The guard at the entrance to the brothel was a colossus of nearly seven feet tall, with a broad belly covered by a thick bearskin coat. His long, thick beard reached down to his stomach, tangled with the straps of his chainmail. His small, sunken eyes scrutinized her with a mix of suspicion and curiosity.
"And who are these?" he growled, addressing the soldiers escorting her.
The men exchanged glances. One of them, the one with the broken nose, stepped forward.
"We've come to see the commander," he said firmly. "Our new sister has business with him."
The colossus frowned and stroked his beard with a hand as thick as a club. Then his gaze fixed on Drusila.
"You must be the new one..." he muttered suspiciously. "A Roman noble or something like that. Your arrival was expected, though not in the middle of a siege."
Drusila didn't hesitate. She stepped forward and, with a deliberate motion, let the hood of her cloak fall. The torchlight illuminated her face with a golden glow, but her presence seemed to absorb the light rather than reflect it. Her eyes, so black that no pupil was visible, seemed like bottomless pits of darkness. Her hair, dark as obsidian, devoured the firelight, as if her very existence defied the clarity of the night.
The guard stroked his beard again, squinting.
"And what is a lady of your class doing in a brothel during a siege?"
Drusila let out a measured sigh, just enough to appear resigned without showing vulnerability.
"The Romans let in more mouths to feed in a besieged city," she replied. "I am here as part of an honorable agreement, to please Commander Theodomir and ensure the safety of my family."
The guard stared at her for a long moment and then chuckled under his breath.
"Ha... Romans never cared much for honor," he said, but his tone lacked conviction. Finally, he stepped aside and allowed her to pass. "Go in. But don't keep the commander waiting."
Drusila hid her satisfaction behind a slight nod. Her lie had aligned with a rumor already circulating among the troops: Theodomir had demanded the "gift" of a Roman noblewoman as part of unknown negotiations.
However, as soon as she crossed the threshold, a voice stopped her.
"Halt!"
A middle-aged Ostrogoth soldier, with a scar on his cheek and a sharper expression than his comrades, watched her with narrowed eyes.
"If you've come to serve the commander," he said in a calculating tone, "why are you escorted by these men and not by his personal guard?"
The air grew tense. The colossus's gaze darkened. The soldiers who had plotted the betrayal with Drusila exchanged nervous glances.
"Because the commander doesn't trust his own guard," she interjected quickly, seizing the doubt. "If he did, do you think he would have asked trusted soldiers to bring me instead of his own men?"
The scarred soldier studied her for a few seconds that felt like an eternity.
Then he smirked disdainfully.
"If that's true, we'll find out soon enough."
With a gesture, he motioned for her to continue.
As Drusila moved toward Theodomir's chambers, a growing unease settled in her. Her lie had brought her this far, but there was a buried truth she hadn't anticipated.
If the rumors were true and Theodomir was indeed expecting a Roman noblewoman...
Then, somewhere in the besieged city, there was another woman destined for the commander's brothel.
And if she arrived before Drusila could execute her plan, everything would fall apart.
Upon entering, they found Theodomir beating a man, an emotionally shattered Ostrogoth noble. The commander shook him furiously, his voice roaring through the room.
"If you weren't my lord's nephew, I'd have cut off your balls for cowardice!" Theodomir growled, his brow furrowed and jaw clenched. "How in the hell did you let fifty of my best men die? They were effeminate, yes, but they fought better than anyone here. And now they're dead because of your incompetence!"
The young noble could barely stammer. His eyes were glassy, his lips trembling.
"The goddess... the ice goddess..."
Drusila felt a shiver run down her spine.
Theodomir shook him even harder.
"Don't give me old wives' tales! Who really killed them?"
The noble swallowed hard, his voice barely a whisper.
"We were patrolling the abandoned temples... We heard a song... a chant in Latin, sweet like a prayer... and we found her there."
Drusila kept her expression serene, but inside, a dark satisfaction burned.
"Who?" Theodomir pressed impatiently.
"A woman with eyes as black as night... Her voice enveloped us, left us frozen... And then... then the cold came... The air turned to ice, our bones cracked... My men screamed... shattered like glass..."
The young man looked up and, for the first time, his gaze met Drusila's.
For a moment, he seemed not to recognize her. But then his face twisted into a mask of pure terror. His pupils dilated, his skin turned ashen, and with a choked sob, a warm trickle ran down his leg, darkening his tunic.
Theodomir frowned, stepping back in disgust.
"By the gods, what a pathetic spectacle!" he snapped, clicking his fingers. "Take him to the priest. If anyone can do something with this wreck, it's him."
The guards dragged the noble out of the room, still babbling incoherently.
Drusila said nothing. She only watched, with an imperceptible smile, as her little game continued to unfold perfectly.
