tyw7

Valatina Hispaniensis was thirty-three. This was very old for a single woman in Rome. Most girls married at fourteen. She was more than double that age, yet she had no husband. She remained alone because of fear. No man in the Empire dared to approach her. Suitors did not see a wife when they looked at her. They saw a Camp Prefect who could command legions. They saw a daughter of Bellona. You do not court a war goddess. You worship her from a distance and hope she does not strike you down. The Ninth Legion celebrated her birthday in York. It was a massive event. It did not feel like a party for a friend; it felt like a ritual for a god. The soldiers roasted whole oxen over pits. They poured their finest wine into silver cups. To them, she was the Daughter of the Legion. They were celebrating the day the soldiers found her and saved her from the dark. Valatina sat at the head of the long table. She hated the noise. She hated the attention. The soldiers chanted her name until the

May 2002. I remember the date exactly. It was my tenth birthday. I sat on the patio all day with a bridge made of popsicle sticks. I told my mom he promised to come. My mother, Haven, sat at the table grading papers. She wasn't just a physics professor; she had been a teacher at the Williams Base School. She knew how to spot a soldier who was about to deploy. She looked calm, but I know now that she was watching the world fall apart. The towers had fallen the previous September. The peace of the 90s was dead. "Kyle’s dad left on Tuesday," I told her. "And Mr. Gurney next door. They all got the call. What if Dad got the call?" "He keeps his word, Lu," Mom said, not looking up from her red pen. "Your dad always keeps his promises." "But if the Army calls..." "He isn't in the regular Army, baby," she said softly. "He’s... he’s the one who goes first." Around 8:00 PM, the sound hit us. It wasn't a roar. It was a rhythm. Thump. Thump. Thump. It vibrated in my chest like a

The skate park was empty. It was late. The concrete bowl was cool and smooth. This was my happy place. I dropped into the deep end of the bowl. My wheels hummed against the cement. The wind rushed past my ears. It was physics in motion. Pure velocity. I sped up the curved wall and did a quick 180 turn. Then I smelled it. Rotten eggs. Sulfur. I landed back in the bowl and looked up. Two snake women stood at the edge of the ramp. Dracaenae. They had double snake tails instead of legs. They held spears. "Demigod," one hissed. "Fast food." "Not today," I muttered. I pushed off hard. I skated toward the opposite side of the bowl to get speed. I needed momentum. I planned to launch myself into the air and stab them on the way down. I reached into my jacket pocket. I grabbed the handle of the drumstick. I hit the ramp fast. I flew into the air. I was upside down for a second. I tried to pull the stick out and press the SPQR button. But my palms were sweaty from skating. My

The year was 97 AD. The Roman frontier in Northern Britannia was less a line on a map and more a wound that refused to close. The afternoon sun was weak. It struggled to shine through the grey clouds. Val sat in the hortus, the garden behind the villa. She was supposed to be weaving. A small loom sat on her lap. But the wool was a tangled mess of knots. She could not sit still. Her leg bounced up and down. It tapped a frantic rhythm against the wooden stool. Her fingers twitched. She felt like her skin was too tight for her body. She felt like a compressed spring ready to snap. "Focus, Valatina," Julia chided gently from the doorway. "The thread must be smooth." Val groaned. She hated the thread. It was soft and weak. "It is boring," Val said. She dropped the shuttle. Her eyes drifted. They did not look at the flowers. They locked onto the perimeter fence. Her father, Marcus, was there. He was not just checking the wood. He was sharpening a stake with his pugio. The metal

