The first thing he did when the stress began to set in on those Saturday nights was grab a beer from the fridge and sit down on the couch. His wife was paranoid about spills, but like she did every third weekend she’d packed a suitcase and left to spend the night with her ailing mother. When she was gone, he could no longer refrain— the white leather cushions were oh so comfortable, and the sweet, earthy ambrosia tasted best with his feet up and head back. He couldn’t relax for long, of course, he had a list of things to pick up from the grocery store, but for a moment he closed his eyes and felt the cold neck of the bottle against his palm, reveling in his small insurrection.

            Even then, though, his mind couldn’t help but wander towards the following afternoon. Every third Saturday his wife left him to his own devices, but every third Sunday he and his three best friends gathered in his basement to play tabletop RPGs. They met at ten in the morning and played until about two in the afternoon, when Tina returned. It was their tradition since he moved into their new place a year ago, which was large enough for both a nursery and a mancave. He was never a partier (not after high school anyways), so he spent those Saturdays drawing maps, reading game manuals, and typing away while nursing a Modelo Negra in the comfort of his living room.

            The story of their most recent campaign centered around the rise to power of the Sazerean Republic. After hundreds of years of dormancy and extortion under The Gimlin Empire, an uprising in a single town became the match that lit the fuse for the overthrowing of a tyrant, sending the geopolitical world into turmoil. Roleplaying the first-in-command, second-in-command and star soldier of the Sazarean army, his friends traveled from country to country furthering Sazereia’s reach. Each four-hour session was a new excursion, which generally meant either converting smaller settlements to their cause, or leading an advance force to scare a mid-sized city, but for the first time this week they would be commanding the entire Sazerean legion. This meant that as DM, he was responsible not only for buying snacks and drinks, describing the world and keeping the plot on track, and roleplaying the enemy soldiers (the highly-trained militia of the Gimlin’s largest city, Mojina), but he had to keep track of a force of forty-two hundred infantry and three hundred cavalry, and in a way that his friends could command without him or them having to manually keep track of every battalion, while still giving them interesting strategic decisions to make. He took a swig of beer.

            Because taking mid-session notes for an entire army wasn’t his biggest concern— his friends were about to face the main villain of the campaign, and wanted to meet the player’s expectations while defying them at the same time. A legionary legate, a man of equal rank to them, who was cunning, patient and (after the players killed his wife as a result a set of failed negotiations) hellbent on revenge. What was the depth of his rage? Did he believe his victory was guaranteed? What did he know about the players? It might not even matter, maybe Duncan and Ricky and Lazer were coming up with a crazy plan to snipe the legate with an arrow five hundred feet away and he’d have to freestyle the whole session, but he liked to have a good plan. If anything it’d help to put out the spark of anxiety that had begun to flare up in his chest.

            Having finished his drink after a minute, he got up and grabbed his laptop from the other room. LegateBattle.docx was currently a blank page, and he stared at it. Wrote a sentence or two, deleted it. Scrolled through Reddit. For every idea that popped into his head, a shrill voice in the mind asked him if it was really what he wanted, or what his friends wanted. After getting distracted twice by clickbait headlines while googling weapon stats, he groaned and stood up. For once he was thankful for his wife’s endless list of chores.

— — —

            Triacles was unknown to history because he was born not to Marcus Aurelius’ wife, but to a prostitute with whom the emperor had an extended affair. His mother, unnamed in the epics of Gnaeus Naevius (where his existence was discovered), was abandoned by her lover and left to die on the streets of Rome the moment her pregnancy was discovered. She persisted, and as a sort of revenge she raised her son with full knowledge of his heritage. “You are the son of a king,” she’d say, bouncing him on her lap, and when the emperor gave speeches or rode through town or presented himself at the games, she’d urge Triacles to stare at him, to make him feel the weight of the lives he’d thrown away. She taught him this, and he was said to have a certain arrogance unheard of for a child of his circumstances.

— — —

            At the grocery store, he leaned over his cart, staring at two different tofu brands that he’d sworn he’d seen in the house before. He put one of each in the cart, figuring that they were pretty much the same thing, then headed towards the back of the store to grab some beer. There he ran into Duncan.

