Thwack!

A sound like the Skyfather’s own thunderbolts resounded.

Thwack!

The force of the clashing boom set fire to the air.

Thwack!

The scent of ozone and searing meat and coppery essence fanned out like a smoke grenade.

Yes, punching Persias Fulvion in the face was quite enjoyable.

“Don’t lose control.” Alsig warned.

So enjoyable that I had to temper my passions and restrain my strength to the barest fraction. Being Golden was like living in a world of paper, you could manage to interact with it but a slip meant something was going to tear.

“Can’t say he’s particularly high on my list of things to be careful with.” Alsig said, a hint of a laugh in her voice.

Heh.

I smiled. She almost seemed normal again. Persias wasn’t very high on mine either, but that had more to do with this paper-man being able to put himself back together.

He teleported again, choosing to spend the limited ability once more. Interesting. He must have been getting frustrated.

I arced through the air, true flight rather than mere levitation whipping me through the clouds in a crescent path, the vapor superheating as I moved through it. Lord Fulvion had nearly exhausted his teleportation reserves and I had yet to spend any of mine.

What do you think the other Golds do? I wondered to my companion. Do any of them even use it?

“It’s instantaneous, or near enough, one would think it’d be valuable.” She replied.

It was hard to be as sure as Alsig was. The distances Silvers and even Golds could use the Imperial ability granted at the Third Rank to jump through space in an instant were impressive only until you started flying. Then the three-dimensional movement seemed like unimportant and sluggish.

As I soared idly, Persias used the brief moment to draw the water droplets of the clouds toward his outstretched hand, the gas thickening and condensing into liquid that coiled around him like a snake.

“Weapons?” My AI asked. “Weapons of water? That would do jacksh-“

“-armor.” I mused aloud. Persias was drawing the vapor to him to freeze around him into a slimmer, frostier copy of his Adamantplate. Threaded through the ice were fibers of azure psychic constructs, acting like rebar in concrete.

Interesting choice. I thought. I had not used any fire yet, neither that of the god Heracles nor the black fire of my new Order of Afrits, the same Order that covered my arms in diamond dragon scales. Not using any fire meant that Persias shouldn’t have defaulted to this, making armor purely out of mental energy would be far stronger than a hybrid of ice and psychic power. Lord Fulvion would only be making such an inferior choice if he thought I was going to be provoked to burn him.

“Should you let him keep going?” She worried.

It’s fine.

I let him drift, let him pull raindrops like a magnet. It was cathartic to beat him, but pure physical force wasn’t fazing him, and I needed to start testing new powers. Pulverizing him to a spray of chunky salsa would tell me only that punching the less durable hard made them die, and I knew that already.

Holy lightning was flickering around him, diving into crannies and notches forming in his makeshift elemental armor. The arcane lightning imbued the marks with a white glow and made the air hum with the echoes of a song forgotten by man. It set my teeth on edge, heat flaring within. Something about it made the divinity etched into my gained genetic code writhe, the instinct to silence a rival welling up in my heart. But this was no rival, so I did nothing, holding back my violent intent and inhuman strength to see if this was more than a desperate gamble.

The glowing runes and symbols were more than just for effect or even just singular spells networked together. They were pleas and promises to the heavens, invocations. Invocations to Zeus and Athena and Ares, invocations to Heracles and Artemis and…

Alsig started laughing in my head.

And invocations to me. The prayers weren’t even asking me to spare him, they were specifically calling upon my might to help him win against the enemy he was facing, a foe unnamed.

“The sheer gall of it! He’s praying to the being he’s trying to fight!” Alsig chuckled.

Time was up for him, whether Persias liked it or not.

My body shrieked downwards, gravity and telekinesis compounding each other, friction and air resistance nothing more than an afterthought. I kicked him to the ground, making Persias into an impromptu meteor that pierced the earth of his estate’s lands.

The ground shook, a localized earthquake vibrating through it. Persias leaped out of the hole.

