Nava-Verse Hero Biography: Denfumia

"Bloody" Denfumia, also known for a time as "The Drainer", was a mutant Wabacawler female who was born with an "advanced", uniquely ravenous form of vampirism, as opposed to the "mild", benign form of vampirism that afflicts every other member of her kind. Before proceeding, do be warned that her life story is, in the most literal way possible, the bloodiest by far among those of all "superheroes", to the point of being a horror story in some ways. Indeed, the term "superhero" seems a rather inappropriate one for her; perhaps "folk hero" or even "anti–hero" might be better, though many would argue that labeling her as any sort of "hero" is overly generous. Even if one considers her a flat–out "villain", though, it cannot be disputed that Denfumia stands as an extremely unique, notable and very much "super" individual among her race. She is also one of the few modern "superheroes", insomuch as she "counts" as one, known specifically not to have been consciously inspired by the Eggmen in any way, as well as the youngest ever in terms of when her "career" started. Despite her never once leaving her homeworld in her life, her legend has by now spread throughout most of the Prime Galaxy just like those of adventurers who traveled between and operated on many different planets.

Denfumia came into this world in mid–Age 789, born to an aristocratic couple with distant connections to the Wabacawler royal family and residing near the heart of Finngaed's capital of Nasfrott, in a sparkling sunlit birthing ceremony (a semi–common practice among Wabacawler nobility). During the delivery process, severe complications unexpectedly arose, ultimately resulting in an impromptu incision procedure having to be performed on the mother to safely remove the child, whose abnormalities were fully apparent from the moment she was ripped from the womb, this being especially so given the ceremonious circumstances of her birthing. Rather than harmlessly, "beautifully" (the alleged brilliance of the phenomenon is considered highly subjective and disputed among non–Wabacawlers) glistening in the rays of Brighis as expected, the newborn's flesh began to smolder and blister in the sunlight as she was held up into it. All present quickly rushed out of the sunlit dome theater and back under the shaded roof of the hospital, where the baby, as it "cooled down" and recovered, could be examined, confirming what everyone bearing witness had immediately, instinctively feared upon seeing it starting to burn under the sun. The infant's skin was pale, cold, clammy, her teeth and nails abnormally sharp, and covering her back was a "cape" of several leathery plumes… instantly recognizable in their alikeness to those characteristic of the Xamenrufs, the other, decidedly more malicious vampiric race spatially distant from but culturally familiar to the Wabacawlers. It was clear that the child was not only a mutant (almost any lesser form of which would have been far more tolerated), but one whose "special" trait constituted Wabacawler–kind's most dreaded nightmare which hadn't been present outside of ancient lore and myth since further back than any among the race could look back to: pure, unmitigated, unbridled, malignant vampirism… the kind that would make her specifically crave the blood of people, rather than just animals.

Over the following hours, and as the nature of the mutation was verified on a scientific level, the mother of the infant who had not yet been given the name Denfumia went dark from a combination of the physical shock of having been cut open and the psychological and emotional shock of finding her baby to be a monster. Despite the subsequent efforts of the various doctors and other hospital staff, several more of whom had arrived on the scene as the overall incident had continued to develop, she would never wake up. At the end of the day, and with all things, all options, having been considered, the doctors all came to the painful–to–reach but logically sound consensus that the mutant baby be put down… a decision that became clearer, somewhat easier to make, for them after the newborn violently bit into the hand of one of the nurses. However, despite all of these recommendations, the father, visibly heartbroken and mortified at the loss of his wife, defiantly opted to keep the baby, refusing to let himself lose both his woman and his only child, and hastily left the hospital with the newborn. The doctors would have used force to see to it that the demon–child was euthanized, were they legally able to; for obvious reasons, forced euthanasia has always been strictly illegal on Finngaed and on nearly all other civilized worlds.

