Chapter Text
The sounds that echoed through the lower decks of The Merryweather were those of lethargy—the low growls and whines of source hounds nipping at binds, paired with the rhythmic sound of prisoners pacing across the creaking floorboards. The recycled air smelt of dampness, mold, and rot, shared by far too many lungs in too little space. Every couple of seconds, the transfer ship groaned in a quiet agony as the tide licked at her hull.
Deep within the bowels of the ship, in the middle of the monotony, were the prisoners’ commons. Here, sourcerer cattle ate, mingled, and lived, overseen by twice as many magisters, an extremity considered their current state, that being malnourished and bound by source collars.
It was within this hollowed heart that Sebille sat at the center of it all. Alone at a wooden table, her tall and lithe elven form towered over the crowd of other races—humans, dwarves, and even lizards, much to Sebille’s irreparable disdain—that spanned the commons. She was the only elf held captive besides one other that was most curious and un-elf-like.
Sebille’s slender fingers ran up and down her throat, scratching at an insatiable itch. Her neck felt strangled despite a lack of shackles physically pinching her skin. It was the hovering collar circling her neck, made of metal and pulsing with a vivid blue, that bothered her.
In her right hand, Sebille held a tattoo needle. Meticulously, and with her gaze trained on the instrument, she raised its pointed end to her collar and began prodding at the elaborate contraption. As she did so, an incredible numbness flooded her form, starting at her elongated fingertips and running all the way to her beating heart, the sensation almost paralyzing.
Sebille hissed and withdrew her needle. Feeling burst back into her body at such a pace that it almost took her breath away, forcing a soft gasp from her mouth.
“Fettered again, it seems,” came a familiar, velvety voice from the other side of the table. Its arrival made Sebille growl, attention turning to its source. The image that met her was that of a young elven woman with a pair of light umber eyes and long brown hair held in a strict, sophisticated bun; her sharp facial features and general appearance faintly echoed Sebille’s own. “Exactly as you wished it.”
The woman gracefully sat down across from Sebille. She was remarkably out of place, her figure draped in ornate leafy green armor that marked her as a member of the upper class in elven society—making her a victim. Sebille’s victim.
“Spectre.” Sebille glared indignantly at the elven woman. “I was hoping you were gone for good,” she said under her breath. Her eyes scanned over her fellow chattering prisoners who lingered nearby, looking to see if they so much as noticed the ghost pestering her.
The spectre watched Sebille’s shifting gaze as a small smirk tugged at the corners of her lips. “Worry not,” she said with a wave of her hand. “It appears I fool the eyes of both sourcerers and magisters.”
Sebille spoke in a mocking drawl. “So they can't see or hear you? Lucky them.”
“And they maintain the choice to speak to people other than you, Sebille.” The spectre’s smirk widened. “Lucky them, indeed.”
“As if any of the cretins here are capable of discussion.” Sebille rolled her eyes, turning around to face away from the spectre, her forearms hanging off the table while her twisted needle swung lazily from her fingers. Her focus bounced around the commons, taking in the sight of its other inhabitants as she crossed her tatter-covered legs.
A creature with ruby scales was the first thing to catch her eye, much to Sebille’s chagrin: a lizardman on the other side of the room speaking boastfully to a female counterpart, a blue thing with large frills. Short spines erupted from the top of his head and extended down his neck, and his beady orange eyes were cold and piercing. Despite his savage appearance, his claws moved gracefully as he spoke, animating his words with the mannerisms of a lord. He was a contradiction. He was a bane on the world that Sebille yearned to erase.
Without thinking, Sebille’s fingers brushed against the spiral-shaped scar on her cheek.
“Not keen on the lizards?” came the spectre’s voice again, this time from beside Sebille, immediately souring the taste on her tongue. “How out of character.”
“Save it, Spectre.” Sebille’s words left her in a hiss. Her grip on her needle tightened as her lips twisted into a snarl, glowering at the space to her left where the spectre lingered, donning a knowing grin.
“Oh, you’re thinking of him.” The spectre laughed. “You see him in the mirror, in those reptiles, in your own skin.” The spectre reached forward, her hand ghosting over Sebille’s bare arm, columns of jagged names written in rune-like characters staining it: elven names written in elven script.
“Quiet.” Sebille felt a boil ignite in her stomach. Her gaze darted around. No one was looking at her. Yet. “Even after all this time, you’re still just a ghost—an aberration—my mistake. You know nothing.”
