When the hospital staff first began to bother Tacitus – well…it was more of a respectful request for his presence if he was being fair, but at the time he sure felt bothered – he responded with his favorite refrain: “I’m a surgeon, not a medicus.” It was enough to send the nurses away, at least initially.
As he went throughout his day, however, he began to hear rumors from the other staff: a sudden, steady surge of people coming in, pureblood and provincial alike, all with similar symptoms. Some had headaches, some could not focus, others claimed they were hearing voices or were unresponsive entirely. Either way, such things were outside of Tacitus’ ability to treat; he was a man of the scalpel, not of the mind.
It was a position he’d fought hard to secure for himself, and years of hard work and study had paid off. He was now one of the youngest surgeons in Garlemald, hell-bent on proving science’s supremacy over magic. There were, after all, some injuries that even healing magic could not cure; Tacitus was determined to bridge that gap.
He’d set the bar high for the rest of his siblings. Irene wound up joining the Frumentarii; Verina became a lawyer; Marco went into magilectrical engineering. It left poor Laelia sticking out sorely as the black sheep of the family, the perpetual under-achiever. She knew it. Their parents knew it. It’d made things rocky at times. Now, Tacitus didn’t even know where his younger sister even was. She’d fled the night that Zenos had purged the Popularii. All he knew was that there was no way in the hells Laelia was dead. If anything she played dice with Death on the regular. He’d admittedly always envied that in her.
It was with such thoughts that Tacitus turned towards the family restaurant as his long shift finally ended. He’d been on his feet for close to twelve hours now; the day had been full of patients mangled in the latest civil war. It felt like there’d been an awful lot of those recently. The lower parts of the city had been completely razed, and the fighting was beginning to creep inward. It’d resulted many long nights of tense conversations between the Belisars of late, debating what to do if they were forced to abandon their restaurant. Belisar in Cucina had become more than just their income. It was their identity. Their legacy. It was the Belisar family.
For now, Mater and Pater stubbornly kept it open, in large part to help provide their fellow civilians a feeling of normalcy. Once, the best tables had held a breathtaking view of the palace, and of the city lights sparkling below; on the upper balcony, one could gaze out over the walls at the silver snowfields instead. Now, their patrons could enjoy a glass of wine and unlimited breadsticks to go with their front row seat to fire and destruction. Everyone up here knew, though no one dared speak it, that it was only a matter of time before the soldiers came for them as well.
Life in the Empire was just one long, surreal, unending dream now. Even sleep couldn’t shake the fog of dread hanging over the back of Tacitus’ mind. Fighting and riots were time-honored Garlean traditions going back to the days of Ivalice, if such tales had any truth to them. Fighting broke out in the streets when the wrong chariot racing team won, for Solus’ sake. But there was something…aberrant, this time, about the way everyone was behaving. It was as though they’d lost their own free will, and happily danced upon puppet strings instead.
It was as though the world was slowly going mad.
Lee…wherever you are…I hope you’re safe… he thought.
Tacitus opened the door to the restaurant and nearly collided with a patron making her way back out. He voiced his apology and stepped aside to let her pass, but instead she simply stood there with her head bowed. It was only when he reached for her that she finally looked up, staring at him with vacant eyes and a frenzied expression.
“Glory be,” she whispered, as though sharing a precious secret. “To Garlemald.”
