Chapter 14 - Welcome Home!
Palinus smiled as he woke.
The excitement of the previous day lingered like an itch. But as his good dreams lay forgotten, he recalled the nightmare of his evening meeting. The frustration with himself for dragging his friends into his mistake weighed on his conscience, but the support from Bruchts and Rufian buoyed his mood.
“Friends,” he verbalised his thoughts and found them to be true. They could have left him to his own problems, but they had stood beside him.
A bad smell roused him from his thoughts. He had slept in his tunic which was still damp from the wash in the river. Since he had stopped staying at the Children’s Dormitories he was almost always a bit unkempt. Running his hand through his hair and checking over his body he confirmed that he at least wasn’t too dirty. Finally he assessed the nest of random cloth he used as bedding to check if he had brought any of the muck from the previous day home with him.
Not that it was much of a home.
His nest was in a lofted storage area above a textiles workshop. He had made a hidden space behind a stack of old hand looms into a cubby. A cosy nest above the workshop floor with what few possessions he had. They had found his hideout years ago, he and Silene. He hadn’t spoken to her in months and the memory of their friendship was bittersweet. They loved running around the 7th hill playing hide and seek and this spot was a favourite haunt. They would climb a riverstone wall at the back of a forgotten courtyard and squeeze through a round window into the loft and spend hours spying on the workers.
The only way to access the loft from the floor was to use a platform on a pulley system attached to the wall. When they first found the space the loft was filled with bolts of fabric. But a few years ago the hand looms had been replaced with bulkier treadle looms and they had stopped using the space as fabric storage because the bolts that came off the new looms were too wide to fit in the loft. Amongst the relics of the past, it was rare that the workers would ever need to come up here and Palinus’s hideout was near perfect.
The only problem with this arrangement was the noise. Every morning at sun up there was a racket as the workers came into the workshop. Then a whirring clatter started as they began running the shuttles; weaving the bright red fabric used in the Erulean Legion uniform.
“...he’s from the 7th hill you…”
“HE NEVER, little Pod! His ma…”
“HurrKahkahkha, she was always such a…”
“.... what she did to our Littera. I’ve half…”
The gossip of workers was incessant and Palinus tried to tune it out. He could pick the voices of the two Florias from beneath him. Floria Blanda has the braying cackle and Floria Facilius always seemed to be onto the scandalous gossip. Floria B said that she was projecting her own insecurities behind her back.
“Ughhhh.” Palinus groaned quietly and chose to get up rather than subject himself to their voices; it was aggravating the pain in his head.
Stretching his slightly sore body he slid out the window. He quickly descended the wall and started jogging. If he was early enough he could get some food from the temple before the first lessons.
As he jogged he avoided making eye contact with the people he recognised as he went the long way around the block to the public square. Even this early there was a hive of activity around the water fountain as people came to collect water for their households. Checking the sun in the sky he figured he had time and kept going past the Gymnasium and only slowed as he came to the 7th Temple, joining a throng of people walking into the sacred hearth.
Walking reverently through the doors into the vestibule people would stop next to a neat pile of wood, some making donations of coins and picking up some wood to carry into the temple. Palinus never had anything to donate today but he pretended to put something in the donation bucket in case anyone was watching and picked up a chunk of wood. As he followed the people in front of him they passed through the entrance and came to the temple proper.
The 7th Temple was an old building, it was constructed of enormous blocks of marble rather than the albumstone of all the new temples and government buildings which dated it as being from before the first emperor. Despite its age the building was big, a rectangular room with a high ceiling and tall columns carved with square edges. The central feature was an enormous fireplace that was surrounded by thick stone edging that radiated outward in circular bands and was surrounded by woven rugs. A low chatter filled the room of people talking and laughing.
Along with the people coming into the room he respectfully shuffled around the perimeter of mats. He could see his mother ahead, talking to a group of supplicants.
She acknowledged him with a nod of her head as he waited for their conversation to end. It was the banal small talk of the faithful, well wishing for acquaintances and the ‘well meaning’ shaming of people they perceived to be different, also known as temple gossip.
Listening to the conversation felt worse than taking a blast from a tower to the face, and Palinus was weighing up the pros and cons of not speaking to his mother and just accepting a verbal lashing later. Sensing the gossip finding a rich vein about the love life of Aedile Littera he accepted that he would rather do anything else than listen to the hero's lascivious ways so he turned to the Hearth fire.
Imitating the supplicants approaching the fire, Palinus slowly moved towards it. Around the fire were rings demarcated with lines of tiles, as he stepped into the first ring. Here he normally felt the fire raging. But today it only felt like a gentle warmth.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
As he took another step forward he started to feel the true warmth of the fire, a heat that held a touch of essentia and was beyond a normal flame’s.
He stepped forward again and the heat ratcheted up, now starting to feel uncomfortable.
Stepping forward again it started to hurt, but he didn’t yet feel that he was at his limit.
He took a final step and quickly with his skin felt like it was starting to burn he threw the piece of wood on the burning pile.
