Axis’s eyes lazily tried to open, his vision blearily fogged and his senses numbed. Everything his whole body over ached, and as he tried to move his head to find some defining feature of the blinding white and gold filling his distorted sight, muffled voices with undeniable urgency found his ears. “Who za ‘ell?” he slurred when his range of vision was filled with the face of an unfamiliar dragoness who was far too close for comfort.

“... … … fine,” the dragoness said to someone Axis couldn’t see.

“Fine my ass,” Axis groaned in retort, fluttering his eyelids to try to clear his eyes.

“Yes, you are right. He seems to have lost none of his charm,” the unmistakable miffed voice of Charlie DelRose said from somewhere behind Axis.

“Oh hey - !” Axis began to say, trying to lift his head and twist it to find her only to immediately lie back down amid a string of winces, hissing, and half formed curses. His neck lanced stinging pains up and down, efficiently convincing Axis to keep it relaxed.

A decision the physician heartily agreed with, saying, “Mm… you’re going to need to be very careful youngin’. While the scale hardener works its wonders, any sudden moves will only make recovery worse and longer.”

“Joy…” Axis grumbled, recognizing now that he was in a medical ward somewhere and the memories of his fight with Rothbard flooding back fresh. He cautiously adjusted his head to examine his left leg and found it bound in a thick layer of gauze. “Damn,” he hissed, tentatively flexing the leg’s talon only to find that while doing so was painless, whatever agents were beneath the wrapping made the attempt shaky and lethargic.

“You’re lucky to still have that leg,” the physician tisked with a sidelong glance as she checked over the rest of him. “Surgery was seven hours to put the muscles and tendons back together. When the scales start to grow back, they may not mesh together the same way again.”

“Meaning?” Axis growled.

“Meaning that leg of yours will have you seeing me more often if you get into any more brawls,” she answered with no hint of sympathy. “Now, I have other reckless patients to check on and you have two visitors who have been here since you got out of surgery.” She left the recovery room briskly and Axis huffed, still trying to get his talon to clench completely. From where they had no doubt been standing at the tail end of his rest bench, both Katya and Charlie entered his range of vision. Neither looked enthused that he was awake and alive, instead offering him slightly different glares of derision.

“Ya know,” Axis half-smirked into a wince as any slight movement strained on the bandaging covering his many broken scales, “a normal guy would be on cloud nine if not one, but two girls came to see him in the hospital.” Neither dragoness gave a reply, continuing only to stare daggers into him. “Oh come on,” Axis said, glancing between them, “no one’s dead.”

“No thanks to you, Axis Mortimer,” Charlie growled. “Samuel Rothbard would be were he not a Duke.”

“Good thing he was then,” Axis answered. “He did come at me first.”

“You locked me in a washroom with the entire floor of a guest room first!” Katya nearly yelled at him.

“Brilliant right?” Axis tried to chuckle and groaned in instant regret.

“Are you wholly incapable of understanding the gravity of your situation, Axis?” Charlie asked as Katya stormed off to pace the room, fuming. “Attacking a Duke is grounds for execution.”

“Sure it is,” Axis rolled his eyes. “That’s why you’re still talking to me, I’m not in prison, and she,” he pointed his head in Katya’s direction, “hasn’t ripped my head off and stuck it on a stake.”

“I still might!” Katya sniped from the other end of the room.

“Insufferable,” Charlie hissed. “But as it is, you are correct. Since you did not kill anyone and since, somehow, for some reason, Matriarch Loftus has vouched for your good word, charges will not be brought against you.”

Axis cracked the toes of his good front talon together in the dragon equivalent of a snap. “Damn shame huh?” he said.

“Believe me, I would like nothing more than to level at you the full power of the law,” Charlie sneered only to become frighteningly cheery as she continued, “However, while neither Matriarch Loftus nor Duke Rothbard will see you reprimanded, I cannot say the same for Pi.”

“You didn’t!” Axis started, instinctually attempting to jolt up to his body’s defiant protest.

“Oh, I did,” Charlie replied. “She requested and has been granted emergency leave to come visit her injured brother in the medical ward.”

“With details?” Axis asked.

“All of them,” Charlie confirmed.

“Well Truminoff…” Axis grunted with sarcastic resignation, “you can forget your promise to your sponsor. I’m a dead man and my sister’s gonna be the one do it.” Katya eyed him quizzically and Axis refused to look at the smug expression of satisfaction pouring off Charlie.

“Now, selectee Katya here asked to speak with you privately before you woke, and I have responsibilities to attend to now that you have been informed both that you are still a free dragon and that Pi will be visiting you,” Charlie said. She strode out of the room without waiting for a reply, offering a respectful nod to Katya as she left.

