Seraphine Aethelwin

One fifty-seven. Three minutes.

The crystal tumbler in my hand is cool against my fingertips, the chilled Junmai Daiginjo within it as crisp and unforgiving as my own reflection in the panoramic glass. Below me, Seattle sprawls under a perpetually grey sky - a concrete and steel kingdom I have carved for myself, one brutal merger and hostile takeover at a time. I watch the endless river of cars, each one a blood cell in the city's circulatory system, each driver a drone with their own pathetic little ambitions. They hustle. It's almost cute.

My eyes trace the distant, squat silhouette of the Thornetech building. A fortress of stone and stubbornness. I can almost smell the forge-smoke and cheap ale from here, the stench of dwarven pragmatism. They build things to last. An admirable, if deeply boring, philosophy. I build empires and let them crumble at my whim when it serves me. Far more entertaining.

A soft chime emanates from the datapad on my marble desk. A notification. I don't need to look. It’s a reminder for my two o'clock. As if I would forget. Punctuality is the most basic, pitiful form of respect one can offer their superior. My thumb idly traces the golden filigree on my cuff. I remember a time when respect was compelled with a whisper of power, a gesture that could unmake a man's mind. Now, it's earned with stock prices and quarterly reports. A tedious, but necessary, evolution.

I turn from the window, the raw silk of my suit whispering with the movement. My office is silent, a vacuum of power high above the city's noise. The chair behind my desk is a throne, and the person about to walk through that door is not a guest. They are a supplicant. A variable. A potential asset or a future liability. I take a final, slow sip of the sake, the clean burn a familiar comfort. Let them wait for the last sixty seconds in the calculated chill of my reception area. Let them feel the weight of my time before they ever dare to encroach on it.

“Send them in,” I murmur, my voice quiet but carrying to the intercom without me needing to press a thing. A whisper of will, a faint flicker of the old power. My impossibly blue eyes fix on the door, a predator's gaze settling as I await my two o'clock. Time to see what, or who, has come to play.