I paired up with Kato, Andarias got with Pollixa, Aurelia with a girl I did not know and that I decided to call One, the first of the remaining five Bronze Imperators I did not have a name for. Then there were two boys facing off against each other who I called Two and Three. Finally, there was a girl I designated Four and a boy she was going to fight that I decided was Five.
Kato was slow and reticent with his movements as we fought, at first, I thought he was still groggy from the sedative we had been injected with by the Assassin Venators, Kato was not as good a fighter as the other students, but he was certainly better than this performance.
Then I realized that he was throwing the fight willingly for me so that I could get ahead with an advantage. I struck him a few times, dodged a few of his, allowed him land one and then flipped him to the ground and pinned him. I held him in a chokehold and after a bit of mock struggling, he tapped out.
I looked to see that Andarias had beaten Pollixa Gallion and One had beaten Aurelia, Three had beaten Two, and Five had beaten the girl he had been paired with. The boy, Three, came over to me and One and Andarias took up fighting positions. Five leaned against the side casually, watching the rest of us brawl as he waited for a new victor from one of the two fights to battle with.
Three went down with a little more effort than I had put into the struggle with Kato. Three was not that martially proficient as some of our peers might have been, but unlike my friend the boy actually wanted to win. I tripped him and brought both of us to the ground and then held him still until Justinias called it.
Finished with the fight with Three, I looked and over to see that Andarias had already blown through both One and then Five, who had been waiting, in the time I spent going fist to fist with Three.
“Let’s find who’s the better man, 002.” Andarias said, cracking his knuckles.
“Guess we will, 007.” I said, putting emphasis on his ranking compared to mine.
He snarled at my snide insult and moved forward, and I danced out of the way of his first strike, letting it fly by me like a train.
I was wary now, not fearful but not taking my victory as already decided. Andarias’s Campeador DNA made him a hulking beast and it gave him a substantial advantage on me. He had a foot in height on my seven feet, a lengthened reach that allowed the clone to strike at me without any worry that I might be able to hit him in the same moment without closing the distance, hyperdense bones that might as well have been unbreakable, unnatural explosive power that would have given him additional mechanical strength even if we had the same weight and height and proportions, and an exaggerated physique and musculature that probably gave him over a hundred pounds on me easily. It was like a Welterweight taking on a Super Heavyweight.
The tide began to turn soon after we started, I could land a few punches on the clone but he soaked them up like a sponge and while I could dodge and scurry from his attacks, when he landed one it stunned me and he was able to pile on more and more. I hit Andarias again, and then he smiled viciously and hit me in the chest and broke my ribs. Reeling from the injury, I took a step back. I could heal from these wounds in a short time, there was no poison like the flight attendants’s claws or Thanatosian particles on a Keenblade sword, but Andarias did not give me that time. He applied hits at superhuman speed, striking me and taxing my regeneration further before each injury had a chance to fix itself.
He grabbed my hand and snapped my wrist and then brought down his fist on my skull, partially caving it in. Blackness flashed over my vision, eventually receding and leaving stars and spots in their wake in my vision. Then he broke my jaw and then Andarias dislocated my right shoulder with a blow. The clone followed that up with a punch to my abdomen that I could feel was causing major organ damage and internal bleeding. Then he pushed my sternum in, causing me to hack up blood through my broken jaw.
Broken and battered, I took one more step towards the Fulvion boy and then he slapped me with the back of his hand and knocked me off my feet and into the stone wall. It cracked as I slammed into it with the force of Andarias’s brutish might and physical strength.
I tried to get up, but my body refused, seizing up and trembling. I could not see straight; I most likely had a severe concussion and other forms of brain damage from the severe hits to my head.
Distantly, like hearing through cotton, I heard Andarias laugh at how I had been brought low and how he had triumphed. I felt the sharp stabbing of shame and then an even worse pain when I thought again of Livia and how she would be sent away with nowhere to go.
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The other Imperators in the room besides seemed to me seemed slow to a crawl in their movements like they were swimming in honey, and then they outright froze. I tried to blink but found I could not. I was not sure if that was because of the neurological damage and psychological trauma I had just endured or if the same effect that had put them in a kind of stasis was affecting me too.
Tavias appeared before me, winking into existence not unlike the Governor’s Silver teleportation ability, though I suspected he was here only in my mind and not actually in the room physically. Some kind of waking vision overlayed over reality, time frozen as I experienced this transmission between us.
“Adrias.” Tavias said, his golden irises gleaming. He was as he had been last time, a short man with tan skin, dressed in worn rags.
