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the Aoide quirked his head, did not follow up from the bottom of the dais stair.


"There is no mouth to answer you, Lord Silence. That is....a cocoon. " The Aoide worried his forelegs together in his discomfort.
"I .....do not believe that is our Crown, Harmodius, any longer. Destruction is gone. That sickness, the burning, that was the sign of this. What emerges from that will be something else, with other purpose then the Crown."

The surface of the thing under his hand was smooth, carapace hard. The nearby exposed flesh seemed like it may be less solid or dry. In proximity, he could perceive the in-and-out of a simulation of breath from the flesh.

No tendrils snaked out, or maws opened in to draw him inexorably away into the unknown innards. It felt alive, if such a word could be said of touching any egg or casing that house a growing thing. His hand remained whole, uneaten by invisible acid or unmade by unseen power.

It was a living stillness, stark in its presentation of it.

"We were told to await the coming of the Dragon Kings. One should bear back the manacles, and was long, long away. One was sent to gather them all and never returned. Then another sent to do the same. We were to wait, if he was not able or was away. I do not know what has happened to the others. There were four of us. They may have fallen to the wave. " Xedre eyed the simpering uncertainty and indecision in Hue and screwed up his own nose. He stilled his forelegs on the ground.
"The End is in that wrapping. It is growing and will hatch. That was why the manacles were needed. Lord Silence, I do not know if the dragons have come back here, but it should be seen to that they are made aware of this. I do not mean to command you. you may have other business, but please release me to see to it. "

"Silence is gracious and merciful. " Xedre bent, bowing at his bipedal waist while his forelegs splayed to lower his arachnine half. He had no words for Hue, nor feelings, so he said nothing to that one and backed from the room. The first woudl be to check for the others, then to try to find the Kings himself. One at least had formal quarters, he recalled, there at the complex. It was a start.

It was difficult, left to immediate independent device, to consider a starting point. There had been queer goings-on, told in the map of the room. The floor was pocked in places and one of the doors was eaten into by some force. The window nearest the wall was broken out. He started there, more for lack then drive, tracing his fingers on the stone frame outside the housing of metal. There were shapes in the open beyond. How the lava beds would be construed as more welcoming then the couches, he did not know, but there were some who preferred out-of-doors. Maybe they were there when it happened.

There were many mouths in that place, he should not waste time in discovering the right ones.
Xedre moved from the window to the door and out again to examine some of the blotches.


_ _ _ _ _

Whatever lay wrapped within did not seem to suffer or worry to be descried. It was still, soundless, even for the push against the softer membrane against the inner linings. Nothing reached out, thought or otherwise, to touch against the inner pressure of the paled hands or forehead.

It was
a dog? cat? horned...thing?
Xedre came to a pause some three body-lengths away, and considered the hunkered, slavered thing. Would it even be capable of speech? Where had it come from? Perhaps also why. Though there were plenty of lesser or stranger races across what existed then boring humans or other such smooshy beings.

"Can you speak." It was a question, though his tone was flat, without expectation. Plenty of the gods also kept pets and lesser servants not of divine right. It could be one of them.

"I am of His retinue." A distinct separation to an 'I and the best'. Most likely a host, given the circumstances of the pantheon. "I was away, given to temporary service of Silence. I want to learn what has happened."