The clang of steel echoed across the Roman training yard. The sun was still low, its pale light glinting off helmets and polished shields. Taranis moved like shadow and storm, his chains rattling as he fought against three centurions in succession.
Every strike he gave was measured, precise but every parry cost him pain. The iron bindings cut into his wrists, leaving a thin red line that deepened with each movement. He refused to yield.
Caelum stood at the edge of the sand pit. His tunic far too fine for this place a youth of maybe sixteen, bright-eyed and restless. His gaze never left Taranis.
“uncle Marcos,” he said quietly, turning to the older man beside him. “Can those chains come off him?”
Marcos didn’t answer at once. His face was lined from years in service, his eyes as sharp as the swords he trained with. “Chains are the only reason he’s still alive, Caelum,” he said finally. “Without them, some fool would call it fear instead of discipline.”
“But he’s fighting for us now.” Caelum’s voice carried, defiant. “For Rome, at least.”
In the pit, Taranis struck low, sweeping a soldier’s legs out from under him. Before turning the momentum into a twist that sent the next centurion stumbling backward.
The last one hesitated, shield raised, watching the way. Taranis breathed steady, like a man waiting for the storm to break.
The chain coiled once, twice then snapped out, wrapping the shield edge and dragging it down. The sound of the soldier hitting the ground was followed by silence.
Caelum took a step ahead. “He’s more Roman than half your men.”
Marcos shot him a warning look. “Careful, boy. You sound like your mother.”
The youth smirked faintly. “She says the same.”
When the training was done, the soldiers dispersed, muttering under their breath half respect, half fear. Taranis knelt in the dust, hands bound before him. Marcos approached, tossing him a canteen.
“You could have killed them,” Marcos said.
Taranis drank, the water streaking through the dust on his face. “You didn’t tell me to.”
Marcos grunted, half a laugh, half frustration. “One day, that mouth of yours will get you killed.”
“Maybe,” Taranis replied. “But not today.”
Caelum stepped closer, watching the bruised wrists, the marks the chains left behind. “You’re not like the others. You don’t fight for their gods.”
Taranis looked at him not unkindly. “No. Mine are older. And they don’t care who wears the crown.”
The boy tilted his head. “If I asked you to fight for me instead of Rome?”
Marcos snapped, “Enough!” But Taranis only smiled slow, deliberate, dangerous.
“Then, little wolf,” he said softly, “you’d better be ready to pay the price.”
Above them, thunder rolled faintly in the distance, though the sky was still clear.
Chains clinked like faint echoes of the arena’s roars, and the scent of iron still clung to the air. Taranis Storm lay awake in the half-darkness, eyes open to the stone ceiling, counting the rhythm of the guards’ boots. Rome slept, but the storm within him did not.
He had won his life for another day, but victory came at a cost. He had shown them what he was. Not a beaten barbarian, but something far more dangerous a man who learned.
At dawn, Marcos appeared at his cell door, shadowed by two guards. “You’ve made them talk,” Marcos said quietly. “The governor himself wants to see you.”
Taranis said nothing. The chains around his wrists jingled as he stood.
They led him through the inner halls of the fortress, where Roman banners hung stiff and silent. Soldiers stared as he passed some curious, others wary. A man who defied lions and bears without breaking was not easily forgotten.
In the governor’s chamber, incense burned thick. Maps of Britannia sprawled across a marble table, marked with red ink and small figurines of silver legions.
The governor, Decimus Varro, was not a cruel man by Roman standards merely pragmatic. “You are a spectacle,” he said, voice calm. “A man who fights like the gods themselves favour him. Tell me, Briton what drives you?”
Taranis met his gaze. “The same thing that drives Rome. Freedom.”
Varro smiled faintly. “Freedom is an illusion. Order is what endures.” He leaned forward. “Serve Rome, and you’ll live well. Defy us again, and your death will be remembered only as noise in the sand.”
Silence stretched between them, thick as the smoke that coiled from the brazier. Then Taranis spoke, slow and deliberate.