 

For roughly the next four years, the father of Denfumia, whom he gave a conventionally–etymologized but uncommon Wabacawler given name, attempted to raise his "monster" of an offspring in secrecy, and grew increasingly withdrawn from society as time went on eventually all but vanishing from public presence. Great measures were taken to keep the mutant toddler's very existence hidden, for highly warranted fear of her (and possibly himself as well) being taken away. All of the medical workers who had been present at the child's birthing were paid many tens of thousands of Galactic Common units apiece to keep their mouths shut, and two of them were suddenly and mysteriously found dead within the cycles immediately following the mutant super–vampire's birth; investigations were held and foul play suspected, but no one was ever indicted and both deaths remained cold cases. Meanwhile, an inordinate number of recently deceased bodies vanished from morgues, cemeteries, etc. in and around Nasfrott over the course of those four years, though there was no observable spike in the number of actual murders within the region, with the exception of those two doctors. Despite the increasingly–demented father's efforts to hide his dark secret being largely successful in terms of "official" standings, in the lower levels of Nasfrott's communities and even on the streets of cities elsewhere on the planet, many rumors did abound over the four–years–time, most of which ended up being pretty spot–on.

Eventually, his madness growing and his hope for his daughter having become progressively depleted over time as he was forced to face more and more the fact that she really was a monster, with her cravings for the blood of sentients showing no signs of decreasing and, if anything, growing, Denfumia's father snapped. Despite his wanting desperately to be able to love and accept her, he found himself utterly unable to continue doing the things he had been doing while sacrificing nearly every other aspect of his personal life, and decided that the malignantly vampiric mutant child had to die. Taking Denfumia, who was still even "younger" than her own physical age in terms of knowledge and speaking ability – having no contact with the outside world whatsoever besides one's father, with said father himself being in a state of mental and psychological deterioration, will do that do a person – out into the middle of the nearby woods late one night, he told his daughter that he was bringing her out into the "real world", and she, having come to trust her sole caretaker over the course of her young life thus far, trusted him. Upon reaching a spot he deemed to be sufficiently obscure and unlikely to ever be investigated, he led Denfumia out of the Dirkster (automobile), put a single handgun bullet in the back of her head, buried her in a shallow grave and departed. Dropping his facade of a normal demeanor as soon as he'd believed she was dead, he continued to cry hysterically as he drove, drunk on his own tears, back to Nasfrott and retreated into his home where he now lived alone, slamming the door behind him.

Denfumia's father would never leave that building alive again. One half–cycle later, he was found, dead since several days earlier, in his living room with a stool on its side on the floor and a noose hung from the ceiling. The noose, however, was empty, untouched, and the body instead lay on the floor, thoroughly, "professionally" mutilated and almost completely drained of blood, in a way distinct from and more extreme than how "normal" Wabacawlers sometimes drank blood from corpses of their own kind when desperately starving. The following investigations of the death and the property on which it had occurred yielded little evidence, only a few hints to the truth; no other bodies were found in any part of the home, though many scattered blood stains were, especially in the basement area and with some of them appearing to be years old. Further investigations and searches throughout Nasfrott bore no additional evidence or clues whatsoever.

 

Obviously in the context of this biography, though not yet to the knowledge of the public, Denfumia had in fact not died by her father's hand in the woods. As the super–vampire would later demonstrate time and time again, she possessed advanced blood–regeneration–based healing abilities which had been present in her even at this young age and, given that much, most likely from birth. Rising from the ground within hours after being left for dead there, the forsaken mutant child, still injured, weakened, lost, frightened and confused, initially began wandering aimlessly through the dark environment she'd now found herself in. It is entirely possible, perhaps even more likely than not, that had the chance meeting that would soon occur not happened when it did, Denfumia actually would have died out there in the woods; despite being a very special, powerful little girl, she was still a little girl.

Enter Yagelga, a fanatically God–fearing and overall demented but, in certain ways, wise old hermit of a woman who had withdrawn from the "sinful" society of Nasfrott many years ago and since lived alone in a hut, one she'd constructed with her own two hands from manually–acquired materials, in the middle of the woods, and whose aforementioned home the wandering, near–starving Denfumia just happened to stumble across. Seeing her, and immediately taking full note of her weak, disoriented state while being far less concerned, at least in the immediate term, with her abnormalities, Yagelga took the delirious toddler into her home and swiftly went about providing her with a meal in the form of a freshly dead Teddkrutch taken directly from the personal "farm" in back of her hut. The last time someone had attempted to feed her such an animal having been during her infancy, Denfumia, still less–than–lucid from what she was still recovering from but now on her way to becoming lucid again, now that she was being given food and shelter, attempted to drink the plucky avian's life fluids for only a few minutes before giving up on it… and turning her attention to the old hag beside her. Do understand that attacking Yagelga, the very person who had just saved her life, was not as much Denfumia's fault as it would have been in most other circumstances. After all, the only other person she'd ever come to recognize as "friend" rather than "food" (and indeed, the only other living person she had interacted with up until now outside of her birthing) had been her own father, and even he had just turned on and tried to kill her, a fact that she was still in the process of comprehending and accepting.

