It's another night, somewhere deep in the past.
A young lady raises her hands to the heavens within the warm night of a dense forest. An ancient chorus of shadows, insects, and animals sing back as the leaves and the wind create their own symphony. An orchestra of beauty and nature overtake the atmosphere of the small village. It is the night of her induction into the brotherhood of the druids, and she is dedicated to leading the next generation of her tribe down the path of wisdom.
Rows upon rows of delicious food beckon as the festival begins. She dances, sings, and plays instruments with her folk, until, of course, she sees the flames in the distance.
"What's that?" someone asks, and she's short of breath, because she already knows— this is her favorite dream, after all.
"Oh, just some stupid spirit hovering about. Methinks he's happy to see that our little Aisling's joined us," one of the head druids says. He is a man draped in moss several times over, to the point where it is just a white beard under an enormous blanket mat of green and olive colors and flowers, with a thin pale arm sticking out to hold his walking staff.
Druid Minion, called "Aisling" by her clan for her otherworldly beauty, stands up from her place of honor.
"I'm going to go out and meet them," she says. "You all should snuff out the fire, pack up, and go as soon as you can," she adds with a certain tone.
"But why?" the head druid retorts.
"I think the spirits are talking to me," she says. "It is me that has to do this… on my night." With that, she drops her new hood and begins heading into the woods towards the distant flames.
"If you say so," he says, turning to the other druids and people of the clan. "Alright, everyone, party's over. The new druid thinks we should stop, and you know the rules about initiation night."
There's a huge conjoined sigh as everyone realizes she has totally pooped the party by invoking the one rite of the clan that no one really ever invokes.
"But what do you say, Elder?" one of them asks as she walks off into the woods, she can hear the voice of the elder chastising a young hunter, saying they should indeed stop the party because when the spirits speak, they mean it, and they must be listened to no matter what.
She continues on until submerged in the emerald shadow of the night. Her responsible gait becomes a little more carefree now that she's out of sight from the villagers. She saunters more youthfully, as if intentionally entering a new role, one that is not quite as serious as that of a druid initiate.
She was ready last time, but she is even more ready now, and she misses it.
She heads a mile into the light, and of course, in dream time, that's only a few seconds. Immediately, she's surrounded.
"Well, well, well. What have we here?" a hot, tall, shirtless Roman Centurion asks. The only thing he wears is a small loincloth marked with SPQR embossed into it, and a Centurion helmet brushing over his head with an official grace.
"Oh," she says, as if she doesn't know, though the smile is hard to keep off her face. She is surrounded, and yet it is all the same man. She pulls her hands into her very human chest and joins them together. "Aurelius Crucius," she whispers, almost like a prayer. "You've come."
"Anything for you. I'd cross the Rubicon a thousand times just to see your face," he and his one dozen other identical compatriot copies of him say as they draw in.
They kiss without the corruption of her future overlord's ether cutting his lips. Between them, she feels the full effect of what it's like to be human, and her heart leaps with the same thrill of meeting her lover in her dreams, if only one last time.
He pulls away.
"So, I suppose if you dreamt up this many of me, you want to go ahead and get on with it, don't you?"
Rapidly, she nods her head. Of course she does. She'd been waiting for this moment again for over a thousand years. He gives a knowing nod and leans in to kiss her again. She can feel every single set of Crucius's hands upon her as they slowly warm each other up for the moment. Tears appear like stars in her eyes. This is what she'd waited for all this time, and even though she knows it's a dream and a falsehood, she would do everything she could to hold on to this sensation of him holding her.
Then, between kisses, she opens her eyes and sees a man that isn't Crucius in the crowd.
"Ah, uh," she stumbles over her words for a moment. Crucius doesn't seem to notice him. He draws in as Crucius and all the other ones of him pause, as if in a painting.
