Chapter 16: What We Keep.

More than One Thousand Years Ago.

The [Great Abyssal Mother] lay dead at my feet, and I was annoyed.

I held my hand outstretched, fingers still curled from the [Greater Silence] that had ended her. The corpse stretched so far across the cavern floor that its large tail vanished into the dark beyond the reach of my sight. The beast had had twelve heads and now they lay splayed in every direction, each one larger than a boulder, each set of jaws frozen mid snarl. They never would again. The teeth alone were taller than most of my generals.

Around the beast, the remains of my horde littered the ground like so many fallen rainstones. Hellhounds lay in heaps, their bodies broken and strewn across one another. Imps had been crushed flat and a full regiment of Fiends -two hundred strong- had been reduced to a smear of viscera along the far wall.

It was truly a waste of my time. Only slaying a God would have let me get more experience points now. I lowered my hand and turned, regarding the man behind me.

“Zarvok.”

The demon stood twenty paces behind me, leaning on his warhammer. Even leaning, he towerred over me. Zarvok was ten feet of red skin and muscle, broad enough to block the cavern tunnel entrance behind him. His warhammer was larger still, a slab of black iron on a shaft of bone that he dragged across the ground when he walked. The drag marks it left were a reliable way to track his movements through my fortress. He was also bleeding from his skull, and somewhere beneath his chestplate, if the steady dripping was any indication.

“Your Royal Darkness,” he rumbled. His voice was deep enough to feel in the stone. “The beast proved more tenacious than the scouts suggested. Its ninth head alone accounted for-“

“Zarvok.” He stopped. “I gave you three hundred soldiers and half a day. This creature has been nesting in my lower tunnels for a week. You could not manage this yourself?”

The giant shifted his weight. Even that small movement made the ground tremble. He had the good sense not to answer immediately. “The Abyssal Mother’s regeneration was -if Your Darkness would permit me the observation- rather beyond the pale. Each head, once severed, returned larger than before. It was as though death itself recoiled from her and, finding nowhere else to go, simply-“

“Zarvok.” I had not permitted him his observation.

“Yes, my Queen?”

“Shut up.”

He shut up. I turned back to the corpse and regarded it one final time. I had campaigns to plan and a border war with the Elven Dominion to prosecute, and at least three generals who needed executing. I did not have time to clean up after-

There was a sound. It was small enough that it should have been swallowed by the silence. The sound was a wet, and keening thing. It came from beneath the Abyssal Mother’s bulk, where the massive body curved against the cavern wall. I paused.

“My Queen?” Zarvok took a step forward.

I raised a hand and he stopped. My gaze found the source. There was a nest. It was crude -made from bones and the shed scales of the mother, pressed together into a hollow against the wall. Inside it, half buried in the remnants of a shattered leathery egg, was a hydra.

It was no larger than the smallest hellhound. Three heads sat atop three thin necks, each one barely longer than my forearm. Its scales were dark and slick with the fluid of its birth. Its eyes -six of them- were open and fixed on me.

I stepped toward it. My mana answered before I called, settling into my right hand. The [Balefire] would be simplest. It would leave nothing to clean up later -there would not even be ash. Hydras were rather cumbersome to deal with if given the chance to grow. The creature would flee, perhaps best to vaporize it before it had the chance to. The creature did not flee. All three heads watched me with an intensity that bordered on absurd for something so small. Its body was trembling, though whether from cold or from the aftershock of its mother’s death, I could not say.

“Well?” I said. “Attack me or run, death lies either way.” It did not attack, nor did it run. “Your mother tried. She failed, obviously, but she tried. Surely you can manage the same.”

The hydra’s central head lowered. It pressed itself flat against the nest, its small body drawn tight. The other two heads followed. It lay there, watching me, and did not move. I held the [Balefire] ready. One thought was all it would take.

“Perhaps the fool child believes you are its mother, my Queen.”

I turned and stared at Zarvok. The giant had the decency to look uncertain about having spoken. “Its mother,” I said flatly, “lies dead behind me.” Was the fool blind? Zarvok was a great many things, and intelligent had never been among them.

“Indeed, Your Darkness…and yet the hatchling does not run.” He paused, and the thoughtful look on his face was one I had not asked for. “Zera would say the creature has chosen. Beasts do, sometimes, when they are too young to know better. They fix upon the first powerful thing they see, and they do not let go.”

“Your sister’s expertise in rearing beasts is noted and unwelcome.”

The hydra had not moved. I looked down at it. It looked back up at me. Its six eyes were a deep, unremarkable black. I considered.

A hydra was no dragon, but it was closer to one than most beasts would ever be. [The Great Abyssal Mother] had destroyed three hundred of my soldiers before I had ended her. That was the bloodline of this thing. This, raised under proper direction, trained from birth – it might grow into something formidable. Trained by me, perhaps it could one day swat the greatest Dragon from the sky.

It was a strategic consideration. That was-

Something stabbed behind my eyes. A pressure, dull and heavy, bearing down on the inside of my skull. The Class. I felt it pull, the way it always pulled -toward the efficient choice, the correct choice, the one the world had written for me and everything around me. The hatchling was a loose end, and it had no place in the world’s story.

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I gritted my teeth. My mana flared and I pushed back. The pressure did not relent, but it did not grow. It sat there, insistent. It could wait, it had always been able to wait longer than I could fight. I fought anyway. I clenched my jaw and it ached from the clenching. The [Balefire] guttered and died in my hand.

“My Queen?” Zarvok’s voice was careful.

I knelt. The motion was stiff. The hydra flinched, then settled. Its central head rose, just slightly, and pressed its snout against my knuckle. Its scales were cool and damp. The beast had no name, not yet. Someday, the [System] would name it, if it became formidable on its own. There was only one other way to give it a proper name.

I opened my mouth and named it. The cavern faded, and the name faded with it.

The first thing I felt was warmth. The gentle warm of the thing that sat against my chest, pulsing in a slow rhythm. A twin to my own heartbeat. It was the egg, I knew at once. The remnant of the beast I had unmade and remade. I knew it, without needing to look. My arms were curled around it. My fingers had locked in place, and when I tried to move them now, every joint in my body complained.

There was something else, so very faint. The residue of a dream, perhaps? It had been a long time since I had dreamed of anything at all. I reached for it with my tired mind and found nothing. All I found was an impression of something that had once been important. The feeling faded before I could chase it further. I let it go, though some part of me did not wish to. I opened my eyes.