“Fuck you, Charlie!” Axis said rather loudly as the door clicked shut behind her. “Vindictive bitch…” he mumbled. Katya ceased pacing once Charlie was gone, unrelenting in her scowling at him but saying nothing. “And don’t you come at me,” Axis headed her off. “I could’ve ripped you up too but I didn’t. Oh, and wouldn’t ya know it, I didn’t kill Marley Loftus! Just like I said I wouldn’t!”

“And I was supposed to believe you!?” Katya shouted at him, crossing the distance to his rest bench in three large strides. “How in the Progeny’s name does destroying an entire level to lock someone in a washroom make you more trustworthy?! Huh!? It’s absurd!”

“Eh… debatable,” Axis said. “You were being a real cunt about it.”

“You are not pinning this back on me!” Katya yelled. “Literally anyone else would have thought the same thing!”

“Okay, first, would you stop being a cunt about me getting one over on you with such a brilliant idea,” Axis replied, “Two, let’s make a pact since you’re into those.” Katya’s only answer was a low growl, but she didn’t rebuff him. “Aight, so,” Axis barreled on, “since I didn’t kill anyone, you can try trusting me more, and I’ll be generous and level with you more.”

Katya considered him with piercing indignance and held it as she added, “Admit you played the fool and forced my talon.”

“I mean…” Axis replied slowly, eyes shifting up in thought, “I didn’t think you’d get out so fast…”

“No,” Katya cut him off firmly. “No caveats. You were an idiot.” She and Axis stared at each other, Axis’s mouth hanging open in a half formed retort before he shut it. He searched her hard leering eyes for a spell longer than was strictly necessary before taking his losses, albeit without any grace.

“Fine. It was dumb. Happy?” he muttered.

“Its progress,” Katya relented. “Please tell me you got something out of this mess other than a ruined leg.”

“Sorta?” Axis said. “Woulda been nice to know being sponsored was more than ‘Har har, ya got permission’.”

“Matriarch Loftus offered and you didn’t take it?!” Katya inferred, the intensity of her shock magnified as her head came within inches of Axis’s face.

“Look, maybe you’re fine with being sucked into a royal House,” Axis snorted, waving her back, “but I’m not.” He sighed in passive frustration and Katya took a moment before speaking again.

“You said you’d level with me,” she began, “So is it all Houses or House Loftus specifically?”

“I don’t know,” Axis sneered. “Little of both probably. But c’mon, what’s the irony in taking the name of the woman who turned your life upside down and replacing the family she took you from with hers?”

“To become a Duke is to humble yourself to the needs of others,” Katya said, though not callously. “Letting go of our own names and the meanings they hold is part of that.”

“It’s sick and twisted is what it is,” Axis spat.

“She may be your only option, honestly,” Katya countered. “I seriously doubt any other Matriarchs will take you after provoking a threat on the life of one of their sisters and fighting the Duke sent to protect her.”

“Didn’t we just agree I wasn’t going to kill her?” Axis asked with an annoyed lilt.

“Yeah well rumor’s a bitch, and I’m not every dragon in the Palace,” Katya shot back. “Just stating the facts of the situation.”

“I’ll figure it out,” Axis said. “I’ve still got a few days.” Katya nodded in acquiescence to his finality before turning to leave the recovery room.

“Figure it out fast,” she said, opening the door. “I don’t want to be selected just because you’re a stubborn invalid.” He didn’t bother with a snappy reply, heaving a tired sigh when the door shut behind her and left him alone in the room.

“Fuck you too, Truminoff,” he whispered to the emptiness. “It’s not so obvious to all of us…” Although, he had to admit, she was unfortunately right about his options for sponsorship shrinking as he lay in the medical ward. The more martially inclined he knew would see his battle with Rothbard as proof positive of his skill in a fight, but that would also require the complete details of the reason for the fight to also be included. By the time word of it reached the ears of other Matriarchs it was likely to have been reduced to the simple fact that he had nearly put Rothbard in the grave. Sure Marley would be able to offer a missing explanation, but then, any Matriarchs who cared to listen to her would also be averse to swooping in and stealing her claim to Axis’s sponsorship. From what little his sister had tried to explain of Machinery politics and what even less of that he had retained, such blatant maneuvering would be grounds for a generations long feud between Houses.

Axis flopped a cushion over his head, trying to block out thoughts of Marley. All he could see when he thought of her was a shriveled dragoness weeping for her sins and seeking desperately to make amends. It was so contrary to how he had envisioned her for the last seven years that he wanted nothing more than to erase their meeting and preserve his unfiltered hatred of her. Instead, he was now plagued by spikes of guilt for having so reviled and rejected her. Guilt he snarled into the cushions for even allowing himself to acknowledge. But it was a pervasive sensation and would not easily let him disregard the truth of her person.

