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Writer's pictureMark Sanders

Chapter One: Lock

Blogtober 2021 Story Project

Lucius heard the bolt on the door slide open. Strong hands shoved him through the door, and he stumbled and fell on the rough ground of the dungeon. The door slammed shut, and he heard the bolt slide closed to lock him inside.


He was blindfolded, but he could smell the stench of death in every corner of the cell. Lucius had joined the Roman Legion on his 18th birthday, and in the seven years since, he had experienced the smell of death—blood, sweat, piss, shit, and rot—in Gaul, Greece, Judea, and now Egypt.


Lucius pulled off his blindfold, and his eyes were already adjusted to the darkness of the cell. An older man with a tonsure of graying hair and tattered robes sat against the wall to his left. To his right, a teenage girl with dark skin and long hair appeared to be praying.


In front of Lucius lay a wounded Libyan soldier, a member of the rebellion against the Empire that Lucius and his comrades had been sent into the desert to crush. The battles had occurred on the border, however, which made Lucius wonder how the man had come to be in Alexandria—that is, if they were still in Alexandria.


When Lucius was taken, he was struck on the head and rendered unconscious. When he came to, he was bound and blindfolded in the back of a wagon. He didn’t know how long it had taken them to reach this dungeon of death.

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