Chapter 14: Aftermath
Chapter 14: Aftermath
The chant hit him in waves.
"ALBIUS. ALBIUS. ALBIUS."
Fifty thousand voices. Bouncing off stone and wall, coming from everywhere at once until it stopped being a word and became something else entirely. Something that lived in the chest rather than the ears.
Alex stood in the middle of it and didn’t move.
He couldn’t, even if he wanted to. Oseka’s arm was the only thing keeping him vertical. His legs had made their position on the matter very clear, they were done. They had been done for a while now, and they were only still functioning out of spite and stubbornness and nothing else.
His chest felt like someone had parked a cart on it and forgotten to move it.
But the chant—
"ALBIUS. ALBIUS. ALBIUS."
He’d never had fifty thousand people agree on anything about him before. In his previous life the most attention he’d gotten simultaneously was fourteen people liking a history meme he’d posted at two in the morning.
This was different.
"They... love me?" He whispered.
Something moved in him. Quiet and unbidden. Not pride exactly. Something more complicated than pride. Something that started in the sternum and spread outward slowly, like warmth from the black sludge Gaius made him drink on his first night. He hadn’t asked for it. Hadn’t earned it in any way that felt clean. He’d run, and stumbled, and gotten lucky in the most catastrophic way possible. But it didn’t matter.
And fifty thousand people were chanting his name.
He let himself have it. Just for a second. Just one second of standing in the middle of something enormous and basking in it.
Then his ribs reminded him they existed.
A sharp pain ran across his chest, as he hissed. His hand went to his side automatically. The movement made everything worse. Something in his chest shifted in a way that felt deeply wrong, like his ribs were being ground against stones.
"Arghh." He let out a small groan. Everything blurring for a second, before he caught himself.
"Don’t move." Oseka’s voice was quiet and steady beside him. His grip tightened. "Just stand, the guards will come to help you move."
Alex nodded. Small and careful.
The chant continued above them. Around them. Through them.
He stood in it and breathed shallowly and looked at the sand and at the lion and at the bodies scattered across the arena like broken furniture and thought—
’Wait. The notification.’
He’d been about to read it. Right before the decapitation. Right before the blood hit his face and scattered every thought in his head across the sand. He’d been staring at the system UI, halfway through focusing on it, when—
He focused now, carefully. The system window blinked into view from the corner of his vision, soft gold against the red of the arena.
’I got five charges, after the upgrade. Why did I have only three, before the fight?’ He wondered.
The notification icon pulsed gently. He mentally reached for it.
The text began to form. But just then, the pain in his head rang, everything blurred, and the world tilted all at once, like someone had reached into the arena and rotated everything forty five degrees without asking. The chanting became a low hum, muffled and strange, like he’d gone underwater. Oseka said something beside him. He couldn’t make out the words.
The sand came up to meet him.
He didn’t feel it when he landed.
Then, everything went dark.
---
In the pulvinar, the chanting continued.
Aurellia Magna watched as everything unfolded.
She sat perfectly still in her cushioned seat, one hand resting on the arm of her chair, the other holding her wine cup with the particular stillness of a woman whose mind was somewhere else entirely. Her red hair caught the afternoon light. Her expression was pleasant and composed and revealed absolutely nothing.
Her eyes were on the sand below. On the pale boy who had just killed a lion with a borrowed sword and had moved in ways she had seen nowhere before.
On the pale boy who was now, very quietly, crumpling to the ground.
The crowd’s chanting shifted. A ripple of concern moving through fifty thousand people simultaneously, like wind across a field of grain.
Aurellia set her wine cup down, and flicked her finger.
A servant materialized at her shoulder. Young, and quick eyed. The kind of girl who had learned that being useful meant being invisible until the exact right moment.
Aurellia leaned toward her without turning her head. Her voice barely above breath. The words dissolving before they reached anyone else.
The servant straightened, nodded once, and was gone.
Aurellia picked her wine cup back up.