Should he manage to find another Matriarch willing to sponsor him, their relationship would be entirely formal, and he would likely have little to do with their House upon being selected. If nothing else he would be able to coerce them into simply letting him work by the sheer abrasion of his disregard for court decorum. He would be left alone and the proof of his right to the title of Duke would be in the results he produced in that capacity. This was how he wished to live. How he had always imagined life as a Duke would be. Solitary. Violent. Significant only to those who suffered his judgment and those whom were saved by that judgment.

But with Marley, everything about his place within the Machine would change forever and anon. She had not said so directly, but there was no doubt in his mind that taking her sponsorship would involve more than just becoming a Loftus. Her desire to atone would drive her to take him in as if he were a son. A son of her own direct bloodline. He would be welcomed with open wings into her own home. His pride in his work across the Empire as a Duke would be shared by her as the pride of a mother. She would vouch for and defend him at the cost of her own reputation. He would be given the strong company of more brothers and sisters and likely also the opportunity to dote on nieces and nephews. He would receive invitations to celebrate holidays, marriages, and birthdays even if his duties prevented him from attending. He would have the one thing he had rejected as forever lost since his deportation. He would have a family again.

Axis buried his face deeper into the cushion of the rest bench, snarling as he was bombarded by images of a potential happy future he swore he did not want. His was a cursed existence. Cursed to see the evils of the galaxy that no one else wished to acknowledge. He was a sacrificial artifact. He suffered that others could live in peace. This was his lot in life, and he had embraced it with masochistic enthusiasm. He was a killer and a reckoner of souls. It was not his place to receive love, acceptance, and happiness. His father had taught and trained him in this reality, reinforcing to him that the rewards of their breed was less tangible. The knowledge that they gave themselves up so that others could avoid such a fate. That a few were offered up to save many. It was honorable, romantic in a way, and yet sitting before him was a chance at the exact opposite. A chance at the kind of contented life pulled from the ashes that his sister now enjoyed. He only had to turn his back on vengeance to accept it. Why it was so difficult, he could not comprehend, and it was with that battle of choice that he succumbed to his weary wounds, dropping into sleep.

Two more days passed before Axis was permitted to leave the medical ward, the medical ward of the Loft of the Duchery no less. He had protested the delay, insisted he was feeling significantly better (despite actually still feeling like a pummeled sack of meat), and made drastic claims of death by starvation for being given the scraps of what the ward referred to as food. But, as was the wont of doctors in his experience, nothing swayed his prickly physician. She refused his complaints and demands with a practiced stoicism, likely earned from years and years of dealing with much the same from every Duke who was put under her care. Her responses to his queries, if she responded at all, were brief, simple, and born on her absolute certainty that she and only she had final say on his condition. It was infuriating and Axis frequently found himself overtaken with toe tapping restlessness, but he made no attempts to slip out unnoticed. This too he had experience in, having tried to duck out of a hospital twice and each time been caught and returned to his room only to be strapped to the rest bench to dissuade any such future endeavors. He was in no hurry to repeat that embarrassment nor was he confident his physician would not keep him longer out of spite.

When he was finally discharged, it was with a tentative clean bill of health. Surgery and judicious application of scale hardener had repaired the scales Rothbard had turned to broken china even if the muscle beneath still ached and the artificial scale plates holding his stomach together were uncomfortable but not unbearable. However, his still heavily bandaged left leg was a different beast. “You’re free to go,” his physician had said, “but you cannot be putting weight on that leg for at least another week. Ignore me and you’ll be back here faster than you can say ‘bullshit’ and then I’ll have to cut if off.” Axis had naturally not heeded her advice initially but one step had been enough for his attitude to change instantly. He wandered through the halls of the Duchery, following his lens to a tram station, with his left leg hugging his side and hobbling forward with the gait of a cripple. Even this was not enough to avoid any pain as the jostling motion of a three legged walk sent fiery bolts up his leg and into his shoulder if he bumped it too hard.

He dreaded how the unstable ride on a tram would treat the leg, but steeled himself against the idea. He didn’t have much of a choice as it so happened. He would need to switch trams a few times to make it to his destination but on this he was set. Mostly. It was easy enough to say to himself he would take up Marley’s sponsorship but knew it would be quite another to make the commitment when he stood before her. He knew that to do so was to rid himself of everything that had defined him since he first placed a single talon on Imperial soil. To kill who he knew Axis Mortimer to be. But to bring that from soft mental acknowledgement into vocal, physical reality… Axis shook his head to rid it of the doubt. This was his path. Not his only one, but the one down which he could see a future. Every other option he dwelt on in the ward had ended in him dying a miserable old man chained to unsatisfied desires. Forever chasing the wraith of someone the Empire would find never allow him to become. At least with Marley he had a distant chance at actually making something of his life. It would be a future filled with obstacles and challenges both internal and external, but a future nonetheless. Being on decent speaking terms with his sister that didn’t involve her clobbering him over the head with long heavy objects first would be a nice bonus. Hell, he might even have children, a thought he’d never once entertained but which presented itself in open opportunity under Marley’s banner.

