Make the deal

You aren't at all sure about this, but your brother is much brighter and surely knows best. So you offer your hand to seal the bargain. "Deal," you agree.

Your brother smiles, obviously pleased, and returns your grip with a hand that is cold and reptilian and somehow almost slimy, but which leaves no obvious residue when he releases it to usher you inside. Nonetheless, you now feel somehow unclean, on top of your insistent mating urge.

"Masters," your brother announces, "I believe I have a solution. My brother of the breeding-caste is come of age, and is deep in his first rut. If you allow, he has agreed to offer himself in my place." Your smarter brother sounds pleased, and you smile a bit shyly, fidgeting with yourself in your soft leather pouch under the cold, beady eyes of your tribe's elder Shamans and seers, who mutter among themselves.

Eventually, the oldest and coldest among them speaks with a voice like ice and iron. "Throw the rune bones for an augury."

Underlings scurry to light braziers and roll out an ancient leather mat painted with strange signs, and a slightly less elderly elder approaches, unfastening a pouch at his belt. He stoops, rattling a handful of bones in thin hands, and casts them onto the mat, then steps back. A third sorcerer hobbles over, tapping the bones in turn with the iron tip of his twisted, black cane.

"Om, in the house of sacrifice. Thurz in the house of pacts. Dun in the house of blood. Yth in the house of fate." he mutters in a thin, reedy voice. "The augury is clear. This will be agreeable, and meet the bargain we have made." He nods to the eldest Shaman, and his colleague gathers up the bones again.

The cold-eyed sorcerer nods in turn to your cunning brother. "It is decided. Take your surrogate and prepare him. We will make the necessary arrangements to open the Gate of Souls, here. Return when he is ready." His appraising look at you is grudgingly satisfied, but does not linger. He and his fellows vanish back into shadow to do whatever it is that they do down here, and you are left once again with your brother.

"See?" he says, more pleased than ever, "Nothing to it. Now, come down to the Spirit Waters for a wash, and we'll get you ready for your mate."