We walked outside my apartment, absent Livia, and an expensive looking hovercar hummed through the air to us, called by Antonias’s communicator. We drove, or rather flew, to his villa in a gated community. Imported forests surrounded his home and a manicured lawn stretched in front of it.

We walked inside and I was met again with the Golden Hetaira that I had had Livia pull out of the the consequences of the Hetaira’s and Antonias’s toxic hedonism.

“Better circumstances to meet you than last time.” I said.

“I’m Junia. Antonias’s… friend.” Junia said.

She was still the most beautiful woman I had ever met and I tried not to stare too deeply into her captivating pink eyes. I didn’t know how Antonias would interpret such a thing and I didn’t want to behave like a lustful imbecile.

“Thank you for saving Toni and I that day.” Junia said.

“I’d do it for anyone.” I said honestly.

“I’m sure you would.” Antonias said. He didn’t sound like he was mocking me, I merely heard sincerity in his voice. “Run along Junia, I want to talk to Adrias.”

The two of us went to sit at a marble counter in his expansive kitchen. Every object and every room in this villa felt like it was worth more than the whole of the apartment building I lived in. And the ones next to it. Probably the whole block too just for the kitchen.

“I can bring you to meet my friends again and so you can get involved in the Imperial social scene on Sunburst Station.” Antonias offered.

“I’m not interested in Sunburst Station’s Imperator social scene.” I dismissed the thought with a disdainful shake of my head.

“Why not?” Antonias asked, confused.

“They’re foolishly harming their advancement if they’re anything like you and from what I’ve been told they’re just not going anywhere any time soon when it comes to reaching Bronze Rank.” I said.

“How do you expect to advance any better than us with your lack of wealth? I mean, no offense, Adrias, but you live in a hovel of an apartment with one Servus servant to manage your affairs. I have hundreds at my command here at this villa and my parents’ estates have thousands.” Antonias said.

“I have a way to advance.” I said confidently. I wouldn’t be telling him how, but I did have a path to victory with the Brazen Chains ludus and through access to the Red Sands arena.

“What, your little gladiatorial games?” Antonias scoffed.

Damn. How did he know?

“Excuse me?” I faked. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. How does watching the gladiators fight improve my chances of advancing to Bronze or laying the groundwork for Silver? It’s all just entertainment. I suppose I could memorize some fighting tactics, but I have no way of putting those to use in combat without another Imperator to train against.”

Antonias rolled his eyes. “I got access to Sunburst Station’s surveillance system to find you in the first place, you don’t think I wouldn’t do a little reconnaissance on my savior’s life? I know what you get up to. Shameful, really. Imagine, an Imperator lowering themselves to putting on a performance for the ignorant, raucous masses of Servi littering this damn ring station.”

I sighed. “Fine. You got me. I’ve been fighting in the Red Sands arena games as a Brazen Chainer against Golden Servi with strong Foundations and ravenous Infernal Beasts with vicious intent. Now, why do you think that’s not enough to advance better than the rest of you? I’m winning real victories and getting bloody and violent combat experience. It should be building my advancement into an inferno feeding on pure gasoline.”

“It’s still not enough to advance significantly.” Antonias said.

“Why not?” I asked.

“Because, Lucion, it’s still just a game.” Antonias said exasperatedly as if I wasn’t getting something basic. “It’s something that’s played, a simulation, a farce, as much a play as the one about Oedipas Rex we saw at the theater we burned down.”

“We?” I said pointedly.

“Well, you knocked my hand aside and pointed the psionic flame in my hand towards the wall of the viewing box, which started the fire.” Antonias said.

“What was I supposed to let you burn me?” I said incredulously.

He waved a hand. “Your skinshields would have protected you. I wasn’t in the mental state to conjure up Vital Intent to give the psionic fire a sting or a bit of bite.”

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“My… skinshields?” I said.

Antonias studied me. “What rock did you crawl out from under? Children know how to make a skinshield. Most parents teach their children it as the first psionic skill to protect against assassination by rivals. Where in Heaven’s name did you come from?”

I decided to throw a bit of truth into my web of lies. “Lavinius. Lived there all my life.”

He stared. “That shithole? There isn’t even Dominium presence on there. It’s practically one of the extraterritorial colonies outside the main solar systems of the Dominium.”

“It’s not that bad.” I said. “It might be distant from the sun of Apollo and Apollo system’s capital planet of Iulia, but Sunburst Station passed by it not long ago when I first arrived. It was only a few hours by starship.”

“No, Adrias, it kind of is that bad. It is, as I said, a shithole. You and your family must have been the only Imperators on the planet.”

I decided to expand said web of lives with even more truths wrapped in lies and false perceptions. I was going to convince Antonias I was some kind of orphan. Well, I suppose I was now post my family’s brutal murder and desecration by the Cantions in retribution for my brother Flavias’s deflowering of Gavias Cantion’s daughter, Tullia Cantion, but I was going to be persuading and leading Antonias down a different path than was strictly true.

