Juncture 4.5

I was woken up in the middle of the night by an odd rumbling. I swung my legs over the side of the cot I had been sleeping on and leaned down to feel the ground. The dirt floor was shaking softly, and dirt particles flung their way onto my fingertips.

Something was going to happen. As I rose back up, a sense of doom balled up and sunk deep into my gut. I looked for Jake, but he wasn’t in the room. The shaking stopped for a second, long enough for my wariness to go down. I relaxed – and it began again, harder than before.

I went over to the window. Maybe there was some event going on outside that I didn’t know about. Looking out, I was surprised at how bright it was. A weird, dull, red light was emanating from dark cloud cover over the city.

I blinked.

Red light, in the middle of the night.

Rumbling ground.

Rome.

Ancient Rome.

It clicked.

“Pompeii,” I whispered to myself. Then I began getting dressed as fast as I could. While I was tying up my sandal I tripped and fell, losing precious seconds and almost landing on my sword.

I ran out of the room into the lobby of the inn. It was completely empty, and I exited as fast as I could.

Just outside of the entrance was Jake, still wearing the heavy grey cloak; that in the light looked more maroon than anything else. He was looking up in the direction of the red light, and as I got nearer I saw that he was holding his ornate porcelain mask rather than wearing it.

“We have to get out of here!” I shouted as I ran up to him. He turned around, a look of surprise on his face. “There’s a volcano and it’s gonna explode and... kill… everyone here.” The realization hit me like a truck. “Is that why we were sent here? Are we going to save people?”

Jake sighed. “No, we’re not, but you are right about the volcano. It’s going to explode in a day and a half, and we have that much time to get what we need. Namely, there’s a bunch of scrolls somewhere in this city that are apparently extremely pertinent to the organization—“

“What scrolls?” I interrupted. It was apparently hard to get Jake to talk, but he was incredibly long-winded when he did. That was surprising.

“I’m not sure exactly, but I have an idea of what they are.” He turned toward me. “Let’s say that you were given a long mission in a different time-period than your own. While you’re there, you get attacked, and lose track of your time machine. You also lose your memories. But after that, you’re plagued with memories of your past, or the future from where you’re at now.”

“Suddenly, things that you dreamed about start happening. Maybe you remember that you were supposed to save somebody, and they die. You can see the future. You’re a prophet. Naturally, you start telling people about these visions.”

“In Rome, people took prophecies seriously. They had the Oracle of Delphi. They had the Fates. And they had the Sybils. So I believe that the original Sybil - the one that the position was named after – was an OST agent.”

I nodded. It made a grim sort of sense. “So… how are we supposed to find these scrolls, if that is what they are? Wouldn’t they be in a library or a museum or something?”

“They might have been if the Sybil had any sense to share them, but from what I could tell, and what I’ve gleaned from the people at the OST, she wasn’t all too careful. There’s almost definitely a shrine or a temple or some religious site that the scrolls are kept at. When morning comes, we’ll just ask around for it.”

“I guess that sounds like a plan. Are you sure about the volcano?” I asked. I was terrified that he wasn’t right about when it was going to blow, and I didn’t want to get stuck here when it did.

“Yeah, I’m sure,” was his response.

“Okay, I’m gonna head back to sleep then. We’ll start looking in the morning, yeah?”

“Yup.” With that, he turned around and looked up at the sky again, and I was left to wearily go back to the inn. I swayed my way through the foyer, almost missing the small child staring at me with wide, brown eyes.

He looked to be about five, wearing a large shirt-like thing that was belted at the waist and hung down around his ankles. I stopped in my tracks, and we both stared at each other for several seconds. Then he whispered something I didn’t understand. I blinked rapidly.

“Um… no speak Latin?” I tried. The kid looked at me and babbled some more. No dice. I shrugged, pointed at him, pointed at my ear, and shook my head. He said something else and waited for me to respond, when I didn’t he walked away, up the stairs.

I went back to the room that I had been occupying earlier and started the tedious process of untying the stringy sandals. When I finished I laid myself back down on the bed.

I hadn’t realized just how scratchy it was when I had gone to sleep before, but I noticed its scratchy nature now. I turned onto my side – it helped a bit.

I closed my eyes, trying to go to sleep. It didn’t work. I wasn’t going to get any more sleep, probably at least until I was far, far away from here.

I spent the rest of the night thinking about what could go wrong.