Seren

stage 3 murder kid faerie

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"What do you mean the child doesn't have a name?" Skaede looked between the two. Lephyntylth had a remarkably expressive face considering that it was a bare skull, but at that moment she just looked indifferent and faintly amused.

"I figured he'd tell us when he was ready," Greattail said, as though that was an entirely reasonable way to name a hatchling. Skaede glanced at the alleged hatchling in question, which was currently wrestling with one of Lephyntylth's skeletal constructs like a playful puppy.

"Children don't names themselves. The parents name them." He was starting to suspect Greattail had even less experience in this area than he did.

"Oh." Greattail considered this for a moment. "I'll name him Sparkle then."

Sometimes Skaede regretted being Greattail's friend. "You can't name someone Sparkle. It's undignified."

"Fine." Greattail frowned like a hatchling told he couldn't have dessert. "How about... Sparklesong!"

He could just leave. Skaede had absolutely no obligation to help the two with their mess; no one in the clan would blame him for choosing not to get involved. Everyone but the mad necromancer and her far too kind assistant wanted nothing to do with whatever infant horror Greattail had found.

The child stopped gnawing the femur it had torn off the construct to look at him, a curious tilt to its head, eyes just a little too large and too bright. Yet another monster Greattail had decided to adopt.

If the rest of the clan was right and it was just an unusually creative mimic, Lephyntylth was more than capable of taking care of it before it could harm Greattail. But the two were not capable of taking care of a child, and if it really was one... Skaede sighed in resignation.

Lephyntylth finally spoke up. "How about Kharsirass? That's a very dignified name."

Now it was Greattail's turn to be horrified by a suggestion.

"That isn't a name Lephy," Skaede told her, "that's a snarl."

"It sounds like something that lives in the bottom of the Leviathan Trench and eats people," Greattail added.

Lephyntylth looked at the still unnamed child as its body unfolded like a beetle's wings or the petals of some horrible flower, revealing something much larger and sharper, dark and glittering. Jaws too full of jagged teeth snapped closed over the helpless construct.

"Are we sure its mother was not?" Lephyntylth asked drily.

The thing folded itself back up into the shape of a hatchling, spitting out a shower of bones. Whatever else she was, Lephyntylth was a powerful mage, and even her most haphazard projects were powerful workings; Skaede knew how hard it was to destroy one of her constructs. But the discarded bones didn't stir. The hatchling looked up at them with unsettlingly large eyes and cheeped. If any of the three had a scrap of self preservation left they would have fled.

"What about Seren?" Skaede tried hopefully, as if giving it a mundane name might make it so. "A nice, normal name. Let just one part of this child's life be normal."

Greattail picked the hatchling up and grinned at it. "Seren Kharsirass Sparklesong!"