Delwyn

Delwyn woke in darkness, the cave damp and smelling of limestone. For a moment she moved nothing but her eyes, searching the blackness for some hint of light. She found nothing, but her other senses kicked in to paint a more complete picture. Rough stone beneath her feet, cold and solid but dry. The water smell came from somewhere else. She heard the dripping, but it echoed through the space, sometimes far away and sometimes sounding as if it came from right by her head.

The trickle must have cut through a rune, weakened the magic that contained her. Not enough. Her awareness had returned, but her body remained mostly beyond her control, locked in the before form from when she'd been nothing but a statue used for experiments.

She smelled magic in the air, old and tired, and nothing of her captors. She would wait.

***

Muscle control came much, much later. Eons after the first tentative flutter of eyes. The dripping water had become a river that cut through the cavern, that eroded the base of stone that connected Delwyn to the floor.

It was a single toe that twitched first, cracking the bit of rock still binding her to the ground, the last thread that held her as statue rather than golem.

That link broken the rest came fast. Wings spread wide, claws of stone and bone stretched. Huge jaws molded from raw emerald opened, and a mighty roar cascaded through the space, rebounding off far walls and growing louder and louder until the noise alone set the walls to shaking.

Rock collapsed around her, the ceiling falling to reveal bright blue sky above. Delwyn looked up, her face raised to bask in the sun that warmed her crystal hide, giving her the greater life her lack of blood could not. No runes or magics forced her into inanimate hibernation. No watchers stood ready to imprison her again.

Another roar, and then she launched herself upwards. Fully awake and finally free, the Emerald Golem soared. And the world trembled.