The dull ache resolved first, coalescing into a throbbing pain behind the eyes and a general soreness that spoke of a body recently under duress. Coarse fabric, rough against skin that felt too sensitive, too young. The rhythmic sound persisted: a heavy, deliberate thump-thump, muffled but pervasive, like a giant, weary heartbeat. And the smells – damp earth, sharp woodsmoke, the unmistakable tang of old sweat, and a lingering, coppery scent his mind, with a grimace, identified as stale blood. This was a brutal assault of the primitive.
Alistair—the name felt like a distant echo, the anchor of a former self—forced open eyelids that seemed weighted with lead.
Light, or rather the scarcity of it, was the first visual shock. No cool, ambient luminescence. Instead, the flickering, unsteady glow of an oil lamp cast dancing, distorted shadows across rough wooden walls and a low, timbered ceiling. Furs lay haphazardly on a crude bed. The air was thick, chilly, and carried the aforementioned olfactory cocktail. A universe away from the sterile, filtered air of Neo-Alexandria.
He tried to move a hand. It responded, albeit sluggishly. Younger, smaller than he was used to, the nails bearing traces of dirt. This body was that of a youth, perhaps eighteen. The certainty of that age settled in his mind, not as a deduction, but as something known, something inherent to this form he now wore.
His mind, always racing, began to sift through the immediate, jarring facts of this new, unwelcome reality. He was… somewhere else. In a different, younger body. The world around him felt raw, primitive, a stark contrast to the sterile precision he was accustomed to.
A shuffling sound nearby. He turned his head, pain spiking through his skull. A woman sat slumped on a low stool, older, her face etched with worry and fatigue, dressed in dark, simple wool. As if sensing his gaze, she looked up. Her eyes widened. "Constantine?" Her voice, a hoarse whisper in Latin. He understood her perfectly, the words carrying their weight of hope and fear directly into his mind. The language felt utterly natural, as if he had spoken it his entire life.
When she said "Constantine," the name struck him like a physical blow, yet also like an old, undeniable truth. With it came a rush – not his own life, but another's, vivid and overwhelming. Faces. Voices. A lifetime of feelings, of intricate bonds and bitter feuds, now his own, or tangled so deeply with his own self he couldn't immediately separate them. Helena. The name for the woman before him surfaced with that rush. Mother. Her evident anguish was a sharp, unwelcome intrusion. Alistair recoiled internally from the intensity, the sheer illogic of feeling another's life so vividly. These were not his memories, not his feelings, yet they clung to him, demanding attention, clouding the cold clarity he valued.
"Constantine, praise the gods, you're awake!" Helena was on her feet, her relief so potent it seemed to fill the small room. "How do you feel? The physician said… he said to expect little." He understood. The physician. He himself, this Constantine, had been near death, then. That must have been the moment of his… arrival. "Thirsty," he managed. The word, the Latin, formed and spoken without conscious thought, using vocal cords and a tongue that knew their task. She hurried to pour water from a rough pottery jug. As he drank, more of Constantine's life flooded his awareness with unnerving clarity: Eboracum. Britannia. The legions. And his father, Flavius Constantius, Augustus of the West… critically ill. This Constantine had been present through his father's decline, had felt the chilling weight of the political uncertainties it brought. Alistair now felt the echo of that remembered dread, not as an emotion to be embraced, but as a critical variable in his immediate, precarious situation.
The rhythmic thumping from outside – the legions marching. Through Constantine's awareness, he knew its meaning: the army his father commanded, the bedrock of imperial power in these lands, now a dangerously unstable element with its leader fading.
He looked at Helena again. This woman, whose face was so familiar to Constantine's memories, was a powerful figure in her own right. Her piety, her fierce hopes for this son, her gnawing anxieties—these were not abstract observations but deeply felt realities that came with the name Helena. And with her, the shadows of others Constantine knew all too well: Theodora, his father's other wife, her children a knot of potential vipers in the family nest. Each face, each remembered slight or calculated gesture of friendship, was now a piece of the dangerous puzzle Alistair found himself inhabiting.
"Your father…" Helena began, her voice trembling, "he asks for you. He is weak, but his will remains." Constantius. The Augustus. Alive, and asking for him, for Constantine. Alistair looked through eyes that had seen eighteen years of this Roman world, his mind armed with the intimate knowledge of its personal and political complexities. The choice of how to respond was his, yet it would be Constantine who spoke, Constantine who acted, drawing on a life Alistair had not lived but now, in some fundamental way, possessed.