Gladius

He comes at you.

He swings his Gladius sword, his Kopesh-looking sword, and he dings you in the armor for two points of damage.

And you just kind of like, he looks at you, and he roars again like defiantly.

I laugh.

The Second Punic War saw legendary Carthaginian general Hannibal cross the Alps and bring the fight to Rome's doorstep.

For 15 long years, he had terrorized mainland Italy, but Rome would not surrender, and in 204 BC, a young general named Scipio raised an army to invade North Africa and Carthage's heartland.

And just two years later, he finally found himself outmatched in a town in modern-day Tunisia.

The Battle of Zama was not just a victory for Scipio and Rome, but the subsequent peace treaty stripped Carthage of military might and territory, ending their time as a dominant power.

There's only one, there's only one proper way to say it.

I think Gladius is not really fully established, um-

Mm.

That's true

... 'cause it's so, and also 'cause it's the, it's the sword, isn't it? A Gladius.

Oh.

So I think there is, like, if you want to be that full on.

I'm a...

Gladius is probably one of my favorite swords.

I have two gladiuses that I'm looking at right now.

You, you...

Sorry, that happens after a little bit.

Before lighting him on fire, Gladius pushes back on this, saying, oh, my brethren have risen, and Gia waits only for the blood of Olympus.

And I was like, that's the next book.

It's coming so soon.

Pretty cool.

Do you see the Gladius style? He's got a Gladius style ballet song with, like, Damascus in it.

Oh, I see that.

Yeah, yeah.

Okay,

look one below it.

The Gladius kind of blade.

Yeah, that's the one I was talking about.

The vacuum was the real theology.

And yet here was the chaos again, and here was Hannah Voss, his graduate student, still barefoot among the shards, gladius propped carelessly against a toppled speaker like an afterthought.

She moved with the scarred, predatory economy of someone who had once killed for the roar of fifty thousand throats.

Time-displaced, the department's quieter mystics whispered, pulled somehow from the sand and iron of the Flavian Amphitheater into doctoral work on classical violence.

Morning's wave unfurled slower than the night's collision had.

Long exploratory minutes of his salesman hands mapping every attachment point of her body.

The deep groove of an old gladius kiss along her hip traced with the same patient care he'd once used to fit the crevice tool into an impossible corner.

The raised welt beneath her left breast stroked with the delicacy reserved for an upholstery brush against silk.

... that's, that's correct.

Fucking Pica, and fucking Shuzo with the long arms, Holdem, fucking Mach Vice, Gladius.

Yeah, this is a good-

This is a...

We've got Page One.

We've got Holdem.

We've got Machvise, who's s- standing atop Gladius making him squanchy because Machvise, of course, is heavy.

Yep.