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There are spells, Desmona knows, that should not ever be attempted. Spells requiring not the bones of Imperials but the fused ones of Emperors spells that call on shade and death and chaos and things that no good dragon should ever reach for.

She does not think she cares to be good if it means standing for what has happened.

She does not look at the bundle laid out before her. She cannot make herself; even wrapped she can see the shadow-silhouette, the familiar form of her hatchling daughter. Even a glance down shows the arch of her neck, the curl of her back foot, the twist of her tail.

Desmona looks away and prepares her tools.

There are spells that are forbidden, that are never permitted. Desmona thinks that this, the death of her daughter, should be forbidden, never permitted as well.

She does not remember, later, the way the spell wove. How she twisted it through her hands, directed it with the conjoined Emperor bone, the way the shadows had become Shade, reaching, reaching, something more and more powerful as she reached and reached and sought her daughter’s soul.

Lunara, she called, reaching into the deep dark void of death. Come home.

She does not remember how the spell concluded, binding some essence of life into her daughter’s body, weaving through the corpse to give some semblance of life, until twisted claws and twisted limbs moved, unsteady and unready and unhappy, until the body groaned with a noise she could not mistake for anything but the pain it was.

She does remember, though, claws of immense size, claws not of flesh but of magic, that reached out, reached down and pulled her from her body.

All she can think as she is ripped free and away, the last thing she sees as she tries to find her daughter’s face in the twisted body on the altar, is an image of the Elder’s face, the Elder’s words echoing in her mind. Grandmother, she thinks. You promised me my daughter.
A voice rings out, echoing and unfamiliar, and she - whatever there is of her left - blinks into the luminescent space, seeking the voice.

“You are summoned before us today before your time of passing for the crimes you have committed. The crimes: the use of forbidden magiks, banned by the Arcanist. The reaching into the Dark of the Shade, as forbidden by Lightweaver and Shadowbinder. The raising of the dead, as forbidden by the Gladekeeper and Plaguebringer.”

The light is bright or- is it even light? Has she even eyes to see? Whatever there is that is her in this space twists and flails, trying to understand, to see, to grasp, to know-

A presence reaches out, and she is blinded by Shade.

“To see us is your doom.” A new voice, a softer voice. A familiar voice, the one which had always guided her spellcasting. Lightweaver. And now the light is taken from her. “We are as beyond your ken as the magics you attempted were. Have some sense, child.”

The presence withdraws, the first voice speaks again.

She does not get to speak. She does not know, if, in this form, she even can.

She is cast out, cast down, cast away. Not returned to the world, not left with the punishment alone of knowing she failed her daughter, she is cast beyond that, beyond the light of the gods, the light of the world, far into the shadows they chose to bind away from the world.

The shadows she summoned to try to raise her daughter. The shadows she now knows coil within her from that magic - a dark truer than any night, than any shadow, than anything delineated by light.

The shadow reaches into her. Desmona reaches back.

She comes stumbling back into being, hacking and coughing, the form unable or unwilling to contain her utterly. She feels her essence seeping beyond its bounds, and snatches it back, tries to hide herself in this husk of a form she has found.

It’s not hers - or, perhaps it is, ancient and broken and dessicated and that is, perhaps, why it fits so poorly. Ill-fitting.

It matters not. She opens her eyes; the light, what little there is now she’s returned to Sornieth in the midst of night, is almost blinding to her Shade-adapted eyes. She snarls, coughs, tries to clear her throat. When physical efforts do not work, she sends magic through the hollows of her body to ease the movement.

“Yes,” she manages, whispered and dry, papery as old dry parchment. “Now. Where am I?”

She does not recognize the lands around her. Trees, a cave, fungi. Some aspects she knows but… it is unfamiliar. Perhaps it is that she sees the dark better than the light, now, perhaps she has been so long dead that that which is living is alien. She doesn’t know. Doesn’t care.

“Water,” she think-says, and steps.

The leg crumbles. She summons magic, reinforces, and tries again. She stumbles, steps, stumbles, steps, steps, steps, stumbles, strides. The balance coming back to her as she makes this husk her own.

She finds water, a crystal clear pool, reflecting back the full moon high above. Her own reflection as it should be: an outlined shadow, her eyes, as dark as the rest of her, the seeping spirit flickering like the edges of the moonlight.

There are runes etched across her form too, and as she reaches her hands to cup water to drink, she sees runes there too, so complete on her hands they are almost all one all the one color but separating out as they spiral up her arms.

Runes to bind. Interesting. Perhaps something she should have tried.

She drinks the water, feels her essence settle more utterly into the body. Hers now, and even the gods would have a trial of trying to pry her from it.

She smiles. Runes. Hm. She rises, steps, strides, stretches out her wings and flies.

She knows what she must do - she has her daughter’s body to find, her daughter’s soul. She has runes to carve.

She will see her daughter returned to her. The Elder had promised her her daughter, after all.