2
The endless blue sky spread over brown sands punctuated with olive and fig trees. The sun blazed overhead, reflecting across placid Mediterranean waters. A most beautiful scene it would make, were it not for the fading screams of the dying and the enslaved. Rome had come, as Baal Hammon had said they would, to destroy them all.
Carthage had given up their arms, desiring mostly only, probably, a just peace with Rome after so many decades of animus and war. Rome felt the same but attacked the issue from the other direction. It would be difficult to wage war without weapons, but have you ever tried to swing a sword while dead or in shackles? It’s quite difficult.
The city itself burned hot with Rome’s mercy. She had stood for a thousand years on the sea. She had witnessed the fall of Mycenae and the rising Temple of Jerusalem. Today, she smoldered with Scipio’s Sin. She would only be spared the rise of Rome in death. Illiterate Italian barbarians would rule the world now. Thieves, beasts, deceivers.
A lone figure walked through the carnage where the city’s magnificent walls had once stood. His black robe billowed behind him as the heated air of the ancient city’s final breath escaped it. His fiery red hair blazed alongside the city, the locks a crazed orgy of action atop a head which never swiveled on its neck. His destination was known.
If any had been there to witness him, they would describe his eyes as the same blue of the infinite sky. Or perhaps a brown so deep as to appear red. Yet another would state his eyes were clearly the deep green of the condemned, Carthaginian fig trees. Or the grey of desolation’s smoke. Whatever the color, all would agree they did not blink.
He knelt upon the ash, plunging his arm to the elbow and holding it there for a moment before steadily extracting it. Exposing first another small hand from the ash, a thin forearm, then a full arm, until finally extracting the gasping body of a young man. Setting him upon the earth, he tilted his head and unblinkingly studied the child.
The boy laid upon his back fighting for air, his panicked eyes wide and desperate. Finally finding a breath, the boy’s chest rose and fell with a better rhythm as his mind pulled back from the brink. His tunic was filthy from ash, but it had never been fine. A street rat, a beggar, a parasite, an unknown nobody. He stared at the man in black.
And the man in black stared back, his unblinking eyes raging above a grin promising the fierce, desperate love of a hate unending.