Apex domains cannot have CNAME records.
Question and response
Question
dig i.nease.net. NS
Answer
i.nease.net. 5 NS dns-soa01-game.nease.net.
i.nease.net. 5 NS dns-soa03-game.nease.net.
i.nease.net. 5 NS dns-soa02-game.nease.net.
Authority
The response has no authority records.
Additional
. 0 OPT ; payload 1232, xrcode 0, version 0, flags 0