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At her mother’s knee, Sebille had learnt the proper way to honour the dead, by consuming their flesh. Keeping their memories and wisdom well and truly alive, so long as she lived too.
Consuming was never for the sake of the living, oh, no, and it had to be done the proper way, else the dead would linger, wrathful and unsatisfied. Everything had to be done correctly and with caution and respect. First, the body should be carefully washed and purified with water and incense, and only then was their heart to be consumed, after the ritual words were chanted. Then, the dead elf was to be wrapped with the giant leaves of the ancestor trees, starting from the fingers, and working up to the forearms and knees.
The humans of course disapproved of that ritual quite loudly.
Cannibalism, they said. Such a dirty word did they use, to describe something so innocuous. No Sebille, it is more than simply innocuous. It is transcendent.
Ah, humans. They did have their way to destroy what’s beautiful.
Elves knew better, naturally. Before the ancestor trees fell silent under the weight of the fog, before their once lush forest went dark with death and grief, before their people became a remnant of a remnant. Oh, we knew, Sebille, we knew. Become one with us, let us know you, and you us.
Sebille shook her head in stark denial. She could remember a time, when even a sinner such as she knew peace; when she was naught but a small child, wandering the woods.
After she had escaped the false adoration of the masses. After the poisonous whispers that seeped into her mind by the Mother Tree were finally silenced. Mother’s ceaseless thirst for vengeance, for a world green with only ancestor trees, spreading their roots deep within the soil of Rivellon was nightmarish enough for Sebille, along with her desire to make Sebille take root.
In this regrettably short time period, between one prison and the next, she had caught a glimpse of true childhood.
Of running through rolling green hills, the grass soft beneath the bare soles of her feet. Of resting beneath the shade of maple trees, each seemingly as old as Rivellon itself. Of bathing in the crystalline waters of a small stream, bare as the day her mother birthed her. Of peering into the darkness of the cosmos, up where the stars dwelled, moving in their timeless dance for eons, their glimmer giving people the warmth of hope. Giving Sebille herself hope.
It was too good to last.
All of that had ended in a heartbeat, when the Shadow Prince’s Wolves had captured her.
But, freedom was a sweet poison. Tasting it meant never being satisfied, until you can do so again.
And so, stubborn creature that she was, she had endured the insufferable.
Through lonely nights, shut in a room as small as a box, with nary a window nor a door, without starlight nor hope. Through the scarring of her neck, which that damnable Prince had used to make her little more than an instrument of punishment, a tool to control and execute his murderous schemes.
Blood, hers and others, had stained red the marble skin of her hands, and through all of this, she had endured.
Carving the names of the dead in her forearm, as though that would bring them back to life, as though that would save the next unfortunate soul, she carried on. As the list grew longer, more dead joining with the ground in shallow graves, Sebille swore to exact vengeance upon all those who wronged her; who wronged them.
She broke the small oaths she had taken as a child one by one; she feasted on the dead improperly, and of hunger, rather than in the correct way.
Sebille often wondered whether these elves made it to the Hall of Echoes, or whether they remained on Rivellon, haunting her still. She couldn’t bear the thought of them suffering still because of her. Perhaps it was her imagination, or that sliver of source she possessed that made her so entirely certain that she could feel them still, icy cold and lingering by her side, dead eyes urging her forward.
She couldn’t understand why they had to die; she only knew that the Prince had commanded it so, and she could not but dance to his tune.
Oh, that accursed tune the Shadow Prince hummed, that bound her limps with invisible strings and made her little more than a puppet, haunted her even unto sleep, in the nightmares she called dreams, for they were the only succour she had known for a long while.
In the end, her heart hardened, becoming steel, tempered by fire. She could not mourn the dead, for she had already joined them; in spirit if not in body.
Her mind was still sharp as a needle though, and she waited patiently, for she knew that eventually, the chains would be loosened.
There came the day when her captors weren’t nearly as careful as they had been once. That day Sebille knew freedom once more.
Hiding was never her desire, unless it meant to conceal herself like a snake in the undergrowth, silent and deadly and venomous, waiting for her prey. And conceal herself she did, lurking until the most opportune moment arrived to stick at her foes. She did so, attacking again and again, until she was uncertain whether she was more than a dagger, a needle, something that only spread blood and misery. Sebille did not hate what she’d become. Oh, no. She merely hated what they had made her become.
Alas, that glorious freedom was not to last.
She was a sourceror after all, and source wasn’t seen kindly by the Magisters. Soon enough, someone -one stripe of coward or another- blabbered on to them, intent on receiving a few gold pieces, and her nature was revealed.
When the came to arrest her, Sebille only laughed. Shrugging a shoulder, she went with them without a shred of fight, of resistance. There was someone on Fort Joy that she dearly wished to see after all, and it would be a pity to deprive poor Stingtail of her company.
Chained and collared as a dog, she knew that soon she’ll fight again, for the sweetest poison of all; freedom.