The moss-lined stomach of the Underbough ruins wept with trickling sap. It fell from a ceiling so high that it vanished behind the veiny roots above. Each falling drop caught brilliantly in the light of a thousand candles.
Necromancer Drakenot stood in front of this dripping corona, their arms spread wide to encompass the altar before them. The stone table’s smooth surface held a single egg. And before the parent and child at the altar, countless gangly forms gazed unblinking from the darkness. Where the sylvaneth ended and the skeletons began was unclear in the winking half-light, but each one watched with obsessive intensity.
There was utter silence, despite the impossible crowd. Each sparkling splash of falling sap echoed threefold.
And every so often, there was a crack.
And then another.
The metal that had encased the fossilised egg so tightly was melting and pooling below it, exposing its true creamy shell. And that shell was breaking. A soft whisper of prayer rippled across the gathered acolytes as a large chunk of shell chipped and smashed against the altar’s stone. And then, with the barest half-cry, a tiny red-scaled nose poked from the little gap left behind.
“When the metal melts and mother Madraga turns within her grave,” Drakeknot rasped, their voice a harsh whisper from below their gleaming skull-mask. “When mercury seas caress red, saltless stones and the mountains merge, our vigil comes to an end.”
The shell split cleanly into pieces as the tiny charge inside struggled its way out. The infant draconith gazed up with eyes like amber stones, quivering up at its parent. Drakeknot scooped it up with great gnarled claws and held it softly to their chest.
“After centuries of patience, my friends, the wilds have begun to bleed and the oceans of Chamon bathe the Badlands with their ur-water. The impossible has become possible. The energy that has seeped out as mother Madraga stirs from her slumber has granted us a child this day.”
There was a pause. The babe within Drakeknot’s arms let out a sweet yawn, pressing itself into the haggard wych’s shoulder and snuffling around for comfort.
“This child is but a taste of the things that are to come.”
A gradual sound rose steadily from the crowd. The children of Alarielle’s twisted-wood throats were just as hoarse as the rattling of the undead’s empty jaws. As Necromancer Drakenot melted into the eager gathering, the voices rose to an echoing, voiceless song, of bone scraped against bone and the whisper of the wind in trees. The branch-cradled ruins had set aflame with life once more.