The air in the atrium was thick with arrogance.
Galen stood by a marble column, not waiting like a subject, but observing like a diagnostician studying a curious disease he called "the Imperial Court." He watched the senators and servants scurry past, his expression one of weary intellectual superiority. He was the greatest mind of his generation, summoned to examine the fractured mind of a boy playing emperor.
Then Marcus entered, and the air shifted.
He didn't storm in with the frantic energy of a madman. He didn't shuffle in with the hollow eyes of a melancholic. He moved with a cold, unnerving calm that was far more disturbing than any theatrical rage. His eyes were clear, focused, and utterly devoid of warmth.
"Leave us," Marcus commanded the Praetorian guards. His voice was quiet, but it carried the absolute weight of a signed execution order. The guards vanished.
They were alone. The vast, echoing space held only the two of them, a genius and a man pretending to be a god.
Galen stroked his neatly trimmed beard, taking the initiative. "Caesar, your recent actions have caused some… concern in the city. Tell me, do you suffer from fits of melancholy? Or perhaps periods of extreme… elation?"
Marcus stopped a few feet from him. He didn't answer the question. He didn't defend himself. He went on the attack.
"I suffer from an excess of fools," Marcus said, his voice flat. "Tell me, doctor. Do you suffer from regret?"
Galen's professional calm faltered. A flicker of surprise crossed his features. "I'm not sure I understand the—"
"Don't you?" Marcus cut him off, stepping closer. The hunter was now the hunted. "You had a student once. Years ago. Valerius Celsus. They said he was the most brilliant mind you ever taught. A true prodigy."
The blood drained from Galen's face. He looked at Marcus as if seeing him for the first time, not as a patient, but as something else entirely. Something impossible.
"You cast him out," Marcus continued, pressing his advantage, his voice a relentless, damning whisper. "You and the Senate. You called his work unnatural. You burned his research. You broke him because you feared him. Because his genius eclipsed your own."
Galen was speechless. The mask of academic superiority had not just cracked; it had shattered. Before him stood an emperor who somehow knew his deepest, most shameful secret.
Marcus delivered the final, killing blow. He leaned in, his voice dropping so low it was barely audible.
"Your student is in Germania, doctor. He is leading a unified army, and he is burning my legions alive with an 'impervious fire' made from 'mountain flax.' He has become the greatest strategic and scientific mind on the continent."
Marcus straightened up, a cold, predatory smile touching his lips. He let the silence stretch, letting Galen absorb the full, horrifying weight of his failure. The student he had thrown away was now poised to burn down the world.
"I thought," Marcus said, his voice returning to a conversational tone, "his old master might be interested in a game of chess."
Galen stared at him, his mind reeling. His intellectual pride, the core of his entire being, was wounded. His scientific curiosity, the engine of his life, was ignited. He was trapped. He was horrified.
And he was hooked.
The war room was transformed. The old, dusty military maps were now covered with fresh sheets of parchment, scrawled with chaotic diagrams and complex equations. It was no longer a war council. It was a think tank. An engine of invention.
At the head of the table stood Marcus. To his right, a shell-shocked but utterly engrossed Galen. Around them were two of Rome's most senior military engineers and Crixus, who stood sentinel by the door, a silent representative of the men who would have to use whatever these geniuses cooked up.
"The problem is the asbestos," Marcus said, tapping a crude drawing of a flaming bolt. "It insulates the fuel source, allowing it to burn hotter and longer than simple pitch. We can't douse it."
"A fool's errand," Galen scoffed, his initial shock now replaced by a familiar academic arrogance. He was in his element now. "You cannot fight an alchemical agent with brute force. The fire needs to be smothered. Deprived of air completely."
One of the engineers, a grizzled veteran named Vitruvius, grunted. "We'd need to bury his whole army in sand, Caesar."
"The fire brigades of the Divine Augustus used vinegar-soaked blankets," Marcus prompted, pulling a historical fact from JARVIS's data stream.
Galen waved a dismissive hand. "Crude. Effective against burning timber, perhaps, but this is a chemical accelerant. No, we need a reaction. Something that produces a suffocating gas." His eyes, which had been clouded with shock just an hour before, now burned with a brilliant, feverish light. "Carbon dioxide. We could use a carbonate… heat calcium carbonate… chalk, limestone… we have entire mountains of it!"
Marcus felt a surge of pure, unadulterated exhilaration. This was it. This was his true element. He wasn't a warrior. He was a manager. A synthesizer. Taking brilliant, disparate minds and focusing them on a single, impossible problem. The ghost of Commodus was silent, its brutal instincts useless here. The terrified soul of Marcus Holt was forgotten. There was only the thrill of the problem, the hum of creation.
For the first time since he'd arrived in this brutal, primitive world, he felt truly powerful.
While Marcus was winning his war of intellect, Marcia was in her chambers, facing a different kind of enemy.
A young serving girl, one of the few who hadn't started avoiding her, slipped into the room. Her hands were trembling.
"A gift, my lady," she whispered, her eyes wide with fear. "From the Lady Lucilla."
She placed a small, silk-wrapped package on the table and scurried away as if the thing were poisoned.
Marcia stared at it. A gift from Lucilla was like a kiss from a serpent. Her fingers were cold as she carefully untied the silk ribbon.
She unwrapped the cloth.
Inside was a small, exquisitely crafted silver cage, the kind used to keep prized songbirds. It was a beautiful, delicate thing.
And inside the cage was a single, dead finch. Its tiny neck was bent at an unnatural angle. Broken.
There was no note. No written threat. None was needed. The message was as clear as a scream in a silent room.
You are the songbird. This is your cage.
Marcia's breath caught in her throat. A wave of ice-cold terror washed over her, so intense it made her feel faint. She placed the cage gently on the table, her movements slow and precise, a desperate attempt to control the violent trembling that had started in her hands.
She had been a fool. She had thought this was a political game, a contest of influence. She was wrong. Lucilla wasn't trying to outmaneuver her.
She was promising to kill her.
She had to warn him. She had to show him. He had to understand the kind of danger his sister truly represented.
She wrapped the cage back in its silk cloth, the small, heavy weight a ball of dread in her hands. She walked with purpose, her fear fueling her steps, back toward the war room. He had to see. He had to know.
She reached the heavy oaken doors and pushed one open just a crack.
The scene inside stopped her cold.
Marcus and Galen were hunched over a table, their heads nearly touching. They were laughing. Actually laughing, like old friends sharing a brilliant discovery. As she watched, Marcus grabbed a piece of charcoal and excitedly began scrawling a new design onto a fresh sheet of parchment—some kind of cart-mounted canister with a nozzle.
He looked alive. He looked energized, happy, completely and utterly absorbed in his element. The haunted, terrified look was gone from his eyes, replaced by the fire of creation. He was winning.
To burst into that room now, to show him the dead bird, to bring her fear into his moment of triumph… it would be like throwing a bucket of icy water on a forge. It would shatter his focus. It would pull him from the one place where he was safe, where he was strong, and drag him back into the murky, personal darkness.
She stood there, her hand on the rough wood of the door, the dead bird a cold, heavy secret against her hip. A wave of profound loneliness washed over her.
He was fighting a war to save the world.
She was in a war for her life. And she was utterly, completely alone.