#the blacksmith

Childhood:

Fey was born on VILE island. Her mother, Astrid, was a faculty member and a descendant of Gunhild the Gruesome, a Norwegian shieldmaiden worth her salt. Her objective was to pass on the glory and fame of the Gruesome name. It was expected of her. The only problem was, she couldn't conceive a child with her wife, Tove, a fellow faculty member, an operative of Swedish descent. Thunder and Storm- VILEs couple of modern shieldmaidens with a spectacular mission success rate.

In order to complete their mission they turned to 2 other faculty members for help, firstly The Doctor (Dr. Bellum's mentor) and Bravehart (real name: Alastair) a scottish warrior, descendant of highlanders. With a sample from him and the Doctor's experimentation they were able to implant the embryo in Astrid, the creation was a success but the delivery not so much... Astrid passed away during childbirth from complications. They had succeeded but at what cost?

Tove, Astrid's widow and Alastair were devastated and left to raise baby Fey with some help from the rest of the faculty. Training Fey to live up and maybe even surpass Gunhild's glory began as early as she could walk. The Faculty was more than happy to have a potential operative they could mold out of a blank slate. So from a young age the pressure was beaten into her very bones: Weapons training, strength, stealth, mental fortitude, survivalism in the wild, studies on history and artifacts etc.

She can replicate the smithing style from most historical eras with great accuracy, same goes for fighting styles and identifying artifacts.

The codename Blacksmith was given to her when she managed to completely restore one of Gunhild's passed down battle axes.

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Operative:

Years passed since her graduation and the old faculty had faded into obscurity- either disappearing off into a lavish retirement or meeting a gruesome demise in the attempt to satiate their greed. Her guardians were no exception...

The new generation of faculty members regarded Blacksmith as their pride and joy, even though all the hard work was already done by the previous generation.

Her main mission, her life's mission, was to research and track down the emblems left behind by the Original Five, including her own ancestor. She was supposed to exhaust any and all leads regarding the original VILE treasure, the raided artifacts were just extra cherries on top.

Despite many successful capers that brought all kinds of valuable artifacts into VILEs clutches, they kept sending her out. Over and over again. The greed was neverending. Sometimes she barely got a whole day of rest before being shoved back into the next transportation vehicle. That came with a heavy price.

When it was finally time to go on that particular caper... Her body started failing her. She was so close to grabbing the final clue to the location of the first emblem but her vision started blurring and she eventually fainted. Next thing she knew her body was plummeting several meters down a cliff. The Cleaners found her hours later, retrieved and transported her back to the island.

After a grueling recovery period, she felt ready to hop back on the saddle despite the lingering health issues, she didn't want to abandon the one thing that gave her existence meaning. But the new faculty deemed her incapable for field missions.

Thankfully at the time she had people to lean on. Her long time girlfriend, Brunt and her old friend and coworker Shadowsan. All she could do those days to keep the reality of her situation at bay, was help train the new class of operatives alongside them as potential faculty members. Eventually her partner in both crime and love finally managed to ascend into the Faculty's rank. All her hard work paid off. Fey of course was happy for her, she could remember Brunt, now Coach Brunt- babbling on about how she'd strive to reach that power with that charming southern accent of hers.

After a while though, the power dynamic caused a rift between them. They both decided it was for the better to stop having expectations and remained good friends instead.

She was left behind in the candidate rank with Shadowsan. They were friendly as students, they worked well together as teachers aids too. The two of them grew closer together as coworkers, hanging out at the end of the day to rant about the rowdy students over drinks. Seeking sanity in the small quiet moments. Then the faculty struck again. After Wolfe's disappearance, Shadowsan was chosen to replace him, now two of her closest friends had become faculty members. She watched him leave for that mission, days later he returned, supposedly triumphant with Wolfe's "abandoned" daughter in his arms.

She sought him out to ask what became of their favourite teacher and accidentally caught him lying on the mission report. Shadowsan broke into cold sweat at the thought of getting exposed, Blacksmith only gave him a sad smile and hugged him tight. It was their secret now.

As someone who was born and raised there, she had great sympathy for the girl. If anyone knew what it was like to grow up there, it was her. It felt like a brand new purpose, the “legend” could wait. So she, Coach Brunt and Shadowsan took most of the responsibility for raising the kid as best they could under those circumstances.

The bond they formed in the guardian role felt like the world had color again. She truly wanted to help him raise that kid and he even implemented a new rule after seeing what early pressure did to Blacksmith. The rule stated that Blacksheep should be free to choose if she wants to enroll in classes or not when she reaches the minimum admission age. Fey was glad to see someone learn from past mistakes.

But as the girl grew up and needed them less and less, Coach Brunt in denial refused to take her eyes off Lambkins and Shadowsan started growing colder. They kept sending him out on toiling missions and he looked more and more miserable each time he came back... She tried to keep the trio close, combining classes and group projects with the students as an excuse, but to no avail.

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The Beginning of the End:

Eventually Blacksheep left. Then Shadowsan left too. Coach Brunt was descending into madness with each betrayal, becoming more aggressive and irritable each time.

She resorted to simply isolating herself into the weapon's workshop, doing the only thing she was still good at. And now that the world was quiet, their protege was all grown up and there wasn't much more left to do to save her personal relationships- the reality of her situation dawned upon her once more. She never completed her original mission, she was far from the legend she was supposed to be… one more reason to keep hiding away in shame along with a body deteriorating little by little ever since the accident, she hadn't told anyone about it either. A burnt out hermit, keeping her head down and fulfilling weapons orders.

As she was mending Roundabout's cane sword for the third damned time that month, in the darkness and solitude, with the scent of molten metal overwhelming her senses, the bitter brain kept bouncing between two extremes. She would either strive to find that damned treasure and finally prove herself in order to join them at the big table or just- give up. Leave or die, it didn't matter. And then as if the universe noticed her insanity after all this time, she was finally summoned back to the conference room with a choice to make.

To be continued.

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