She is the only protegee of Valinna Strom. Thyra is a serious angel, completely dedicated towards her craft. Valinna seems to value her skill and creativity. She was the architect and maker of Blaze's gauntlets.
She is a tall, lean angel, with a long voluminous mass of braided golden blonde hair that reaches her ankles. She has sparkling turquoise eyes and plump red lips. Her golden eyebrows are sharply angled, give her a perpetually serious expression
Tara Maitreya
:
Aahna's mother. She has long greyish white hair and tawny colored skin. She looks like an older version of Aahna, but her calm and serene vibe contrasts her daughter. She is the Vice head of Vidisha, a large merchant guild.
Cardinal Amanah Tudor:
She is a hawkish angel and seems to wield a lot of power in the Malakim. An exceptionally beautiful angel, who doesn't care to hide that she is very dangerous. With golden blonde hair, a perfectly shaped and slightly upturned nose, deep set hazel eyes, and an angular jawline, she is almost a perfect specimen of beauty. Yet, the only emotion she evoked in Blaze was to get away from her as fast as he could. She dresses modestly but everything else about her is pompous and arrogant.
Priscilla Ainsworth:
She is a brunette with long hair held in two ostentatious pigtails. She is quite beautiful with brilliant blue eyes, long lashes, a perfect nose and pouty red lips. However, her beauty is too perfect and seems made up. Her wings are beautiful, white, and radiant.
A Quick, Full Recap:
Blaze hatches out of a large, feathery egg and is taken in by a kind, mysterious angel named Jie Er. Rebecca, a boisterous but well-meaning lieutenant in the Red Rose division of the Angelic army, unexpectedly becomes a part of the group.
At Varan, a nearby city, Blaze forms a friendship with a young 60-year-old angel, named Elyssa, who turns out to be the daughter of a popular Duchess.
One day, he picks up a baby Quetzal, while trying to rescue a carnike from the jaws of a Xenodon. Sky, the quetzal, soon becomes a part of Blaze's new makeshift family.
Blaze begins to attend Tir academy, along with Elyssa. While trying to defend Siofra, a pixie, from being bullied by an angel of the Malakim, Blaze displays the Righteous Fury. As the youngest Righteous Fury in ages, his name quickly resounds throughout the Heavenly Union, and he comes to be known as "Blazing Fury".
One day, while training with his classmates at Tir, Sky and Splash (an otter) show up at the academy, in search of Blaze. At first, the angels are suspicious of Sky, as the only quetzals they know of are demonic. However, once they realize that Sky is, in fact, the first angelic quetzal, everyone in the HU starts vying for its ownership.
A meeting of delegates at Tir decides that in order to retain the ownership of Sky, Blaze must prove himself first and place at least 3rd in the upcoming Under Sixty Martial Arts Tournament (USMAT). If not, Sky will be raised by Nikolett Lovag, a talented knight in training, considered to be the most likely person to win the tournament.
Thus, begins Blaze's training.
During the first break from the academy, Jie Er trains him at Mt. Raivataka, where he meets Valinna Strom and her apprentice Thyra. Thyra offers to make him a pair of novel gauntlets. Blaze also befriends an arctot, a large bear-like creature, and names him "Jeffery".
During one particularly intense training session, due to intense pent up emotions, Blaze loses the control of his mind. When he wakes up, he finds out that he had attacked Jie Er, though he had also healed some of her taint. Jie Er consoles him over his distress.
The next break, Blaze and Elyssa stay back at the academy for a special training session with students coming from the country of Xian. Blaze meets a princess named Chengguan Shangdi, and they quickly become friends.
On the third break, Blaze and Siofra accompany Jie Er and Rebecca to train at Riverbridge, a town on the southern coast of the Purple Sea. Jie Er requests her old friend and rival, Fulla Frejadottir, to teach Blaze the way of the berserker. While taking a break from training, Blaze attends a party, along with Fulla's daughter, Ragna.
There, he runs into Lynn Streltsy, a young angel, whose eyes never fail to bedazzle him. Finally, he musters up the courage to talk to her, and after a dance and an evening together, she invites him on a "date" the next day.
The date proves to be a spy mission to obtain information about a nefarious organization called the "Princeps". Blaze is pulled into more than he bargained for and the night ends with an energy blast at the Princeps' meeting place. Blaze is rendered unconscious and wakes up back at Fulla's place.
Blaze completes his final stretch of training and his final term at Tir. During one of the shorter breaks, he manages to completely heal Jie Er's tainted wings, and she is finally able to once again use her archangel wings to their full potential.
