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Their assembly had taken a brief pause, mostly to give everyone time to breathe and think and cool down after being given such a moral thrashing. While some of the more embittered senators stood in clusters back inside to groan of their displeasures, the cheering of the common people echoed all around.

Claire hardly got past the building’s awning and down a few steps before many in the crowd ran up towards with excitement plastered on their faces. Although their advance was quickly stopped by a couple of praetorians who stepped in protectively – they pulled their scutums closer to their bodies as their other hands reached for their hilts.

“It’s alright,” said Claire quickly. “The people aren’t my enemy.”

She stepped just past the praetorians and smiled at the people around her. Claire couldn’t help but feel energized by their enthusiasm – many yelled out their support and praise for her, which no doubt echoed into the building behind her easily.

“Senator Clarus! Thank you so much for speaking today!”

“It’s time more of the truth was told!”

“You’re the only senator who’s given any of us hope!”

“You’re all far too quick to praise me,” Claire replied. “I haven’t accomplished much of anything yet – I’m merely a junior with barely a few months of time in the senate. And besides, it isn’t just up to me – we all have much to do if we’re to make any kind of true change.”

.....

“What can we do, though?” asked an older plebe. “We’ve no power, no wealth, no means. Many can’t even write or read…”

“That’s far from true – all of us together are a vast power. The empire might be famous for its roads and its swords, but what holds it together is all of us. We work the fields, shape the tools, press the wine, cook the food. Without any of us, all of it crumbles to dust.

“The patriarchs of the empire seem to have forgotten who it was that built Rome – it was our fathers and our mothers, alongside their fathers and mothers, stretching all the way back to the founding. Certainly, they grew wealthy in the process, but that doesn’t make them more important than us.

“All we need to do is remind them of that fact. Then they’ll listen to us – all of us.”

“What’re you saying?” asked a concerned citizen. “That we stop working? That if we put our tools down, it’ll force the empire to listen to us? That won’t work! The patriarchs will just get more slaves to do the work in our stead! Then where would any of us be? We’d get thrown out in the streets to die in the gutters!”

There was a murmur of agreement that spread across the crowd. Some were so agitated that they began to curse loudly.

But Claire did her best to calm everyone down.

“We share that concern, you and I,” said Claire. “Listen, please, understand that our climb is uphill. It will hardly be easy. In fact, many of us may get hurt. Our blood might get spilled. We might lose much.

“But if we do nothing, if we simply allow it to happen, then I promise you we will definitely get hurt. All our blood will be spilled. And we will lose everything. Tell me, which would you rather have?”

There was another murmur as Claire’s argument swept through the crowd.

Of course they knew they needed to act, but fighting against the rich and powerful seemed an impossibility. They were all simple people, with simple lives. Confronting those who commanded armies felt a bit like suicide.

Although some were vaguely aware of a plebeian uprising that occurred in the long distant past.

“We could resurrect the Conflict of Orders!” someone shouted. “We could threaten secession from the empire, as a class!”

He was immediately met with a chorus of approval, and many attempted to chant it, but once again Claire calmed the crowd down.

“That is an excellent idea,” she said. “But things are more complicated these days. We could do something similar, perhaps, but pure secession would be impossible. The Conflict of Orders worked back then because power was shared among the plebeians and patricians, back when the empire was a republic. There’s an obvious imbalance in our strength today.

“We would need to be extremely careful if we were to go down that road, and-”

Before Claire could finish her sentence, someone within the crowd screamed angrily.

“Harpies like you got no place in the senate!” they said. “And if you don’t shut your mouth, I’ll shut it for you!”

The angry man pushed his way through the crowd as he rushed towards Claire. In his hand was a sharp pugio – its edge gleamed under the morning sun. Its tip was aimed straight for her chest.

Those in the crowd around him screamed in panic, then ran in every direction out of pure fear. And because chaos had erupted, they ran chaotically in every direction.

Both of the praetorians were unable to respond quite in time. They struggled against the running crowds, even as the assailant drew closer and closer to Claire. Both watched in horror as he burst through and swung his dagger down on the senator. They drew their gladiuses and screamed at the crowd to get out of their way.

They were too little, too late.

But Claire herself was hardly put off by the attack. She was a Raven, after all, and had learned from the best how to handle herself.

As Freya had taught her long ago, she breathed deep as she pulled whatever reserves she had deep within. She then unleashed her own latent energies throughout her body just as her would-be assassin was right in front of her.

Then in a burst of movement and power, Claire grabbed him by his wrist and his tunic, turned her body to redirect his energy, then threw him right over her shoulder.

Her assailant sailed for a moment before he landed face-first into the steps in front of the Curia Julia. His face made a crunching sound as bone met stone. It was accompanied by the clanking of his blade against the cobble.

Claire’s energies ebbed back down to normal as she exhaled out, even as his body crumpled into a heap.

But even as she recovered herself, two more assassins leapt from out of the panicked crowd. They too had sharp daggers in their hands, and their faces were as angry and as reddened as the first man.

