The victory feast in the governor's palace at Virunum was a raucous, triumphant affair. The Norican chieftains and Roman officers drank and celebrated together, their earlier mistrust washed away in a shared tide of wine and success. But Lucilla did not celebrate. While her commanders reveled in their victory, she was in the cold, damp cellars beneath the palace, conducting her own private war.
The captured leader of the horde's supply convoy was chained to the stone wall, his body bruised and bleeding, but his eyes still holding a spark of defiant intelligence. He was not one of the silent, hollowed-out warriors she had heard tales of. He was an overseer, a man with the spiral tattoo on his forehead, a middle-manager in the great, silent enterprise of the horde. He was terrified, but his mind was his own. He was a priceless source of intelligence.
Lucilla, a skilled and ruthless interrogator, began her questioning. Senator Rufus was present, a reluctant witness to this grim proceeding, his presence a legal necessity to sanction the interrogation of a significant captive.
At first, the prisoner was defiant, spitting curses in a guttural language. But Lucilla did not need to resort to the crude, physical tortures her guards were preparing. She was a master of a different kind of pressure. She spoke to him not of pain, but of logic.
"You are an intelligent man," she said, her voice a calm, reasonable counterpoint to his panicked defiance. "You are a leader. You understand logistics. You must know that your position is hopeless. Your convoy is destroyed. Your men are dead. Your 'Conductor' is a thousand miles away and cannot help you. But I can."
She leaned closer, her expression one of mock sympathy. "Help me understand your cause. Help me understand this 'Great Conductor,' this 'Silence' you serve. Perhaps there is a path to peace. Or, you can cling to your silence, and I will hand you over to my new Norican allies. They have… traditions, for dealing with men who have burned their villages. They are very slow, and very inventive. The choice is yours."
Faced with the choice between a potential, distant mercy and a certain, immediate, and horrific death, the man broke. He began to talk.
And the story he told, in fragmented, terrified whispers, chilled Rufus to the bone. He spoke of the Great Conductor, a being of immense, silent power. He described the process of conversion, the "Song of Silence" that wiped a person's mind and filled it with a new, placid purpose. He spoke of the horde's mission: to cleanse the chaotic, noisy world of humanity and bring it into a state of perfect, unchanging order.
Rufus listened, his face growing paler with every word. This was not the talk of a common barbarian. This was a cohesive, terrifying alien philosophy. Everything the Emperor had told his inner circle, the wild, unbelievable tale of cosmic gardeners and a war for humanity's soul, was being confirmed, piece by agonizing piece, by the trembling man chained to the wall. The Emperor's "divine vision" was terrifyingly, demonstrably real.
The prisoner, desperate now to prove his value, to offer up anything that might save his own life, revealed something new. A critical, vital piece of intelligence.
"The Conductor… it is not all-powerful," he gasped, his eyes wide with the terror of his own blasphemy. "Its power, its song… it is not infinite. It draws its strength from the earth. It is amplified. By the Resonators."
"Resonators?" Lucilla pressed, her voice sharp with interest.
"Great black stones," the prisoner explained, his words tumbling out in a rush. "Like the pylons in the camps, but far, far larger. They are ancient. They were here long before us. The Conductor found them, awoke them. They are hidden deep in the forests, in places of old power. They amplify its song, allowing it to control the warriors from a great distance. Without them… its voice would be weakened. The Silence would fade. The horde… it would fall into confusion. The men would… remember who they were."
He looked up, a sliver of hope in his eyes. "I know where the nearest one is. The most important one in this region. It is in the heart of the Schwarzwald, the Black Forest, a place my old tribe always considered cursed. I can draw you a map."
The room fell silent. This was it. Not just intelligence. This was a key. A potential, war-winning weakness in the enemy's seemingly unstoppable power.
Rufus, his mind reeling from the confirmation of Alex's secret war, recovered first. His duty was clear. "My lady Lucilla, this is intelligence of the most vital importance," he said, his voice trembling with the magnitude of the discovery. "The Emperor must be told. Immediately. This confirms everything he has feared. This is the key to our victory! We must send a dispatch at once!"
But Lucilla was not looking at Rufus. She was staring at the prisoner, at the map he was beginning to sketch with a shaking finger in the dirt of the cellar floor. And her mind, always calculating, always seeing the angle, saw something else. She saw not just the key to victory, but the key to her own, ultimate glory.
Alex was a hundred leagues away, playing his defensive games on the Danube, launching his own secret, desperate missions into the dark. If she could be the one to act on this intelligence, if her new legion could be the one to find and destroy this Resonator, if she could be the one to strike the blow that threw the entire horde into chaos… the victory would be hers. Not her brother's. She would not be remembered as the Emperor's loyal "warden" of the north. She would be hailed as Lucilla Victrix, the true savior of the Empire. The glory, the power, the adoration of the people and the Senate—it would all be hers.
She made her decision in the cold, silent space of a single heartbeat.
She turned to Rufus, her face a perfect mask of grave, dutiful agreement. "You are absolutely right, Senator. The Emperor must be told." She took the crude map the prisoner had drawn and tucked it into her belt, along with her own notes from the interrogation. "This is too important for a common courier. I will draft the dispatch myself, and I will send it with my most trusted centurion. It will be on its way to my brother by morning."
Rufus, relieved by her sensible, loyal response, nodded and left the cell to make his own preparations. The moment he was gone, Lucilla's expression hardened into one of cold, ruthless ambition. She turned to Cilo, her most loyal centurion from the Urbana, who had been standing guard at the door.
"Take the prisoner to a secure location," she commanded, her voice a low whisper. "Ensure he remains silent. Permanently, if necessary. And burn these notes." She gestured to the notes Rufus had seen her taking. "There will be no dispatch. No message is to be sent to my brother."
Cilo's eyes widened slightly, but he did not question the order. He simply nodded.
"Now," Lucilla continued, her eyes gleaming with a dangerous, triumphant light, "assemble the First and Second cohorts of the Legio II Norica. Issue them three days' rations and full combat gear. We are going hunting."
She had made her fateful, treacherous choice. She was deliberately withholding critical, potentially war-winning intelligence from her Emperor, her commander-in-chief, and her brother. She was choosing to risk the entire northern strategy, the lives of thousands of Roman soldiers, for a chance at personal, immortal glory. She was launching her own secret war, a race against Alex's own desperate gambit, to be the one who cut the heart out of the beast. Her ambition had finally, irrevocably, crossed the line from political rivalry into active, calculated betrayal. A betrayal that would either win her eternal fame, or doom them all.
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