>>5534121>>5534066>>5534042>>5533901>>5533898It has a been a full season now since your battle with Hapo the Necromancer, the kobold who dared to ascend to some facsimile of dragonhood and to challenge your claim to kingship. In that single spring, your sons—nine in total—have grown considerably. Your own race has a notably short youth—you were essentially physically mature by your tenth or twelfth year—but your ‘wyrmling’ spawn take this to a new extreme. It seems every week or two they moult, and each time they emerge from their skin they are larger, better armoured, more complex in configuration. At first, you had difficulty telling them apart, by their most recent moults have granted them clearer distinction. The reddish, mammal-like hair they inherited from you has thinned out, parting to reveal armour-like exoskeleton. Their grublike bodies have broadened and elongated, segmented more clearly into something mid-way between the head-abdomen-thorax configuration of their mother (the ‘greatworm’ who you nicknamed ‘Glowie’) and your own tetrapodal body-plan.
“Zzoldierz!” Glowie enthuses in her sing-song buzz, gushing over your peculiar heirs with a mother’s pride. “Warriorzz!”
“Hunters,” you agree. “I will teach them to hunt, before I leave.”
Glowie is sad to see you go. Despite your explicit and public alliance with the insect-queen, she and your sons are largely isolated from the rest of your empire. Even in Bloodrise’s mixed and multicultural society, they are an alien breed, and unsettling to most. Oddly enough, they seem to find the most kinship with the Drow—the blackish elves of Wevenore—who keep many great insects and arachnids as pets and familiars. Most preeminent in their esteem is the Centipede Lancer Hamaraska, who has served as tutor and babysitter to them these last few months.
“How have their minds developed?” you ask, confiding in this androgynous mammal your concerns. “They seemed… Less than sapient, before. Their bodies have grown, but…”
“They have trouble speaking Dark Elven or the humans’ Northern Common-tongue,” the Lancer admits. “But they understand it well enough. Now that they have… Well, grown HANDS… They can even write in it. It is the mouthparts that are the problem.”
“They cannot ‘speak’ with psychic assistance, like their mother?” you inquire.
The Lancer shakes their head.
“That’s unique to elite females, the Queen thinks.”
You look sharply at Hamaraska. That these Wyrm Princes are your sons, that Glowie was your mate, this is a secret kept even from the elven caretaker. Only the Novice knows of your mating. IT takes you a moment to register Hamaraska’s confused expression, and to realize the elf means ‘Worm-Queen’, and does not mean to imply she is YOUR queen.
“Yes,” you say, “Good. Thank you.”
