Only my right hand remained bare of my new armor, diamond Afrit scales fusing to the oaken polearm. Carefully, I pulled fire out of my soul and sent it streaming into the godkiller in pulses. It was the best way to control it, I was beginning to believe. Giving it a direct flow made it hungrier. A little at a time kept it in heel though. Something was strange to me though, why it affected me so when larger expenditures did so much less to my health. It was more than just the drain or the ordinary damage to my flesh that heavenly flame did to me, holding the weapon and quenching its thirst weighed on me in a unique way. Burning myself up felt like using my body as fuel, this felt like I was aging and growing sickly.

How did one kill something that did not, would not, and could not die? Even Zeus’s bronze bolt of celestial wrath had not killed his father Kronos as I had seen in Tartaros. This was meant to do so though. To slay the unslayable.

It wanted to tell me; I could see. When I gave of myself to it and when I imagined murder committed by my hands, a part of me became the spear and a part of the spear became me. There was no more of this Spearbearer nonsense nor was there an Adrias Lucion, there was only the End.

The answer was before me, in the obsidian mirror of the tip and in my eyes that I saw reflected on its midnight surface.

If gods were myths, then their death was singular truth imposed on them. If the divine was contradiction, then their death was a solution to their paradox. If they were commands upon the universe, then their death was to be silenced. To be rendered voiceless.

Through my own mirrored face, I saw a more painful teaching in store for myself. To kill the immortal, one had to convince them that this realm’s laws affected them. How did you do such a thing? Make them accept death over eternity. Only, any argument was only as powerful as the one who gave it. My ethos was lesser and demigods and deities could swat aside my logic like a fly unless my pathos burned them. And in order for the argument to stick, I needed to believe it myself and let the spear kill me bit by bit too.

I didn’t think my grandfather was going to have the control he thought he would over this thing. Whoever used this on the Skyfather would shatter their own foundations to do the deed. And then Platinum would freeze that person in their final state, not save them. The question wasn’t how terrible it would be, it would be how terrible it would be for the rest of the universe when they were locked permanently in that state and gifted the full majesty of the Fifth Rank.

It had to be asked though I didn’t want to be the one to do it. Was Augustas the best possible choice for the mortal realm’s ultimate master for the rest of existence? I wasn’t asking out of arrogance. I didn’t think I was somehow smarter or wiser or more knowledgeable as a ruler that the Regent was. I was unworthy of a world that demanded more of its king than a clenched fist.

Even so, facts were facts, no matter how harsh. Something was terrible wrong with Augustas Heraclides, a mask of sanity slipping away if I watched him closely. And that internal self-destruction was only going to manifest more heavily. What Thrax had told me only cemented the thought that all the direness of my fate was only strengthened by the Regent’s circumstances and importance. Every moment that went on, his ancient mind aged further, at every hour of every day, the judgment and desire of a trillion human souls pressed against his divine half to warp his mythic nature into a contradiction that pleased their worship, and if Augustas took up the oaken doom I held, he would find his body flensed of vitality just before Platinum locked that lifeless status into perpetuity.

It was a fate I wouldn’t wish on anyone, no matter how much they wanted it, especially not someone to whom I owed so much. And to the rest of worlds, was it fair to leave them in the clutches of such a monarch?

A new plan was occurring to me. At the moment of the Skyfather’s downfall, as he lay at my feet and I held the deathly weapon and Augustas waited for me to hand it to him at the last second, I would stab the god myself and doom myself to Platinum and an eternal walking death.

I laughed. For the first time, an Advancement loomed before me, and I did not want it. Gods, I did not want it.

“Something funny, Adrias?” Livia asked, drawing my attention back to the airship as it continued to transport three hundred-and-five heavily armed souls to a battlefield of ice and snow.

She was such a nice girl. I felt… sorry. Sorry for how I treated her. It felt like all I did with her was drag her around after me and allow her to be the background to absorb my emotions. Had she really wanted to be an Imperator because she was tired of being weak or was it because she wanted to be more than a living surface for me to bounce my thoughts off of? It was too late now to change anything. Any realization came too late, when the curtains came to a close, if all went as planned, I would stand alone as a monument to my own sacrificial ruin.

And Livia and Toni would be in the audience seats not because they weren’t enough to deserve the spotlight or because I craved the sole focus, but because I would need to destroy myself to save them from a worse fate.

“You two, come here.” I said to them. They moved closer and I grabbed them in an embrace, careful not to let the spear touch them.

“Hey!” Toni said, surprised. Livia sank into it, though I could tell she was surprised. Why had I never done this more often? Why did I never think to do so?

“I want you both to know that I’m proud of you.” I said.

“I know.” Toni said.

“Are you alright?” Livia said.

“We came together because I wanted to rise up the Ranks and to be a hero, but I want you to know that if there were no Paths at all, going on adventures with you two would be meaning enough. And that I had wished I had seen that before.” I said.

“What’s wrong with him?” Livia said to Toni.

