Rahu L'Ra, the Hierarch of Heaven, rolled back his shoulders, trying to loosen the muscles there. He shook out his massive wings, spreading them fully in the generous breadth of the Celestial Hall.

The Holy Disk hung on the far wall of the Hall, having already been lowered for the night.

At full brightness, it was a huge white-silver circle so bright, it was burning a hole in the dark and empty Hall.

Spanning wider than L'Ra could stretch wingtip to wingtip, he imagined he could walk right through it and leave behind the ordinary world.

He went into a half-lotus sit before the Disk, calming his breathing in its radiance.

The fatigue and disappointment of his trip into Stratos washed over him.

This latest challenger had been disappointing. Though these days, all L'Ra ever expected was disappointment.

As far as he was concerned, the secular world had nothing to offer him.

It was a repulsive and meaningless place; the place where he, and everybody else in the Eyrie, had come from.

But he wasn't the kind of person who could revel in squalor.

Since he'd first seen the Disk, he'd known he had to go to it. And anybody even remotely capable of approaching his level must feel the same.

So expeditions into Stratos to meet any so-called challengers were futile.

Anybody with the mettle to test him would come to the Inner Sky.

L'Ra breathed deeply. All the tension in his body left with an exhale.

He should go back to his villa and clean up before he went to see the Grand Chancellor at morning court.

But L'Ra stretched his legs out of half-lotus pose to lie on his back instead.

As if anything in even his own most lavish mansion could compare to the private light of the Holy Disk of Heaven.

Through the transparent roof of the Celestial Hall, the night was clear and replete with stars.

L'Ra's reflection floated there above him, and for a moment he wasn't the Hierarch lying on the well-worn floors, arms flung out and basking, but his spectral double peering down from above as he always was when he flew the Eyrie's heights.

The figure lying on the ground began to shrink as the reflection that he was rose higher, drifting away.

Who else could know this vertigo, this rapture?

Only the Hierarch, in a place nobody could ever reach.

Yes, he was completely safe. He was completely alone.

The door to the Hall creaked open.

L'Ra was up in a flash, flaring his wings in a show of power.

The three priests at the door fell to their knees immediately, hands and face to the floor.

"Your Highness," gasped the one who was the most senior.

Even in the haze of incense permeating the Hall and backlit by the Holy Disk, L'Ra's statuesque silhouette was unmistakable.

His cream-coloured feathers, having soaked in the Disklight, were so luminous they could have been blinding.

"Had we known you were in the Hall, we would not have dared disturb you," said the senior priest, doing well to suppress any audible or visible trembling.

L'Ra recognised all of these priests. They were part of the rotation that managed maintenance of the mechanisms in the Celestial Hall.

If they touched the Disk, it was always with glove-wrapped hands, and of course they had drunk Suffuse Decoction and would never feel the fortifying effects of the Holy Disk.

But the chief priest of this rotation had recently supported a contingent of court officials: a petition to the Grand Chancellor to send the Hierarch out of the Inner Sky, before the lunacy the Holy Disk could induce overcame him and he killed them all.

"Will the dawn break soon?" L'Ra asked. He wasn't interested in watching plebeians quail.

"Yes, but if your Highness wanted-"

"No," said L'Ra, before the senior priest could thoughtlessly offend him. "I'm finished here. See to your duties."

He marched past them, through the door and out the Hall, taking off into the sky.

The warm pre-dawn air felt disgusting after the chill of the Celestial Hall.

For all the blood he'd spilled to rise alone to the top of the world, the sacred sanctuary he'd found with the Holy Disk was a space he wouldn't share with anybody.

He didn't want to be there if he wasn't on his own.

---

L'Ra didn't return to his villa.

He flew a circuit up and down Celestial Mountain on the northward side, out of sight of the loathsome aerial gondolas cluttering the perfectly open sky.

Certainly the Caritas Festivals had become more lively since their installation, but whether the gondolas were engaged by the secular or the devout, it wasn't right for Aven who couldn't fly themselves up to the Inner Sky to be there.

But the majority faction in the priesthood and the court didn't agree with L'Ra about that.

L'Ra pumped and flexed his wings until all that existed was the strength of his own body, the sharpness of his senses, the air currents at his feathers, and the pull of gravity he could defy.

He flew until the sun rose and he was breathless. Then he rinsed off at his favourite secret little waterfall, re-dressed in his traveling robes, and went home.

The residence of the Hierarch was the Celestial Villa, tucked on the north side of Celestial Mountain. The main wing of the Villa faced south, Inward, so L'Ra could behold the Holy Disk from his home's open door.

The servants doing chores outside saw him alight on the landing balcony, bowing politely and making themselves scarce. They had become very good at that over the years.

L'Ra nodded minutely to them in acknowledgement as he walked through the inner courtyard and towards the main wing, following the sound of his disciple Nihyl's ostentatious voice.

When the gaggle of sycophants Nihyl liked to surround himself with noticed the Hierarch, they dismissed themselves and hastily fled, vacating the main wing.

Nihyl was dressed in a black and gold robe L'Ra had never seen before, though the daring asymmetry he'd cut into his bangs hadn't grown out or been corrected in the time L'Ra was gone.

Hardly flustered at his arrival, Nihyl bowed to the bare minimum degree that could be considered respectful.

L'Ra suspected he was testing that minimum every day.

"Your Highness," said Nihyl. "Welcome home."

