>>5521785A part of you, perhaps awakened by the strangely-validating revelation of your noble ancestor’s emotional similarity, wants to use this opportunity to revivify your own lost lover. Just as the Red Dragon King missed comparatively short-lived mate, you often find yourself missing Davora, the Herbalist. While Glowie was your first (and thus far only) mate and a close friend, and your feelings for the Novice are lasting and deep, your emotions around Davora are mired in a mix of wistful nostalgia and regret. She was your first LOVER—the first and thus far only female with whom you have rutted repeatedly, and without any real ulterior motive beyond enjoying her body, her voice, her warmth, her cooking, her company. That you allowed her to die—and that this might be your last chance to reverse that decision and restore what could have been—weighs heavily on you.
But another part of you is certain—just as certain, MORE certain—that her death is the best thing that ever happened to you.
It isn’t that Davora herself weakened you. That would be the traditional Reptilian takeaway, and certainly what the Novice would tell you, but you don’t think it’s true. But… Had she not died, would you have ever actually come to understand and accept yourself, and your capacity for love? Her grief taught you to feel more deeply, to value others—lessers, females, mammals—in ways you might not have done otherwise. Accepting that loss forced you to grow beyond it, and gave you the impetus to confess your feelings to your TRUE love: the Novice Fleshweaver.
If you brought her back, would that reverse or stunt that growth? Maybe that’s why, though he clearly loved this female so dearly and missed her after she died, the Red Dragon King never used those very tomes which Hapo stole to bring her back from the beyond? There is no way to know.
Well, actually, you suppose there is.
You close your eyes and focus upon the hovering, ambient energies of the half-formed summoning spell which the Necromancer had meant to cast. You draw them out of the air—the faint remembrances of hidden knowledge, which the Necromancer learned and put into practice. It is the Akashic Record you draw upon, you sense-that hidden archive of the Dark Gods knowledge, which the Maser of the Insightful Eye has long maintained in the spaces-between-spaces, hidden away from the sight of the light. This tome teaches you the motions, the words; you follow them through as if heeding your own muscle memory, recite the words as if it were a prepared speech.
You summon the last king of Bloodrise, whom the kobolds call ‘Big Red’.
