T5A
by AB
Chapter 12
Vulcan
Twin blades passed overhead, slicing at the air above his head. The faded metal cutting through the air. Their veiled holder dancing around him, using his own moves.
"Leave me alone damn you!" The veiled figure demanded.
"Never, never surrender, never hold back!" He found himself replying to the unknown veiled figure.
"I do not wish to fight you anymore." The veiled figure continued, losing ground.
Mist covered the ground, melting leaves hang huge from black trees. The soil felt warm and murky beneath his sandaled feet.
"But I do, yet." He deflected one of his enemy's swords with his own while stabbing at his heart.
"Do you remember the sea at home? I do, you were not at peace even there and then, father would not allow you to, yet you now perceive it as the best time of your life." The veiled one replied.
"I was mortal then. I had family and people I cared about." He panted disarming the veiled one.
"No, you have never been Immortal." Andreas kicked him flat on his back, standing atop him.
"There can be only one."
"True, but will it be me?" The veil fell off just as Andreas' swords descended on his neck.
Andreas woke with a start having seen his own face under the veil.
"Fuck!" Andreas wiped the sweat off his forehead. Looking at the alarm clock he groaned at the time being seven in the morning.
"Well I ain't getting anymore sleep now…" His thoughts interrupted by the phone ringing.
"Oh…not again." *Unknown* the caller ID read.
"Fuck my life." He groaned rejecting the call.
"This shit has got to end…he has been calling me for like two weeks now, for fucks sake!" He thought heading to the bathroom.
It's an almost euphoric time for a boy, morning wood piss, so Andreas positioned himself above the toilet and let loose.
Clothes on and ready he walked to the kitchen. Kendra, Mathew, and Artemis waited for him to start on breakfast. He tried to smile.
"You look tired." Mathew commented.
"It's stupid o'clock." Replied Andreas, rubbing his forehead and eyes.
Kendra served him breakfast, fruits, and cereal with milk.
"Aren't you gonna pick that up?" Artemis indicated his vibrating phone.
"It's wrong call, I have no idea who that is." Replied Andreas with a semi-full of grapes mouth.
"They seem insistent for a wrong call."
"Idiots are usually insistent." Came Andreas' witty reply.
The phone's screen turned black as the incoming call terminated.
"See? Told you it was a wrong call." Andreas finished his breakfast and headed to school with Mathew. Artemis waited for her boyfriend to pick her up.
Andreas smirked. "You know, if you like her, you should ask her out or something." He told Mathew who turned his head to him blushing.
"Uhhh…she's like one of the cutest girls in school. She probably has a boyfriend already and he's older. Besides…how do you even ask a girl like that out?"
"Like any other girl? "Hey wanna go out with me?" And if she had a boyfriend she'd be around him, I see her alone. Stop making assumptions that keep you idle to keep you idle, surpass your shyness fear, and ask her out. Or regret it forever." Andreas shrugged and moved on.
Turning his head around he saw Mathew standing there swaying slightly back and forth, go not go, go not go. Go not go.
Andreas walked back, and gave Mathew a good shove on his back. Mathew stumbled over to the girl and her friends who giggled.
Andreas left them at it walking inside the school building where he found Triton in one of the corridors near their classroom.
"I've not seen Michael anywhere, the last few weeks since I broke his arm…"
Triton eyerolled. "Yeah, good day to you too." He punched his shoulder playfully. "Immortal Dork."
Andreas chuckled. "Morning doofus." Triton grinned.
"That's not a bad thing is it though?" Triton asked.
"I prefer a dog that barks. Oh well nothing to be done, we'll face it when it comes."
Classes had become interesting in Triton's and Andreas' year with Andreas' witty and knowledge-full remarks and explanations. He could not always hold himself back from correcting the teachers.
This day, though had passed without many such remarks. "Everything all right?" Asked Triton.
"Hmm? Yes, why would I not?" Andreas asked him as if surprised.
"I don't know. You have become the class's poster boy for funny, witty remarks and today you had very little to say." Triton shrugged.
"Maybe I'm coming down with something." Andreas avoided.
"Bullshit. You can't get sick." Triton pushed.
"I broke up with Sophia." It was the end of the school day. "Or rather she broke up with me."
Triton stared in his eyes. "What happened?"
"Teenagerhood." Came Andreas' dry reply.
Triton eyerolled. "Your replies sometimes…"
"Witty? Come on let's go home. We're coming up to the good stuff." Andreas gave a trying smile.
