the call
CHAPTER V
She has been asleep for so long.
When Caido grew listless and disappeared to their lonely perch on the mountain, the game of kiss-chase between All and Entropy became mundane and trivial.
And so, like a player with no opponent, she quit. More accurately, she slept. Her home still churned and bubbled all around, but even the fiery embrace of the Climb was not enough to stir her. And without their mother flame, there was nothing to fan her children to wakefulness either.
Until now.
Blood-slick and seeping, the cavern of rubies shifts and uncoils, causing the earth all around to shudder under the force of her morning stretch. Limbs shift (human ones, some of them) and tentacles of blackened rock and glimmering crimson arrange themselves; a sinister geode coming to life in the underground. Claws flick and jaws part in a yawn; carmine eyes open to take in this new and shining world.
Hideously beautiful, buxom to the waist and nightmarish everywhere else, a tentacle reaches out to tickle at the remaining gems that still cling to the cave walls. Stone on stone, they click and chime, ringing farther than they have any right through the tunnels. And in response, deep within the Burrows, things begin to stir. And they call to her so sweetly in the dark, in the heat.
Goddess.
Lady.
Mother.
Dygra.
She smiles a smile too wide, with far too many teeth.
We are awake.
