StormborneLore

Tag: captivity

  • The Chains of Blood and Brotherhood

    The Chains of Blood and Brotherhood

    The storm had not yet left his veins. Even in exhaustion, Taranis’s breath came sharp as lightning through rain. The iron on his wrists bit deeper with each movement, the weight of Rome’s victory heavy, but not finished.

    He heard them before he saw them the measured tread of Caelum and Marcos. The murmur of soldiers giving way as they entered the cell yard. The torches flared against the damp walls, shadows stretching long like reaching fingers.

    “Uncle Marcos,” Caelum’s voice was quiet but edged with fear. “Can those chains come off him?”

    Marcos paused beside the centurion who held the keys. His gaze lingered on Taranis, bloodstained and silent, the faint curl of defiance still etched into his mouth. “They can,” Marcos said slowly. “But they won’t. Not yet.”

    Caelum’s jaw tightened. “He’s bleeding. If he dies”

    “He won’t,” Marcos interrupted, eyes never leaving Taranis. “He’s too stubborn to die.”

    Taranis lifted his head then, a slow, deliberate motion. “You sound almost proud, Marcos.” His voice was hoarse, roughened by sand and roar, but steady. “Tell me how does it feel, watching Rome chain another son of the storm?”

    Marcos stepped closer, the metal of his own armour glinting in the firelight. “It feels like survival,” he said quietly. “A lesson you still refuse to learn.”

    “Survival,” Taranis repeated, the word tasting like ash. “You call it that. I call it submission.”

    The centurion moved between them, keys jangling. “Enough talk.” But Marcos lifted a hand not to command, but to stay him.

    “Let him speak,” Marcos said. “Words weigh less than chains.”

    Caelum’s eyes flicked between them, confusion and pain warring in his young face. “He fought lions, Uncle. Bears. He lived through what no man should. Why must you treat him like this?”

    “Because,” Marcos

    “You know they say deaths the final lesson?” Taranis grinned…Marcos’s eyes hardened, but not with anger with something closer to grief.

    “Death teaches nothing,” he said. “It only silences the unteachable.”

    Taranis laughed then a low, ragged sound that echoed off the stone like distant thunder. “Then maybe silence is what Rome fears most. A man who dies still defiant who doesn’t give them their spectacle.”

    The centurion stepped ahead impatiently. “Enough of this.” He seized Taranis by the shoulder, but the bound warrior’s gaze did not waver.

    “Do you see it, Caelum?” Taranis rasped. “Chains don’t make a man loyal. They only show who fears him most.”

    Caelum swallowed hard, torn between the authority of his uncle and the raw conviction before him. “Uncle… he’s right. Rome fears him.”

    Marcos turned sharply. “Rome fears no man.” Yet even as he said it, his voice faltered, as if the walls themselves disagreed.

    A moment of silence fell the kind that breathes between lightning and thunder.

    Then Taranis whispered, “You once said the blood of the storm can’t be trained. You were right. It can only be bound… for a while.”

    The torches flickered, shadows dancing like spirits around the three men the Roman, the youth, and the storm-bound prisoner.

    Marcos finally turned away. “Clean his wounds,” he said curtly to the centurion. “He fights again at dawn.”

    As they left, Caelum lingered by the gate, his eyes locked on Taranis’s. “I’ll come back,” he said softly.

    Taranis’s faint grin returned. “Then bring thunder, boy. Rome hasn’t heard enough of it yet.”

    The cell door slammed shut, iron against stone but somewhere, deep beneath the fortress, thunder rolled.

    © 2025 Emma Hewitt / StormborneLore. All rights reserved.Unauthorized copying or reproduction of this content is prohibited.

    If you enjoyed this story, like, share, or leave a comment. Your support keeps the storm alive and the chronicles continuing.

    Futher Reading

    The Prophecies and Tales of Taranis Unfolded

  • The Iron Silence

    The Iron Silence

    The march south had stripped the world of meaning.
    Days blurred into rain and dust, dawn into dusk, until even time seemed shackled beside him.


    By the time they reached the Roman fort near Corinium, Taranis Storm no longer knew how many nights had passed.

    Only the rhythm of iron and boots. The murmur of Latin commands, and the distant echo of thunder in his bones.

    The fort loomed ahead stone and order built upon the bones of chaos.
    Walls cut sharp against the grey horizon, guarded by rows of pikes and men who moved like clockwork.
    To Taranis, it felt wrong. A place without wind, without life.

    Every sound was contained, controlled, sterile.
    Even the air smelled of discipline oil, smoke, and iron.

    The storm in him recoiled.

    They dragged him through the gates in chains. Soldiers gathered, curious and cautious. Some spat, others stared.
    Whispers followed him like ghosts daemon, barbarus, filius tempestatis.
    Son of the storm.