Loftus Tower was one more stop away and Axis limped out of the most recent tram car too distracted to immediately notice the two uniformed drakes blocking his path. He only stopped and looked them over when they abruptly closed ranks and more deliberately blocked his path. They were not Palace or House servants, that much was immediately clear, being clad in much more refined coats and having a bearing more akin to a royal. Their uniforms were stark white, accented by red cuffs and edges, covering them in a conservative but efficient design. Each also wore a gold heraldic pin over the left side of their chest. “Machinery Code of Scholars…” Axis mouthed out, squinting to read the engraved script on the pins. “Ahhhhh… nerds,” Axis assessed with casual insult. Both said nothing and stood with resolute scowls, unmoving. “That means beat it fucksticks,” Axis reiterated with more venom. “You’re in my way.”

“We’re here to take you to the Pillar,” one of them said.

“Uh… no you’re not,” Axis replied. “Loftus is the Machinery Census, not Code of Scholars.”

“Correct,” the other drake said matter of factly. “Our Pillar wishes to offer a proposal.”

“Well,” Axis half chuckled, “Your Pillar can take her proposal and shove it up her ass. Now if you two don’t make a hole, I’ll make one for you.”

“She thought you might say as much,” the first drake smiled knowingly. “She also said if that were the case, we were to ask you to consider why, after the incident two days ago, she would still wish to speak with you.”

“Look, this whole gig you’ve got is cute and everything,” Axis scoffed, “but I don’t care. He made a hopping turn and swept around them, intent on making the next tram to Loftus Tower.

“She knows the name from Insertion Archon!” the second drake shouted over the din of the tram station. Axis froze. Archon had been five years ago and unpleasant. He whipped back around to the two starkly out of place drakes as rapidly as his injured leg would allow.

“How?” he asked, making the threat clear. “That entire insertion was reported eyes only to the Admiralty.”

“She has her ways. Hear her proposal,” the second said, both drakes smiling triumphantly.

“Make it snappy,” Axis growled, extending his wing for them to lead him to this Pillar of theirs. They inclined their heads and made their way off the tram station into the tower itself. Axis knew each of the sixty-seven royal Houses maintained their towers in the Palace of the Loft as imitations of their thrones on their homeworlds and thus each had an architecturally distinct interior, but he was hard pressed to believe whichever House held sway in this one rejected such tradition in favor of an emotionless white and grey tunnel like hallway. Everything was modern. Modern polished tile, not even of the patrician kind, modern basic walls, modern doors marked only by a numerical code, and modern, somewhat overbearing lights. No great portraits, nor exquisite sculptures nor even any flags or banners adorned the hall’s surfaces. Everything was cold, blank, and sterile. Of the dragons he passed, not one smiled or even had a skip to their step. The whole aura of this royal tower was like the concentrated dullness and soul-sucking banality he found certain corporate offices possessed, just distilled into its most pure, potent form. Axis concluded that if depression had a home that wasn’t prison, he’d definitely found it.

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

Once deeper inside the tower, Axis’s lenses served only to confirm the building was a cascading maze of identically long, low roofed hallways linked by seemingly random junctions of stairwells and elevators. It also identified the place as Nieves Tower. All of it was eerie and made his skin crawl with animalistic apprehension. The two drakes escorting him finally made a turn to a door which turned out to be an elevator entrance and entered a long running sequence into the floor buttons until the elevator chimed and sealed itself before ascending. Rather than begin to instruct him on the proper protocols for meeting the Matriarch, the two drakes stayed resolutely silent, only growing Axis’s mounting apprehension. Either she was too eccentric to be mollified by proper decorum or was too stringent for any lowly dragon to ever meet her expectations. Not that Axis was inclined to attempt to do either anyhow.

When the elevator came to a steady halt, it opened to yet another blank hall, this time with no doors save one at its far end a good forty meters away. Axis followed the drakes, pausing to eye both curiously when they opened the door to the Matriarch’s chambers but did not enter, instead flanking it. “Our Pillar is particular about who sees her and who does not. We are not allowed in. Few are,” one of them explained whilst the other gestured that Axis should go inside.

