The Imperator

“I hope my centurie treated you kindly, Thomas.” The man sitting behind the marble desk was so pale that the warm lamplight only accentuated the corpse-like appearance of his face. Thomas merely nodded, unable to speak through his poorly hidden fear. He’d received the invitation to this meeting three days prior, along with a black credit card. The sender asked him in excellent though rather quaint handwritten Latin if he was available to produce a memoir. He’d hesitantly accepted and was picked up by armed men with peculiar golden insignias on their dark suits in a purple van. They’d been kind enough, but their tone implied that they expected him to comply with their demands. He was blindfolded and brought to this palatial office with tall columns framing arrays of ancient weapons mostly concealed in shadows. “Good,” the man stood up and Thomas was astounded to see that he was dressed in a red full-body tunic that looked strangely wet. “You will do me a service for which you will be handsomely rewarded. I was betrayed once, long ago, you see.” He walked around the desk and Thomas’ skin crawled as he saw the tunic dripping blood on the floor. “They thought me dead, but the fates decreed otherwise. Now I want the world to read my story from my own mouth. You will write it for me, and then…” the man smiled glacially “You will be the first to witness the ascent of the New Empire that I bring.”