Nick Kane
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Gateway Chapter 1
🕑 Added 2024-09-02 22:07:45 +0000 UTCRome.
It is a beautiful city, with the morning sun shining upon it it’s hard not to feel at peace walking through its streets, although the tourists try really hard to ruin the atmosphere.
Not that I can complain too much, considering I’m a tourist myself, but at least I have the mind to keep photographs and rubbernecking to a minimum.
Or maybe I’m not doing it thanks to the three-and-a-half hours of travel to get here.
Although I have to say, the beautiful scenery combined with the smoothness of my uncle’s bike and the pleasant weather made it a very enjoyable ride, it was only waking up so early to get here that sucked.
I heard a call from the guide, the tour of the Colosseum I’d been waiting for finally starting.
As we start moving, I finally start paying attention to the tour group: An old British couple with a stereotypical tourist setup, an Italian couple with their young daughter, three middle-aged men discussing passionately in a language I don’t understand, and a group of ten hungover Americans in what appears to be their graduation trip.
Of course, there’s also me: short dark-brown hair, brown eyes, and an angular jawline with some stubble. I honestly look the same age or a little bit older than some of the Americans even though I’m still 15, which is the point of the stubble, Uncle Jean-Claude would much rather spend his time in a café or bar flirting than play babysitter, something that I wholeheartedly agree with.
I hear the guide’s voice and I follow to enjoy the tour.
___
It’s around an hour into the tour that it happens, we pass through a doorway and suddenly we can hear a crowd roaring, as if we went from a soundproof room into a full stadium. The confusion is evident on everyone’s faces and everyone almost instantly started talking at the same time.
The guide looked spooked, but he still tries to calm everyone down.
While he does that, I notice how different this room is from the others, it’s nowhere near as dilapidated and there are even some wooden ornaments.
The noise increases and I look up just in time to see two men in armor come out of the doorway behind the guide.
Everything stops, both the men and the group are too shocked and confused to say or do anything, that is until the guide turns around and starts rapid-firing questions in Italian at the men.
“What’s going on!? Who are you!? Is this some new thematic tour that no one bothered to warn me about!? Because I’ll have you know that I don-”
And that’s as far as he got before one of the men pushed him back and started screaming back at him in what sounds somewhat like Italian, although I can only understand one or two words in every sentence.
The parents start moving backward to the wall beside the doorway we came through, which now also has a door, the Americans divide themselves, with the guys going to back up the guide and the girls going with the parents while pulling the confused seniors with them, the three middle-aged men are nowhere to be found, and I?
I move slowly along the side wall, the room is just big enough that I can do it without being obvious, with both doors being close to the corner on the other side of the room, so no one notices me.
‘What the fuck is going on!? The metal-looking armor I can understand, but the language barrier and the way the second man has his hand on the handle of his sword make no sense!’
I reach into my spot just in time for the leading American to start screaming back and all hell breaks loose.
The little girl, who was being distracted by one of the girls starts crying, and that’s enough to distract the guys up front. It’s almost like slow-motion, while the first man is distracted with the guys, the second firms his grip on the sword and starts pulling. I scream and try to rush him, focusing my goal on the sword, but it’s no use, his sword is shorter than the ones you see in movies and he obviously has experience using it, by the time I collide with him his sword is already in the air, one of the guys making a gurgling noise.
The collision and subsequent fall are anything but graceful, the men were close together so they both go down.
While I fall and struggle to get the sword out of the man’s hand, everyone in the room starts screaming. One of the guys starts furiously stomping on the man’s face and he finally lets go of the sword.
As I pull myself up with the sword, I notice that it’s actually two of the guys stomping on the head of the man I just knocked down, while the guide is holding the other man’s legs while two other guys kick him in the face.
The last American guy is lying down in a big puddle of blood, his throat sliced open, gazing unblinkingly at the ceiling.
I shake myself off of the sight and look around, the parents, the kid, the girls, and the seniors are nowhere to be found, three of the guys have stopped and are now pulling back the last one from the unmoving body of the murderer.
“Hey!” I try to call out to them, but I can barely hear my own voice, drowned out as it is by my rapidly beating heart and the cheering from outside.
I jump as I feel a hand lightly grasp my arm, I turn and see the guide, he’s saying something but I can’t hear it so I focus on his face.
He’s wide-eyed and his previously tanned complexion is nowhere to be found, he’s not that much older than the Americans, but now it looks like he’s aged a decade in the last few minutes.
“-ay? Kid, calm down, are you ok?” I finally start hearing in English, I shake my head to clear my thoughts and answer.
“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine, just, y’know.” I answer, gesturing at the scene of the Americans crying over the body of their friend while avoiding looking at the other two bodies in the room.
“I understand, but we need to leave, I don’t have reception and I need to call the police” I nod and he moves to talk to the Americans while I move to the doorway, now door, we came in from.
___
As I pass through it, it happens again.
The light of the corridor, once from a bright and sunny morning, is now dark and interspersed with flickering orange. The dull roar of a stadium cheering changed in pitch to terrified screaming.
I turn to look at the room I just came from, and it’s empty apart from some dark spots where the bodies were.
The panic I’ve been holding off since this started rushes through me unimpeded, I turn back to the path we came from and start running, paying no attention to the scenery, holding the sword in my hand tightly, just in case.
As I round a corner, I spot a doorway for another room with the door ajar. I slow down to look inside and, once I go through I see the mother, huddled in a corner crying softly to herself. I approach and crouch in front of her.
