The elf was placed under two strong curses. They could not die no matter what, and any time they tried to meditate, they fell into a deep sleep, dreams and all. -- BKF
Immortality isn't always a blessing. It isn't an accident, either. On rare occasions, it is truly a curse.
Once upon a time, a mighty hero slayed a Dragon. This would normally be something welcomed as a legend in their own lifetime. Alas, this was the Dragon God of Equity. Thus, the very idea of it was lost for millennia.
There would not be a god for it for millennia more.
For such a blight on the making of the young world, the gods in existence cursed that hero forever. Since he was an Elf, they had a unique torment for him. Living forever was just the start, if one could call it living. The second curse was sleep.
Elves have always been disturbed by dreams and shadows. Two things that never belonged to their origin realm of Nanogh. They could become used to their own shadows, but dreams... dreams were antithesis to their nature. Anathema to their sanity.
There's nothing an Elf despises more than something they cannot control.
The incoherence and randomness of dreams terrify them and soon turn those dreams into nightmares. It's no surprise that Elves learned to meditate and rest without dreams, and it's no shock that they do so as soon as possible.
It took the hero five nights to learn the depths of their curse.
They were in their six hundreds at the time. Meditation should have been rote and easy. On the first night, they chalked it up to the exhaustion of the battle. On the second, they merely thought they were out of sorts from the previous evening. By the third, they began making an effort.
On the fifth evening, they had set up everything that helped them meditate back when they were a child[1]. Instead of meditative torpor, they fell deep into nightmarish slumber.
A visit to the nearest temple made the diagnosis clear.
They were cursed.
It took them two weeks to avoid rest altogether. A further month before they were afflicted with The Blight. The dark pollution of their blood showed underneath their skin at its thinnest points first. It spread from there, and any Elf could tell at a glance that the hero was not healthy at all.
In five years, the hero began trying to die. Thus came the truest depths of their curse.
Other immortals are not deathless. When the gods are done with them, they can die. Or they can die and be revived by their gods. The cursed hero suffered the pain of any mortal injury, and then the pain of healing from it. Fighting the need for sleep all the time. They can starve, but suffer the pains of hunger. They can drown, but still wander under the waves.
So if you see a crazed Elf in the wide world, underweight and beset with a spiderweb of dark veins all over their body... beware. They are desperate to die, but cannot do so. They will do anything to be sure you kill them again. And, if you are not thorough enough again, and again, and again.
They once swallowed an Explosive Sphere bead, and jumped off a cliff to detonate it.
It took them seven weeks to re-corporate.
[1] Elven children are not considered adults until one hundred years of age.
[Photo by Ron Whitaker on Unsplash]
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