The name Taranis Stormborne had long since faded from Rome’s records, but not from its whispers.
A hundred years had passed since the day the storm was chained. Yet still he fought beneath the sun not as a man, but as the empire’s curse.
They called him many things now. The Emperor’s Champion. The Storm Gladiator. To the slaves, he was The Unbroken One. And to Rome’s generals, he was a weapon too valuable to destroy, too dangerous to free.
Every emperor since his capture had ordered the same: “Keep him alive.” For his blood immortal, untamed had become Rome’s secret ritual. Each time the storm bled into the sand, their augurs said the city’s heart beat stronger.
Chains replaced chains. Iron became gold. He was moved from the pits of Britannia to the marble arenas of the south. A relic paraded before crowds who no longer remembered his rebellion only the spectacle of a god in man’s form.
Yet he remembered.
Every lash. Every fallen friend. Every whisper of his brothers Drax, Lore, Draven still echoing through the storm he carried in his veins.
And sometimes, when lightning forked across the horizon of the Mediterranean. The guards swore they saw him lift his face to the sky and smile.
“Not long now,” he would murmur, voice low and rough as distant thunder. “The empire will fall and I will still be standing.
A hundred years had passed since the storm was bound.
A hundred winters since Taranis Stormborne’s chains had sung beneath Rome’s hand yet still, his name whispered across the camps and the courts like a ghost too proud to fade.
In the hall of the Legion’s veterans, laughter rose among the embers. Drax, Draven, and Lore sat together with old friends, all bound by immortality, all marked by the centuries. The world had changed around them Rome had fallen, risen, and reshaped itself but some wounds did not age.
“They want to see how far they can push him before he dies,” one of the legionnaires said, swirling wine dark as blood in his cup. “The Empire’s still obsessed with him. Calls him champion now.”
Draven’s brow arched. “Champion?” he repeated, half with scorn, half with disbelief. “The Emperor’s champion? Then he’s no prisoner he’s a prize.”
Another man leaned closer, the firelight cutting sharp lines across his face. “Word is they’ll grant him exile. An island of his own. Somewhere the storms never touch.”
Lore laughed softly though there was no warmth in it. “Exile,” he said. “Rome’s mercy always comes wrapped in iron.”
Marcos older than them all, though untouched by time raised his cup. “Your brother’s no man anymore,” he said quietly. “He’s a story they can’t kill. A weapon they don’t understand.”
The hall fell silent. Only the fire spoke a low hiss, a breath of smoke curling upward.
A woman’s voice, cool as silver, broke the quiet. Calisto, immortal like the brothers, leaned against the pillar’s shadow. “Calisto owns your brother now,” she said. “Gladiator. Slave. Sold to noble women to keep their beds warm and their secrets buried.”
Draven’s hand tightened on the table. “You speak lies,” he growled.
Marcos shook his head slowly. “Not lies. Rome believes a man can be broken if he’s humiliated long enough.” His eyes darkened. “They never understood what blood he carried.”
Drax stared into the fire, jaw set like stone. “Then they’ve forgotten what happens when storms remember,” he murmured.
Outside, thunder rolled faintly over the hills distant, but coming closer.
Dawn broke over the Roman camp like a blade drawn through fog. Grey light pooled across churned mud and sharpened stakes, catching on helmets and spearheads lined in perfect order.
The night’s rain had thinned to mist, and every droplet clinging to the leather tents shimmered like glass. The smell of smoke, sweat, and iron hung heavy in the air the scent of empire.
Taranis stirred. His back ached where the whip had bitten, skin raw beneath crusted blood. Yet the fire inside him burned brighter than pain the storm had not passed. It gathered.
Across from him, Marcos watched with his one good eye. The old fighter’s face a map of old wars and fading loyalties. “Rome wants to see storms broken,” he murmured, voice gravel-deep. “They’ll test you again today. But storms… storms don’t break. They shift. They wait.”
Taranis tilted his head, a faint smirk cutting through exhaustion. “And if they try?”
Marcos shrugged, rough amusement in his tone. “Then you show them the wind can cut as deep as the sword.”
Trumpets blared as the camp came alive in a heartbeat. Orders barked in Latin, armor clattered, horses stamped restlessly against their ropes. Two guards approached, eyes cold, hands twitching near the whips at their belts.
“On your feet,” one barked.
Taranis rose slowly. Chains clinked. His shoulders squared, each movement deliberate. The iron at his wrists and ankles was heavy a reminder that for now, he belonged to Rome.
Yet even bound, he carried the air of something untamed. The guards kept their distance, as though the storm in his eyes strike.
They led him toward a cleared space at the edge of the camp. A makeshift ring had been marked out with stakes and rope a place for training, punishment, or testing.
