I walked to the administrative desk manned by a Copper Imperator. A sneer came over her face as she recognized my face, no doubt my image was being widely disseminated throughout the Guard stationed on Iulius.

“Can I help you?” She said, pulling a false mask of politeness over her face.

“Yes. I would like to resign from the Solar Guard.” I said.

She laughed. “You’re not getting off that easy, coward. Once the Guard claims you, it owns your body, mind, and soul. The only way you’re going anywhere is in a body bag. You can’t just resign.”

“Actually, I can.” I said. Lord Fulvion had assisted me in finding a bit of a loophole.

The Copper raised an eyebrow. “You have a direct missive from the Governor?”

The skepticism in her voice was clear.

“No. Paragraph 167, Subsection 32, Clause 4 of the handbook allows for religious exemption to participating in any form of the Guard, both active and inactive duty as they both contribute to the war effort.” I said.

“And what god do you supposedly worship?” She asked me.

“The Peacegiver.” I replied.

“Who?”

“Eirene.” I said, but she didn’t seem to know even the goddess’s true name. To be fair, neither had I until an hour ago.

“Sounds made up.” She said.

“You’re welcome to look her up.” I said pleasantly.

Her expression soured as she read the confirmation of the goddess’s existence. Then I saw light in her eyes as an idea came to her on how she might deny my request.

The Copper Imperator pulled up the handbook on her monitor and moved to the section, her eyes flicking back and forth as she read frantically.

“Aha!” She exclaimed, drawing attention from others in this section of the Solar Guard’s facilities.

She stabbed a finger against the screen. “This says that the religious exemption is only valid if the resigned had records before their enlistment of following a deity that would demand them to cease being a part of the Guard.”

“Why don’t you check my records.” I suggested.

Lord Persias had hacked into the system and backdated my supposed devotion to the Peacegiver in my personnel file.

She hemmed and hawed but eventually she was forced to accept my resignation.

I turned to walk away.

“Wait! Your Silicon Daimon is our property, it has to be removed.” She said.

“Try and take her from me.” I said while looming threateningly over her.

“I thought you said you were a pacifist?” She said incredulously.

I smiled. “Every man has his own struggles with his faith. Would you like to find out how much I’m keeping to the Peacegiver’s creed at this exact moment?”

Walking out of the building, I considered my disgraced and dishonored uniform. It was just a bitter reminder of how I had been shamed for following my conscience, of how my friends and teammates had turned their backs on me. I hated this uniform. I hated the ruined dreams and the lost glories it carried with it like a phantom one step behind me.

My eyes alighted on a banner of the Dominium’s crest of a violet three-headed eagle set here against a white fabric background. I remembered what I had done when I first had emerged as an Imperator with no clothes in sight to fit me.

“Adrias, what are you doing?” Alsig said as I stripped off my uniform and tore it to shreds

“Improvising.” I said.

“You can’t go around basically naked in just shoes, socks, and underwear, you’ll get arrested and with the infamy we’ve earned you can’t rely on the court system to take your side like they would for any other Imperator.” She said.

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“I’m not going naked.” I said and I pulled the banner of the Dominium down off the hallway’s wall. Then I wrapped it around my waist like a rather long bath towel.

“That’s sacrilege!” She hissed.

My grandfather, whether these people care about that or not, is the Regent. I’ll wipe with this banner after using the toilet if I feel like doing so. I thought to her.

I activated a homing beacon on my wristwatch and a minute later a hovercar dropped out of the air and stilled itself in front of me. I saw envious eyes from others outside, those who weren’t still staring at me in my wrapped banner, the hovercar must have been expensive. The door popped open, and I slipped in.

There was chilled wine and a corkscrew inside, so I popped the bottle open. There were also crystal glasses rimmed with gold, but I just went ahead and drank straight from the bottle. I had an image of being an absolute lunatic to keep up after all.

I sloshed the contents of the sparkling wine around in the bottle. It was a shame that I had never gotten drunk as a Servus, mere alcohol was not enough anymore to do anything. It still tasted nice though, and the chilled temperature was refreshing.

I stared down at the skyscrapers we were flying over on the way to the Fulvion estate. I saw a holo propaganda image projected of my face. I stared at it hard. They were really going all out to drag my name and image through the mud if they were releasing information to the general public. My fingers left dents in the hovercar’s door.