"You are at least…what? Seven hundred years old? How much better can it get? You have given me information on several Byzantine Emperors, Arab sultans, Venetian merchants, some of which still known. You were there in the Fall of Constantinople, the Fall of Baghdad from the Mongols. What good stuff?"
"Well…I'm not just Seven Hundred years old, am I?" Andreas remarked.
"As I've mentioned I was in Athens in 412 A.D., It had been two years since we had heard of another Fall, of Rome's to the Warlord Alaric and his forces. What a turbulent time it was, hordes and armies ravaging the lands once protected for hundreds of years under the Pax Romana, raping and pillaging, burning, and laying waste to civilization. But in the east Constantinople rose. We couldn't believe the news when we heard them, the eternal city sacked, the Empire in shambles, the once divine Emperors now puppets to barbarians.
"At the time, I had found myself an apprenticeship of sorts in a blacksmith's forge, helping the man who owned it and his two sons. My first friends in a good long while. Fleeting joys of an eternal life." It was seldom that Andreas' voice did not possess a hue of melancholy.
"What changed it?"
"Samaritan raid, the two boys killed in the attack, one raped. The forge destroyed, the man, widower already joined the imperial army to seek revenge. I too joined the navy, if you ever want to know how to create Greek Fire, I guess, I'm your guy." Triton's jaw fell open with Andreas winking at him.
"Where were you before Athens?"
Andreas allowed for a couple to pass them by before continuing. They were walking back home.
"Roaming the Eastern Roman Empire. I always liked reaching one geographical end, staying in various locations along the way then tracing back to Constantinople, seeing grow, and expand. I stayed in Alexandria for a few years at the Hight of its scientific progress. Did you know that not only had they discovered the Earth was spherical but also that it was travelling around the sun and that the sun was but one of many stars circling a central point? They thought it was the center of universe. Now we know it as the center of the Milkyway galaxy. A philosopher even argued that we may not have been the only such universe in existence. He meant not the only galaxy but still at three 300 A.D. that was something." Triton nodded trying to record everything Andreas was saying in his tablet.
"Oh, the freedom of travelling horse back in the middle of the dessert, from oasis to oasis, alone or with caravans. It was interesting finding locations I had been before now in ruins."
"Like?"
"Like Nekken, like temples and palaces and cities now long since abandoned and covered by sand."
"Nekken? I do not know it."
"You do, by another name. More on that later. I was there when the Arab tribes invaded, taking the lands from the Romans, I even fought in the siege of Alexandria. Almost lost my head there, to a mortal as well. The city was never recovered by the Byzantines but the Arab dynasties did it justice regardless."
"How many languages do you speak?" Asked Triton. "I have heard you this far speak…at least 20 different languages and many more dialects, some of which extinct."
"Stuff one picks up while traversing the Earth for…centuries and having to communicate with people of different religions, cultures and languages." Replied Andreas. "I have them all written down you know. Every dialect and language I know."
Triton's eyes bulged at the concept. "How many are they? Where are they recorded?"
Andreas smiled at his eagerness and excitement. "They are…about a hundred dialects and as many languages, most of which lost and forgotten. As to where I have recorded them…up until I met you I kept detailed diaries and journals of my life. Up until what is called now late antiquity I would hide them in locations, then Julius Flavio created the "bank" where Switzerland is now and I spent a lot of time going back to those places digging them up and getting all of them to there. Some were destroyed by time's passing so I had to rewrite them. I have since been sending them there."
"But...all that pool of knowledge and they would have to be maintaining them? I mean...the materials can't have lasted all that time…wait a second…until late antiquity? How…"
"Like I said we're getting into the good stuff now and what? We are already nearing 0 A.D." Andreas chuckled.
"You were there? In the "Holy Lands"?"
Andreas smirked. "No, but that's a story for another time."
"You tease! So there exist journals written by you? Why have me write all of it again?"
"For two reasons, one you seem to enjoy it, and it brings us closer together as friends and this is from your perspective the journals are from mine. Both perspectives are useful I think." Triton eyed him curiously but said nothing.
"You were there, in Alexandria when her philosophers discovered the Earth was round and traveling around the sun? And Hypatia, what was she like?"
"I was in Alexandria during that time, yes. And she was…astonishing, driven and opinionated in a man's world on the verge of change between the Roman Pantheon and the…Monotheistic religion coming from the east. She was a genius. One of three truly ingenious people I have met."
