I absolutely gorged myself on food and drink. I ate meats and bread and cheeses and fruits, I drank wines and beers and mixed drinks and milk. I carved up steaks that tasted like the sun god’s cattle and drank drinks that tasted like divine ambrosia. I kept going until I was stuffed but somehow despite being completely full to the brim I was still hungry.

“What’s wrong, Adrias?” Caesia asked. She had been mothering me while I was intoxicated in this state.

“I’m full.” I said.

“Yes?”

“But I’m still hungry. I just can’t fit anything more inside me.” I said, I tried feeling disgust with myself on overfeeding myself. I had never done anything like this.

“Oh, we have a room for that. Follow me.” She said, taking my hand.

She brought me to a secluded room where people were throwing up.

“Oh.” I said, feeling slightly sick. This was a bona fide temple to controlled eating disorders. Binge eating and then throwing it up into disposal pipes. Some of it may have just been drinkers, but I saw food coming out of someone’s mouth.

“You just kinda… stick your fingers down your throat like this…” Caesia demonstrated, and I felt even more sickened. Was I really about to do this?

My stomach rumbled and my taste buds craved. With the spontaneous hilarity of Shine, I threw up everything I had just eaten and stumbled back to the table for more.

The gleam and shimmer of everything was beginning to dim. My neurons stopped activating and firing so gloriously, my senses stopped gathering in pleasurable sensations in such quantities. The fine food in my mouth tasted like ash and the wine that had tasted like Heaven’s Honey tasted like dishwater.

“I need more.” I realized. The understanding I gained in expressing my need was almost religious in its majesty and pressure.

“More food?” Caesia said, her eyes wide at the quantities I had managed to scarf down. The sheer gluttony and excess of it all.

“No. I need more Shine.” I said.

“…are you sure? You beat the living infernal hell out of Cornelias for giving it to you and now you want more?” Her violet eyes looked at me worriedly.

“I need it. Everything’s going grey. Everything’s going cold and barren and empty.” I said, the world dimming to my perceptions every second my superhuman liver and kidneys processed the Shine out of my body. It was designed to make everything bright and novel and sweet tasting. And it was running out in my body. I had hurt Cornelias because I was afraid that he had drugged me to the point of being like Antonias when he was dying and I saved him. Now I knew it wouldn’t kill, at least the amount I had taken so far.

Antonias came to my side with a handful of pills, “If you’re taking more, I’m taking the same amount.”

“My brother,” I grinned and popped more of the pills.

When it hit, we danced and celebrated and partied until my feet hurt and my veins felt raw.

Antonias and I stumbled to the roof of the main house, where a concrete platform overlooked the shingles. We shoved each other, laughing, and marveled at the colors Shine and the natural landscape of Caesia’s family estate created together.

I was still so damn high, soaring in euphoria with the Shine in my veins, but as time and distance removed me from the fight with Cornelias. The more I worried about it. I had brutalized him, broken his nose and his wrist and his spine. That wasn’t a school yard fight between hot headed boys, that wasn’t a petty street fight, it was a straight up assault. Back on Lavinius when I was a Servus, if I had beaten someone that badly and it wasn’t someone lower in status than me, I could be imprisoned by constables. Silver Servus police officers charged with duty by the capital of Lavinius. Then again, that would have been breaking the nose, wrist and spine of a Copper or Bronze Servus, a serious injury that would permanently deviate their Foundation. Cornelias, bastard that he was, was a Copper Imperator, weak or not, he was still following the Path of the Emperor. The injuries I had gifted him wouldn’t have been close to killing him.

They would all heal as well, even the nerve damage from the spine in short order. If someone had set the injury back in place, he’d probably be healed already from it. We were half-mortal, not quite demigods, but beyond the human experience of men before the Twelve had given the Paths to humanity.

I looked to the stars above that were flickering from shades of red to yellow to blue to green to purple to white and then back again, my Shine affected mind playing tricks with my vision. When the Twelve had given the Paths to humanity… I knew the stories of course. An event as significant as the Gifting was branded upon human consciousness forever. During the reign of a man called Gaias Julias Kaezar Octavianas in the age of Roma’s grand empire, the Olympians caused all over the world a twelfth of the population into one of the twelve Paths, the majority of the transformed being Servus. There were a good number of Imperators scattered amongst the globe’s population, North and South and East and West, all amongst the continents, but the most concentrated was the village of Thaekyr in what was once called Germania Antiqua. The Thaekyri tribe expanded into much of Europa to form the state of Thaekyria, a nation that suckled deep on the lifeblood of the culture of Roma and Grecia to develop its own nature and identity as a people. The Thaekyrian Imperators’ hunger for power couldn’t be contained in one country though, they decided to conquer the whole of the world and bring all of the Paths under their control. Augustas Heraclides, son of the Champion, led this charge in the name of his Thaekyri mother and formed the Old Thaekyrian Empire, the entity that preceded his Dominium.

The ordinary humans of Earth were left lost and helpless, they were not chosen by those of Heaven’s Peak and were outbred and outworked by the Slave Path and outskilled by the other servile Paths and outfought and conquered by the combat and leadership Paths.

I closed my eyes and rainbow patterns vibrated to silent music that I felt more than heard with my ears. I was getting distracted. The question was what were the consequences of beating Cornelias so badly?

“Am I going to wake up tomorrow to some Militares dragging me off to some godsawful Tartarosian hellpit with a bunch of convicts stuffed in it for beating the crap out of your friend?” I asked Antonias.

