>>5350281>>5350283>>5350281You’re not a terribly practiced swimmer, but this is not your first time doing so. Furthermore, you have always been prone to sinking rather than floating, even when you were young, and in your natural form—your muscles and dense skeletal structure ensure it. Between this and your <Dragonshape>, it should be no matter to reach the bottom of this pool…
>1…Which is why it is so peculiar that you cannot. You dive nose down, forcing your nostrils shut and closing your nictitating membranes over your eyes to protect them as you orient towards the distant glow… But it remains distant. You use your tail, threshing the water with the spade at the tip as you kick your legs… But it grows no closer. In frustration, you swim to the side of the grotto, and physically grab hold of the stone, using your claws to pull yourself yet lower… But like the moon and stars in the lands above, the glow remains illusive, ever-distant.
>1Too late, you look up, and see that are trapped deep in darkness. You cannot see the faint glow of your fire-lizards, or of the sword which you left as a beacon. The only light is that damned, unreachable glow—the false promise of treasure, luring you to your doom! Was that all it was, another trap?
Well, you have no time to find out. Your lungs are screaming for oxygen. You kick off from the stone and begin paddling up towards the surface… But you are deep, too deep, UNNATURALLY deep. Your natural lack of buoyancy now works against you...
And then, your <Dragonshape> and its attendant strength and lung capacity give out. You gasp, involuntarily, taking in a slightly bitter sig of water, filling your mouth, lungs, and stomach. You try not to panic, but you cannot help it—you are deep in the water, floating in darkness, helpless, alone. The elves’ ancient curse ahs claimed you, after all! You thrash, a last, valiant struggle against the darkness, before a it consumes you.
For a time, you are sleeping, unconscious… Dead? You aren’t sure. The realm you find yourself in isn’t wet, but ashen in its dryness, like bones long picked-ocean in a great, grey desert. You stand, looking around uncertainly—your head is hazy, recollection fuzzy in that moment. In your periphery, small figures appear, surrounding you. You step back from them, readying to defend yourself, but the shades reveal themselves: dark-skinned elven children, eight or nine of them, though not quite so dark as the Drow you know.
“Come,” speaks a voice, too deep and masculine to be a mammal pup’s.
You turn, and see a single fully-grown elf, in elaborate white regalia, a tiara of some sort upon his brow. He meets your eyes with his own, sad ones.
“It is not his time yet,” he tells the children, and takes one of their hands, guiding them away and leaving you, once more, alone in a dark which your eyes cannot penetrate.
