@deliratio // sometime in 536 AD
Betrayal has a special way of clouding one's mind, the rest mist of anger, it was a catastrophic and rapid deterioration that lead Lucius Sigeric Benoit de Clermont to leave his home, leave his family and find himself lost for two years wandering, and without purpose, without chain of command a soldier falls into base instincts. The guard dog turned jackal, and he nearly had him. Matthew made the mistake of being slow, of wanting to see Constantinopole on the way to Corfu.
A golden spear with it's beautiful golden tip broken and steel replacing it, what once was a symbol of his honour, a mark of his valour now descecrated with one target in mind was nearly launched from the top of the hill and would have found the target's heart. It meant something, the hasta was an emblem of a proven soldier, Patrician families often gifted ceremonial weapons to sons who had shown exceptional discipline or bravery. The Lucretia gens, being old and conservative, would favour a symbol of duty, restraint, and honour rather than ostentatious display.A spear is not a weapon of frenzy ā it is a weapon of precision, distance, and control, which mirrors his entire psychological architecture.
Lucius was not a man that swung wildly, he was a man who held the line.
Lucius was a man who fell to a spear but to a studied Roman it's very tip, the desecration of what was meant to be a symbol of the best of a Roman soldier was proof enough of his frenzied state. Another vampire's hand held the back, held back a symbol of valour being used for fratricide and it took a mere sentence, a Roman vampire questioning what happened to strength and valour to allow Lucius to drop his spear and Matthew to continue on his horse never knowing he was seconds away from death.
A Roman. It took just that, Marius being eloquent and Roman to allow Matthew to leave. He allowed Matthew to escape. He did not scream, he did not lash out, he stood a little straighter, the way a man of the Empire would stand presenting himself. Marius was so eloquent, he did not demand Lucius stop, he wished to understand what would drive a Roman, a son of the Lucretia gens no less to fall so far from grace as to contemplate fratricide as of course Lucius had introduced himself with his trinomen to prove he was a true Roman, it was his spear.
The haze broke enough to make him look to the figure gaining distance and not pursuit. The presence of another Roman so monumental that vengeance fell secondary.
So here they were, rising from finding shelter in an epipitaph some said housed the tomb of Thessalonike herself, Alexander's half sister, Lucius had relinquished his spear to Marius' care and he held Marius's books, an old tradition of travelling companions to offer collateral as proof that they would not rob each other.
Some men needed a moral compass, if someone just showed them North they could claw themselves back. "I take it Cicero is who you admire? I have never read his philosophies. Would you mind if I read this?" It was not relinquished to him to use it was as safe keeping, and he was not the sort of man to flick through another man's property casually.
"Have you been waking early too?" Lucius asked as he noticed that the sun's hold was weakened over him since crossing the borders closer to Greece. Who else was he going to ask about the darkening skies that had the mortals in a fuss. The stone sealing the epitaph was heavy but nothing to a vampire like Marius or him. "Do you hunt?" he asked, so far his life consisted of two types of vampires, his family and those he imposed Philippe's dominion over. Marius was a strange third thing that did not fit into that binary.
"It is strange, I must admit, to see Rome's principles in another. The Empire is but a shadow of her former self..." they walked slowly away from the Epitaph should someone see them to think them pilgrims, Lucius' horse was about the only thing that would gain a glance and more in the sense of someone thinking they had never seen a horse walk down steps before, something most horses were able to do. "Did your eyes ever see Rome in her glory?" he didn't mean if he visited the city, he was asking if he understood the city that still marked them.
