>>5710366In different hills and mountains, in a different et of caves and caverns, toils a female of the same race as the Chaplain—of his own get, in fact. She does not know of her father’s death, and anyone who knows her would have good reason to suspect she might not particularly care, even as he had so defined her birth and youth, her identity, such that one of her titles was Chaplain’s Daughter.
Her true name was Sseztlussth, but there were few who called her that—a True Name is a sacred and secret thing, among the Master Race. More frequently she has been called the Novice Fleshweaver. It was a more accurate name, one she was more proud of, even if ‘Novice’ isn’t truly an accurate description for one such as her, with all her brilliance and mastery, no matter her age. She rather prefers her current title: Serpent Queen of Bloodrise!
She even likes it enough to put up with the cloying sappy way her hairbrained mate calls her ‘Beloved One’, if they two must come as a package deal.
Ah, yes, her bumbling, ever-distractable ‘husband’—variously called the Copper Dragon King, the Dragonborn Antipaladin, Theral of Blood Rise, Prince Long Wang of Hawksong (and, in her three-chambered heart, ‘Degenerateborn’). He had left on another of his gallivants across the world, to tour the neighbouring human baronies and—ha!—make friends with the pitiful ape-men. It was absurd, by her reckoning…
But then, the Degenerateborn DID have an uncanny knack for taking the absurd and actualizing it. Her stupid childhood friend, who she used to mercilessly bully until he bawled and whined to her father or ran and hid to cower next to the Great Green Dragonborn for shelter… He had really grown into himself, no?
The Serpent Queen shakes her head to clear it of this infectious sentimentality, and chalks it up the effect of the pregnancy hormones resulting from her gestating egg—the Degenerate Dragonborn King’s child, growing within her. It weighs heavily within her, ready soon to be laid, and reminds her of its sire, and his absence.
Ugh.
