V
The Third Immortal
The god Saturn himself stood there in the cold moonlight, staring at Catus Pompilius. He wore a long, ragged red tunic, and his old, muscled arms were bare, the light casting them in a pallid grey. He began to walk toward Catus, his steps slow, unhurried. He carried a great staff which, as he came closer, Catus noticed was not a staff, but the arm of a great scythe, the sort used to cut wheat in Etruria. The implement curved over his shoulders like a partial harvest moon.
Saturn’s thick beard, and the thin hair upon his head were as white as the fresh snow upon the cypress trees that surrounded them in that city of the dead. His eyes were ancient and wise, but also held something wild and unrelenting.
Catus quaked as he looked upon that stately god for whom those h
