The rush and thunder of the fight in my nerves dimmed to a tepid electric flow. I was close now. I was so close to my final move that I could almost see my perfect victory, feel the sensation of Platinum taking my mind and soul, hear the shock and surprise of all those who would be there in Olympus’s throne room. That exact emotion from Augustas engraved in my sight as I outmaneuvered him for once, but for his own good and the good of all the Paths and peoples of the greater human species. If I wanted to preserve that surprise and the greater good, I would need to keep my grandfather from knowing that something was up. Doable, perhaps, if I alone was the one that reported anything back, but there were other witnesses to how I disappeared by Akhillos’s order to an unknown location before coming back with an unnaturally tan skin tone for the stonelike Imperator bloodline. Not only that but with the demigod seeming to let his guard down before I killed him with the spear.

It was suspicious.

They were things that I needed to explain away sufficiently that no one would give the Regent a reason to be wary of me.

Think, Adrias. Think. I said to myself. Devise a way out of this. Devise a lie that’s easier to believe than the truth.

As I pondered through it, the others finished the engagement with pitched duels of their own. Thrax shattered mutated and augmented bone with his shield, stepping out of return strikes before nailing a finishing stab with his short sword. Persias and Livia worked as a tag team, her youthful aggression tempered by his experience, and his eccentric tendencies reined in by her comparative sanity.

And then there was Toni, dominating the field of war with a Seraph’s speed and wielding whips of stolen blood that twitched and writhed with unnatural life of their own. Even caught up in his own Leechling hunger, I saw him glance over at me with concern.

Toni. Toni would be where I would start with my deception, enlisting his aid through voiceless telepathic communication that no one else besides the two of us would hear.

The more and harder I planned; the greater amount that time seemed to slow as my processing speed picked up. A great boon that would have given me effectively infinite time to plot if I was among ordinary humans, but the others moved with superhuman swiftness as well. I still wasn’t out of options though. Subtly, I let my body sag and tremble from feigned exhaustion, mimicking the symptoms of what the spear usually did to me but had not with the aid of the sun god’s information about Akhillos’s mother.

Let anyone watching think I was weak and feeble. First, the lie. If not Apollo himself, what could tan a Golden Imperator’s skin? The best lies had something of the truth to them…

So I would say that I had been burned by the light of a sun but not by the Sun himself. I had not known that Akhillos could have displaced the two of us like that nor could I have known where he could take me. I doubted that the others knew anything more than I had. The Regent might find it strange, but he also had his attention fully focused on the war effort against the heavens.

So, for this lie, I would say that I had been taken to the surface of a blazing star in this lie. Only, that alone would not be enough. Not when my will resisted mundane forces. Unless… Unless Akhillos gave another divine command to have it burn me. No, that still wouldn’t work. My armor and clothing would have been fully destroyed, and I would be a barbecued husk of a man rather being a bit more colorful and normal looking than my Path should allow.

What then? Well, I should just keep going with taking a fraction of what had really gone down, warping it, and then diluting it with falsehoods. Apollo’s glaring sunlight had not set a single thing on fire, but it had destroyed DNA and bleached pigments in the crops. I could say that Akhillos had not commanded the star’s radiation to burn me but instead used it to damage my genetic code as an attack, leaving my overall body unchanged save for a divine command of my own that I made to protect myself. That gave a reason for where I had gone and why I looked the way I did.

Now I needed something to explain why he had done all of that effort and then waited to strike me down. An offer of a different but similar sort to the reality, maybe. Akhillos was an alchemist and a geneticist. I could lie that he tried to threaten me with my divine inheritance been corrupted and him offering to fix it with alchemical treatment if I switched sides as a turncoat. Now I had a faked motive for him, a falsified location as a reason for his arrogant waiting for a response.

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It was go-time without a moment to spare.

“Toni? I need you to do something for me exactly as I tell you to do it.” I sent to my friend without the slightest of whispers.

“Alright. Hit me with it.” He replied through our private telepathic link.

“We need to convince Thrax and the other Regnators that they don’t need to look too deeply into what just happened.” I replied.

“What did just happen?”

“I’ll tell you later. Now, just trust me.” I said. “You need to pretend to be in the grips of your bloodlust.”

“I am in the grips of my bloodlust.”

“Fine. Just pretend to be angry that I’m not fighting as hard as I would without the spear.” I said.

