“You do love it, don’t you.” Alsig said to me as a hovercar glided through the air to land on top of the temple.

“I only play my part as an actor would.” I whispered back to her, my ability to obscure my words from watchful sensors much improved when I didn’t need to shield Antonias as well. Some more time for me to think over it helped as well.

Or rather, some more time for me and the copies of my mind that divided at will, different parts of my brain creating alternating personalities as I needed them. With the concerted efforts of the many and my superhuman reaction times, I processed things at remarkable speeds. I had been told long ago by Justinias at the Scholarium that it was debatable whether Golds were actually smarter or just inhuman. I certainly was starting to feel like both.

“No, it’s more than you just playing a part.” She insisted, getting back to her point. “It’s proof.”

“Proof of what?” I said.

“Your lips are blurry, it’s annoying to look at.” Antonias cut in, complaining.

“Can you still hear me then?” I asked him.

“I’m Silver.” He replied.

That was answer enough. It was also answer enough for my unasked second question, which was whether the more advanced surveillance tools could pick up the muffled sound of my voice even if they couldn’t pierce the veil around my face. The Dominium hungered to replicate the greatness of the Paths when it could so they could be profited from. A Silver Imperator’s hearing wasn’t beyond the works of mankind to replicate when we could travel the stars and turn planets into irradiated glass. I let the distortion effect fall away.

Proof of what? I thought to Alsig, resigned to the fact that I’d have to go back to speaking to her in that way. It felt… compressed. Like trying to have a conversation with someone but you were squished together into the same shirt. You were closer, but that didn’t mean it was more coherent or comfortable.

“Proof that the only way you can cover up your past is with the adoration of the masses.” She said to me.

If those words had come from someone else, I would have taken them as a challenge. With her, well, I just felt sorry for her. Isolation had scraped something in her soul raw until she lashed out at every opportunity. I pitied her, a fact that no doubt would have infuriated her if I wasn’t hiding my core consciousness away at times and having a duplicate personality fill in for me with thoughts that were less likely to bring her anger. Alsig seemed only able to interface with one of my personalities at a time, and with the cognitive division working by isolating sections of my neural structure, I could have the part her chip was closest to be run by an intermediary.

Truly, was anything about me still human anymore?

My arm rested on the door of the waiting vehicle, the diamond scales scraping against the metal. This was the same car that Persias Fulvion had sent for me after I resigned from the Solar Guard, I had almost gotten in it without hesitation, but I was no longer the Bronze I was then.

“Are we getting in or not?” Antonias demanded, his fangs seeming longer. He must have been hungry.

“No. I changed my mind.” I said. “A Silver and a Gold are above ordinary machines like this.”

“Teleportation then? I might run out before we reach the main estate.” He said.

I closed the hovercar’s open door. Before I had levitated. Hovered. My lip curled at the thought of such impotence. Man had dreamed of flight, true flight, since his inception and I was no different. I was Gold and I was done with floating, now I wanted to fly.

“You won’t have to worry about that. Now hold on.” I said, grabbing him and soaring above the crowd to their applause. The version of me that was managing Alsig informed me that she was now going on about how my flight pattern related to a savior complex.

“What about the others? Pollixa and the Laruas?” Antonias asked.

I had forgotten about them in rapid pace of advancement and then revelations from my grandfather, but they were all down in the remnants of the cathedral-like temple. I could speak into their minds and give them instructions, but if my followers wanted a triumphant god and Alsig believed I had a complex about bringing salvation, I would just have to play my role once more.

The top of temple was carved out by my telekinetic blades of azure light and I drew it up and then to the side, revealing the interior filled with the newly reborn.

“Time to go.” I announced, all those besides the thirteen souls that had been my Ghostforged blade having good enough hearing to pick up my voice even as a whisper.

I pulled the thousands of those who had followed me out of the Underworld with a force in between magnetism and gravity, and took off with them trailing behind my path through the air.

There was a terrible yet exhilarating feeling that I could do anything now, that once my blood, bone and brain had been scrubbed clean of weakness and impurity that I could break the unbreakable.

Crack!

Unconsciously with what felt like the slightest twitch of my fingers, I shattered the shoulder of Antonias that I was holding onto. He growled, his facial structure becoming more wolfish in his ire before reverting back to normal.

“What the hell?” Antonias snarled. “You crushed my goddamn shoulder!”

“You’ll be fine in another second or two.” I promised him, though I was shaken as well. A Silver Imperator’s bones should not be pulverized with such ease by movements so light. It wasn’t a deficiency with my friend, not by any way my senses could tell as they scrutinized every cell down to the atoms, instead it was the freakish might of Gold.

