>>5279308>>5279264>>5279262>>5279195>>5279180>>5279168>>5279337You stay on guard near the entrance of the chamber, ready to flee or to fight at the slightest sign of ambush. Your brother picks up on your anxiety, uttering a guttural rumble that you know precedes the opening of the passages in his chest leading to the organ which concentrates vital energies into dragonfire. You motion to him to cease, and he obliges. No… There may be time for that later, but not yet.
Still, you decline to 'jiggle'. You have your dignity as a Dragonborn to consider.
"What kin are you to us, creature?" you demand, instead. “Why do you lurk in the shadows of the Master Race? How do you come to speak the True Speech?”
“We learned it from you, ovvv courzze,” this empress of insects hums, still jiggling but settling into more of a slow sway.
“By spying?” you ask, and then gesture to the remains scattered about the room. “Or from your victims, prior to consuming them?”
“From our mutual parentzzz,” the brood-mother replies. “From the Godzzzz, and their Zzzerpent Priezztzzzz.”
This shocks you into silence… But then you look upon the wall behind the worm-matron, and you see it: a symbol of an ovoid—an egg—wrapped up in the coils of a great glow-worm. You reach into your pack and extract its near-match: the holy symbol you took from the cocooned Serpent Priestess corpse. It is a Reptilian egg, identically-encircled by a coiling snake. It is the symbol of the Lady of the Rookery, the Mother of Dragons, the Dark Goddess of hatchlings, of birth, and of home defence.
“The Serpent Priestesses made you,” you infer, speaking the thoughts slowly as they assemble, “at the behest of their goddess.”
“Yezzzz!” the worm-ruler buzzes happily.
“But why?” you ask, dumfounded. This is… Disgusting. Abominable. Bizarre in the extreme! W
What use do the gods have for such insectoids?
“To replazze you,” it buzzes.
