Rift

Rift closed their eyes as they sank deeper and deeper through the kelp forest; there was no need to keep them open anymore. Even if light could penetrate this deep into the water, the kelp grew so thick around them that it would block any trace of the sun from reaching them. Rift didn’t need their eyes, anyways. They had other ways to find their way through the darkness.

Their wings flicked out this way and that, like fins, helping Rift dart between the thick stipes of the kelp forest. A passing school of fish scattered in Rift’s wake, but they barely paid them any mind. Rift had sensed something deep below, and they were single-mindedly focused on their goal.

Time passed, and Rift drifted deeper and deeper, their magic guiding them to the prize. They slowed to a stop just as they reached the ocean floor, a cloud of silt and sand rising in their wake as they came to hover in place, their tail swishing and churning to keep them level. They stretched out their magic senses as far as they could reach, searching…searching…there.

They cast a light spell, holding the glowing blue orb aloft with one claw, and finally reopened their eyes to see their target.

Bones.

A sea of bones lay before them. Maren bones and dragon bones lay intertwined, piled upon each other and jumbled together until they were impossible to tell apart. And in the center of the ancient battleground stood a massive pillar, all that remained of the temple that the ancient dragons and maren had fought over.

Rift passed silently over the dead, careful not to disturb them, to approach the pillar. As they came close, they could make out carvings and runes coating its surface, mostly eroded from the long years at the bottom of the ocean, but some still surprisingly intact. Rift ran a claw along one of the faintest runes, tracing it slowly and trying to make out its shape. It was difficult, but not impossible. Not after all of the years Rift had been down here, studying these ruins. Every day they grew closer to unlocking their secrets, to learning what had been so important about them that countless maren had died to protect them.

And why countless dragons had died trying to destroy them.

Rift didn’t have all of the answers yet, but they were determined to solve this mystery. For the sake of the fallen, they would find out what these ruins were, and make sure that whatever their were, no more blood would be spilt over them.

There were enough bones coating the ocean floor.

Additional Headcanons:

• Rift started out as a deep-sea archeologist
• He discovered the mysterious ruins and became obsessed with them, and began searching for them, spending more and more time in the sea and abandoning his life above the waves
• The ruins call to him, and he hasn’t really admitted it to himself yet, but they’re starting to sound like voices
• The more time he spends in the sea and near the ruins, the more monstrous and otherworldly his form becomes
• He claims to have an abrasive/loner personality and that’s why he avoids others, but anyone who knew him when he was younger would disagree and say he had been perfectly friendly. What he doesn’t understand is that his subconscious realizes that whatever’s calling him from the ruins is dangerous, and so he’s pushed everyone away from him to try to protect them from getting sucked in by the ruins as well
• (There’s totally an eldritch god in the ocean taking over his mind)