Welcome to the capital city of the avian empire, otherwise known as Tayin'kurtze. Population: 20 million.

Towering skyscrapers of steel and iron rose up from the grassy highlands below. Forest girdled the metropolis, while lone stands of trees popped up occasionally in parks and yards. Weaving through the city were the wind tunnels, the arteries of Tayin'kurtze. Hundreds of thousands of avians effortlessly glided along the canals, merging on and off through connective ducts. Andreios, his squad, and I followed one of these ducts into the main tunnel to the city, the T-25 expressway.

A mass of generators and pumps scattered underneath the city provided the power to the expressway. With it, the sparrows, crows, and ravens could travel for hours at a time with seldom a wing beat. Around bends, collections of vents on the sides of the tunnel redirected the air flow. No flapping or feather adjustment was needed.

I attracted loads of attention once I entered the wind tunnel. All of the commuters knew who I was. The closest ones gave respectful nods and waves in my direction. They were the nice ones. The not-so-nice ones were the demi-form commuters, racing toward me with cameras in hand.

Paparazzi. With a status like mine, you had to expect them to dog me.

Andreios and his crew instantly switched from wartime to civilian bodyguards, keeping the press of the media away from me so that I could at least have some maneuvering space as I flew. They flashed pictures of my golden hawk form and shouted for a quote or two. I didn't say anything. I didn't even acknowledge them. I had learned through experience that anything I said or did would instantly be headlines the next day.

It was hard to be a celebrity, a politician, and a warrior all at once.

We flew quickly, but even so, it still took twenty minutes to reach downtown. There, my bodyguards were finally relieved of their duty as we merged out of the wind tunnel. We left the connective duct and came into full view of the Hawk's Keep.

It was a common saying among the avians that, if the world ended and the sky fell to earth, the Hawk's Keep would be the last sanctuary for survivors. The fortress certainly looked the part. The Keep was 2,015 feet tall, and spanned a total of 150 floors. It was cylindrical at the top and gradually shaped into a rectangle at the bottom. Branching out from the bottom of the Keep was a curved set of buildings, which enclosed a massive garden on the ground floor. Viewed from above, the Hawk's Keep looked, not surprisingly, like a hawk in flight.

My suite was on the top floor, along with my mother's and those of my deceased family members. Beneath these suites were the Royal Flight's barracks and guest rooms reserved for any high-and-mighty officials who might stay the night. Beneath these were the parliament courts and the National Library of the Avian Republic, a vast hall of rows upon rows of books ranging from history books and science tomes to new releases and bestsellers. Offices for government workers took up the levels between the library and the ground floor.

The "wings" of the Keep housed two more additions. The east "wing" was the Tayin'kurtze Stock Exchange, a loud and rowdy building buzzing constantly with flashing billboards and shouting avians. The west "wing" contained the Alasdair Medical Center and Hospital, a much more quiet location that treated all manners of patients. These days, however, its grim staff saw more and more war casualties instead.

Our group descended toward a gate at the entrance to the garden. This was the only way into the Keep. If you flew above the gate, automated guns on the roof and sides of the building would shoot you down in seconds. It was a scary, effective method of security. Ever since the guns were installed twenty-five years ago when my older sister was born, there have been no uninvited visitors to the Keep; there have been several incidents where innocent civilians accidentally flew in range of the guns and, consequently, lost their lives because of it. Normally, this would have caused an upheaval among my people, but from what I've heard, the few casualties of the automated guns were either criminals or dumb homeless people. No one really cared about them.

Four guards manned the gate checkpoint, all of them armed with assault rifles. We landed, and Andreios stepped forward with his ID card. A guard took his ID card, flashed it before a scanner, and then gave it back to him. Andreios stepped forward toward a wall panel. A green laser shot into his right eye and scanned it for a few seconds. Finally, the panel beeped, and the guards opened the gate.

A safe, secure home for a princess? You tell me.

It wasn't until we left the gate far behind and began walking through the garden that Andreios finally spoke up.

"I radioed in a squad to pick up Xavier's body before we came back. They took him back to the morgue. They're fixing him up right now. I believe the funeral will be tomorrow."

I said nothing, letting Andreios fill the silence.

"You okay with that?"

"Oh yeah, definitely," I replied.

"Doesn't sound like it."

"Yeah, but what the hell? It's not like mom's gonna care about what I think. She'll hold the funeral tomorrow, burn him on the pyre, and leave me to mourn over smoldering pieces of coal."

"At least this time she has a body to burn," Andreios replied. I winced. My older sister, Mara, had been brutally gunned down in battle nine years ago. Her killers continued shooting her body long after she died. They had intended to deliver pieces of bird meat to my mother.

