senna of house hajakha
prince seneca of rune, seventh son of emperor rahza

In Scarab, he had been born three princes too late to have been blessed with a moniker. Only the first five princes received such an honor, and Seneca of Rune had been the last.

But if fate had smiled a bit more favorably upon him, he would have been named Sokar. The Falcon.

Senna — he has long since shed his birth name of Seneca — is a striking creature. Falcon-esque like his could-have-been moniker suggests, yet infused with a sharpness, a richness, that heightens his features to something beyond mortal. Hyper saturated. The chimaera blood in his veins has never quite managed to settle.

Beginning with his wings: sleeker than a falcon’s, they stretch almost twice the length of his body, and taper into refined points that whisper of the speeds they are capable of reaching. In his younger years, the skies were where the eighth prince had reigned supreme. (In his older years — and he is not even that old, mind you — he has settled for conquering the much more tedious world of politics.)

His pelt gleams in shades of crimson, painted redder still by the faint glow of his jutting, ruby horn. Seemingly cut from the gemstone itself, the craggy horn glows not from magic, but from natural bioluminescence. Along with a set of needle-sharp fangs that protrude slightly from his lips, both are distinguishing features of his esteemed Ancestor Rune.

Blood red eyes appraise all in silent calculation, and Senna rarely — if ever — wears anything close to a cheery demeanor. With a gaze (and cheekbones) sharp enough to cut, the Hajakhan head has lived past his days of charm and vanity. Habits from his time as a Scarab prince, however, still remain: his ribbon-sleek hair, long enough to scrape his fetlocks, is knotted every morning in the ascetic Runian style, and the few adornments he wears, though priceless, were the only finery allowed to princes with no hope of ever ascending the throne.

But just as he has shed his name, Senna has shed his princeling roots like snakeskin. As the most prominent member of the Solterran nobility, Senna is utterly intimidating in the way he holds himself — for his build, in contrast, is avian and sharp instead of powerful and sturdy. Yet with a Marwari's high carriage and a panther's grace, he needs nothing save the curl of a fanged lip and a snarl as smooth as it is guttural to render any who dare oppose him as speechless as a gaping statue.

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a letter from the advisor charon

To say that Senna is ambitious is to comment, rather blithely, that an adder is venomous. You might well have said nothing at all. (And if you are inclined to spouting such proverbs, I warn you to hold your tongue around the man himself. There is little he detests more than idle chatter.)

Many serpents are venomous. Many men are ambitious. To distinguish the ambitious from the zealot, then, the python from the viper, it is more enlightening to ask one: what are you willing to lose?

I did not know Senna as a young man. Though, over a decade of proving myself as the most competent advisor he would ever have on hand, and the rare occasions he had endeavored to drown himself in drink, I am confident enough to presume that if he had been asked that question back when he was a prince of Scarab, he would have answered: everything.

From my knowledge, the most valuable talent a Scarab prince can possess is magic. Deadly, otherworldly magic — it is the reason why the emperor takes a bride from each Ancestral line, ensuring himself a stock of half-mortal, half-divine heirs. Senna, by his own admission, had inherited a far weaker version of his mother’s blood magic, and had endeavored to impress the king by excelling at everything else. Swordplay. History. Languages. Warfare. Yet, essentially magicless, it is a wonder the princeling survived at all. Without the arrival of Princess Zofia, he very well would not have.

If you think the Solterran court mad, then by my lord’s own words: “This is a court of foxes, Charon. Sly, uncivilized foxes — barbarians, the lot of them — but mere kits to Scarab’s hounds.” And despite what you may say about his actions (he certainly had not ascended to the head of Zolin’s own house by being merciful) I have yet to meet a man as ruthlessly brilliant as he.

I have also yet to meet a man who is as addicted to his work as lesser men to opium, or to the comfort of women. You will do well to remember this, when you gape at the tasks assigned to you: no matter how hard he works his men (to the bone, and beyond — I often wonder if he means to work us even in death), his room is the only one in the castle where the candles burn into the hours of dawn. I do not think the man sleeps.

Such dedication as that elicits a strange sense of loyalty from all those who serve him, myself included. Though, do not be mistaken — he is the furthest thing from honorable. He has not been honorable since birth (the only compliment he will accept; I advise against honeying your tongue unless you mean to lose his goodwill, of which he has a severely limited amount). But he rewards a job well done, and is generous with his coin.

I shall leave you with a last piece of reflection, before this letter becomes unbearably long. Senna is a complicated man. There is no written description that will ever capture the full intensity of him, so you'll just have to meet him yourself. (And straighten up when you do, lad — he will not suck your blood, like some rumors say. The fangs are mostly for show.) If you asked Senna now “what are you willing to lose?”, I am not certain what his answer would be. He has already lost his wife, of which she was his world. His daughter’s safety — and throne — are yet to be secured.

