Governor Theseas Claudion sat at the head of a table filled with Evaluation Committee members in the twelfth dining room of the Governor’s Palace. As usual, this gathering of some of the most educated, noble bloodlined, powerful, wealthy and cunning individuals in all of the Dominium’s nine solar systems were behaving like squabbling six-year-olds.

Though the Evaluation Committee could and would argue over everything from the temperature of the room to politics, the current issue causing the imminent temper tantrums of these esteemed Apollonian citizens was the matter of placement of the three hundred accepted candidates chosen for the next Scholarium first year class. The problem was simple, today’s examinations had put perfectly on display the Scholarium’s biased policies on blood purity being favored over performance. It offended some of the Committee members that they were expected to ignore deficiencies and deprioritize superior performance in favor of selecting for baseline genetics. This debate came up every Examination Day inevitably, a performative show put on for the Governor’s personal displeasure each and every time by people who should really know better by now. What had flared such tense discussions was the strikingly blatant examples of purity favoritism that had come up this time.

The core of the hostilities had been triggered by a group of applicants from a minor stellar outpost. Starblast Station? Haloshower Station? Something along those lines, Theseas had not been paying close attention to where exactly they had come from. It ultimately was unimportant. What mattered was that the four Bronze Imperators were in the wrong places according to the Evaluation Committee members gathered here today in his palace. Three of them, the shockingly pureblooded ones, Antonias Calion, Caesia Zellion, and Kato Haelion were ranked numbers 300, 299, and 298 respectively, just barely squeaking into the final cut that would be elevated into the officers’ school to train to become Strategos of the Apollonian Solar Guard. It had ruffled every one of the Committee officials that they had made it that far despite their actual scores.

If each and every Bronze candidates of the one thousand and thirty-one young Imperators here today had the same blood purity rating and measurements, Calion, Zellion and Haelion would rightfully be floating somewhere in the 900s by the Governor’s own estimation. In all fairness, the three of them should not even be within spitting distance of the Scholarium’s exalted halls. Yet, by the Regent’s directives given to the nine solar systems’ resident Scholariums, allowances were to be made to encourage the protection of bloodlines being passed on and not being neutered by Houses and promising lineages cutting off their reproductive potential by spamming the generation of Red Haloed offspring. Of course, the grand Imperator families of high society of preeminence still could not resist tinkering with their children in the attempts to achieve greater renown and legend amongst their peers and rivals.

Only four candidates present today were remotely baseline and those were three of the four outsiders and Lucias Fulvion. Lucias had Kadmean aberration markers being a clone, so that advantage was erased, but the other three were given a substantial advantage that had gifted them an unearned place at the school.

The other half of the equation was the opposite effect, legitimately exceptional Bronzes being demerited for having unconventional or excessively toyed with genomes. If Theseas had to rank the top honestly as he had with bottom three of the three hundred, placing everyone of the one thousand and thirty-one on equal footing purity-wise, Adrias Lucion, the fourth outsider, who was currently positioned at 002 would be by full merits number 001. Quartias Fulvion who had earned 004 would be distantly following Candidate Lucion at rank 002. Clodias Aezion who had achieved rank 001 would, in truth, be number 008 if purity was equalized or disregarded and Thoriana Korazion who was 003 would rightfully be 012. However, bloodline data was not ignored, and Aezion and Korazion’s subtle modifications and augmentations were minor enough to discount and restrict them only slightly and they pulled ahead of the others as a result.

Theseas was truthfully a little surprised with Clodias Aezion’s impressive performance during the examinations, whether the appropriate numbered ranking to give to him was 001 or 008. Through the grapevine, the Governor’s impression of the youngest member of the High Iulian House of Aezion was that Clodias was unremarkable, underachieving in athletics and academics, perhaps even a slacker at heart. At the outset, no doubt the patriarch and matriarch of House Aezion had only hoped for a good showing from their boy in the testings, perhaps somewhere in the late 300s or early 400s, but never in a million years would they have expected him to be the very peak of the candidates. Who could have predicted that Clodias would reveal such hidden depths that he had never before hinted at? Who could have known besides young Aezion that he would pull so defiantly ahead of his assumed mediocrity and crown himself with the laurel of victory and dominance? It was possible that not even Clodias of House Aezion himself had realized that the result of him finally pushing himself to virtuous excellence would have such a dramatic effect.