"Da Vinci, I still cannot believe you've met the guy, her and…?"
"You'll find out soon enough…although I must admit the closer we get to my actual age the more…apprehensive I get."
"Why?"
"Because, mortals tend to freak out when they find out. When I get there. I mean I haven't trusted all that many with this but they have all previously freaked out one way or another."
"We've been through this. I won't freak out. I mean you are already what? Practically 2000 years old? Adding a few years or decades to this won't influence me."
"What about centuries?" Andreas thought. "I think those three hundred and something years were some of the toughest of my life. I think in all the previous ones I had been sheltered from any major social upheavals or changes travelling from place to place. This was the first time I was seeing a society I knew well, the Roman one crumble and change forever. Before 79 A.D. I had spent almost two hundred years travelling the western parts of the Roman Empire and now news kept reaching me of all the changes, the massacres, the new kingdoms sprouting everywhere. The very concept of Pax Romana was undone."
His phone ringing interrupted his narration.
He made a guttural sound of disgust rejecting the incoming call.
"Who is it?" Triton couldn't hold his curiosity.
"I do not know. It's always withheld and it's always the same person, claiming he is my creator and that my name's Adam and I am the third of something. He and the constant dreams of late are tiring me out."
"Dreams?" Asked Triton, mulling over what Andreas had told him.
"Yeah…the last month or so in increasing frequency. I am either fighting a hooded or veiled figure and when I kill it it's me. Or I have an empty dark space before me with only a table in it and me. On the table are scales, one end has a…copper coin and the other one a gold coin. For some reason in the dreams I always pick the gold coin and I always end up dying because more gold coins appear on the scales and I keep picking them up until I drown from vapour like liquid yet un-existing water while I watch my city getting demolished. Or the really fun ones where I have to decide between sacrificing you or me. I can never decide in the dreams and it is just pure frustration as I feel I must but I can't kill you and I can't kill me." Andreas gave a yell of despair ejecting his hand outwards in front of his head as if to push someone back, his face expressing his frustration.
"And to boot it all there's a voice in the background speaking in a language I do not know, telling me shit I don't understand but I feel I should understand and I don't and it's just for fucks sake fuck you all and let me sleep in peace." Andreas concluded panting.
Triton replied with a hug, in complete apathy of the fact they were out in the middle of the street outside the block of flats his home was in.
"Look, it's Friday why don't we do something together? Homework has been a killer the past few weeks and other than training and your life narration sessions we haven't hung out much together. Is there a movie or something you'd like to see? Or something else to do?"
"I have a date." Andreas stated. Triton had to roll his eyes.
"You just broke up!"
"She did and yeah so? Georgia is cute. How's Nikos?"
"Yeah, he's okay…" Triton blushed involuntarily, his mind racing over memories of him and Nikos, Nikos' body naked and other such thoughts. "Thought, but how…open minded is your new girlfriend?"
"You mean if she'll mind a double date with two cute gay boys? I do not know I have only spoken to her in school so far and some chatting online, but I think most of your…our age group are more or less okay with it. Are you sure you want to come out to a stranger though?"
"No, I haven't even told my parents yet, nor has Nikos but…I just want us to hang out some."
Andreas smiled. "Sure, we can hangout until I have to leave to get ready, wanna see something in the TV or laptop?" Triton nodded.
Mathew could feel goosebumps across his spine, and his throat coarse and hard to swallow, his heart and mind racing.
Walking faster he interjected their path. They stopped walking looking at him. Her girlfriends giggled while she stood there smiling awkwardly.
"H…hi wanna go out with me?" He said in one breath, really fast. Half of him wished she'd say yes half she'd say no. In fact, he knew not which of the two answers terrified him more yet he knew which one he wanted to hear more.
"Sure." She nodded biting her lower lip softly. "Give me your phone." He handed it out to her, she opened Fakebook's app and sent herself a friend request before handing it out to him.
"Cool, tomorrow?" He continued not believing his luck.
"Uh uhu, see you!" She left walking fast giggling and whispering with her girlfriends.
A couple of seconds later a notification beeped. She had accepted "his" friend invite.
And so he started chatting with her and Andreas, in two separate chat dialogues.
A knock came on the door to his study. "Enter." Paul voiced while looking at a case folder.
"Hey, dad. Mum says food's almost ready."
"Andreas left?"
"Yeah…date. Is he still avoiding the Watchers?" His father's grunt of confirmation made him giggle.