“You’re brooding.” Alsig commented.

Yes. What of it? I thought at her.

“I just don’t think it’s good for you.” She said.

All those people would know me someday for things I was proud of, I vowed it. My Path would just take some different, unexpected avenues than I had planned. Where I had once thought I would earn my Ranks through going to the Scholarium and then to the Solar Guard, now I would play along with Lord Fulvion’s games. For now. I was nobody’s dog, not even Augustas’s, but if Persias wanted to help me keep moving on to more advancement and have us join forces to embarrass the Governor, I was all for it.

Brutal monoliths of metal and glass and concrete, monuments to mankind’s industry and abandonment of aesthetics, eventually gave way to lush, perfectly trimmed grass below me, and all other air traffic disappeared from my sight. Anyone who dared fly here without authorization would get shot down. It was House Fulvion’s estate, one of the plots of land owned by the Great Houses that could be seen from orbit.

The actual living quarters and buildings were as extravagant and dominating as the immense amount of lawn the House possessed. There were eight castles, each a different style and era of architecture, and seven of those were positioned in a ring around the eighth and largest which was dead in the center. Two of the castles were gaudy to me, but most of them seemed beautiful and tasteful in their design.

The hovercar landed in a courtyard and I was surprised to see that the servants carrying for the gardens and cleaning the fountains and sweeping the stone paths were all Copper Imperators. A sign of wealth perhaps? A way to say to others that the Fulvions were so rich and powerful that even those who were born to be lords and ladies, dukes and duchesses, kings and queens were all mere housekeeping staff and caretakers to a man like Persias.

The man himself soon came out of the main castle to greet me personally.

“Adrias.” He said, flashing me a bright smile that was blindingly white without appearing tacky at the same time like a pair of false veneers would. Though his teeth weren’t as long as his wolfish son, Caias, and were of perfectly normal size, they still reminded me of a predator’s fangs. His eyes reminded me of Quartias’s, cool and focused whether grinning or pokerfaced. “Welcome to my humble abode.”

I looked around the place. Humble abode was an understatement.

“Lord Fulvion.” I said in response.

“I’m glad our little gambit paid off.” He said. “I was beginning to think you weren’t coming.”

“Got it done in the end.” I said. “The woman did not believe me that the Peacegiver even existed.”

“She actually did not exist on the normal records of the religious authority of Iulius before I had her placed on it shortly before you went.” He said.

That stopped me short. “You made the Peacegiver up?”

“No.” Persias replied. “Eirene is a real goddess, just one long forgotten. The Thaekyrians saw little value in a goddess of peace, being a warlike culture that dominated the rest of the planet and genocided the Unpathed, and our successor civilization of the Dominium never regained an active worship of a minor goddess whose legacy and history had been actively repressed. I only knew of her because I once heard your ancestor, the Regent, mention her.”

“Ah.” I said. “Well, it’s a good thing he did. You’ve been to Terra then?”

“He sent an emissary, a Heraklion descendant of a pure and primary line that had been infused with fresh blood from Augustas recently, that he then possessed with the Gold bloodline ability so that he could speak to Theseas’s father when he was still ruling. My father brought me to see the Regent speaking in council.” Persias said.

“Must have been a long time ago if your father and the Governor’s father were still alive.” I said.

“Oh, it was, but our fathers would still be alive today if we hadn’t killed them.” Persias Fulvion said nonchalantly.

“You killed your own father?” I said, taken aback.

“Of course not. The gods look down on kinslaying and patricide. I killed Theseas’s father and he killed my own and we took their places.” Persias said, a fond look on his face as he recalled the memory.

I decided to change subjects, a bit disturbed. I could not imagine celebrating my own father’s death or arranging it.

“I see you have Copper Imperators working as servants.” I said.

“Yes, quite frankly I don’t trust Servi in my own household, so I’ve found alternatives,” He said as he led me into the castle. “It’s kept me safe from things such as recent events. Some of the other Great Houses have had… worker disputes as of late. A few have even had children killed.”

The interior of the castle was filled with artwork and sculptures.

“Are we going to give Alsig her new casing now so I can use my divine power again?” I asked eagerly.

“I thought we would do that after a nice meal with my wife.” He said. “She wanted to meet you.”