This story is about a young mage in ancient Rome with some little changes in history. The story takes place in about 300BC. It is recommended to read the prologue first. Enjoy...
Note: All characters are over 18 in the story
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When my father returned to the garrison he was promoted due to his brave sacrifice which he somehow survived. About five years later the Etruscan empire had to kneel before the republic of Rome and its people.
Arretium got a Roman provincial city and many of the Etruscan people were enslaved by Rome. Now as an officer my father took care to enslave as many of the Etruscan nobles as possible, because they declared war on Rome not the farmers or workers.
This move of my father to spare the poor people made a good impression in Arretium and the surrounding villages, which stopped the civil unrest and gave my father another promotion and he became Centurion.
About six years later my father was able to rescue consul Publius Valerius Laevinus in the city of Herdonia, when to consul was besieged by the Samnites. The good strategy and my father's brave and skillful fighting impressed the consul in a way to promote my father to a praetorian.
This was indirectly my ticked to the academy with the age of ten. The academy life was on the principle corpus et animus, so body and mind. In the morning we had body training and in the afternoon till late night we were taught magic and other knowledge.
The academy's teachings are focused on destructive hermetic and military warfare knowledge. The Legions teachings were intensive body training with military drill and much alarm practicing even with surprise alarm practice at night.
After some years of training I was very good at the mental disciplines. The other students were guessing why I was so good at fire spells especially when I was angry. My body skills were unfortunately not that outstanding. The main problem was not the endurance or the agility or strength; it was the problem of weapon skill.
All students of the legion's academy of destructive hermetic in Tibur got a ceremonial club like staff, for mage rituals, to perform better. This staff was very useful to me in kind of magic, but to fight with this stick was something that did not really work for me.
My father in the position of a praetorian got all results from possible candidates for praetorians in legion and in all the academies, so he was also aware of my bad results when it comes to weapon skills. This was a real career killer problem for me, so my father took some days off duty and traveled to from Rome into the small village half a day to the east in order to see me in the academy.
I was very surprised when in the morning the non named officer of the legion that came to see the students turned out to be my father. He was discussing with my teachers to get me for special training in order to improve the weapon skills. My teachers which were already frustrated by my bad results in only this one category of the education so they agreed.
My father was a little surprised how easy they gave their approval, but they explained it that in the other categories, there is not the high need for training compared to weapon skills.
He took me back to Rome to a small gladiator's school in the east of the city. He greeted the owner of this ludus as they were old friends. "This is Arius. He was one of my soldiers earlier before he finished his serving time in the legion in order to take over his father's ludus."
The man looked at me and said: "There he is. This is the young gifted Darius. Is he a son of your wife or your concubine?"
My father replied: "Actually he is from my concubine, but he has more potential then my other son. Some of his sisters show the same potential, but I could only afford to send one to Tibur."
"So Darius, come to me. I heard that you have problems with the weapon use?" he asked.
"Yes, this is correct, sir. I cannot really get in touch with this club they gave me from the academy." I replied a little ashamed.
"Hmmm, maybe it is simply the kind of weapon what troubles you. Your father never used a club and I saw him fighting with a lot of weapons. Let us try some things..." He gave me at first a short sword and instructed me to do some movements.
"You see Lucius he is already doing much better than his teachers would think. It is not him; it is the weapon that is wrong."