As quickly as the super–vampire had lunged at the old woman's leg and sank her teeth into it, however, Yagelga reacted and violently shook her off, sending Denfumia half–flying across the room and into a side–interior wall of the hut and knocking her out momentarily. It was at this point that the hag, who, as she had just demonstrated, was not nearly as feeble as she might have appeared, having developed plenty of survival skills during her time as a hermit as had been necessary for her survival out in the woods, took greater note of the child's strange appearance as she lay there, unmoving but visibly still breathing, and began to piece together the nature of her condition. While she did this and tended to her own bleeding, punctured leg, the full extent of the pain in which kicked in with a delay, Denfumia began to wake back up after only a few minutes; despite it being as easy to knock her unconscious as with any young child, she was extra–mortally quick to come to – after all a bullet in the head had only put her out for a few hours. Upon doing so, she started to cry, very softly at first but then with increasing intensity and volume, soon catching Yagelga's attention. A conversation then ensued in which Denfumia bore, in infantile, half–coherent language, all that she knew about herself, her life, the world, and everything else, for that matter, confirming to the hermit what she had already been about to fully realize.

 

With this knowledge, Yagelga's first instinct was to carefully start moving toward where she kept her axe, but as she thought harder about it, about how this child had been utterly forsaken by the whole world for something that, while ghastly, she had no free will over determining and which was technically just a more extreme form of something that all Wabacawlers were guilty of, she stopped herself as she made an epiphanic and dubious subjective realization. Despite being excessively harsh towards those around her as to what was right and wrong and having, in a way, "forsaken" her own people as a whole out of her radical beliefs on God's will, Yagelga was in some, select ways simultaneously wiser than most, and her beliefs and impositions, though excessive, were largely based in truths. In this particular dilemma of an instance, she had reached the conclusion that no individual of a race known to be capable of good could be, inherently, by nature and from birth, irredeemably evil and unfit for living. Upon contemplating this, she then reached the second, more personally–affecting conclusion that this child whom others had denounced as an "abomination" had been arranged by God and His servants to cross paths with her as a sign of and call to a mutual destiny that they would have to work together to fulfill. This destiny, Yagelga reasoned: punishing, exterminating the truly wicked – that is, those who had chosen lives of mortal sin far more severe than that committed by the rest of the wayward populace and had, furthermore, shown an utter unwillingness to reform – among Wabacawler–kind.

Yagelga held out a hand to Denfumia, telling her, in simple terms that she, being little more than an infant mentally, could understand, that she was a friend.

Over the following days, the hermit woman continued taking care of Denfumia, nursing her to as healthy a state as she could be restored to without ingesting humanoid blood, and taking early measures toward educating her in more coherent speech, all while further explaining to the child her plans for her and testing, exploring her physical abilities. With the super–vampire's innate skills of acrobatic agility quickly proving to be beyond even Yagelga's greatest expectations, it was not long before she decided that the time had come for the undertaking of what both herself and the person she now thought of as her "daughter" had come to agree should be her first "mission": the killing of the father who had tried to kill his own child.

On the eighth night following Yagelga's finding of Denfumia, the former led the latter out of the woods and into Nasfrott, arriving in the city during the hour of night when the streets were most empty. Climbing up to and silently prying open the window of the mansion she had once called her home with incredible expertise for this being her first time doing such a thing, the mutant child entered the building and proceeded to navigate its rooms and hallways with great furtiveness until she at last located her father, who was presently preparing to kill himself over a three–way combination of remorse, despair and sheer insanity. Were Denfumia not as presently starved for blood during this moment, she might have had second thoughts about killing her father upon seeing this. However, the reality at the moment was that she was very starved for blood.

She tore her father's throat, chest and wrists open and drank the blood flowing from each of the resulting wounds until little was left of his body but dry skin and bone; he did not attempt to fight back.

