Round one of the championship match had begun, and amid the thunderous applause, Nadine Amaryllis mourned. Mourned the sins she had committed. Mourned the punishment she had received.
As an entire arena’s worth of cheers rained down upon her, she thought to herself: I was never meant to stand in the spotlight like this.
Nadine Amaryllis wasn’t even her real name. She had long since forsaken the name her parents had given her, though by now there was no one left alive who would recognize it.
She was born to a family of Assassins that carried out the Imperial Court’s dark bidding. Concealed in the shadows of the nation’s history, their bloodstained legacy spanned many generations. Nadine herself was only a girl of twelve when she first joined their ranks. Children had their uses, after all.
She didn’t question it. She didn’t—couldn’t—feel fear. Fear would only impair her ability to work.
The day she was born, her father was disappointed. As she recalled, her mother once let slip that the first thing out of his mouth had been, “I was expecting a son.”
Her family was strictly patriarchal, and the expectation was that only a son could inherit their legacy. But giving birth to Nadine had taken its toll on her mother, and she was told she could no longer bear children. And once Nadine had reached an age where she could comprehend the implications of that, she desperately threw herself into her training, absorbing everything her father taught her about the craft.
She forbade herself to speak or dress like a lady. Instead, she focused on combat training, toxicology, and assassination techniques. These were the skills she needed to survive as a child Assassin. And Nadine was gifted.
One day, she overheard her father say, “She’s doing quite well for a girl.” Oh, how her heart danced. For a girl! She was sure her macho, manly father had finally accepted her as his heir, despite her gender.
But this was a delusion all her own.
One night, when Nadine was seventeen, her father came home with an unfamiliar young man—the sixth son of a different Assassin family, apparently. Her father told her that this stranger would be the new heir of the family. She was to marry him, teach him everything she knew, and ultimately “go back to being a woman,” in his words.
Three months later, as the wedding approached, Nadine was on her way home from a spontaneous imperial job request in a distant part of the country. And when she arrived, all that remained of the family mansion was cold, ashen ground.
A different Assassin family had broken through their tight security. Her father, mother, and all their servants were dead, and her father’s chosen heir was the one who had arranged it all.
If only she had been born male, that traitor never would have set foot in their house.
She had done everything she could to try and live up to her father’s expectations, all to atone for the “crime” of being born female. She got her hands dirty from a tender age, just like her ancestors before her. Everything she did, she did for her father. For her family. So they would respect her. And yet, just like that, their entire legacy had been snuffed out.
She had assumed the Court would silence her, too, seeing as she’d been involved in a handful of secret schemes and killings, but instead they told her to “find a new life” and threw her out.
Why didn’t they kill me? Nadine wondered. Am I not worth the effort? Just because I’m a woman? Why? I inherited my family’s craft, didn’t I? Didn’t I?!
After that, she could only laugh at herself. She was alone, and all she had left to her name was a pair of tainted hands.
Eventually, it occurred to her that perhaps she could support herself as an adventurer instead. With that thought, she enrolled in adventuring school. Sick of hurting people, she elected to pursue the Healer class.
But she was hilariously unsuited for the role of a Healer.
In the end, she felt only despair. She couldn’t heal anyone’s wounds, and though she’d spent her entire life learning how to kill and deceive, she’d failed to see through the sinister plot that destroyed her entire family. She was worthless no matter what she did.
No party wanted a Level 3 Healer, so she took the job as a Guild receptionist and lived a quiet life. She wore her long hair in two braids and slapped on a pair of nerdy glasses. Polite, amiable, feminine; acting was always one of her talents. It was part of an Assassin’s toolkit, after all. No one noticed.
Nothing could have prepared her, however, for the day an assassinated couple’s oldest daughter walked in, looking for a Mage to take her in as a disciple. Nadine didn’t have much of a salary, but she decided to support this girl and her siblings nonetheless. Not that it would make up for her crimes, of course.
She planned to waste the rest of her life here.
But then that woman showed up—Tanya.
You should join our party!
Sometimes she laughed without a care in the world. Other times she raged or wept on Nadine’s behalf.
Then there was Laplace.
Nadine is our Healer, she’d declared without a moment’s hesitation. Nadine had envied that self-confidence.
Hee hee! Just don’t tell Tanya, okay?
Dancing through the night sky with a mischievous grin on her face, Laplace was the picture of beauty.
These women had taught her what unconditional love felt like... and now she was conflicted.
If she went back to being an Assassin, she could be more useful to Tanya. She had the tools, passed down from her father, and she had the training. But... once she dropped her soft, sweet Healer façade, would Tanya still accept her?
For once in her life, Nadine Amaryllis was scared.
She opened her eyes and looked up. Cheers and applause filled the dusty arena. Her comrade, Laplace, was standing by her side. Right now, they were in the spotlight.
“...Laplace?”
“Hmm? What is it, Nadine?”
“I’m going to go all-out in this fight, so... um...”
“Yes?”
“...Let’s be sure to win this.” For Tanya, the woman with a heart of gold who rages on our behalf.
“Très bien!”
And so the former Assassin and the Great Sorceress exchanged a secretive smile to raucous applause.