I couldn't find the UK edition of the musical so have attached the US version. I can't believe I talked Maria into this. A relaxing vacation in Cardiff, and what do we do? We see this again. The last time I saw this tactical disaster was in Stoke-on-Trent. You remember that mess. I spent the entire show hunting a two-thousand-year-old clay monster through the backstage labyrinth, a fight that climaxed during the second act and required a full S.H.I.E.L.D. clean-up crew to scrub from the records. I saved a couple of their actors from getting turned into primordial sludge, and you'd think that would earn me a free ticket for life. But no. Officially, the incident was 'faulty pyrotechnics.' The public just knows that six people went missing that week, a tragedy the local police never solved. But I know the truth. I know this show is a literal monster magnet, drawing that thing to the psychic energy of the crowd. And now I have to sit through it again, knowing I'm the only one in the

In lands of kiln and broken clay, The hollow hunter seeks its prey. Where false Greek heroes take the stage, The empty vessel vents its rage. To turn the monster into man, The Roman completes the maker's plan. It was a crisp October morning. To get my steps in, I decided that I would skate to work. Before I put on my skates, I checked my pockets to make sure I had everything. spypod? Check? Wallet? Check? Water bottle? Check! Drumstick? Check! Wait? Drumstick? Why would an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. carry a drumstick to work? Well, dear reader, I am no ordinary agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., but I am a demigod, a daughter of Mars. And the drumstick is the mortal disguise of my primary weapon, a golden gladius. I was the former centurion of the Twelfth Legion, and I lead a task force, a clandestine branch of S.H.I.E.L.D. called A.S.G.A.R.D. that dealt with godly artifacts and kept the other godly threats at bay. I've made it my sworn duty to protect the mortals and the defenseless from the

The Quinjet's engines whined down to a whisper as it descended through the moonless sky towards the small Cornish town of Duloe. Below, the village was a patch of faint, sleeping lights surrounded by an ocean of darkness. Lu guided the jet into a field behind a cobblestone house, touching down with a soft squelch in the damp earth. Once she was out of the plane, the damp cold of a British night hit her like a wet towel. She was glad she had chosen to wear a rain coat. She pulled up her jacket hood and contacted her base. "Where is the house with the first victim?" she asked, her voice low. "Number 2, B3254," Bianca answered from the other side of the world. Her voice was about to continue, but Lu cut in. "Funny road name," she quipped. "...The road runs just in front of where you landed. Take care," Bianca continued, pointedly ignoring Lu's interruption. "When have I not been careful?" Lu joked back as she took a step towards the gate separating the field from the road. The

The vision always drops me in at the same moment. I'm on horseback, looking down at a scene of frantic, disciplined construction. If there was one thing the Romans were known for, it was their construction speed. We learned that lesson well at Camp Jupiter; we could throw up a marching fort overnight and tear it down by morning. But whatever this legion was building resembled a marching fort on a scale I'd never seen. It was almost as large as a Roman city, a permanent statement of defiance in the middle of a muddy, hostile wilderness. While some of the soldiers were building the walls, others were going around the border of the construction pouring something from large vases. Their actions reminded me of how the American Paranormal Agents would form barriers of salt and iron to trap spirits. But the soldiers also had companions.  Along the newly-finished walls, women in long, flowy robes stood in front of the completed sections, their hands weaving intricate patterns in the

Imagine being an atheist and suddenly finding out that you’re a daughter of an ancient Roman God.  This happened to me when I was age 17.  I found that instead of my mom, a flock of Stymphalian Birds are a species of monstrous pigeon-like birds was waiting for me downstairs.  Terra (Gaia) kidnapped my mom as leverage to get the Golden Fleece to help her awake her children, the Giants, who wanted to overthrow the gods.   And yes, I said "gods." Lowercase 'g', plural. While I remain unconvinced that "God" with a capital G—the omnipotent creator of Abrahamic religions—exists, I was forced to accept that the entities from ancient pantheons do. Mars certainly does. He and my mom had a brief encounter, and bam: you get a sassy, red-haired demigod. Me. Jupiter exists, too. So do Juno and Venus. The magicians of the House of Life channel real Egyptian deities, and the Norse Asgardians have their own demigod children running around. So, how do I remain an atheist in a world objectively