“Not grown in one piece…” I said to the Regnator. “What does that mean exactly? Did my grandfather glue your limbs onto the rest of you? Stuff your heart into a chest cavity?”

“I can show you.” He replied. “We can discuss after it the plan for the suppression of enemy forces on Terra and the upcoming assault on Mount Olympas.”

“What is your name, by the way?” I said. “I think it might make this conversation less odd.”

“I don’t have one.” The Regnator replied. “Haven’t earned it yet. I am nameless for now. I do have a number though.”

He pulled at the rubber seal around his neckline to reveal a string of numbers, an ink tattoo that reminded me more of cattle being branded than an expression of loyalty.

“15730-B.” I read them off his skin. “I’ll call you Bee then.”

“No.” He replied.

“No?”

“Pick something better if you’re going to break tradition.” The Regnator said.

“Give me the names of your usual weapons then.” I said.

“Short sword and shield.”

“Thrax then,” I said, matching it to a type of gladiator- the Thracian. “I’ll call you Thrax if you’re fine with it.”

He nodded his assent.

“Well then, Thrax, is that the number of the order of your creation or just a randomly generated one?” I asked.

My grandfather had certainly kept good on his promise to have legions waiting for my arrival if there were at least nearly sixteen thousand of them.

“It was the number of distinct Regnators at the time as I was fully formed. More or less. Some of the numbers have multiple variants, like twins or triplets. There is a 15730-A and a 15730-C for my -B.” He said, putting the seal back into place around his throat.

I wondered if he felt a kinship for them. Maybe even that was too much to expect from this strange entity.

“What are they like?” I said.

“I’ve never met them.” The Regnator replied. “They have different roles to play.”

Those featurelessly gold eyes remained as static as ever.

“My grandfather is keeping you from speaking with them? Or you just don’t want to?” I said.

“I don’t feel the need, though our assignments would make being together in a room difficult. You find this unsettling, I see, but that’s shortsighted. Why would the Creator make Gold Imperator level combat lifeforms and then purposefully instill in me emotional fragility? There are Regnators capable of such, but the 15730 line was made to slay immortals and shatter the pillars of Heaven, not hold hands and hug each other.” Thrax said.

“Still seems a rough hand of things.” I replied.

“The universe is cruel, Spearbearer. If you have to weep over someone, do it for those who cannot choose their own role in life, but unlike me suffer from lacking it. There are billions of your Path who die feeling unfulfilled."

Billions of my Path? There was nowhere near that number of Imperators. Confusion ran through me for a second before I realized what he really meant.

“I’m not a Servus anymore.” I said.

“The heart of you still is.” Thrax said.

I gripped the spear tighter, and it hummed.

“I’m an Imperator.” I said. “I’ve gotten to the highest Rank possible for me. Explain how the hell my heart is a Servus’s heart when my body and soul have nearly been entirely converted over.”

“A person can follow the tenets of something he is no longer.” The Regnator said.

“Then explain to me how I still follow the tenets of a slave.” I said, the spear warping of its own accord as it sensed tension in the air.

“Despite the name, the core principles of the Servi aren’t slavery any more than Imperators’ is kingship. They would only be able to advance while actively enslaved if that were true.” He said.

I had known a great many wealthier Servi citizens and gladiators who reached high Ranks while being far freer than those actually living in brutal destitution on Iulius and elsewhere.

“What is it then?” I asked. “If not servitude, what is the true nature of them?’

“To labor in spectacular fashion past what a man should be able to bear.” He replied.

“Thereby making them good little workers.” I said dismissively. “And getting the same result as if it were the enslavement instead.”

“Only because their strength was crippled.” He said.

“Well, obviously. If you’re created weak, then you get taken advantage of by the strong.” I said.

He halted and I watched as a statue of Heracles, rippling with sinew and muscle, scanned the two of us before beginning to slide aside, the stone pedestal screeching to reveal an elevator hidden beneath. It rose to ground level and opened its doors for us.

“I said their strength was crippled, not that they were born weak.” The Regnator said as we stepped inside.

I narrowed my eyes. “And what does that mean?”

“It means there’s a reason why you don’t see even Gold Servi replicating the same trick of conjuring up vines like you can despite only possessing mixed blood.” Thrax said.

They really had studied my life, it seemed.