“I have no wish to be remembered. Only to finish what began in the storm.”
Varro frowned not in anger, but thought. “Then we understand each other.” He gestured to Marcos. “Train him. Watch him. If he can be tamed, he’ll fight for Rome. If not…”
Taranis was taken to the training grounds. Men waited there gladiators, soldiers, slaves who had survived too long to be careless. The air rang with the sound of iron on iron. Marcos tossed him a blade, better balanced than the last.
“Your real trial starts now,” Marcos said. “In the arena, you fought to live. Out here, you’ll fight to learn what Rome fears most a man they can not own.”
For the first time since his capture, Taranis smiled. The storm had found a new horizon.
They say the stones at Emberhelm still whisper when the wind moves right a low murmur that rises from the earth like the breath of something ancient, waiting.
Farmers avoid the place now. Shepherds drive their flocks wide, and children dare each other to touch the outer ring, laughing until the laughter falters. Only the old remember that once, before Rome, before even the clans, the stones were not dead things.
Each one bore a mark storm, fire, tide, and light carved by hands that no longer walk the world. Together they formed a circle, a promise between the gods and those who spoke their tongue. The Circle of the Gold Ring.
When the brothers swore their oaths there, thunder split the air. The eldest spoke of wisdom, the youngest of freedom, and the middle ones of strength, loyalty, and truth. But the sky heard more than words it heard pride. And pride is the chisel that breaks all stone.
Now, when lightning rolls across Cannock’s high fields, some claim to see figures between the stones. Not ghosts, not living men something between. They say one wears chains that sing when he moves, another bears a sword that hums with the weight of unspoken guilt, and one more walks with his hands clasped behind his back, watching the storm as though it answers to him.
The villagers leave offerings there still a bowl of salt, a coin, a lock of hair just in case the whispers are not only echoes, but memories listening for their name.
A vibrant artistic depiction of a stylized object, blending intricate designs with bright colors, invoking themes of lore and magic.
The Quiet Flame
The wind that swept over Emberhelm carried no warmth, only the ghost of fire long spent. I stood where the circle had once been whole, where twelve stones still defied the weight of empire, and one lay split a wound upon the land.
The others had gone. Drax to fury, Draven to silence, Rayne to his choices, and Taranis to chains. I remained, bound not by steel but by memory. It was not courage that kept me here; it was knowing that something sacred had been broken and that it was not yet done with us.
The Romans called this valley conquered. They built their roads and forts as if they could hammer meaning from earth and stone. But meaning does not bow to empire. It whispers, it lingers, it waits. And I have learned to listen.
I knelt beside the thirteenth stone, tracing the crack with my fingers. The split hummed faintly, as though it still remembered the storm that birthed it. I could almost hear Taranis’s voice beneath the wind, a murmur of thunder too distant to strike.
“Brother,” I whispered, “if the storm is caged, does the sky mourn its silence?”
A shadow passed across the ridge perhaps a hawk, perhaps a sign. In the old days, I would have asked the druids for meaning, but now I was the only one left to ask.
Rayne’s betrayal still cut deep, though part of me understood it. He had always been the one to see the long game, the patient serpent coiled beneath the waves. I did not forgive him, but neither could I condemn him fully. Perhaps this is how the gods feel when they look upon men weary, knowing, endlessly disappointed.
Night crept over the hills. I lit no fire; the Romans watched for smoke. Instead, I watched the stars, the same constellations our ancestors had trusted when the world was still young. Somewhere beyond those lights, I felt the pulse of something waking old magic, stirring beneath stone and soil, called forth by blood and betrayal alike.
The Circle was broken, yes. But its power had not vanished; it had merely changed shape. The storm that once lived in Taranis’s heart now whispered through the bones of the earth. I could feel it gathering, quiet but sure, as if the land itself prepared to rise.
In that silence, I spoke the old words not prayer, not spell, but remembrance. A promise carved into breath:
“When the storm returns, it will not ask who was loyal. It will ask who remains.”