            Duncan’s DND character, the famed soldier Caede, was central to the conflict with the legate: it was Caede who had given the order to kill the legate’s wife, even after his advisors warned him against it. He was a brusque, stoic, hypermasculine character not too unlike Duncan himself, and Mark wanted this week to feature a grand reveal that made Caede come to terms with the weight of his actions. Perhaps, like Caede, the legate was an orphan who joined the military after being adopted into a tribune’s family? Or what if the legate showed remorse (after the long-awaited battle, of course) and beg him for mercy? Caede was a compelling character, one that Mark had somewhat regretfully given some favoritism to over the last few months, but Duncan was also the most excited about the game. He worked nearly eighty hours a week, as the head HR representative at an injury firm in the suburbs, and between that and his lengthy divorce proceedings, Mark thought, the guy needed a break. He was in a wrinkly white button down with a navy-blue striped tie hung loosely around his neck, and was rubbing his five o’clock shadow with one hand while holding onto a shopping basket with the other. Inside the basket was instant mac and cheese and two frozen lasagna boxes— not that Mark was judging, considering his house was filled with ingredients that only Tina knew what to do with. He glared at the tofu.

            “Dunk, hey,” he called out, and his friend looked up at him with weary eyes, processing for a moment before cracking a smile.

            “Markayyy. What’s up man?”

            “Just grabbing some groceries for the missus, then heading back to get ready for tomorrow!”

            “The old ball and chain, eh?” He playfully hit him on the shoulder. Mark disliked that phrase, but he knew Duncan didn’t mean any harm by it. Some projection, definitely, but nothing else. “Listen, about tomorrow, would it mess anything up if Caede brought Ferox to the battle? I know I said I’d used the downtime to fletch more arrows and improve my archery, but I feel like sending Ferry to a trainer would be fine because I don’t have to do anything. Like, I could do both. I’d totally pay for it, too, would that be fine or is that too retcon-y? It's okay either way, but I thought it be cool for him to be there for the final confrontation with the big bad. Man’s best friend and all that.”

            He thought about it for a moment, but that brought to mind all the work still had to do. It was retcon-y, sure, but didn’t matter too much the scope of everything. “Sure! Yeah, just, you write out the stat block. Use the one for Mastiffs.”

            Duncan was half-paying attention, glancing between his cart and Mark’s. “Nice. Yeah, I was talking to Lazer about it, because that dumbass wanted to make a trebuchet and shoot us into the city. And I was like, ‘where the fuck are we getting a trebuchet’ and he was like ‘M-Dog’s got us covered’ and I said that was stupid because the setting is Rome, not The Legend of Zelda and we got in this whole argument about it but it was whatever, we were pretty drunk at that point. Don’t know if he remembers it.”

            Mark nodded along, making a mental point to look up trebuchet time period on his phone. His friend continued, sharing a few too many details from their night, and then concluded:

            “I’m just excited for the end of this session, honestly.”

            At this, Mark furrowed his brow. “The end?”

            “Yeah, like after we deal with this league-it guy, what comes next? If the Gimlin army is ours, Sazereia is like, the most powerful country in the world, right? I know the other guys are gonna want to go warmonger, like pillage the capital city or something, but I want to check out that weird swamp we passed by, the one with the permanent thunderstorm or whatever?”

            Mark remembered describing it on their travels. It was an afterthought, really, they were tracking one of the legate’s guards, and he needed to make something up to throw off their trail. If they captured him, the whole story would get derailed, so lightning struck the metal wheels of their souped-up chariot, and he got away. He remembered feeling tacky for resorting to something like that. For a historical campaign, it felt out of place. But Duncan went on happily, talking about what he thought could be there.

            “...and we get to the very center of the swamp, and it’s a magic staff causing the storms! And then we take it, and make a crazy lightning gun.”

            Mark chuckled. “Alright then, I’ll keep that in mind.”

            “I know it isn’t your style, but it happened to catch my eye.” He looked down at his watch, then clapped his hands nonchalantly. “Alright, I gotta head off. Museum kicking your ass recently?”

            “No, but I can’t really say anything on my weekend off, can I?”

