Toni dragged me, moving in a darting motion that was half flying with his twisted wings and half sprinting.
“You look rough. Really, really rough.” He said, my body held under his arm.
The butt of the spear and my heals dragged on the ground as he ran.
“I feel fine.” I insisted.
“I don’t believe that.” Toni replied.
“Maybe the arrow is affecting me, but otherwise, I’m good.” I said, pulling it out of me.
“You’re in denial.”
I unlatched myself from his grip and ran under my own strength once more.
“Thank you for finding me.” I said.
“I almost didn’t. This place is a labyrinth. It shouldn’t be this hard for a Gold of any Path to find you in a city this small.” Toni said.
“The landscape warps the senses. Like how the walls of my grandfather’s palace blocks them.” I said.
“No, this place is creepier. It shifts around. One minute you’re in one place and then next you’re back where you started. Won’t even let me teleport.” He said.
His words must have been an omen because we stumbled right back into the area where Thrax and his Regnators were unsuccessfully fighting the goddess. Somehow, we had looped around despite heading in a straight line towards the center and the highest point of Olympus. We could try flying but there was no doubt in my mind that we would be struck down by a thunderbolt. That was even assuming that the tricks with distance and direction were stopped when you rose above the streets. It would be too convenient a way around the effect to be hoped for.
I saw that the goddess’s companions were dead, but even with thirteen Regnators that had all been made with incredible amounts of Advancement lightning, they were just barely managing to slow Artemis down. Her divine commands were sliding off them, creatures distanced from the meddling influence of Olympus, but that didn’t make her fists and knives any less devastating. Thirteen Regnators became twelve and then eleven. Something drastic needed to be done. Waiting only meant more of my bodyguards and soldiers dying off like flies and running just led us nowhere. I needed to find a way to deal with Artemis but without killing me.
A scheme to even the odds.
The very first arrow that she had sent at me had been slowed by my psychic shield and then been lodged in my chest without fully penetrating it. Dipping a finger into the hole, I examined the residue smeared there. The beginnings of an idea breathed its first breath in my mind. I liberally coated the obsidian spearhead with as much of the remaining cursed poison left and then spoke in Heracles’s pitch and cadence, “Enhance curse, resist removal.”
I hoped it would be enough to get the job done. The goddess struggled harder upon hearing the weight of my voice. Eleven fighters became only nine.
Two more things that had to be done.
“Cover her mouth.” I told Toni.
And then only one more; mitigating the negative side effects of the spear. I had less help than I did for Akhillos, but I wasn’t trying for a full kill either. Just a temporary crippling. My spear moved twice with surgical precision, once into the throat to damage her vocal cords and once across her eyes to take her sight. Both woundings let mortality sneak in with a simple taunt; an agreement with her assessment that immortality meant seeing Apollo degrade further and further. It might not have been as true as she believed, but she thought it was and that was enough.
I smiled, rising in triumph and then falling in tragedy as the toll of my actions struck me. Even only wounding a greater god and with relying on the poison, I had done something terrible to my health to foot the bill for what I wanted. I could only hope that it would be enough to outweigh the ultimate consequences.
“Adrias, why??” Toni said.
“C-carry… carry me to… to the rooftops. S-stay low…” I got out.
“What if that doesn’t change anything?!” He snapped.
“Spread out as a group. If one of us starts to diverge or disappears, everyone stops and the missing members reorient.” I said, switching to telepathy. Partly secrecy, partly a struggle to move my tongue clearer than a drunkard would.
We left a blinded, voiceless Artemis behind us. She would recover eventually, but not before we bought ourselves much more time.
Remaining with me were ten others.
“Antonias will carry me. Thrax, you’ll be ten feet directly behind us. The rest of you eight will split four on each side and span out the same radius apart from me.” I said silently.
With Toni’s help, I was moved at a crawling pace across the rooftops of temples and dwellings that had never been home to anyone at all. Olympus was made to look like a true city and that required lesser structures to highlight the grander ones, but at the same time it would never have tolerated the kind of people who would have belonged to these empty shells.
“You staying awake?” My friend said.
I slurred something back and returned to my thoughts. This was the major difference between Elysium in the Underworld and Olympus in the sky, the first needed slaves in order to feel superior, the second could not bear the imperfection that inferiors would track in. This distinction had made Elysium seem rotten to me and now made the city of the gods seem cold. Something like a fireplace that had never been lit even in the dead of winter so that it could never be dirtied by smoke.