I am a perceptive man, you see, older (and wiser, for which I suspect is a large part of why he has kept me on for this long) than he. And what strikes me as the most tragic thing about Senna, is his own realization that the more his ambition obtains for him — the more he has left to lose.

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a tale of a prince and princess

“Far across the sea, in a kingdom of sand and sky, there was once a prince painted all in red born to an emperor painted all in white.

This prince was not the first prince, and he was not the second. He was not even the third — no, this prince was the last in a line of eight. His mother named him Seneca after her father, and in her heart she was glad he would never ascend the throne.

You see, Sol, this is a tale where the prince’s mother did not love the emperor, and the emperor did not love the prince’s mother. What he was in love with was her magic, and a little bit of her wildness; so when the eighth prince seemed to inherit all of his mother’s wildness and none of her magic, the emperor did not love him at all.

No matter, thought the eighth prince. I shall make him love me for my brilliance. And then he shall love my mother, for raising such a brilliant son. Armed with such a declaration, the years passed like seasons. And true to his own words, brilliant the prince became.

He spoke languages that even Sova, the Owl prince, could not speak. He tricked thieves and wise men that even Solovei, the Nightingale prince, could not fool. He spoke of wars and kingdoms that Samael, the Serpent prince, did not know, and hunted boars and criminals that Rasha, the Stag prince, could not catch.

But it was not until he disarmed Oroszlán, the Lion prince, in a heated spar that the emperor spoke to his seventh son at last. “You have best all your brothers in all they are best in. But what of your magic?” It was not unheard of for a prince's magic to appear late in adolescence. To which the eighth prince replied: “It has come, father. I... have not been able to compel more than animals yet, but I assure you, I will be far more useful as a tactician in your wars. Not even Samael knows of the maneuvers that I have studied —”

“Yet the fourth prince’s magical prowess is unmatched. Can you say the same?” was the emperor’s reply, swift as an executioner’s blade.

(It is too soon to despair, Sol. The eighth prince surely had not. Besides, I have yet to reach the best part.)

Far across the sea, from a kingdom of sand and sky, there came a princess made of porcelain born to a king of molten gold. Princess Zofia from the House of Hajakha (Have you realized at last? Smart girl.) had come to visit this kingdom with its abundance of princes.

She was greeted with a procession fit for a queen, with five princes kneeling before her. Oroszlán. Solovei. Sova. Samael. Rasha. The emperor had sent only the first five princes, his most powerful sons, to meet her. They escorted her to their beautiful palace, and treated her as a foreign princess ought to be treated. But not one — not even Sova, to his grievance, for the princess was very beautiful — knew her language, and as the days crept by, the princess grew terribly tired of fumbling over their tongue.

Until one evening, to both of their surprise, she wandered into the chambers of the eighth prince. The eighth prince had not been allowed to see her, but he knew her name, and most wondrously, he knew her tongue. In near-perfect Solterran, he said to the Solterran princess: “We have not been formally introduced, Princess Zofia. My name is Seneca, and I am the eighth prince.”

Over the course of her winter stay, the princess came to love the eighth prince. For his brilliance, for his slyness, for his sharp, peculiar kindness. And when it came time for her to return to her own kingdom of sand, she asked for the eighth prince to come with her. “They do not deserve you,” was all she said. But it was all he had needed to hear.

So he bade goodbye to his wildling mother, who, without a son in the court, was at last allowed to return to her home. He bade goodbye to his brothers, who were not much saddened to see him go. And finally, he bade goodbye to the emperor, who saw the loss of one son hardly a matter to grieve over.

The rest of the story is, as they say, history. (And because it is getting far too late. Your father will not tolerate you being up at this hour.) There is no happy ending I can tell you, because the story has yet to reach its end. But when it does, as it will one day, I have faith that you will tell it well.”

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a letter that smells of ash

By the time this letter finds you, know that the rebellions have reached us at last. Do not come — I will no longer be at that gilded monstrosity of a castle. I have taken Sol and fled to a place I know to be secure, at least for a time. You shall receive another letter brought by Nestor if I have reached it alive.

This kingdom has gone to madness. That bastard of a king — I refuse to waste ink on his name — he has killed us all. Even in death, he continues to take.

Zofia is dead because of him.

I found Sol, fainted from the smoke, curled against her mother’s blood-soaked body in the ruins of her chambers. I do not pray to this nation’s gods, Charon. But for my daughter’s sake, I pray to Solis she is too young to remember.

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a diary bound in gold

Spring, Year 501

Father has not visited for months and months. I miss him terribly, but it is alright — I received a letter yesterday that he shall be coming in time for my birthday. He has never broken a promise, but I am also not a princess without a spine — if Father ever does break one, I shall never let him hear the end of it.

The last time he visited, he told me that I deserved to know where he was spending his time. Of course I do — I am his only daughter. Anyways, he said that he is in Denocte, of all places, overseeing the completion of an establishment known as the White Scarab.

