Painstakingly, I sewed another loop of stitching into a piece of cloth with a needle I had gotten from a Servus female servant. She had initially insisted that she be allowed to mend whatever clothing I had damaged quite insistently until I had told her I merely wanted to practice the skill. Then she had been confused and asked if I wanted to use a sewing machine, though it was clear that she thought me quite strange and a little crazy for wanting to do menial tasks. I had asked her to bring me a needle and sewing thread and cloth and that was that, even if she thought me a bit mad. It wasn’t just for a hobby or out of boredom or even out of a desire to be self sufficient or to get back to my roots of my days as a Servus. No, it was to practice self-control, delicacy, restricted and paced dexterity, and restraint with my body. My accidents of destroying plates and damaging walls and floors as well as overdoing it in training with Antonias even when I wanted to go lightly on him because of my Bronze instincts and impulses were becoming quite annoying. Infuriating even.

I added another stitch and then another and another. And then I bent the metal needle with my fingers.

“Damnit!” I swore.

I set the cloth aside. This was only one exercise of many, and I would keep going until I exhausted my options or completed them to my satisfaction. I grabbed a piece of paper and started slowly tearing strip after strip of it. After that, I divided each strip into twenty squares each. Then I split each square cautiously into two. I swept the paper remnants into a garbage bin and smiled. That was one more successful control exercise even if the sewing hadn’t gone as I had wanted it.

“Servilia?” I called outside my room to a servant.

“Yes, lord?” She replied, walking in, and training her brown pupilless eyes on me. A Bronze Servus. Middle-aged, unlikely to advance further on the Rankings to the partial divinity and superhuman glory of Foundation Gold.

“Can you bring me the glass objects I told you about earlier, please?” I asked her politely.

“The cups and glass and ashtrays and such?” She said.

“Yes, the very same, please. Please bring them to me right away.” I said.

“Very well, my lmperial lord.” She curtseyed and walked away.

At least the Servi directly serving Imperators had proper respect for us. Most of Sunburst Station seemed to be rather bold and hold active contempt for their Imperator betters and rulers.

She, with a few other Servi, brought several trays of glass items and objects as I had specified.

“Here you go, great master.” She said to me as they set it down on the guestroom’s desk where I was working on the exercises.

“Thank you, Servilia. And you two others as well.” I said. “Alright, you can go. Dismissed.”

I picked up a glass, noting its fine engraving. It was a nice piece. Shame I was almost certainly about to break it.

I held it in my fist and closed my eyes and imagined my family’s brutal murder. I imagined Gavias Cantion’s face. I imagined blood and pain and shame. I imagined what it would have been like if I hadn’t lucked upon or been fated to find the ring that had tenfold advanced me into an Imperator on the Path of the Emperor from my former Path of the Slave. I imagined making Livia cry. I imagined the bruises on Junia’s neck after I had involuntarily grabbed her. I imagined-

Crack!

Crack! Crack! Shatter!

The fine piece of glass was crushed to vitric slivers and coarse chunks of shattered glass material, the former drinking vessel completely unrecognizable, its engraving erased by the force of my constricting strength.

I breathed in and out, well, it gave the servants something to do and clean up, I supposed. If the groundskeepers and the landscapers were working their asses off from Antonias’s and my destruction of the lawn, then everyone else might as well be as productive and hardworking as them. As productive and hardworking as Toni’s training, really.

I took more of the glass cups, ash trays, glasses and small vases and started juggling them. I added more and more. The number wasn’t really a problem, I move and thought and reacted at superhuman speeds, so I could manage them easily. That said, that was at a normal rate of movement. Increasing the rotation, I began hearing micro cracks and fractures as they passed from my left hand to my right hand and then up into the air to be caught by my left again. The limiting factor on my speed was really gravity and I eventually ran out of free hands for all the glasses I was moving from one hand to the other and they started breaking. Grabbing them out of the air and replacing the non-broken ones on the desk I went on to a new test. Slowly increasing grip pressure on them until they broke by marginally adding more and more strength over the course of ten minutes where I heavily concentrated on slow, fractional movements too small for a baseline human’s eyes to see.