“I have no idea. Maybe the spear is messing with him.” Toni said.

“Thrax will protect me, your jobs will simply be to survive until the slayer of Zeus claims Platinum and then all will be well. Fight and live no matter what happens. Promise me.” I said.

“I promise.” Livia said solemnly.

“Are you alright? Answer that first and then I’ll promise.” Toni said to me.

“I’m the best I’ve ever been. I finally understand where my path leads.” I said.

“Alright, I promise, big guy.” Toni said.

“You both trust me?” I said.

“Yes.” Livia said.

“Yeah…” Toni said.

“Good. Then don’t break this silencer.” I said, snapping my fingers and wreathing them in veils of obscurity that shut away their natural and supernatural senses.

I sent pulsing threads of flame to the spear to distract it from my words.

Maintain. I commanded the veils over my friends’ bodies with the voice of exalted Heracles, champions of champions, king of triumphs.

Facing the remainder of the ship, all three hundred assorted Regnators present plus loyal Thrax and Persias of the gleaming eyes, I spoke with my own voice.

“This is the answer to the unanswerable.” I said, raising the spear aloft.

Each helm’s eyes stared at the sharpened edge.

“It is neither holy nor unholy, for those are the distinctions of man to separate the unnatural means that saves him from the one that damns him. It is, above all else, a refutation of anything that does not belong to this universe, a rejection of anything that has forgotten that the laws of this reality demand that all things rot and divide into new things. It is the paper upon which Fate is scrawled and I am its messenger. To cease the ceaseless, I will need to accept that same finality.” I said.

“What are you saying, Adrias?” Persias said.

“I’m saying that when I fight today until the war is one, I fight alone with my life’s thread about to be cut. You have been given orders, some of you have been instilled with devotion to me as much as my grandfather, some of you have come by it naturally, but if we are to have any chance of winning, you must not protect me. If I am not as close to my last heartbeat as the demigod Akhillos, then I will not be able to slay him. Do not save me. Not if I bleed, not if I weep, not if I stand a half step from my doom.” I said.

“I was made to safeguard you.” Thrax said, troubled.

“You were made to ensure that I make it to the throneroom. That won’t happen unless the gods are threatened and the gods won’t open up Olympus until their demigod servants have been killed. You were made to be at my side, so do your duty, soldier, and watch me walk into the unknown.” I said.

“You’re the only interesting thing in my life that I’ve gotten my hands on.” Persias protested.

I formed a coin from psychic energy.

“Things are only interesting if the outcome isn’t assured. Place your bets then.” I said, flipping him the coin.

He solidified it with his own power and tucked it away.

“As for the rest of you Regnators, we’ll be conducting a little experiment. My friend Thrax here, one of your brothers in the Regent’s defiance of biology, has told me that the divine and the semidivine are warped the naming and thinking applied to them. He has also indirectly found that while he cannot call me by my birthname, he can give me new monikers.” I said.

Accusatory looks were sent Thrax’s way which he bore unyieldingly like they were the criticisms of ants.

“In order to obey your creator’s mission, you are going to adjust your directives. Your new title for me is the Boy from Lavinius. Every time you think of me, that is the name you will carve into your mind’s sight, every time you see me that is what you will hear. Understood? Victory may depend on it.” I said.

“What’s this all about?” Thrax said urgently.

“The young are as mortal as any, but usually they go slower than their elders.” I said grimly.

“Akhillos then.” Thrax said.

“Hopefully, death takes my elder first.” I said.

Dismissing the veils around Livia and Toni, and promptly ignoring their questions, I made my last move and headed to the cockpit of the craft.

“What’s our landing strategy?” I said to the Navita pilot.

“Low altitude drop. From there, you’ll fight your way inside and downwards.” She replied.

“Belay that. It will take too long. Set it on an automated course to crash through the Silent Citadel’s walls and energy shields, and then eject yourself to safety.” I said.

“Sir? Are you sure?” The pilot asked.

“I have no interest in fighting Akhillos’s minions step by step on his terms. We’re getting as close as possible to him from the beginning. Set it and eject out of here. That’s an order.” I said.

I resealed the cockpit door and relayed my plan to the others. When our airship dipped into a monstrous descent controlled only by a machine, I felt peace. Soon there would only be the Boy from Lavinius and a man who had lived far more than his fair share, and either one or both of us would pass on.

We crashed through three layers of nearly impenetrable forcefields, then walls of frozen snow, and then bastions of Jovium alloys built to stand for generations. When the craft screamed to an embedded halt in the citadel’s structure, I led the charge out into the hordes of snarling mutants, armed with a psychic blade wreathed with an Afrit’s black fire and the godkiller spear.

I danced with the grace of a man who welcomed death’s kiss. There was no fear anymore. No anger either. There was only the rhythm of my heart and the surety that either I would draw my last breath or I would win, no path remaining but forward. Both options were of equal worth to me.

There was something ironic about how the closer you were to dying, the more you felt alive.