The morning broke pale and cold, a thin mist rolling across the fields like a ghost that had forgotten its name. My horse shifted beneath me, uneasy. The world felt quieter than it should have been not the quiet of peace, but the kind born from expectation. Something waited ahead.
I had traveled for weeks now, keeping to forgotten roads, trading false names and favours for shelter. Rome’s messengers had ceased for a time, and that silence was heavier than any command. I began to wonder if I had been released… or abandoned.
At night, when the campfire dwindled, I caught myself tracing the symbol of the Ring into the dirt a circle broken clean through. No matter how many times I erased it, my hand drew it again. Habit or guilt, I couldn’t tell. Perhaps both.
Rumours reached me in fragments: a rebellion rising in the north, whispers that Drax had taken to leading the scattered tribes, and that Lore had vanished into the mists of the west, chasing prophecies no man could name. Draven was silent. And Taranis… Taranis had become a legend again.
They said he had escaped Rome’s chains, that his eyes burned brighter than ever, that lightning followed where he walked. I did not believe all of it but I wanted to. The world is easier to bear when its ghosts refuse to stay buried.
One night, beneath a blood-red moon, I reached the edge of the marshlands near Ravenmere. The air there was heavy, each breath tasting of iron and old secrets. The ruins of an outpost stood crooked against the skyline Roman stones built upon older foundations. It felt… familiar.
Inside, beneath moss and dust, I found carvings of the Circle faint, half-effaced by time. Words I had spoken in another life echoed in my memory: “We are the Ring. Bound by oath, unbroken by fear.”
I knelt, running my hand over the stone, feeling the groove of each line. “I broke it,” I whispered. “But perhaps it was already breaking.”
Something stirred in the shadows not human, not beast, but presence. A warmth against the air, like breath drawn from memory itself. For the first time since Emberhelm, I felt the Ring respond.
A whisper, faint but unmistakable, rippled through the ruin. “The Circle is never broken, only divided. The storm remembers.”
I rose slowly, the hairs on my arms prickling. Whatever force had once bound us had not died it waited, fragmented, patient. And now, it was calling.
When I rode from Ravenmere at dawn, I carried no banner, no ally, no command. Only purpose.
The Ring was broken but not gone. And if Taranis still lived, if the others still walked their paths… then the storm was far from finished.
“Taranis is our baby brother, no matter what some think,” Drax growled, his voice low and edged with iron. His gaze locked on Rain across the firelight, sharp enough to cut stone. “You betrayed him when he was a child and you betray him now.”
Rain’s jaw tightened, but he did not speak. The silence stretched between them, thick with memory and regret.
The old priest, Maeron, lifted his hand gently. “He forgives you, Rain,” he said, his tone weary yet steady. “He wanted Drax, Draven, and Lore to know he will endure what they give him. So that you three will survive. He says to make choices that will keep you all safe and your people.”
Drax’s expression did not soften, though his eyes flickered with something that have been pain. “He forgives far too easily.”
Maeron inclined his head. “Forgiveness is not weakness, my lord. It is the weapon of those who can’t be broken. The Romans won’t rule forever. Prepare for what comes next.”
At the edge of the fire, Caelum shifted uneasily, his young face caught between fear and pride. “But what about my uncle’s meals?” he asked suddenly. “Uncle was exiled from the Circle years before they caught him. I was a baby then. Now I’m fourteen he shouldn’t be forgotten again.”
The words silenced the hall. Even Rain, for all his bitterness, not meet the boy’s gaze.
Drax rose slowly, the firelight glinting off his scars. “He will not be forgotten,” he said at last. “Not while the storm still bears our name.”
“But won’t they strip him of his name?” Caelum pressed, voice trembling now. “If Rome erases it, how will anyone know he lived?”
Drax looked down at his son the fire’s glow. Reflected in the boy’s wide eyes and placed a steady hand on his shoulder.