 

Following the death of Denfumia's father, there were, over the next several years, a large number of strikingly similar murder cases in and around Nasfrott as well as in some other nearby settlements. In all these cases, the murders took place overnight. In all these cases, the victims were found in heavily mutilated, sucked–dry states. In all these cases, the investigations yielded no evidence solid enough to constitute a true "lead" even as it became increasingly clear with each death that the murders were all connected; committed by the same entity. Note that, initially, it was not even clear to the Wabacawler populations that the killer was even the type of being that could be called a "person"; demonic presences were often cited in early rumors surrounding the string of deaths. Despite they themselves being afflicted by a form of vampirism, it had been so long since the last Wabacawler–on–Wabacawler vampiric murder that the notion of such a crime seldom crossed their minds during the early stages of the killer's time of prevalence. In most of the cases, investigations did, however, lead to discoveries revealing prior criminal and/or otherwise immoral activity on the parts of the victims; in the few that did not, it came to be extrapolated, as the general pattern became clear, that the victims there had been criminals as well. One victim was found out to have been a mass extortionist, another a person–trafficking "pimp" and yet another (arguably ironically) an outright serial killer. Others were discovered to have been guilty of lesser crimes that would not, in a system of due process, warrant death or even that long of an imprisonment, and even in the cases of the worst offenders among the victims, their outright violent murders were never considered to be justified by authorities. Nevertheless, the increasingly evident pattern of those slain by the mysterious killer turning out to have been wrongdoers themselves and "it" (later thought of primarily as "him" as it became clear that "it/him" was indeed a person, or at least a sentient being capable of having a motivating force) doing the dark deeds it did in the name of some form of justice, even a warped one, gave "it/him/whatever" a more glorified image in the minds of many. The fact that, if the acts of the killer "itself" are excluded from calculations, felony rates in Nasfrott and the surrounding regions plummeted by more than 20% during the Drainer's initial reign of terror did not help the "problem" that was "its" glorification. Of course, there were times, cases when the romanticization went objectively too far. There was even one (and thankfully only one… known) instance of someone else imitating the killer, by then popularly known as "The Drainer", by murdering his allegedly "abusive" landlord in what was intended to be the same manner. He was found at the scene of the crime, well into the following morning, in a state of shocked mania and with his victim's body nowhere near as drained as the Drainer's previous victims had consistently been; it was swiftly and widely realized, as the story of this incident unfolded in its wake, that this disturbed individual was not "the real deal".

Ultimately, "the real deal" would go uncaught and unknown in identity until Age 802, at which point the "Drainer" murders were still continuing, and often occurring as frequently as once every cycle. One day, a wealthy man came forward to Nasfrott's constabulary, confessing to multiple recent acts of fraud, which he now regretted intensely out of fear that the "Drainer" would eviscerate him, and begging to be detained somewhere safe. With some time having passed since the last vampiric murder and the next one seeming "overdue", the authorities proposed a deal to the man: they would guard him within his home during the coming nights; if this led to them catching the "Drainer", he would be allowed to keep his freedom. The racketeer, after some deliberation, agreed to this deal, reasoning that the prospect of avoiding imprisonment, even while still losing all his money, outweighed the odds of the Drainer overpowering the constables and succeeding in killing him despite his and their efforts.

As it turned out, not only was that crooked man's paranoia wholly warranted, but he could not have chosen a more perfect time to come to the authorities for help; Denfumia would break into his home that very night. Moreover, had the attempted killing taken place at any later date, Yagelga, during her daytime scoutings of the city, the intended victim and his property under a beggar's guise which had been a routine aspect of preparing for the carrying out of killings since early in her and her "daughter"'s "career" of "carrying out God's will", would have caught on to this plan and changed those of herself and Denfumia in accordance with this discovery. However, this was, again, not the case, and both of them being elusive and cunning but not omniscient, neither Yagelga nor Denfumia would know of the operation being conducted against them until it was too late.

 

Upon reaching the quarters of her would–be victim, Denfumia was ambushed by several armed constables, and a fight ensued; one officer was killed and two more injured before the others finally managed to incapacitate the super–vampire with multiple bullet wounds to the peripheral areas of the torso. During the course of the altercation, a Communocatite message was sent out to all other night–shift constables on Nasfrott's streets, alerting them that the "Drainer" had been found, and following this several quickly arrived on the scene, where they found Yagelga outside the building and attempted to arrest her as well. The hag, now well into her eighties, violently resisted arrest… and was promptly shot dead with a single bullet to the head fired by an overzealous rookie constable. The intended victim survived the ordeal unscathed and was later stripped of most of his property while avoiding imprisonment.

