Blight lay curled on the ledge, half-asleep, watching Azure pace. There was a little amusement, and a bit of annoyance--well, not really annoyance... more like... Her pacing's making me nervous. He couldn't help it. While they'd all recovered magically--for the most part--from their creation of the children, that didn't mean they were necessarily ready to be parents. He had gathered, from Azure's brief and reluctant mentions, that she had some kind of a bad past with her own. As a result she was perpetually anxious about her upcoming motherhood: her first children. It left her fretting over the chrysalises, often bringing back whole palm fronds to lay over them like blankets. Like a mother bird she tucked twigs around the edges and carefully swept dirt away with her feathers, and when she thought nobody was looking, she tutted over them--all of them, not just the ones her own.

Blight sighed and lifted his head, his serpentine neck twisting to look out across the bay, where the first light of day was casting the cave into hues of pink and gold.

The place they'd chosen--adjacent to the Volcano, a long ledge reachable by land trail--had a beautiful view. And it was safe, relatively speaking. They had basic tents, here. A campfire, which they lit at night, mostly for Thalia's benefit--she preferred her food cooked, though Titanite often lingered far from the flames. And it was mostly hidden. Good to sweep down from, for a dragon, to go fishing and hunting; good to see angles of approach and to defend, though nothing so far had threatened their clutch of children.

Seeing no signs of danger, Blight looked back to Azure. "I think you can rest, Azure," he said at last. Titanite was off somewhere else, and Thalia had gone foraging. It was just Azure and he--Azure, who was again pacing, again fretting, making it hard for Blight to sleep.

He watched her, for a moment. "They'll be fine. You'll see."

He would've been nervous, himself, if she hadn't been exhausting him already with her own trepidation. And just to be sure, he cast a side-eyed glance at the gemstones.

A dim flare of magicka granted him additional 'sight'--and he could see that there was nothing new, no infection that had infiltrated the stones. Not that he hadn't checked an hour ago, and yesterday, and... "They're fine. Go to sleep."

The glance Azure shot Blight's way was fraught with anxiety. Her feathers were ruffled, her eyes drooping--she was tired, filled with worry.

Her thoughts had been running a loop--would she be a good parent; yes she would; but what about her horrific legacy of trash parenthood; could she be a good parent; would she... and so on. Determination, fear, hope, love, trauma, all ran circles through a worn mind.

Thalia'd been a gem. Her easy jokes, laughter, songs and stories had reminded her of Dip: a friendly and familiar tone. Azure'd even learned, a little, to respond to some things with humor rather than a snap or stress. And she did so now; it came more easily than it once had. "Hey, they're gonna be my first kids, can you blame me?" she shot back, and turned to eye Blight. He was pretending at calm--and to be fair, she could tell he wanted to sleep--but it wasn't like he hadn't also been fretting over the chrysalises when he thought nobody else was looking. "Yours too; you've gotta feel it. The-..." and here she paused, looking at the nearest stone, trying to think of the right word. "...worry. I know we all want to do this right," she added, more quietly now. One clawed foot lifted to rest on the Titanite beneath her, and-

"It's warm," she blurted, surprised. It wasn't warm before. Not like this.

Azure backed up sharply--then paused, ruffled her feathers, and pressed forward again. She touched her beak-tip to the stone. This one wasn't hers; it was Blight's, and Titanite's. I have to check mine! she realized, and twisted her head around to bark a sudden order at the far larger dragon, her eyes wide.

"Blight--get down here. I think they're hatching! I need to-" and she didn't finish her sentence, instead scurrying off to the other side of the alcove, where she'd laid the butter jade to which she'd granted life.

All the chrysalises were growing here--a little grove, backed by cave wall, walled by trees, overhung with trailing plants and flowers. On the far side lay a topaz, a ruby and Blight's butter jade--all of which held Azure's life. She rushed to them and waited, breath held, eyes fixed on the stones as she watched for signs of life.