“I was the only Imperator on the planet.” I said.

Antonias squinted. “But then… who…?”

“Who raised me? A family of Servi called the Lucions. They found me as a child in a crashed starship in a ship graveyard.” I said, mixing up parts of the story of my becoming an Imperator by finding a divinely blessed or technologically advanced ring that had transformed me and combining the story with my actual childhood. I was allowing him to believe I had always been an Imperator as was the only logical conclusion, who would believe I had once been a Servus on the Path of the Slave? At the same time I was explaining my comparative infantile lack of knowledge about Imperators that wasn’t general knowledge even lowly Servi on Lavinius would know.

He shook his head. “You were raised by a family of Slaves? No wonder you’re so weird. And poor. Extremely weird and pitifully poor.”

“You don’t have to rub it in.” I said.

“Ah, but yet it’s so easy to do so, dear friend.” Antonias said.

“We’re not friends yet.” I said.

“Touchy.” Antonias replied.

“Whatever. Tell me about it then, what are skinshields?” I questioned.

“Psionic energy shields. Imperators, Venators, and Magisters are the only ones capable of the psychic arts, and the Path of the Emperor reaches the peak of the psionic mountain. With the power of our minds, we can create telekinetic barriers invisibly present above our skin.”

“Teach me how to do it.” I said, eagerly.

He held up a finger. “If you come to Caesia’s next party, I’ll tell you how to make one.”

I weighed this over in my mind.

“Fine.” I allowed.

“Have you told anyone else about me fighting in the games for the Brazen Chains ludus at the Red Sands arena?” I asked.

“Just Junia.”

I worried over this. Two people could keep a secret if one of them was dead, as the saying went, but three people? Good luck with that. Hetairas seemed like a less trustworthy Path as well. You could trust honor to be a core component of Campeadors on the Path of the Champion and obedience and loyalty to be a core component of Militares on the Path of the Soldier, but those on the Path of the Whore made their coin or earned the patronage of a master by prostituting themselves out or serving in lewd entertainment. Their minds and bodies and loyalties could be bought easily, traveling from patron to patron or dance club to dance club or brothel to brothel as money called and beckoned. Junia surely couldn’t be trusted.

“And you trust her?” I questioned warily. “She can be expected to hold her status on my current method of acquiring coin and achieving dominion and renown?”

“I’d trust Junia with my life. I’d marry her if she wasn’t from an inferior Path and bloodline.” Antonias said.

I thought of Livia. “You still could if you really wanted to. The other Imperators wouldn’t take it seriously, but if you and her did it would be real enough to you, even if you are from another Path.”

Antonias laughed, long and hard. “My parents would expect me to get married at some point and have children. If the Skyfather and the Matron allow for it, of course. Most Imperator women expect male Imperators to put aside their toys and their minor flings away into the shadows of a youthful past when they marry.”

Something about how Antonias said “if the Skyfather and the Matron allow for it” caught my attention. There was a weight and graveness to it.

“Does your family have a history of having a hard time having children?” I asked.

“All Imperators have a hard time having children. Half of us are straight up infertile for most of our lives even with in vitro fertilization and cloning. The zygotes simply die off and wither away. It’s a godsgiven curse to balance out of gifts. Which makes sense.” Antonias explained.

“How does it make sense?” I said.

“The gods of the Pantheon each made a single path. Clearly, they want for each to flower and grow to their own place in society and thrive according to their own abilities. If we weren’t restricted, we’d probably outgrow and eliminate the others as the Paths eliminated and outbred the original Unpathed strains of humanity. The Imperators on the Path of the Emperor are simply too powerful and intelligent to not displace the other genelines if we could advance our own line without restriction.” Antonias said.

I shook my head. “I don’t believe for a second the Imperators would kill off all of the other Paths.”

“Why not, we’re a superior race that faces competition from mankind’s other divergent species? Competition between rival genomes is nature’s constant. We’re stronger and smarter than most, we’d consume all the resources like a sponge. We already have a good deal of prejudice towards the lesser Paths.” Antonias said.

“No, you definitely wouldn’t kill them off if you had normal rates of reproduction. You expect me to believe that Imperators wouldn’t be doing their own laundry and cooking? That they would clean sewers? Sweep streets? That Imperator women would lower themselves to serve in brothels? You need the other Paths for all the things you couldn’t bear to bring yourself to do.” I said.

“You would be surprised with what is possible with automatons and cloned flesh. The labor that can be accomplished, the works of art and engineering that could be done by artificial intelligence.” Antonias said. “It’s cheaper now to use the existing workforce, but robots don’t strike or unionize or disobey.”

I shivered at the thought of such a cold, alien galaxy. Little godlings attended into eternity by cold metal machines hidden inside skinsuits of flesh grown in laboratories.