             “Fair enough,” he laughed. “See you soon.” He walked off towards the registers after grabbing a case of PBRs, and Mark watched him turn right into an aisle, pause for a second, and then immediately turn around before disappearing. His phone buzzed: his wife had texted him, asking him to pick up a few things at the store if he hadn’t gone yet. He replied with a thumbs-up emoji and started looking around for the frozen aisle.

— — —

            Triacles was arrogant indeed, and would do whatever it took to claim his birthright. He sucked up to anyone with a modicum of power, and had an incurable wild streak. An older neighbor, who hired him to feed the sheep on his land and taught him to read and write, caught him trying to steal a shipment of wool. The farmer beat him severely, and when he returned home for the night, he told his protective mother that the old man had punished him for no reason. She visited the old man and asked for his version of events, and when she found out the truth she immediately returned home and scolded her son. Triacles said that they deserved the wool, that they nearly froze to death each night, that it had more of a place with the son of the emperor than it did rotting in some rich man’s second bedroom. She appealed to him that, yes, he had every right to resent his father and to demand the life he was worthy of, but added that conniving and stealing was not the way to go about things. Triacles didn’t listen, he shouted unthinkable things and stormed out of the house.

            At the end of their neighborhood, in a lone shack halfway up a hill lived an oracle. Triacles had been there before, to pray for his mother’s good health during a bout of sickness, but now he flung open the door and shouted:

            “Seer! I require your guidance at once.”

            The oracle, a tiny woman wearing a cloak the color of royalty, yelled back: “Close the door, boy. If you can show some respect, then I’ll listen to your tale. Here.” She handed him a cup of a warm, green liquid, and he drank with abandon. It tasted like dreams, and it calmed him in seconds. He sat, and told the oracle of his situation, sparing no details, and she in turn only nodded and said nothing. “So?” he asked at the end. “What can I do? How can I prove myself to my father?”

            “I see.” Her voice had a gravelly property that conveyed boundless authority. She pointed out of a window, towards the greater city. “Your father, as you say he is, is a man of service and duty above all else. He will not recognize a son that does not devote himself to his family nor his country, nor one that takes from his people without giving anything in return. Enlist, boy, serve for ten years and pray to Mars and Minerva every night for guidance. At the end of your term, it is they who will have your solution.”

            Triacles went back to his home and did not sleep for the entire night, only did as the oracle commanded and prayed prayed prayed. When his mother returned in the morning, he apologized for his actions, gave her what was left of his meager savings and left to find a recruiter. But in his entire life, he returned only once.

— — —

            On his way back from the grocery store, Mark stopped at the local game store, Adventurer’s Guild, to pick up a minifigure for Caede’s dog. He had planned to visit eventually—he usually bought minis in bulk to take advantage of the Guild’s discounts for high-volume orders—but running into Duncan had provided the perfect excuse for a trip. The street it was on was a hub for hobbyists and was next to a local art supply store (his wife, in search of a new hobby, had begun painting a few months before the move). The building was nondescript save for a large sign sporting their logo, a castle with an open drawbridge. Mark parked in the lot across the street, jogged across the road and headed inside.

            The Guild had three main rooms, including an open area in the back, and each was densely packed with nerd stuff. He waved to the employee behind the counter, a heavyset woman with jet black hair. She was paging through a binder filled with trading cards, occasionally stopping to take one out and place it in a plastic sleeve. She waved back and he moved on, passing by assortments of dice, board games shelved on their side like books, and handbooks for various tabletop games, including a prominent Dungeons and Dragons section on display directly to the right of the register. Behind the counter was empty—only one person at The Guild worked the front of the store at a time.

            The other room in the storefront was dedicated to minifigures. It was a small square, with no furniture except for a large display table in the center. Futuristic plastic soldiers filled the space, one side treading across a flat plain and the other down a steep hill, which was represented by a bunch of 3D-printed sloped boards.

            Most of Mark’s war gaming experience came from lengthy descriptions from Ricky, who loved to complain about the cost of putting together and painting figures while mixing brown acrylics so that the teeth on his orcs would be appropriately flagrant. His friend had the same care for his DND characters, making colorful portraits that he copied and taped to his character sheet, and he even complained once when Mark gave him new armor from a boss fight because, as he noted, “it didn’t jibe with his guy’s mojo.” He didn’t care about stats, or damage, or adventure, really, and when boredom ran its course the energy of the whole room was brought down. But he loved the right magic item or plot point that let his creativity run wild, and Mark tried to include those moments while keeping the plot moving forward, when it made sense.

