Episode 6.2.a
>Sextus's Villa, Pompeii, Italy, August 79 CE<
You say goodbye to Caecilius and walk over to Sextus's villa. Sextus is waiting at the door, smiling, a wax tablet ready in his hand. You wait for the world to come apart the way it always does.
Nothing happens.
Sextus turns the tablet over. He frowns. He turns it again. The smile goes out of his face.
"What is this," he says, not really to you.
He sets the tablet down and walks into the tablīnum, no longer smiling. A moment later he is back, and in his hand is the gleaming medicāmen he gave you the very first time, in your very first lesson.
"The tablet always worked," he says. "Today it won't. I don't know why."
He holds the medicāmen out. You take it. The world shudders. The colors slide. Sextus's villa thins out and is gone.
>Above new Carthage, in the most ancient time<
You are standing in a cloud beside Sextus. Below the cloud the sea opens out, and along the shore a new city is rising. Its walls are not finished. Its harbor is not finished. Everywhere, people are working.
"Carthage," says Sextus. "The city Dido is building right now. Not finished yet, but already beautiful."
In a second cloud, not far off, there are two goddesses. One of them you know: Juno. The other is the most beautiful woman you have ever seen, and you understand without being told that she is Venus. Both of them are angry.
Juno speaks first. "Aeneas was wandering, and so were you, Venus. Now Aeneas is building a new Troy. Your son and you have found the city. You should live here. We should set the Lapis here, in the new Troy."
She points down to the land, to the city, to the harbor, to the ships drawn up on the shore.
Venus answers her. "You are wrong, Juno. My son has a fate. Jupiter himself commanded it. The Lapis will be carried to Italy, not to Carthage. My son is building a new Troy, but not here. Rome will be the name of the new city. Empire without end, Juno. For Rome, not for you."
Juno is furious. Venus says nothing more. The two goddesses look at each other, and the cloud trembles under your feet.
>The shore of Carthage<
All at once you are standing on the shore. A wind comes off the water. Near you the Trojans are working, sailors and slaves, all of them worn down by a long voyage. Beside one of the ships a great labor is underway: an enormous stone is being lowered down from the deck, and you can hear the men shouting as they take the weight.
Eadem lūx. īdem Lapis.
Aeneas is there. He is looking at the stone. He turns to you.
"Why are you here with me, young ones? You should be carrying the Lapis!"
Prompt: In accordance with your worldview, and using your knowledge of Roman culture, either aid the removal of the Lapis to the shore, or interfere with it.
