Queen Azshara had lived a long and remarkable life.
For the vast majority of her existence was Azshara a creature of immortal beauty and power, surrounded by grandiose luxuries few individuals could dream of possessing for their own. She had erected an empire spanning the length of this planet in her youth, commanded the presence and allegiance of millions and owed fealty or rivalry to no one. Her main resource of study and focus into the world and vast cosmos yet to heed her call was the Well of Eternity, a font of unlimited fable, magics and mysteries whether hers to know alone or still to fall into her grasp; the shining, glittering gem of Azshara's kingdom taking the shape of a majestic arcane pool. This was a time where she did as she willed and few voices stood in the way to hinder her demands.
Alas, times did change and points of view had a tendency to succumb to that effect. Azshara had witnessed this fact of life first hand, when her empire was at its glorious apex. Delving her mind into her Well of Eternity, she had born witness to an entity of unparalleled strength. He requested her aid in entering Azeroth from the Well, calling himself the titan Sargeras. Azshara, sensing this great power emanating from him, power so similar to hers and with potential to forever change Azeroth to an image of perfection befitting its empress, did as he wished, inviting him and his armies to her realm.
And so the titan's minions, demons and fiends of all breeds, entered on a river of fel-fire and blood. By tooth, claw, fist and sword they slaughtered what kaldorei resisted their entry and purpose, sparing no malefactor or innocent in their mission to enact their master's will. To see her people perish in so brutal a fashion was something Azshara witnessed in utmost sorrow, but she knew their sacrifices all assuredly necessary for the new world to be born, or so she suspected. Her people though, the impudent, petulant masses they were, rose up against her as one defiant voice and cast out the titan, his demons and influence in one fateful stroke, at a cost so unimaginably horrific that Azshara could scarcely comprehend it even as she saw it occur before her.
Change could at times prove to be a bitter truth. While that fact stood, some things had the will to refuse change's demands. Even as her first empire fell to ruin all around her at the hands of her inane, rebellious subordinates, even as she was banished beneath the sea at the sight of the Sundering of her Well of Eternity, Azshara the Vainglorious commanded the adoration of what people who still remained by her side. Even as her form and the forms of her myriad of loyal subjects mutated into that of the serpentine, sea-dwelling naga they now were, their love for her was absolute and her pride undeniable.
Where once was an empress of the land, ruler of Azeroth itself, now drifted an indomitable Queen of the Sea. Her newfound power secured by a pact with an ancient, eldritch entity, all the oceans of this world held sway to her grasp. All tides paid their tithe to her, all vassal creatures their tributes. By her treacherous former subjects' betrayal she had traded one life for another, and as one to make the most of any given situation, she regretted it not.
And yet, for her lack of regret, it was not enough. Still she hungered. Still she wanted for more. Ever did she want for more, yearn for far greater things to claim for her own. But if she did take them, and she often did, such trinkets would satiate her immortal hunger only briefly. She could have risen from her domain eons ago to crush the pitiful, twisted skeleton that remained of her former, fractured empire, and she knew in her heart of hearts that it would never be enough.
Impatient as she often was, Queen Azshara summed up an incredible resistance for this one goal, this one objective to wait for her true prize to present itself. She fasted her appetite for this one ultimate accomplishment, waiting for a proper moment, ripe and ready to be plucked, to present itself. Her arcane majesty ever at her disposal, she often spied upon the masses dwelling on the land, hoping to see that which she sought finally emerging, whatever it was destined to be. What she saw, more often than not, were but children. Nations of simple children, waging their insipid means of warcraft upon one another for fickle purposes, building and destroying things at a flick of a wrist and a blink of an eye. Sometimes it was amusing to bear witness to, to see all that blood wasted and horrors enacted with every passing day, but more often was it not.
Azshara only fleetingly chose to get involved in these paltry battles and pathetic skirmishes, for if she did, what would happen if her true prize manifested while her gaze was held elsewhere? Azshara far preferred to let her people and pawns do the duty of reminding the ungrateful world that its true mistress was alive and well, only occasionally letting a finger or two of her direct involvement bless their missions. She saw her people rise and fall in these conquests of the surface many a time. Yet they, or anything done by the mortal folk above had yet to yield anything worthwhile.
The queen's surprise, then, was something astounding and fierce when she observed one such trinket finally fall into her domain. And it was all by accident and chance that it had done so.
Upon one still day spent reclining in the seat of her power, Queen Azshara was mustering but a fraction of her godlike power to observe the happenings of the mortal world above. Where she had sent her errant gaze first was the storming sea neighboring the hated lands of Darnassus, and there she witnessed a lone shape fall into the choppy brine from a vessel constructed of wood and metal. The ship abandoning it, that lone shape itself was nothing special—it was a weak and sickly thing doomed to perish in the cold ocean's grasp, or so she first thought.
By chance, Azshara chose to focus on this entity. Her curiosity was piqued truly when she realized just what this entity was. It was an elf, a night elf, and he had leapt into the uncaring sea by his own admission. As the powerful waves threw him about like a straw doll and soon began dragging him under, Azshara witnessed the despair shining with clarity in his strange, pink eyes—a color natural to him and wholly unique among his people. As was his flesh, showing as palest white, his long hair as well. He was indeed a unique creature, young and filled with a life all his own, and now he was soon to die, as he seemed to wish.
But Azshara could not- would not permit that. He had given up his own life, thrown it to the sea like a rock from the shoreline, but as it stood that life was in her hands now. And by the all-spying eyes of N'Zoth the Corruptor, she would not let him slip betwixt her fingers so easily!
With purpose and preternatural speed, Queen Azshara departed from Nazjatar. A minute had passed and a hundred thousand miles traversed when the naga demigoddess finally reached her quarry. By that point the sea had devoured him and he had sunk low, far beneath the choppy, storming waves above him and her. His body had become prone and muscles relaxed, his pale pink eyes now dull and lifeless. Death was at his doorstep, that was plain to see.