    He smiled faintly. They weren’t wrong.

    The cell they threw him into was little more than a pit of stone and shadow. The walls sweated damp, the floor slick with moss.


    Above, a slit of light cut through the dark too narrow to touch the ground.
    He sat in the half-dark, wrists raw and heavy with iron. The silence of Rome pressed close, cold and absolute.

    He did not pray.
    He waited.

    When the footsteps came, they came as they always did measured, deliberate, Roman.
    The door creaked open, spilling lamplight like a wound across the floor.

    Three entered.

    A centurion, broad and cold-eyed, his crimson cloak pristine even in the grime.
    A scribe, pale and thin, clutching a wax tablet as if it were a shield.


    And a woman cloaked, silent, her gaze as sharp as a blade. Her presence was wrong for this place; too poised, too knowing.

    “Taranis of the Stormborne,” the centurion began, voice clipped and ceremonial.

    “You stand accused of rebellion against Rome. The murder of imperial soldiers, and the disruption of trade along the Salt Road. Do you understand these charges?”

    Taranis raised his head. His hair hung in dark, tangled strands, but his eyes were steady the colour of gathering thunder.


    “I understand,” he said. “You’re afraid.”

    The scribe faltered mid-stroke. The centurion’s jaw tensed.
    Only the woman’s expression remained still.

    “You will answer with respect,” the Roman said.

    “I already have.”

    The blow came fast a strike across the face that turned his head with the sound of split skin.


    Taranis straightened slowly, blood sliding from the corner of his mouth.
    His stare did not break.

    The silence that followed was heavier than the hit.

    The woman stepped forward. When she spoke, her accent carried the soft inflection of the East Greek, or something older.


    “You fought well,” she said. “Even Rome admits that. There are ways to survive this. Serve us. Lead men under our banner. Take Roman land, a Roman name. You need only kneel.”

    Taranis smiled faintly, the expression more weary than cruel.


    “Rome offers gold to every man it fears. But my kind do not kneel. We weather.”

    She tilted her head slightly. “Weather breaks.”

    He met her eyes. “Only if it stops moving.”

    For the first time, something flickered in her expression curiosity, maybe even a trace of respect.


    The centurion, however, had no such patience. “Enough. He will be moved south to Londinium in three days. If he refuses Rome’s mercy, he will die as a slave.”

    The woman’s gaze lingered on him a moment longer before she turned away. “He won’t bend,” she said quietly. “Not yet.”

    They left him in the dark once more. The door slammed shut. The iron bolts fell into place.

    Taranis exhaled slowly. The air was thick with the scent of blood and damp stone.


    He tasted iron on his tongue metal, blood, defiance.


    The light from above had shifted again, sliding across the wall like the movement of time itself.

    He whispered, barely a sound.
    Not to gods, nor ghosts, but to the storm that still lived within his chest.
    It was quiet now, resting waiting.
    But it would come again.
    It always did.

    When the night settled deep, the sound of rain returned, gentle against the stones.


    In that rhythm, he found memory of his brothers’ faces in the torchlight. Drax’s steady eyes, Rayne’s trembling defiance, Draven’s silence.
    He had told them he would return.
    He intended to keep that promise.

    The fort around him slept in its illusion of control.


    But beyond the walls, clouds were gathering over the hills slow, patient, inevitable.

    The storm was not gone.
    Only waiting.

    © 2025 Emma Hewitt / StormborneLore. All rights reserved.Unauthorized copying or reproduction of this content is prohibited.

    If you enjoyed this story, like, share, or leave a comment. Your support keeps the storm alive and the chronicles continuing.

    Further Reading

    The Prophecies and Tales of Taranis Unfolded

  • The Breaking of the Circle

    The Breaking of the Circle

    The rain had thinned to a whisper, though the earth still drank its memory. The camp at Viroconium lay beneath a pall of grey the banners limp. The fires low, the air thick with the scent of wet iron and trampled earth.

    From the timber walls came the faint murmur of Latin, measured and precise, a language of order wrapped around conquest.

    Taranis Storm knelt in the mud outside the command tent, wrists chained, head bowed. The iron bit deep, the skin at his wrists raw and darkened with rust and blood.

    The mark of the Stormborne ring had already been scrubbed from his armour. He was no longer heir, no longer rebel merely a trophy of Rome.

    But even stripped bare, even silent, there was something in his stillness that unsettled the soldiers. Some swore the air shifted around him, that the faint tremor of thunder haunted the edges of his breath.

    Others avoided his gaze altogether, crossing themselves as they passed. A man broken should not look like that unyielding even in ruin.

