The first person to give Valeria a name was the patriarch of the domus to whom she was sold as a slave. When he attempted to assault her, she killed him with her powers and fled into the protection of a fellow slave's friend, the doctor Tadla, who made her an apprentice. Tadla came to be like a mother unto her.
Two years later, Tadla was captured during a Vandal siege. Valeria then took the woman's nomen and cognomen, Junia Paetina, and signed up to be a soldier, using her powers to manipulate her way around rules that should have barred her from entry. She killed and interrogated Vandals in the hopes of recovering Tadla, but the woman was nowhere to be found even after they had laid waste to the largest camp.
Junia Paetina now gave herself up to a gladiator dealer and was sold to the colosseum at Carthage. There she became increasingly famous as a highly entertaining battler, to the point where the Emperor Alexius himself asked that she be bought over by Constantinople.
Impressed with her inaugural battle there, in which she killed five bulls, the emperor awarded her the agnomen Marcia. Given a doorway to success, she went on to climb society while maintaining her career in the colosseum.
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