Her expression hadn’t changed, but there was something subtle in her eyes, now.
Three seats behind her and to the left, Ignatius sat forward slightly in his chair.
He’d been watching the sand since Alex stepped through the gate. He’d watched the decapitation. Watched Alex shove the smaller fighter clear. Watched him use something — that thing, that movement like smoke, like disappearing — twice in rapid succession. Watched him drag the boy out from under a leaping lion with one hand and somehow end up underneath it with a sword pointed upward.
He’d watched it all and said nothing and kept his face very still.
Beside him, a middle aged man in a red toga leaned close.
His face was broad. Weathered. The kind of face that had spent decades in rooms where decisions were made and had learned not to show what it thought of them. A heavy gold ring on his right hand caught the light as he raised it to gesture toward the sand below.
Ignatius turned his head slightly.
The man in the red toga said something low and measured. The words of a man who had already calculated and was now merely stating the result.
Ignatius listened. His eyes didn’t leave the sand.
Below them, two guards were already moving toward where Alex had fallen. Oseka was crouched over him, hands on his shoulders, saying something nobody in the pulvinar could hear.
Ignatius watched for a moment longer.
Then he turned to the man, smiled flatly, and nodded. Slow and deliberate, before leaning in to say something back.
---
---
That evening, Alex woke up in a room.
The first thing Alex noticed was the smell of herbs, and venigar. Then, the ceiling.
Then, the familiar stones, cracks, and familiar torches in the same brackets throwing the same orange light across the same walls, he had come to feel oddly accustomed with.
"Gaius’s ward." He muttered.
He’d been here enough times now that it was starting to feel familiar in the way that places you never wanted to return to eventually become familiar anyway.
"I should really stop ending up here so often." He said.
He tried to sit up.
"Ahh!"
The sharp pain in his chest immediately explained at length why that was a terrible idea. He lay back down slowly, with great care. Like any sudden movement would break whatever bones he had left.
He stared at the ceiling instead.
The room was quiet. Empty beds on either side. The smell of herbs and old wine and something medicinal underneath both. Bandages wrapped tight around his chest and ribs and what felt like most of his torso. His arms had their own wrapping. His left shoulder looked like it was dislocated.
"At least, I’m alive..." He paused "barely."
He let that sit for a moment.
Alive. In Gaius’s ward. Which meant he had survived the arena. Which meant he had survived the gladiators killing each other. Which meant he had survived two men coming at him against a wall. Which meant he had survived a lion the size of a horse falling on him from above.
’Huh.’ He thought.
He stared at the ceiling some more.
Agrippa’s face came back to him. The moment the sword came down. The way his head had stayed upright for just a second too long before falling sideways into the sand. The yellow eyes of the lion finding his before they went still. The blood hitting his face from the man who suddenly didn’t have a head anymore.
’This has all been like a fever dream.’ Alex thought, as he let out a sigh.
He breathed through it, deep and slow.
’You’re alive.’ He told himself. ’Process the rest later.’
Then he remembered the notification.
"That’s right."
He focused on the system window. It blinked into full view immediately — soft gold light that somehow made the stone ceiling look even grayer by contrast. He scrolled through his stats carefully. Everything looked roughly as expected except —
He clicked the notification icon.
A new interface opened.
Sands of Fate System
Notification: Charge Clarification
Your Temporal Dilatation upgrade added 2 additional charges to your existing pool.
At the time of upgrade you had 1 charge remaining from your previous 24 hour cycle.
1 existing charge + 2 upgrade bonus = 3 charges total.
Your maximum charges per cycle is now 5.
Charges reset every 24 hours.
Current charges: 0/5
Next reset in: 19:32:17
Good luck.
"You sadistic piece of shi–"
The door swung open in that instant, cutting Alex off.
Gaius walked in with a clay bowl in one hand and the expression of a man who had seen everything and was no longer surprised by any of it.
He looked at Alex.