“Names can be taken,” he said quietly. “But legacies can’t. The Romans think power is carved in stone. Ours is carved in memory.”
He turned back to Maeron. “Tell him that. Tell him Emberhelm remembers.”
The priest nodded, rising to leave. But before he turned, his gaze swept the circle of men gathered in the hall. “When the storm returns,” he said softly, “I hope you are ready to stand beneath it.”
When Maeron’s footsteps faded into the night, the hall remained silent. The storm outside broke, rain hammering against the shutters like the echo of distant drums.
Drax stood by the window long after the others had gone. He could not see the fort from here, but he could feel it the iron cage that held his brother. The empire pressing closer each season. Yet as lightning flashed over the valley, he smiled grimly.
Because storms, no matter how long they’re caged, always find their way home.
The road to Viroconium was slick with rain. Drax rode beneath a low sky, his cloak heavy with water, the wind biting at his face. Beside him, Maeron’s hood was drawn deep, the priest’s silence carrying the weight of things better left unspoken.
When they reached the outskirts of the Roman fort, the air stank of smoke and iron. The rhythmic clash of hammers and the cries of soldiers echoed through the mist. But above it all, there was another sound low, strained, human.
Drax reined his horse sharply, his eyes narrowing.
At the edge of the square, raised above the mud and the murmuring crowd. Hung a man bound to a crude wooden cross. Blood streaked his arms, his body marked by lashes and bruises. His hair clung to his face in the rain. But the set of his jaw the defiant lift of his head was unmistakable.
Taranis.
Drax’s heart clenched as the legionnaire stepped forward, spear in hand. “He struck a guard and tried to run,” the man said stiffly. “By Roman law, the punishment is public display.”
“Law,” Drax echoed, his voice quiet, almost a whisper but Maeron flinched at the tone. “You call this law?”
The soldier hesitated, but before he could respond, Maeron laid a hand on Drax’s arm. “Careful,” he murmured. “The walls have ears.”
Drax dismounted, boots sinking into the mud. He walked forward until he stood before the cross, rain washing the grime from his face. Taranis raised his head slowly, eyes bloodshot but burning with that same inner fire that no empire could snuff out.
“Brother,” Drax whispered.
Taranis gave a faint, broken smile. “You shouldn’t have come.”
“And leave you to the crows?” Drax’s voice cracked like thunder. “Never.”
Maeron stepped forward, murmuring Latin prayers under his breath for the watching soldiers. Though his words were laced with druidic meaning ancient phrases meant to shield, not to save. His fingers brushed the iron nails that bound Taranis’s wrists. “These are not deep,” he said quietly. “They did not mean to kill him. Only to shame.”
Taranis’s laugh was hoarse. “They can’t shame what they don’t understand.”
The centurion appeared, cloak heavy with rain. “This man belongs to Rome,” he declared. “You will step back, Lord of Emberhelm.”
Drax turned slowly, the weight of centuries in his gaze. “And yet Rome forgets whose land it stands upon.”
The centurion stiffened. “Do you threaten?”
“No.” Drax’s tone softened to a dangerous calm. “I remind.”
The priest raised his hands quickly. “My lord only seeks mercy,” Maeron said. “Let him pray with his brother before the gods.”
After a pause, the centurion gestured sharply. “You have one hour.”
When the soldiers withdrew to the gatehouse, Drax knelt beside the cross. The rain had turned to sleet, stinging against his skin. “Hold on,” he murmured. “We’ll get you down when the watch changes.”
Taranis shook his head weakly. “No. Not yet. If you cut me down, they’ll know you came. They’ll burn Emberhelm.”
“Then let them come,” Drax growled.
But Taranis only smiled faintly. “Storms must wait for the right sky, brother.”
Maeron placed a hand on Drax’s shoulder. “He’s right. Endurance, not rage. That is his rebellion.”
Drax bowed his head, jaw clenched. He hated the wisdom in those words. He hated that Taranis could still smile through chains and nails.