Theaseas rubbed his chin as he considered the young man’s scores, still ignoring the bickering back and forth of the Examination Committee members in front of him at his table. No, the Governor’s instincts were screaming at him that Clodias Aezion’s meteoric rise was no accident or astonishment for the teenaged Bronze. In fact, Theseas thought Clodias could have done better than the boy had performed in the examinations. That was not to say that the Bronze candidate would have beaten out Adrias Lucion’s inhuman handiwork in the heat resiliency appraisal, but still the thought that Aezion could have improved on what he had gotten nevertheless niggled at Governor Claudion. Several times, just as Clodias was about to surpass a previous recordholder and attain perhaps Abnormal Primacy: Third Class or Second Class, Clodias had immediately yielded or coincidently failed the test or made an unfortunate misstep in his attempt. He would be just a few seconds or a fraction of a value from making Abnormal Primacy several times but would instead earn the mark of Doppelganger as he matched the previous record or would get Exceeds Expectations right before making it to the recordholder’s placement.

“The Old Thaekyrian boy should have the status of 001, by all rights.” Orelianas argued, referring to Candidate Lucion.

“His deviancy is on display for all of us to see. You know the Regent’s orders, quite frankly I do not think we should have allowed him into the chosen few at all.” Abronia replied. “He’s no different from the Fulvion clones. Freaks, all of them. Degenerate monsters.”

Persias Fulvion said nothing in response to Abronia’s remarks, apparently unconcerned with her sharp judgment of his clone children. In Theseas Claudion’s personal experience with the head of House Fulvion, the second richest and mightiest High Iulian House after the Governor’s own family, Persias Fulvion only showed two emotions: contempt and boredom. Right now, he was showing the second. Persias looked the way that the Governor felt, but Theseas was carefully concealing from the Committee members, like he was praying for an assassin to rescue him from spending anymore time with the others in this room by blowing his brains out with a high-powered anti-Imperator sniper rifle.

“The Old Thaekyrian is no overengineered brute or exaggerated mutant. He lacks a Red Halo in his eyes.” Orelianas retorted. “The Medicus on staff checked for contacts in Lucion’s eyes and found none.”

“Some manner of trickery that will be quickly discovered upon more thorough investigation, I am sure.” Abronia said. “One cannot have that level of genetic tampering and insertion of alternate Path DNA without developing a Halo. It is simply impossible for Candidate Lucion to not have one based on his genetic analysis.”

The Committee members argued more over whether or not Adrias Lucion should or should not have a Red Halo while Theseas rubbed his forehead to forestall the brewing headache forming.

The Governor knew why the sixteen-year-old boy did not have a Red Halo, of course, had recognized the divine blood of Heracles himself even as diluted as it was, though he kept that information from the others present at the table. He needed to know first what a descendant of Augustas Heraclides was doing so far from Terra and the Regent’s own grasp and for what purpose Adrias Lucion had appeared here today to apply for the Apollonian Scholarium.

“It does not matter. The decree does not apply anymore once the students actually arrive to the school. It would be irrelevant if we placed Lucion at 300 or 001, he will take what he is owed by his own merits when all of them enter the Scholarium together.” Theseas said tiredly, knowing his words would fail to quell the debate between Orelianas and Abronia, the two of them would go at it if not forcibly stopped until they starved to death.

By and large, the grotesquely modified would soar to the top if artificial barriers were not placed in their way. Unsurprisingly, at the Scholarium, when yearly reranking of the students happened, engineered children would find their way to the front as blood status was no longer looked at, only sheer performance and the quality of grades earned.

