He is no stranger to fatherhood, so is not plagued by the worries some first-time sires may possess. He has danced this dance a hundred times before, and as his demon queen bloats and the due date of their child draws closer, he begins to follow her like a shadowy disease. When he has to rest, Cynder follows instead, always keeping a keen eye out for any signs of labour. The demon has no intention of missing this, missing the birth of a beast, because this will likely be the first and only time he sees his newest son or daughter. Come the day after the birth, he will be pounding a furrow into the ground with the intensity of his gallop to get back to the herd he left behind. Given the size of the vampire, he has his suspicions that more than one little grub is set to burrow free of her womb; after all, twins do run in his family.

When the birth comes, the beast and his dragon will not arrive giftless, either. A day previous, they had been resting in the forest when they had witnessed a gold queen dragon - reminscent of his father's bonded Eridor - giving birth to a clutch of eggs high up in the trees. Tyradon had watched the birth through Cynder's curious eyes, because, as a subservient green, she was naturally intrigued by the bringing of new life and was keen to help the wild gold protect her young. The majority of the eggs were bronze, gold, silver, royal, but nestled among them was one little black egg; oh, the trees had shook with the force of the gold's fury! She, a royal queen, giving birth to a plain! Both Cynder and Tyradon had watched in horror as she rolled the black egg to the edge of the nest and promptly cast it over the side - with a feral squawk Cynder had flown towards it, catching it before it shattered on the ground. The gold had watched in haughty disgust, curled around her royal eggs without a care for the black she had so carelessly cast aside. Abandoned.

Cynder was a maternal thing, and through their bond Tyradon had felt her desire to raise the egg as her own. But it made little sense; to his knowledge he could only bond to one dragon, so the black would simply hatch and fly away. A waste, he felt. Why not give the abandoned egg to his child when it was born? Both he and his father before him had bonded with dragons very early on in life, in their first year, in fact; it had influenced the rest of their life for the better, and the black behemoth has every intention of giving his and Confutatis' devil offspring that same privelege. So he instructs Cynder to keep the egg warm and alive, but not to get too attached. She reluctantly obeys, although it does thaw his stone heart somewhat to see her sleeping nestled tightly around the egg.

Today, though, it is Tyradon himself guarding the black egg, as Cynder is out keeping an eye on Confutatis; the stallion rests with one hindleg cocked when he feels the shout down their mental bond, the summons. It's happening! He is awake in an instant, charging in the direction of the green war-dragon's mental instructions with the egg balanced precariously on his shoulders, ascending a thin rocky path until he reaches a beautiful field high up in the heavens. How odd - he'd assumed Confutatis would choose to give birth somewhere a lot more dastardly, like a cave or a blood-soaked battlefield.

He arrives just in time to see not one but two bloody young bodies leave her own in a heap of wet warmth and pain; twins, as expected. The hellhound looks with cold eyes down at the foals, waiting for them to stand so he can examine their genders. They exude strength, and he is fully confident that they will soon be teetering up on stilt-like limbs to suckle at their dam's teat. Cynder perches between his ears, her tail coiled possessively around the egg as her yellow eyes greedily observe the two newborns. "Didn't we do well," drawls Tyradon, tail lashing against his powerful thighs as he stands proudly and protectively over his young. Which one gets egg? questions Cynder, and the beast's brow furrows. "I have a gift for one of them," he says, giving a mental nudge to Cynder. With great reluctance, she scoops up the egg and flies down towards the foals, one clawed paw protectively over it as she awaits the instruction on who to give it to. "We found a gold giving birth - she abandoned this egg because of its colour. Both myself and my sire bonded to dragons when we were very young, and I want our children to do the same. For whichever one doesn't get the egg, I also have an amulet - a less life-changing prize, admittedly, but a gift nonetheless. You may decide which of them receives what." She is their mother, after all, and the one who will have to live with the consequence of choosing one above the other.

Grey eyes watch impassively as one of the foals struggles to his feet; a jet black colt, his mother's skull-white face but his father's white forelegs. Pride wells up in the beast as he sniffs at the colt, who looks rather alarmed and reverses backwards into his mother's side. As Tyradon sniffs, so too does Cynder, and the brute feels puzzlement flashing down their bond. She cannot articulate her words clearly, so instead sends images, and the beast begins to get the picture. "Cynder is detecting something in both of them - she seems to think they can both bond to more than one companion. Says they have something of the dragon about them, something she has never seen before. Impossible, surely." He does hope the green is correct; if so, then that really does make these twins something special. Kings and queens in the making.