The centurion stood nearby, expression carved from granite. The boy from last night watched from behind a cart, pale fingers gripping the wood. He didn’t dare speak.
The centurion’s voice carried over the murmurs. “The barbarian survived crucifixion,” he said in clipped Latin. “He has killed Roman soldiers with sword, axe, and bow. Let us see if his storm can be harnessed or if it dies in the mud.”
Taranis met his gaze.
“Let him watch,” he murmured in Brythonic the tone sharp, almost ceremonial. The centurion frowned, not understanding, but the words left a chill in the air.
A guard offered him a practice axe, a short sword, and a small round shield. The weapons were worn, dulled, mockeries of what he once wielded but they would do.
He ran a thumb along the axe’s handle, testing the balance. The first bout began.
Two legionaries stepped into the ring, boots sinking into wet earth. They grinned, confident, soldiers against a chained barbarian. Taranis didn’t move until they struck.
The first swing came from the right clean, practiced.
He stepped aside, caught the motion with the rim of his shield, and turned it aside. The counter came low and fast a backhand with the axe that cracked into the soldier’s guard, splintering the wood. Mud sprayed. Gasps followed.
The second soldier lunged from behind. But Taranis ducked, dragging his chain taut to trip him, then drove an elbow into his ribs.
He rose without looking back. Breathing steady. Eyes cold.
He didn’t grin. He didn’t boast. He simply waited.
The crowd quieted. Even the centurion lowered his stylus for a moment.
“Again,” he said.
Another pair entered. Then another. By the third round, Taranis’s arms burned and his wrists bled where the chains bit into skin. Yet his movements only grew sharper measured, adaptive, each strike like thunder rolling closer.
Marcos leaned toward a watching soldier. “That’s no wild man,” he muttered. “That’s a storm that learned to fight back.”
By midday, silence had fallen across the ring. The spectators no longer laughed. They watched uneasy, enthralled, afraid.
The centurion finally raised a hand. “Enough,” he ordered. “Feed him. Let him rest. He will fight again tomorrow with steel.”
Taranis tilted his head, the faintest smirk touching his mouth. “Feed the storm,” he murmured, “and see what it grows into.”
The boy crept closer, slipping a crust of bread from his tunic and setting it by his side.
Taranis nodded once not gratitude, but recognition. A gesture between survivors.
As they led him away, one of the younger guards spoke quietly, incapable of concealing his curiosity. “They say you fought crucifixion itself and lived. What man survives that?”
Taranis turned his head slightly. The grey in his eyes caught the light. “Not a man,” he said. “A storm that forgot to die.”
Marcos barked a laugh, shaking his head. “Gods help Rome,” he said. “They’ve chained lightning and think it’ll sit still.”
When they finally removed his restraints for cleaning, Taranis flexed his wrists, skin bruised and torn. He studied the marks, then smirked.
“At least they removed the restraints,” he said quietly. “I grew up fighting in them.”
The centurion said nothing. The sky grumbled overhead thunder rolling distant but deliberate.
Then, softly, as if remembering something half-buried in blood and rain, Taranis spoke again.
“They put me up,” he said, eyes fixed north. “Nailed me in on the hill at Salinae”
Marcos frowned. “And yet here you are.”
Taranis flexed his fingers, old scars catching the light. “I ripped myself off,” he said simply.
Silence cracked through the camp. Guards shifted. Somewhere, a dog began to howl.
“Rome thinks it crucified me,” he murmured. “But the dead don’t stay nailed not when the gods still have use for them.”
Thunder answered. Closer this time.
Rome had not yet learned that storms do not serve. They return.
The rain had followed them south. Turning the clay of Staffordshire into a sucking mire that clung to boots and hooves alike.
The Romans marched as though it were paved stone beneath them, shields squared, helmets gleaming dull beneath the Grey sky. Between their ranks, chained at wrists and neck, walked Taranis Storm.
Every step tore at his ankles where the iron bit into flesh. Every breath was smoke and ash and memory. Behind him lay the broken circle of stones, the Black Shields scattered or slain. Ahead, only Rome.
The villagers came out to see. From hedges and low doors they watched the prisoner dragged past their fields, whispers coming like crows. The Stormborne, Ring-bearer. Betrayed. Some spat into the mud, others lowered their eyes.
A few, bold enough to remember, lifted hands in the old sign of the ring. when the soldiers were not looking.
At the front of the column the standard rose a square of blue cloth. That had been painted with a face in iron helm, cheeks daubed red with victory.
The mask grinned as though in mockery. The Romans called it their mark of order. To Taranis it was something else: the face of the empire that had swallowed his people.
