I moved without thinking of doing so, lightning quick, savage impulses coming to light as my mind was bathed in the heat of the Divine Champion’s pyre. My skin was cracking and revealing the warm light of embers, my blood was perpetually on the verge of evaporating out of those cracks before my healing factor recondensed them and reformed the crisping blood cells. When I breathed, golden fire shot out of me. I was burning up from the inside, but I had never felt so alive, so vibrant. My body’s impending destruction was not painful, instead it felt energizing, electrifying. Glorious and victorious.

Andarias came at me, with surprise and the slightest beginnings of fear in his eyes.

He was slow now to my perceptions, so slow that I could not imagine having lost this fight moments ago. When my fists struck the clone, his skin blackened and blistered at my scorching touch and his clothes ignited as I came into contact with them. When he punched me, I heard the sound of his knuckles shattering against my skin, suddenly ultradurable beyond that of a Bronze.

I sucked in another breath, the heat building and seething as I inhaled like I had thrown gasoline on the blaze inside me. As I battered Fulvion, a dark, predatory instinct was stealing over me, inflaming my most violent impulses and devouring any thoughts of holding back against Andarias. His head was annoyingly difficult to get in consistent successive hits so I grabbed his thigh and wrenched, pulling him off balance. He slammed backwards into the stone like a building being demolished by explosives.

Climbing onto his expansive chest, I pounded my right hand into his face. Up and down, faster and faster, increasing the velocity and intensity. I panted as I did so, partly an animalistic urge brought on by the divine power of Heracles enveloping me and surging in me and partly by my rational desire and tactics to increase the heat of my body through rapid inhalation. Feeding the fire oxygen, stoking the flame. My marble skin burst on fire. I was enduring the high temperature better than I had during the heat resiliency test during Examination Day, I did not know if that exposing myself to that extreme had caused me to adapt and acclimate to such thing or if the sacred, heavenly energies raging inside my very being were strengthening me even as they worked to destroy me. Perhaps both.

Andarias’s face was reddened and blackened from swelling caused by the heat and the injuries and by the scorching effect of my flesh bashing into his. Blisters formed only to be burst by the next time I brought my hammering fist down on him, popping open and releasing the fluid within that vaporized the instant they left his body. The hyperdense bone of his skeletal structure that I had earlier judged to practically indestructible were pushed inwards, cracked in many pieces under the bruised, searing skin and muscle of his face.

His Bronze Imperator regeneration was preventing blood from leaking outside his body, as Gaias had told me back on Sunburst Station on how not even a Keenblade with Thanatosian Particles would draw ichor from my veins after my advancement in rank, Andarias’s healing power was coagulating any leaking upon contact with the outside air and telekinetically siphoning droplets and spurts back inside to refill his blood vessels. Something about that was incredibly unsatisfactory to the animal instincts and predator’s mind that was overwhelming my personality and mortal identity every moment I was exposed to the transformative effect of my partially divine genetics awakening.

Something very unsatisfying indeed about the lack of blood. I decided to fix that, arching my back and drawing my fist back all the way and brought it down again like the Skyfather’s thunderbolt lancing down from heaven to smite his foes.

Blood and cerebrospinal fluid from the interior of the clone’s skull that cushioned his brain sprayed out. I smiled manically in triumph and clenched my teeth, my muscles glowing like coals, golden fire and scarlet smoke pushing out of my nostrils as I snorted.

I did not care anymore if this fire of Heracles’s pyre was going to kill me. I really did not. Whether I lived or died seemed a distant, unimportant concern when fueling the light and heat in my veins and the miniature star that had replaced my heart felt so gratifying.

What was a thousand thousand years of mortality to a few seconds of divinity? What was-

“That’s enough, Lucion.” Instructor Justinias’s voice cut in through my mad, feverish thoughts.

Was it though? I stared down at Andarias Fulvion’s destroyed face and considered the merits of just one more punch.

I drew back again.

And then I felt a strong hand wrapped around my neck. I looked up to see Justinias.

“I said that’s enough. You won.” He said firmly.

I remembered Augustas’s transmitted words to me when he had commanded my hand to strangle Junia, Antonias’s Hetaira.

You let these worms speak like that to you?

Who was he to tell me what to do? I was the grandson of Augustas, the great grandson of Heracles, the great-great grandson of the Skyfather. Who was this man to tell me to do anything?