After winning a dramatic Flyball tournament at Tir, Blaze bids his farewell to Tir and his friends, and returns to Varan to prepare to head over to D'Warka, a major port city of Caledonia, where the tournament is to be held.
oOo
"People are often quick to judge something as flawed when it doesn't align with their beliefs. They ask the question, 'Why is this wrong?', and find answers accordingly. However, it is often prudent to ask, 'Why is this
not
wrong?' for they may find that it is their own premise or assumption about that particular something that is flawed."
-- Aspasia Saras Marigold, a monk of the Chayot and mother of Astrid Athene Marigold.
"Philosophy -- It (referring to the Philosophy of someone or her own) is wise if you understand and agree with it. It is esoteric if you do not understand it. It becomes foolish if you disagree with it." -- also by Aspasia Marigold.
Chapter 19
The legend of D'Warka was not an unfamiliar one. Earth had many similar legends.
The island city was once a pinnacle of power and civilization. The angels of the city held such strength, that the legend states that they hatched as archangels. Even the demons, at times, deferred to their power.
However, a great cataclysm in the Purple Sea caused the city to sink to its depths and took the city's denizens along with it. No one could be sure why the angels, who could have easily flown away, perished along with their city; there are only conjectures that attempt to explain why, the most popular being that the power of the D'Warkans was somehow intertwined to their land and, thus, their fates.
Eight hundred years ago, an earthquake rearranged the faults and brought the sunken land back to the surface. Though absent of sentient life and covered in beautiful, yet eerie, colors of moss, corals, and anemones, the ancient structures of the city were still intact.
Angels from near and far flooded to occupy the city and its wealth, but very few dared to live inside the original buildings, afraid of linking their fates to the city, just like the ancient D'Warkans. Ill fate seemed to beset anyone who did try, until the rulers of Caledonia sent out a decree forbidding anyone to reside within the original structures.
Thus, the new city of D'Warka was built atop the ancient buildings, made of a lime-green stone called "malachite" that seemed to not erode with time. As a result, every house in D'Warka had at least one unoccupied floor of malachite.
In time, the malachite floors turned out to be a boon in disguise. D'Warka was located within the confines of a massive semi-circular atoll that served to magnify the high tide, which regularly flooded the lower city under almost fifteen feet of sea water. Thus, the indelible malachite protected the newer buildings, while the angels of the city quickly learned to use the tides to transport goods around the city, and expanded the city well into the continental shelf.
The water in the city also allowed for the Undine, a race of sea nymphs, to take up residence inside the city. Some claimed that the Undine were the original residents of D'Warka, cursed to never fly again. However, historical data indicated that most Undine settled down in D'Warka only after it resurfaced.
The appearance of the Undine was a little different from the Mami Wata -- their skin was a shade of light blue, instead of purple. To a colorblind angel, they might even be indistinguishable from one another. Collectively, the water nymphs of Azra-El were known as merangels.
***
It was a sweltering and cloudless Hadie afternoon in D'Warka when four viridian-plated carriages, lined in silver and gold, swept over the walls of the city. They were escorted by a platoon of sixteen Aranyan soldiers, riding magnificent looking war-Pegasi.
However, their grand entrance did not receive any more than a curious glance from the citizens of D'Warka. With the USMAT and YAMAT tournaments just around the corner, they had become accustomed to such glamour; there was no lack of nobility coming from all around the continent to watch or take part in the tournament.
Blaze and Elyssa peered out at the city below, through the windows of their carriage; neither of them had been to the city before, and its sights filled them with wonder.
The midday sun gleamed off the surface of the smoothly polished malachite and covered the entire city in a brilliant hue of emerald.
Sailboats and ships floated in the sea that surrounded the city, and the bright sunlight reflecting off the surface of the water and the white sails made it hard for the two angels to keep their eyes on them for too long. The name "Purple Sea" originated from a purple-colored floating weed that was prevalent in the sea, but the waters around D'Warka were mostly clear.
To the south of the city was a massive port, moored with boats, caravels, and venetian ships. Their general shape was similar to their Earthly counterparts, but even from afar, Blaze could make out their piscine nature. The rudders, sides, and the masts had a spiny, fish-like appearance to them, making him wonder if the merangels were the architects of these ships.
Canals and moats replaced streets in D'Warka, and enormous manatees pulled floating cargo over the water. Angels, Gryphons, and a few Pegasi occupied the air over the city. Gryphons were the more popular flying mounts in D'Warka, as they could easily land and take off from perches and rooftops.