“Servilia!” I called again.

“Yes, Master Adrias?” Her face whitened when she saw the mess. “Are you okay, Lord?”

“Just training.” I said, waving a hand.

“Training?” She said skeptically.

“Yes, don’t worry about it now. You can clean it up later, I’m going to continue to make a mess for a while.” I said. “Bring me the chopstick and rice, the tweezer and sand, the flower, the bouncy ball I mentioned, the pocket taser and the Keenblade pocketknife.” I listed more items I need for the testing.

“As you will. I’ll get help to bring it all up and find it in the first place.” Servilia said.

“Good. Thank you, kindly.” I had brought my eccentric test ideas to the servants of this estate a few days ago and they had prepared them elsewhere for me, secreted away until I needed them.

She and other Servi returned to me fifteen minutes later with the supplies.

I started with the chopsticks and the grains of rice, testing my patience and dexterity. I moved one grain of rice from one pile to the beginnings of another one after each previous and then back and forth. Then I moved to tweezers and grains of sand, creating patterns of vines and swords and the aerial layout of Antonias’s estate. After that I clenched my fist around a flower without crushing it all, demonstrating perfect control to not harm the delicate plant. Then I bounced a bouncy ball against a wall and window without breaking either. After that I mimed tearing my bed sheets without actually tearing them. This I failed to accomplish as on the third time I mock strained against the fabric, I tore it apart easily. Then I got to blurring in motion across the room trying not to crash through the wall. Following that, I sat at the desk surrounded by glass particles and fragments, and I brushed the sand and rice on the wooden desk aside to lay my hand on the surface. I then shocked myself with a pocket taser and fought to stay still as my muscles trembled from the electric stimulus. Finally, I made incisions on myself with the Keenblade pocketknife and calmed my body to prevent it from reacting to the cuts.

There was no blood of course, my superhuman physiology not allowing a single drop to spill without Thanatosian particles covering the Keenblade pocketknife to induce bleed and tissue necrosis with the death god’s dust.

I heard noise outside and looked out through the window to see news crews outside Antonias’s mansion making a commotion, training cameras on windows and reporters speaking to live audiences. They had been here for three days since they discovered I was living here. Sunburst Station had never had a Bronze Imperator before let alone one that rescued Servi from fires set by other Imperators and one that had fought in gladiatorial games pretending to be a Golden Servus. Now I had achieved some manner of celebrity and fame following my advancement in Rank.

I walked down from my guestroom with Livia to the concrete bunker where Antonias and I trained. Well, trained was one word for it. Beatdown was probably more accurate. I walked down from my guestroom to the concrete bunker where I beat the living crap out of Antonias several times a day. Today though, Antonias would be getting his revenge on me. Or he would be trying anyways, I wasn’t convinced he actually could hurt me. This was one more planned exercise in self control and restraint. My combat instinct was direct and difficult to control, it was triggered easily, and my body responded brutally to the threat even without my control. Perhaps the voice, this “grandfather” as the voice had called itself in relation to me, was merely a manifestation of the Bronzeness that I interpreted and understood as hallucinated vocalizations and expressed thoughts as if my subconscious was a real person. Or perhaps I was completely insane and one step away from being a basket case.

“Hello, Toni.” I acknowledged him.

He smiled evilly, malice in his gleeful eyes. “Hello, Adrias. Ready for my early birthday gift?”

I sighed. “Yes, Antonias.”

“You are going to try to restrain yourself, yes? I’m not just going to get smacked so hard I get knocked out again?” Antonias asked.

“I’ll try my best.” I said. “I’ll try my best, certainly.”

I stripped my shirt off so that I was bare chested and threw the shirt aside. There was no reason to get it destroyed and dirty from Antonias’s strikes and punches and kicks.

“You should take off your shirt too just in case.” I said. I added, “I am going to do my best, but I’ll probably slip. That shirt on you looks expensive.”