The spectre shook her head. “I know you. I know everything about you—you’re predictable, a girl frightened by the dark, a skittish rabbit who flees at the slightest rustle in the grass.”
Sebille’s whole body tensed as the spectre leaned closer, the space between their faces shrinking. She could see every sharp edge in the young woman’s face, every golden speck in her eyes, each one of them burning like embers in the night.
“Face it, Sebille,” the spectre said. Sebille bared her teeth. “He owns you. Your hatred makes it so. You’re nothing but his little—”
“I said quiet!”
Sebille’s hand slammed against the table. She froze. Suddenly, all eyes were on her.
Over two dozen gazes burned into Sebille’s flesh as a heavy hush hung over the previously lively commons. Tentatively, Sebille’s focus flickered away from the smug spectre, sweeping over those staring at her. Miscellaneous onlookers sneered before turning away, annoyed; that odd elf in the corner watched her, puzzled; a fiery-haired woman standing beside a group of kids observed, concerned; and then there was the lizard. The red lizard.
His attention wasn’t trained on her. No, it was trained on the slave scar that sullied her fair skin, the blemish that his rabid kin so graciously gave her. His spiked tail flicked, and he looked as if he were about to move.
Sebille didn’t give him the chance.
Immediately, she stood. The spectre remained lounging, long fingers drumming insistently against the table, a noise grating as sandpaper. Catching Sebille’s eye, the spectre merely chuckled.
Sebille shot her a severe glare before turning and slinking away from both the spectre and the crowd. She passed a pair of chatting magister guards, none the wiser, and exited the commons, walking through the gloomy, dank hallway to her designated bunkroom as the ship swayed below her. With each churn and creak of the ship, Sebille felt her vision swim.
The spectre.
Sebille’s free hand turned to a fist as her hand with the needle lifted to her mouth, its fine point resting on her lip.
The spectre was right, in a way, no matter how much it pissed Sebille off to admit it—she was not free from him. Not yet, but soon. Very soon.
With a heavy exhale, Sebille pulled her needle and the hand that held it backward to glance down at the interior of her forearm. Written in the same elegant script as the others marring her skin, three names sat there, carved into her flesh with black ink.
Stingtail.
Roost Anlon.
The Master.
These are the three who transformed her into this monster, a slayer of her people. These are the three who will die by her hands, and her hands alone.
A laugh tore from her throat. Whatever the spectre thought she achieved, all it did was make Sebille’s heart yearn further for the taste of their blood. Sebille vowed it now: There shall be no more Masters. There shall be no more ghosts, phantoms, or spectres.
Then, and only then, shall Sebille be free.
Her declaration rattled through her brain as she continued, now nearly halfway to the bunks. An eerie quiet cloaked the lower deck of the ship, all silent except for one thing: the softest sound of pitter-patter. Sebille’s ears shifted up and down. She couldn’t place what it was.
Gradually, the noise intensified. It was only then that Sebille realized the sound was no pitter-patter; rather, it was footsteps heading her way.
Her shoulders turned taut. A corner was just on the horizon, swallowed by shadow. Clenching her jaw, Sebille slipped into the darkness as she reached the corner, crouching and awaiting her pursuer. The footsteps grew louder. Slowly, they closed in on Sebille. And then, from around the corner—
The fiery-haired woman appeared.
Sebille’s eyes narrowed. She leapt forward before the woman could react, pushing her up against the interior wooden hull of the ship. From her grip, Sebille’s needle rose, its sharp end digging into the side of the stranger’s neck.
“Little lamb, astray from her flock,” Sebille said. The woman’s softly lit face was one of surprise as Sebille lifted her by the collar of the rags she wore, all the while dwarfing her petite human form. “Why are you stalking me?”
Locks of white hair spilling from the peak of her hairline fell over the young woman’s stormy eyes as she gaped, the confusion slowly slipping from her expression. “Woah, woah, woah,” she said. “Stalking? Me? I’d never! I mean, I was just gonna slip by without being a bother, but then you—”
Sebille sunk her needle into the stranger’s flesh, just enough to draw a single droplet of blood. It rolled downward, a streak of red against otherwise pale skin, a sight all too familiar for Sebille’s fractured mind.
The woman grimaced. “Ow! Okay!” Sebille watched her throat bob. “When you have a dagger at your throat, you should probably get to the point. I get it!”