Superhuman potential that forgot the word human was in it at all.

Two of the original Nine, Vespasias Flavion and Nero Aezion were coming to kill me and they would find me waiting for them. None of us could go any further than being Golden without testing ourselves against the god of our Path, and so the only things that mattered were who we were without our shared Path’s gifts. The fourth Rank had removed our flaws, soon we would put what had been left untouched by the cleansing to the test.

Rocketing down towards the ground at the sight of our destination, my overconfidence in my new abilities had its foundation shaken. Below lay mostly what I expected both from my memory and from my psychic perception snaking ahead of me in all directions, seven castles in a ring around a central one, the seat of House Fulvion. The one aggravating detail was a single smile, a crescent grin that shouldn’t have been where it was according to all of my senses except sight.

That blindingly smug smile belong to Persias Fulvion who stood outside waiting for me in defiance of everything else telling me nothing was there. Evidently, he could hide from me in everyway but my bare eyes.

When I decelerated into an easy landing and his smile widened, I decided that he probably could hide from any method of detection by me but was merely allowing me to see him.

I wanted to punch him.

“Persias, my most faithful servant.” I said. “You certainly have… made changes in my name. Changes to our plans for the invasion of Iulius that had to do with acceptable targets.”

“The original plans for drilling underneath failed, we were trapped in our territories and unable to advance. A new paradigm had to be made.” Persias said smoothly.

“A new paradigm like a religion based burning people to death.” I said drily.

“None of us knew you would return to us, my Governor. We did what we had to.” He replied, tossing me the ring of office.

I slipped it on, the weight of the contents inside of it palpable.

“Why didn’t you just go for your own rule if you did not know I was coming back?” I said. “Fear of punishment?”

“I don’t feel fear.” Persias said, and despite all the lies he could tell, that rang true to me. There was something deeply wrong with the man.

“Why let my legend latch onto you like a leech then? Why feed a dead man’s cult when you could have patriots and hardliners of your own?” I said.

“Throughout my life, I’ve searched for meaning. Meaning that I found in your divinity.” Persias said.

“A philosopher, are you then?” I scoffed.

“Merely a man bored by the limits of mortal men’s bodies and minds. If it was not clear before, it should be now, you are more than the sum of your parts and the result is glorious.” He said.

“We will be shaping the doctrine of my religion- of Lucanism, to something more in line with my vision.” I said.

“Of course, my lord.” Persias said.

I didn’t like how he looked at me. My soldiers had looked at me with hunger and my worshippers with love, but Persias gazed at me like I was a trophy on his shelf.

“I brought my Laruas here for the extra space you have in your castles. Antonias, Pollixa and I will need places to sleep as well.” I said.

“It will be done.” He bowed with false humility. “I hope you might join me and Lady Fulvion for dinner once more?”

“Fine.” I said tiredly.

Letting Persias’s staff handle the others, I found my way to a bed. It had been a long, long time since I had slept, before I had died was the last and I wanted to just for a little while sit on a soft surface and close my eyes.

Even if I did not need to sleep anymore.

I walked through the most isolated of the castles on the grounds, finding my way to the most remote bedroom I could find and finally be alone. I smiled as I opened the door to the empty one I had chosen.

“002.” Clodias greeted me with my number from the Scholarium’s entrance examinations.

“I am getting really frustrated with how many people seem to escape my detection.” I said, looking around the bedroom for any more inexplicably good spies.

“I won’t be able to do this to you when we meet, don’t worry.” Clodias smiled.

“What… are you talking about?” I said carefully.

“What’s the special ability that Golden Imperators are granted upon their rising to the fourth Rank?” Clodias asked.

“Bloodline possession. The same thing that allows me to communicate with my grandfather where ordinary telepathy would fail across the distance of light-years.” I said.

“But that’s not its main purpose obviously.” Clodias said, plucking petals off a rose from a flower pot.

“No, it’s to take over and control your… descendants.” I said.

Clodias laughed, dropping the rose to the ground.

“Clodias’s last name is Aezion.” I said coldly. “Any chance he’s a descendant of Nero Aezion, one of the two Golden Imperators coming to kill me?”

“Kill is a strong word.” The thing controlling my friend’s body replied, confirming its identity.

“Let my friend go, you foul creature.” I seethed.

“I’ve been your friend for the entire time you’ve known him.” Nero Aezion speaking through his descendant’s mouth.

“What the hell are you talking about?” I said.