“That’s going to be a pain to get fixed!” He yelled up at me as I hung suspended in the sky.

“I don’t think landscaping is something you have ever cared about.” I said, drifting to the ground, my shoes sinking into the loose dirt that had been launched everywhere.

“You don’t think my family’s ancestral lands matter to me?”

“No.” I said drily. “Maybe the size of them, but I think people’s conflicts and societal turmoil are the only things that matter to you.”

“I don’t think you understand me as much as you think you do.” Persias said, striking at me.

I leaned out of the way and then caught the next, gripping his icy gauntlet in my diamond scaled hand and whipping him into the ground before flinging him away.

He gracefully landed on both feet, jumping back to put more space in between us. Irrelevant space, but distance all the same.

“How so?” I said.

“You act like the only thing that matters to me is drama.” Persias lamented.

“That was my impression, yes. You get bored easily because nothing matters to you.” I said.

“Absolutely. That doesn’t mean drama does anything to alleviate my tragic pain.” He said.

I rolled my eyes and then dashed forward to shoulder check him in the chest. His icy armor cracked, but melted and resealed itself immediately after as Persias flipped through the air. This time he stopped himself with levitation.

“Chaos then? You’ve lit this planet on fire, literally so in many parts of it.” I said.

Persias shook his helmeted head. “You have lit this world on fire, I merely fed your legend some kindling to make it shine brighter. If all I wanted was chaos I could have done that long before you were ever born.”

I was about to suggest that he was too cowardly to do what I did on his own, but the taunt died on my tongue. I knew that wasn’t true because of his screwed-up brain chemistry.

Perhaps I didn’t understand him. Maybe I couldn’t understand him. His particular lack of fear was strange to me, it wasn’t bravery or courage but something else entirely.

“Fearlessness then? A lack of fear instead of persevering through it?” Alsig said to me.

Even that didn’t feel right. Being fearless gave a far more heroic and reckless feel to me, someone who abandoned reason entirely. Someone could credibly assign that term to me, but it didn’t fit the master of House Fulvion.

“Show me your divinity, Great Lord.” Persias said. “Set yourself aflame.”

“That would kill you.” I said flatly. Heracles’s funeral fire surging through a Golden Imperator’s body was a recipe for annihilation of anything that put itself in my way.

“I’m touched by your concern.” He said, bringing his gauntlet to his heart in a mocking gesture, his icy armor scraping against itself.

“I have elected to keep you alive for your usefulness, despite how annoying and deceptive you are.” I said.

“But the point of this is to prepare you for the Golds coming,” Persias insisted.

“I’m limiting myself. Some grass and your face will be the least of the casualties if I unleash myself.” I said.

“Then limit yourself while also wielding your most devastating strengths, Adrias. You cannot practice your full potential, so practice controlling and focusing it. Hone it to a razor’s edge.” He said.

“No.”

I needed to figure another way to go further, perhaps a room spatially warped to be larger and sealed with heat nanites like the ones that protected Alsig and the strongest Jovium alloys possible. Something that let me pretend this world of paper was a world of wood at least.

“Perhaps you’re not what I hoped.” He sighed. “One can’t refine garbage into greatness, no matter how much of the rot you cut out and replace.”

“What?” I said, confused. A prejudice against Sunburst Station Imperators?

His telepathy brushed against my mind, an image sliding into my neurons rather than words.

An image of my face.

“Oh.” Alsig said to me. “Oh no.”

More specifically, it was an image of my face before I had put on Augustas’s ring. What I had looked like as a Servus boy.

“How did you find this.” I said quietly.

He waved his hand, a far larger dome of silence than he usually made forming over us as he approached.

“Few people would ever believe it for obvious reasons even if they traced records of flight patterns back to your original planet and reports of a strange Imperator appearing. How would such a transformation even be achieved? One would have to believe the impossible to even connect all the dots together, but, for the record, you probably should have gone by another name than you did as a Servus. Would you believe there was only one Adrias Lucion on Lavinius? One Adrias Lucion who disappeared after his family’s murder just before Adrias Lucion the Imperator appeared in the exact same place?” Persias laughed.