"Good evening, young lady," the man says. There's an immediate rottenness to the air, and she can smell it easily. The scent of wine and incense clings hard on Crucius, but in between those smells, she can pick up something else: like an elk that died in a bog and was left to rot, it's really quite intrusive. It is rude, in fact. How, in the moment of her absolute perfect bliss, the moment that she's pinned for the rest of her life as her most wonderful encounter of sincere, intimate connection with another person, this smelly fellow just pops up with some paper in his hand.
"Having fun?" he adds.
She glances over to Crucius, whose face has almost disappeared like an expressionist piece of absurdism: it isn't really an expression anymore.
"Yes, and you're in the way of it, thank you," she admits.
The man with a hat with a brim that shadows his face in a mysterious way creates a wide grin that simply cannot be made by a real human.
"So, what if I could tell you that Crucius didn't have to go back to Rome tomorrow?" he says with a breathy tone.
Her eyes alight.
"What?"
"Yes, what if they weren't routed by the Celts? What if they didn't have to build the wall? What if he could stay with you forever?"
She quickly grabs the piece of paper.
"Then what is…" She stops herself as she looks over the terms. Actually, they seem quite promising.
"You… you can do that?"
"I can."
"You can change the very fabric of history!?" she asks, forgetting that it's a dream.
"You can live with him forever in your own perfect world. All the wars will stop, and you will no longer need to heed the words of the spirit if it will pitch your lands against each other. An end of the violence, and a beginning of eternal love."
The tears of excitement welled up in her eyes turn to tears of deep awe as they stream down her face.
"I can't believe…" she stops herself, holding the contract like a sacred relic. She looks down at the rest of the page, and the feeling of liberation stops.
Her eyes scroll across the words down below, and she blinks. After a moment, she wipes the tears off her face entirely. It's not initially clear what the strange language says, but the longer she stares, the clearer it becomes.
"I…" she chokes up again, shaking her head in profound, soul-destroying disappointment. "Not even for him. It wouldn't matter. I'd never… see him again. This…" Her breathing becomes unsteady. "I… I-I don't know."
"Take all the time you have to think about it," he says, entirely calm, unbothered, and in control. He leaves, allowing all the Crucius's to continue movement, her eyes wide open at the sky with something left to think about.
"And where were we?" Crucius says, setting one of his copies to lean down a little lower to her waist and gently kiss her stomach after parting the robe away. The thought bothers her, but not enough to detract from the moment. She reaches her fingers down, crossing them through the brown curly hair of her adored one, upsetting the fine scented oils laced inside his hair.
"We're together," she says. "That's all that…" A clarion calls out, a sound calming and beautiful to her, but to Crucius: the sound of a death knell. All at once, the twelve Crucius's merge into one, a certain sign that whatever kind of strange dream logic is in the moment, this one is going to be personal and related only to one moment with him, rather than a dozen.
"No," is all he says. He turns up and reaches for his robe, nonexistent from before, but for some reason, it feels right that he has to put something on.
"Wait," she demands. "It's okay. I can talk to them!" but it's too late when she hears a hiss behind her.
She swings around.
Held up by a long, bony hand about the size of an old tree, dangles one of the druids: the mossy fellow from before. He's been beaten badly, and blood drips from the green tips of his moss.
"I'm… sorry… Aisling," the druid coughs out. The massive hand throws him down into the grass as the enormous skull connected to the hand leans forward into the moonlit glade.
"Lovers on my warm twilight."
"No," Crucius says, "no, it can't be!"
"Please, Woods Mother," Druid Minion shouts. "Not him, not him!"
"Not only will I kill him, child, I will make you watch, and it will be very… slow." The bony hands and vines reach up from the ground, entangling Crucius's feet. He reaches for his love.
"Aisling, help me!"
She grasps onto him, but the forces of raw nature are too strong. She spots the contract out of the corner of her eye, lying in wait upon the grass nearby.
"B-b-but I can't!" she cries out as she watches Crucius fall down to the earth by the swing of the Woods Mother.