No more cracks of thunder echoed in the sky that I had heard, but its absence was more than replaced by the roars of Augustas taking on multiple gods at once and Paths engaging Regnators. My grandfather was dragging our forces forward with his indomitable will, not even undying legends could stop him. The clash rippled through the city, demolishing large sections only for them to reset their position and state moments later.
I wondered if the head of that statue I had launched at Artemis had eventually regrown itself. Had it teleported back into place? Disintegrated into dust and then been replaced by a double? Flown through the air and then been glued back on top?
“Adrias, we keep veering off course.” Toni said.
I blinked slowly, my face feeling numb.
“Just keep resetting every time. Everyone stops, the missing member finds their way back to the group, the group repositions and starts again. Go as slow as you have to and then even slower than that. Now, let me rest.” I said.
My blinks kept coming slowly, flashes of blurring roofs and passing groves in between long periods of blessed darkness. It was the price I had to pay. There was no chance that I could have gotten away from Artemis in this place with its tricks and her ability as a huntress. Many of my self-made mishaps were from impulse or anger, but this was merely a necessity. Sacrifice was needed to fight the divine. A letting of blood, a scourging of flesh, a baring of the soul. That much was the same now in the age of starships as it had been when men sailed on ones made of wood.
“Adrias? Adrias, we are here.” A voice said. It was distant and muffled. I assumed it was Toni’s, but I couldn’t be sure. Whether it was Toni or Thrax didn’t seem to matter right now. I just wanted to sleep.
“Your grandfather is here.”
Those words shocked me back into awareness. I rammed the bottom of my spear into the ground and stood straight up, pushing off assistance. Augustas was ahead, staring up at the throne room. Many steps above the center of the city of the gods sat an acropolis much like the one that had stood in Athens long ago. Zeus awaiting us upon his heavenly seat.
“Truly I was right to entrust this role to you.” The Regent said without looking at me.
“Born ready.” I said.
“Made ready.” He corrected.
Looking behind us, I saw that a quarter of the original number of Regnators that Augustas had brought with him still stood alive. A culling. Yet another sacrifice paid to facedown with Olympians.
“A hard-won victory.” I noted, gathering my wits about me and steeling my nerve for what lay ahead.
“Easier than expected.” Augustas replied.
“They had less willpower than you anticipated?” I said.
“They had fewer numbers. Apollo, Heracles, and Athena all were not present and Artemis spent her time tracking you.” He said.
There was an air of suspicion about him, but it was not yet directed at me. In many ways, I still remained merely a pawn in the Regent’s view. Let him think that. If my grandfather thought I was dumber and more loyal than I was, then maybe any inconsistencies could be explained by me simply being nothing more than what he expected. I had a role to play, but it was not as just the expendable Spearbearer, the instrument to secure Augustas Heraclides’s dominance over Heaven and Earth, but as a Liberator of all mankind. My offering to Fate and Fortune was my own self-determination in order to free others from the rule of the selfish and the ancient.
“What are we waiting for?” I said finally.
“A reprisal.” Augustas muttered. “Zeus can’t have that many throws left in him at this point, but one never knows. I see the Regnator you call Thrax survived.”
“Yes, I managed to deal with Artemis with only a few losses.” I said.
The Regent’s eyes zeroed in on something I couldn’t see. “That makes this more convenient. Come here, 15730-B.”
Light shone from inside the throne room above and a crackling surge arced towards us.
Bang!
When the flash’s effects passed, even sooner than before, I saw that the Regent had used Thrax as a human shield, gripping the Regnator warrior by the back of his neck and holding him aloft. A bronze bolt was buried in the Thrax’s chest. The man I had called my grandfather cast aside Thrax’s smoking husk of a corpse without the slightest concern.
“Now we move.” Augustas said.
I felt more sadness than I should have. I had only known Thrax for a short time, he had been utterly prepared to die, and the basis of any connection we had was programmed into him, and yet there was still sorrow as I charged up the steps to the Skyfather’s acropolis. Perhaps it would have been easier if he had gotten to die a hero’s death rather than be so unceremoniously robbed of agency and used up in an instant. The last time he had been addressed, it was with his number rather than his name and that bit into me. Thrax had deserved a death fighting beside me with a smile on his face and blood on his sword.
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Reaching the apex of Olympus, we stood in front of great columns of flawless white that shone like the sun, just beyond them a curtain of swirling mist that obscured everything inside.
