>>5324358>>5324356>>5324352>>5324322>>5324278>>5324261>>5324217>>5324157>>5324146You are consider the logistics of your upcoming alliance and raid, as well as the management of your people’s new holdings at Bloodrise. The kobolds can’t watch themselves after all. The Bastard emerges as an obvious choice, for in his time here, he has really seemed to thrive in a leadership role. As for who to ally with first… Well, the force you have left with he Drow, once mustered, can only help to ‘convince’ the strange and spiny man-things of the deep darkness of your value as allies, and danger as enemies.
You are still planning your return to Jazkarmel’s outpost when the Novice calls upon you, summoning her to her laboratory. There, she reveals several important results of her ongoing investigations and experiments.
“Firstly, behold!” she announces, with a dramatic flourish as she pulls the blanket from the cage which houses the so-called ‘Junior Novice’.
You do so, with as much disgust and horror as wonder.
“So THAT is where the dragon embryo went,” you note.
The maybe-mammalian not-kobold is not merely changed in terms of a certain scaliness, but transfigure din more fundamental ways. You can see stitching—not of fabric or wire but of flesh and veins, by means of magic—at several junctures between limbs. This includes new limbs: the wings of an embryonic dragon. They have been tied into tumorous muscle-groups upon the back and ribs, woven under the skin and fat, and strengthened with meals of distilled and transplanted blood. The creature is a warped, half-draconic abomination of its already-displeasing former self. It is cramped in its cage, now grown, and sputters and whimpers with impotent rage, pain, and misery.
It reminds you, perversely, of what you learned of the genesis of your early genesis and life of your ‘brother’, the Great Green Dragonborn.
“It’s abominable,” you comment.
“No moreso than you yourself,” the Novice shoots back defensively. “And anyway, it suffers so you will not. Between he and my second experiment, I have learned MUCH which can be applied to your own improvement and perfection.”
“The second experiment being… Glowie’s brood?”
