savetheearth | Second Message [Text

Does anyone know this story?

A Roman soldier travels to a desert ruin, questing in search of a supposed artifact carrying otherworldly power. He finds the artifact, but as soon as he touches it, the god whose power it holds possesses him. Borrowing its unnatural abilities and turned immortal, he begins preparations for a ritual to summon that god onto Earth.

A thousand years later, a slave dancer in a temple in the forest is left alone and desperate for adventure, and explores. A secret passage takes her to the place where the temple's deity hides, and where she is given another artifact that she is told she needs to hide from the deity's enemies. Somehow, the artifact is magically absorbed inside her. Before she can go back to the surface, the soldier appears and demands to know where the artifact is. When she can't answer, she is killed on the spot.

[A short horizontal stroke.]

That doesn't sound like the end, but that's all that I know. I've tried to look it up in several places, but I haven't seemed to have found anything at all.

I know that it probably doesn't seem important. However, it feels important... I remembered it just after watching what happened on April 5th, though I can't remember where I might have possibly heard it or read it.

Thank you.

[He starts to sign his name - but no further than "Anth" thinks better of it on remembering Davin's propositions and rubs it out.

After Capt. Mass responds, he reconsiders again and signs "Anthony J."]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I've got a weird ancient artifact stuck around my waist. I can absorb it back into myself.

I'd rather just the weird memories.

[He's not sure who this is, but there's no point in being secretive since so many people were there at Lyall's meeting when the stupid belt showed up in the first place.]

I was there when that appeared. Hello, sir. I'm one of Mr. Lyall's students.

Do you think of them as memories?

Which one were you?

[The shock of the belt combined with Hajime's normal pre-meeting aloofness made it a bit difficult to remember everyone who was there...]

I'm not sure. The one I saw felt too vivid to be a dream. But I know I've never been in that situation. What about you?

I was the taller one in the brown jacket. My name is Anthony. I'm a freshman. [He half wonders if it would've done for identification to say even just that, for the weight grade seems to have among students.]

I know that I can't have been in the situations I've seen in them, either. In my first one, I was told to deliver a message to Charlemagne. In the second one, I saw a dead body in an old wooden coffin with its chest blasted open.

Ah, right. I remember you. My name's Hajime. I don't think I ever introduced myself to the group.

[No, he much preferred skulking around the back of the room, avoiding notice...at least until the belt had made that impossible.]

Second one wasn't because of what happened to that kid, was it? After that happened, I saw some guy in weird armor who wanted to shoot me.

[Which isn't quite what he saw, but it's easier to explain. Killing makes more sense than the "sealing" the vision had gone on about.]

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