He fixed his gaze on it as they dragged him past the rise where the heath opened wide. He thought of Boldolph and Nessa, of the wolf in the trees. He remembered the cairn and the promise beneath the oak. The chain jerked and he stumbled, but he did not fall. Not yet.
The centurion rode beside him, face shadowed beneath his crest.
“You see the banner, barbarian? Rome wears a smile even when it breaks you.”
Taranis lifted his head, eyes dark as storm clouds. “Smiles fade. Storms do not.”
The soldiers laughed, but unease rippled through their ranks all the same. For the wind carried his words across the heath, and even bound in chains, Taranis Storm did not sound broken.
By dusk the column reached the ridge where the woods thinned and the land opened to heath. Smoke already rose ahead straight, disciplined pillars from square fires. The marching camp of Rome.
The soldiers moved with the same precision as their shields: digging trenches, raising palisades, planting stakes.
Every camp was a fortress, stamped into the soil like a brand. The ground of Cheslyn Hay, once quiet pasture, now bristled with iron.
Taranis was dragged through the gate cut into the new rampart. The ditch still stank of wet clay, the sharpened stakes gleamed with fresh sap.
Inside, order reigned the tents in perfect rows, fires burning with measured rations, horses tethered and groomed. No laughter. No chaos. Just Rome.
The banner with the painted helm was planted at the camp’s centre. Beneath it the centurion dismounted, barking orders in clipped Latin. Slaves scurried to fetch water and oil for the men.
A scribe scratched notes into a wax tablet, not once looking up at the prisoner he recorded.
Taranis stood, wrists bound, staring at the banner. Its painted grin leered back at him, mockery frozen in blue and black.
Around him the soldiers muttered in their tongue some calling him beast, others trophy.
A soldier shoved him down beside the fire trench, close enough to feel its heat on his raw wrists.
“Sit, storm-man. Tomorrow the legate will decide whether you march to Wroxeter or Luguvalium. Either way, Rome will bleed you for sport.”
The word spread through the camp: arena.
Taranis lowered his head, though not in submission. He closed his eyes and listened. Beyond the walls of the camp, the wind still carried the smell of rain-soaked earth.
The whisper of fox and owl. And beneath that, deeper still, a memory: wolves circling, dragons wheeling, the voice of the tree.
Rest, child of storm. The road is not ended.
When he opened his eyes again, the firelight caught the glint of iron. Not on the chains, but in his gaze.
Even in Rome’s order, storm can find a crack. And cracks spread.
The fire burned low, and the camp settled into its rhythm. As guards pacing in pairs, dice rattling in the barracks-tents, the low cough of horses in their lines. The rain had eased, leaving the air damp, heavy with smoke.
Taranis sat in silence until he felt movement beside him. A figure shuffled forward, ankles hobbled, wrists bound with rope rather than iron. The man lowered himself onto the earth with a grunt.
“Storm of Emberhelm,” he rasped in Brythonic, his accent from the northern hills. “I thought the tales were lies. Yet here you sit, same chains as me.”
Taranis turned his head. The prisoner was older, his beard streaked white, his face cut with old scars. One eye clouded, blind. The other burned sharp as flint.
“And who are you,” Taranis asked, “that Rome keeps alive?”
The man chuckled, though it ended in a wheeze. “They call me Marcos now. Once, I was Maccus of the Ordovices. I led men against the Eagles before your birth.
Rome does not waste good meat. They break us, bind us, and sell us to the sands. I’ve fought in two arenas. Survived them both.”
Taranis studied him. The weight of years hung from his shoulders, yet there was steel still. “Then you know what waits.”
“Aye.” Marcos lifted his bound hands, showing knotted scars across his forearms. “The crowd roars for blood. Some fight once and die. Some fight a hundred times and die slower. But all die.”
The fire popped. Sparks leapt into the dark.
Taranis leaned closer, his voice low. “Not all. The storm endures.”
Marcos’s eye narrowed. “You think to outlast Rome?”
“No.” Taranis’s mouth twisted into something not quite a smile. “I think to break it.”
For the first time, the older man was silent. He searched Taranis’s face, weighing his words. Then he gave a slow nod.
“If you mean what you say, Storm of Emberhelm, then I’ll stand at your side when the time comes. Better to die tearing the eagle’s wings than caged beneath them.”
Chains clinked as they shifted nearer the fire. Around them the camp slept, unaware that in its shadow two sparks had met. Sparks that yet become flame.
The guards had thrown scraps of barley bread to the captives, little more than crusts softened with rain. Most fell on them like dogs, clutching and hiding their share as if it were treasure.
But when the boy, thin as a willow switch, glanced to where Storm sat, his brow furrowed. The man beside him Marcos noticed at once.
“What’s wrong, lad?” the old warrior asked, shifting his chains.