“Buncha pussies…” he muttered, crossing the door tracks and being now unsurprised by the flimsy sound of its closing latches behind him. The room he stood in was tiny and clinical by comparison to the grandeur and magnitude of Marley’s chamber. Axis guessed it to be about the size of one of the classrooms back at the Machinery Naval Officer’s Academy and perfectly square. A block of metal one might tentatively call a desk bench stood at the far end adorned by three viewjectors and flanked on either side by doors. A simple path from the entrace to the desk was formed by four daises that looked pulled straight from a Ridley’s helm, complete with their array of six viewjectors. The room was otherwise undecorated and deathly quiet. Axis took a few tentative steps, searching for any sign of this Matriarch he was supposed to be meeting but found the space lacking in any living thing save him. He had only just crossed between the four daises when the door to the left of the desk revealed itself to be automatic, sliding open with deliberate smoothness and making no intrusive sound.

“You’ve got to be joking,” Axis growled, the out of sorts structure of the tower and secrecy of this Matriarch beginning to overflow from creepily odd to comical. He limped past the desk and slipped inside the newly opened door, able to only briefly register he was now in a breakroom of sorts before all of his attention was magnetized to the lone dragoness waiting for him. “H-holy Progeny…” Axis choked out an invocation to the dragon god he had never believed in.

The secrecy made much more sense to him. She was, at first sight, grotesque; and the longer he stared, the worse she became. Younger than Marley but older than Axis himself, she was an albino: scales and feathers all a uniform, sickly white. Her eyes were a deep blood red, but only one contained distinction between the white, pupil, and iris. The other was a solid mass of maroon. Her lower jaw was also severely off kilter, jutting so far to one side that one set of her upper fangs hung down, visible against her lips. Her back right talon had its claws fully extended whilst the others remained retracted and judging by the way the claw tips were worn flat, it was a permanent malady. She had one wing visibly stunted compared to the other, there were gaps in the spines running the length of her back, and her scales didn’t seem to mesh correctly, scraping on each other harshly with any significant movement. But worst of all, while it was not immediately apparent, her very gait was wrong. While all of her legs seemed to move and work correctly, either by differing physical dimensions or some problem with their musculature, or possibly both; every step she took was wobbly and unnatural, conveying extensive mental and physical fortitude to even walk. To Axis, it was like staring at a living corpse mutilated by a too near explosion. Revolting, and made all the more disturbing by the gorgeous, single piece brilliant red gown she wore.

“Tea?” she asked, offering a drinking bowl. “I find it helps with long, serious conversations.” Axis was unsurprised that her voice matched her mangled appearance. It was still definably female, but rasped, grated, and seemed to strain against every syllable. How she didn’t struggle with larger words Axis could not fathom.

“You… You’re a hatchling,” he blurted, unable to find any other way to relieve the shiver in his bones at the sight of her.

“Oh, thank you for noticing,” she replied, too sweetly to be genuine but without any hint to her true feeling. “My name is Chloe Nieves.”

“Not the Matriarch then?” Axis raised a brow.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she chided him. “Of course I am she. I just felt it would be, shall we say, prudent, to get off on the right foot with you and come together as individuals before Matriarch and Duchery selectee.”

“Well that would be a first,” Axis huffed, taking a seat with her and accepting the drinking bowl of tea.

“In my Sisters’ defense,” Chloe rasped, “none of them were naturally hatched by an idiot mother. They do not understand baseless discrimination nor the real priveledges power provides.”

“Speaking of privilege,” Axis diverted, not intending on leaving without answers. “Why’d your boys out there bring up Archon? That was an Admiralty eyes only report.”

“You needn’t fret, Axis Mortimer,” Chloe made to reassure him, her voice notwithstanding. “It is my understanding you are a stubborn drake under the best of circumstances, and I simply wished my genuine interest to be quite clear. As it happens, I agree with your then captain on the matter of the… unfortunate accident.”

“You didn’t answer the question,” Axis observed, making a note to himself to not underestimate the silver tongue she clearly possessed.

“Very good, very good,” she smiled, a horrifying gesture on her uneven face. “But a dragoness of my means holds those means close, lest they cease to be useful.”

“That ain’t doin’ you much good in the ‘best foot forward’ department,” Axis said.

“Perhaps not, but to be interrogated by you was not my intent in seeking your presence,” Chloe countered. “I wish instead to extend an offer of sponsorship.” Axis finished his tea with a singularly large gulp and set the drinking bowl to the side.

“Too late,” he said flatly. “I’ve already made my choice.”

“But you have not officiated it,” Chloe replied. “I am not forbidden from making the proposal until then.”

“Yeah, but you’re wasting your time,” Axis said, making to stand. “We’re done here.”

“Answer me one question before you go, Axis Mortimer,” Chloe requested. Axis eased his haunches back down and nodded for her to continue. What came next was like a physical transformation. Where Chloe before had carried the same restrained propriety as other royals despite her warped appearance, it fell away like a dripping veneer to match her twisted visage as she asked, “How exactly does a dragon engineer the deaths of four Naval special operations drakes and suffer no repercussions? And before you posture and hiss like a child - !” she warded off his snarling retort, “I have no interest in why you did it, I just want to know how. The brilliance borders on artistic.”

