The news fell upon Rome like a thunderclap on a clear day. It arrived in the form of a single, dust-caked rider, his horse lathered to a foam, who galloped through the Forum screaming of a massacre on the frontier. He was, by design, a perfect instrument of Perennis's art—a man whose genuine terror was real, even if the context he understood was a carefully constructed lie. Within hours, the story was on every tongue, a firestorm of rage and grief sweeping through the city.
Fort Zeugma, a forgotten outpost on the far edge of the civilized world, had become a household name. A full cohort of Roman soldiers, sons of Rome, had been slaughtered. A treacherous Parthian commander, in an act of unparalleled barbarism, had launched a cowardly, unprovoked attack on a peaceful garrison. The details, embellished by Perennis's agents seeded throughout the city, were gruesome and inflammatory: the fort's commander crucified, the Roman standard desecrated and dragged through the dirt. The honor of Rome had not just been insulted; it had been spat upon. The city was in an uproar, a collective roar for vengeance.
Alex convened an emergency session of the Senate. The Curia was packed, its usual air of drowsy debate replaced by a volatile, electric fury. Senators who weeks ago were plotting against him were now clamoring for blood, their faces flushed with patriotic rage. Pertinax was there, standing tall and grim, the dutiful servant of the city, his face a mask of solemn duty. He knew, better than anyone, that this was a turning point. He could feel the reins of the city's mood being snatched from his hands.
When Alex entered, a hush fell over the assembly. He ascended the rostrum, and the man they saw was not the cold, calculating politician of recent memory. He was transformed. His face was pale, his eyes burned with a cold fire, and he wore the simple, unadorned toga of a grieving citizen. He was the personification of Rome's righteous anger.
"Fathers of the Senate," he began, his voice low, trembling with a controlled rage that was more powerful than any shout. "I come before you today with a heart heavy with sorrow, and a spirit hot with outrage."
He recounted the story of the "unprovoked, barbaric" attack on Fort Zeugma. He painted a vivid picture of brave Roman soldiers, keeping the peace on a quiet frontier, ambushed in the dead of night by a savage horde. His words were simple, brutal, and effective. He did not need to lie about the details of the massacre; Perennis's trap had ensured they were all too real.
"They have murdered our sons! They have defiled our Eagle! They have scorned the very name of Rome!" he thundered, his voice finally rising to a crescendo of fury that was met with an answering roar of approval from the senators. "I ask you now, what shall be our response? Do we send a diplomat with a strongly worded protest? Do we demand an apology and a bag of Parthian gold? Or do we answer this atrocity in the only language these Eastern despots understand? The language of Roman steel!"
The Senate erupted. Cries of "War! War! Vengeance!" echoed off the marble walls. Alex let their fury build, standing silent at the rostrum, the eye of the storm. He had them. War was now inevitable, a foregone conclusion.
But then, just as the calls for war reached their peak, he held up a hand for silence. The chamber, slowly, reluctantly, quieted. He was not finished. He was about to pivot, to use the immense political capital he had just generated to launch not just a war, but a new age.
"But vengeance for our fallen sons is not enough!" he declared, his voice cutting through the expectant silence. "To simply march to the frontier, to find this one rogue commander and put his head on a spike, is not enough! That is the action of a city watch, not a global empire! We must look deeper!"
He paced the rostrum, his presence commanding the absolute attention of every man in the room. "This attack is not an isolated incident! It is a symptom of a deeper sickness! A sickness of weakness and complacency that has been allowed to fester on our borders for a generation! For too long, we have looked inward. We have bickered over titles and taxes. We have grown fat and comfortable in our villas while our enemies grow bold in their deserts and forests! They see our peace and call it weakness! They see our prosperity and call it decadence! This attack on Fort Zeugma happened for one reason and one reason only: because they thought they could get away with it! Because they no longer fear us!"
He strode to a massive, newly installed map of the known world that now dominated one wall of the Curia. "Look!" he commanded, pointing to the sprawling, ill-defined Parthian Empire. "A viper's nest of treachery and civil war that has threatened the legacy of Alexander and the stability of our East for generations! We will not just punish them; we will break them! We will shatter their armies, dethrone their puppet kings, and tear down their cities of mud and straw! We will seize the wealth of their Silk Road and use it to fund legions that will be the envy of the world! We will secure our Eastern flank, not for a season, not for a decade, but forever!"
The senators were mesmerized, caught up in the sheer scale of his rhetoric. But he wasn't done.
"And we will do this," he roared, his voice filled with a messianic zeal, "so that we may turn our true attention to the great task our ancestors left for us!"
His finger moved on the map, sweeping from the sun-baked East to the dark, foreboding, and vast forested lands of the North. "Germania!" The name itself was a challenge, a curse, the graveyard of Varus's legions. "A land of endless resources! A nursery of hardy warriors waiting to be forged into Roman citizens! A dagger aimed perpetually at the heart of Gaul and Italy! We have built a wall to keep them out. I say to you now, we will tear down that wall and march in! We will not wait for them to unite and attack us! We will bring the light of Roman civilization to them! We will build roads where there are only muddy tracks! We will build cities of stone where there are only huts of wattle and daub! We will build a new Rome, a stronger Rome, a grander Rome, a Rome that will last for a thousand years!"
It was a stunning, breathtaking declaration. He had taken their anger over a minor border skirmish and masterfully channeled it into a mandate for a multi-generational project of total imperial conquest. He was asking them to commit not just to a punitive expedition, but to a new, aggressive, and glorious destiny for their civilization.
For a moment, the Senate was stunned into absolute silence, overwhelmed by the sheer, magnificent audacity of his vision. Then, a single senator leaped to his feet, shouting, "To the glory of Rome! To the glory of Caesar!" and the dam broke. The chamber erupted into a tidal wave of ecstatic approval. The senators were on their feet, shouting, pounding their fists, their petty squabbles and internal rivalries utterly forgotten, consumed by the unifying fire of a grand, common purpose.
Pertinax alone remained seated. He watched Alex, who stood bathed in the adulation of the Senate, and a look of profound shock and dawning horror spread across his face. He had been completely, utterly outmaneuvered. He had spent weeks preparing to challenge a failing administrator, a secretive sorcerer whose projects were failing. But that man was gone. In his place stood a new Augustus, a man who had just successfully hijacked the entire Roman state, unified its warring factions, and aimed it like a loaded gun at the rest of the world.
The Forge of Empire had been lit. And Pertinax, the Servant of the City, could only watch as the flames began to rise, threatening to consume everything in their path.