“I have ten more in my closet.” Antonias said dismissively. “Let’s just get started.”

He ran at me and punched me in the face. I didn’t move. He wound up again at superhuman speeds and with unnatural agility and launched another hit at me. I involuntarily caught his hand and then slowly forced myself to release it.

He shook it to dull the pain. Then he headbutted me. I resisted the urge to strangle him that rose up in me like a raging beast.

“Ow.” He complained. “Why is it that me hurting you hurts me more than you?”

“Because I’m Bronze and you’re Copper.” I said. The way the Foundation Ranks and Path Ranks worked was that the Foundation was your baseline physiology and neurology amplified and added to with each Rank, with Copper being indistinguishable from base humanity and Gold being superhuman for all Paths even if they weren’t combat Paths or part of the Dauntless Ones. The Dauntless Ones were the Imperators, Militares, Campeadors and Venators and they had special abilities at Gold. Path Ranks were added to your Foundation and scaled up similarly. Copper Imperator Path Rank was equal in many ways to the Gold of non-combat Paths and that immensity was multiplied and amplified as you Ranked further. Copper to Bronze Foundation was minor but Copper to Bronze combat Path could be substantial.

If you thought about it, even if you were only twice as fast as you were before, you would dominate every running race you ever participated in should you face someone of a lower Rank. Little edges could become dramatic and Antonias was now below me.

Antonias kicked me and I stiffened, barely resisting the urge to lunge. He punched me in the gut and I grabbed him by the throat and then released him. He slapped me and then buried a fist into my right cheek and then one into my left cheek. He karate chopped me in the neck, and I pushed him back, my left arm moving on its own accord. Truly it would be impossible for a Copper to kill me and it would be hard for another Bronze Imperator to take me without a fight, the instinct for war and combat so deeply ingrained now. I shook my head now at the thought of how I had mentioned to Gaias that I wished my advancement had happened in secret so I could keep fighting. I saw how silly that was now. I would destroy any opponents if I seriously fought and if I wasn’t seriously fighting it would be apparent to the audience. My days as a gladiator truly were done for.

Antonias kept hitting me and I kept holding back my natural impulses to beat the living hell out of him and send the Copper to an early visit to the Corpsefather’s Underworld. Eventually, Junia and Livia came down to watch. The two of them had grown closer in recent days. When it was over between Antonias and I, mostly because Antonias was worn out by trying to hurt me more than any injury to me, I went over to Junia. The bruises on her throat were mostly gone. That they were still present a week after showed how much damage I had really done. Then again, she and Antonias were drug and alcohol abusers so her healing could have been slowed. I was trying to break Antonias of his lifestyle, but he was resistant to my control over his free time and leisurely hours.

“I’m sorry, by the way.” I said to Junia.

She nodded. “All’s forgiven. Livia’s talked to me about it.”

“So, what’s going on with the voices in your head.” Antonias asked, toweling off sweat as he approached. His Imperator’s senses picking up our conversation.

I tensed. “Excuse me?”

“Junia told me you were talking to yourself when you were, ah, teaching her about the merits of respecting personal space.” Antonias said.

I looked down. “Oh. I hope you all don’t think I’m crazy but when that all happened, I was unable to let go of your Hetaira and I heard a voice that called itself my grandfather. I had to beg it to let go. It called Junia a worm.”

“Bronze business, I guess.” Antonias said. “I’m not looking forward to that, I have to say, when I make Bronze. I like the god of war business, but not the possibility of Rank given schizophrenia.”

“Or I could just be crazy and its just me.” I said bitterly.

“Nope.” Antonias said simply.

“Nope? How can you know?” I said. “It’s the most likely answer.”

“That's one of Bronze Foundation’s little tricks for all the Paths. It gets rid of most harmful mental illnesses like depression or ADD or OCD, pretty much everything except sociopathy and narcissism.”

“I didn’t know that.” I said.

“So, you can’t be crazy, and its either the gods talking to you or something to do with our Path.” Antonias said.