Blight's calm was blown away by Azure's words, and with a start he tumbled from his little roost, hastening to the alcove. He rested his snout on first one chrysalis, then the next--and now, despite his words prior, he found himself scanning the trees almost in desparation for any sign of the other two parents.

Titanite--well, he wouldn't be much help, would he? No--he would, he's had kids before. Thalia-? She might know how this is supposed to go. Shit! he thought, and looked back down again.

A slender crack was appearing in the titanite stone, and his gaze shot to Azure, worried. Fear lay thick on his tongue, and he tried to swallow it away in favor of the lingering excitement. "I think you're right," he managed, looking back down at the rock.

I WILL NOW TAG (and post vastator)

@Kafziel @Hiruko

The cycles of light and dark had gradually filtered into his growing awareness, as had a comfortable sense of warmth which had eventually become... restricting. Not claustrophobic, not yet, but an irritation, a constriction of limbs where some instinctive part of him yearned for freedom. Voices, too--muffled, muted--had become familiar companions over the last few days, albeit trickling into a mind not yet fully formed.

Now, however, that formation was complete. Restlessness, life, had infused limbs and lungs, so that he ached for true breath, squirming beneath his prison of stone. Little talons, still soft with fetal formation, pricked at a far harder Titanite shell.

Vastator--he knew his name, now--felt places, past that half-sleeping stir, where the stone was thinner. Here he pressed, prodded, pushed; testing, slow and methodical and determined. He didn't know enough of this world, of himself, to know that determination was good, or that it would yield results, or that it could become stubbornness. He knew only that he wanted out.

His final few scrabbles and kicks rewarded him: a thin sliver and then a larger shard of brilliant green slid away, chrysalis fluids spilling forth, the child twisting to emerge from the hole that he'd created. He tried to breathe, found his lungs filled with fluid and he coughed, further liquid spilling from opened jaws as he heaved.

Six gleaming chartreuse eyes opened, finding vague figures looming around him: figures for whom he held no apprehension, for he didn't know any better. Those eyes then found the shards of his own stone where he hung at the lip of his chrysalis, still half-in half-out. His gaze, and his attention, was fully captured by this shiny object. He reached out an oversized forelimb, working clumsy taloned fingers around a piece of green.

"Mine," he rasped, the tiny voice incongruous with the possessiveness of his little tone.

It shivered inside the egg, opening eyes bathed in red light - drowning in it. It stirred, writhing, feeling the gnawing at its stomach and the fear in its brain. Out. The gemstone obliged.

Out it squirmed from the new pile of shards, sopping wet like the world's most pitiful looking worm. A certified soggy meow meow, if you will. Its wings jutted out in awkward directions as it struggled to move, feathers hanging heavy with the womb-wet. Its violet eyes darted wildly around from object to gembound, clearly overwhelmed with all of the new things it saw.

With a strong shove, it pushed itself forward, still almost flat against the ground, wings splayed on the floor. Looking upward at the larger of the crowd, it chirruped sadly, as if pleading: 'Don't eat me - please?'

Inside the diamond, a life was becoming more and more aware. Light filtered in and then left and then returned, an endless cycle, and the awareness was starting to be curious. Where did this light come from? The life wanted to know. The life did not like be confined, even if they had never known anything else. A sturdy if tattered set of wings stretched and stretched until at last the being freed itself from the prison.

The creature that emerged was small, almost falling more than simply exiting as their legs derived from a stag wobbled and failed them. Instinctively, their wings flapped and they found themself managing a balance of sorts. The draconic faun was about the size of a human toddler, maybe a bit taller.

It took a long moment for the gembound to stabilize themself. But as they finally reached stability, they peered around, almost overwhelmed by the influx of input their brain was giving them now.

And then a word came to them that was different from the rest of these words, that helped them focus. The child realized it was not a word at all, really. It was their name.

Kafziel.

