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At sunrise the morning Brakiheth died, the Candidates were pulled from bed or Craft. Any protests were ignored on direct orders from the warden and squirmers bodily dragged by stone faced guards. They were herded towards the Sands, down the large stone corridor that would turn to face the expansive impromptu attempt at actual hatching Sands. The eggs and rider were hidden from view, though an observant candidate may have glimpsed a green tail. Other than the haunting keens of dragons that faded a candlemark prior, the morning sparkled, the heat not yet oppressive.

M'onk blocked the turn to the entrance, his hands behind him and that pleasant smile on his face. He did not look like a man fresh from bed but alert, completely at ease. Beside him stood Secondary Warden V'tyai since he, after all, would be taking responsibility for these children. His flat, square face had lost some of its color to a sickly gray sheen, his mouth set into a grim line that made the forming wrinkles deepen. He crossed his arms over his chest. He looked more ill than angry.

A low keening came from the hidden Sands, a womans voice. It grew louder before breaking into wretched sobs, another voice saying soft words.

V'tyai flinched.

"Welcome, Candidates!" M'onk smiled very wide. "I am sure you heard the dragons cry this morning. Some of you may have already heard the news. In a rather tragic turn of events, dear Brakiheth has passed on from us. Very sad, especially since she left her rider behind."

He glanced to V'tyai, expectant. The bluerider's jaw flexed, his gazed fixed on no set Candidate. "We do not believe some of you understand the bond of a human and a dragon. Kaelyandra has not yet suicided. Warden has called you here in order to witness what can happen to you, should you be careless."

"Now mind you, we wouldn't kill your dragon." M'onk spread his hands out, ever the kind one to V'tyai's wrath. "Simply culled from the group. It's important never the less." He shifted back, away, to glance towards the sands. "M'ska, we're coming in."

When M'onk's back was turned, V'tyai mouthed 'I'm sorry' to the Candidates. He gestured them to follow the bronzerider. "In the lot of you. Don't touch the eggs."

Inside the sands were the eggs as they had been before. Kaelyandra, once a raging spitting terror, sat on the ground as a sobbing wreck of a woman, her hair mussed and blind to the candidates. A sleek piebald green was there as well, along with a rider - M'ska. She clung.



[OOC Note: All Candidates are present. They don't have to be roleplayed in this thread but anyone who will be Standing is considered to be in this thread.

There will be no on-screen suicide or what have you. M'onk won't be forcing your kids to watch something like that. Gah. I apologize for how the initial post is worded!

Jaykkial had not heard the keening of the dragons early that morning. She had only just passed out in her cot still in uniform after a very long shift. Even Handsome Boy's keening and short lived panic fit didn't wake her, though the brown had left a nice little scratch on her forehead that had crusted over.

The scene before her didn't make sense in her sleep deprived state. Were the eggs hatching? Were they not wearing robes...? She couldn't hear thrumming, just an awful screaming coming from the woman... Handsome was hunched low on the padded perch of her jacket, eyes whirling yellow and head tucked under her ear.

.........................................

To say she was alarmed might have been an understatement. Luka's skin was crawling and even a day of solitary confinement was starting to sound like a more pleasant experience than this. Was he going to kill that woman?! Riders lived without their dragons sometimes. She'd heard stories as a kid. Was she just to be an example then... show them how sad it was to lose their dragon? Either way Luka did NOT want to be there. M'onk's alert smile was terrifying enough. She didn't want to see what made him smile so wide.

As for the bit about culling their dragons... Wasn't that the same thing? Luka didn't know much about beastcraft, or any craft for that matter. She was pretty sure to cull something was to kill it though. Her confusion was settled by the words of another prisoner. Noooo she didn't like this one bit.

Descanth keened mournfully, her eyes grey and dark. The crippled green had been an obvious choice: someone needed to take over looking out for the eggs, and there was no junior gold to do the job. So instead it would fall to a rotation of greens, who would hopefully keep the eggs safe until they hatched. It was a strange reversal of the usual tragedy: when a goldrider died, their dragon lingered until the clutch was hatched. But when a gold died, and their rider lingered…

Well. Kaelyandra might not be lingering long. That remained to be seen.

Regardless, Descanth was grounded, and thus assigning her to egg watching duty would not disrupt any of the existing squads. And she was reliable, which meant she could be trusted with the important task of watching over Brakiheth’s last clutch. She regarded the Candidates with only a faintest flicker of warm blue in greeting, before returning to shield the little clutch with her solitary wing. Today was not a Touching. It was no celebration of life. It was M’onk, displaying the consequences of losing a dragon.

And it wasn’t exactly a secret that M’ska did not approve. The older greenrider sat with Kaelyandra, arms wrapped around her, murmuring some meaningless words of comfort to her. There was no comfort to be had for her, with her dragon gone, but he at least would not see her put up on display like this alone. She had no Weyrleader, no partner to cling to. So she would have M’ska. He smoothed her rumpled hair down with a soothing hand, shooting a briefly murderous look at M’onk’s back when the man spoke of culling dragons.

