificial knife, dripping with blood. Gods, let him get one shot in before he shuffles off to the underworld.
He stabs blindly down but he’s no match for the reflexes of a wolf. The Legate catches his wrist and twists so the knife clatters to the ground, staining the moonlit blue marble with the last the lamb.
The fingers wrapped around his wrists are the first he’s seen of the man. Under the oiled leather gauntlets is the skin of a man as pale as salt.
Those whispers again, like loathsome flies. I hear they are not god nor mortal. They are unkillable monsters, sprung up from all the salted earth that lies at the edges of the Empire.
No. No! Gale Dekarios is a man of reason, of science. He will not sink into the fear of these superstitions even as the city burns.
And yet the commander tuts in his ear. “Foolish. Valiant, though. Braver than I expected from an island-soft little scholar.”
His wrists are twisted behind his back. The hand in his hair guides him to turn. Gale had not realized the streets of his city were so close until he’s forced to face the four walls of the temple once more.
The soldier’s corpse lies in a burnt heap. More charred meat than man, now, he is entirely unrecognizable. The fire has been satisfied. Loyal to the end, it has left his temple untouched. Thank the Gods for that.
The other soldiers look at him in a mix of awe and anger. Perhaps it is his foolish ego, but Gale would swear they clutch their spears just a little tighter.
Yet Athena remains so wholly silent.
“Would you like to bid mother goodbye?” The Legate snarls, close enough to his ear to make him shiver.
Gale meets her eyes. Grey, like the tides as they turn from summer to fall. Like the ocean spray from a cliff high enough to yell to the Gods and get a whisper back. Like home.
He’s lived a good life, hasn’t he? He’s made a fine priest. It is an honour to die serving his Goddess one final time.
Ah, he will miss that sea, though. The cliffs of his hometown and the rolling green hills beyond. He is but a mortal man despite his reaching for the heavens.
But he won’t give the man the satisfaction of seeing his desperation, so Gale merely closes his eyes and prays with a scream in his head.
The commander clicks his tongue.
“Ah. And here I thought you a poet. I do wonder what stills your tongue, magus, when you were once so eager to speak.”
“I am no magus. I am a man of science, a servant of the Gods.” Gale fights in the hold. Bares his teeth like the war priest he might have been in Rome. “The fact that you think as much means any final poetry worthy my Goddess would be lost on the likes of you.”
“Ah of course! A priest. And what a fine one at that, refusing a last chance to pray to his Athena.”
He feels the commander grin behind him. It’s unexplainable– he cannot see– but somehow his teeth in the moonlight are as clear as his goddess’ unmoved gaze.
“No matter. I’m sure a scholar like you will learn ‘Ave, Minerva’ soon enough.”
The sword never comes. Gale’s blood turns to ice as he’s shoved forward, into the waiting soldier’s arms. They grip his arms tight and soon enough there’s a rough cord around his wrists, biding them behind him. No. No. Let him perish protecting the temple before he dies as a broken body for the Empire.
The Commander is still a lupine presence behind him. Gale fights not for freedom, but to see his captor’s face and spit upon it.
He sees a flash of gold in the moonlight. Two strong legs between swaying leather skirts. A mantle of a copper wolf upon a pair of narrow shoulders and a shock of pale curls.
The soldiers laugh and take him by the scruff and—
A sword hilt strikes his skull.
…Then, a smile from familiar stormy eyes. A secret murmured into a goblet of wine. Teeth and a tale more prophecy than simple dreams.
Cazador’s Legates have traded away the colour of their hair and have drunk so deep upon conquest their eyes have filled with blood.
He is a monster half drained to Hades. Gale.
He has not earned your warfire.