Theodomir narrowed his eyes, his instincts roaring in warning. On the outside, the woman seemed like a Roman noble, her posture erect and her accent flawless. But something about her put him on edge, a danger he couldn't name.
His hand flew to the hilt of his sword, and without thinking, he swung it toward her neck.
The blade never reached its target.
With a simple gesture of her hand, Drusila stopped it. She didn't touch him, didn't even graze him. But it was as if an invisible force caught his arm mid-air, freezing it in its attempt to strike her.
The door to the room slammed shut behind them.
The air turned icy.
Theodomir felt a chill run down his spine as the woman's breath turned to vapor before his eyes. His muscles tensed, his heart pounding like a war drum, he tried to break free from the strange pressure holding him in place, but it was useless. It was as if the weight of winter itself had settled upon him.
Then she spoke.
Her voice was harsh, strained, searching for the words in his people's tongue. But the rawness of her question made him shudder more than her accent:
"Where is the main army of your filthy tribe? Speak now, barbarian, and perhaps you'll die quickly."
A heavy silence filled the room.
Behind her, a jug of wine rested on the table, inside a carved glass bottle. Within seconds, the dark liquid crystallized, cracking the glass into a web of icy fractures before shattering into tiny pieces.
Theodomir felt his blood run cold.
This woman was no mere noble.
She wasn't human.
"Witch..." Theodomir whispered, his eyes wide with terror.
Drusila tilted her head slightly, her expression showing neither anger nor satisfaction, only icy disdain.
"Wrong answer."
She raised her sword and, with a calculated motion, drove it into his foot. It wasn't a deep wound, but the effect was immediate. The veins in Theodomir's leg blackened under his skin, as if rot itself coursed through his blood. A searing pain spread from the wound to his thigh, as if his bones were being burned from within.
The barbarian tried to scream, but his throat only let out a choked gasp. His entire body trembled, sweat pouring from his brow. He tried to pull away, but his leg no longer responded.
"Answer now," Drusila ordered, her voice as cold as the air that had suddenly turned frigid in the room.
Theodomir breathed heavily, gritting his teeth. He was a warrior, raised in brutality, but he had never felt anything like this. He looked at the woman with eyes blacker than night and knew he was facing something that didn't belong to this world.
"There are minor garrisons all the way to Ravenna..." he managed to spit out between labored breaths. "My king can muster sixty thousand men easily. Half are riders, fast. The heavy infantry will be bogged down in skirmishes for weeks... That's how the Romans lost their empire..."
A defiant glint crossed his eyes, even as his face twisted in pain.
"And that's how it will be with you."
Drusila said nothing. There was no emotion on her face as she raised the sword.
The steel descended in a lethal arc, cutting through the air with an icy whistle.
Theodomir's head rolled across the floor before his body finished collapsing.
Silence covered the room like a marble slab.
Drusila cleaned her sword with deliberate calm.
"Winter has come for you," she whispered, and her words hung in the air like an omen of death.
The rooster's crow echoed just as Theodomir's head hit the ground with a dull thud. For a moment, the room was enveloped in an almost surreal silence. Blood pooled thickly, and the high-ranking officers, still stunned by what they had just witnessed, exchanged uncertain glances.
Then, one of them tried to draw his sword. Drusila barely moved a finger, and the man froze in place. His muscles tensed in terrifying paralysis, his eyes widening in panic. Then, with a simple whisper from her, his heart failed, and his body collapsed like a puppet without strings.
The other officers surrendered immediately. They knew they were facing something they couldn't fight with steel or numbers.
Outside, the news spread like wildfire. The Ostrogoth soldiers, seeing their leaders fall, realized the fight was futile. Without a commander to lead them and with no clear chain of command, they panicked. Many threw down their weapons, others removed their cloaks to blend in with the population. Some tried to flee, disappearing into the outskirts and ruined houses of the city, like disoriented shadows in the morning mist.
From atop a half-ruined wall, a Roman sentry lit a torch, raised it three times, and extinguished it. It was the signal.
In the distance, the earth rumbled under the disciplined advance of Roman troops. The city gate creaked open with a long, heavy groan, and three centuries entered in tight formation. They moved like an unstoppable machine, pilums in hand and shields raised.
There was no resistance. The legion swept through the city systematically, breaking down doors and dragging the barbarians from their hiding places. There were no trials. No mercy. Every Ostrogoth identified by Governor Julius Pisco as an enemy was executed on the spot.
The streets filled with muffled screams and the smell of iron. Blood flowed over the cobblestones like open veins of Frusino itself.
And then, for the first time in centuries, a banner of purple and gold flew from the highest tower. The standard of the Senatus Populusque Romanus waved over Frusino once more, announcing that Rome was not yet dead.