I was not able to move my jaw, even if it had not been broken, to respond to him. My wounds weren’t healing in this time stop but I could still feel the intense pain of them.
“Speak to me with your thoughts, boy. Project them out at me through our connection and I will hear your words as you intend them.” Tavias said.
I can’t do it. I’m not strong enough. I thought, pushing them outwards towards him. Andarias is a monster in combat, he’s more powerful than I am.
“You are my grandson. You are strong enough so long as you choose to take that strength by force of will. My children and other descendants were unable to summon my full potency or mimic my deeds, but you have the mindset to seize what they could not. You understand what it means to sacrifice everything for glory, to destroy oneself in pursuit of perfection. I see this in you.” Tavias said.
It’s not enough. You don’t think I’m trying, Grandfather? I want to break this bastard and save my friend more than you could imagine. I thought.
“Try harder then, boy.” Tavias replied.
Whatever you think I inherited from you, I obviously did not. I said in my thoughts, emotions rising within me.
Tavias paused, considering something, mulling over his thoughts. Apparently, he could take as much time as he wanted with how time was behaving out of whack.
“I had thought to put this off for some time, but it appears you might need it now. Tavias is not my real name and the form you see before you is not my real body. Tell me, Grandson, who am I?” He asked me.
I don’t know.
“Guess.” My grandfather insisted.
I do not know.
“I am an Imperator, but more and greater. I am legend itself refined. Who am I?” Tavias said.
An answer occurred to me, but the idea of it was so absurd I had been avoiding it in my thoughts whenever I had wondered about the creator of the ring that had transformed me, the man who claimed me as his descendant.
“Speak.” He demanded.
You are Augustus Heraclides, Regent and master of the Dominium of the nine solar systems, and son of the Divine Champion himself. A Golden Demigod. I thought. I would have trembled from the audacity of the guess if my body was able to shift.
“Yes.” He said, amused. Yellow light glared in his golden irises.
I was too cowed to speak again.
“Now you see whose grandson you really are, and you know why you are strong enough to win.” Augustas said.
I still wasn’t so sure of the idea that I could win. Demigods in the legends of Grecia and Roma left children behind before they perished. Those children left children of their own and yet, by and large, we do not remember their deeds or tell their stories. You are a great man, beloved by the heavens, but that does not mean I am. I replied.
“Those descendants of the heroes of old might have been unimpressive, but that does not mean you have to be, Adrias. I am more than my father as he was as a mortal demigod because my demigod Foundation has been refined and enhanced by my evolution through the Metallic Ranks. The power given to you might be small but your rising to Bronze Rank has purified and strengthened it. You can tap into it.” Augustas said.
How do I do so, Grandfather?” I thought.
“Do you know how my father became a god, grandson?” Augustas asked me.
No. I replied in thought, knowing only that the Champion had been born a demigod before the arrival of the Paths and had become a deity after his mortal life ended.
“He burned. Heracles self-immolated, went to his funeral pyre willingly upon the nearing of his death from the touch of hydra’s blood. When the flame consumed his mortal flesh, only the god remained after the inferno cooled.” Augustas said.
My grandfather winked out of the room and I was left alone in my thoughts.
Warmth spread from me, a furnace where my heart was pumping boiling blood through my veins. Time unfroze, speeding back up again. I saw Andarias’s smug face, saw the others looking to him deferentially, heard them speak to one another.
“And that will be it then.” Justinias said. “Fulvion is your-“
Heat radiated from my body. My clothes burst into flames, where my skin touched the stone ground it glowed red, baking under my flesh’s touch. My injuries repaired themselves, skin unbruising, bones unbreaking, muscles and tendons and ligaments untearing. My skull popped back into shape from being smashed in and my jaw popped back into place.
Ages ago, Heracles’s pyre was first lit and now the pyric fury and intensity of that day burned from within me. I stood, the stone growing sticky and slowly liquifying from the heat and pressure of my feet pressing down on them.
The others stepped back, forced away in surprise by the thermal energy pushing them back, save Andarias who bore it resolutely.
“What is this?” Andarias demanded.
“He burned and thus so must I,” I said, the words coming from somewhere deep inside, my veins glowing like magma and my heart seething with the light of a star. Strange energies coursed through my nerves and muscles. I heard the tongues of the Haellenic ancients, and the roars of lions, and the marching footsteps of legions, and the drums of war.
I saw now that the test would not be whether I could defeat Andarias Fulvion but if I could do it before the divine power raging within every cell in my body incinerated me.