When one loves an object very much it is possible to leave an imprint upon its substance. A shadow of your own soul, your intention and desires. At best it can be a legacy to impact the future. A talisman to your descendants, carrying a memory of your presence.
This is not a true path to immortality, for there is not enough time to imprint an entire soul onto an object. Why, even to imagine such a thing were possible, the process would take centuries, if not millennia. Even the longest-lived of aelfin-kin would die long before such an imprint was complete.
No, those seeking to outlive their deaths are best served seeking other routes.
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PROLOGUE
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Beneath a mountain of gold, an ancient dragon lay sleeping.
The treasure carried a curse, one which held him as surely as it prevented any thieves from decimating his horde, a curse of slumber and stillness. If the dragon were to wake, if he were to stand up from amid his gold and prowl down long-empty corridors to his entry cavern, he would find a feast of sleeping adventurers from a dozen countries and eras lying atop the lesser treasures they foolishly sought to steal away.
But he did not wake.
The dragon slumbered on. The would-be thieves slumbered on.
Outside the cave, a sign had been carved into the lintel, a warning to explain the curse and dissuade new fools from entering. The words were worn by weather and time, the message faded but not yet illegible.
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Dust coated the entry cavern in thick layers, obscuring the form of the thieves and treasure alike. Dust drifted in the sunlight from the exit window far above. Dust concealed the true nature of the dragon’s final resting place.
His home, his place of power, had become his silent and lonely tomb. The heat of his body had slowly reshaped the golden coins upon which he lay, beneath which he lay, into a perfect prison fitted exactly to his body but for a single flaw.
Beneath the dragon’s foreclaw, his chin resting upon its rough surface, lay the centerpiece of his horde: a gemstone older than the mountain itself. Light glimmered within its crystalline depths, its colour the fiery red-gold of molten amber, flickering in time with the dragon’s slowly beating heart.
The dragon slept and the centuries passed. No ripple of concern disturbed his dreams of conquest; dreams of power; and most of all, dreams of gold.
But all things must end. Even the most powerful curse cannot last forever.
One day every adventurer awoke as the last trickles of magic faded away. They coughed and choked upon the dust which covered them, but most survived the ordeal and set about looting the place as they’d long ago intended. The lesser treasures were easy pickings, so easy that they turned their attention at once upon their fellows. Those come soonest claimed priority through chronology, while those come latest claimed priority through enlightenment and strength.
Unnoticed amid this chaos, the dragon lay gasping futilely for air beneath his golden prison, his mighty strength insufficient to break a thing so perfectly molded around himself.
His only movement, the claw which tightened over the warm crystal, determined that if he were to die he would at least never surrender his greatest treasure.
By the time the surviving adventurers reached the central cavern, the mound lay cooling above the dragon’s unmoving body.
Beneath the dragon’s still, cold claw, the gemstone pulsed with fiery life.