Episode 12.2.a
>Alexandria, Aegyptus, 80 CE<
You are deep in your reading when shouting breaks out at the gate. Tertius is out of his chair at once, because you all know that voice. It is Tiberius. "I want to see whether they came here!"
Tertius pushes you back against the wall and goes to find out what is happening. When he returns he keeps his voice to a whisper. "I've paid the guard, and he'll let no one in. But Tiberius hasn't come alone. There are men with him, and they are the ones who sent him. Potentes, I think. They want to know where the map came from."
Then the ground begins to move.
"We have to get out, and..." Tertius says, and he is gone.
"Mission Control here," says the voice in your ear, not quite steady. "Operatives, please rem..."
The voice breaks off. In the same moment the ground heaves, and with a roar part of the Musaeum's wall comes down. The air turns black, and when you can see anything at all, the shape of a man is standing in the darkness in front of you.
A voice speaks inside your head. "We have to get away from here." It is Sinistrus.
"It appears the TSTT has lost track of you completely," Sinistrus says, "so I can risk invoking some code that I wouldn't otherwise have access to..."
Behind you, Tiberius and his companions are coughing in the dust, and the sound is coming closer. Daylight floods in where the roof has fallen, and it blinds you as badly as the dark did. In a moment Tiberius will see you, and the ground still has not stopped shaking...
"Here," says Sinistrus. "Your next training. Enjoy! And don't forget what's really important about this LAPIS nonsense!"
It is a hot day in the fields of Italy. You are standing a little apart from two Romans deep in talk. Both wear armor, and the crests on their helmets mark them as commanders.
"There!" says the prouder of the two. "He had the Lapis on the back of an elephant!"
The other, a plainer man who still talks like a farmer, answers, "So they say. On an elephant, at the battle on the Ticinus."
Prompt: Find out what's going on.
