Sarphlies, The Sister of Wrath

𝐼. Roots

There are many things all beings wish to forget, sentient or not.

Sarphlies simply wished she was never allowed the prowess of remembrance. Unfaithful roots were the cause of evil many times, but Sarphlies as a whole was unholy from day one. Even to a non-believer like herself. She was the daughter of a tiefling, mighty half demon and an enslaved beast, or so she thought that was how such a thing came to be. She took no pleasure in researching her lineage that so deeply rooted back to the Prince of Evil. She took no joy even endeavoring in the business of the infernal kind.

To her relief, however, her mother Ora was never a beast at heart. But to the many, the gentle orc was just as uncanny as she was just like they say: food for fodder. She was not enveloped in the shamanic worships of her people, and thus, a millenia prior, it seemed, sold off as property would. She was far too kind, existing in a world that craved for wars as much as its people craved for heavy drinks in dusty old taverns.

Sarphlies remembers her mother with adoration, after all, she was the one to run when both their lives were threatened by the hell creatures that treated the frail Ora like a pile of garbage turned pyre. Orcs are strong, yet hated creatures. Little did the young tiefling-orc know she would come to be amongst the most hated. But, not more than an exiled and cast away orc woman, patronized and objectified, carrying the seed of Hell itself. Sarphlies became then the personification of shame herself, in the shape of a being.

It was odd, to think a hated kin such as the hellbent tieflings would have enslaved a being that saw itself as greater. In actuality, the men did. The women were cargo or acquisitions. And disposable when not in agreement with the patriarchal notions of the mountain orcs. That was the gist of how Ora ended up as a slave to the Asmodeian offspring. And, as the rule follows, all and all offspring of the deranged God will abide to him with the preserved purity of their blood. Not Sarphlies, however, half orc due to the stubbornness from Ora's roots. No parasitic hell nature could overpower the righteousness of life of an orc. And, that was what saved Sarphlies and her chance at redemption. The two greatest evils in her life, battling for dominance within the half-bred being.

There was something wise that Sarphlies carried within her mind and remembered at all times, a promise she had kept unconditionally to her dear mother Ora saying, "Lat liwo olk der tozaz. Ul tieflings saib parhor gimb alnej nart lat." (Promise me you'll never travel west. They can't ever find us.)

So, she, a forced nomad that always found rest in a place called home, never travelled west. Any place but the place where Ora had been enslaved and treated as lowly as they come. Any place but Kintyrnfirzyr.

There was a place that the tiefling-orc could find peace after her travels, one place where she wasn't a demonic offspring or a wretched existence. It was small and humble, and quite possibly not suitable for anyone to live there but Sarphlies. It was a cabin, a cottage where Sarphlies grew to be the young woman she was, a place coated in tall climbing greenery, all kinds of ivies and creepers, and hidden from view by shrubs and tall trees that dominated the swampy woods. Some of those branches sometimes made their way to the inside of the cottage that Ora and Sarphlies had built once they found their safe grounds. And, like so, Sarphlies was in a constant fight against the traces of ever growing nature, the stubborn ivies that clung past the gaps of the worn out trunks that made up walls. They were a reminder life moved on and Sarphlies grew older with the passing days in which she only lived accompanied by memories of the feeble and aging Ora.

Madness was a creeper that joined the ever climbing ivies that shrouded the frail cabin the young half-orc had built with her mother. Silence was deafening in the middle of the swampy forest, amidst quicksands that littered the way out of the area. So, Sarphlies tended to break the silence. She knew how to identify the types of terrains, and she knew how to travel past them, since hunting was a task she needed to undergo, especially so she could keep her demeaning and bulky shape and fend off whichever evils.