The main wing of the Celestial Villa had become populated with numerous lacquer chests and cases, flung open and loaded with all manner of fine paraphernalia: vases, vessels, sculptures, ceramics; painted silks, papers, scrolls, all littered about in heaps and stacks.

What was being brought out or put away, it was hard to tell.

L'Ra's hair was still wet from his waterfall wash-up. It was dripping onto his shoulders and his villa's polished floor.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm redecorating," said Nihyl.

"You should be training and studying."

"Sure," said Nihyl, with a pretty smile. Then he lunged at L'Ra, claws out.

They traded less than ten moves.

Every kick and strike Nihyl dealt was precise. Clearly, he hadn't been slacking.

L'Ra blocked everything, feeling the rush of his morning flight again against his disciple's uninhibited brutality.

Nihyl withdrew from close-quarters and snapped his wings out to boost his next kick. Loose papers flew everywhere in a leafstorm.

L'Ra swung a case of scrolls off the floor to block the kick. The case shattered to pieces and scrolls flew everywhere too.

L'Ra took the opening to grab Nihyl by the front of his robe.

He stopped himself from putting his claws through it. The feel of the fabric reminded him: it was surely very expensive.

As was everything in his house.

He flicked a fingertip across Nihyl's throat to make him understand that he'd lost, then swiped a claw at half of his bangs, cutting one side of it short again.

Nihyl squawked, but didn't forget to bow and acknowledge the end of their sparring match.

"Your Highness' tutelage honours and humbles me."

L'Ra turned away. "Why do you have a new robe?"

"Tonight is the last night of the Caritas Festival,” said Nihyl as he began collecting the  scattered scrolls. "As the disciple of the Hierarch, I have to look the part."

L'Ra looked at him.

In all the years of Nihyl's discipleship, nobody could have ever accused him of failing to look the part.

Even in the earliest days during Nihyl's moody and taciturn youth, the Archasaurs of the Inner Sky had laughed at L'Ra, calling him a narcissist for picking a disciple whose pale wings looked so much like his own.

Nevermind the fact that Nihyl was unmatched in his generation, and recommended to L'Ra by the Grand Chancellor's own personal assessment.

It was only years later that L'Ra would hear from him a familiar story: a raggedy and contemptible adolescence until the sight of the Holy Disk beckoned him to rise to the Inner Sky.

Nihyl, his shining shadow, deserved to delight in the fate he'd won.

It was right for him to wear expensive robes embroidered with gold flowers, in a house teeming with treasures no matter where you looked.

"Why do you ask?" said Nihyl. "Does your Highness fancy a robe like this one for himself too?"

L'Ra rolled his eyes.

Wouldn't that vindicate Nihyl like nothing else; to brag that he'd influenced the Hierarch and spread a new fashion trend in the Inner Sky.

It was the evolution of his oldest, most childish habit of dressing just like L'Ra.

For a decoy, he would claim, as a measure against assassination.

To this day, nobody had ever mistaken them for each other. They were two completely different people.

L'Ra batted a wing over his side of the room and the scattered scrolls and papers blew towards his centrally situated work desk.

Nihyl had appropriated it in his absence; it was cluttered with various little trinkets that he swept aside to clear some room.

Nihyl flapped his own wings and the papers collected into a pile there that he neatened himself with a huff.

L'Ra went over and picked up the last errant paper from under the desk and turned it over.

It was an ink painting of Plum Blossom Mountain.

"Oh," said Nihyl, admiring it with L'Ra. "I won that one from Lord Archasaur Wriz at the Freezing Sky Parlour. Isn’t it beautiful? He wouldn’t tell me where or how he got it though.”

It had been a long time since L'Ra had been to Plum Blossom Mountain.

"I was going to put it here," said Nihyl, gesturing at the wall before the entryway. "But... you can have it if you want, Master."

L'Ra placed the painting on the desk. Nihyl didn't often call him that.

"Put it wherever you want," said L'Ra, heading for his quarters. He needed a change of clothes. "Clean this up and meet me after morning court."

“Wait,” said Nihyl. “Your Highness, you know I’ve only been upright and filial, and I have never disgraced you.”

L’Ra knew where this was going.

“In every Caritas Festival, I have never flown any gauntlet against the rabble from Stratos,” continued Nihyl, “but now those louts are on Frigid Mountain. For the honour of the raptors of the Inner Sky, please, allow me.”

L’Ra felt for him then, this eyas, a raptor to whom no one in the Inner Sky could compare.

Even L’Ra, at Nihyl’s age, had not been lonely. In fact, those few years were the only time in L’Ra’s life he’d ever known another raptor good enough for him.

But that was years ago.

“Fine,” said L’Ra. “Fly the gauntlet. Don’t lose.”

“Of corse,” replied Nihyl. “That is not even remotely a possibility.”

---

Later that night, on Frigid Mountain, Nihyl strutted out of the back courtyard of the Freezing Sky Parlour to the fervour of all the eyas there.

Both the proper raptors of the Inner Sky and the posers visiting for the Caritas Festival parted as he commanded their attention to the starting line of Frigid Mountain’s gauntlet.

Nihyl already knew which one of them was the fastest raptor on Frigid Mountain, after him, of course.

“You,” he said, jutting his chin out to one of the bland-looking bumpkins flanked by two of his kith. “Isn’t your name Angelico? I’ll be your opponent. Why don’t we take a wingfight?”