    Inside the tent, the light was dim, filtered through canvas streaked with rain. The scent of oil lamps mingled with the metallic tang of blood. He had been made to wait hours, until the flap stirred, and three shadows crossed the threshold.

    Drax came first.

    Older now, heavier in both body and soul. The broad shoulders that had once carried their people’s trust. Now bore the eagle of Rome, its gold thread dull in the half-light. He paused by the entrance, rain dripping from his cloak, his eyes lingering on Taranis longer than words fill.

    Behind him, Rayne entered, slower. His face was pale with sleeplessness, the hollows beneath his eyes deepening the cold fire in his gaze. He did not meet Taranis’s eyes. The torchlight caught the edges of his features sharp, beautiful, worn.

    Draven followed last. He moved like a shadow quiet, deliberate, almost ghost like. His cloak brushed the ground, damp from the mist outside. When his eyes lifted, they carried both sorrow and warning.

    No one spoke at first. The silence was a living thing, heavy and raw, pressing between them like the weight of the storm itself.

    Then, slowly, Taranis lifted his head. The light touched his face. Revealing the dark bruises along his jaw. The faint smear of dried blood across his temple and eyes. Eyes that still burned with the calm fury of the storm.

    “Brother,” he rasped, voice rough but steady. “Have you come to finish what Rome began?”

    Rayne’s jaw tightened. “I came to make sure you lived.”

    “Lived?” A hollow laugh escaped him no warmth, no humour. “They’ll march me south in chains, Rayne. You traded the Circle for a collar. Don’t pretend it was mercy.”

    Drax’s tone was even, but heavy. “Enough. You both know what’s done can’t be undone. I took the oath so the rest of us survive. So that our kin would not hang from Roman walls.”

    “And what of honour?” Taranis’s gaze snapped to him. “Or do we trade that too for a few more winters of peace and a Roman coin to buy it?”

    Draven shifted in the corner. “Peace doesn’t last, brother. It only changes its face.”

    Rayne’s voice cracked through the air, sharp as the wind. “You think I wanted this? You think I didn’t bleed the same as you when the Circle broke? I saw no victory left to take I chose survival!”

    “You chose fear,” Taranis said softly. “And fear has a longer memory than Rome. It will rot what’s left of you.”

    Rayne turned away, jaw clenched, the lamplight trembling against his cheek. “You’d have doomed us all for pride.”

    “And you’d damn us for obedience,” Taranis countered.

    The space between them trembled with tension brothers bound by blood and broken by choice.

    Drax broke it first, his breath slow, his tone heavy with command. “They take you south tomorrow. I can do nothing more without risking every name tied to ours. Whatever happens after this live. Find your chance.”

    Taranis’s lips curved, a ghost of the old stormborn grin. “I will. And when I do…” His eyes rose, burning through the gloom. “I’ll remember who stood, and who knelt.”

    For a heartbeat, no one moved. Only the rain, soft and relentless, filled the quiet between them.

    Draven looked away first, eyes glinting with something close to grief. Drax’s shoulders sagged, his silence an admission. Rayne lingered his hand hovering at the tent’s edge, uncertain, trembling.

    “Taranis…” he began.

    “Go,” came the answer, quiet but final. “Before you remember what it means to be one of us.”

    But as Rayne turned to leave, Taranis’s voice cut through the rain again lower, heavier, carrying the weight of prophecy.
    “You know what you’ve done, brother. You’ve condemned the poor those I sheltered, the villages I defended. Rome will use your choice to bleed them dry.”

    His gaze flicked to Drax, then Draven. “Do what you must to live in my absence. Keep them safe if you can. But remember this the storm doesn’t die. It only learns patience.”

    The words hung in the air like thunder before the break.

    Rayne hesitated, his throat tight with something between guilt and defiance. “If you live to see freedom, Taranis… will you forgive me?”

    Taranis met his eyes grey meeting grey — and said nothing.

    Outside, a trumpet sounded the signal for the night watch. The guards were coming.

    The brothers turned, one by one, each carrying their silence like a wound.

    Drax’s heavy boots faded first. Draven followed, his steps ghost like. Rayne lingered, then vanished into the rain.

    Alone again, Taranis knelt in the mud and closed his eyes. The iron dug deep, but his breath was steady. The storm was not gone merely waiting beyond the hills, patient and unseen.

    And somewhere, far to the south, Rome’s banners rippled in the wind ready to claim the storm for themselves.

    © 2025 Emma Hewitt / StormborneLore. All rights reserved.Unauthorized copying or reproduction of this content is prohibited.If you enjoyed this story, like, share, or leave a comment. Your support keeps the storm alive and the chronicles continuing.

    Further Reading

    The Prophecies and Tales of Taranis Unfolded