An Ancient Cryptic Puzzle

Here’s a variety cryptic for your puzzling pleasure. The clues are cryptic, but as you can see below, the grid is unusual. Axial clues are entered from the outside in. Around clues are entered in order according to
a pattern created by the Josephus Problem. The first letter is entered in some location (not necessarily where the letter indicator for the ring is), and the subsequent letters are entered by skipping some fixed number of empty spaces, circling around the ring as necessary. The number of spaces skipped is fixed within each ring, but may vary between rings; note that none of the skip numbers is greater than 8. It is up to you to determine the initial location and the number of spaces skipped, but the clues are entered clockwise. I wish you luck!

Axial

1. One out of many! (3)
2. Alternative selection from bassist lays down bottom with a groove (3)
3. They deliver Downs’ partner (3)
4. Almost entirely Canadian line drafted from front ranks of Red Wings, Oilers and Jets positions (3)
5. South’s short for partner in clubs, requiring bid (3)
6. It’s slippery around frozen precipitation after scraping perimeter (3)
7. Competition eliminating final, natural source of sugar (3)
8. It’s one way star ejects corona (3)
9. Soldier’s medical tests (3)
10. Doc prepping package for embedded cyst extraction (3)
11. Chargers’ guard, center pushing between Dolphins’ ends (3)
12. Starting fire late to identify place for ashes (3)
13. Teen? Not quite! (3)
14. Apply for job after wasting time (3)
15. Wrongly claim extraterritorial possession (3)
16. Dude goes about war…casually? (3)

Around the Rings
A1: Short-form writers are uncommonly terse after discarding some characters out of twenty (8)
A2: Short story of small girl, with brother, riding horse uphill (8)

(Original had these clues reversed in error, thanks to @jafe for catching.)
B1: Former king hangs around ample, toned model (8)
B2: Positioned top-knot after weaving sinew in creating vintage bag? (8)

C1: Equivocating government leaders, worry with street-walking ultimately force last of residents to find ways out (8)
C2: Airline, incorporating group of lawyers after I left, becomes no better (8)

D1: Putting laundered baht in action is final stop in lifecycle (8)
D2: All the People: variety show about mass movement (8)