She slept for too long, during her last awakening her actions resulted in the best effects ever. The noise of the children lessened to a level she has not heard since before the first elf walked the land. In fact, the quiet let her sleep so deeply it took her decades to wake up since the noise would normally wake her.

She was not awake yet, not fully. Though a great eye had opened and saw that the cave was dark. Nothing had come in to scatter light over her great form. The eye was still clouded from many centuries of sleep, and hunger had yet to rumble to her.

As she woke she listened to the noise. The noise had increased to a level it had never been. The noise irritated her more than before, causing her great heart to beat once more, and frozen blood to move through her system. Long dormant organs and cells woke up, the decades of oversleep causing inertia and friction that needed to be overcome.

Her second eye slowly opened, and the slitted eyes slowly cleared as she scanned her lair. No-one had visited her in the centuries since she had fallen asleep. In times past there would always be offerings before her body. Offerings of hope that she would sleep on. Offerings of sacrifice that she would pass them by.

Deep within her, her spirit took offense at the lack of respect. The offense was tempered by the knowledge that perhaps she was too successful during her last period of activity, that no-one knew where her lair was and that she had remained hidden all this time. Disappointment overtook offense as her body started to wake.

Offerings didn’t matter to her. They never worked, all they did was provide her a link to those who she could manipulate and turn to her cause. This time she didn’t have the link. Her body started to move. Ice, feet thick, cracked, and cascaded off of her body. This was only a little movement to her as her muscles were fed blood, and guidance, for the first time in centuries.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

Her mind reached out, to find the noise. There was a good level of emotion for her to latch onto. The emotion that she craved. The emotion that she bestowed. The emotion that all creatures had.

One spark of the feeling was out there. One point of light in the ambient light of what she sought. One point that she could feel, and one she could kindle. She was a creature of ice… Ice and fire.

She stretched out her long neck. The first conscious movement she made since waking up. The neck, covered in white scales that no mundane weapon had ever cracked. Her great horned head broke free of the ice and she opened her mouth and hissed.

The armored spines on her back shifted and shredded the ice. Ice that could crush a ship was no match for her strength. Her four legs brought her off her bed, and she swung her tail back and forth. A shake ran down her body from her head to her tail, shedding the centuries of ice that had gathered on her body. A final stretch and her wings unfurled.

She did not leave the cave, not yet. She was not hungry yet. She would wait as the fires stirred in her belly. She turned her head to focus on the light of emotion she sought. Plans formed in her mind.

Farther away she felt the rising of the demons. Something she had not felt before, she had always slept through the rising of the demons. Her plans were discarded and her mouth opened in a smile that was truly not a smile.

‘This time, it won’t be me. It will be the children.’

Fire escaped her mouth as she settled back down on her bed, her body slipping into a light sleep. She was saving her physical energy, as her mind drifted over the world to prepare, and to manipulate. Not only was she a creature of legend, feared in myth, she was also a goddess and it was time for the world to worship her once more.