“Right, mixed blood, as you said. I’m the compound of three bloodlines; Imperator, what barely remains of Servus, and divine, all of them crowned with Gold. It only makes sense that I can do what others cannot. What was there is multiplied by what I am.” I said.

“Zero multiplied is still zero.” Thrax said.

“I’m surprised that this is the kind of knowledge and interest my grandfather would instill in you. I don’t think he’d agree with what you’re implying the Dominium should look like.” I said.

“It wasn’t explicitly given to me.” Thrax admitted. “But if falls within my directive. I was told to learn everything about you that was available, and that included classified documents on your origins.”

“You did some extrapolating as well,” I said, leaning against the back of the elevator as a dizzy spell took over me. I’d need to figure out how to manage the weapon better. How was I supposed to fight anyone at all if it could make me blackout and breathe like an asthmatic? I would probably take myself out before an enemy could get the chance.

“Learning is understanding. Understanding cannot be complete with missing data. My directive remains intact.” Thrax said.

That sounded like willful overstepping of intended boundaries through loose mental gymnastics, but I kept my mouth shut.

They weren’t entirely robots. Not wholly. I could have gone with the assumption that Thrax was merely malfunctioning due to some error in the logic he’d been given, but an entirely different impression as forming in my head. Thrax had been imprinted with certain orders and had normal human functions tossed to the wayside, but he had also had an obsessive interest in me implanted into his mind. Likely to ensure that he’d guard me no matter what, but that emotional drive pushed Thrax to do things he would not have without it.

The elevator finally came to a halt and the doors pulled open to reveal a glass walkway that overlooked something in between a coldly clinical laboratory and a slaughterhouse in appearance. The room was full of tables with conveyor belts besides them, the tables bearing the load of whitish-grey chunks of… something. Something grotesque and fleshy.

Mechanical arms bearing lasers traced beams of silver light along the surface of the workbenches, wherever the light touched it left in its wake the pale material instead of scorch marks. Thin strands of silver energy neatly created organic structures out of thin air, building each successive layer on top of the previous one. From there, more automated limbs assembled the smaller pieces into recognizable organs.

“Never seen the grey stuff before.” I said.

“Synthflesh. Artificial cells fabricated by bio-printers and then combined into organs and bulk tissue masses.” Thrax told me.

I pierced the glass between me and the grey flesh with my enhanced senses and peered into their structure. Perfectly made save two very large missing elements from each and every cell.

“I see they’re not complete. There aren’t any nuclei or mitochondria in either.” I said.

“Those are added later in the process. The genetics of different Regnators and even separate parts of us can be from different templates. Chimeras in the scientific sense. All the components uniting into a unique form for whatever the Creator requires of us.” Thrax said.

“This place makes my experiments look like a baking soda and vinegar volcano.” I said, amazed at my ignorance and inability compared to what Augustas had set up.

“You filled an entire volcano with-“

“Not that kind of volcano.” I said. “Don’t worry, your records didn’t miss anything other than a childhood science experiment.”

There was a small part of me that wanted to protest that Augustas had far longer to study and far more resources as Regent, but I knew that was only my ego coping. Even if I had had everything he had now, I would have tried to brute force it. I could already imagine what I would have tried to do if I had the goal of creating new life outside the control of the gods. I would start by taking samples of all the Paths’ genetics, cutting portions didn’t closely match, and then replace parts with sections I had reverse engineered myself.

The flaws in that plan were painfully stark to me; the high likelihood that the Paths shared some unnatural traits without variance that I wouldn’t know to remove, the near certainty that whatever replacement genes I dreamed up would be nothing like what a Unpathed human was supposed to be, the inescapable prospect of never managing to make them superhuman without the Olympians’ Gift. No doubt when problems started piling up, I would resort to using divine commands to try and fix it, only to end up making a mess. Livia’s amnesia and illness remained a bitter reminder that I needed to learn faster. Know better.

Be better.

“I see kidneys and hearts and livers, among other things, but no brains yet.” I commented.

“Those are done elsewhere in this facility.” Thrax replied. “Let’s continue onwards, genetic essence is introduced next as spare parts are intermixed.”

“Tell me more then about the DNA of your kind.” I said as we moved forward through the encased walkway.

“Precursor blueprints were reconstructed from fossilized remains of humans, ones that died long before the advent of the Paths, and then those models were improved to peak physical function.” He said.

