Chapter 1: Encountering Ares

When Gabriel first met Ares, his life was forever changed. What had been just a little crime gig in Alexandria—the capital of the Great Zalfarian Empire—was flipped on its head when the famed war hero showed up.

Gabriel didn't remember how he'd appeared. Just the feeling he'd gotten when he saw the man.

Gabriel's father had been an unreliable man who gambled away the money he'd gotten through luck. Short-tempered, he beat his wife, eventually killing her by accident. He was executed by the time Gabriel was 11. He learned to survive by himself with the help of talent in essence manipulation. At 19, he worked as the ace of a band of criminals connected to Nexus in Arkryk. He preferred that life to anything that had come before, but all that changed in an instant.

Ares was steady, tall, and broad-shouldered, looking formidable by all means. But anyone would have known that he wasn't a man that could be accurately judged by appearance. The air around him trembled, and the people under his gaze froze. His presence warped one's sense of time.

If there had been a man that was the opposite in every way to Gabriel's father, Ares would have been him.

All his life, Gabriel had spited the royals with their pampered upbringings and dreamlike privileges they took for granted. When he'd heard the countless stories about Ares, son of the 5th Emperor, he'd scoffed.

However, when he saw him, he didn't make a sound. He threw away the bag of coins in his hand and backed away. All just to take in every detail of the man.

His regal white and gold uniform, the slightly curly golden hair, and blue eyes that seemed to drink in everything all at once. Otherwise, his face seemed almost ordinary. Gabriel had imagined Ares as an eagle-like man with features that would stick out a mile away. In reality, he was a humble lion.

That just made Gabriel feel more insignificant in comparison. What if the royals simply were people of higher value than anyone else?

One of Gabriel's accomplices gathered all his idiocy and rushed at Ares, closing the distance in a split second. Gabriel looked on in his trance.

Ares lifted a hand loosely, and a wall of essence flickered into existence. Gabriel's accomplice ran into it and hit his head. While he stumbled back, Ares shifted his hand by the wrist, making a platform beneath the man's feet. Before Gabriel could process it, Ares spun the platform and the man on it before flicking his fingers, making the wall bump the man. Gabriel's accomplice stumbled, fell, and didn't even bother trying to get up.

Gabriel looked up, and Ares met his gaze.

"How'd you do that?" he asked.

Ares looked almost confused by the question, as if someone had asked him how he breathed. However, Gabriel had never before seen a materialization move while detached from the body. As far as he knew, it was impossible.

Ares asked him for his name.

"Gabriel, sir." He didn't remember ever having used the word 'sir' seriously before.

"A worthy name," Ares said, nodding to himself. "This place is going to be raided by enforcers when I'm done. They'll take the hands of thieves, legs of escapees, and lives of resisters. Which one are you?"

"All three," Gabriel answered honestly, more concerned about how to answer Ares than about his own fate.

Ares raised his eyebrows just a twitch. "I see. Fortunately, I have another offer for you. How willing would you be to be a soldier in my command?"

"I'd die for you," Gabriel replied without hesitation. It felt like he'd been waiting for this moment all his life.

"Die?" Ares looked at him, puzzled. "I have no use for a dead soldier. I want my soldiers to live."

"It was a metaphor, sir."

"I have no use for metaphors either."

"Oh, then... yes. I will be your soldier."

"Good. But you will need to get through training first," Ares said and simply walked out.

Gabriel reached out with a question, but he was already gone. Someone who could change a life with a few sentences and never know it, as he was already on to help the next person. That is who Ares was.

No matter the power an individual had over others, what carried the most weight out of all their acts were the meaningful words that they imbedded in others. A man could sever the limb of another and make him go through life as incomplete. However, the ripple effect that a few words could grow through time into waves that washed over the rocky shores of humanity. Gadreel often regretted that Ares was most known for the ugliest of his words.

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'What... just happened?' he asked himself before hurrying after him.

And though he felt a unique connection to Ares ever after that infinitesimal exchange, he couldn't have guessed how such a man could grow all the more strong and wise.

Nor did he have any idea what ugly demons lay past that mature exterior.

***

Chapter 2: Times Before Kendrick

As Gabriel had not known Ares before the war between Zalfari and Lundkirk began and the Elite Troop was formed, he relied on the accounts of Alexander the 6th, the current emperor.

Alexander was the half-brother of Ares. The two didn't have much contact, though. In fact, Alexander remembered meeting him for the first time only when he was 10 years old. By that time, Ares had finished his training under the tutelage of his mother, Id.