“Hey, are you ok? Where is everybody?” I ask softly, trying to hide my relief in finding someone else.
“We were running back towards the entrance when we heard screaming coming towards us.” she sniffed “Everyone got into the closest room to hide, I thought Francesco and Bella were just behind me when…” she started crying again.
“When you went through the door, looked back and they weren’t there.” I say, and at her nod, I get up and extend my hand toward her. “Well, I guess we should go out there and find them, what do you say?”
She looks at my extended hand for a moment before giving me a watery smile and accepting it. As she’s getting up she looks at the sword in my hand.
“What happened to the others, after?” She asks, gaze fixed on the blood still on the blade.
“We managed to take out the men, far too late. After that, I went to the corridor to look for everyone when things changed.”
She nods and tears her gaze away from the sword to look back at me.
“I’m Antonella.” She says as we walk towards the door.
“I’m Alex” I answer, and as we pass through the door, another change happens.
The dull light of an overcast sky greets us from the window, the sound of the pouring rain alerting me to the fact that I haven’t heard the screaming since getting into the room where I found Antonella.
“Let’s go!” I say. As I start running in the direction of the entryway, my head barely turns to make sure she’s following me before focusing on the path ahead.
We barely start running when we come upon an odd sight.
One of the men in armor (guard, my mind helpfully adds) is accosting one of the American girls. He’s not aggressive, going for a flirtatious air that I’d swear was working if the coy smile on the blonde girl’s face wasn’t directed at the other four girls, who were trying very hard to sneakily carry a clay pot as big as me over their heads behind him.
I turn to Antonalla and, upon seeing her motioning me to be silent, nod and start to very slowly move toward the guard.
Once I’m a few feet behind him I wait as the girls get into position and let the entire weight of the pot hit him in the head, it is not a pretty sight.
“Grab his sword!” I tell one of the least shocked girls as I see Antonella running over. “Come on, we have to go!” I say, pulling the blonde girl with me as I start moving towards the entryway at the end of the corridor.
___
Once I go through the entryway, I notice that everything is exactly as it was when we were getting in except, of course, for the lack of anyone who works here and instead an abundance of suspicious men in suits.
I barely finish that thought when some of the men are already there, guiding the girls away from the Colosseum to a line of vans with a few ambulances behind them, I gently push the blonde girl towards one of them and turn to Antonella.
“Stay here, I’ll go back and find the others.” I say, running back inside.
She starts to say something but I’m already past the entryway, whatever is making things change coming into effect and turning the brightness of the morning into the dwindling light of late in the afternoon.
I stop, panting, trying to figure out why I came back when safety was just there.
I tried to justify it to myself but the thoughts refused to form, the truth is that there was something weird and magical happening and I wanted to be part of it, and who wouldn’t?
‘Well, sane people.’ The thought came unbidden.
Smirking to myself, I move forward to the center of the Colosseum.
___
As I approach the arena, I start hearing screams of anger, cries of pain, and demented laughter.
Upon my arrival, I see a tall figure with its back to me in the center of the arena, its deformed head the source of the laughter that seems to have two voices at the same time.
Surrounding it are what I can only assume to be the bodies of soldiers, all already defeated, but not all dead, with one unarmored man kneeling in front of the creature, a spear broken by his side.
It’s the father, one cursory glance doesn’t reveal his daughter, so hopefully she isn’t around to see this.
Slowly and with soft steps, I approach the thing laughing from behind, sword at the ready.
As I draw nearer, I prepare my attack, hold my sword with both hands and angle it up to where I hope the heart will be.
I put all my strength and body weight behind the blow, it smoothly slides in, with no resistance to stop me.
The laughter stops, the creature gurgles, and I feel my shoulders sagging in relief when something hits me from the side, launching me a few feet away to collide with one of the soldiers trying to get up.
The creature laughs while I reorient myself, and when I manage to open my eyes I see two faces come out of the deformed head, both of them pressed together at the front as if they were competing for space.
“As if a mortal weapon could actually kill us.” Both faces say at the same time while I try to get up, my side is pure agony and my breath is shallow.
“Although we commend you for managing to land such a blow,” They continue as I finally get my footing. “It is rare that a mortal can bypass our sight.”
The creature is slowly approaching me when I notice the father grabbing something on the ground where it was standing, I mask my noticing with a wince I wish was fake.
“So, what the fuck are you? I feel like the grotesque head is a clue.” I ask, acutely feeling the pain on my side with every word. But it can’t be helped, the father needs a distraction and I’m the only one available.
“You dare?!” The creature screams, its faces quickly turning purple in apoplectic rage.
“I AM JANUS! GOD OF ENDINGS AND BEGINNINGS! Of TIME! TRANSITIONS! GATES AND DOOR-” He stops when I catch the thing the father threw at me.
“The keyhole in his chest”” Is all I can hear before a wave of something bright passes where my head had just been.
I have just a microsecond to realize he threw me a key before I have to duck again, this time right at the god’s feet.
It’s more of a stumble than the roll I intended, but it did its job, all I can do after it is position myself with the few milliseconds I have before he attacks again and jump with all the power left in me.
I can see the shocked faces right when I inserted the key and turned it, whatever magic they were using to attack instantly stopped and blood came out of their mouths.
As I hit the ground, all I can hear is the god choking on its own blood before everything goes dark.
