>>5282579>4“I did not create you,” the Chaplain spits, like venom. “If it were up to me, I would have destroyed you before your hatching.”
This… Stings a little to hear, from one who has largely lavished praise on you, been almost paternal.
“Then why did you not?” you almost whisper.
“Your mother invoked her success… Arguments for a plurality of thought, and for a divine mandate.”
You nods slowly.
“Who told you of the truth?” the Chaplain demands. “Truly?”
“The Dark Gods Below and Beyond,” you say, truthfully, for who else could have guided the vision? Where did you encounter Death, before your first proper communion?
“The Gods!” the Chaplain rasps, furious. “They see fit to bestow their gifts, their visions, on ANOTEHR Degenerate! WHY?!”
You resist the urge to blurt out that they have seemingly come to favour even ISNECTS over your once-proud Master Race. Is this where dogma has brought your noble people?
“I warned your mother that this would happen, you know,” the Chaplain says, calming himself. “Look at you—codependent with a mental defective, hastily slapped-together by an ape-woman with no notion of draconic majesty. And even HE is better-built than you, better-blooded! He is the scion of the Great Green Dragon—YOU are merely some superficial mockery, some hairy-headed PARODY of the Red Dragon King, with barely a drop of his blood in your veins and a head full of frivolous, MAMMALIAN attachments!”
You force yourself to remain stoic—to not rise to this male’s bait, just as you long ago learned not to react to his daughter’s baiting.
Instead, you say: “But it was my mother that fixed the human mage’s mistakes. So I also learned.”
“Yes,” the Chaplain admits. “She was… Uncommon in her talents, I will grant her that. It’s why I gave you a chance—why I still will. He TRUE Dragonborn will not hatch until towards the end of the next twelve-month cycle—when the Stars are Right. They will need time to be reared, to grow into their own. Until then… I have only this rough, unrefined, primitive tool before me…”
You narrow your eyes.
“…And with the Dark Gods as my witness and my judge, I will use it.”
“…So may I have the Great One’s aid, then?”