As dusk fell, lightning cracked beyond the hills, white and wild. The storm gathered again over Viroconium.
And though Rome saw only a prisoner’s suffering. Those who remembered the old ways knew the truth: A storm had been crucified and still, it did not die.
The morning mist hung thick over the Roman fort, curling around the walls and the sentries like ghostly serpents.
Taranis Storm’s wrists ached where iron had bitten into bruised flesh, his ankles raw from chains. Yet the fire inside him refused to be tamed. Marcos had warned him that this day would test more than his body. It would probe the limits of fear, endurance, and wit.
The centurion led him across the courtyard. Other prisoners lined the path, eyes wide with terror or jealousy. Weak men, broken men, some shaking in expectation of death. None dared speak.
“Today, you fight for Rome’s amusement,” the centurion barked, voice carrying over the square. “The arena awaits. Survive, or die beneath their eyes.”
Taranis allowed a faint smirk, almost imperceptible. Chains or no chains, sword, axe, or spear he had survived worse. The storm was within him, and storms do not break.
The first trial: Damnatio ad Bestias.
Lions, their muscles rippling beneath tawny manes, were released into the sand. Their growls rolled like thunder, a sound meant to unnerve men and mark the end of hope. Taranis was pushed forward, unarmed, the chains clinking with each step. The crowd leaned forward, eager for carnage.
The first lion lunged. Taranis dropped low, letting its momentum carry it past him. Spinning the chain to trip the beast, a subtle but devastating movement learned in the wilds of Staffordshire. Another lunged, jaws snapping, claws tearing sand.
He moved like the wind low, sharp, unpredictable. He stood baiting, dodging, spinning chains like whips, forcing the predators into missteps against one another.
Blood rose in clouds around him, yet he remained untouched. When the final lion recoiled and the centurion’s mouth twitched a mix of disbelief and begrudging respect. Taranis exhaled slowly, chains clinking, storm-controlled and silent.
The second trial: Gladiatorial combat.
He was given crude weapons a short sword nicked from years of use. A small round shield marred by countless hits, a spear bent at the tip. Combatants approached with mockery, expecting an untrained barbarian to stumble, falter, and bleed.
Taranis did not falter. He did not rush. Each movement was a calculation, using the terrain, his chains, the enemies’ weight and momentum against them. The first pair charged together, one with sword, one with shield.
Taranis pivoted, letting the chains tighten around their legs. As he ducked beneath the sword, delivering a clean strike to the opponent’s flank.
The second soldier hesitated, startled by the unexpected precision. Taranis did not smile he simply waited for the next assault, reading, predicting, exploiting every weakness.
A guard whispered to another, “He’s no ordinary man… he fights like the storm itself.”
By midday, the arena was a battlefield of skill, endurance, and cunning. A third pair entered, wielding axes. Taranis dodged and parried, chains tangling in the sand and catching his enemies off-balance. His movements were fluid, almost artistic — a storm in motion, controlled yet deadly.
Between bouts, he observed fellow prisoners some cowering, some quietly strategizing, watching him with awe. He nodded subtly, acknowledging their respect without breaking focus. Alliances were unnecessary here; survival was enough.
Two massive bears were released simultaneously, roaring, claws digging into the arena floor. Taranis analyzed their pattern one slower, one feinting left before striking right. He baited them, using his chains to trip and distract, pushing one into the other’s path. The crowd gasped as claws met flesh, teeth snapping on fur instead of his own body. His footwork was precise; his breathing measured; his mind sharpened like a blade.
When the bears finally withdrew, exhausted or bested by circumstance, Taranis stood alone in the sand. Sweat streaked with blood and mud clung to his skin. He raised his head, grey eyes surveying the watching centurion. There was no fear in him. Only storm.
The centurion approached cautiously, expression unreadable. “Enough. You will live… for now. But know this: Rome does not forgive defiance. Your survival is theirs, not yours.”
