Overview
The Brood-Carry Chimera is the pack, certain tail of Mosaic Crags, a three-parted beast of the mosaic crags — lion-front, goat-mid, serpent-tail — who carries the brood and keeps the high rings, the crag's pack, cunning, and most certain tail. It spans just under 3.58 m long, three-parted and patient, with the kind of certainty that comes from a life measured in kept broods rather than years. Where the Litter-Sense chimera senses the litter, the Brood-Carry chimera of the crag carries the brood, and it has been carrying the first brood on the first ring for a very long time.
Habitat
The Brood-Carry Chimera keeps to the high rings of Mosaic Crags, a crag of three-parted beasts whose face is a mosaic of lion, goat, and serpent and whose silence is broken only by the litter and the brood. Its dwellings are hollows of bare stone and kept litter, their floors dissolving and re-forming with the drip, their faces catching the bronze shimmer of the crag on the inside and the shelter of the stone on the outside. It favors the higher rings where the brood runs widest and the carrying is widest, the places where a brood can be carried without the crag's own motion breaking it.
Appearance
A Brood-Carry Chimera is about 3.58 m long, three-parted and patient, with wet bronze-gold hide that reads as cold in the bronze crag-light. Its spine carries the sea-black spine-bands, a deliberate mark worn as a record of the long art of the carrying, and its front ends in the ivory fang of the lion-part, the color of the crag's own stone at low drip. Its eyes — one on the lion-front, one on the goat-mid — are washed-out crag-white, bright and certain beneath the brow, and they hold still in a way that no other eyes on the crag do — they are reading the brood.
Behaviour
The Brood-Carry Chimera is pack, cunning, and profoundly aggressive, a creature of long broods and long attention who rarely surprises and rarely is surprised. It waits before it carries, often for days, waiting on a ring or a stranger or a brood until it understands the shape of the litter, and only then does it carry, and then with an exactness that feels rehearsed over centuries. It is not unkind, but it is not easily moved, and a debt named by a Brood-Carry chimera is a debt the crag will keep long after the carrier has gone.
Natural Weapons & Defenses
The Brood-Carry chimera is no open-sky fighter and carries no blade, for its power is the carry and the crag itself, not force. Its primary defense is the crag, for it knows every hollow of the high rings and can lead a pursuer down Mosaic Crags until the pursuit loses its nerve and its footing in the bare stone. Should it be forced to act, a Brood-Carry chimera is quick and precise, 8 m/s down the mosaic face and low, and it fights to unmake a threat rather than to wound it, dimming a light, holding a ring, or carrying until the threat is spent.
Magic Alignment
The Brood-Carry chimera is attuned to the long word of the crag, for the word is the carrying and the carrying is the whole of its power, and a chimera that has a crag and a fang and a brood does not need a spell that is not its own. It keeps no faith above the brood, for the chimera is the promise, and the promise is the whole of its way of being free. Its one signature thing is the Litter Word, which is not a magic but is a thing that the chimera of the crag has spoken for a very long time, and the word is the carry, and the carry is the whole of its power.
Society
The Brood-Carry Chimeras keep to Mosaic Crags in pack, cunning broods of one mother per ring, bound by the broods they carry rather than by blood or by place, ranked by whose brood is truest. There is no elder beyond the mother who decides, for a chimera that has carried the most and kept the most is simply the one the others listen to, and the listening is a carry and the carry is the whole of their society. Decisions are made on the ring, by the brood, and once made they are kept, for a chimera that breaks a carrying is a chimera that has broken the whole of what it is.
Culture & Lore
The culture of the Brood-Carry Chimera is a culture of the kept brood, a whole way of life organized around the idea that a word that is pack and cunning is the only honest word on the crag. It keeps no records, for a chimera that has carried a brood does not need a record, the carrying is the record, and the carrying is pack and cunning and does not fade. Its stories are slow and quick, told on the ring at the low drip, and they are stories of broods carried and litters kept and the pack, cunning difference between them, told in a voice that is fang-heavy and means every carrying.
Home
Mosaic Crags are the Brood-Carry chimera's home and its carrying, a crag of three-parted beasts whose face is a mosaic of lion, goat, and serpent and whose silence is broken only by the litter and the brood, where the chimera carries its broods and keeps its pack, cunning words. It is a strange and quick place, one that stands as if it were a very old animal holding its breath, and the Brood-Carry chimera has learned to live on that crag rather than against it. The bronze shimmer of the crag that runs across the high rings is the crag's own, a cold light that the chimera has come to read as the color of a kept brood.
Relations
The Brood-Carry Chimera keeps a long, careful truce with the other creatures of Mosaic Crags, a truce of kept broods that has held for a long time and is the oldest and most fragile thing in the bronze stone. To the bronze shimmer of the high rings the Brood-Carry chimera is a pack, cunning, and absolutely aggressive presence, a washed-eyed carrier that is at home on the rings and on the brood, and the shimmer has learned to glow wide and let the carries pass, for a chimera that has carried you has decided you are a promise and not a lesson.
In the Story
In the story of the crag, the Brood-Carry Chimera is the pack, cunning edge of the tale, the place where the broods are kept and a litter is carried and a carrying is read. It is the figure that carries a new brood at the low drip and holds the crag very pack and very cunning, and the figure that, when the truce with the litter-sensing chimera grows thin, is the one that remembers what the truce cost and keeps the old carry pack and very cunning and absolutely aggressive.