The Hive alerted him of the arrival long before Juggernaut had gone to check on the litter's chrysalises, An excited buzz that grew more and more intense as he traveled through the tunnels to where her new creations lay. More family, vulnerable family - something he'd have to work to foster. To buy them the time they'd need to prepare for this world, so often cruel, so often hostile to what they were and what they lived for.
He hoped their childhood would be gentler than his. He'd fight to make it so. They would accrue flaws, yes - dents and scratches in their armour - but they'd be given the space to find wisdom in life and suffering, rather than be overrun and overwhelmed as The Juggernaut had.
She would be the kindness her Mother could not offer.
It hovered over the swollen lumps of Clearstone, eyes scanning the surfaces for any imperfections, any hint of emergence. It would be the first to truly see them, and it would carve the image into its brain. The closest thing to permanence any of them would truly have.
(And
@Herse and Whimble, once they're real)
The only loser without a table is finally real, and as here mentally as it can manage. Personalities begin to show early in this batch, and Juggernaut would find, perhaps to its horror, that this little one was... well, the most
disappointing right off the bat, to put it... lightly? Dull, crabby nubs knocked at its clearstone casing, attempting to scrape its way out. It looked, for a while, like a pretty hopeless endeavor, until...
cr-crak! Two nibbly little nubs penetrated the world within to feel the first breath of air from the world without.
The creature bursts forth from there, not nearly as impressive as its other sibling. Its slimy, slithery body slides out from its incubator to reveal a beautifully ugly, asymmetrical fish-bug-whelp thing. Its plethora of ill-fitting wings and eyes, barely just tiny nubs and closed bumps all over its skin for now, wriggles out with a certain ugly-cute charm.
And its first act, regardless of any thought in its head (if there even was one), was to turn toward the thudding on the chrysalis that remained yet unhatched. Two dull little nubblies would knock on the other side—
knock, knock! who's there?—likely hoping to make some kind of assistive dent in the other clearstone from the outside.
@Juggernaut (ya baby has finally arrived!)
@Herse (and he's coming for you, sibling!!!)
The new connections blinked awake, moments before the cracks had begun to web through the various stones. The Juggernaut's insides fluttered suddenly as it rushed to reach them all, to know them as soon as it could. It was Mother's family... But these children where hers.
But he was not like his Mother. He could not compartmentalise or partition like She could, a skill She'd practiced through her eternal time as their omniscient caretaker. The first began to clamber up his side, bringing Sister's previous near miss to the forefront of his mind. He'd have to peel this one off-
And suddenly the muttering it'd heard from the second turned to a pained wail, its call for help like a chant, bouncing off of the walls of the Juggernaut's head. WHY. WHY. WHY. WHY-
And then the third, oh Mother the third. It saw it crawl slowly to aid its sibling first, before Juggernaut had time to react. It was about to be proud of it, for thinking so swiftly of its family. But then the drone figured out what exactly it was seeing, and it recoiled. Asymmetrical.
And distantly he could hear the ticking of a clock, the roar of a fireplace and the stench of cigars, that awful sense of something slipping further and further from his reach. This would pass, all of it, and something small and pitiful screamed at him to make something of it, anything at all, before it was gone.
But he did nothing but await Her call.
(GM tagged for Mother interaction)