            Ricky would know what was going on with the display (and would probably have some thoughts on coloring) but Mark just looked on in blissful ignorance—the sheer scale of Warhammer had always fascinated him. Hundreds of units, dozens of kinds of units, hours of preparation, it certainly was not a hobby for the busily employed. A large robot, at least three times the size of the units surrounding it, stood out. He picked it up, running his hand over the single gold stripe that ran down its right side, but then remembered why he was here and put it back down with a pang of guilt. Lining the walls from floor to ceiling, suspended by peg hooks, were individually boxed minifigures— Mark meandered towards the Animals section (between Angels and Beholders) and grabbed the only dog minifigure that they had. It was a mount, so larger in scale than he would have liked, but there wasn’t another option to explore sixteen hours before the session began. He was combing the shelf one last time when he heard loud voices from the other room.

            Two guys, both of whom looked to be in their late twenties, were slouched over a table that didn’t look too dissimilar from the display in the room Mark had just come from. The one closer to him was sternly explaining something to his friend, who was poring over a rulebook. The rest of the room, which was used for store-hosted trading card game tournaments and large-scale tabletop RPG games, sat vacant behind them.

            “No way,” said the one with the book.

“I’m telling you, it’s totally legal.”

            “Bullshit.”

            “Look it up, I’ll quote it to you. Space Marine snipers get an extra five tiles of range for every one tile of height. So, fifteen tiles. Count it.” The other one, who wore thick coke-bottle glasses, grabbed a ruler from the side of the table and held up to a hill near the center of the battlefield. He counted the inches on his fingers: one, two, three.

            “Fuck. I mean, like, fair enough, but I really can’t do anything about it. Do we need to keep playing?” He put the ruler down at the edge of the table between the two of them, but then his opponent knocked it off the table when he went to move a unit. It landed with a clatter, which startled Mark, but neither of them seemed to have any interest in picking it up.

            “Play it out man, it’s only one turn,” the first one responded.

            “Yeah, one turn where I’m surrounded, I have no comms, and any air unit I send across that bridge, which is the only chokepoint I have a semblance of control over, is getting filled with holes. GG.”

            Mark nodded in agreement. He found war games tended to reach a point where it was clear that one player was going to win, and playing on became a kind of formality. But, while hearing fine, you win after gaming for multiple hours felt nice, he also understood the urge to play it out. To knock over the enemy king. To feel victory. A vision of the legate jumped to his mind, again reminding him of all the work he still had to do, and he sighed loudly. Coke-bottle-glasses looked over at him, then turned back to the table.

            “It’s over,” the kid said with a shrug. “Even if I continued now my heart wouldn’t be in it.”

            “My heart wouldn’t be in it,” he mocked. “You always do this, Christian. You never let me win.”

            “Do what? You won. My ass has been thoroughly kicked. Plus, it’s getting late.”

            “I want to play out the turn.”

            “You— fine. Fine!” With his palm out, he pushed a handful of his units from his front line forward, onto a stretch of map covered in light-blue construction paper. He dragged another handful back with two fingers, one by one. “There. This battalion is terrified of your overwhelming power and runs back towards the base.”

            “But that provokes an—”

            “And that one jumps into the river for the same reason. Everyone else is frozen by fear. Your turn.” He smiled, then pulled over a chair from an adjacent table. It made a horrible scraping sound as he brought it over, and he sat down with his arms crossed. His opponent scoffed, but then started moving units all the same. Mark was surprised by his commitment to the win, but he didn’t stick around. He went back to the register to pay and then left—in the car he found himself craving another beer.

