“You keep avoiding me, and I’ll never be able to mold you into a master’s blade.” Moving quickly through the hall, a man gallops toward Simora. A pleading voice precedes the man; though, humor attempts to mask the clear resolve he has to accomplish his task.


    Without turning toward the deep voice, Simora pictured the man’s face perfectly in his mind. A small patch of black on his chin and a bun of the darkest hair tightly bound on the back of his head during training hours. Green eyes with rims of dusk’s favored purple peeled wide at the inner conflict of duty from past and present. The head sits atop finely toned muscles forming the trunk of a neck.


    “I regretfully must decline, Thomat.” Simora keeps his pace. His hands, stuck straight to his side, tap against the light fabrics of green and blue. “Much work to do. Preparations and such!”


    A head of black hair swoops past the leader and turns to form a fleshy blockade. “Sir, please. You’re placing me in a troubling position.” Even with his quick movements, the toned man’s breathing is as even as ever. His eyes, just as wide as Simora imagined, say more than the man’s vocabulary allowed him to. “Of my pride, I am wounded by your refusals.”


    “Your pride neither diminishes nor suffers in any fashion but by the damage you do yourself.” Simora smiles gently to the man as if their ages reversed. The thought spreads Simora’s grin farther up his cheeks. My silvery hair might make more sense. Fine hair and features for his years. “You are no longer my father’s man, Thomat. You’ve been mine for some time.”


    Streams of lights come from extended series of rods along the ceiling. The hallway fill with funneled sunlight across deep blues and blacks. Like traveling a creek under the shade of a thick forest, Simora stuck to walking along the blue shapes. Careful to step into the false water instead of the blackened moss and muck.


    Simora notes the spotless uniform of the man; a reflection of the man within. The Nor-Noctlin crest above his right breast, and a sigil of a white hammer against a silver background. A Deep Root allowed to display, with the utmost honors, the sigil of their sworn charge and of their own bloodline.


    “Sir, if I may.”


    “You may not, Thomat. I’ve heard your pleas four-hundred and seven times just since I’ve assumed the title of Dominax.” Two cycles since manhood by the Universal Atomic Counter time. “My Hand and Gavel is to follow my orders. Should my orders contradict an order of the past, would these not supersede the previous orders?”Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.


    A moment of hesitation grants Simora the time needed to swing swiftly about the man like a comet refusing to slow for a dwarf planet’s pitiful gravity. “I-I don’t mean to insult my Dominax.” The title sounds native on the man’s tongue. “But your mother’s—”


    “My mother’s been gone for even a great time, Thomat. Please, let her and her commands rest within the stillness of an undisturbed past. I barely knew her, in truth. What I do recall were devotions toward philosophy and hobby than to maternal duty. ‘From cosmic dust to cosmic dust, the order of all returns to chaos.’ Right?” Reciting one of his mother’s favored passages from the Star Testament, Simora taps at his side to the beat of the line.


    “Of course, I am your man.” Thomat turns on his heels and keeps pace. “But you insist on walking these halls alone, you avoid me when possible, and—”


    “Sounds more like questioning me, Thomat.” Simora’s golden eyes glance to the side like a cat stirred by a mouse.


    “You keep me around for such a challenge.”


    “That I do.”


    “But what use is the question when ignored?”


    Simora cannot refrain from chuckling, “Come now, Thomat. You know your tongue speaks false. Your counsel is always considered. Your Tempering insights through Tact give a unique perspective. It applies well to probability calculations. Every quantifiable detail provided by your instincts paints a clearer picture.” The Dominax’s shoulders roll as he clicks his tongue and taps his sides five times each. “To keep the Civilized managed and safe in our arms. To predict movements and uprisings! Who else knows the laws like the back of his hand or people like pieces in Galaxia?”


    “Then perhaps, my Lord, you’d honor me with a game later, and we could discuss such things further.” Thomat nods to himself with pinched eyes considering another failure to sway his Dominax. “Let us speak plainly and hone our skills. Tact versus Prescience.”


    He notes the Black and not the Blue. “Indeed. Habit against manipulation.” I am son of a Black family first. Must they forget my mother’s blood? Why does such an advantage nag me so? “We will share a drink for your many future losses. Now, I must return to my study. When done with their counsel, I shall seek yours to solidify it.”


    “I look to the future of your presence, my Lord. Take care to not leave the building without guards.” Thomat stops and lets his leader leave. Calling to him as if attempting to parent the orphaned man. “There’s a dark storm coming.”


    “Another?”


    “Indeed, Sir.” Thomat waited patiently for his master to turn the corner of the hallway. Alone in the square tunnel of deep blues and blacks, he looks up to the string of light poles. Stored sunlight falls over him in fractions of a true star, yet the warmth in the body rises as if in the midday sun. Somewhere, algae batteries and solar drinkers work tirelessly to keep this massive structure illuminated. “I tried, Lady Grefta. He’s a stubborn one.” His eyes fall back to the end of the hallway. Not a single soul about, “He’s grown to quite a man. Lord Morikal, you raised a fine man.”


    Thomat taps twice over his heart and once to his forehead, “Beldara Wamenik.”