Orebos

It’d been years since Sec had set foot in the great forests of Orebos, even longer since she’d set eyes on the Matron Tree. She supposed this was her homeland, though she wasn’t exactly born in the conventional sense. Grown was more accurate, awakening in that fetid root lab a fully grown adult with only the last hints of adolescence softening her new face.

After the fire and her subsequent escape, all of her focus had been on going unnoticed, hiding from cult agents and listeners amongst the crowd. She’d gotten a job working as a maid in the palace which kept her fed, gave her a bed, and was the perfect place to learn how to navigate society.

All was calm and quiet, after more than a year working cleaning bed chambers, bathrooms and the occasional ball room, Sec had begun to feel a sense of comfort and safety. All of that normalcy washed away in an instant the morning she found out that there was a Cult envoy in the palace. She was certain they were there for her, to take her with them, to reclaim their “property”. But they were not there for her, no they were there to murder a king.

In the aftermath, after the shock had faded, after Sec and everyone else in the palace had fled to other mother trees or even out of the country in Sec’s case, the Matron Tree was effectively abandoned. It was still maintained, but as a cultural site not as a residence or seat of government, a place for pilgrims to visit.

Sec smiled to herself, she was a pilgrim of a sort now.