I needed to drum up some sympathy from Thrax.

“What the hell is this, Adrias?” Toni demanded with feigned annoyance. “You just vanish and then come back and just stand around?”

I said nothing, focusing instead on artificially making my heart beat erratically and causing my breathing to hitch. I could tell Livia was about to say something, so I sent her a silent message to stay out of it. It all had to come down to making Thrax feel obligated to be the one to defend me rather than taking the role of my investigator.

“He slayed the mighty demigod with one attack!” Thrax said.

“And we’ll be facing full-on gods and all their forces soon.” Toni said.

This was good. I severed capillaries in my throat so I could cough up blood.

“Just give me a minute.” I said, using the spear as a makeshift crutch as red fluid dripped from my lips. I thought I was doing a decent job of acting.

“Just keep pushing, Toni.”

“Do you want us to wait all day?” Toni said.

“Watch your tongue! You’re speaking to one of Mankind’s greatest heroes, you mongrel demon. Show some respect to the legend you dare to call a friend.” Thrax spat.

Toni made a face and Thrax’s golden eyes flashed with murderous intent. I had to hold up a hand to stop the Regnator from pulling his blade out from his sheath again.

“I can tell you guys what happened…” I said before stumbling intentionally. Thrax caught me as I fell and set me down on my knees on the chilled floors of the frozen sanctum.

“My lord, it can wait. You are unwell.” Thrax said anxiously.

I shook my head, making a show of pushing through it.

“When Akhillos displaced me with the authority of a god, he took me somewhere for what might have been a short time for you but was a long time for me.” I said.

“Where? Where did you go?” Thrax said.

“A star.” I said.

“Laugh derisively.” I sent to Toni.

He did so, as only he could.

Thrax glared at him. “I will cut your tongue out.”

“Akhillos sent us there on the surface of that blazing sun to try and force me to fall to his inner darkness. He used the ionizing radiation of our surroundings combined with his own will to try and damage the sacred genes that my beloved grandfather has entrusted to me. And in doing so, attempt to control me by offering elixirs to slow the degradation. I would have been permanently dependent on his witch’s brews to live.” I said.

“Dastardly coward.” Thrax said bitterly.

“Cause trouble again.” I thought to my friend.

“So you just got yourself a little suntan?” Toni said.

“I will beat your smug face into a paste of bone fragments and jellified muscle!” Thrax snapped.

“You want to rein in your biggest fan? He looks like he’s serious.” Toni whispered into my mind.

“I know. You did a great job.” I sent back.

“It’s alright.” I said to Thrax.

“My prince, how can someone as noble as you stand to listen to this kind of backstabbing drivel?” Thrax protested.

I laid a hand on his shoulder and stood with his aid.

“I can bear any criticism or mockery so long as a few believe in me.” I said.

Toni used telepathy to send me the impression of him gagging at my words. I had to resist the urge to smile. So long as these words were what I needed to win, I would say them. What kind of hero would I be if I could take lives but was afraid to be briefly embarrassed?

“I will always believe in you.” Thrax promised.

The presence of fingers reached past my sternum to grasp my heart and the disembodied voice of Augustas Heraclides thrummed in my bones and my teeth.

“Adrias, my loyal soldier. The time is at hand. The gods have crossed over to this world and given me a pathway to exploit for our invasion as I knew they would.” My grandfather intoned distantly.

“Where do you want me to meet you?” I said aloud to the confusion of my friends and allies present with me.

“You misunderstand. We advance now. Brace yourself and bring your soldiers as you are summoned.”

Summoned? What did he mean by summoned?

“ARISE!”

The call came through me so loudly that the others were knocked aside just by standing near me. I was ripped into the sky, just barely managing to drag my friends and the three hundred Regnators I had been given after me. We fell upwards more than truly flew, and the sky we traversed was somehow more than just Terra’s atmosphere, not just the air of the Earth’s but of all the skies of every world that the human species had colonized. The transition seemed to last an eternity and the longer it took, the greater the number of our forces gathered together as a gleaming rain of comets.

Clad in armor, veiled in superheated air, we ascended towards something I had never truly looked at before, something I had never recognized despite it having always been hanging above me. My eyes had just never been able to see it.

It was a mountain’s peak floating in the clouds.

It was Olympus.

And today I was going to kill its king.