The boy’s voice was a whisper. “Why haven’t they fed him?” His gaze fixed on Taranis, who had taken nothing. His hands still resting on his knees, his eyes far away. as if listening to some thunder only he hear.
Marcos gave a grunt. “Rome plays its games. They starve the strong first. Weak men die quick, but a beast like him…” He lowered his voice. “They want to see how long he lasts. How much fury stays in him when his belly is empty.”
The boy clutched his crust but then held it out with trembling fingers. “He should eat.”
Taranis turned his head at last. His eyes, Grey as storm clouds, fell on the offering. He did not take it. Instead, he placed his bound hand gently over the boy’s.
“Keep it,” he said. His voice was rough, hollow from thirst, yet steady. “Storms do not starve. But you” he pressed the bread back into the boy’s palm, “you must grow.”
For a moment, silence hung around them. The boy swallowed hard, then nodded, biting into the bread with tears in his eyes.
Marcos watched, the ghost of a smile tugging at his scarred face. “A storm, indeed,” he muttered.
Above the camp, thunder rumbled faintly though the sky was clear.
“I’m fine ” Taranis smirked seeing a whip in someone’s hand and wood
“What’s going on?” The boy asked
The guard with the whip dragged a stake of green wood across the mud, planting it near the fire trench. Two soldiers followed, uncoiling rope and hammering pegs into the ground.
The boy’s eyes widened. “What’s going on?” he whispered, clutching what remained of his bread.
Marcos’s face hardened. “Discipline.” His single eye slid to Taranis. “Or rather a spectacle.”
One of the soldiers smirked. “The barbarian thinks himself storm. Tonight, he learns Rome is thunder.”
They hauled Storm to his feet. Chains clattered, mud spattered across his bare shins. The whip cracked once in the air, sharp as lightning.
The boy tried to rise, but Marcos gripped his arm and pulled him back down. “Don’t,” he hissed. “They’ll flay you too. Watch, and remember.”
Taranis did not resist when they bound him to the post. His wrists were raw, but he set his shoulders square. lifting his chin to meet the eyes of the gathered legionaries. The smirk never left his mouth.
The centurion stepped ahead, whip coiled in his hand, iron studs gleaming wet in the firelight. He spoke in Latin, slow and deliberate, for the advantage of his men:
“This is Rome’s law. Defiance is answered with the lash.”
The first strike fell. Leather snapped against flesh. The soldiers cheered.
Storm did not cry out. His lips moved, barely more than breath: words in the old tongue, prayer or curse, the guards could not tell.
The boy’s knuckles went white around his crust of bread. Marcos leaned close, his voice low. “Look at him, lad. That is what Rome fears most. A man who will not break.”
The whip cracked again. Blood ran down his back.
And yet, when the centurion paused, Taranis raised his head and laughed. a rough, hoarse sound, but laughter all the same.
“You call this thunder?” he spat. “I’ve stood in storms that would drown your gods.”
The camp fell uneasy. The centurion snarled and drew back the whip again. But already some of the soldiers shifted, unsettled by the chained man’s defiance.
The guard sneered as he coiled the whip in his hand, the wood of the handle slick with rain. He pointed it at Taranis.
“On your feet, barbarian. Let’s see if your tongue is sharper than your back.”
Taranis smirked, rising slowly, the chains clinking as he straightened to his full height. The firelight threw shadows across his scarred face, making him seem larger than life.
“Screw you,” he said, the words spat like iron nails.
The boy gasped, his hands clutching the crust of bread. “What’s going on?” he whispered to Marcos.
The old warrior’s one good eye didn’t leave Taranis. “Rome’s testing him,” Marcos said quietly. “They want to see if he breaks before the whip… or after.”
The guard cracked the lash across the ground, sparks leaping from the wet earth. Soldiers nearby turned to watch, eager for the show.
But Taranis only tilted his head, the faintest grin tugging his lips. “Go on,” he said. “Try.”
And in the silence that followed, the storm seemed to shift, waiting.
Taranis straightened, chains rattling as he rolled his shoulders. His eyes met the guard’s without a flicker of fear.
“Screw you, ass,” he growled, voice steady. “I’ve dealt with worse.”
The words landed like a stone in still water. A few soldiers chuckled uneasily, but others muttered, shifting in place. The boy’s eyes went wide, his crust of bread forgotten in his hands.
Marcos gave a dry, wheezing laugh. “Storm’s got teeth. Rome should be careful putting its hand too close.”
The guard snarled and snapped the whip through the air once, twice before bringing it down toward Taranis’s back.
But Taranis didn’t flinch. He stood, broad shoulders braced, chains biting his wrists, and took the first strike in silence.
StormborneLore 