“Question for a question, hatchling,” Axis glowered, putting the full weight of the slur behind it, “If you’re so sure I killed them, why would you want to sponsor a dragon like that?”

“Oh, now we’re making progress,” Chloe’s voice scratched with undisguised, vicious delight. “You and I are not so different, Axis. We both are outsiders to the seat of power. We both were abused, shunned, and neglected by power. And we both have licked our talons of the blood of those foolish enough to brag of their superiority over others weak and defeated. This means we both share the same enemies as well.”

“So you want an attack dog,” Axis snorted. “I’d sooner eat my own shit.”

“Attack dog? Pff,” Chloe replied with offense at the audacity of the suggestion. “There is no shortage of greed driven assassins I could satiate for that.”

“Then what?” Axis hissed. “You’ve got nothing Loftus doesn’t. Less actually.”

“Less?” Chloe scoffed derisively. “Marley has chained you with the sentiment of her own failure. And she will ceaselessly tug you back with that chain every time you come close to enacting righteous judgment on those who deserve it. She will make you into a shadow of who you are, dulling her own guilt at the expense of your very soul.” She paused to let her words permeate the air between them. “You know I speak the truth.”

Axis ground his teeth, unable to deny the monstrosity of a dragon in front of him. He had known that was what awaited him as Marley’s selectee and had accepted that road. But to have another dragon see that very same outcome so clearly and put it to actual words made it that much more self evident. His future as Duke Mortimer-Loftus would begin only with the suicide of Axis Mortimer along with the essence of what had driven him onward for seven years. Axis was many things, but a traitor and back stabber was not among them, least of all to himself.

“If I accept that,” Axis said, low and threatening, “how are you any different?”

“I value what you are and what you could be,” Chloe answered simply. “My sponsorship would not require you to bind yourself to my House. I would have you go out and vindicate yourself on this faltering Empire. Make the name Axis Mortimer a terror to the corrupt and the unprincipled fools who have taken all and given nothing.”

“And in return?” Axis asked, seeing no benefit for Chloe in the arrangement.

“As I said earlier,” she explained, long suffering anger hanging from every word “we share the same enemies. Look at me. You think this broken, horrific body is respected by even a slave? How much less by my supposed equals? Your vengeance will be my own. That is my only price.” Axis stood and turned his back to her but didn’t leave. His head was a roiling mass of contradiction. Part of him desperately insisted he walk away. Keep to his decision and make his way to Loftus Tower. It was the part of him that could not forget Marley’s tear stained scales and the sincerity of her regret. It told him that Chloe’s path would only break Marley’s heart further and would stain his talons with so much more blood that he would drown in it. But there was another side that tugged against such pathetic sentimentality. This part of him ruthlessly desired meet out justice to those the Empire would not touch. It had fueled him. Kept him alive and above the waters of despair. It had driven him to become worthy of the Duchery and given him the clarity to see through the lies of Machinery hierarchies to the truth of power preserving itself for its own sake. And it clawed and scrabbled for him to accept Chloe’s sponsorship, knowing full well it would mean his transformation from mere judge to law itself.

He restrained a roar of frustration and quashed the two competing voices, leaning back to his training at the Office to purge all outward emotion and center his mind. This had been his true calling: to become a Watcher. An agent with no political obligations or attachments, no complicating personal relationships, and a singular mission to find and slay Tocri’ah and those who perpetuated them before they could harm the innocent. That dream had been shattered by Marley and her Census, and while the Duchery also hunted Tocri’ah, Axis had always found their latent connection with Imperial politics lacking the same purity of the Watchers. By whatever means he became a Duke, it would mean an implicit bond with the Palace of the Loft. However, it was still a chance for him to fulfill that original purpose; sowing retribution among the Empire’s comfortably powerful for their lack of character.

“No favors?” he asked Chloe harshly, still with his back facing her.

“Only if our interests align,” Chloe admitted, and Axis could hear the pulsing excitement of victory in her raspy voice.

“Then Matriarch Chloe Nieves,” Axis said with rare formal declaration. “I accept your sponsorship to the Duchery on these terms.”

“And I, Axis Mortimer,” Chloe responded in kind, “welcome you on behalf of the Imperia Machina. Until we meet again for your submission.” There was no need for Axis or Chloe to say more, and he limped out of her small quarter. As he passed the two drakes who had brought him up to Chloe, the side of him which had demanded he accept her sponsorship roared in triumphant glee, burning to ash any indecision in a column of vengeful fire. Determination and stony resolve coursed through him and set his face firm. He was, and always would be, Axis Mortimer.

