Senfe had never known her mother. Her father refused to talk about her. She had heard a servant years ago say that the woman was beautiful as ever and had a very distinctive choice in perfumes; specifically that she liked to smell like cinnamon. Constantly.

“Lovely woman, truly, though I do believe she would bath in cinnamon oil. She wanted the scent to be permanent on her! Ha!” He’d been a good servant, answered all her questions one night while he drank with her nearby, listening to his tales and rumors on more than one occasion. Senfe could never quite recall his name, despite enjoying his presence so much. She wouldn’t ever forget her first though. He died gargling on shards of glass from the whiskey bottle she smashed down his throat.

He died for insulting Senfe’s mother.

She was ten years old at the time. Her father taught her to always clean up her messes, tidy up all loose ends. “Then, you truly can do whatever it is you desire. Funny thing about life; we are our own gods, ruled by superstition and modesty. Ah.” Senfe’s father definitely thought it was funny at least, always laughing. Giggling. Chuckling like a madman. But Senfe always listened to him. One, because he was her father- and two, because she knew the man was a genius. She didn’t know the extent of his plans at any given time but she knew they were the right ones. So she had learned to clean up her mess.

Ten-year-old Senfe had buried the body of the servant, feeling he was owed that much for the snippet of useful information he shared about her mother. Her second, third, fourth, and fifth victims were his family. His wife, two children, and elderly mother. They had invited her in without any hesitation. A ten-year-old girl covered in blood screamed crisis to them. She let them clean her, took their change of clothes, and ate with them that night. Senfe stayed silent for the most part, playing the trauma angle so much as she could. She played games with the young children until their mother insisted it was time to sleep. She assured the older women that she could make her way home on her own. Senfe stepped outside and climbed into a nearby tree. When all the lights inside had been put out she simply burned the home down with a single torch. Barred the doors. Went home to brag to her father when her work was done. She didn’t know them. Didn’t owe them a thing. No burials for the crisp corpses left behind.

Since then, Senfe’s father had used her to the fullest extent of her abilities. He seemed to believe Senfe held some of his genius inside her as well and the young girl wasn’t going to argue with her father after he gave such a heavy compliment. Even if she never felt like much of a genius herself White persisted that she kept up with her studies. He taught Senfe everything she knew about casting, how to truly manipulate essence- and people- and in what specific ways to cast that could prolong one's youth, one's life. She quickly became an irreplaceable tool in her father's cabinet. The young girl was such an absorbent pupil that White had sent her into the other nations to take care of any number of discreet matters.

They changed her look every so often; around every twenty years or so, people would begin to ask questions. Senfe’s skin tone had been darker for a good thirty years, a bit lighter for the next twenty. She’d looked like a Trallen with long braided hair. Like a sister from Matrius with a shaved head and blue cloaks about her body. For years she’d posed as a lovely rosy-cheeked Nomad. She’d spent some of the best times of her life among those people. And Senfe’s eyes… Her eyes had been every color known to Noctran’s except their true color.

A stark, icy white. Like all of her siblings.

Throughout the years she helped her father, Lord White, with his operations to prepare for his silent, painstakingly slow coup. It was a long process and Senfe had killed people repeatedly at her father’s request. Her body count soon became too high to bother keeping track. She’d become different people all together for years to ensure his plans came to fruition. Senfe knew others might think it a dismal existence always at the beck and call of one great man or another but her father wasn’t just some great man; he was the greatest man. Damn near-divine so far as she could tell. When he had asked her to go and save Patri from his Serpint’s after the Fracturing began she didn’t ask a single question. Just went.

White had warned her, “Don’t get too attached to this one dear. Ten years' time and he will be at the end of your blade. A short job. I know you aren’t used to those. Your goal, for now, is just to keep him alive. I don’t care how you do it or what you do otherwise. Just keep Patri alive. Keep the guild alive. Your brother will have missed them by the time he returns.”

He’d meant Mezir, of course. And he had been right.

Mezir De Blancana the “one and only bastard” of Lord White. While she had grovelled for years dodging around in the shadows slaying anyone in her father's way, Mezir became a Legend. Loved and revered by Blancana and the other great nations. Heralded as a hero and Lord of the people. Senfe reminded herself often not to compare herself to such a failure, a disappointment to their father and his blood. She always had to remember that there were others, other children of Lord White, who had it far, far worse.

As always, Senfe had done her job. She had done it well.

The poor guild leader had been smitten with her instantly. A fact that made her job all the easier, for a while at least. The “closer” they got the more questions he asked. The more lies she had to remember. It wasn’t a problem, per se, but definitely a pain in the ass. She’d had to create some fake noble client just to stop him from asking where she always disappeared to. Patri was a smart man but Senfe was one hell of a woman and she’d put blinders on his eyes without him having ever noticed how tunneled his vision had become. She did like Pat, enjoyed the time they spent together, loved the early days when they would go out cutting down White’s guard, looting caravans and stores, but she’d grown to resent him as he had aged. As she always did with the men and women she bedded during her operations. Fun for a while but ultimately just more weak, mere mortals.

Senfe had thought their last tryst together was more than enough of a goodbye present for the homely old thief. Patri had never been hard to please. Not for her at least. He chalked it up to his unbelievable attraction, his infallible love for Senfe; she knew, however, that it was just her years of experience. She’d been Patri’s lover, his confidant, his second in command- for over a decade. None of it changed what she was to do.