They were Kafziel, but who were all these other beings their brain had registered, they wondered. An inquisitive noise left them, curious but not concerned yet. And not yet reaching the point of speech yet.

Things were happening quickly. Maybe too quickly, if you asked this particular new parent. His head swung from one cracking chrysalis to the next, and, well, if one had never seen a dragon scurry before...

A nudge was offered to Vastator, a soft assurance, "Yours. Sure, buddy," granted in a gently easygoing manner. Kafziel was given the most delicate of snuffles, a surprised sniff-and-greeting--and Hiruko a gentle, curious glance, but Blight mostly left that one to Azure.

It was one of hers, after all.

But these two-? They were... they were his. Thalia's, too. Titanite's, too, he reminded himself--but... his. Magic flared out for one distracting moment, returning the information that nothing looked too catastrophically wrong with them, at least.

Children stared up at him, and Blight realized that he was on. He was up. It was his turn to speak, to welcome these new beings into the world, to give them the first instruction that might inform their lives-

"...Hey," he offered, and his voice cracked.

Oh, shit. Not a good start.
He tried again. "Hi. I'm Blight. I'm--one of your fathers. I'll take care of you," he hastened to assure them, and frantically--for the first time--tried to think back to his own hatching. What'd he wanted to know-? "I'll help teach you how to fly!" he said, blinking with that memory. "...And get you food. Do you--know your names..?" he added, uncertain.

Parenting was hard, particularly for a child who had almost raised themselves.

My child.

A dozen emotions were coming to a head. It didn't do to even name them all; they were a confused mass, intense in their impact but too tangled to make real sense of. It tore at her, yanking her heart this way and that, but her blue gaze remained unblinkingly fixed on Hiruko.

"Hey," she offered softly, gently, in time to hear Blight coincidentally parrot the same word in a far blanker, less awed tone. She didn't spare him a glance. "I'm Azure. I'm your-"

murderer savior mother killer guardian tormentor creator refugee parent

"...Mom."

She reached her black, taloned forelimb out toward Hiruko, as if to give it something to touch, to cling to if it so desired. To make contact with. And who will you be-?

A hero, a child, a guardian of their own?

She dared not consider other possibilities.

@Vastator @Hiruko @Kafziel (I doubt post order matters)

Vastator hissed, for a moment--or started to--at the hovering figure of another dragon. He did not immediately place it as family. Instead, Blight was a potential predator--no, a competitor. Somehow, Vastator saw him as nearly an equal, despite his massive comparative size.

Equal, but terrifying.

He curled forward, possessively, over his shard of green stone--then Blight was gone. Infant eyes tracked the dragon to where he moved to Kafziel--ahh! Another child! A potential victim-? The same size, but... conflict seemed like a bad idea when Vastator didn't even understand such things. Even he could tell that.

He snagged a shard of 'green' in his jaws, and half-scrambled, half-tumbled out, trying to drag it up and away into the underbrush like a prime first kill and not a broken piece of rock. In any case, he tore it from the rest of the chrysalis with ease, so that was something. A twist of his neck and it had snapped away, carried beyond with a stumbling, tumbling, waddling stride. He was fully visible to both other children, but seemed determined to carry his pointless prize into cover.

The drinker thing shrunk away with every new glance, as if each had been a hungry snap of teeth rather than a disinterested, half-acknowledgement of its presence. But only one truly approached it, and it flapped wetly on the ground in a brief panic. Ultraviolet eyes fixed on the larger animal, on a familiar stormy gaze. They pinned, then dilated.

"Ma- ma." It crackled, not quite mimicking the Azure's words, but running them through its little brain and spitting them back out stranger. It rose, toddling forward with its wings hung low, like a bird of prey's. Its triple split jaw opened, revealing its rows of tiny white teeth, as its hardened lips clacked softly on her nail.

This one would likely not be a hero, but in its early cycles it was hard to tell.

@Azure