breakinglight11 (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
breakinglight11) wrote2014-08-28 10:33 pm
breakinglight11) wrote2014-08-28 10:33 pm
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31 Plays in 31 Days, #28 - "Burn Your Empire"
Another highly speculative scene for eventual sequels to Adonis.
The character with perhaps the highest flat-out cool factor in the story is probably Morna. Morna is Aidan's little sister, born with a twisted leg and so utterly dismissed by Roman society for her disability. But she is utterly brilliant and within her burns a fierce desire to overthrow the system that has made her and so many like her into slaves, and she puts these things to work fomenting the revolution. I wanted her to seem as externally as helpless a person as possible, so as to contrast as strongly as possible with the fact that she is the most dangerous of them all.
This scene probably would not happen, at least not like this-- she is too valuable to be placed in such a vulnerable position --but I really like the idea of her asserting herself to her enemies of just how brilliant, and correspondingly dangerous to them, she is.
Burn Your Empire
by Phoebe Roberts
MORNA, formerly a slave, now the mastermind behind the revolution
SATURNINA, a general of Rome
~~~
SATURNINA: Who are you?
MORNA: You wanted the revolution. That would be me.
SATURNINA: You?
(She regards MORNA.)
SATURNINA: I wanted the traitorous general of Rome, the blond Adonis. But you mean to tell me this little cripple before me is the here to deliver the terms?
MORNA: They are my terms. I will be the one to speak them.
(SATURNINA laughs.)
SATURNINA: Very well, girl. This need not come to war.
MORNA: We are already at war.
SATURNINA: It will mean certain death to oppose the combined might of Rome.
MORNA: Not when we are through.
SATURNINA: What do you want?
MORNA: You know.
SATURNINA: I know you were a slave. End this, and I can make you a mistress of Roman property. Even a queen.
MORNA: I want no part of you, nothing you can give. I mean to burn your empire down.
SATURNINA: Brave words for a cripple against the phalanx of a Roman army.
MORNA: All your armies could not keep me out. And if you don't lay down your arms now... I will burn you with it.
SATURNINA: You cannot.
MORNA: I cannot? Do you not see what I have done already? The revolution seethes, and I lit the flame that heats it to boiling. I took the greatest general in your empire and I made her my creature. She commands my armies now, not yours. And the Adonis? I made him. He lives and dies for me. More flock to him every day, ready to take up arms against you. Because I took that beautiful boy and made him into that beacon that calls to every desperate soul in the empire. Look well, Roman. All that I did when I was only a slave. And now? Now I am a slave no longer. Bar your doors, general. I am coming for you.
The character with perhaps the highest flat-out cool factor in the story is probably Morna. Morna is Aidan's little sister, born with a twisted leg and so utterly dismissed by Roman society for her disability. But she is utterly brilliant and within her burns a fierce desire to overthrow the system that has made her and so many like her into slaves, and she puts these things to work fomenting the revolution. I wanted her to seem as externally as helpless a person as possible, so as to contrast as strongly as possible with the fact that she is the most dangerous of them all.
This scene probably would not happen, at least not like this-- she is too valuable to be placed in such a vulnerable position --but I really like the idea of her asserting herself to her enemies of just how brilliant, and correspondingly dangerous to them, she is.
Burn Your Empire
by Phoebe Roberts
MORNA, formerly a slave, now the mastermind behind the revolution
SATURNINA, a general of Rome
~~~
SATURNINA: Who are you?
MORNA: You wanted the revolution. That would be me.
SATURNINA: You?
(She regards MORNA.)
SATURNINA: I wanted the traitorous general of Rome, the blond Adonis. But you mean to tell me this little cripple before me is the here to deliver the terms?
MORNA: They are my terms. I will be the one to speak them.
(SATURNINA laughs.)
SATURNINA: Very well, girl. This need not come to war.
MORNA: We are already at war.
SATURNINA: It will mean certain death to oppose the combined might of Rome.
MORNA: Not when we are through.
SATURNINA: What do you want?
MORNA: You know.
SATURNINA: I know you were a slave. End this, and I can make you a mistress of Roman property. Even a queen.
MORNA: I want no part of you, nothing you can give. I mean to burn your empire down.
SATURNINA: Brave words for a cripple against the phalanx of a Roman army.
MORNA: All your armies could not keep me out. And if you don't lay down your arms now... I will burn you with it.
SATURNINA: You cannot.
MORNA: I cannot? Do you not see what I have done already? The revolution seethes, and I lit the flame that heats it to boiling. I took the greatest general in your empire and I made her my creature. She commands my armies now, not yours. And the Adonis? I made him. He lives and dies for me. More flock to him every day, ready to take up arms against you. Because I took that beautiful boy and made him into that beacon that calls to every desperate soul in the empire. Look well, Roman. All that I did when I was only a slave. And now? Now I am a slave no longer. Bar your doors, general. I am coming for you.