“I wouldn’t really define Cornelias as a friend. More an associate really,” Antonias said dreamily, his eyes dilated to big black discs surrounded by a thin line of violet. I expected my eyes were the same.

“But?” I said.

“But no, I don’t think you have to fear anything. He might try and get a rematch, but conflicts between Imperators are largely decided with trial by combat. You just won said trial. He could ask for said rematch but we already know the result of that.” Antonias said.

“What if he tries something else?” I asked.

Antonias laughed. “I don’t think he’s going to jump you with a bunch of friends with weapons, though I would still bet on you. He’s shamed in losing but his pride would take a further hit and his standing would be kneecapped if he lost a fight and then fought you unfairly a second time. Cornelias does have honor.”

“Does he?” I said.

“A smidge of it.” Antonias replied.

I was hearing whispers in my ears like buzzing fairies.

“So… Gold?” Antonias asked me.

“Gold.” I confirmed. “I’m going all the way.”

“I believe you.” He shook his head in disbelief. “I actually believe you.”

“Is it really so hard to believe that someone with determination and boldness could advance to the peak of Rankings?” I said.

“Nine, Adrias. Nine people ever in fourteen thousand years have made Gold Imperator. And one of them is the actual son of a god. Is it hard to believe that someone who’s only achieved the rank of Copper will stand to such heights? Yes, it is incredibly hard to believe.” Antonias said.

I blew out a breath. “Then I’ll be the tenth.”

Antonias edged away from me.

“What?” I asked.

“I’m getting away from you in case the Skyfather decides to strike you for your hubris.” Antonias said, his dilated eyes wide.

“I thought you said you believed me.” I said.

“I do, despite my better judgement. Doesn’t mean I don’t think it’s completely insane and deserving of a good smiting from a deity with a bit of sense for a man’s place and station.” Antonias said. “If you reach Gold, then like all of the other nine, you’ll be doing it by shaking Heaven’s hand and spitting its face.”

“I’ll pray to the Lady of Luck then.” I said. As always, I refrained from speaking aloud a god or goddess’s name unless it was modified in some way like the second half of the Regent’s name: Heraclides. It was for the same reason one did not lightly speak Augustas’s name. At a certain level of might and spiritual cultivation, one began to hear when their name was invoked. I would use an epithet for Tyche but not even dare to whisper her holy name.

Antonias went silent.

“Antonias?” I said.

He didn’t reply. I sharpened my hearing and listened to his heartbeat. Still beating, if a bit erratic. Good. Just sleeping and not taken by Thanatos, god of death.

I still felt awake. Lightning coursing through my nerves, fire in my veins, thrumming pistons in my heart. Balls of light danced in my vision. Something tugged at my memory. Balls of light…

“Oh!” I said, laughing in the divine high of the Shine. Balls of light. The first stage to making a skinshield that Antonias had mentioned to me was making a blue ball of light in your palm. I stared at my hand, grimacing in concentration but the hallucinatory balls of light kept getting in my vision when I focused on it.

“Go away.” I said. The streaks of light buzzed around annoyingly. I paused. Could this help me? If the goal was imagining it hard enough, would hallucinating light help the process?”

I tried hard for an hour until I had a shining light in my palm.

“Now how do I know you’re real?” I asked the little bobbing ball.

I held my left hand and looked at how the ball lit up the side of my hand. The illusory hallucinations didn’t cast light, they just appeared bright in my vision.

“Yes!” I shouted, raising my hands in victory, the Shine making this little win feel like I was awarded godhood and eternal glory.

I heard Antonias’s breathing hitch as he came awake.

“What?” He mumbled.

“I made the blue ball! Or at least I think I did…” I said.

“What do you mean you think you made it? You made it or you didn’t.” He grunted, rubbing his eyes, clearly having a rough time coming out of the sleep I had awoken him out of.

“I can’t tell if I’m hallucinating it or not.” I said.

“Well, if we both see it, it’s probably real.” Antonias said.

I opened my palm and held it between us and willed a blue ball of light into existence. He smiled.

“Good job.” Antonias said.

“So, you’ll teach me?” I said.

“Man… tomorrow, I promise. For now… let me sleep.” He said.

We lapsed into silence, and I began to feel tired. The food from my second filling sat heavy in my stomach.

“Adrias…” Antonias said.

“What?” I responded.

“If you’re serious about reaching Gold, you need to talk to the Oracle.”

My heart froze. “There’s an Oracle on Sunburst Station?”

“One arrived recently.”

“When can we go?” I asked, but Antonias had fallen back to sleep. My eyes fluttered and I set my head back on the cold concrete of the roof platform.

…

I groaned, opening my eyes to a blinding flash of sunlight. Everything seemed so lifeless and grey as I looked around me. I just felt numb. I couldn’t tell if the Shine had done damage to me or if just reality was comparatively so drab without it.

“I need more.” I said to myself. Then I shook my head. “No! Stupid idiot! You’re not getting yourself hooked on this crap.”

Resolved to a return to sobriety and abstinence, I shook Antonias awake. He slowly came to his senses and as he did so memories of last night crashed down around me. I regretted eating and drinking so much, I regretted hurting Cornelias when I was superior and could have defeated him less violently, and finally, thinking of Livia, I regretted kissing Caesia.

Antonias went to the side of the roof and threw up and then returned to me. “Let’s go.”

“You said you’d teach me today.” I said. “You promised.”

“Alright, skinshields. Skinshields.” Antonias said, rubbing his hands.

“Thank you, Antonias.” I said.

“Call me Toni.” He said.