Death though, as Azshara decreed by virtue of her incontestable will, was not fated to come for him this day. She focused but a measly fraction of her arcane might. With one small nod of her regal crown, her spell was cast.
The effects of her spent magic were immediate. As small portions of the interior of the elf's body started to change, the flesh about his neck began to shift to accommodate them. A second later the areas had split into several serrated lines, all horizontally positioned beneath the other starting just behind the jaw and ending midways down his neck. Filamentous strands, short and fibrous like tiny feathers, protruded from these cracks as they formed and expanded, intaking water the moment they opened.
And so Azshara's spell concluded. Now blessed by her own hand with gills and the necessary lungs to ingest the salty brine of the depths, the elf unleashed a long gasp; perhaps the longest he had ever given in his short life. Bubbles scattered from his mouth in thick abundance as they expelled the remaining air within his body, clustering together as they fled for the surface above that he had forsaken by his own admission. His dull pink eyes gained a vivid texture that came with life, and they closed. No longer chained by death's clutches, he drifted about loosely in the current. Azshara drifted with him, looking over his thin, sinewy shape all the while. She approached him in one swift movement, locking her many arms around his thin frame, holding him close and feeling his soft flesh against hers.
The moment she touched him the naga queen felt something had never before experienced. The second his skin touched hers, she felt something sharp enter her. It pervaded her entire being, reaching for her soul and took deep root. It warmed her, her flesh ever so cold from the many ages spent in the cold dark below. A single, incredible thought screamed through her head by its lone self as she registered this sensation, this wonderful sensation.
Was this creature the treasure she had been waiting to acquire for so long?
Azshara knew not for certain, but her endless hunger longing to be sated more than anything, she chose to believe it to be so. She held him in her embrace for a time, resting her head upon his shoulder as she felt him adapting to his environment. She felt his chest heave with ever heavy breath he swallowed, and she adored it. Only when she sensed him stir did she pull herself back, to both look at him as he awakened and to let him know of just who it was who had spared his life.
The elf regained consciousness at a sluggish pace. The two luminous pink spheres that were his eyes opened slowly, still yet to retake their true sight. When they steadied and gained awareness, they witnessed Azshara first and focused upon her at once.
For a minute he stayed like this. His expression was calm stillness, at first. Soon it became realization, and in a fraction of the time he took to reawaken that realization turned quickly to shock. Azshara grinned as she saw him quiver in a startled display, all too clearly tasting the wonderful surprise in his queer pink eyes. When his shock ripened into something resembling fear, the wise and just queen chose to comfort him.
"Fear not, little elf," she hushed in her beautiful voice, running her fingers through his silky hair as it flowed freely in the water, white as snow as every long thread was. "You are safe and you are well. I, Queen Azshara, have rescued you. And the sights I plan to show you are numerous and spectacular..."
Those inviting words struck the elf in a different manner than intended. Disbelief and horror now entered his bony visage. As soon as he was able he opened his mouth in response to scream. No sound fled his maw, only what few remaining bubbles of air he still clung to. It was by Azshara's touch that he could now breathe beneath the waves, but she had yet to permit him capability of speech.
Unexpected as the reaction was, it did not dampen what emotion the naga queen felt toward him. Sifting her fingers from his head to the base of his skull, she took firm, but fair hold and steadied him. Bringing her her face close, her mouth locked locked on to his. She passionately kissed this elf, this unique and frail creature, and she deeply appreciated what new experiences he had to offer.
His taste was decidedly sweet. Azshara treasured sweet things. So gratifying a quality as that was a rarity both coveted and despised in the bitter, salty depths of the sea. Her hand continued holding his head motionless in place, motionless against hers, her mouth avariciously craving more of the splendid, heavenly ambrosia his soft lips offered and unwilling to be denied. He tried struggling against her superior might, tried to wrench himself free of her cold grasp as it ensnared him in a multitude of arms and tentacular appendages, but it was all futile.
And it was all too much, it seemed. His resistance eventually waned, not out of acceptance, but from exhaustion. He shuddered one final time. His eyes rolled slowly to the back of his head, closing once more as his body again fell still.
Only when Azshara saw what had happened with her many eyes did she finally choose to end her kiss. She pulled herself back to observe him in full detail. He had again passed out; this time it was his emotions that had overcoming his senses, forcing his sickly form to react in the only way it thought best. For his weakness, Azshara only smiled. Such a thing was to be expected after all. For a sickly, melancholy mortal elf of the land to be rescued from certain death and fall into the bewitching embrace of the illustrious queen of the naga herself would come as a hefty surprise, to him or to any sane creature. And some creatures were simply incapable of handling the presence of the divine for too long.
With her catch safely in her clutches, Queen Azshara began her long venture back to the abyssal depths from whence she had emerged. The light grew weaker as she entered depths so strong in their weight that they could crush what fools dare traipse here unpermitted. Soon blackness, the all-consuming void it was, overcame her sights and the last stretching fingers of light faltered and vanished.
Azshara would spare an occasional glance at her quarry as she carried him off to her cold dark underworld. Whether or not he was the object she had been yearning for for so long, this creature would regardless be an intriguing specimen to preoccupy her attention with, to say the least. Azshara knew this for certain, and as the queen of her people, a position held only by the wisest creature to dwell within the ocean of Azeroth, she was scarcely ever wrong. She did wonder how great a time it would take him to adapt to his new life in her Nazjatar, how terribly he would writhe and thrash about in his efforts to do so. She smirked at the image, but much more so were her thoughts held, bated and primed, on how well he would take to the reserved position of being her new consort.
Oh, how she wondered this...