Taranis’s gaze swept over the spectators and fellow prisoners alike. Some bowed in awe, some averted their eyes in fear. Marcos leaned against the wall, one eye glinting with pride. Even in chains, Taranis Storm had not been broken.
That night, in the darkness of the cell barracks, he traced patterns in the dirt beneath his chains. The arena had been a spectacle for Rome, yes, but also a proving ground for him. Every movement, every dodge, every strike had been a lesson in patience and precision. Each enemy, each beast, each whisper of fear from the crowd had been data to be remembered, stored, and used.
The storm waited. It always waited. Taranis knew the chains bind him. swords scratch his skin, lions and bears roar, but they could not break him.
He smiled faintly to himself, letting the chains clink softly. Rome had given him a stage, a spectacle, and a lesson. And when the right moment came, the storm would strike and it would not be for their amusement.
The dawn was cold, a thin veil of mist curling over the ramparts of the Roman fort. Taranis awoke to the metallic tang of iron and the distant clang of the blacksmith’s hammer.
His chains clinked softly as he shifted. The cold biting into bruised wrists, but the fire in his chest remained unbroken. He had learned to sleep with storms in his mind; the thunder never ceased, even when the sky cleared.
The sentries passed with measured steps, their eyes avoiding his. Even in chains, Taranis carried the weight of warning: a storm was bound, not broken.
Marcos stirred beside him, shoulders tense with age and pain. “They move you today,” he muttered, voice low. “Legionaries say they march prisoners to the amphitheatre. Another show… or training for others. Rome’s curiosity is insatiable.”
Taranis flexed his wrists against the iron, listening to the rhythm of the camp. The clatter of swords, the measured steps of patrols. The faint murmur of Latin all part of the pulse of this cage. He did not fear. He calculated.
The centurion arrived just as the morning sun began to pierce the mist. A figure of red and bronze framed against the wooden palisade.
“Stormborne,” he said, voice sharp, “prepare to march. Rome watches, and your survival is… optional.”
Taranis rose slowly, chains rattling in protest.
“Optional,” he echoed, smirk tugging at his lips, “like the wind choosing which trees to break.”
The march was silent, the prisoners lined in pairs, shields clinking and armor scraping. Taranis felt the eyes of the Romans on him, not all hostile.
The Curiosity and caution blended in the same gaze. Word had spread of his defiance surviving crucifixion. But unyielding under whip and sword and whispers of the “Storm of Emberhelm” made even hardened legionaries pause.
They crossed the outer hills and entered the amphitheatre grounds. Dust rose from the packed earth, carrying the scent of sweat, straw, and fear. The arena awaited not yet for combat, but for demonstration, for Rome’s fascination with endurance.
Taranis’ chains were secured to a central post. Around him, other prisoners fidgeted and whispered. He noticed the boy from the march days ago. A little child of six years old hiding behind a stack of crates, pale fingers gripping a fragment of bread. Their eyes met, and Taranis gave a faint nod not reassurance, not command, just acknowledgment.
A guard stepped forward, coiling a whip in his hand. “Today, we measure the storm,” he said in Latin, the words sharp as steel. “Let us see if the barbarian bends to Rome.”
Taranis let the chains pull taut, shoulders braced. “Storms bend only to themselves,” he whispered, almost to the wind.
The first demonstration began. Spears and short swords were thrust toward him, each movement designed to test, to gauge. Taranis shifted with the grace of the hunted and the hunter intertwined. As he continues deflecting, twisting, and using the very pull of the chains to redirect momentum.
Every strike met resistance, every thrust was countered. The audience of soldiers murmured in disbelief.
Marcos watched from the side, leaning heavily on his staff. “Still untamed,” he muttered. “Still Emberhelm.”
The sun climbed, and with it, Taranis’ endurance was tested further. Roman instructors pressed harder, pushing his limits, yet he remained unmoved, his grey eyes sharp as lightning.
When at last the centurion called an end, sweat streaming and blood staining the mud, Taranis did not collapse.