            What did the legate, the terrifying man that was the cornerstone of the Gimlin empire, want? The two kids’ pettiness reminded Mark of himself at a younger age, before he started at the museum and before he met Tina, playing DND in somebody’s parents’ house on a school night. He thought about previous groups he’d played with, the most passionate ones: there was the one that had fallen apart after two players had fought about the power level of one’s homebrew magic item, the one where a player screamed at him and cried after his character died to a dungeon trap, and the one where everyone wanted different things and pulled his girlfriend (who was DMing for the first time) in so many directions at once that she quit in the middle of a session. Mark was certainly more mature now, but maybe what he was missing from this campaign was that fire. The legate: his wife was dead, his army was facing an undefeated threat, and his legacy, even moreso than his life, was on the line. What did he want? Certainly not a mercy rule.

— — —

            The only moments that Triacles remembered from his first decade in the army, amidst the brutal training, the bloodshed, and the fervor with which he prayed each night, were the times he saw his father. Each morning there was to be a battle, the emperor emerged from his chariot and, standing on a dais and flanked by muscled guards, he would speak to all the soldiers. He spoke of courage, of loyalty, of sacrifice, but Triacles never listened. Instead, he watched his body language, and tried to spot a semblance of a similarity that would prove the good faith of his quest. The way Marcus Aurelius took a step forward when his voice peaked, did he do that? Was his resting face set in an indifferent frown? Did his hands twitch when the crowd roared in approval? Perhaps part of him wanted his father to single him out in the crowd, to find him in the barracks and publicly claim him as his son. Could he not see the himself in mirror that watched from afar? A decade passed with these questions unanswered, and over time the determination that had driven him towards his goal became flecked with despair, and anger.

            On the night marking the end of Triacles’ tenth year of service, a wolf and an owl invaded his dreams. In its mouth, the wolf carried a gladius, identical to the ones the army used, except with a gold stripe running across the hilt. The owl cooed and the sword fell from the wolf’s mouth; the clang of it hitting the ground woke him with a start. It was before dawn, but he felt rested. Immediately he reached for his scabbard and found that his weapon had been replaced with the one with the gold stripe. When he held it in his hand, he felt braver, more assured, even physically stronger, but the absence of those feelings after he put it away caused a slight twinge in his neck. He shrugged it off, knowing that his destiny was upon him.

            The strength imbued in him by the sword quickly became gossip that spread through the army, as the legionary from the lower class began to outperform even the wealthiest and most experienced of soldiers. Golden gladius in hand, Triacles instinctively knew what move his opponents were about to make, how best to counter, and where to strike for maximum damage. Moreover, he could discern an enemy’s movements as a whole, and could feel the flow of the battle as if it were blood coursing through his veins. He became measured, tactful, and weary of those who might see his ascension as a threat, especially after he heard his name in talks about the appointment of a new tribunus laticlavius, after the former second-in-command died in the war with the Germanic tribes. The thought that the tribunus got selected and sworn in by the emperor, by his father, consumed his mind.

            Especially because, as he relied the gladius more and more, he began to understand its true nature. The sword improved his brawn and his brain a hundred-fold, but the second he let go of the hilt he became weak. His neck, his back, his legs felt the brunt of the extra weight they had been carrying and collapsed into a heap. His mind, filled with information it could no longer comprehend, fizzled out, preventing him from answering the simplest of questions without a struggle. He began to sleep with his weapon in his hand, but that just made the moments where he couldn’t hold on worse. However, he had no choice as the selection drew near. Once he met his father, everything would be fixed. He would understand his struggle, appeal to the gods to save him, and things would be right once more.

— — —

            Mark woke up the following morning hungover, about two hours before his friends were supposed to arrive. He had passed out on the couch, which wasn’t necessarily unusual, but his laptop, apparently left open, had died. He ran to the bedroom to plug it in, then to the kitchen to grab a trash bag and an Advil, and finally back to the living room to assess the damage. Six beers and three dirty napkins were scattered about the left side of the couch, and his draped-out coat on the right was definitely hiding some stain that was going to be awful to clean. He set out clearing the trash, as well as preparing the dining room for the session (pulling out the table, grabbing pencils and snacks, setting out the dry erase mat he used as a map). Through the headache, he tried to remember the plan:           

