@pyrinas plotted a starter with Verena.
Was there a difference between slumber and death?
What made anything alive?
Swathed in an endless darkness---motionless and silent---could they really consider themselves alive at all? No breath filled their lungs, no feeling crept across their skin. There was not even the dull ache of wasting to remind them of what it was to feel. Only two things existed in their tomb of stone and dust: thirst and cold. Neither of them were painful, they did not think pain was capable for them anymore---at least not in this state. The cold did not prickle or bite. The thirst did not burn on their throat. They were not a suffering, merely a yearning.
But it was only that yearning that gave them the hope that this dark stillness was not a death.
Verena had few memories of either of their lives. The human woman that had once laid down her life for her children---what did her face look like? What were her sons’ names? Her daughters’? Had she had a mother or father? Had they loved her? What did she even look like? The beast had even fewer memories, and those they did were all unpleasant. The dragon---the undying flame---knew only blood and flesh, felt only rage and hunger. A passing glance at their memories showed monsters, both man and beast, and war, and then darkness. They could remember the taste of hot blood more than anything else, and it is what they dreamed of even now. To taste blood again. To taste fire and smell ash in the air.
One singular memory was crystal clear: the day they’d been sealed into their stony prison. The sorcerer standing before them, raising up his trembling, blackened hands as fire filled the room and the mountain around them shook. They could remember the staff of metal in his hands that had melted down his arms and splattered his cheeks. They could remember how that made him scream through his incantations. And they could remember striking, as fast as the crack of a whip---jaws open, flames glowing in their throat only to die seconds later.
They never tasted the sorcerer’s blood or felt his bones shatter against their tongue. They never let loose the blaze trapped within their throat. There the two of them had remained, encased in stone, with only the darkness. And the yearning.
A thin, brave ray of light warmed the cold stone of the dragon’s eye. They could not move to meet it, or see what had caused it, but there was light. Light and the crumbling of stone above them. Had the ceiling fallen in? Something yelped or shouted, and they could hear it breathing.
How much time passed? Verena couldn’t tell. Maybe seconds, maybe years. It was all the same anymore, but it felt like only heartbeats after the light came the blood. Sweet and warm, dripping down the side of their head and following the curve of their lip inside of their maw. It fell on their tongue with an audible splattering. They felt the cold wane and from the depths of their stony throat, a groan came to echo through the cavern.
They could not see them, but they could taste them. And beneath the heaviness of the slate their mind began to sharpen and their power began to grow. It was not much, but enough to raise their disembodied voice.
“Blood has been spilled.” The dragon rumbled, their jaws still unmoving, poised over the dying sorcerer that had cursed them to this fate. “But more is needed. Give your life’s blood to me, and I will give you mine.”
Somehow, against all logic, against all forces of nature, the stone along their chest and neck began to glow with the promise of fire.
“Set me free. Break that stone that binds me. Undo what the magi have done.” It was almost desperate, even a little angry. “And when I am flesh once more, I will give you the sky, the earth, the sea---anything that can be taken, anything you could desire. I will deliver it to your hands.”