"He was terrifying," Alexander recounted. "When looked at by him, it felt like you could die at any moment. He looked at people like he was dissecting them in his mind. There always seemed to be a quiet rage in his eyes."

Alexander told a story of having asked Ares why he went on so many missions. Supposedly, Ares had answered, "Maybe I just like destroying things. Maybe it's just in my nature to do so."

"I learned early not to ask questions like that. Not from him," Alexander noted. Though the 5th Emperor's influence on Ares was seen as malignant, it was hard to say he would have been better off without any kind of guide, even one that treated him without a weapon.

"Later, I figured that his rage came from his mother's death. It was to my understanding that they hadn't been as close as mother and son usually are, but she had been his world for almost two decades."

While recounting, Alexander put his head down, talking in a low tone. "She'd died mysteriously straight after Ares' training was finished. I suppose that's what made my father the most terrifying of them all."

He looked up again as if revitalized. "He was the same age as my older brothers but stood head and shoulders above them."

Alexander's brothers were Fardinaz and Alexander the 6th, who had the position of inheritor of the empire before both his brothers died, and the title as well as the name moved to Alexander, who was previously named Lucaliel.

"I remember hearing something about the three of them. Supposedly, my older brothers had insulted and spit on him at a strategy meeting, so Ares broke Fardinaz's nose and Alexander's finger. The two probably thought Ares would be imprisoned or even executed for that. After all, who could casually break a future emperor's finger and get away with it?" Alexander gave a wry laugh at the memory.

"In the end, nothing happened. My brothers were humiliated to learn that it did not matter that Ares was the son of a concubine. He was father's most prized possession, nevertheless."

Gabriel theorized the animosity between Alexander the 6th, Fradinaz, and Ares led the two brothers to attempt the military operations that cost them their lives.

Alexander commented on the theory, "It is certainly possible that my brothers were trying to prove themselves with the operations that claimed their lives; however, I doubt their intent was to be superior to Ares. By that time, they feared him far too much to even think about it. In their eyes, Ares lived and breathed violence, which he very much did in those times. They were also the targets of the enemy, which undoubtedly played a factor, especially in light of the quick succession in which they perished."

After his brothers died, Alexander the 5th hurriedly renamed and began shaping Lucaliel into his heir.

"Those were the most painful times of my life," Alexander the 6th commented. "I was 14 at the time, the oldest of my living siblings, but I was never meant to be emperor. I was of slight frame, cried easily, and had breaks of anxiety that rendered me almost catatonic. I often heard my father curse that my deceased mother giving birth to such failures."

Alexander was tutored in politics, history, and philosophy by his father and in essence usage and combat by Ares himself.

"They were very similar in their teaching at first. For all his faults, my father was a genius and a successful emperor. The rate at which he forced me to absorb information and hone my mind almost made my mind collapse. In the same manner, Ares' teaching broke my body. I say with no irony that he did not know the meaning of gentleness. Whenever he hit me, I would go numb or faint.

"The difference was that, with time, Ares turned into a better teacher. He still pushed me to my limits, but he would recognize when he needed to use other methods."

Ares was around 25 by that time. He'd spent almost the last decade on various missions, supposedly killing tens of thousands. He was hailed as the strongest combatant in the whole world. A title he'd inherited after the death of Solomon, the Soldier of God.

"Ares's rage had mellowed. Violence no longer seemed to pull him to it, and he started to only go on paramount missions. That gave him free time he didn't know what to do with, so he spent it on tutoring me.

"When I was 17, I had already grown accustomed to the intense tutelage. I had mastered all the disciplines I was faced with, and my confidence had risen. I had never talked with Ares outside of training before. Partly because I respected and feared him and partly because I thought he disliked me like he disliked my brothers. But having grown more charismatic, I began making jokes with him. For months, I made it my objective to find out what would make him laugh.

"I tried everything from puns to absurd scenarios, but nothing made his expression even twitch. I was convinced he had no sense of humor. Then, one day, while in the courtyard of the Royal Palace, we saw a bird croak at another bird, which then flew into a wall. Perhaps a little darkly, I said it reminded me of Fardinaz's leadership. It was then that I saw him smile for the first time.

"A few weeks later, I made an impression of Father and heard him laugh the first time. He began returning my greetings and even smiled ever so slightly. We began talking outside of training as well. Not much after, we were on the terrace of my room in the palace tower, and I noticed a hint of longing in Ares' eyes as he looked towards the horizon. 'I wonder... who is it that is calling me?'"

"It was then that I knew something drastic had changed," Alexander mused. "The next day, he was gone, and while I was sad to see my elder brother go—without a word, no less—I remember smiling."