“I have come for your throne, Zeus.” Augustas shouted triumphantly.
No reply came.
“Scared to fight me?” The Regent said.
No words were spoken but there was a hint of emotion emanating from within. Contempt.
Augustas snarled and lumbered forward with his gigantic stride. When the wall of mist resisted his warpath, he set his fingers gripping deep inside like it was made of firm steel and wrenched an opening into it. I followed, and then Toni, and then the first of the remnants of the army. My hope was that Livia and Persias were somewhere far back in the lines, away from the coming confrontation. This whole battle had been no place for Silvers, but now especially I didn’t want there to be potential hostages against me. The interior of the throne room was very similar to the vision Kronos had shown me, but with some subtle differences that I did not know quite what to make of.
There were still twelve thrones and on the highest one sat a black haired man with eyes that dimly flashed with electric arcs, but unlike the vision this man wore no crown and his face seemed worn and lifeless despite his otherwise youthful appearance.
“I have come to take my glory.” Augustas proclaimed.
Some focus came back into Zeus’s eyes, just enough to show disdain.
“I gathered.” The Skyfather said. “Will you be narrating all of your actions today, worm?”
“After all I have achieved, still you belittle me. I am your ruin, not just a mere pest or a disease.” Augustas said.
“You are the symptom of the true disease.” Zeus corrected him.
“And you, of course, are above us all. What difference do you find between what I do to you now and what you did to your father, Kronos, when you overthrew him?” Augustas said.
“Nothing.”
That word held in the air.
“What?” I said.
“Stay silent, Grandson.” Augustas said.
This didn’t seem to be the grand triumph that the Regent had been hoping for, a bloody brawl or a clash of rhetoric.
Zeus fixed his sight on me. “Speak.”
“Why aren’t they different?” I said.
“Every revolution believes that they will be different to the old order. That they will be the exception. They never are.” Zeus said.
“I said to keep silent.” Augustas said to me. “Enough of your chattering, Zeus, it is time for me to break you. My grandson has brought a gift for you, you see, and you are out of bolts to throw.” Augustas said.
“Am I?” Zeus said, manifesting a zigzagged chunk of bronze metal.
The Regent paused in his step.
“Perhaps you have the mental fortitude to bring one last one out, but we both know that each one drains you. You’ll have nothing left after that, and one won’t kill me.” Augustas said.
“It does drain me. I can’t do a fraction of the number I once could.” Zeus admitted, tossing the bolt aside, the metal clattering on the smooth floor.
Then he manifested another one. This too he threw to the side like it was garbage before making yet another and dropping that as well.
“Only a fraction of my old power is left to me, that is true. Tell me, son of my son Heracles, do you know how many I once could make?” Zeus said.
“Then why not strike me down before with those?” Augustas said.
“Because you aren’t special. Because there would be no point.” Zeus said.
“You truly have gone senile.” Augustas hissed.
“If I killed you now, there’d be another eventually. Some demigod spawned in the mortal realms, a horror generated in cloning tanks, an ancient monster unleashed. The cycle repeats. The young reject the yokes of heaven and cast down the old to take their place, just as I did to my father, and he did to his.” Zeus said.
“None have challenged you like I have.” The Regent said.
“Because you eliminated them all to protect your rule, fulfilling the purpose I gave you in allowing you to live. You’ve down an admirable job of sabotaging all the other challengers while slowly mustering up the courage to finally do something. And it only took fourteen thousand years.” Zeus said with dark sarcasm.
Augustas roared and seized the smaller man by his robes, brutally bashing him in the head over and over. There was nothing subtle or skilled in the violence, only anger and spite. The king of the gods merely stared dispassionately, golden ichor leaking from his nose.
“Grandson, bring the spear.” Augustas said, slamming the god to the ground. “With this you shall be gone forever, and I will rule eternally.”
“I thank you for your kindness, that I will never have to feel the disappointment of seeing it.” Zeus said.
“The spear, Adrias.” Augustas said.
I stared down at Zeus and wished I could tell him what I was going to do so that he might look less scornful than he did now thinking that I was just going to hand over Platinum to a lesser man, a crueler man. Igniting the full force of Heracles’s funeral pyre, I noticed the blessing of Apollo laced into my skin activate unexpectedly to protect me from the blaze. My body moved faster than it ever had before, all of my training and determination focused behind the black tip of the ravenous spear.
Nothing could go wrong.