“You dare?” I seethed, the divine flame enraging me like I had never felt before. “I am the descendant of the Regent!”

The other young Imperators gasped at that admission.

“You dare?” I said again, standing to my full height so that we were eye to eye, though he still had a tight grip on my throat.

“Why, yes, I do.” Justinias said evenly and then I felt a coldness spread through my form, originating from the instructor’s hand and spreading throughout me like an inverse of the divine power that had ignited with me. Heracles’s funeral pyre cooled, the star where my heart dimmed, my burning blood chilled back to a normal Imperator’s temperature.

Justinias dropped me and I fell to my knees, breathing heavily. I did not feel immortal and invincible anymore, in fact, I felt terribly mortal and even sickly. Reserves of energy and stamina I had not even recognized I had possessed were drained to the merest drop and I felt like I had aged a hundred years, even after my regeneration had begun to repair the outward appearance of damage.

I felt a stranger in my own skin now, the arrogance and fury that had materialized as divine vigor had flowed and coursed within me was as frightening as it was exhilarating.

“Well, looks like Pyro Boy is your Spartiate.” Justinias said pleasantly, as if nothing had happened. “I have the pleasure of being your guidance counselor, adviser, and group mentor for you delightful little angels. I’ll be helping you with choosing classes.”

Kato helped me stand and I went over to Andarias who had healed enough to have eyes again. I held out a hand to help him up and hesitantly the boy took it and I lifted him up.

“Real sweet and sportsmanlike,” Justinias commented mockingly.

I looked at the others who would be my Helots under my command. None of them would look me in the eye and all of them looked absolutely terrified save for Aurelia who looked unimpressed and Kato who looked like he had just watched his favorite checkerball team win the Apollonian Championship.

I sighed and tried to focus on the fact that Livia was safe now and still had a place at my side.

“How do we get out of here?” I asked our guidance counselor.

Justinias popped a slim remote control out of his pocket and clicked a button. The stone wall of the chamber suddenly turned silvery metallic and then collapsed into grains of metal fillings, the roof retracting away from the center and to the sides so it did not fall on us. The stone floor’s metallic grains collapsed through a metal grate and the rest followed, filling a pit below with piles upon piles of the substance.

“What are those?” Pollixa asked curiously, getting over the unease she and the others had displayed following my defeat of Andarias.

“Polymorphic transmutative nanites.” Justinias said. “They can become any substance besides Jovium.”

“Why can’t they become Jovium?” Kato said.

“Because Jovium is Heaven’s Metal, the Skyfather’s Gift to all the Paths of Mankind, and that which is divine cannot be copied, recreated or meddled with by mundane and mortal hands.” Justinias said.

He glanced at me.

“Or it should not be, anyways. You all just got front row seats to what happens when those with too much ego and too little sense play god.” Justinias amended.

“You realize you just said that about the Regent of all the Dominium.” I said stiffly, being more open about my origins now that my fat mouth had revealed a substantial portion of it.

“Yep. I would say that to his face too.” Our guidance counselor said happily, as if he was not talking about insulting the lord and master of the known universe but rather telling a hobo that he smelled.

With the stone room broken down back into the shapeshifting nanites, we looked around at a cavern filled with training equipment, workout machines, obstacle courses, fighting rings, and weapon racks.

“What is this place?” I said.

“Headquarters for Team Nine, which is you guys, and also where I sleep. Consider it a home away from home. Here you will train together and improve your physical and mental skills outside of class or Apollonian Citadel facilities.” Justinias said.

Andarias’s face did not look so bad anymore, more swollen and bruised than that of murder victim killed with a hammer and a flamethrower and I noticed he was walking right beside me, a step behind. He did not seem to be plotting revenge against me.

He smiled at me. “That was fun, we should do it again. I bet I can get you next time.”

“What the hell?” Kato said under his breath. “You two just tried to murder each other.”

Andarias stuck out a massive hand. “Friends?”

“Do you often make friends by having one of you get brutally beaten to a pulp?” I asked the clone.

“How else do you make them?” Andarias said, completely serious.

I considered the fact that the clone was actually three years old rather than his apparent age of eighteen and that perhaps I had been judging him harsher than he deserved as a result. I took his hand and shook it.

“Friends.” I said.