Satoru Gojo

Rome, 66 B.C.

“I told you I don't need no damn personal slave!” railed the boy, glowering at his father with his blue eyes. Satoru was the second son of Gaius Cassius Longinius , who became a senator for life following the consulship he held seven years earlier, in 73 b. C.

Belonging to one of the oldest and most important Gens in the whole of Rome, Gaius was not only an austere man,avaricious and greedy for luxury and riches, but also an expert calculator and a skilled orator.

Therefore, in the face of his son's exasperated cries, instead of breaking down and shouting in turn, he remained impassive and merely hardened his gaze. Obsidian eyes fixed themselves in those of Satoru, who could do nothing but lower his own and clench his fists.

Defeated and with bleeding pride, the boy turned and muttered between his teeth, “Have it your way,” before retreating to his room.

---

Satoru Cassius Gojo was an illegitimate son, born of the union between a senator and a freedwoman of Parta origin, who was found abandoned in the countryside by Roman soldiers and then sold at auction as a slave. When his father bought his mother in 86 b. C., the woman was little more than 18 while the man was more than 30 years old. Neither the age difference nor the girl's precarious state of health prevented him from making her his pleasure slave. The woman was forbidden to speak her old name and given a new one.

the mother obeyed all her life, never rebelling, but meekness and diligence could not hide superhuman gifts or even less break her fighting spirit. In fact, even in moments of deepest pleasure, even as Gaius possessed her hunched over the triclinium, she never fully belonged to him. Refusing to call his name or resisting as much as possible before releasing any kind of moan, but everything changed when she became pregnant.

Even though she had by a man she hated, the young woman could never truly despise that seed slowly germinating in her womb, and when Satoru was born, she loved him as she had never loved anyone before. The child had the same white hair and the same blue eyes, the resemblance was stark.

She held that pure soul in her arms after childbirth as Gaius entered the room and, for the first time, the senator saw in her weary eyes submission and a plea for mercy, more for her son than for herself.

Gaius Cassius Longinius had been many things in the course of his life. An orator, a ruthless military man.a diplomatic consul, a strict pater familias and a man capable of taking a young girl's virginity, but he was no murderer, and the young woman knew he would never kill an innocent child. Especially when at less than a year old Satoru had demonstrated a skill and insight that made him more of a demigod than a man.

The situation changed, the young woman was freed from the condition of a slave to one of freedom, and she was guaranteed room and board on the sole condition that she take care of her son's physical and mental education. Satoru grew in his mother's love, and despite his mother's noble status and the way she reminded him that he was a Roman, he could never help but feel that he came from another world that he might never know.

It was because of this ailment that his mother began to tell him about the place he came from, so different from Rome Of villages more like military encampments than anything else, of hunting and fishing trips, of natural and exotic wonders, of fruits and vegetables he would never have eaten in Rome. When Satoru turned 8, a serious illness cut short his mother's young life...leaving him alone.

He went to live with his father and older brother, who never loved him and indeed, in his brother's case the feeling was more akin to hatred and envy.

Satoru was entrusted to a private teacher to teach him how to fight; Satoru's speed of learning was such that it impressed everyone. People as he passed by murmured "who would have thought that the savage disposition of the Parthians, if subjected to discipline, could bear such fruit." He then turned and hurled thunderbolts with his sky-colored eyes, so unusual in Rome, silencing the voices and making them shudder at such intensity.

His brother began to envy him and the moment he realized that if he took the same path as him he could not surpass him he decided to divert to the path of politics and, very young, was initiated into the Cursus Honorum.

---

Knowing his mother's history, then, it was no surprise that he did not want a personal slave, although help in tidying up the bedroom and cleaning it up would actually have been very useful to him. Yet it was already very difficult for Satoru to demonstrate a superior attitude during meals, when slaves brought food to him and his family members.

He would have done anything for him to become his father's or brother's slave, he would have been adamant in his refusal, he would have shaken his head at whomever the domus maids would present before him shortly thereafter, rejecting him and leaving him in the hands of the other two men of the house. He would have done so by looking the man or woman in the eye, and nothing mattered to him if it would have left him with perennial guilt, since he knew what kind of life it would doom him, or her, to. He was firmly convinced of that, until you walked in.

One glance was enough to change his mind.

"I can't allow myself to end up in their hands," he muttered without even realizing that his unconscious had chosen for him, but after all, how could he leave such a creature in the hands of the other two?

In front of him stood you, eyes downcast and body trembling, you must have been about his age. Sighing and making up his mind Satoru spoke.

"Tell me your name," he ordered you.