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"Where are you?"
Estinien's voice was clipped. The last time Vidura had heard him sound like that he'd been balls deep in Nidhogg's blood.
"Art thou well?" Vidura asked. G'raha looked up from the missives he'd been browsing, concerned by the tone of Vidura's voice.
Estinien, Vidura mouthed. G'raha's eyebrows crept higher on his forehead.
"N-no."
Vidura's eyes widened. He'd never heard Estinien say that, even when he was an ilm away from death's embrace.
"Where art thou?" he asked. He grabbed a few potions and elixirs from his saddlebag and stuffed them into his pockets.
"R-urgh! Radz-at-Han."
Vidura heard something clatter on the other end of the linkshell. The connection shut off with a buzzing noise.
"Raha," Vidura said. "I need thee."
"Of course, my love." G'raha got to his feet. "What ails Estinien?"
"I do not know." Vidura looped an arm around G'raha's waist and began to cast a teleportation spell to Radz-at-Han's aetheryte. "I fear for him."
They winked out of their room in the Baldesion annex, and in the next instant alighted upon the tiled streets of Radz-at-Han. Under normal circumstances Vidura would have basked in the bevy of familiar smells: incense, chutney, alchemical reagents. These were not normal circumstances.
Vidura and G'raha used the aetheryte network to arrive before the Meghaduta in the time it took for Vidura to exhale. They ran into the adjoining suite of private rooms, where Estinien's aether was so bright it stung Vidura's eyes.
"Estinien!" Vidura burst through the unlocked door. The dragoon was writhing on the floor, dripping with sweat. His bare abdomen bulged. Estinien's aether was especially concentrated within that bulge, swirling alongside an aether of a different hue. Vidura frowned and squinted at Estinien's belly, crouching next to Estinien to get a better look.
He laid a hand upon Estinien's stomach. Estinien shouted, and his bulging belly moved against Vidura's hand.
Vidura stared. For a horrifying moment his mind was blank. Then offhand comments by Vrtra and Vidofnir came to mind, and he swallowed.
Gods above, how had Estinien made an egg?
"Raha! Call Vrtra!"
G'raha nodded and ran out of the room.
Vidura turned his attention back to Estinien. How in the name of all that was holy were they going to get this egg out? Perhaps whatever strange magicks had given Estinien a dragon's ability to create life had also given him the power to bring it into the world.
"Estinien," he said. "Thou hast my deepest apologies."
He conjured a knife of pure aether and split the seams of Estinien's breeches.
No such luck. Estinien's loins were decidedly human in nature.
Vidura cast a sleep spell with as much aether as he could spare. The tension in Estinien's face relaxed. Vidura hoped the spell would spare him at least some of the agony that was to come.
He lengthened his aetheric blade and pressed it into the base of Estinien's belly. The heat of the blade cauterized Estinien's flesh as Vidura made a single long incision along the curve of Estinien's stomach. He cut as quickly as he could, trying to keep as much tissue intact as possible.
Layers of muscle and fat came apart under Vidura's blade. It hissed as he went. The smell of burning flesh filled the room.
Vidura sliced through a filmy skein of tissue. Finally he came face to face with the egg. It was the size of Vidura's head, and was as pale as Estinien's hair. The mucus coating Estinien's guts made the egg glisten.
Vidura dissipated the blade and coated his hands with restorative aether. He took a deep breath, plunged his hands into Estinien's body and pulled the egg out. It came free of Estinien's belly with a schlock.
Vidura set the blood-streaked egg on the ground next to him. He bent over Estinien once again, pouring curative aether into the open abdomen so that it might close itself.
He had his hands hovering over Estinien's reforming muscle when Vrtra-as-Varshahn and G'aha burst into the room.
Varshahn cried out when he saw Estinien. He ran to the dragoon, speaking rapidly in the draconic language. When he saw the egg dripping blood onto the floor, he went silent.
He stared at the egg, then at Vidura, then at Estinien, whose skin was knitting itself together. "Did you-"
"Cut it out of him?" Vidura asked. "Aye. I could find no other means of removing the-" he looked at the egg. His caramel skin took on a greenish tinge.
"'Twould seem he has taken after my brother in more ways than we had expected." Varshahn picked up the egg and cradled it in his arms. He held it close to his chest. Estinien's blood and mucus seeped into Varshahn's cream embroidered salwar. Vidura wondered what magic the palace staff would have to cast to remove the stains.
"I never had children of my own," Varshahn murmured. "No brood, no eggs. I have spent eons alone in this jeweled city."
He cooed to the egg, singing to it. To Vidura's ear it sounded like a draconic lullaby. G'raha put his arms around Vidura's neck. Vidura leaned into his lover's touch, trying to keep his blood-soaked arms away from G'raha's clothes.
G'raha saw the state of Estinien's breeches at the same moment Estinien woke up.