Taking some steps inside the room he saw two three folders opened on the desk. "George's and Eva's cases are still open huh?"
"Indeed. Not peculiar. Officially they are closed as far as the police is concerned but the Watchers need to know who killed them and we don't know, still. It's like their watchers have memory gaps or something."
"Weren't you George's Watcher?"
"Indeed."
"What are these two?" Triton pointed at two pictures of two bone-like objects with two different runes carved on them.
"We don't know what the runes mean, yet they are from a language called linear A and we have yet to decipher it, humanity I mean, but some of our contacts who dated the bones place them as far back as one hundred…thousand years or more."
"They were found by George's and Eva's bodies?" Asked Triton, looking ashen.
"Indeed, why are you asking?"
"Uhh, no reason. Just curious is all. Come on I'm starving." He cut the conversation short.
"You are always starving." Triton laughed poking his tongue at his father.
As it was Friday evening and Andreas was otherwise preoccupied he left for Nikos' place for a sleepover.
Nikos greeted him with a huge grin, grabbing him by his wrist dragging him in, closing the door behind him and firmly planting his lips on his. Triton allowed himself to be handled smiling broadly by the younger boy's energy then he cupped a cheek in each hand reciprocating his kiss.
Moaning Triton broke the kiss. "Nice to see you too, babe." Nikos grinned.
"Mum and dad are out." Nikos blinked rapidly.
"Well, then…" Triton pulled Nikos to him pushing his tongue in the boy's mouth eating each other's breaths for a few.
Nikos broke it leading Triton to his room and his bed, pushing Triton on it and straddling him.
"Sooooo." He giggled. "I wanna suck you and you suck me, mkay?" It was not precisely a request as much as a statement, one that Triton had no intention of denying.
"You are delicious how could I ever deny you?" Replied Triton pulling him down, his hands all over Nikos' dick massaging it. It always made Nikos squirm and make little squeaks.
Nikos kissed lower to Triton's neck, breathing in his teen scent before moving to his boy nipples.
"Oh fuck, that's new!" Triton inhaled feeling a warm, moist feeling surround his dick. Instinct taking over he held Nikos' head in his hands shoving his pelvis upwards.
"Oh gawd…oh fuck yeeesssss…." It did not take long for Triton to get lost in the intense feelings and take over from Nikos. A few seconds of face-fucking later he blew his load in Nikos' waiting and eager mouth.
"OOoohhhh fuuuuck!!!!" With a yell announcing his imminent eruption and a final shove he cummed.
Nikos slurped and swallowed all he could, some of it slipping outside from the edges of his lips. Coming up he grinned and dove in kissing Triton sharing his own cum with him.
"Your turn, babe." Nikos gave a sly smile lying on the bed.
"Yeah…" Triton returned the smile placing himself above his boyfriend.
Two days later they lay under a tree in the park, Triton taking notes.
"So, you were in Herculaneum? When Vesuvius blew?" Triton couldn't believe he was actually asking this from someone.
"I was. I had settled there for nearly…five years and I knew I'd have to relocate sooner or later but I had friends there and for a little while a semblance of a normal life, like I do now, and like then, now will also end…eventually."
"How was it? I mean the pyroclastic flows must have been…" Triton's voice faded away.
"I…knew what it'd be like so shortly before the wall of ash and molten rock came upon us I slit my wrists. I still had to claw myself out of the ash-tomb before it had solidified and leave the area. I died a few more times while trying to flee the area although the psychological impact was worse than any physical death. But I'll tell you this, Vesuvius wasn't the loudest volcano I've heard erupt but I know that sound and…I can't properly put into words how it feels to hear that booming sound and know there is shitloads of nothing you can do to escape. It doesn't matter how fast you run or where you try to run off to, you hear that sound and you know you are dead, the ash wall will kill you. It is an immobilizing realization and it is followed by death.
"Both times I saw it, the eruption. Although Vesuvius was like comparing a firecracker to a…nuclear bomb but I saw it, I even knew it was coming before hand. The earthquakes, the smoke rising from the volcano, increasing as the days went by…I stayed behind trying to convince the residents to leave…if only more had believed me…then thunders before the eruption followed by the boom and the huge pillar of ash. I slit my wrists as the flow reached the city. It was horrifying to see the stars covered up by a wall of dark…glowing cloud flowing at breakneck speeds." Andreas shivered.
"Thunders before the eruption…" Triton's whisper was cut off by Andreas' phone ringing.
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