tundra
length: 3.21 m
wingspan: 3.48 m
weight: 356.26 kg

Aemma's life started parentless, but not alone. In the nest where she would hatch, there was an egg that crackled and glowed blue with electricity, a pink egg that hummed and spun all on its own, an egg that pulsated and glowed with fungal growths, and her own egg, that shone with perpetual light like a miniature sun.

She hatched second, after her sister, Tanwen. Soon after came Alseid, flopping out of the shadowy shards of his egg. Many hours later, so long that they wondered if the last egg was a dud, came the tiniest fae they'd ever seen, Cerisha. They started off with many differences, but they lived and grew and played and survived together as a family unit for many years. Tanwen, moody and clever, grew up with a mind always on the move. She was constantly tinkering with little bits of metal, welding them together with her magic. Aemma was often right there with her, the first to trade for the research they would need to fuel Tanwen's passions. They could sometimes convince their younger brother, Alseid, to give them shade with his enormous guardian wings. Cerisha was dreamy and wistful, with magic exploding out of her at strange moments, with neither the attention span nor the interest to apply her own magical abilities to the kinds of objects Tanwen did. Aemma noticed that it often frustrated Tanwen.

One day, the four of them piled into a huge, gassy, creaky metal monster of a machine that Tanwen had created with her clever little claws. It smelled terrible, like rotten eggs stuffed into mud and then dredged into the light, but Aemma got on board anyway. It was for her sister. Of course she would go, go and see the underwater wonders that they would suddenly have access to-- all because of Tanwen's ingenuity.
But Tanwen's experiment went terribly wrong that day.
With the sound of metal ripping apart loud in her delicate ears, Aemma was flung from the ship and she pushed out her wings to try to catch herself, but she was going much too fast. She slammed into the water so hard her lungs seemed to flatten, squeezing the air out of her. She cried out as her wings shredded on the sharp rocks she plunged into. She pulled free, gasping with no air, blood flooding around her thick fur and into the water all around her. She sank into the salty currents, unable to breathe, and she passed into oblivion with no thought but please, please--
I don't want to die.

The next few conscious moments she had were staticky, painful, and strange. She thought she felt paws on her body, dragging her along with handfuls of her fur. She thought she could maybe feel the strange, wet flick of a fish's tail, but there was nothing but darkness all around her.
I don't want to die.
Before she passed into unconsciousness again, she remembered pleading with any god who would listen, any god she could remember the name of.

Then her world went white.
"I hear you," boomed a voice and a shudder passed through her battered, once-broken body. Hands pushed against her chest, over her heart, and a sensation of warmth spread from them to the rest of her body, down to the fluffy tip of her tail. Then it was hot. Then it was searing, and she squirmed, wriggling away, but something held firm against her panicked thrashing. It felt like her skin was elongating, stretching, tearing itself apart to lengthen. It felt like her bones were breaking to come together again, stronger, and through the agony Aemma could feel herself getting big. She cried out for Tanwen and Alseid and Cerisha, but there was only that horrible, blue-tinged white light.

Then, suddenly, it all stopped.
Aemma lay on the floor, trembling uncontrollably.
"Is she alright?" whispered a tremulous, male voice in the darkness, and another voice spoke, and she shivered because she recognized it as the one that had boomed over her just before she felt herself transforming.
"I don't know yet," the female voice admitted. "Wyrm? Great wyrm of the Deep, speak to us."
Aemma opened unfamiliar eyes and lifted a head that was attached to a neck that was much too long, and she stared through eyes that could penetrate the strange murk. Two maren hung back, staring at her with large eyes. One was clearly female and her long, spiraled silver hair fell over fingers that still crackled with the remnants of magic. The other was younger, male, and clearly quite young-- he had baby fat filling out his face, still.
For a long moment, Aemma gazed at them, with their long, graceful tails that pushed gently at the water, and she reared back suddenly, because- because-
Because she was breathing underwater.
"Wait!" cried the younger maren, throwing up his webbed fingers in a panic.

When she calmed, they laid out the story for her.
Ace, the younger maren, had found her and taken pity. He brought her to his mother, who was a great sorceress, and begged her to heal her. When his mother couldn't, she instead called on the ancient magic of the Tidelord himself. She had heard of the undertides plans to rise to the surface to reunite with their kin and perhaps selfishly, she'd seen the dragon laid at her feet as the perfect opportunity to bridge their two worlds.
She wrapped her fingers around all the magic she could muster, and she transformed Aemma into- into-
Something else.

Aemma was huge, more than ten times her original size as a tundra. She was serpentine, she had no fur anymore, she had spines full of venom (she squashed her panic with all her might), and she could BREATHE UNDERWATER.