"Yeah," I said.

After a few minutes we reached the main lobby of the Keep. It was a spacious enclosure, with the ceiling six floors above our heads. Marble pillars supported the ceiling, while painted murals of birds of prey decorated the walls. In front of us was a reception desk. Behind it, rising up into the ceiling and the tower beyond, were the elevators.

We proceeded past the reception desk; the receptionist nodded briskly at us before returning to her work. As we approached the elevators, we shifted into our demi-forms, our wings draping along the ground.

We didn't have ordinary mechanical elevators. The box-like things used in other human buildings made us avians claustrophobic. Our elevators were simple: a large turbine set into the ground with a metal grille over it. The turbine spun powerful currents of air up a tube that ran into the ceiling and up the building. Every few levels or so, a few smaller propellers on the sides of the tube would propel us further, should we want to go all the way up.

"Shardae," Andreios said, motioning me to go up first.

I stepped onto the grille. The powerful rush of air from the turbine ruffled my hair and feathers. Quickly, I flared out my golden hawk wings, and the turbine blew me up the building. I looked up as I entered the tube in the ceiling. Now and then, a glowing, green number would appear denoting the next level before a large opening came up. I zoomed up thirty, forty, fifty, sixty floors. I kept going until the bright 150 appeared before I prepared to disembark.

When the opening came up, I pulled my wings into my body and leaned out of the tube. I landed gracefully on the top floor of the Keep. Andreios and his squad had disembarked several floors down. I was finally alone.

I went down a hall to my left, opened a door, and entered a spacey living room. Across from me, an entire wall of glass gave a panorama of Tayin'kurtze, which was just starting to light up as the sun sank beneath the horizon. Taking up the wall to my left was a 120" HD plasma TV. Settled about fifteen feet away from the screen were several sofas and comfy chairs. On my right was a mini-kitchen, which had a dumbwaiter that could deliver meals to me should I choose to eat in my suite. Hanging on walls around me were paintings of serene landscapes and gorgeous mountain ranges.

I walked to a door to the right and into my bedroom, which was just as richly furnished. My giant queen-sized bed sat in the center. A nightstand and a bookcase flanked it. One wall was glass, while the opposite wall led into my bathroom.

I plopped down on the soft fabric of my bed and stared at the textured ceiling. I thought over all the things that happened today:

1. My younger brother died.

2. Gregory Cobriana died.

3. I almost died because Gregory thought it'd be nice to leave a little parting gift.

4. I was assaulted by paparazzi.

So many people died today. No doubt tomorrow was going to be the same.

At least the paparazzi didn't try to kill me.

I pushed myself off my bed, intending to go talk with my mother about Xavier's death. (I assumed she had heard the news by now.) Instead, my body walked itself over to the sofa. It lounged down on it, picked up the remote, and flicked on the TV.

Channel surfing. Every golden hawk's guilty pleasure.

International news. Local news. Cooking show. Reality show. Some odd TV series about doctors doing weird things to each other. Soccer, basketball, educational TV, animal show—hey look, a real hawk!—teen drama series, show business news, another teen drama series, movie, movie…

I turned back to the show business channel.

The host wasn't talking about news. Currently, she was talking about a poll her station had recently done asking who the cutest female celebrity was. I half expected to see myself up there.

I was right. In fact, a picture of me in a new silver dress showed up first.

After the host squealed over my dress and makeup, she proceeded to several other celebrities that came up behind me. All of them, more or less, had blonde hair and either green or blue eyes. Oh, and sexy, curved bodies, too. Topping it off, they were all depicted in either mini-skirts or skin-tight jeans. Several of them were with tall, toned boyfriends.

Aw, well. Who was I kidding? Of course they were all going to be sexy blondes. My people absolutely adored me. Hell, they were willing to copy my body.

The host ended her segment about the poll. She proceeded to repeat the news that had been circulating all day: Xavier Shardae, younger brother to Danica Shardae, was found dead on the front lines. Officials hadn't released any details yet, but rumor had it that Gregory Cobriana, younger brother to Zane Cobriana of the serpiente, had fired the six shots that killed Xavier.

It wasn't news to me.

I picked up the remote and switched to a teen drama series. It was about young professional ice skaters and love triangles, stuff I'd stopped watching a few years ago. But, right now, anything was better than hearing again and again that my brother was dead.

So, I settled down, got comfortable, and watched what some TV critics called "media masturbation for teens". I didn't care.

A girl on screen began screaming at a boyfriend who'd been stepping out on her. Apparently, the guy had gone for her friend, who just happened to be a better ice skater than the girl. The girl teared up and began sobbing.

I laughed. I love TV.