“You should be careful with what you’re doing.” I said.

“I’m never careful with what I’m doing.” Persias replied. “What I do want you to do is show me your final glory, the Imperial Fourth Rank fused with divine blood. Or I can, ah, spill the beans, as they say.”

“I won’t be blackmailed by someone like you.” I said coldly.

“It must have been a relief.” Persias cut me off.

“What was?”

“To have something so shameful and weak sheared cleanly away from you.” Lord Fulvion said.

“You’re not going to enrage me over what I once was.” I said, even as I tried to block it out of my mind.

“I’m talking about your family.”

All emotion fell out of me, dropping out of my heart into an abyss I didn’t know was there.

“It must have felt so good to know those loose ends were neatly cut off by someone else for you.” Persias said.

“He’s trying to get a rise out of you, Adrias.” Alsig said.

I turned to leave.

“I must say, I do feel a shred of sympathy for your youngest brother. Taken away so swiftly at such a young age-“

I didn’t remember turning, nor did I remember stepping towards him, but when consciousness came back to me, I had slammed the Silver Imperator on his back and was standing over him, flames building in my veins.

“Yes! Yes!” He said, laughing. “Show me the blazing god!”

I was giving him everything he wanted. And I hated that more than I hated him in this moment. I extinguished the holy flames and gathered myself.

How did I win? Not just abandoning his game, not just flipping the board over, but how did I beat him at this? How can you beat a player you did not understand?

“Prove him wrong. And then figure out what he wants most and deny him that.” Alsig said softly.

I called up the black fire of the Afrits in my hand.

“That works too.” Persias said.

He wanted to see a Gold’s powers or a god’s, preferably both. So that is what I couldn’t give him. Rather than unchain the dark blaze to devour him, I used its heat indirectly to melt his hybrid armor slightly, though it quickly started to reform.

Vines and roots grew from me and crept down towards Persias, drinking away the melting water and destroying the foundation the other parts built off of.

“What is this?” He complained.

“The power of a Servus.” I said. “Maybe I hated being weak, but I never hated my family or what they were.”

“They were peasants even amongst the Slaves.”

“And if they were alive, I would have made them royalty no matter what Path they bore.” I replied.

“They wouldn’t be worthy of you.” He scoffed. “They wouldn’t deserve to be at your side.”

“You can care about people without them being useful or important-“ I paused.

Alsig had said, And then figure out what he wants most and deny him that.

Pieces fell into place for me. Persias, as he had said, could have caused chaos whenever he wanted. He claimed he had no interest in drama. What did he desire then?

“A lack of boredom.” Alsig suggested.

No. It’s more than that.

“You want to feel alive, don’t you, Persias. You were born into having everything you could ever want, and even death doesn’t make you feel anything. For someone as empty and jaded as you, a sunrise or a fine meal or loved ones at your side will never fulfill that empty void in you. Spite is probably the only thing that has kept you from offing yourself. Nature can’t provide you awe, but the unnatural can. I can. I am the god and the hero and the saint and the demon you’ve been waiting for.” I said.

“Yes…” Persias said reverently, slick with rainwater, reaching up towards me.

“And I’m going away soon to Terra after I have dealt with the two Golds.” I said.

“Yes?”

“Going away soon to Terra without you.” I said.

“No. You can’t- you need me.” Persias protested.

“No, I don’t. I might need you here running things and leading my cult, but I don’t need you coming with me to Terra. The only people I might bring aren’t those who are powerful, but people I actually like as companions.” I said.

“I can be that.”

“I doubt it. But you should try very hard because I am going in the near future, and you may never see me again if Augustas wishes me to stay. You may never feel awe again. Or feel at all.”

Persias looked terrified. For the first time in his life.