The Telling of Nebthet, Who Walks in Ashes

A fictional character Telling. Meet Nebthet.

Hearken, you who still breathe the living air—listen to one whose veins run with tincture and regret. I was Nebthet of The Wildwood Witches, once Windfall, tender of sacred herbs and keeper of the healing arts. Now? I am a name whispered in curses, a shadow that flickers at the edge of vision. My hands were skilled in brewing remedies; now they know only the weight of poison.

I remember the scent of my Grove—sweet cedar and bitter myrrh curling beneath the golden sun, the herb gardens where nightshade grew alongside lotus root. The Romans came with their iron and ambition, but we were hidden, wrapped in wards older than their empire. And yet... and yet... it was I who let slip our sanctuary's secret. Not by blade or torture did they break me—no. By honeyed words from lips I trusted too well. A lover's whisper beneath linen sheets: "Tell me where you go when night falls." And like a fool drunk on pomegranate wine, I told her.

When dawn came, so did the legionaries. They trampled our gardens to mud; they scattered our dried herbs upon the Nile as if we were nothing more than chaff before Pharaoh's wrath. My Circle perished screaming—their names live now only within me, carried upon my tongue like funeral spices. For this crime, for this betrayal unwitting yet unforgivable, The Wildwood Witches cast me out with rites of unmaking: "No remedy shall cure you; no herb shall answer your hand."

Exile is not merely banishment—it is death without release. To walk among mortals unseen as a wraith clad in tattered linens; to hear laughter and know it can never again be yours... this is torment sharper than any Roman spear! Yet even an exile must find shelter when storms come calling—and so did I crawl into darkness where none would seek me: The Dark Masons Lodge.

Ah! You recoil at their name? Good—they would prefer it so! These builders carve not with chisel but with whispers; their stones are set not by mortar but by secrets pressed between them like dried roses in a tomb's embrace... They took me in because vengeance binds tighter than blood ever could! Among them I learned new arts: how to brew draughts that weaken stone from within; how to distil poisons that seep through brickwork and outlast dynasties...

But do not mistake my survival for redemption! Each night when jackals cry along riverbanks (as they did when Osiris lay dismembered), I feel my old self fray further away—what remains is hunger dressed as womanhood! Let Rome believe itself eternal while its emperors play gods atop gilded thrones... All things crumble given time enough... And when Caesar least expects it? Perhaps some wine shall taste of bitter almonds at his feast... perhaps a general's physician shall find her medicines oddly impotent... Who can say what hands guided such misfortunes?

Here then lies truth wrung from anguish: Betrayal cannot be undone nor wounds fully healed—but neither must they define what comes after! The Nebthet who once wept over dying children now walks silent through midnight streets sowing ruin instead of mercy... Is this justice or damnation? Even Anubis might hesitate before weighing my heart against Ma'at's feather... But does it matter? Exile has made me something else entirely: no longer healer nor wholly poisoner but rather vengeance given form — patient as desert wind eroding monuments grain by grain until nothing recognizable remains save dust whispering forgotten names back toward uncaring stars...

Visual

Slight Egyptian woman in tattered linen robes stained with a hundred tinctures, dark skin marked with never-fading sigils, kohl-lined eyes hollow with exile, faint scent of bitter myrrh and dried herbs clinging to her.

Faction: The Wildwood Witches · View the Gallery