Hours passed, and Axis bothered only to take notice by the eventual setting of the sun, the Loft’s Phoenix Star. After leaving Chloe and Nieves Tower, he had wandered. He had no particular destination in mind, just the desire, the need, to move. And to keep moving. He was not running from anything, that much he knew for certain, but a primordial force motivated his directionless steps. There was energy, power welling within him and it demanded it be released. Walking without pause was just the easiest answer. He likened it to the fire that had so often consumed him before a spec ops insertion. A surge of purpose and single minded devotion to a singular cause so strong it silenced the lips, strengthened the legs, sharpened the eyes, and warmed the body. Most notably though, this strength of impetus quieted the mind.

Axis did not consider himself a schemer, especially not as the term was better and more often suited to politicians and business minded types. But neither did Axis concede to being an empty headed dolt. He had ideas, fantasies, complex thoughts. In moments such as these however, whatever drove him to avoid rest also disturbingly silenced his inner monologue. Nothing, not even the sight of the pathetic slaves utterly resigned to their fate, could spark a thought in him. This sensation too he could identify with something more defined. Pure, unadulterated rage, hate, anger: these things he had felt before and they were uniquely capable of driving out of their path any rational thought. But this was something different.

It was more all consuming. More complete and yet also more nebulous. He reeked of danger and vicious impulse yet not even the aimless chatter in his ears onboard a tram could rouse him to act. His blood ran hot but his scales were ice to the touch. His vision was like a razor of detail but nothing registered outside blurs of shapes and colors. A memory of his father intruded through the fog in his mind, and Axis remembered how he had described a great emotional vulnerability of humans wherein they could become “caught up in their own head.” It was especially worrisome, Kirin had explained, because of how it radiated out negative energy in waves a Tocri’ah could easily trace to its source. Axis felt he understood the literal origins of the phrase now and he pitied those humans who frequently found themselves in such a state.

He was a mind enthralled to its own internal turmoil that had already looped back on itself too many times to truly determine its origin. And no doubt, it would continue until his physical body could no longer sustain such aggressive recirculation of Second State energy. There was certainly no chance for him to quiet the flux. He didn’t even know what had started it in the first place. His heart was already too numb for introspection. A stray bit of clarity barely clinging to life, the side of him he had crushed under his own sense of self, quietly accused him of guilt. But it could have been a loudspeaker from a starcruiser. The blaze coursing within his body froze over, and he nearly tripped over himself as his muscles spasmed and shook and his head became heavy enough to bend his neck. No! She was greedy! A complete idiot! He angrily swore at himself, straining against what felt like seized limbs. And I was stupid! He stamped down the pang of emotion under his metaphorical heel for the dishonest distraction that it was. Become a royal... He hissed, the mere notion of such a thing that seemed so acceptable and decent only a few hours ago was disgusting to even consider. You are what you are and can be what they aren’t because you don’t have their blood… and a good thing too…

So consumed was he by disbelief at his own brush with weakness that he only recognized where he was when his body stopped him from tumbling into empty space. He was back in the hangar Rothbard had brought him to for the start of selection at the beginning of the week, only now he was standing at its outer edge looking out into the expanse of the sky around the Palace and the sweeping cityscape miles and miles below. The Palace’s weather regulation rings were weak near its edges and this far down its height, and he stood close enough to the edge of the hangar for a stiff breeze to cut through his feathers. He was at first surprised his clouded mind would steer his body here, but the longer he stared out into the glow of the setting sun, the less shocking it became. This was the only place in the Palace outside of Pi’s room that he knew and after he’d ensured its lack of habitability, this was all that remained. It also possessed an echo of familiarity to the Office back on Incilleron. He and his sister had spent uncountable evenings on the balcony of Kirin’s apartment there, watching and trying to name the ships that cruised by on their way home or to a voyage among the distant stars. From where he stood, had his sister been close by, he might have been able to convince himself he was back there where he belonged.

That was what Marley had taken from him. The place where he belonged. And she had dared to think she could and should be forgiven for it. Worse, he had nearly given it to her just like his imperiophile sister. It was a lapse of judgment he would not make again. The dedication to that thought seemed to have a measurable effect on his body and psyche, as he felt the trickling wash of calm begin to spread through his form. Though, in all fairness, it may also have been weariness from so much ambling and aches from having been cooped up in a hospital bench for two days. It was, in either case, a comforting release from the intensity that had been boiling his blood for the past few hours.

“Ah… thought I might find you here,” a musical voice he was beginning to recognize said behind him. He swiveled his head to see Katya striding across the hangar to join his side. “I’m guessing your sister’s room is off limits.”

“Obviously,” Axis replied.

“I wanted to talk to you about you…” Katya paused with a wry, still clearly peeved, grumble, “about the whole washroom thing.”