Scarab is the kingdom of his birth, but besides that I do not know anything else about this “White Scarab”. (And I suspect that Scarab — he rarely talks about his birthplace, because I know he has no love for it — has nothing to do with anything.)

I wish that Father would take me to see this White Scarab of his. Or if not there, anywhere. I am terribly bored of this half-empty mansion. My aunts never think me enlightening enough to talk to, even when I know that I am a very enlightening conversationalist, so the only explanation must be that my aunts do not wish to talk about enlightening things at all. Their loss entirely.

I think I hear one of my aunts calling for me. They only do so when they can’t find an earring, or a necklace, in their full-to-bursting jewelry boxes. Somehow they always think I have something to do with it.

Perhaps they aren’t as foolish as they appear to be.

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the falcon, the nightingale, and the lion

Summer, Year 506

The problem was that it had worked.

That against everything he had counseled, had reasoned, had spat like live coals through the rusting bars of his brother's cell —

Solovey's mad plan had worked.

Blackness gathered at the edges of Senna's vision when the spear tied clumsily at his side knocked against his ribs as he walked; he suspected that one of them was broken. The white falcon hunched over his shoulder cracked open one yellow eye and clicked her beak at him in reprobation. It is more than one. It is perhaps all of them. You are not immortal, said Nestor, like him.

Senna's blood-red eyes spoiled like milk as his chin tilted towards the form of a scarlet-throated nightingale gliding beneath the moon's sickly light; his mouth winged into a tight smile. "Soon, he will lose even that."

As if it had heard, the nightingale let out a high, laughing chirrup, before arcing like an arrow to the sands. Senna's smile deepened with the burgundy shades of hate. Swallowing a wince, he ripped the spear from its cradle of knotted rope and launched it at the nightingale as it careened towards the earth, still laughing.

"Are you giving this to me?" sang the bird, who was now a stallion, as sand settled in hourglass piles around him. Leaping nimbly to his hooves, he plucked the spear from its resting place in his chest and smiled as a bead of blood dripped off of its silver tip; his shadow shivered away like water.

"Keep it, if you wish," said Senna dryly. The falcon on his shoulder tucked her wings in and sighed.

"I think I will." Solovey’s eyes flashed merrily in the dark. "To kill the Lion with, when he comes."

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nestor the gyrfalcon

Four years ago, not long after his own arrival to Novus, Senna was gifted a brown-mottled falcon's egg by an eccentric foreign emissary. And over the years, as Cerberus is to Hades, the Hajakhan head has become as much associated with his striking white falcon as she is to him.

A female white morph gyrfalcon, Nestor is formidably large (with a wingspan over four feet long), wickedly fast, and — according to some — more ruthless than her master. She is certainly more bloodthirsty, in any case; there is little the falcon cannot bring down, from grouse to gulls to other raptors (her favorite prey). When a son of House Sevetta's prized peregrine falcon went missing in court one day, one of its talons was uncovered in Nestor's mute four days later. There is even a rumor that the falcon once killed an adolescent Teryr alongside Senna, when it had ambushed them in the desert. Though it remains unconfirmed, few doubt the tale's credibility.

Proud and sharply intelligent, Nestor obeys no one but her bonded. Senna himself once jested (though it is always hard to tell with the humorless) that he merely gives her suggestions. She is rarely seen by Senna's side — when she is not hunting, she is circling the skies, maintaining her reputation as the nobleman's keenest source of intel — and only occasionally delivers letters for him (a task she thinks entirely below her).

Despite her prickliness, the falcon is a curious creature and treats other bonded beasts with respect. Their masters, however, she is more wary of. There are only two individuals in the world Nestor holds dear: Senna and his little daughter, (it does not matter how much she has grown; to Nestor, the princess will always be little) Sol.

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iskothe

similar A Persian scimitar (shamshir) with a polished wood hilt and dragon-leather scabbard, Iskothe is wrought in intricate golden carvings of wings, scales, and the emblem of Ancestor Rune. Two curving lines of script run vertically down its dull edge. In the language of Scarab, it says: The crow does not roost with the phoenix. The only gift the emperor ever bestowed upon his eighth son, the saying is a cruel slight against Senna's weak blood magic.

Over the years, Senna has fought - and won - battle after battle in Scarab's endless wars with Iskothe. His father had believed him nothing better than a crow, sullying his roost of phoenix sons. A phoenix, or a crow? Which would he be?

Iskothe is the only belonging besides his heavy gold collar Senna took with him from Scarab to Novus. Always sheathed to his hip, he rarely wields it unless he - or his daughter - is faced with a direct threat.

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accessories

• an intricately carved gold pendant smaller than a coin, followed by two drops of gold, affixed to his forehead just below his horn
  
• a harness-like necklace of gilded sun medallions studded with rubies (similar)

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