And then M’onk turned his direction and called his name, and M’ska’s attention was carefully back on Kaelyandra, displaying no outward hostility. He couldn’t help but feel that in some way they were both on display as consequences: the crippled and the culled. "Yes, Warden."

Saain groaned, blinking blurry and grumbled as she was forced out of bed at the wee hours of the morning. She yawned, blinking but let them lead her off. Fighting or protesting the guards could ruin any change and it had to be too early for any sort of hatching. It felt off, dreary instead of joyful, well she doubted that any of the guards would be cheerful when the time came to gather her and her fellow prisoners for the hatching.

She glanced around and frowned, lips pressed tightly together. M'onk was smiling, that was likely bad considering V'tyai face was green. What was going... he did not just welcome them to a funeral. That was just obscene. Saain bit her lip, pressing against her fellow prisoners. How long were they going to be forced to be here for? Till Kaelyandra pulled herself together or died?

"This is so wrong. So, so wrong," she whispered, keeping close to her fellow prisoners in their red jumpsuits. Saain could do nothing for the woman. Any attempts at kindness would be used against her and she wanted to impress so badly. She wanted to go home to her child.

"He's pleased," Saain stated softly, hands clasped solemnly in front of her as she looked over Hiemal from the corner of her eyes and then back to Kaelyandra. "If it was just to keep prisoners from the clutch, he wouldn't have dragged those in other crafts down to the sands to watch this obscene mockery of a lesson." She shut her eyes, fingers gripping the jumpsuit tightly.

"He is also saying cull... not cripple. Perhaps, he is stating that any sickly dragons will be put down for their own good." She hated to think that, but what else could M'onk be thinking? Showcasing Kaelyandra's grief over the lost of her sickly queen who had died too soon. She kept her voice soft and low, not rising much above a whisper.

It was highly inappropriate but she couldn't help the soft snort and flicker of a smile at the thought of someone attempting to castrate a dragon. "I hope it is a stretch of the term. I don't know how you would even attempt to castrate a dragon." Saain shook her head, flushing slightly. It was inappropriate to joke of such a matter, during such a harrowing time.

"I would not want to be the one to ask her. It is bad enough we are here are witnesses. She should be able to grieve in peace."

When a guard hauled her from bed, Lin hardly put up a fight. She was used to not knowing what was going on, and just went along with it placidly. Several others were being herded along with her, and it only took Lin a moment to recognize them all as candidates as well. Then, this was something to do with the eggs? Ignorant of such matters, she wondered briefly if the eggs were hatching already.

They lined all the candidates up outside the Sands while M'onk turned to face them. He looked unusually pleased, and although Lin had never had never interacted with him personally, she knew enough about his character to take this as a bad sign. What surprised her more was that all the candidates were there, not just the prisoners. It seemed like he was about to do something cruel, but why should they be dragged into it as well?

Nervously, Lin scraped her fingers along the hairline around her ears, miming the movement of tucking hair behind her ears, although there was no such hair to speak of. She usually preferred to have it long- something to hide behind. But since her arrival at Warden's was only several months ago, it was still boyishly short. Still, somehow, the nervous habit remained.

As Lin listened to M'onk speak, it felt like something cold was growing from her stomach. Dead? How can he even say such news and still smile? she wondered. She thought he'd be sad for the dragon, at least. Weren't all dragon-riders supposed to mourn their own kind? But she kept her mouth closed and her eyes on the ground to hide the rage in them (again, she wished for her bangs back!) Clearly he had something to prove, and it'd be better if they just went along with it.

"He's much nicer." Lin muttered to herself, seeing V'tyai's mouthed apology as she and all the other candidates were ushered into the sands. Seeing the sobbing woman, Lin wanted desperately to go to her. Not that she particularly liked her, or wanted to help out of the kindness of her heart, but it was just that her pain was so loud, it hurt just watching her. Fortunately, Lin had many years of practise suppressing sympathy out of self-preservation. She pressed a hand into her ribs, her eyes burning holes into the sand.

She expected them all to suffer in silence for a few minutes while M'onk watched, and then be sent away. Instead, amazingly, a conversation began to brew about what exactly he meant by the term cull. M'onk was right about one thing; Lin truly didn't know anything about the bond between a dragon and a rider. But she did know that a mother had just died and now the fates of her babies were in the hands of these men. The possibilities didn't bear thinking about..

Lin lifted her teeth from her lip and sighed shakily. "Can we please not talk about this now?" she whispered.

Joscelin nodded to M'ska and moved to drape the work smock over the woman's shaking shoulders, offering her some small protection from the stares. She should not be subjected to so many stares, not now. He looked at Leevi, remembering the man faintly from the hatching and snorted softly at the question. Really? Kaelyandra was weeping like one of his sister when they lost a child. How did he think she felt?

"Do you think we could get some tea, a thing of water to make a cold compress as well?" Joscelin asked, the rider soft as he knelt down to gently touch Kaelyandra's back. "Lady, if you would let us move you somewhere more private?" He asked softly, rubbing slow, comforting circles. "Think of Brakiheth eggs. This can't be good for them," he cooed softly. It was a little underhanded but if it snapped Kaelyandra into thinking instead of sounding like a broken hymn, he would take it.