#clipeatus

[ffxiv-swarm]

prompt 4: the iron hand, the golden shield

Cicer’s kids.

The children of Tribunus sas Gallius.

Heirs of the gens Gallii.

They weren’t well-known; Tiber might have grumbled a little about wanting some glory for himself, but truthfully all he’d ever wanted was to follow in his father’s legacy. Portia didn’t even have that much ambition; all she’d ever wanted was to be happy and content with her life. Who needed fame and renown? Those were for people with loftier goals than her.

And besides, with their country a war-torn ruin—with their people Tempered and twisted and slain, the survivors left without food or shelter or dignity—they had bigger things to worry about. She threw herself into the work of rebuilding, letting her world shrink down to what was in front of her. Rivets didn’t scream. Planks of wood didn’t sob in her aunt’s arms. Concrete and rebar and ceruleum didn’t loom large like the broken rubble where her family’s salon and the apartment above it had once stood.

She kept her head down. She did the work that was in front of her. She didn’t let herself notice anything else, not even when they took the fight to the Tower of Babil and she screamed through it in a blur of magitek and steel and those around her began to whisper new names.

Forgemistress Portia. Portia Martella, Portia the Hammer.

And, when the blasphemies came and she could keep her head down no longer, when her people were dying around her, when all that stood between her family and death was her own strength, Portia the Iron Hand.

She couldn’t help but be flustered the first time she heard it. Or the second. Or the seventh. It was only a little comfort to know she wasn’t alone.

Her baby brother had always and only wanted to be a soldier. To serve his people. He’d sought no greater honor than that. Indeed, sometimes she doesn’t know if he’d ranked his own life higher. And yet—despite his own humility, his own awkward I’m-just-doing-my-job mutters, his desire not to be known as anything more than a fighter, they didn’t call him Tiber Miles, the soldier, or Tiber Hoplomachus, the shield-bearer. They saw him on the battlefield, ceruleum burning blue around him, and called him Tiber Clipeatus—from clipeus, meaning both shield and solar disc alike.

Tiber sat down next to her, poking at the shield in question with a grimace. “It isn’t even gilded,” he muttered.

She elbowed him in the ribs. “At least you’re a Scion. Everyone in the Scion gets a bloody fancy epithet!”

“Not everyone. There’s...uh...”

His face screwed up as he tried to think of any comrades of his who hadn’t earned some impressive title for their deeds. Rolling her eyes, she put him out of his misery. “Everyone.”

Not to be outdone, he scoffed at her. “And you’re trying to say I deserve one more than you?”

Her ears went hot. “I’m a blacksmith.”

He gave her an incredulous look. “Portia. You punched a blasphemy in the face.”

Ugh. She hated when Tiber was right.

[terra-ultima]

2d/tu.013 - Garrulus clipeatus (Armour Plated Jay) …