Chapter 8: Sit Tight
Chapter 8: Sit Tight
The room was small and dark. Two straw beds, one on each side, separated by nothing but a strip of bare stone floor. The only decoration, was a single torch bracket on the wall, and it was empty. The only light came from a narrow window near the ceiling, letting in a thin slice of moonlight that fell across the floor like a pale scar.
The air within the room smelt like animal piss, and hay.
Alex lay on his back, staring at the ceiling.
He wasn’t tired. Or maybe he was too tired to sleep. He couldn’t tell the difference anymore.
His mind kept racing on its own, replaying everything that had happened so far, in no particular order. The axe whistling past his ear. The giant’s blood spraying between his fingers. The shit pit. And every other thing.
He pressed the back of his head harder into the straw and exhaled slowly.
’In just a day.’ He thought. ’It’s not even been 48 hours, and I’ve already fought a giant, met a historical legend in a pool of human waste, eaten ash for breakfast, and got summoned to the lanista’s office like a student called to the principal.’
He stared at a crack in the ceiling.
’What the hell is my life right now.’
It wasn’t even a question anymore. Just a statement he kept returning to like a bruise he couldn’t stop pressing.
He thought about his apartment. The unwashed dishes in the sink. The essay he’d been putting off for two weeks. The leftover pizza in the fridge that was probably growing something by now. The hum of his PC fan in the quiet.
’I’d give anything for that hum right now.’
He closed his eyes. Tried to hold onto the image. The glow of the monitor. The smell of cold takeaway. The completely unremarkable, boring, beautiful ordinary of it.
It slipped away before he could hold it properly.
He opened his eyes.
The ceiling crack was still there.
He sighed and shifted his focus to the system window at the corner of his vision. It blinked into full view at his attention, soft gold light that somehow made the dark room feel even darker by contrast.
He checked his points first.
Sands of Fate System
Host: Human
Name: Alex Norman
Skills: Temporal Dilatation Lv 1 (3 charges)
Status: Recovering
Points: 65/100
Next daily task in: 08:07:54
65 points. He needed 100 for a level up. He was more than halfway there.
’At this rate I’ll hit it in a few days.’ He thought. ’Assuming I don’t die in the arena on Saturday first.’
He watched the countdown tick.
08:07:43.
08:07:42.
He closed the window.
The silence settled back in around him. Somewhere outside, he could hear the distant sound of the city. Rome never fully went quiet. There was always something. A cart on cobblestones. A dog. Voices carrying on warm air from somewhere he couldn’t see.
He was still staring at the ceiling when the door creaked open.
A figure shuffled in, moving carefully in the dark like someone trying very hard not to make noise and failing at it anyway. He was small. Wiry. The kind of thin that suggested he’d been underfed for a long time rather than just born that way. He had close cropped hair, dark skin, and large eyes that caught the moonlight when he glanced over and noticed Alex watching him.
He froze.
They stared at each other.
"You’re awake." The boy said. His voice was quiet. Slightly surprised.
"Unfortunately." Alex muttered.
The boy blinked. "What?"
"I didn’t even know I had a roommate." Alex said. "How long have you been in here?"
The boy stared at him for a moment. Then he let out a short, soft laugh through his nose. "Since before you arrived." He crossed to his bed and sat down on the edge of it, the straw rustling under his weight. "You’ve been a little preoccupied."
Alex couldn’t argue with that.
"Oseka." The boy said, patting his scarred chest once.
"Alex." Alex said. Then after a beat, "Albius, apparently."
Oseka smiled at that. Small and brief, but genuine. "I know who you are. Everyone does." He lay back on his bed and pulled a thin blanket up to his chest. "The giant slayer with the ghost feet."
"Ghost feet?"
"That’s what they’re calling it." Oseka said, already sounding drowsy. "The way you moved in the spar today. Like you weren’t really there."
Alex said nothing to that.
He turned back to the ceiling.
Ghost feet. Ignatius had said smoke. Same thing. Different words. Both of them noticing something they couldn’t explain.
’I need to be more careful.’
"Get some sleep." Oseka said quietly from across the room. "Weekend comes fast here."
Alex didn’t answer.
But eventually, somewhere between staring at the crack in the ceiling and listening to Rome breathe outside the window, his eyes closed.
And for a little while, at least, his mind finally stopped moving.
---
---
Across the city, in a villa that smelled of jasmine and expensive wine, Aurellia Magna was entertaining guests.
-
The villa of House Aurellius sat on the eastern hill, where the air was cleaner and the streets were wide enough for two chariots to pass without scraping wheels. Inside, the triclinium smelled of jasmine oil and heated wine. Silk drapes in deep red and gold hung from the walls. The couches were cushioned and low, arranged in a loose circle around a table of polished cedar that held bowls of figs, honeyed nuts, and small pastries dusted white.
Bronze oil lamps hung from the ceiling on iron chains, casting warm light across the room.
It looked exactly like what it was supposed to look like. The home of a respectable woman of standing, entertaining respectable company.
Six women occupied the room. Wives of senators. Daughters of military men. The kind of women whose names appeared on the right documents and whose faces showed up at the right events. They were dressed well, perfumed carefully, and laughing at something one of them had just said about her husband’s new secretary.
Aurellia Magna sat at the head of the arrangement, draped in a pale blue stola that made her look cooler than the room deserved. Her red hair was pinned with a single gold clasp. Her wine cup sat in her hand, barely touched. She laughed when the others laughed. Asked questions at the right moments. Let the conversation breathe around her without pushing it anywhere.
