Each year when Shesheshen hibernated, she dreamed of her childhood nest.

Oh, the warmth of it. A warmth unlike anything in the adult world, soft and pliable heat keeping her and her siblings alive. In that warmth, they were fed raw life. Her father's ribs, rich in marrow, cracking delicately in their mouths, and providing the first feast of their lives. His fat deposits were generous, and his entrails sheltered them from the cruel winter elements. If Shesheshen could have spent her entire life inside the nest of his remains, she would have.

But all childhoods end, Hers ended when one of her sisters bit off Shesheshen's left heel. Her siblings matured too quickly and hungered for more than their father. Shesheshen had to defend herself using jagged fragments of their father's pelvis⁠—his final most gracious gift. The assault was a gift from her siblings, too, for she spend a week dining on their savory carcasses.

Mourning wasn't natural to her. She missed the succulence of her siblings for some time, and had the errant moment of nostalgia for sharing their body heat. Little of her pray was memorable. Of her mother, she only remembered her wide maw and the artificial steel fangs she'd worn. Still, Shesheshen would always miss the nest that her father had made out of himself. He had been a good parent, and a better setting.

Nothing matched that nest. These ruins were little more than an unloved cave. Where weather had caved into the ceiling, ornery spruce trees grew and plugged up the gaps. Poison ivy and spiderwebs were the few decorations, overgrowing everything architects had once achieved.

Deep beneath the ruins lay an underground hot spring that some aspiring human had connected to a bathing room. Nowadays the chamber was flooded with humid murk, gone brackish and amniotic from Shesheshen's excretions. It was nearly opaque down in the waters. They were a refreshing place to hibernate through winter seasons.

Yet noises had roused her prematurely. Her lair had unwelcome visitors again. They did not even wipe their shoes.

She heard them before she saw them. The water of the hot spring stretch into so many cracks in the building's foundations. Sounds from all ends of the property traveled through the network of water, alerting Shesheshen when something worse than a bear was coming.

"Good gods, above and below. Rourke? Do you smell that?"

"Yeah. Like death without the sulfur. This is no wyrm."

There were two visitors. Both human men, with two feet each, trampling over the weeds of her threshold. They paused in the foyer, snuffling and fighting with their gorges. Her foyer opened to many hallways, and one would lead them to Shesheshen. It was fortunate they didn't know which one. She had to act before that changed.

The one called Rourke said, "Malik, don't pass out on me. Put your mask on."

"I'm fine," the one called Malik said. "The contract is for a wyrm. Could it be an eastern wyrm? From the Al-Jawi Empire?"

"Those smell like burned bread. This just stinks of infection. I'm telling you, whatever is in this place isn't a wyrm."

The one called Malik spat upon the floor. He didn't clean up after himself. "Then what is it?"

The one called Rourke muffled his coughing, probably behind a fist. "I'm not sure. But we need priests. At least three of them."

Shesheshen liked priests. They tasted righteous.

"Did I hear you two mention priests?"

Shesheshen had though there were two. She was wrong⁠—distracted and foggy-headed from having her hibernation interrupted. Whoever had yelled was a third voice, matched by the clank of heavy armor heading into her foyer.