Talia, the Governor’s newest, youngest and thirty-second wife coughed next to him as the others went on and on between themselves. The difference in ages and maturity between them was disconcerting for Theseas, her fifteen versus his eight hundred and forty-nine, coming up soon on eight hundred and fifty. If it had not been for the demand of her father for a trade deal to go through, Theseas would never have taken her as a bride. He would probably wait until she was fifty to consummate the marriage, holding off until she seemed less a child compared to his advanced age. The natural lifespan of a Silver Imperator untouched and untreated by modern medicine averaged around five hundred years, but Theseas Claudion was the Governor of an entire solar system of the Dominium, and had the resources and medical care to extend his lifespan to conceivably three thousand years before nature finally had its due and the Fates snipped his life’s thread and he departed for the Corpsefather’s underworld to dwell as a shade for the rest of eternity with the rest of the masses of mankind.

Governor Claudion’s eyes drifted from his newest wife back to Persias Fulvion, both the Governor and the Fulvion patriach still blocking out the rest of the dining room. What had possessed the man to consider cloning to further his legacy? The temptation to push the limits of genetic engineering and lineal modification made sense to Theseas, even if he refrained from the extremes as a personal inclination for his scions and heirs of House Claudion, but cloning? Not only were clones, no matter if they were otherwise baseline Imperators like Lucias Fulvion, completely sterile like the worst of impure hybrids and augmented mutants, but the Skyfather’s reproductive curse punished any attempts at natural fertility most cruelly once the Kadmean sin had been committed. Persias was risking putting an end to House Fulvion with his experimentation, even his children that had been born regularly were at risk of the Skyfather’s angry gaze spreading to them and affecting their childbearing abilities. Did the man simply not care? Finally, clones were subject to a most nightmarish punishment, they were damned from aberrant conception to the deepest pits of Tartaros. Theseas supposed though as he viewed Persias Fulvion’s cold, emotionless gaze that the man probably did not care that he had guaranteed his clone sons an eternal hell for an afterlife with his misdeeds.

The Governor wondered if the four clones knew of their eventual fates or if they even cared if they did have that particular knowledge of the underworld. Perhaps it was too far off for them to truly confront and grapple with. Or maybe they were too young as well to internalize it. The clones were only three years old, eligible for Examination Day only because they had been artificially aged in growth accelerant tanks to teenagerhood and having forced their Awakening to Copper ten years early by defying nature and advancing their apparent biological age past thirteen.

Theseas found an unexpected feeling of empathy well up inside him for the clones, he hoped that despite their eventual damnation, the high Imperator society of the Dominium’s distaste for their kind, and their father and progenitor’s inability to truly love anything besides himself that the four boys would find some measure of happiness in their lives.

Soon, all three hundred of the candidates chosen for the officers’ school would set off for the Scholarium. First taking transport for Iulius’s North Sea to ensure the false assumption of the Iulian population that the school was under the ocean continued to propagate, and then secondly taking a submerged train located on the sea floor back to the Administrative District to continue the High Houses’ mistaken belief that the Scholarium was, in truth, in residence deep below the Governor’s Palace. Neither assumption was true, and both lies were fed respectively to the general population and to the upper crust of Imperator society for the safety and privacy of the school.

Governor Claudion rubbed his signet ring, the mark of his office of governorship, handed down to him by Theseas’s own father who had been the previous Governor of the Apollonian system before him. The signet ring was made of the white metal of Jovium and depicted a blazing sun on its face.

Known only to the Governor and the Headmaster of the Scholarium was a startling fact that no one present here today would guess in a hundred thousand years of guessing. The Scholarium was not beneath the Governor’s Palace and the Administrative District, though one could say that at times it was inside the Palace. At times.

The Apollonian Scholarium, with the aid of spatial warping and pocket universe creation technologies, had been miniaturized and stored inside the Governor’s signet ring. Students, faculty and servants would be teleported to and from the signet ring’s innards, never knowing that the whole of the officers’ school was at all times present on Theseas’s right hand. He rubbed at the white metal band again, reveling in the surge of exhilaration that the entirety of the Scholarium had been hidden right around his right ring finger.