“Okay, Adrias. Step one. Form the ball.” Antonias said.

I opened my hand, revealing a glowing blue ball of light.

“Get it to levitate higher.” He said.

I focused and like a slider on the dimmer of a light switch, I slowly raised the ball of light six inches above my hand where before it had hovered just barely above my skin.

“What’s this for?” I asked him.

“Teaches you control of your mind’s visualization and how to manipulate psychic energy and false matter.” Antonias said.

“Now what?” I said.

“Bring it back down to your palm.” He said.

“Got you, Toni.” I smiled as I easily accomplished movement with it now. I liked when things came easy.

“Move it back up.” He said and waited for me to do so. “Okay, now move it to the right.”

I struggled to do so.

“Here’s a tip. Try picturing with your mind’s eye leaning your weight against the ball in the direction you want it to go.” Antonias said.

I shoved the ball mentally, imagining all seven feet of my muscled bulk leaning against it. It moved to the right. Without be asked, I moved it to the left without restriction by applying the same idea of bodily weight in a mentally expressed form.

“Okay, here’s what we’re going to do next. There’s now an invisible point an inch and a half from your ball. Get your blue ball to revolve around it in a perfect circle.” Antonias said.

“Got you.” I attempted to do so but after five minutes, I finally gave up and said as much.

“I’m sorry, it’s just not working.” I said to my new teacher in the psychic arts.

“Imagine there’s a bar connected to the center of the circle you want to be revolving your ball of psychic energy around and also connecting the ball to that bar. Turn the bar.” Antonias said.

I tried, I grunted and strained and cursed. To no avail, it wasn’t working. I imagined putting my full weight and Imperator strength behind that imaginary bar but the ball didn’t move in a circle no matter how badly I wanted it to.

“You alright, Adrias? We can stop and take a break if you want.” He asked.

“I can’t do it.” I finally admitted. “I don’t want to take a break yet, I want to keep going.”

I was resolved to accomplishing this. Finish the fight, I told myself. This was one trial of many that I would breakthrough on my path from Copper to Bronze to Silver and finally to the highest peak of Gold.

“What’s your thought process? How are you visualizing it?” Antonias asked.

“I’m imagining a little me pushing the bar, moving it manually.” I said.

“Okay, how about… how about you pretend the bar is connected to a little mechanical engine?” Antonias said.

I felt apprehensive. “That seems kind of silly, Toni.”

“Just try it. Come on, I don’t want to be stuck on this roof all day looking at you scrunch up your face and grunt every once in a while.” Antonias said.

I imagined a little thing of steel gears and pistons pumping away and to my surprise the psychic energy ball floating above my hand turned in a circle like a planet full of people revolving in gravitational orbit around a sun.

Antonias smirked. “Behold! Wisdom.”

“Shush.” I said. “I agree, you’re very smart, and my way is very dumb. Happy?”

“Yes.” He said, pleased. He ran his fingers through his white hair. Before I had ever met an Imperator, hell, before I had even looked in a mirror for the first time as one on the Path of the Emperor, I had heard stories of the ruling class’s white hair crowning their heads and had thought it would make them look old. Like old men and women with young men and young women’s faces. That clearly wasn’t true, I thought, as I looked at Antonias. What I had imagined as a Servus simply wasn’t accurate. Imperators’ hair, at least the ones of young aristocrats like Antonias, was fuller and richer and thicker and more lustrous than an old Servus’s mane. It seemed to glow just slightly too.

“What’s next?” I said. I was getting a little bored of just moving it up and down, side to side, and around a point in space in a circle. When were we going to get to something practical?

“Smash it into your palm.” He said.

I drew it towards my palm at a decent speed like a magnet calling iron fillings to its touch. To my surprise, the psychic azure ball merely phased through my hand like nothing was there, like my genetically, phenotypically and spiritually enhanced flesh was nothing more than thin air. Nothing of note despite all its eldritch secrets and divinely gifted might wound up tight in my cells and organic tissues.