            The city of Mojina sat on the coast. It was separated from the main continent by a river, and was only accessible by a number of bridges that spanned its eastern edge. Very few of these bridges were steady enough to hold the weight of hundreds of soldiers, so the legate’s plan revolved around controlling them. He ordered the construction of hundreds of barricades, behind which thousands of archers waited for the call to rain down arrows on their foes. Even volunteers with little to no military experience were given bows and told to do their best with the time they had to prepare; the point was for the city to look impenetrable, not to necessarily be so. The legate’s grand plan was to give up the bridges, and to trick the players into running headfirst into the second wave of archers, which were hidden, surrounding the market in the center of the city. The two sturdiest bridges (made of stone, while the others were wood) both led directly there, and the legate himself was to be there, in the hope that Caede would take the bait. It risked everything, and put thousands of citizens in danger, but it had the highest chance of success.

            And fuck, would it piss them off, Mark thought. Duncan and his other friends had no interest in tactics or strategy or anything that Leeroy Jenkins would frown upon, which was part of the reason he knew they would love piloting a huge army. Run in, some die, some live, victory, was just their style. Mark had even begun highlighting notable soldiers within the Sazerean army, creating a few recurring side characters that he could kill off in high-stakes situations, give to the players as apprentices, or even to be piloted by his friends if their current characters died (Caede especially had been saved by benevolence on Mark’s part one too many times). The legate had seen their tactics before, and the bridge defense was his response. The rest was up to the players.

            But as Mark cleaned and recleaned, and his headache became a dull thud, he wondered if it was too much. He thought back to the game store, to the bothered look on the young man’s face as his opponent, presumable his friend or at least someone he knew in the local community, read out that rule. Certainly, the legate would do anything to defeat the Sazereans, but would Mark? He had run sessions in the past that he wasn’t sure we’re beatable: some worked out, but most needed to be adjusted on the fly. There was the classic “the puzzle solution is whatever you come up with if it takes long enough,” but he’d also lowered health stats mid-combat, made obviously suboptimal decisions, even quietly changed a rolled twenty to a seventeen behind the curtain. He was used to fudging the rules, and this would not be different. When he thought about toning down the legate he found that his heart disagreed, but when he thought of his friends, of a fake man’s blood spilled on fake concrete, he felt bad all the same.

— — —

            Triacles walked down the path to the Curia, minutes from his appointment as tribunus laticlavius by his father. He heard the slap of his sandals against the ground, but could not feel his legs, only the beating of his heart in his chest and the smoothness of the hilt of his gladius in its scabbard. In recognition of his promotion, he’d been given the day off, and he’d spent it lying in bed, staring at himself in the reflection of his weapon. He had his own room now, a tent to himself when he traveled to his various conquests, and a servant boy who managed his affairs. The boy, a senator’s nephew who was but twelve years old, was the only person that knew about his curse. He’d saved his life multiple times, finding him passed out in a cold sweat trying to reach a piece of meat on the far side of his plate. At first he worried about what people would say, but the urgency of that feeling faded each time he lost his power. Let the rumors circulate, he thought, let the world collapse into a ball of fire the moment I leave Marcus Aurelius’ side.

            The Curia was a domed, concrete building surrounded by a low brick wall, with a single archway leading inside. The waiting room was dark and empty, and had no features except a small dedication to Julius Caesar that sat above a large set of double doors. It read let the decisions made here be final. Triacles lingered in front of them for multiple minutes, gripping his sword every tighter, before mustering the courage to knock. “Enter.” A deep voice boomed from within. With one hand, he slowly opened the doors.

            Marcus Aurelius stood at the far end of the room, alone. He wore a toga of deep burgundy, with a gold stripe along the edge. He held his hands clasped behind his back and stared out a window, taking no note of Triacles’ entrance. The younger man walked forward, then stopped in the center of the room.

            “Imperator,” he said.

            The emperor turned around, his lips pursued in a tight, stoic frown. He glanced at Triacles’ hip. “I see what is said about you is true.” He took a step forward. “Don’t you know, boy? They say when you fuck that it is the sword that enters, not you.”

            “Sir, I—”

            He smiled. “It is no matter. One who wishes to defy their circumstances must have a strength that a thousand men do not possess. One that is not limited to physical prowess alone.”

            “Thank you, sir.” Triacles’ hands were sweating.

            “You are here because I do not believe in wasting that strength. Because I see more for you.”