Denfumia was taken, unconscious, to constabulary headquarters for questioning, waking up there fastened into an interrogation chair that bound her with what were essentially mesh–metal ropes and surrounded at gunpoint by agents of the law. Upon being questioned, she disclosed in great detail information constituting the bulk of what has been recounted in this very biography up to this point, albeit with a twisted perspective indicative of her belief that she had only been doing what God had always intended for her. This was to the immense astonishment of all of her present captors, who could not help but to be engrossed, darkly fascinated, by the entire macabre tale, the most shocking element in all of it being that the infamous, ever–elusive "Drainer" killer had, for all this time, been a young girl who, even now, was barely even a teenager.

Following her account, Denfumia demanded to be released and to know where they had taken her "mother".

She was bluntly informed by one of the constables that Yagelga had been killed.

Upon being told this, the mutant became enraged, going into a mad frenzy through which she, to the further shock of her captors, broke free of the metal restraints that bound her and proceeded to lunge onto the person who had said this, tearing his throat organs completely, cleanly out as the other constables began opening fire on her, some of them with slight hesitation. As all the eyewitness accounts of the incident from these very same law enforcers go, Denfumia then immediately released the tactless officer's already dead body from her grasp and fled the room, the building and the city with startling agility; some of the constables even swore they saw her hovering, levitating as she made her (ultimately successful but dubious–seeming at the time) getaway. It was also claimed by more than one of the constables that they managed to shoot Denfumia multiple times, including (allegedly) in the head, as she made her escape, inflicting damage that "should" have been fatal.

 

Shortly after the "chase" reached the outside streets, it ended just as abruptly as it had started as Denfumia seemed to vanish in a way that none of the law enforcement agents who participated in or were otherwise present for the overall sequence of events have ever been able to confidently explain; her disappearance from sight and from the radar of constabulary pursuit seemed very much inexplicable. When all was said and done and as the morning sun began to rise soon thereafter, the status of the long–standing case of "The Drainer", as well as of its subject, was uncertain for the time being. The killer's identity, nature, motives, background and name were all now known, but Denfumia herself had seemingly escaped; seemingly. The constabulary of Nasfrott, in the aftermath of the night's ordeal, considered themselves to have some reasons to believe that the super–vampire might – might – have been killed, given the claims among their men that she had been shot in ways that "should" have resulted in mortal wounds as well as the fact that Brighis had started coming up at a point when she may very well have still been out in the open both standing as factors amid the uncertainty. During the following day of business at constabulary headquarters, the status of the "Drainer" case was updated as "solved; culprit still at large". Starting that same day and continuing over the next several, searches of the woods the killer was now known to have lived in, including Yagelga's hut, which was found empty, were conducted, all of them proving fruitless.

When several cycles proceeded to pass with no reports of additional murders matching the methods of operation of the killer now known to be Denfumia, the case's status was updated again, this time to "solved; culprit presumed deceased".

One day short of one exact forty–day cycle after that update was made, its "presumption" was proven to be highly incorrect when news reached Nasfrott of yet another grisly murder that had left the victim's body mutilated almost beyond recognition and bereft of blood. Moreover, subsequent investigations of the property on which the killing had occurred had started, and were continuing, to reveal some disturbing, drug–dealing–related details about the victim and his private dealings. Furthermore, the homicide had been committed in one of the Southernmost settlements on Finngaed, hundreds of miles away from Nasfrott and nearly as many miles further from the Wabacawler capital than the sites of any of Denfumia's previous known killings. Upon being sent the message informing him and the rest of Nasfrott's constabulary of this news, the agent operating the receiver, who had watched his best friend within the force die by the super–vampire's hands (or possibly her fangs; it was hard to determine which, given that both had pierced his body) during the initial operation that had led to her brief capture, fainted in a rather theatrical, melodramatic fashion.

