there’s panic in the air. the true emperor of rome slipped out of the city. he was making for nicaea but you have no idea what happened to him. you half-remember wires that sang of distant lands but apparently they have fallen silent or maybe it was just a dream you had forgotten until now the usurper’s armies surrounded the city surely it’s the city? there’s the golden horn, there’s the sparkling sea of marmara. but wasn’t it bigger? wasn’t there a grand… pantheon? the image of a stern-faced god on a ceiling drifts briefly through your mind
the sons and daughters of byzas the grandchildren of poseiden himself drawn to this meeting of sea and earth were among the first to take up the cause of the true emperor of rome, the first to declare against the man who bought the empire from the emperor’s murderers. but your emperor was not the only one. rome is a five-headed aquila.
the sky night sky is cloaked in luminous smoke but isn’t it always these days? you can’t remember the last time you’ve seen the stars over the bosphorus. the walls have tumbled down. the usurper’s legions surge over the rubble. the false emperor himself now strides the street, stern, grim-faced, severe, purple cloak stained crimson with the blood of byzantines. your heart falls. if he’s here, the true emperor must have already been slain elsewere.
he orders the city put to the torch. you turn and run, but there are legionaries everywhere. you have no idea where you could go anyway, the geometry of this place is all wrong. you can’t find a single familiar landmark to orient yourself by. where’s the well,you can’t quite remember what it was called but what about that place where or remember that time you and no you can’t quite or what about the site you heard once had etc., etc. loyalty to pescennius niger the just has bought nothing but death for byzantion, and for you.
You awake with a start. You light a lamp and check the clock in your hotel room, and wish you hadn’t. The opening of day two of the International seems impossibly far in the future.
Whenever you feel yourself about to drift back to sleep, you suddenly notice the sound of the clock ticking and jolt back into consciousness.
It keeps you up all night. You arrive at Presidium Hall having gotten just four hours of sleep. Well, it could be worse.