[Because boy howdy are you getting a story. Ripped straight from the passages of her journal. Though the way Mindfang talks, with a small fondness in her eyes it's as if it was almost yesterday.

Hopefully he doesn't scare easily.]

Something blocked the light of the unbitten moon, treating the harbor to darkness more grim than what fell this season's apogee. I made the mistake of looking into its eyes, each like a sun concentrated into a small jewel, as two hot garnets searing through a black veil. A dragon.
How was one allowed to be raised by a dragon in this era? Let alone one of such middling blood, the sickly hue of a gutless civil servant. Those of her caste were typically pleased to mount a sluggish cholerbear, or some brainless squawking spleenfowl during petty expeditions to plaster seizure notices on gamblignant property. By what fluke had this woman been granted such a weapon, permitting her to luxuriate in these delusions of righteousness?

A question I'll never know the answer to.

I shut mine eyes quickly, but the more sensitive of them was already burned irreparably from the beast's glare. When I regained sight in the other, there was only red. My fleet was in flames. The neophyte was on deck. Pyralspite, she mentioned through her ridiculous forced grin. She wanted me to know the name of the beast which was able to consume my lusus whole.

My dice were in the hold below, not that my present luck would consent to a favourable roll anyway. I made a move for my blade. She took my arm, which I'm sure she kept as the tiniest of snacks for her ostentatious custodian. Maybe she meant to prove she wouldn't need me in irons to have my submission?

Bound or free.

Two, one or none.

I wonder how well she knew that it's not what I could do with my arms she has to fear?

I awaited my trial, alone in the dark, still bleeding.

Much fanfare was made of the trial. More than I would have dared to hope. It seems my luck had been returning of late.

The Highbloods surely intended to make a spectacle of my conviction. They filled the courtblock with peasants ravenous for the comeuppance of a blue blood. I wasn't about to deny them what they came for.

It was kind of the authorities to supply me with phalanx of such impressionable spectators. The weak wills were nearly as thick in the air as the rust in their veins. Funny how my other senses seem to have piqued since exchanging glances with the dragon. What an extraordinary specimen. How I've came to covet the creature since it ruined my fleet. I knew too well the whispers of a dangerous new infatuation when they beckon. But I digress.

It was simple enough to nudge the hostility of the lowbloods from one aristocrat to another. The subjugglators could not have been pleased, but nor could they have been altogether unamused, I would expect. I wonder still if this was part of their unfathomable game? I'll never understand their riddles.

I only regret I didn't get to hear the opening statement the neophyte had prepared against me. The case she compiled from all that evidence she burned must have been damning. I bet her remarks would have stung worse than when she severed my arm. She certainly would have shown me greater mercy by taking the other instead!

Alas, I mock to disguise the extent of my regret.

Had my escape not necessitated her demise, she would have made a lovely rival. If she'd only discarded her childish preoccupation with justice, we might have made a striking scourge. Had we inched blacker we'd have torn red miles across the land and sea. Unfortunately, the only miles to be found through her bureaucratic calling were those of red tape. When so ensnared, one is eventually bound to be choked.

With the courtblock cleared, all that remained to obstruct my freedom was His Honourable Tyranny himself.

Upon reflection, Redglare showed the foresight of a true seer in thieving my arm before the trial.

It permitted a fair fight.