As he walked away from the flame the air caressed his skin with a cool susurrus as he noted that there was no damage from the burning. Assessing himself he realised that he truly felt much better than before, his headache and his body aches had dulled. Within himself his essentia felt energised, returning to his mother he marvelled at the feeling.
His mother appeared to have finished the conversation as he saw the gossip mongers separating with rounds of blessing each other with the ‘Warmth of the Hearth.’
In her white and red Vestral robes and her brown hair done up in complex braids around a silver band his mother, the 1st Vestral Priestess Appalina VII approached him with a wide smile. The genuine smile made the makeup she used to mask her age flake and Palinus was slightly taken aback. He was used to a sappy fake over the top display if they met in public, especially at the temple, but it seemed that today she was genuinely happy to see him.
“‘The Hearth welcomes home a man formed in fire’”, she chanted ritualistically, loud enough for many in the room to hear. Palinus instantly went crimson with embarrassment recognizing what this was.
“WELCOME HOME!” The room full of people chanted in response.
“Ugh, mother…” Palinus whined as she grasped him in a hug. Everyone in the temple, even people he didn’t know came over to him and patted him on the head, arm or hands and awkwardly sometimes his legs and chest.
He had seen ‘the formed returning home’ in the past and from the observer’s role in the ritual he had always relished giving the person as big a slap as he could get away with. Being hit by the younger people in the room now made him giggle and surprisingly it didn’t seem to hurt.
For most undertaking the homecoming it was just a coming of age ritual, but it made more sense now that he was being welcomed having actually been formed in a rift. Palinus was just surprised that his mother somehow knew so soon, he hadn’t had the chance to tell her yet.
As the well wishers finished touching him and giving platitudes his mother walked him out the back door to the refectory.
“I’m so glad you came so soon!” Appalina cheered.
“How did you know? Palinus asked.
“A mother just knows these things.” She joked, but knowing he would keep asking she told him the truth of it. “As someone carrying the power of the rift you can sense when someone else is formed as well… and Servius came and told me.”
She laughed brightly as they collected a breakfast of porridge and fruit, finding a table to sit at in the large room. As he considered what she said he realised what she meant, he had felt the power coming from Servius and he could sense a bit of the same coming from his mother.
“We used to run the occasional rift… Servius and I.”
Bored of waiting for Palinus to play with his newfound sense, she reverted back to her usual gossiping mixed with trying to provoke a response from him. He was surprised to think of his mother putting herself at risk and entering a rift.
“He, and Ember, and Littera… Oh and little Pod! I always forget about him! Did you hear-?”
“Mother, I don’t really want to hear what you did or did not do with half the citizens of the 7th hill. I have to run for the first session. Bye!”
----------------------------------------
His mother seemed to make a sport of embarrassing him and as usual he had made the excuse to leave as soon as he could. Palinus walked through the gates of the Gymnasium complex with plenty of time to spare.
The morning session started as always with physical training, so rather than walk up through the pillars of the tall Albumstone building and into the main hall lined with mosaics of battles, scenes from history and monsters he jogged around to the training yard to see hundreds of children. They were a range of ages, from his cohort who were as old as 15 down to the first cohort who could be as young as 9.
Around the training yard a hard dirt track surrounded sparring squares. Along the track edge were obstacles: walls, pits and rope ladders. Then on the outside of that were various exercise stations with equipment like heavy stones and bars for pulling up on. Palinus joined some of his peers in the 3rd Cohort as they started on the outer exercise circuit.
“It’s so funny watching the littles on the obstacle course.” He laughed as he joined Rufian and Bruchts. They usually put effort into competing with their peers but today they grouped themselves with the slackers looking to gossip.
“Hmm, yeah. So cute.” Bruchts said distractedly.
“Especially when they fall on their faces! ” Rufian joked. “Did you dream of curly hair and wide hips too?”
He had a black eye and both he and Bruchts looked sore as they messed around at a station lifting heavy rocks above their heads.
“Looks like my dreams weren’t as rough as yours…” Palinus quipped back.
“Haha,” Rufian gave a too loud fake laugh, they all knew the black eye was the work of his father. “We’ll have to do all the work we skipped yesterday this evening. Still totally worth it. How are you not too sore to move faster than a stumble?”
“I’m not sure.” Palinus replied, “My body is barely sore at all, but my head feels like it's been pounded with these rocks and my essentia has been churning enough to make me feel sick.”
“Huh,” Bruchts had a thoughtful expression as he lifted an enormous rock above his head like it was nothing. “My head barely hurts at all, and comparing our pain. It seems like mine is more my skin and deep in my bones, whereas Rufian’s is his muscles.”
“.. and look at how much I can lift! This is half again heavier than my heaviest lift last week, and I can lift it easily!” Rufian held the stone above his head, pressing it up and letting it leave his hands to show off his strength and control.
“I have so many questions…” Palinus sighed.
“Well, I might have some answers for you.” A voice stated from over his shoulder.