“No.” Beelzebub whispered.

Svetlana didn't reply. Her posture told Eel everything she needed to know.

“No.” She repeated louder. “You're the best healer in the Scarred Wasteland. It was your fault she was even sick and you, you promised to help her! You said you were healing her! How could you let her die?”

“There's only so much even I can do.” Svetlana said gently. “I worked with Lvovna throughout the night, but her spirit was rejecting her new body. It’s amazing she lasted as long as she did.”

“She was all I had left.” Eel's eyes filled with tears. It was too soon. First her mother, her aunts, her siblings… and now, not even a month later…

She looked around, seeking a distraction. But there was nothing. The Great Migration had robbed her of her childhood home, as well as her family. The Garden she’d loved, the rock with holes she’d liked to wind her way through…the caverns she’d explored with Cadell… Cadell who was now-

“She can’t be dead.” Eel said. “I won't let her.”

“She’s with the Plaguemother now.”

Eel stared past Svetlana. There was one option. Only one. “I need to see the body.”

Svetlana lowered her head politely. “As you wish.”

“Now.”

“Of course.” As High Priestess, it was only a matter of time before Beelzebub would have to see the body to perform the necessary funeral rites anyway.

Beelzebub followed the imperial deep into the network of tunnels. She hated every inch of it. This is what they died for. Wyrmwound. They reached the infirmary relatively quickly; it had to be close to the entrance for emergency injuries sustained outside the tunnels. Lvovna was tending to the body – applying the insects to accelerate decay. Eel pushed the wildclaw away violently and started sweeping the insects off her friend's corpse. It was too late for much of the face and forelegs, but at least her body was largely intact.

Svetlana put her hand on Lvovna and led her away. Eel distantly registered the two leaving. Finally, she was alone. She needed to carry Cadell for the next stage of her plan. It would be just like when they were children and the bogsneak had still been a spiral. It would be hard, but she could manage. Eel gripped the corpse and lifted.

She dragged the body through the tunnels towards the laboratory. Several dragons noticed and gasped, but no one questioned her. The advantages of being High Priestess. She kept her face impassive and her motions purposeful until she entered Flo's laboratory. She lowered Cadell to the floor gently, cradling her head so the already exposed tendons wouldn’t snap.

“High Priestess?” Flo looked shocked at having a corpse dumped on her floor.

“This.” Eel spat, “Is what your father did.”

Flo lay flat on her belly, forehead to the floor and wings fully outstretched in a solemn gesture of apology. “I am not my father, Venerated High Priestess.”

“Undo it.”

“With all respect, Venerated High Priestess, I cannot-”

“Aren’t you a necromancer? Isn't it your burden and duty to grant unlife to those the Plaguebringer chooses? I am her voice. I am her fangs. And I order you too reanimate this dragon.”

“I… I have never attempted this before, High Priestess. I am uncertain it would be successful, even if her body were not already so… cold.” Flo was trying to say that the insects had already eaten her face. That even if she could restore Cadell, what came back would be mutilated from the start.

“I order you to bring her back.”

Flo cringed into the floor. “As the High Priestess wishes.” There was bitterness in her voice. “The rites will take several hours to complete and will require a sacrifice. Do you have one prepared?”

Eel grimaced. It was difficult to procure a dragon sacrifice, the period after the Great Migration when there had been sacrifices aplenty had ended quite some time ago.

“Prepare the pentagram and body. I will return with a sacrifice by sundown.”

---

Flo had asked whose eggs they were, a question Beelzebub had easily answered. They were her own, laid only a few nights before. She had rights to her own eggs, as any dragon did without question. Flo had accepted the reply with a small smile.

“I'll need other mages.” She said. “I'm not strong enough to attempt this on my own.”

Eel frowned. It would be nigh-impossible to persuade Svetlana to partake in the blackest of magics. Who else was there? Maybe Goddess or Hyperion, Plaguebringer knows the former had enough devotion. Perhaps Lvovna, she had been a close friend of Cadell's and had no known disputes with necromancy. With a sigh, she left to gather support.

All three agreed, although Lvovna irritatingly brought Svetlana along. The imperial had to stoop to fit into the chamber. Her eyes were full of kindness and judgement. Eel couldn't decide which she hated more.

“Cadell wouldn't want this. You weren't there when she died.”

Beelzebub didn't reply.

“She wanted it. She asked us to stop healing her. She doesn't want to come back. It was torment for her, to inhabit that foreign mutated body. And now…” Svetlana let the mangled corpse on the floor speak for her.

“As High Priestess, I order you to leave.”

Of all the dragons here, Svetlana was the only one who could stop her. She was powerful enough and had enough influence, as one of the Clan's five founders, to go against Eel's wishes. But she did not. Instead, she went as ordered.

“Do not ask me if I am sure.” Eel told the gathered dragons. “Do not question the will of the Plaguebringer. Just do it.”

And they did. Flo broke the eggs one by one. The fetuses inside didn’t move once they spilled onto the floor. They were barely formed. Then she began to chant. Eel watched, her eyes fixated on Cadell. Magics swirled around the bogsneak and coatl, drawn from the egg sacrifices and surrounding dragons. Even Eel felt some of her own magic leave her and be added to the mix.

There was no bang, no flash, no moment when it was clear that it had been a success. After a while, Eel noticed breathing.

A blood-red eye opened and something beautiful bloomed in Eel's chest. Cadell was back. She was no longer alone.

Then the undead bogsneak began to scream.