Beside him, the feathered Wind-Runner envoy pressed his chest flat against the stone, shouting with equal hysteria. "The Wind-Runners yield! We swear allegiance to the Sovereign of the Fifth Layer! Command our scouts, draft our youth, rule our skies! We are your people now!"
"The Scaled-Kin swear!" the amphibious envoy hissed, his gills flaring as he bared his scaly neck to the dais. "We submit to the Great Mother! We renounce our borders! We are your thralls, your hunters, your subjects forever!"
"The Horned-Clans pledge their horns!" the massive brute wept, pressing his snout into the stone crack. "Rule over us! Protect our hearths and take our strength! We swear allegiance to the High Seat of the Veynar!"
The great hall echoed with the thunderous, desperate vows of all tribes formally casting aside their ancestral freedom, competing with one another to surrender faster, louder, and more thoroughly than their peers.