Then at the ceiling Alex had been staring at.
Then back at Alex.
"I see your face in here more often than I see my own reflection." He set the bowl down and reached for a fresh roll of bandages without breaking stride. "Might as well charge you rent."
"Isn’t my warm company payment enough?" Alex chuckled, holding his sides with his palm.
"Hah!" Gaius let out a short laugh, as he pulled up his stool and began unwrapping the bandages around Alex’s chest with the practiced efficiency of a man who had done this ten thousand times and intended to do it ten thousand more. His eyes moved over the wounds methodically. Pressing here. Checking there. The same clinical inventory he always took.
Then he paused. Glanced up at Alex, meeting his eyes.
"What’s the matter?" Alex noticed the look in his eyes. Like he was about to say something, but withheld.
"Nothing." Gaius shook his head, resuming his duty.
Alex watched him.
Gaius said nothing after that. His face gave nothing else. He simply continued wrapping the fresh bandages with the same efficient movements, tying them off with a neat knot and patting them once.
He stood up. Picked up his bowl. Turned toward his table.
"You’re healing." He said. Flatly. To no one in particular. "Faster than you should be."
He didn’t turn around.
"Wha–"
"You have visitors waiting outside." He said. Still not turning. "Try not to undo my work by doing anything dramatic."
He walked to his table and resumed grinding.
Alex stared at his back for a moment.
Then the door opened.
Spartacus came through first.
His arm was still wrapped but the linen was cleaner than the last time Alex had seen it. His ashen eyes found Alex immediately and something in them settled. Like a held breath being released.
Oseka was right behind him. He looked Alex over once head to toe, quick and thorough, then let out a sigh.
"You gave us a scare there." He said, walking to the empty stool beside the bed and sat down without a word. Like he had every right to be there. His hands still shaking, ever so slightly.
"Speak for yourself." Spartacus said to Oseka, resting his back against the wall. "I never once doubted he’d be fine." He smirked.
"I still recall you almost knocking old man Gaius over, trying to force your way in here. Even after he warned you to let Albius rest." Oseka fired.
Spartacus let out a weak smile, before turning to Gaius. "I’m sorry old man."
"Oh, don’t bother." Gaius waved in a chuckle. "Let me give you boys room to catch up." He said, as he walked out of the room.
A moment of silence fell upon the room for a while, before Alex broke it. "Never knew you two were close."
"I never knew he talked." Spartacus let out a soft chuckle, looking at Oseka.
"I noticed he was the only person you seemed close with. So I went looking for him, after we were brought back from the Colosseum." Oseka blabbed sheepishly.
"Thank you." Alex said, shifting glances between the two lads. "Both of you. I really mean it."
Spartacus looked at Alex for a moment. Then he pulled up the second stool and sat down. His jaw was set in the way it got when he had a lot to say and was deciding whether to say it.
He didn’t say it.
Instead he leaned forward with his elbows on his knees and looked at the floor between his feet.
"The crowd is still talking about it." Oseka said quietly. "The whole ludus is. The guards. Everyone." He paused. "Akosa hasn’t said a word since we got back. Not one."
Alex processed that. Akosa not speaking was somehow more alarming than Akosa speaking.
"You should’ve seen the look on his face." Spartacus added, letting out a laugh.
Oseka joined in. Then Alex.
"God, my ribs." Alex winced. "I really shouldn’t be laughing."
Just then–
The door swung open, and the laughs stopped abruptly.
The room went quiet in the specific way rooms go quiet when a certain kind of person enters them. Not loud quiet. Just... still. The kind of stillness that happens automatically when something changes in the air.
Ignatius stood in the doorway.
Akosa behind him.
Neither of them spoke immediately. Ignatius’s eyes moved across the room. Across Spartacus. Across Oseka. Across Alex on the bed with his bandages and his surprised expression.
He stepped inside.
Akosa closed the door behind them.
The room felt smaller than it had a moment ago.
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