“Can we… can we justify these projected losses? With the highest respect, my Governor and my god.” Tradelia said, she shifted in her chair, her violet and Copper eyes staring at sobering estimations.

She was one of the governmental staff inherited from the previous regime, present when I had come to Theseas Claudion’s former Palace to take advantage of some of its records and resources. A dangerous move perhaps for an ordinary man to let my fallen foe’s staff assist me, but if I investigated her mind and saw disloyalty, both of us knew I could take her out of the equation on a whim.

“We can’t move an entire planet’s worth of people,” I said while examining a data pad detailing the possibilities. “Even if we had the ability to round up all of Iulius’s population and enough large ships to put them all on spacecraft, there’s no way we could sustain them all. They would starve or suffocate inside those starships.”

The room went quiet. Strange to see Imperators feeling empathy for the rest of the populace. I looked around the private meeting room, seeing the stilled faces and tired eyes. Something needed to be said.

“I remember my mortal life. I remember the face of my mother and the feeling of being one more soul in an endless sea of them. These two Golds will not and that is the difference between us. You have my word, upon my honor and upon my bloodline, that I will do everything possible to contain the threat and to minimize mass devastation during combat.” I said.

“Can you not just fly out of orbit into the void and engage them there?” A man said.

“Our… guest, Clodias Aezion, who lies in captivity currently is being possessed by Nero Aezion. He was happy to inform me that as part of their strategy one of them would face me while the other went to destroy parts of this world.” I said.

Perhaps it would be too grisly to mention Nero’s alternative plan to go hunting down refugee ships. Oh well, the point was these people understanding that there was no bloodless path out of this.

“Dear heavens above.” The man answered. “Is there no mercy in the greatest of us?”

I resisted the urge to say, Of course not. Lacking that is most of why they are where they are.

“They needed a way to control where the battlefield was set and to limit what I was willing to do. Keeping an entire planet hostage is one way to do it.” I said. “I can’t remove the death toll from the equation, and I can’t go all out without killing my own.”

“Could we evacuate more of the population to Scholarium? Send the ring away on space travel? Or any other such folded space pocketworlds?” Tradelia asked.

You wouldn’t want to be in the Scholarium during this fight, I assure you. I thought, rubbing the ring on my finger.

“The Scholarium’s subreality is being repurposed for classified purposes. I’ll be blunt. People will die if I do not give in, but so too will they undoubtedly die when callous immortals step on them after my corpse has cooled. I choose life for myself and liberty for the rest of you when I have departed.” I said.

I stood, something scraping against my consciousness like rusty nails.

“Continue to prepare the bunker systems and emergency services-“

The scraping became a stabbing sensation in my head and pressure formed in my ears.

Then alarms on my wrist communicator came on, messages from far out satellites around the planet’s orbit detecting cloaked ships entering the system. It was time.

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I stretched my senses, snaking through miles of metal and concrete to find Antonias.

“Time to go. They’re here.” I telepathically communicated to him.

“I’ve got Plan B with me.” Antonias thought back to me. “You’ve got the others?”

“Plan C is around one of my fingers and Plan A is in my heart and soul.” I replied.

Tension and anticipation spread through me, but I took my time all the same, walking through the palace grounds and upwards to a network of shafts and tunnels that I could fly upwards. There was no point at all in wasting my limited amount of slowly rechargeable teleportation jumps even if I didn’t expect to use them as a primary transportation in battle.

Antonias and I met on the roof of one of the skyscrapers, the skies of Iulius remarkably bare of airships and the docking ring that encircled this world of steel jungles and concrete hives was being dismantled and dragged in pieces away. There was going to be innocent deaths today and I regretted it even as I resolved to fight harder. My Golden enemies would not have one more extra second of breath to deal out their horrors then I allowed.

My friend tossed me a sphere of chrome and blinking lights that I caught and swallowed, the safest place for our Plan B. Antonias carried a similar one in his stomach. It would allow me to bring him into the fold at an unexpected time.

I rubbed the Scholarium ring one last time before pulling it off my finger and swallowing it as well. In order to get to these two key things, Nero and Vespasias would need to rip them out of me. Which could very well happen, in all honesty.

As I prepared to float upwards, Antonias made a noise, his red eyes flaring hungrily.

“Forgetting something?” He smiled up at me.

“I’m about to fight a battle, you know.” I said.

“Come off it, your healing won’t even notice it and it needs to be fresh when I end up downing it.” Antonias reminded me, holding up a flask.

I bit into my palm, telekinetically drawing blood forth and preventing it from clotting, before sending it spiraling as a scarlet cord into his flask as he licked his lips.

“Now get away.” I told him firmly. He couldn’t be in the same area for the beginning.

“And don’t drink it before it’s time either!” I warned.

“Aye, aye, captain.” Antonias said, flickering downwards, leaping through time and space.

Distantly, with supernaturally enhanced eyes, I saw two shapes split off from the main ship of the arrivals. Orbital defenses and guardian fleets found themselves impotent before them, plasma and distortion effects blooming without result, lasers and gauss gun accelerators rendered to being nothing more than children’s toys.

My turn to prepare.

Heracles’s fire ran through my veins, pulsing and pounding, just barely contained. I let it run wild, let it tear through my body and my mind until a berserker fury and incandescent aura threatened to utterly consume me. Then out of hardened golden light and azure psychic constructs, I copied in my own way what Persias Fulvion had tried against me, repurposing a design with potential that had been left in inferior hands.

The golden armor of raging light was strong, but if my divine flame guttered out or receded, it was structurally flawed. A mesh of psychic construct fibers interspersed throughout the whole gave it more longevity.

Next, still following some of Persias’s ideas, I etched spells and invocations to divinity into my armor, these ones to Heracles, myself and to my grandfather for good measure. These I lit with both lightning and holy fire, warping the world just as the Corpsefather had when I faced him.

“Look upon me,” I said through my conjured helm, knowing they could hear me despite the distance and the lack of molecules to transmit sound.

“Look upon me.” I repeated. “And know that I am Heaven’s Spawn.”

The two Golden Imperators entered the atmosphere. Nero Aezion bore a Seraph’s splendor while Vespasias Flavion held the same distinction of my order, diamond scaled hands.

They looked young though they were older than nations and peoples, and surprisingly human for entities so powerful. Nero was smiling with an uncomfortable energy while Vespasias had only a cold disdain. I noticed that strangely he had a Red Halo in his eyes while Clodias’s ancestor had nothing at all.

“Look upon me.” Vespasias echoed me mockingly. “And know that I am Hell’s.”

Then he dropped a tiny device downwards. I held it in place between us, above my head and beneath their feet.

“What is that supposed to do?” I said, trying to unravel its secrets, worried that just crushing it might unleash something terrible. It was devilishly complex mechanically and my mental copies were getting led in loops.

Then it exploded, melting every building within ten miles into molten metal and sending me through the crust of the planet like I had been backhanded.