They too swung their weapons down on the female senator, as hard as they could.

They too were stopped moments before their edges could pierce her skin. Their daggers never even came close.

Both Freya and Lucifer hardly had to think about it, and immediately leapt into the fray. They both got right next to Claire, and physically blocked her from both her remaining assailants.

Lucifer’s hands waved in the air as ze wove hir psychokinetic energies all around hir. And with a quick motion, grabbed the assassin mid-swing. Ze literally froze him in position with hir mind, and it took almost no effort on hir part.

Ze grinned as ze watched him squirm and fight against hir helplessly. But there was nothing he could do, not in the slightest.

Hir grin turned more vindictive as ze squeezed the assassin’s throat with hir mind, and choked off all air from getting to his lungs. It didn’t take long for him to cough and sputter as his face turned redder and redder.

After only a few seconds, he slumped over and completely passed out, at which point Lucifer let him go. His body clattered to the ground limply.

Freya dealt with her target much more viscerally. All she did was duck down, leapt forward, then flung an elbow straight at his sternum. There was a distinct CRACK as she shattered his chest.

More than that, the force of her blow was more than enough to throw the man a half dozen meters away. Blood poured out of his mouth as shards of bone dug into his heart.

To him, it felt as though he had just been struck by a slab of heavy iron. And he was sure, in those last few moments, that even if he wore armor the result would have been the same.

He groaned in pain for only a few moments before he ultimately fell unconscious as well. Blood pooled around him as bits of his bone punched through his chest.

With the crowds now properly dispersed, the two praetorians quickly ran up to Freya and Lucifer with their weapons drawn and their shields high. Both their expressions hardly changed, and in fact, Lucifer seemed to challenge the praetorian in front of hir with a sly grin.

“Get away from the senator!” one of them shouted.

“Stop, stop!” Claire cried out. “I’m fine, and these are my friends… They defended me… So please, stand down. There’s no need for any more bloodshed, alright?”

The two praetorians looked at each other tentatively, then back at Freya and Lucifer. They then sheathed their weapons and nodded to them deferentially.

“Thank you for protecting the senator,” said one of them. “Though in the future, we beg that you leave it to us.”

“If we did, the senator wouldn’t be standing right now,” chided Lucifer.

Before they could get angry from Lucifer’s provocations, Freya got in between them apologetically and with her hands up in front of her.

“Pardon my partner,” she said with a nervous chuckle. “Lucifer here has a problem with authority sometimes.”

“Gods-damned right I do.”

“Hmph. Well, tell your partner that provoking a praetorian isn’t the wisest thing to do,” said one of them. “Especially in the heart of the empire.”

“I will, I will!”

Freya then turned Lucifer around and faced Claire, who was a little shaken. But incredibly happy at seeing her friends. She hugged each of them, even while the two praetorians picked up the three assassins and drug them off by their feet.

“I can’t believe you two!” she said. “It’s been so long since I’ve seen you! How was the countryside? Why’re you in the city all of a sudden? How long are you staying? Are either of you hungry? No wait, of course you’re not… Anyway – you’ve gotta tell me all about it!”

She quickly grabbed the two of them by their elbows, then walked them northwards to Trajan’s Market with Azrael right alongside.

“Been thinking,” Lucifer told Freya telepathically as they walked. “Maybe we oughta stay in the city, like Azrael said.”

“What, seriously?” Freya thought back. “Weren’t you the one who wanted freedom from this mess? Said the capital was the last place you wanted to get stuck in. Said it brought out the worst in you.”

“Sure, yeah, that sounds about right. Honestly though you’re more important to me than any of that. I mean, our lives are amazing, don’t get me wrong or anything… I absolutely love what we have. So if anything happened to you, if you stopped being you, then none of it matters. Not really anyway.”

“Wow. Maybe it was you that fell and broke your head,” teased Freya. “Really not recognizing you at all right now.”

“No, take me seriously right now, alright? For one thing, if we’re here, you can be closer to Azrael. She can monitor you for a bit, and hopefully figure out what’s going on with you.

“For another thing, we can be closer to Claire. What she’s doing is way too important. More important than either of us combined. Only woman in the senate? Speaking like that to the patriarchs? That’s gonna get her killed – you just watched an attempt. We need to keep her safe.

“And finally, you heard the senators. The empire’s almost broke. That means it’s weak and easy to kill. If we stay, we can fight it. We can undermine it. We can shatter it from the inside, right at the heart of it all.

“I guess, what I’m saying is we keep talking about fixing this or fixing that, but all we’ve been doing is enjoying ourselves to the maximum. So maybe now’s the time we do something about all this…

“You with me?”

Freya looked at Lucifer with stars practically in her eyes. This was the part of hir that she was absolutely in love with – the violent anti authoritarian rebel with a heart heavy as gold.

“For the rest of eternity, through heaven and hell.” she happily replied.