The sound of wood splintering echoed through the hypogeum like gunfire.
Thousands of men—slaves, criminals, and the ghosts of the arena—tore the underground factory apart.
They smashed the crates of ammunition they had spent months assembling. They ripped iron pipes from the walls. They broke apart the assembly tables to make clubs.
Marcus stood on a crate in the center of the chaos. The air was thick with dust and the sulfurous sting of gunpowder.
"We have no rifles!" Marcus shouted, his voice raw.
A murmur of anger rippled through the mob. They held bullets in their hands—useless, deadly pellets—but had no way to fire them.
"The guns are in the Palace," Marcus continued. "But we have the powder. And we have the fire."
He grabbed a clay wine amphora from a pile of trash. He shoved a handful of black powder into it. He ripped a strip of cloth from his tunic, stuffed it into the neck, and soaked it in lamp oil.
"Grenades!" Marcus yelled, holding the crude bomb high. "Pipe bombs! Suicide vests! If it holds powder, fill it!"
The mob understood.
It wasn't elegant warfare. It was desperation.
Men began stuffing powder into anything they could find. Iron sockets. Helmets. Even their own boots. They tied bundles of bullets around the explosives to create shrapnel.
In the corner, Narcissus was rummaging through a dusty storage locker labeled LUDUS MAGNUS.
He pulled out a helmet.
It was a Murmillo helm—heavy bronze with a grilled faceplate and a high crest. It was dented from a hundred blows.
Narcissus put it on. His eyes disappeared behind the grill. He looked like a demon made of metal.
He reached back into the locker and pulled out a sledgehammer. It wasn't a weapon; it was a tool for crushing rocks in the quarry. The head was a twenty-pound block of iron.
"I missed you," Narcissus whispered to the hammer.
He turned to the mob. He slammed the hammer onto an anvil.
CLANG.
The sound silenced the room.
"The gate is hot," Narcissus rumbled through his grill. "Who walks through the fire with me?"
A roar answered him. Two thousand throats screaming for blood.
They moved to the Porta Libitinaria—the Gate of Death.
In the old days, this was where they dragged the corpses of dead gladiators out of the arena.
Now, it was the only way out.
But the Praetorians knew that.
Through the iron bars of the gate, Marcus could see the enemy. A line of black-armored soldiers stood fifty yards away. They held tanks on their backs.
WHOOSH.
Streams of liquid fire bathed the gate. The iron bars glowed cherry-red. The heat radiating into the tunnel was enough to singe hair.
"We can't charge that," Galen shouted, shielding his face. "We will cook before we touch them!"
Marcus looked up.
The hypogeum was a maze of tunnels, cages, and lift mechanisms. The elevators.
In the glory days, complex pulley systems lifted lions, bears, and scenery from the underground to the arena floor above.
The arena floor was open to the sky.
"The lifts!" Marcus yelled. "Load the lifts!"
"With men?" Galen asked.
"With bombs!"
Dozens of gladiators rushed to the heavy wooden platforms. They piled crates of gunpowder, amphorae grenades, and loose shrapnel onto the lifts.
"Galen! The fuses!"
Galen ran from lift to lift, lighting the oil-soaked rags.
"Haul away!" Marcus screamed.
Fifty men grabbed the ropes. They pulled. The massive counterweights dropped.
The elevators shot up.
Through the slats in the ceiling, Marcus watched them rise.
They burst through the trapdoors onto the arena floor, fifty feet above.
The Praetorian snipers stationed on the rim of the Colosseum saw the platforms rise. They expected targets.
They got thunder.
KA-BOOM.
The gunpowder detonated.
The explosion was massive. It blew out the trapdoors. It sent a hail of burning wood and iron shrapnel flying into the stands.
The snipers on the rim screamed as the blast wave hit them. Some fell into the arena. Others were cut to pieces by the flying debris.
Outside the gate, the Praetorians flinched. The stream of fire faltered for a second as they looked up at the fireball rising from the arena.
"NOW!" Narcissus roared.
He didn't wait for the gate to cool.
He charged.
He hit the glowing red iron bars like a battering ram.
He swung the sledgehammer.
CRACK.
The heat had weakened the metal. The massive blow shattered the hinges. The gate groaned and fell outward, crashing into the street in a shower of sparks.
Narcissus stepped onto the burning gate. His boots smoked.
He roared.
Behind him, the floodgates opened.
Two thousand gladiators poured out of the tunnel. They didn't have formation. They didn't have shields. They had rage.
The Praetorians recovered fast. They lowered their flamethrower nozzles.
WHOOSH.
A wall of fire met the charge.
The first wave of gladiators died instantly. They turned into screaming torches.
But they didn't stop running.
A man, fully engulfed in flames, tackled a Praetorian. The heat cooked the soldier inside his armor. The gladiator's improvised vest bomb detonated.
BOOM.
Pink mist.
It was horrifying. It was suicidal. It was effective.
The Praetorian line broke. They couldn't aim fast enough. The mob was on top of them.
Marcus ran in the second wave.
He carried a "Fire Lance"—a primitive shotgun he had scavenged from the factory floor. It was a bamboo tube wrapped in iron wire, loaded with black powder and gravel.
A Praetorian loomed out of the smoke. He raised his flamethrower.
Marcus didn't hesitate. He thrust the Fire Lance at the man's face. He lit the touch-hole with a match.
BANG.
The tube exploded.
A spray of gravel shredded the Praetorian's goggles. The man screamed, clutching his face. His flamethrower tank, punctured by a stone, began to hiss.
"Clear!" Marcus shouted, shoving a gladiator out of the way.
The tank exploded. A blue-white fireball consumed the soldier.
Narcissus was in the center of the street.
He was a hurricane.
He swung the sledgehammer. It hit a Praetorian in the chest. The breastplate crumpled like foil. The man flew backward ten feet.
Narcissus didn't stop. He grabbed a flamethrower from a dead soldier. He ripped the straps loose.
He put it on.
He was wearing a heavy bronze helmet and a tank of napalm.
He didn't know how to work the pressure valve. He just squeezed the trigger and spun in a circle.
Fire sprayed in a 360-degree arc.
"Burn!" Narcissus laughed. It was a manic, terrifying sound echoing inside his helmet. "Burn for Rome!"
The Praetorians broke.
They were elite soldiers trained to kill civilians and quell riots. They weren't trained to fight demons who laughed while they burned.
They dropped their heavy tanks and ran. They fled toward the Via Sacra, toward the Palace.
"After them!" Marcus screamed. "Don't let them regroup!"
He stopped to catch his breath. The air was thick with smoke. He wiped a mixture of sweat and ash from his eyes.
He looked up.
The path to the Palace was open. The Via Sacra—the Sacred Way—stretched uphill toward the seat of power.
But the city...
Rome was an inferno. The fires from the flamethrowers had spread to the wooden tenements. Entire blocks were consumed. The sky was choked with black smoke, blotting out the stars.
Marcus felt the Ghost of Commodus shivering. Not with fear. With awe.
This is what Nero saw, the Ghost whispered.
Marcus spat a mouthful of soot onto the asphalt.
"Let it burn," Marcus rasped.
He reloaded his Fire Lance.
"We build the new world on the ashes."