It didn’t change the fact that on the night that Mezir, Patri, Amberosin, Korrin, that disgusting beast Heria, the bandaged freak, Ragoth, and Lili-Bon were huddled together in a deep crater amidst the wilders- it didn’t change that she had to kill him. Her blade would find him. He would know it was her.

Senfe was going to make sure of that.

Her poor sister could have Ragoth for all she cared.

***

She was the shadows. Born to it. Raised in it. She revered the darkness that swarmed in and around her person. Her father had taught her how to appease it, conceal it; how to make it useful. She’d rarely had a need for a name herself, scarcely wore clothes- because she was never around people. Not live ones. Not ones that lived for long, anyway. She could be naked in the shadows. She could be whatever she desired. So long as she remembered that she was always, always a blade for her father.

Lord White had always demanded her complete and utter obedience. He knew how the beast inside of her worked. Knew that it could never truly be trusted or controlled. Not in entirety. It could, however, be guided. Persuaded, he had taught her. He’d held it in himself not long before her, incubating it. Preparing it for great things before he passed it on to her to do the same. Marina, as Ragoth’s silly little mask had labeled her, was required to feed the beast whenever it so desired. To live her life as its vassal, to be its guiding light. A beacon that always led back to Lord White. It was her true purpose. It had, of course, been hard for her as a young girl. At first.

When she actually went by the name Marina the great capital of Blancana had just become a nation of its own. It was smaller then, even smaller than it was after the Fracturing, the whole of their lands could fit thrice over inside Lord White’s current estate. She was eight when Lord White appeared in her home; a small white stucco hobble that her mother and false father could scarcely afford. Marina had gone out to play with friends from a few miles away. A rather uneventful day spent exploring areas they’d seen a thousand times over but a decent one nonetheless. She hadn’t made it home until after nightfall and was afraid of what her mother might have to say. But her fear was unfounded. Marina’s true father had appeared and he had slain everyone else in the house. The pittance of a man she thought to be her father. The halfling children he sired with her mother. Her lying whore of a mother died with her hands reaching for the door. Marina almost stepped on her rigid fingers.

Lord White was a merciless shade as he tore through them, laughing on the winds that followed behind. When he was done their shabby home was stained red. Marina couldn’t recognize the remnants of her family scattered about the walls. The ceilings. She was in such a state of shock and horror that she hadn’t moved at all when White walked over to her. He was a shining white beacon in a sea of red. He moved slowly. Calm. Hands raised in a sign of peace that even she could recognize.

White, Marina’s true father, had crouched in front of her, placed a soft hand on her cheek, and ever so gently removed the contacts that her mother had made her wear every moment since the day she had been born.

He smiled. So genuine. So kind.

“ Young one,” Lord White chuckled softly, “I have come to free you.”

With that, he’d picked up her urine-soaked body and held her close. In just a few moments they had traversed back to White’s humble estate without her ever having felt anything changing. Her father had seen the question in her swollen, sordid eyes and answered her gingerly.

“In time, my sweet. You will learn. In time.”

And Marina had. Quickly.

By the time Ragoth had “found” her in the midst of the bandaged fellow's impressive massacre, she’d already been traversing the shadows for a good two decades. They kept her young. Healthy. Over the years they had even started to heal wounds for her. She’d followed Ragoth when he left “ Watcher Marina’s” cove, of course. Witnessed his colossal failure of a rescue attempt where he devastated some peasant’s home, gave empty promises, and limped away like an injured pup. Marina had immediately found her father and reported the incident, as well as Korrin’s arrival. She was his eyes and ears all around Blancana.

Marina had even been there when Senfe seduced that average looking man, Patri, just for the hell of it, it seemed. She hadn’t watched- all of it- of course, Marina was only there to transport Senfe to their father and back in time for… well whatever it was he had planned.

It was also Marina that “attacked” sweet Lili-Bon in the alleyway. Mezir had walked right into that one. As expected.

And she too was there in the clearing of the Wilders. Staring at the group before her with a burgeoning bloodlust that excited her to the core. She ran her hands over her bare nipples, breathing hard, sharp breaths as she slowly ran circles over them with two gentle fingers. The beast had made her more feral as of late. More instinctual. Marina was lacking in her self control and she knew it.

No. No. No dear. No time. Later. No- Yes. Later.

Marina took in one more sharp breath as she released her throbbing nipples. Placed her body on hold, despite her every burning desire not to do so, and prepared herself for what her father needed her to do.

“Just the one, Marina. The others must live. You may only take him.” He’d come to the shadows to talk to her. Ever thoughtful, her father.

“You may only have Ragoth.”

***

All the pieces were set. All the actions to be in motion were. He had been impeccable with his timing, his acts. Ragoth, disguised as Mezir, had truly thought he’d won one over on Lord White. But there was no such thing. Not any more. White chuckled to himself standing atop the high ledge behind as he thought about how much work had gone into making all the people gathered in the crater below him to think they were making their own decisions. He led them all there. He got them all together. And now… now he needed to tear them apart.

Their loss would strengthen those left behind, he knew. Though, it had not made the decision any easier. He loved all his children, blood, and otherwise. All of his citizens. No one would believe it, of course. But it was true. He did all of this for them. White had become a god so that they could win, in the end. Yes. One day they would surely defeat him… but first they had to be bound together. They had to share in a defeat so profound that it haunted them until their final days.

Such is the blight of Noctra’s true Legends.