Sealing the Great Serpent

Summary

 * Location: Serpent's Grotto
 * Author: Unknown

Content
The Sea Serpent or Great Serpent was a curse brought to our clan for failing to respect the sea. We learn that it was formed from the blood of a magnificent scaly fish that pleaded for its life from one of our foremothers, but was not spared.

It is our duty to keep it from rising up and destroying the ships that come to our land and the land itself.

The Great Serpent is blood-mad, and the only thing that can seal it is blood. We learned this the first time it attacked.

Our clan defended boldly and bravely. Their courage did not fail them. But their mortal bodies, small and weak in the Great Serpent's mighty jaws, did. The sea, they say, turned red in that struggle, and still the Great Serpent was insatiable.

Then Elain stepped forward. Elain was a great warrior, but what she proposed was not war. "Set down your weapons," she said.

At first, the clan would not listen. They only saw the imperative to fight.

But then another warrior spoke up. "Elain is right," Ralos said. "Only Old Magic can be used to defeat the Great Serpent."

By this Ralos meant the magic of blood. A third Elf spoke up then, Valir. "It is true. I had a dream last night that we would defeat the serpent, not with hundreds of deaths, but with three. I saw three wells, filled with blood and the Great Serpent in chains beneath the sea."

Valir was known to be a prophet, so at this the clan listened. They agreed on a course of action. The sealing wells were made, according to what Valir had seen in the dream. Elain, Ralos, and Valir each volunteered in turn to give their lives to seal away the Great Serpent.

To this day, our clan guards those wells against intruders who would free the serpent. We call them Elain, Ralos, and Valir, and they stand among us as sentinels and protectors.