In that endless moment, I stared into my targets eyes and saw images of the future reflected in them just as they had been in Artemis’s. Images of me. This time they were of a version of me with Platinum in his eyes and a crown of laurels on his head. The vision shifted, showing my face fill with wrathful anger when again and again future generations rose against me. The visions faded to leave only the same scorn that I had seen before but thought was out of him not understand my intent. But he did. And he despised it not out of it involving his loss but because nothing would change with my reign.
Every revolution believes that they will be different to the old order. That they will be the exception. They never are.
Platinum wouldn’t make the content of a person’s character any greater or lesser, merely freeze it where it was and hand that unchanging mind near infinite power. Would I be any better than the old order? Was I really liberating anyone? In this, was there anything being done other than making either the Regent or myself a more indestructible tyrant than what we had now?
Cursing my foolishness even as I gave into it, I turned the point of the spear aside and then twisted to reposition it to aim at Augustas.
I wasn’t fast enough.
He had begun moving when I had gone for the kill and changing my mind had lost the moment. Augustas’s massive left hand crushed my throat in a vise grip while his right ripped the spear from my hand.
“Betrayal? Betraying me? I, who have given you everything? You worthless Servus!” Augustas said, flinging me to the ground.
Toni flew at him, but the Regent backhanded my friend into a broken mess.
“You and anyone you love will be tortured for eternity in Tartarus, I can promise you that.” Augustas said, readying the spear to commit deicide himself.
“Stasis.” Zeus said.
“No.” Augustas dismissed.
The Skyfather looked to me.
“Stasis.” We both said together, overruling one voice with two.
Time froze.
“Well then.” Zeus said, every trace of weariness gone from him. Whoever that sad excuse for the king of the gods had been before, this was the Thunderer.
“What now?” I said.
“This stasis won’t last forever for us, even if we try to extend it. You’ll have to try winning Platinum from me on my terms.” Zeus said.
I slumped. “I’m afraid I won’t be able to give you much of fight at this point. I’m on my last legs.”
“I can see that. Your soul looks like shredded rags.”
“Thanks.”
“It doesn’t have to be a duel, that’s just what your maker finds most gratifying.” Zeus said.
“Isn’t it supposed to relate to my Path?” I said.
“More or less. Sticking a spear through my eye doesn’t have much to do with leadership as it is.” He said.
“It’s a crowning finish to the war.” I said halfheartedly.
“Perhaps. There are still other ways to decide. Do you know the origin of this winning condition?”
“Athena’s contest of weaving with Arachne.” I said.
“Why don’t we play a game then?” He said.
“What game? Ur? Chess? Cards?”
“Truths for truths. Whoever speaks falsely loses.” Zeus said.
“And if I lose?” I said.
Zeus merely smiled.
Right. Best not to do that.
“We’ll swear it on the Styx.” The Skyfather said.
“Fine. I swear on the Styx to abide by these terms; whoever lies in this game of truths is in the other’s power.” I said.
“I swear this as well.” He said.
There was no boom of thunder and on instinct I looked up as if there was another heaven above us.
Zeus laughed. “I can make some thunder if you really wish it, but the oath will hold without it.”
“That’s alright. What is the disease that Augustas is a symptom of?” I asked. “Eleutheromania?”
“No, not hunger for freedom. The disease is that all kings become tyrants should they live long enough.” Zeus said.
I nodded. “But Platinum would prevent that decay.”
“Only if one was free of the contagion before they won the Rank.”
“Ask your question.” I said.
“Why did you first reject mercy and make that rejection your binding principle?" Zeus said.
Because it was about justice and mercy corrupts justice, I almost said, the words burning on my tongue. But they weren’t quite the truth.
“Because vengeance made me feel strong, made me feel like something was being accomplished. If there was a fitting and just punishment offered by a higher authority, I would have ignored it because killing Gavias felt like it was owed to me.” I said.
“You may ask yours.” Zeus said.
“Why did you make Platinum at all? Why give us the tools to overcome you?”
“In the hopes that I could make better versions of the gods, originally. Dreaming that one day that ideal candidates for replacement would learn our Paths and then be frozen as worthy successors forever. What would you have done to Gavias now were you to step back in time?” Zeus said.
“Imprisoned him and the others for murder. He wasn’t worth my full attention though beyond that. I should have set up a system that punished and prevented those kinds of lynch mobs and family rivalries. I left Lavinius without changing any of the underlying factors that killed my family.” I said.
“A growth in wisdom.”