 

From that point onward and over the next fourteen years, Denfumia, who was now known by her true name to those who pursued and/or feared and/or were fascinated with her, would continue her bloody "work", now operating alone and with her acts of twisted justice occurring with somewhat less frequency than before but also over a greater geographical area than before, this new "range" of her activity being the whole of Finngaed's map. Her methods of operation, as well as the general "results" of her "handiwork" on her victims, remained largely the same: with few exceptions, those killed by Denfumia were discovered after their deaths to have been involved in criminal activity or, in some cases, had been known or widely suspected to be guilty of severe wrongdoing beforehand, but without sufficient "official" evidence to convict them. Again, many, both at the time and to this day, believe/believed the aforementioned "exceptions" to have done something to earn Denfumia's wrath as well, their dark secrets merely being better–hidden, in regards to both "waves" of killings. However, it is extremely unlikely that Denfumia never killed an innocent, given general, proven "margin of error" statistics for mortal–made judgments and applying those to the sheer number of people she killed, which stands at more than one hundred. Furthermore, it should be stressed that not even all of the proven felons that made up the bulk of her victims necessarily deserved to be murdered, especially in such a particularly violent way… on the other hand, though, a great many of them were, to say the least, hard to feel any sympathy at all for after the extents of what they had done and, in some cases, had been continuing to do became evident. In regards to a particular few of her killings, most notably a would–be terrorist planning to bomb a party held by the Wabacawler royal family, Denfumia actually saved several lives, albeit probably not as many as she took.

There were far more sightings of and near–apprehensions of Denfumia during the latter half of her "career", whose turning point can easily be defined as the death of Yagelga and her own temporary capture, than during the former. Many claimed to have seen her at night, usually in the act of climbing up the walls or across the rooftops of buildings. Though at least some of these can be dismissed as mistakes, "wishful thinking" or even deliberate, empty grabs for attention (given her now–known identity and agenda), there is enough of a consistent theme between many of the reported sightings, that being a habit of acrobatically traversing buildings, for a majority to be assumed as valid. Such sightings suggested nighttime scouting practices on Denfumia's part, and this was almost certainly the case; her precision in choosing targets based on their immoral actions without the aid of a day–walking partner or instructor stands as an almost unfathomable feat even if one assumes her to have spent every single night spying on people. It remains a strong possibility that most, if not all, prominent citizens of Finngaed during Denfumia's life were "observed" by her at least once.

Three (and only three, despite the increases in nighttime patrols across the Finngaed that were in direct response to her presence and actions) separate "chases" took place in the aftermaths of murders committed in three different major cities; each played out similarly to Denfumia's escape from the constabulary in Nasfrott, with her appearing to "hover" as she fled with extra–mortal speed each time. Only one constable was killed between all three of these incidents; Denfumia never deliberately went after the law enforcers who pursued her throughout her life (unless they were severely corrupt in their dealings with others). Meanwhile, over the years, several more paranoid criminals turned themselves in, begging protection from the murderous vigilante, but none of the resulting operations resulted in Denfumia being caught like the first one had. In fact, none of the people who confessed to crimes for this reason ever ended up being killed by her, each of them instead being taken to prison after several nights of protected house arrest during which she would consistently fail to show up.

 

In the Seventh Cycle of Age 816, a date later realized and noted to have fallen shortly after the twenty–seventh anniversary of her birth, and after more than two decades' worth of killings, Denfumia was, for better or worse, finally put to rest. At this point in time felony rates across Finngaed had, since the super–vampire's birth, dropped a full 30%, and were now at their lowest since Wabacawler–kind's initial development of a method to keep track of macrocosmic crime rates. As a result, Denfumia had been striking considerably less frequently as of late, by virtue of there being fewer evil people left on the planet to go after. With nearly three cycles having passed since her last killing and her physically needing to feed again soon, however, she was about to strike once again, and for what would ultimately be the last time. Her target, chosen with extreme, particular carefulness: a member of the core Wabacawler royal family.

Enter Prince Kaillio of Nasfrott, the second in line for succession to Finngaed's and Wabacawler–kind's highest seat of regency… and the foremost conspirator in an insidious plot among several of the royal family's inner circle of nobles to murder both the current King and the elder prince and sell out the already–neutered monarchy to said corrupt nobles, effectively abolishing it and ending more than a millennium of standing tradition. Denfumia had never before spilled royal blood nor even been sighted on the premises of Nasfrott's central chateau complex that housed the ruling family and its closest associates. As of and over the course of the last several nights, however, she had in fact been working her impeccable skills of silent, stealthy surveillance on the palace and its denizens for presumably the first time, ultimately discovering through these scoutings the above–described conspiracy. Quite possibly by sheer chance, her timing in choosing to look into the behind–closed–doors dealings of Finngaed's rulers proved to be nearly–perfect; following Denfumia's attack on the young, handsome and murderously treacherous Kaillio, it was discovered that his and his co–conspirators' plans were all but fully prepared to be set into motion and would otherwise have been carried out, most likely successfully, within the next few days.