The woman received another sharp stare. Under the heat of Sebille’s gaze, her lips quivered, unsure whether to open or close. After a beat of uncertainty, her limbs went limp. The look on her face became surprisingly sober.
“Look.” Her eyes locked with Sebille’s. “I saw you in the commons. You seemed… haunted.” The stranger’s mouth curled upward into a fragile smile. “I know what that’s like—to be alone, but not really.” She chuckled. “Never really.”
Sebille’s less-than-pleased expression quickly masked itself as a smirk. “A caring thing, aren’t you, lamb?”
She removed her needle from the woman’s throat, yet she refused to relinquish her domineering position. Instead, she closed the distance, her mouth hovering over the stranger’s neck and that short line of red that colored it.
Her breath caressed the stranger’s skin. “Ease your troubled mind; I am perfectly well.”
“Well?” The woman’s brow furrowed, her cheeks turning the lightest pink as her body pivoted away from Sebille’s. “If ‘well’ means bickering with the unseen in the middle of a crowded room, then yeah, I s’pose you’re well.”
A perturbed gust fled from Sebille’s nostrils. She held the stranger still, pressing forward without a word, even as the woman stammered out a protest. “Wait, what’re you—”
Before she could finish, however, Sebille’s tongue stuck out from her parted lips and ran up the other woman’s neck, capturing the rogue blood that tainted her skin and the thin layer of sweat that overlaid it just below her source collar.
The first thing to come was the taste: a dark, almost overwhelmingly chaotic mixture of metallic tang and saltiness. Then burst forth an image—one of herself through the eyes of the woman—sitting at the table in the commons and speaking inconspicuously to no one in specific. It was before the outburst, before she even raised her voice at the spectre’s taunts. At the sight, a feeling flared: a swelling desire to reach outward, a strange, aching familiarity that caught Sebille entirely off guard.
It was sickening, having this sensation from another directed at her. And yet, Sebille’s grasp on the stranger weakened as it ruptured through her borrowed mind.
“By the Seven…” Under her hold, a nervous laugh escaped the woman. “Is that how you greet everyone, or am I the exception?”
Sebille licked her lips, her tongue still buzzing with the aftertaste of the woman, the alien intensity of her emotions still imprinted into Sebille’s heart. She steadied herself before speaking again, bending over to meet the woman’s gaze straight on. “Only those with a peculiar interest in me,” she replied, the tiniest bit breathless. “And you—in particular—have been watching me for quite some time.”
The woman’s face fell. “How did you—”
“Let’s just say I have an aptitude for extracting information.” She toyed with her needle as it hung at her thigh, her palm pressed flat against the ever-churning hull, locking the stranger in place. “Now, care to explain your fixation, or must I extract that from you, too?”
“No!” The woman flapped her hands up and down. “No need for that, or any more licking, for that matter. Please, I’ll happily explain as long as you hear me out, miss—?”
“—Sebille.”
“Sebille!” she said. “I’m Lohse, and I’m here ‘cause I want to help you. Nothing more, nothing less.”
Sebille stared at the woman—Lohse, or so she claimed. “Help,” she echoed, testing the word on her tongue. It was heavy with promises, promises impossible to fulfill. “You have no idea what that entails, do you, little lamb?”
“When it comes to the realm of the disembodied? I do. I really, really do.” Lohse stared back at her with equal attention, the soft features of her face and her two-toned hair illuminated by a gentle white light. “I know how ugly it can be, how invasive it is. Living with it all, I’m just so… exhausted.” She choked out a laugh. “You must be too.”
Lohse’s deep grey eyes were large and shining, reflecting Sebille's own visage—the vague outline of a long-eared woman, her dark hair held back in a messy ponytail, the little smirk layered over her face barely holding on to her lips. Under that smirk was a burden, dark and all-consuming, a chained void aching to be freed.
Lohse took a single step forward, those knowing eyes of hers only growing bigger the closer they became. “So, yeah. I can help,” she whispered. “But only if you let me.”
There was a brief moment of hush. The reflected woman tensed and was soon to move, but suddenly—
A deafening howl. The entire ship lurched as a shockwave ripped through it.
Sebille felt pain. Terrible pain. Her head slammed into the wall as her body was flung backward, an electric sting rushing through her veins. She gasped for breath, a short respite before her form was hurled again, this time to the floor.
She saw Lohse lying motionless, fiery curls fanned out against the deck boards.
A sharp crack.
And then—
Darkness.