Danu crouched on the pages of a book, absorbed in reading by the light of the eggs. The power curling off them made her scales prickle and her fins curl in eager delight. It was like scenting one's favorite meal in the morning - it reminded her of when she was a hatchling and she'd slowly wake to the sound of her mother peeling the shells from cockroaches, only if that was a feeling that made her belly curl and her lungs feel as if there was no breath in the air around her. Delicious. Enticing. Hers.
She tried to concentrate on the words beneath her claws, but to no avail. There was no concentrating during this hunger.
Maokai had crawled closer, on his belly in Danu's low-ceilinged den, and peered into the nest.
"Is that a crack?"
Was it? Danu shot up with excitement and zoomed over to the edge of the nest, landing there, peering down. Yes! One of the three eggs, the biggest one, easily four times the size of its siblings, had a little whiskerthin crack in it!
Maokai glanced at her and edged away. Danu barely glanced at him. It was coming, the hatchling was coming, her prey would soon be hers.
Lightning began to sparkle and crack along the edges of the egg, jumping to the pale blue of its siblings' shells. They, in turn, responded with lightning sparks of their own. Danu arched her back and curled up to stand on the tips of her claws, anticipatory, a low purring growl reverberating deep in her throat.
"Come on," she murmured, "Come on, come on-"
All at once, both of the smaller shells burst open. Two wet Faes scrabbled for purchase in their broken eggshells, claws finding little nooks in the nest, letting them sit up, their fins and wings stuck to their tiny little bodies.
One of them raised its head and chirped, drinking in the lightning still jumping from the larger egg. Danu snarled. The baby's chirp turned into a squeal, startled, trying to push itself away.
Stupid weak thing.
"Danu?" Maokai asked, looking at her now instead of the children. Danu glared at him.
"Hush!"
Maokai snapped his mouth shut and blinked. The final egg cracked, wobbled, shot off one last sparkle, and then split into neat halves, a tiny pink Imperial child clawing its way out.
"Oh!" exclaimed Maokai softly. "He looks like me!"
That sweet, seductive power called to Danu. She couldn't take it any longer. She leaped down into the nest, the power of her hatchlings crawling along her scales, and giggled.
"Come to Mother~" she purred.
Then she pounced.
The Imperial was her first prey, and its magic and life gushed into Danu as she breathed, a long, ceaseless inhale. It squeaked and tried to fight back, but new-hatched as it was, it couldn't fight off its own mother. Slowly it crouched down, Danu tearing the last of its life force away as it shriveled up.
The other two Faes were quick to meet the same fate. The power gushed into Danu and felt like static in her lungs, like energy filling her every limb and there still being more. Her senses blurred with the crackle of lightning and the electric blue magic. She sat back on her tail and drank in every last drop.
This time, it petered out slowly, one of the Faes trying to cling to life. Danu ripped it from her daughter's clutch and inhaled the last of the magic. Her head felt stuffed full of static, her pulse thrumming with an overdose. When she opened her eyes (had she closed them?) she was met with an empty cave.
Hmmph. Looks like Maokai had fled.
Danu couldn't really bring herself to care. The power inside her curled and beat through her veins, lovely, wild, hers.
She staggered in a circle and fell down into a power-drunk sleep in the nest amidst her dead hatchlings.
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