            “Yes, sir.”

            “Do you see that for yourself?”

            “Yes, sir.”

            “No more sir. If I wanted sir, I would have parrots running my army. What say you?”

            Triacles looked into his eyes, expecting some understanding that this was much more than a promotion for him, but there was nothing. No way around it. He cleared his throat, then spoke.

            “I accept the position, Imperator, thank you, but I have something else to say.” Marcus Aurelius remained silent. Triacles his sword out of its sheath and placed it gently on the ground before rising. He felt a searing pain pulse through his body, starting at his right hand and bounding across his arm, his chest and back, his neck, and his legs. It took every effort not to pass out, even more so to speak. He coughed, tasted blood. “If you have heard the rumors, then you know what this means.”

            The emperor nodded. “Go on.”

            “I am your son. You are my father, you—you abandoned my mother even before I was born. I’m here—” he paused for a moment as a spike of agony shot through his skull. “To make that known to you, I suppose.” He braced himself for a response.

            “You think I don’t know who you are?” Triacles’ eyes grew wide, his legs were buckling beneath him. Marcus Aurelius took a step forward, then another, until they were face to face. Triacles was taller, but in his infinite pain he slouched, so they stood at the same height. “You think I don’t know that you’re the son of that whore, she who goes around Rome telling all who will listen that she sires my heirs?”

            “How dare you—” Another cough. More blood. “How dare you speak of her like that. I am your son.”

            “Pick up your sword.”

            Triacles fell to his knees. It was an arm’s length away. “No.”

            “Pick it up. At once. You don’t know what it means, to be my son.”

            Don’t know what it means? He knew what it meant every time his mother whispered in his ear, every time he saw the emperor from afar, every time he touched his sword and felt the surge of existence. More pain— the beyond was calling out to him, an owl’s coo, a wolf’s howl, a shrill voice, but he resisted.

            “Please!” A shout, a whisper. The emperor swept back his robes, looked down upon him with contempt.

            “You aren’t even your mother’s son. If you were, you’d know she was dying.”

            Those words seemed to him to come from somewhere far, far away, but they reached him nonetheless. Marcus Aurelius kicked the sword towards his hand. Triacles picked it up. He breathed once again, ragged, greedy inhales, but could not rise. His muscles felt atrophied still, his joints like fire. The emperor stepped over him, leaving the Curia and shutting the door behind him, swallowing Triacles in darkness. He let it wash over him as he gathered his strength. And then he rose, half-running out the door, sword in hand, paying no attention to the looks of fear he got on the streets.

            His childhood home looked the same as it did the day he left, still plain and unremarkable. When he saw his mother, gray as dusk in her bed, alone, he dropped his gladius on the floor and held her in his arms as he wept.

— — —

            The doorbell rang. It was Duncan, who as usual was the only one on time, wearing jeans and a navy sweatshirt. Mark sat him down at the table, offered him a drink, made the usual joke about snooping through his notes while he had his back turned. They chatted for a minute about work, and then he pointed out the mastiff miniature on the dry erase mat.

            “That’s sick!”

            “It’s nothing,” he said, waving his hand in front of his face and looking away. “I grabbed it on the way back from the store.”

            “Seriously, thanks. I mean it. Next time we go out, let me buy you a drink or something. You do a lot of work for us.”

            “Seriously,” he mocked, blushing, “you don’t need to do that. Besides, I like watching you guys bulrush through my intricate plots. It inspires me.” It did, he realized. Even if his heart beat out of his chest every third Saturday, this campaign was undoubtedly some of his best work. If his friends’ reactions were a good metric.

            Duncan’s eyes scanned the table. “Whatever you say, buddy. Where’s my character sheet? I want to check my spell slots.”

“Where it always is, dumbass. I’ll be right back.” Mark excused himself and opened up his laptop in the other room, where he had deleted some of his notes from last night and written some random bullshit about a hotshot tribunus that had infiltrated the players’ ranks. It made sense in terms of the plot, but wasn’t very exciting. He hit the Undo command until his previous plan was back, and added two items of note to the legate’s treasury: a bottle of lightning, and a gladius with a golden stripe running across the hilt.