Infiltrating the core palace of Nasfrott's chateau complex and assassinating one of its most prestigious residents would be Denfumia's greatest, most challenging undertaking ever… and she, despite all of her skills and abilities that would have and had allowed her to successfully carry out equivalent deeds in just about any other, lesser place of residence on Finngaed… she failed. The super–vampire, while en route to Kaillio's quarters, was spotted by one of the palace's many, many night watchmen, who gave chase while alerting an increasing number of additional guards, all of whom proceeded to join in the pursuit of Denfumia as she continually outdistanced them, once again appearing to be "floating" as she darted through the halls.

This culminated in a massive stand–off within the quarters of Prince Kaillio, who had, as with all the other sleeping royals, been awoken and alerted to Denfumia's presence by the time she reached his room and quickly found herself surrounded by palace guards from all sides and with all doorways and exits blocked as she came face–to–face with her target.

 

Terrified yet expressing a possibly insincere assurance that his many guards would protect him, Kaillio, without saying a word to Denfumia herself, immediately demanded that they shoot down the most elusive and prolific serial killer in the history of the Wabacawler race. Only a few shots were initially fired, with most of the present security officers hesitating as they saw that she was now merely standing there, and found themselves starting to question why she was going after the prince. In addition, many among them were further captivated by the appearance of the infamous killer who was now visible in full view for the first time since her all–too–brief first capture many years ago. Her skin simmering and blistering from the various light sources in the room which had all been switched on, but her seeming to ignore, at least for the moment, whatever pain this was causing her, this was also the case with the few bullets that had flown her way and pierced her body. Her clothing was ragtag and minimal, having what seemed to have once been a bright red color but was now severely faded, and most noticeably and peculiarly of all, she was surprisingly short, appearing closer in size to the adolescent she had been at the time of her first capture than to the fully–grown, albeit still young, adult that she now was chronologically.

After but a few tense seconds of silence, and just when it seemed Kaillio was about to angrily restate his order to kill her, Denfumia spoke, revealing the truth about her current intended victim and his machinations. She then went on further, stating in what would ultimately be her final words that she had never been given any other choice in life but to do the things she had spent hers doing, and would never, could never go quietly, could never surrender, could never cease carrying out these acts of necessary evil that no one else was capable or willing to do and which she still adamantly believed herself to have been chosen and destined by God to devote her life to.

As she finished her speech, Denfumia began walking slowly toward Prince Kaillio, who demanded once again of his guards that they shoot the "abomination" attacking him down, this time outright screaming and while insisting what the assailant had just said about him to be untrue. While some hesitated once again or even refused to shoot, enough of the men opened fire for the blood–sucking vigilante to be stopped in her tracks and struck down as a borderline–hail of bullets met her body. She fell to the ground before Kaillio's feet in a quickly–forming pool of her own blood, and seconds later, upon seeing that she was still breathing, he frantically, and as more and more of the guards looked to him with scrutiny, grabbed away the gun as well as the bullet satchel of the one standing nearest to him and unloaded several consecutive clips directly into Denfumia's head. He continued to shoot until well after she was clearly, truly dead, only stopping when he himself was shot in the knee by a disgusted night watchman.

Subsequent investigations proved everything Denfumia had said about Prince Kaillio to be true, and he was deposed, denounced by his family, convicted of high treason and hanged, while those who had conspired with him were imprisoned for the remainders of their lives. Despite her being further vindicated by the public and even by some of the royal family's associates for the particular heroism of her final acts, Denfumia still stood as a serial murderer, and her remains were denied proper burial and cremated as long–standing decrees dictated would happen to the bodies of all such violent criminals. Neither the King nor the elder, remaining prince, the latter of whom is still alive and serving as King as of Age 850, did anything to stop this "dishonorable" disposal of Denfumia's remains, nor has either ever officially and directly mentioned her at all, either positively or negatively, despite her obvious and singular role in uncovering and stopping the plot that, if not for her, would probably have succeeded in killing them.

Among general, public populations all across Finngaed, however, as well as among Wabacawler colonies elsewhere in the Prime Galaxy and even among some non–Wabacawler societies, Denfumia remains widely recognized as a legend, and while anyone who would literally call her a force of pure good is… well, insane, far more people would call her a hero than would call her a villain if forced to strictly classify her as either one or the other.

Done