Megara

(from my Female Knight Saga) Flames roared behind Megara, turning the obsidian plates of her armor into mirrors of molten light. The other students at the Knights Academy liked to whisper that she had come from some distant, war‑torn kingdom, a prodigy sent to master the sword. None of them knew the truth that she had never known a home, a family, or even a real childhood. She had been born in a laboratory beneath the very academy they admired.The Head of the Academy called her his “masterpiece.” In secret chambers carved deep under the training halls, he spliced together strands of DNA drawn from beasts no one had ever seen outside of myth. The ferocity of a wild predator sharpened her senses; the speed of a hunting bird lived in her reflexes; the endurance of a great mountain beast burned in her blood. Her muscles healed from wounds in hours, her bones were denser than steel, and her eyes could pick out the twitch of an arrow’s fletching in the dark. But with each gift came a flaw violent surges of instinct, sudden swings in mood, and a hunger for battle that frightened even her.