“There has to be more to it though. Titan blood has to come in at some point, and not even the peak of Unpathed humanity could be powerful enough to fight at my side.” I said and Thrax walked on with the wordless promise of an answer awaiting me.

We entered the next chamber, an ethereal mirror to the one we had left, the smell of disinfectant and chemical agents as thick as smoke. No haze could cloud my vision though. In here, the organs were being placed into husks of bone and grey skin. Workers sprayed the incomplete bodies with antiseptic-laced moisture while data screens displayed orders for specific configurations of anatomy. Shortly before the corpses that had not yet been born were about to be lifted back onto conveyor belts, syringes of nuclei and mitochondria floating in alchemical solutions were stabbed into specific organs.

“A seed is all that is needed.” Thrax told me, gesturing.

I watched one lifeless body be pushed through a passage in the wall and then vanish from my sight.

“I have trouble seeing through the walls of his Palace but not hearing.” I said, the further stretches of the production facility denied to me. For now.

“He liked to keep the Nine on edge, I believe. No idea how it restricts unnatural viewing though.” Thrax said, shrugging. He had an odd mix of normal and abnormal behaviors in him.

The information I was processing in so little time was throwing me; between the spear and its consequences, the plots of the war and my place in it, and the scientific knowledge I was stumbling to grasp. Speeding up my mind and splitting it into multiple personalities only created more trains of thought to overwhelm me.

Justinias Barathion, an Instructor of the Apollonian Scholarium, had once told me about the minds of the Golds and their flawed psyches.

“Are they really just smarter than other people that they can do such things?” I had asked of him back then as a mere Bronze Imperator who was just beginning to tap into my potential and light years away from knowing the limits of that awakening strength.

“Smarter? Perhaps. It’s best not to assign human conceptions of intelligence to them, there’s nothing human left about the Nine no matter how well they hide their true nature.” Justinias had said to me. “They can be tricked and outplayed, but they don’t conform to normal human behavior or limitations. Think of them more like a crocodile given photographic memory and a calculator.”

So often had I found that my Advancement to the fourth Rank of my Path was not a true boost of intellect as one might find, though I could see why many would make that assumption of the near-mythical Golden Imperators, the princes and princesses of the eternal Dominium, anointed by merit and conquest rather than birth or chance.

Many would hold to that rosy view, and yet, they would be gazing in wonder at a shadow cast on a wall rather than seeing the true source of that caused that two-dimensional figure. Justinias had not been as right as he believed, I certainly did not possess true eidetic memory, but he was right that Golds were stranger more than smarter. Accelerated reaction time and calculation was like as if you had much longer to think over an issue than others, and personality division was like having a twin you could argue a point out with, but it did not let you think things you could not have on your own.

It was just enough to make you like an alien to lesser beings, but not enough to solve all your problems without making more of them. No wonder Vespasias had fallen so far. He hadn’t just been thousands of years old when I killed him by shoving my lightning infused hand into his brain, Vespasias had had those millennia compounded by a brain that operated as a crowd rather than one man. Even two selves thinking at twice the ordinary rate would have four hours of memories to file away for one real hour.

Speaking of which…

“The brains. I want to check out how they’re crafted.” I said, done with staring at the current area, though I did note that hearts were added despite Thrax lacking a heartbeat.

“The next chamber is the last.” Thrax told me. “It holds the stations for both titan blood and the brains.”

When I entered I was briefly swept up in staring at brains being crafted by hand with every neuron placed meticulously, and bodies having Kronos’s ichor cycling through their empty veins. And then I looked up.

“Thrax. Thrax! What is that?” I said, pointing above our heads.

At the apex of the atrium’s domed ceiling was a woman chained against it, her back pressed firmly against the stone. She was blindfolded and bound with adamantine chain links.

“That’s how he initiates the enhancements and brings us to life. An Awakening to mirror the Paths’ ascent.” He replied, before moving to show me more of the room.

I caught his arm. “The wires. What are those wires?”

Two lengths of wire stretched from a control station across the room and went up to dive into the woman’s throat.

“How he gets her to sing, of course.” Thrax said. “They hijack her vocal cords and tongue.”

“Who the hell does my grandfather have chained to a ceiling?” I said, a sense of nausea welling up in me.

“A Muse.” Thrax said.