I drew the ball back through my hand to the side of my open palm.

“Didn’t work.” I said.

“I can see that. Try imagining the outside of the sphere hardening into a tangible shell.” Antonias said.

I pictured it freezing like ice, thickening and extruding outwards. I tried to smash it into my palm, and it went through again. I reset and looked to Antonias.

“Make the ball very heavy. Visualize almost fighting to keep it in the air.” He said.

It failed to work, the ball yet again passing through the skin on my palm and out the back of my hand.

Antonias groaned and rubbed his temples. “Last one and then we’re done for today if it doesn’t work.” He warned me.

“Give it to me.” I said, welcoming his advice.

“Stuff it full of psychic energy until it’s about to burst…” Antonias trailed off.

I did so and the ball started to glow more brightly and vividly.

“And then?” I said.

“And then bring it slowly against your skin, the lightest of pushing you can do.” He replied.

It pressed against my hand but did not push through.

“Excellent! Now soften it, make it lose form and shape.” He said.

The sphere coated my hand in soft blue light, filtering the color of it.

Antonias tested it with a psychic knife and smiled. “Now stretch it across the rest of your skin, under your clothes.

I did so. “I’m finished.”

“You’re done then. Dismiss it and when you will it, just call for it and it will spring back into existence without need to make another ball of light.” Antonias said.

I sat back. “Well, that’s done. Certainly took long enough.”

“What do you want to do now?” Antonias asked.

I picked at my clothing that I had borrowed from Toni. I had ruined it in my excess, but I suppose he could always buy more of the kind with his trust fund.

“Let’s go see the Oracle, like you brought up last night.” I said.

He froze. “Damn. I didn’t mean now, now. But alright, we can do that. No time like the present.”

He smiled awkwardly and I could tell he was afraid of the Oracles. For good reason. They could doom you with a single word spoken with their foresight.

Antonias called up his hovercar with his communicator and we rolled off a good distance from the Imperators' estates to the temple district. Elaborately carved marble temples to every god, minor and major existed on this street. All save the Corpsefather, King of the Underworld and Chief Master of the Infernal Beasts.

We stepped out of the hovercar at a temple decked out with golden ornamentation and concealed colored lights that gave a warm orange hue to the inside of the temple.

I stepped inside and looked forward and stopped and my facial expressions froze. Antonias bumped into me until he saw what I saw.

On a tripod stool in the center of the temple of the Sunbringer a monster sat.

The Oracle was stretched, she was ten feet tall, but her shoulders were only as wide as a normal person’s width. Her arms were monstrously long and thin and were covered with golden dragon scales. They dangled on the ground and her silver clawed fingertips scratched against the marble floor as she shifted in her perch on the tripod stool. One eye was completely white while the other was completely black, nor iris or sclera visible to tell what her original Rank or Path was. The Oracles were chosen at thirteen by the god Apollo, whose name I only dared to speak in the silence of my own head or when referring to our solar system’s star which was named for the god. Intent mattered when it came to naming things.

I walked up to her, leaving Antonias behind.

The Oracle had metallic golden hair streaming down her back and every tooth in her mouth was pointed like it had been filed to a tip. Her canines were vampirically long and gave her a wolfish bent to her features.

I approached her. “Great Oracle of the Sunbringer-“

“Adrias Lucion.” She hissed.

“You know me?” I asked.

“Apollo knows who you are, who you once were, and who you will be.” The Oracle said with her serpent’s tongue.

I winced at the god’s name being spoken aloud and for the barest, briefest moment when she uttered those syllables, I felt the scorching heat of the Sunbringer’s chariot on my face.

“Tell me my future. I beg you. Tell me what the gods on Heaven’s Mount and the Fates plan for me.” I asked her. “How can I become a Golden Imperator.”

“Three sons of gods lie ahead of you, their knives at each other’s throats. Only one may you help. Choose wisely, for while all will know your vice, only one will bring you your virtue.” The Oracle hissed with her draconic voice.