He simply lowered his gaze, catching a brief glimpse of the distant hills beyond the fort. Freedom waited there, somewhere beyond chains and Roman order.
As the prisoners were herded back to their quarters, Taranis’ mind raced. Rome could cage him, whip him, measure his endurance, but it could not touch the storm in his heart. The pulse of Emberhelm beat in every step, every breath, every thought of revenge, strategy, and survival.
That night, as firelight danced across the walls of the fort and the whistle of wind through battlements echoed like distant thunder, Taranis sat, chained but unbroken, and whispered to himself:
“Let Rome watch. Let them wait. Storms do not obey. Storms endure. And storms return.”
Night in the Roman fort was never truly silent. Even beneath the canopy of stars, there was always the creak of timber. The shuffle of soldiers on watch, the hiss of oil lamps dying in the cold wind. Yet somewhere beyond that human rhythm, another sound pulsed faint, rhythmic, like the heartbeat of the land itself.
Taranis listened.
He had learned to hear through walls of stone and iron. The whispers of chains, the breath of the wind through narrow slits.All were messages if one knew how to listen.
Marcos stirred nearby, groaning as he rolled against the rough bedding. “You hear it again,” he murmured, voice barely a rasp. “The storm that waits?”
Taranis’ eyes were half-shut, the dim firelight carving hollows beneath his cheekbones. “The storm doesn’t wait,” he said softly. “It watches.”
He turned the small iron shackle at his wrist, feeling for the weak link not yet ready, but close. Every night he tested it. Every day, he marked the rhythm of the guards, the rotation of their watch. Patience, he reminded himself. Storms struck only when the wind was right.
Beyond the barracks, the faint roar of the sea carried inland. Somewhere past those black waters lay the route to Gaul and beyond that, Rome. The thought of being caged beneath marble arches made his blood run colder than the chains.
The door creaked open. A shadow slipped inside small, quick, hesitant. The boy from the arena. He carried a satchel and a half-broken torch.
“They’ll see you,” Marcos hissed.
The boy shook his head. “The north wall guard sleeps. He drinks too much. I brought you this.” From the satchel, he pulled a narrow blade no longer than a hand, its edge dulled but serviceable.
Taranis took it without a word, his fingers brushing the boy’s for a heartbeat. “Why?” he asked.
The boy’s voice trembled. “Because you didn’t kill me when they told you to. Because the others they say you were a king once.”
Taranis looked up then, eyes grey as frost. “A king?” He almost smiled. “No. A storm given form. And Rome can chain storms, but it can not make them serve.”
The boy swallowed, uncertain whether to fear or believe him. “Then what will you do?”
Taranis turned the blade in his hand, the firelight glinting off the iron. “Wait,” he said. “And remember.”
He hid the weapon within the straw bedding, marking its place with a small twist of rope. Then he looked toward the sliver of moonlight cutting across the dirt floor. A thought of home of the high ridges above Emberhelm, of his brothers’ faces fading in memory. Rayne’s eyes full of guilt. Drax’s silence. Draven’s quiet grief.
He did not hate them. Not yet. But the distance between them had become as sharp as any blade.
When dawn came, the fort stirred again the horns of the morning watch echoing across the fields. The centurion approached, flanked by two guards.
“Stormborne,” he said, voice cold. “The governor himself has taken interest. You are to be moved south to Londinium within a fortnight.”
Taranis met his gaze. “To be paraded, then? Or displayed?”
Taranis’ jaw tightened, but his eyes betrayed nothing. Inside, the storm turned once more.
He whispered beneath his breath, too low for the Romans to hear:
As the guards led him from the barracks. He caught a glimpse of the horizon low clouds gathering over the hills, rolling in from the west. It was almost poetic.
“Emberhelm still breathes.”
That night, the chains whispered again not with fear, but with promise. The weak link shuddered beneath his fingers. And when the next storm broke over Viroconium, it would not be made of rain.
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 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.
StormborneLore 