“Would you really have let either the Regent or I kill you? I said.
“I hadn’t decided. I figured I would wait until the very last moment. What is a king’s highest virtue that distinguishes him from a tyrant?” Zeus said.
“Mercy.” I said.
“Why?” He said, breaking the pattern of a question for a question.
“Because the lack of it means you have control over everything but your own self. The impulse upon seeing wrongdoing is always punish it until the desire for vengeance is sated, but that has nothing to do with what is good for society.”
“And do you have control over yourself?” Zeus asked.
I shrugged. “I didn’t kill you when I could have despite having every selfish reason to.”
“One last question then. What is the best type of man there is to be?” The Skyfather said.
“A kind one.” I said.
He summoned a bolt and I stiffened. As I watched, Zeus bent and warped the weapon into a ring shape, the object shrinking into a smaller size. The god stood and came closer to me.
“I think your grandfather would be a good king.” He lied, losing the game on purpose and placing the makeshift crown of bronze lightning upon my head.
For the fifth and final time, I Advanced. For a single moment, the muses’ choir sang until another voice replaced theirs. It was Arkhe, the muse who I had sent Apollo to rescue. My fingernails glowed white, and glyphs of fire burned underneath my skin as electricity sparked around me. Every atom in my body was replaced by a substance that predated matter and energy, the primordial mass that formed the universe.
The stasis broke apart and Augustas eyes widened as he saw me.
“NO!” He yelled, lunging with the spear.
It shattered against my chest.
“Are you going to kill me?” He asked.
I walked past him, the Regent suddenly seeming so small despite his stature and power. Reaching Toni, I saw that he had died a second time.
“Brother, it is time to wake up.” I said, reaching a hand into the Underworld and yanking his soul back from the Corpsefather.
Antonias’s eyes shot open.
I examined him, the twisted monstrous shape that my friend had taken.
“Be well again.” I said, without any need for divinity to make reality do as I wished.
The Leechling in my friend was erased, leaving him as he once was.
So many things to do. So many things I could do now. With every action, there was an equal and opposite reaction. Except now I was beyond the forces of this universe. Placing the unmovable weight of my body and soul on one side and everything else in existence on the other, I pushed, and reality moved. On the steps outside the throne room, Thrax’s burnt husk healed and he breathed again. Elsewhere, Apollo, Athena, and Heracles’s minds were healed of the effects of their long lives cramming their heads. Livia’s memories and the damage I had done to her in transforming her Path was repaired in an instant. On Iulius, those who had died in the crossfire between Vespasias, Nero and I appeared were resurrected. Augustas’s soul was plucked by my hand and given a new life and a new chance in rebirth.
Every mistake I had made and tragedy I was unable to prevent was set right.
Lastly, in a home on Lavinius, a family known as the Lucions opened their eyes in their beds. I stepped through space and teleported outside their door; hand raised to knock upon it. I breathed in and out, before turning around and walking away, cloaked in invisibility. So much had changed, would they even recognize me?
I walked beyond the limits of my hometown, striding towards the junkyard of starships that I had first found the ring.
Zeus appeared beside me in a flicker. He looked much happier to no longer be king. “What will you do now?”
“I was going to make everyone into Imperators.” I said, examining a rusty hunk of metal and then casting it aside.
“Give them something better.” He suggested.
I considered that and then closed my eyes. Touching the core of all the Paths, I unbound them to allow for a new system, one that allowed humans to still cultivate but to choose whatever skills and talents they desired. When I opened my eyes again, I found that the decaying hulks of ships had turned to legions of crystalline flowers of every possible color, stretching on and on into the distance.
“What now?” I asked him instead, uncertain of the future.
“Journeys often end where they begin.” Zeus offered.
I turned and walked back to the Lucion household, not bothering to disguise myself in a veil of secrecy, the townspeople hiding as I passed them. When I got to the door, this time I knocked, and my father answered.
His eyes were fearful when he looked up and met mine.
“Lord… H-how can I-“ He tried to get out.
He didn’t know me. How could he?
My mother came to the doorway.
“Adrias?” She said. “Is that you?”
My mother reached up to touch my face but wasn’t tall enough. I knelt and let her fingers trace my face.
“Yes, Mom. It’s me. I came home.” I said.
“Where have you been?” She said, not remembering any of the details of the day she had died.
“Finding my own Path.” I said. “I’m a king now, Mom.”
“Of what, sweetheart?” She said.
“Of everything.” I said, embracing her.