A Weapon’s Serenade

The girls exited their hotel in Trier after checking in and leaving their luggage behind, only to find a familiar face waiting for them.

“There you are, finally.” Atryca greeted her friends with excitement on her face.

Melody raised an eyebrow. “Didn’t expect to see you here.”

“I wouldn’t want to miss joining you on your tour of my former hometown. Too bad the bathhouses are only ruins now…”

“You lived here?”

“Oh yes. I moved here on behest of a Roman nobleman to tutor his sons. What a time that was, this region wasn’t even properly roman for a while. This poor noble wanted to get a proper roman teacher but all he got was me. The best kept scholarly secret of the Imperium Galliarum. Let’s just say he was pretty happy with my work in the end. I would have stayed here longer, but you know things go… you make yourself at home somewhere and eventually the inevitable Germani attack happens and you need to move.”

“Okay? Fascinating, honestly.”

“And I will tell you all about it over some lunch, what do you say? My treat.”

“Sure thing.”

“And if you want, I can show you around the ruins everywhere.”

Anne nodded eagerly. “You don’t get a tour with a living witness every day, especially one that is your friend.”

Atryca returned a warm smile. “True… oh I think it will never be any less wonderful to be called a friend… anyway, lunch. Pick a place.”

A nice pizza per person later, Atryca had started the tour a bit outside the city centre at the amphitheatre.

“It’s no coliseum but it was still a good time to come here every so often.”

Anne looked at the relatively small arena before her. “You sound like you miss it.”

“I do. I tried to go to a football match recently to try and fill that hole but… I don’t know why but sports don’t feel the same way anymore.” The old sorceress looked up from the arena entrance the group stood in at the overgrown stands surrounding the arena itself. “I don’t think it’s the sports though.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s me, I changed too much. We came here with merchandise from our favourite racing teams, gladiators, whatever games were done that day. Coloured clothes, flags, signs, everything still done this very day. The sport didn’t matter as much as the community did. We were all fans together. It all feels so distant now… not because the fans changed but because I lost that connection to the humans around me. I used to sit in the baths and talk to strangers for hours. Now, I only take a shower at home, I don’t even use my bathtub.”

“I might be going the totally wrong direction but that all sounds like you lost the meaning in those things.”

“…not just in those things. My deepest passion is accumulating knowledge. Right outside my little bookshop is the largest library in the world. In three worlds even. And I don’t go there.”

“You told us that it would be too much, like a drug you will get addicted to.”

“And you believed that?”

Anne looked taken aback. Kuria opted to answer instead. “You’re not afraid that you wouldn’t be able to stop, you’re afraid that you will find something you can’t deal with.”

Atryca nodded and started to slowly walk around the ancient arena. “I had withdrawn to a small town in the Himalayas during the war they now call World War two. I wanted to be as far away from any wars as possible. But even there, news reached me of two things that I should have never lived to know about.”

“The nuclear bombs dropped on Japan…”

“Precisely. I had only recently put everything together that our sacred stones were radioactive and suddenly, I get told that the stones that served as the foundation of the world I called home weren’t just dangerous but capable of immense destruction and that we were too close to creating those horrors ourselves. That was knowledge I didn’t want.”

“And that might happen again, over and over, knowledge that will hurt you. Atryca… you already carry knowledge that hurts for far longer than the atomic bomb existed.”

“What are you referring too?”

“The very nature of your existence. The last living Asuran, the last of the great sorcerers, the last who remembers the old empire, the mistakes, the art, the people, the wonders lost to time, all in one person trapped in a weapon for eternity.”

“Fair point but you are wrong in one thing.”

“And that would be?”

“I am not the last Asuran. You are here with me, we remember all I remember, the old empire, the mistakes, the art, the people and all those wonders. We are the last Asurans.”

Kuria closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “Thank you.”

“No, Kuria, heir of Vashta, thank you. You are right, every little piece of horror I carry with me is part of me, an important part. My very existence is horrific but I have learned to live with it. I can learn to live with knowledge that hurts because for every atomic bomb there are a hundred, a thousand, no… countless moments of beauty. For every death brough about by human hands, for every piece of knowledge turned into a weapon, another hand creates a new wonder, discovers beauty never seen before.” Atryca suddenly stopped walking and looked up the ancient stone wall before her and smiled. “I remember a young man, Julianus, asking me out on a date. We both sat up there, right next to each other by pure coincidence. The play we had watched had just ended. The woman I inhabited was called Septima. She had perished as a child from an illness that even I couldn’t fully heal. I was ashamed that I couldn’t, so I posed as her. I couldn’t break her family’s hearts.”

Melody looked up at the same spot as Atryca. “You told us that you had been a horrible person until very recently. This sounds like you cared even back then.”

“Melody… to act with true malice, you must care. I did some bad things, really bad things. But every single one of them I did with conviction. And sometimes caring means you care in a good way. I owed that family much and I hope I was able to repay them properly.”

“What did you do?”

The old sorceress pondered for a moment. “They might all have perished long ago but I promised Aurelius to keep it all a secret. No matter how horrible I used to be, I never broke a promise.”

Melody shrugged playfully. “Fair enough. I think I understand in some way. If you start breaking promises just because almost two thousand years have passed, what will you do in another two thousand about every other promise you ever made?”

“Precisely.”

The group had found themselves in the shadow of an old city gate, the Porta Nigra, the last one standing from the times when this city was still called Augusta Treverorum. What had once been a mere unfinished city gate, one of multiple, was now the most famous monument in the city, serving as the entrance to the city centre.

“A bit melodramatic to literally call this the Black Gate, isn’t it?” Anne raised an eyebrow.

Atryca nodded in agreement. “A medieval idiocy, this was the Porta Martis back in the day. The Gate of Mars. Frankly, this entire thing is a farce. We are in the middle of Gaule, the Germani as pushing ever southward, the empire is cracking and what do the Romans do? Build some prestige city gates. Three of them! And then they just run of out of money, politics change and the one gate that survives the centuries is the one they didn’t even finish. History is sometimes frustrating.”

Anne giggled. “It sure can be. This is hilarious. To me, this is an amazing ancient monument. It’s so awesome that it is so old and still remains. Truly a marvel of human creation. To you, this is a monument to pompous idiocy. I love that… getting both perspectives.”

“Standing here with you, seeing you appreciate this piece of history, makes me appreciate those memories. Yes, this is a stupid gate but I was there to witness the workers bicker and complain, the architects yell at people, I got to be part of the arrogance of those times and I am glad I was there. And I’m glad I can share all that with you now.”

“As am I. Should we get up there? We still got enough time before they close the doors.”

“You know… I never did go up there. This was still a construction site when I left the city.”

“Well, better two thousand years late than never.”

Atryca laughed. “How true… let’s go.”