Ifwyleth

Once, Lyleg lived with her kin in the abysses beneath the Sea of a Thousand Currents. Always obsessed with exploring deeper, she dove to depths and squeezed into crevices the other Undertide and maren warned were too dangerous. Lyleg disregarded their warnings, believing herself pressure-hardened and prepared for anything.

But wherever she went, she went alone. And, being alone, she was the only one who heard the whispers, deep in that eternally-bubbling crevice. At first they were too faint to make out, but something about them unsettled her regardless.

Not one to be dissuaded by a little spookiness, she slithered downward, using her wings to pull her serpentine body along the jagged wall of the abyssal chasm. The sounds did not echo upward so much as get more intense—not as sound, but as pressure upon her mind, as she realised they had always been. They beckoned to her, urged her onward.

Lyleg did not want to continue. For the first time, she wanted to turn around and run. But the whispers were insistent, and her body continued to obey. The bubbles formed a luminescent galaxy, glowing with omnipresent light, and by the time she finally reached the bottom the pressure and exertion had left her too injured to do anything but lay coiled on the strangely soft silt.

By her nose was an object. It was all twisting edges and flat panes, from it issuing that strange glow. Fear clutched at her heart even as she gazed into it. It’s “voice” filled her mind, beckoning, promising—commanding. It showed her the infinite wonders of the inner world, introduced itself as a fragment from the deepest abysses where no dragon or beastfolk has ever tread.

The creature that crawled back up from that crevice was not Lyleg. Alone, she would have died broken at its bottom. Instead the entity’s power suffused her, healing her while commanding her will and eroding her mind.

She took its relic back to her lair and fed it the lives of her clanmates. No fang or poison, spear or blade could harm her, and where they raked her only black smoke clouded the water. Whatever was left of Lyleg retreated in horror at her own actions, and the relic gave her a new name in its own abyssal tongue, promising she would rank among its greatest heralds.

It pushed her out of the depths, to spread its whispers at the edge of Shadow territory. Tirelessly she carved the Whispering Burrows into the rock where the delta of the Driftwood Drag dropped off into the sea, ensconcing the relic deep within.

Over time, the suffusion of its power has twisted her form and essence. Her eyes glow from the shadows, and her serpentine body unfurls to an intimidating size and length. Unlucky intruders and passers-by get snatched up in her tentacles or grabbed by her powerful jaws to be dragged back and sacrificed—or kept for more intricate rituals yet.