“Oh god… please don’t apologize,” Axis let loose with a long, unenthused sigh. “We’re both professionals. I’d have done the same shit.”

“Pretty presumptuous,” Katya replied lightly. “Since I wasn’t going to apologize.”

“Well… good,” Axis said.

“I wasn’t going to apologize about busting a hole in the wall,” Katya clarified. “But I am apologizing for not trusting you.”

“Wh… why?” Axis scoffed. “Switch places and I’d’ve cuffed you to a wall or something.”

“Because we are professionals,” Katya said, unfazed and rather resolute in continuing. “I should have been able to tell you were being honest about not killing Matriarch Loftus. Instead I let paranoia control me and got you pretty ripped up.”

“You should see the other guy,” Axis quipped.

“I’m being serious, Axis,” she said.

“So am I,” Axis said, turning his gaze from the sunset to her. She did likewise and a pause lingered while Axis shifted, trying to find the right explanation. “Look… out there, our work… it’s your gut feeling that keeps your ass connected to your body. So I don’t accept your apology for going off your gut.”

A smile grew on her face in appreciative approval he had not expected her to give before she turned back to the darkening skyline. “Then we’re even.”

“Eh, not quite,” Axis said with an amused lilt. “You do owe me for that shit food I had to eat in the ward.” Laughter as melodious and bright as her voice suddenly escaped her in short fits and she nudged his shoulder in good humor.

“I take it you have a sponsor if you’re wasting time out here,” she finally said between subsiding chuckles.

“Yup,” Axis said simply as the last rays of the Phoenix Star disappeared under the horizon.

“You’re impossible. Who?” Katya asked.

“It’s not important,” Axis replied, the secrecy with which Chloe concealed her own visage striking him as emblematic of how all business involving her was conducted. A methodology he could get behind. “We’ll all see each other’s sponsors tomorrow anyway.”

“Keep your secrets. It’d better be good,” Katya said, the mirth still not gone from her tone.

“She will definitely make an impression,” Axis half chuckled at his own irony. Katya didn’t offer more conversation, but neither did she leave, the two of them just standing and watching the lights of the City of the Loft below intermix with the spats of color and visual distortion from drive engines. It was oddly peaceful to Axis, being with a lone companion. Katya was like Pi in that regard except that she radiated a more commanding presence much like Axis himself.

“Where will you go if you don’t make selection?” Katya asked, breaking the moment of quiet contemplation.

“I will make selection,” Axis said without an ounce of doubt.

“I don’t think I’d go back to work,” Katya answered her own question, uninterested in arguing Axis’s claim. “Too much of a downgrade after getting this close.”

“Don’t tell me an assassin like you would just settle down,” Axis laughed. “No way you’d just be able to stop the itch.”

“I might, actually,” Katya said, as if genuinely considering the idea for the first time at Axis’s suggestion. “I mean, a dragoness only has so much luck. Eventually someone like you’d be sent to off me.”

“My father always said one failure isn’t the same as total failure,” Axis offered. “Just because you wouldn’t do it as a Duchess doesn’t mean you couldn’t still make the right waves.”

“Maybe,” Katya acquiesced. “But that goes the same for you when I snatch selection from under your snout.”

“As if,” Axis sniffed.

“I’ll see you in the morning, Axis,” she said, turning to leave. He nodded and watched her go, unable to shake the thought that she had a lightness in her step that he’d not seen before. He breathed deeply as he turned back to the expanse before him. Tomorrow morning was selection. It would be the true test, not some paltry examination of one’s command of political maneuvering. What it entailed, Axis could not be sure and trying to guess would leave his head spinning with wild theories. The Duchery guarded the process of selection as a secret as dear as the identity and number of its members. But without question, it would force him to draw on every skill he had, both natural and trained. He had never once doubted his ability to satisfy the demands of such a trial, but neither had he ever faced something intent on finding his limits and exceeding them. Even when he had stared down Tocri’ah intent on killing him, it had been with Kirin at his side ready to absolve him of a deadly mistake. No matter how he looked at it, the anticipation was sobering.

And that thought brought out a song, almost unconsciously. He only hummed the tune, but his head filled in the words. An old lullaby Kirin had sung to him and sister shortly after they’d been rescued and the visions of the Exodus Event haunted their ability to sleep. Axis didn’t know where the song came from, and he’d never asked Kirin, but it now flowed out of him as an odd comfort.

Take me out to the ocean’s edge...

Out to where the war has ended…

Wash the blood from off my hands…

Give me the light to live again…

Pick me up on clouds of gold…

Above the black lands below…

Brush my heart with angel’s wings…

And give me back the joy to sing…

‘Cause you’re not just a child of might,

In the eyes of a knight,

You’re anything that’s out there,

For you to be,

For you to be…