Nobody in the room would have guessed she’d hosted an orgy in this same villa two nights ago. Two of the women present had attended it.
They didn’t bring it up. Neither did she.
A soft knock at the door.
One of her house slaves, a young woman with quick feet and careful eyes, slipped into the room with the particular kind of silence that meant she had something to say. She crossed the triclinium without drawing attention, leaned down beside Aurellia’s ear, and spoke in a voice low enough that the words dissolved before they reached anyone else.
"There’s a new bidder."
The slave straightened and stepped back.
Aurellia didn’t move.
She was still smiling at something one of the senator’s wives was saying about the upcoming games. She nodded along. Made a small sound of agreement. Reached forward and picked a fig from the bowl on the table.
But she set her wine cup down.
Just slightly too carefully.
"How wonderful," she said, to whatever the senator’s wife had just finished saying.
Her eyes didn’t change. Her smile didn’t change.
But her thumb moved slowly back and forth across the stem of the empty wine cup, once, twice, three times.
Then she picked it back up and took a long, unhurried sip.
---
---
The ping yanked him out of sleep like a hook through the jaw.
Alex’s eyes snapped open. The room was dark. Oseka was a quiet lump under his blanket on the other side of the floor.
He already knew what the ping meant.
’Not again.’ He thought.
He focused on the notification with the enthusiasm of a man walking toward a dentist.
Daily Task 1: 10 pull ups
Reward: 20 points
Penalty for failure: 50 points deduction.
Time remaining: 00:09:58
Good luck.
Alex stared at the screen for a long moment.
"Fuck." He sighed.
He sat up slowly, wincing as his ribs shifted under the bandages. He looked around the dark room. Oseka hadn’t moved.
He stood up carefully, trying not to make noise, and shuffled to the door.
The courtyard was empty and pale under the moonlight. The sand looked silver. The wooden stakes of the palus cast long thin shadows across the ground. Somewhere on top of the surrounding buildings, a guard was doing his rounds, boots scraping stone in a slow steady rhythm.
Alex looked up at the pull up bar, he had noticed earlier, fixed to the wall near the training table. A thick wooden beam wedged between two stone brackets, worn smooth in the middle from use.
He walked over to it. Grabbed it with both hands. Took a breath.
’Here we go.’
One.
Ping! +1 vitality.
His ribs screamed. He gritted his teeth and went down again.
Two.
Ping! +1 vitality.
Three, four, five.
Ping! Ping! Ping!
By six his arms were shaking. By eight his ribs felt like they were being slowly pulled apart by invisible hands. He hung there for a second between eight and nine, breathing through his nose, eyes closed.
’Two more. Just two more.’
Nine.
Ping! +1 vitality.
Ten.
He dropped from the bar and landed in the sand on both feet. His arms hung at his sides like dead weight. His chest heaved.
Ping! Task 1 complete.
Reward: 20 points.
Total points: 85/100
Commencing second daily task.
Daily Task 2: Run 3 kilometres
Reward: 20 points
Penalty for failure: 50 points deduction.
Time remaining: 00:09:59
Good luck.
"Three kilometres." Alex cried. "You want me to run three kilometres. At midnight. With cracked ribs. The day before I fight in the arena."
"You twisted fuck." He glared at the screen.
"Alright. Let’s play your game." He looked around the courtyard, then started running.
The first two laps weren’t bad. The third one was worse. By the fifth his ribs were a constant grinding ache that spiked with every footfall. By the eighth he’d lost count of how many times he’d passed the same sleeping guard post. By the twelfth he was pretty sure he was hallucinating slightly.
He kept going.
Ping! +1 vitality. Ping! +1 vitality.
The system kept rewarding him in small increments. Not enough to dull the pain. Just enough to keep him moving.
Lap after lap after lap. The moonlight shifted slightly. Rome kept breathing outside the walls. Somewhere a dog barked twice and went quiet.
And then on the fifteenth lap, mid-stride, something happened.
His legs gave in. And he stumbled.
He bruised his knee, scraping it along the rough ludus sands.
"Ugh! Fuck." He hissed.
He looked at the screen. At the countdown.
01:08:19
"When does this end?" Alex asked the cold night.
With no response, he got back up, and continued his laps.
On the 19th lap, he got a notification.
Ping! Task 2 complete.
Reward: 20 points.
Total points: 105/100
"Finally." Alex heaved, falling on his ass.
Ping! System has reached required threshold for a level up.
Stand by, as the system undergoes an upgrade.
"An upgrade? At long last." Alex said, sitting up. "I wonder what new features I’d get. Hopefully." That last part was oozing with skepticism.
Congratulations. Sands of Fate System has reached Level 2.
Please select one of the following upgrades:
A: Temporal charges increased from 3 to 5
B: Temporal Dilatation duration increased from 5 seconds to 8 seconds
Alex stared at both options for a long moment.
More charges meant more chances. More room to be an idiot and still survive it. Longer duration meant more precision. But he wasn’t precise... yet. He was barely functional.
’A.’ He decided. ’Definitely A.’
He mentally clicked it.
Upgrade applied.
Temporal Dilatation (Level 2): 5 charges per 24 hours.
LOCKED SKILL PREVIEW:
Time Reversal (Level 5)
Effect: ???
Requirement: Reach Level 5
Alex stared at the question marks for a long moment.
’Time Reversal.’ He thought. ’What does that even—’
Before he could finish the thought —
Physical reconstruction initializing.
Sit tight.
Alex frowned. ’Physical wha—’
And then the world went dark.
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