Aero Ellisvat
| Species | Eslurian |
|---|---|
| Affiliation | The Sarakyan, formerly the Nelazgians and the Rewakan gang |
| Home | Varaar |
| Weapons | The Viper |
| Family | Ferra Ellisvat, his sister |
| Status | Alive |
| First appearance | A Sacred Tale Collection |
Aero Ellisvat is a sellsword and thief of Varaar and the owner of The Viper, a man who keeps a wall of imported books in a house surrounded by broken glass.[1][2] He joined the Rewakan gang and later the Nelazgians looking for his stolen sister, Ferra Ellisvat, and turned on both.[3][4]
Appearance
Aero has brown curly hair which he ties up in a messy bun when he means to work, and golden eyes flecked with brown under long curled lashes. He wears his shirt open at the top three buttons.[2] He is strongly built, and Reagan Hideaway notices his arms before she notices anything else about him.[2]
He carries a mark on his right wrist: faint circles around what looks like a split tree. When Reagan first saw it, on the road out of Varaar, it was swollen and weeping.[5] He also carries a knife scar in one shoulder from Jensaad, and burn sores across the hand he used to throw a lit stick at a wagon of hexaflares.[1][6]
Personality
Aero talks his way through danger and enjoys doing it. He greeted Kai Demari mid-ambush by complaining about the gorilla's manners.[1] The lightness is a working posture rather than a mood: he turns away to hide his eyes when Ferra comes up, and turns back with them dry.[3]
He reads. His house in Varaar is walled with bookshelves and he imports the books from Galecrest, where he says a man of his nature would never be found or welcomed.[1] He teases Tabitha Glowdish about it and uses her full name, which she hates, when he wants a reaction.[2]
He keeps his word once given. He promised a dying woman he would leave his old life behind and gave up his sword the same night to do it.[1]
Background
Aero was born and raised in Varaar and never got used to the heat.[1] His family kept a booth in the market square that sold necklaces. He was still a boy when he met Noran Daharshi there and gave her the most expensive item in the shop, the necklace called the Heart of the Kella. His father beat him through the night for it.[1]
Noran was the love of his life from the age of eight. Jensaad, a Rewakan who had been Aero's mentor, wiped out her family for their jewels and left her barely alive. She was blind and, by the time of the Collection, bedridden at The Avonbourn.[1]
The Rewakan gang also took Ferra. Aero joined their ranks to find out where she was being held and learned they had sold her to the Nelazgians, who had been buying young Eslurians, brainwashing them and training them to lead their armies.[3]
Story
The Heart of the Kella
A letter arrived by gully from Noran reading only that it was time. Aero understood it to mean she was ready to stop suffering, and set out the same night to steal the Heart of the Kella back from the Rewakan compound so that she could have it.[1]
He drugged three guards with cactus needles dipped in rhinespire, and was cornered against a wall by Kai Demari, a mountain of a gorilla with an axe. Aero brought a pile of loose rock down between them and drove the Viper through Kai's chest in the dust.[1] He climbed to Jensaad's room and found the necklace around the old man's neck. Jensaad put a hidden blade into his shoulder; Aero pulled it out, told him that he did not get to say where Aero belonged, and cut his throat.[1]
He fastened the necklace around Noran's neck at the Avonbourn, and she asked him to promise to leave it all behind and start a life that would not get him killed in his sleep. He gave his word, and held her hand while the pytocane took effect.[1] On his way out he laid the Viper on the bar and told Reslyn Keiser it no longer belonged to him.[1]
Sacred: Eslura's Calling
Tabitha Glowdish arrived at his door with Reagan Hideaway and the Eyearke Stone, and hired him to escort them to Galecrest. He cleaned and bandaged the cut on Reagan's forehead with migplye before he agreed.[2] On the road he taught her how to hold a knife, and told her that the mark on his wrist is a symbol for liberation, and nothing more.[5]
At the Avonbourn he took the Viper back off the wall the night a crocodile Nelazgian broke into an upstairs room after Reagan and the stone.[7]
Within sight of Galecrest he stopped the party and confessed: he had been a member of the Nelazgians and had told them Reagan and the Ruler would be at the city for the High Moon Festival. Tab put a blade to his throat and Reagan talked her down.[4] He then walked the two of them into the city as a Nelazgian escort with Reagan roped as his prisoner, and stood between her and Drayzuzian's claws with a hand on the Viper's hilt, arguing that the stone would lose its power without her.[4] He led them through the castle tunnels to Elmryn's old study, a route he had memorised years earlier from the Sarakyan's meetings there, and barred the door behind them.[4]
Sacred 2: Flames of the Awakened
Aero worked the lift down out of Galecrest as the city was evacuated, and cut the rope behind them.[8] He went with Reagan and Tab into the drovig tunnels under the Kella Desert for the deterrent stone, pulled a handful of red stones out of the cavern wall on the way past, and threw them into the drovig's mouth on the surface to make her bring up everything she had swallowed.[9]
At the Avonbourn he found Erwin drinking at the bar, the creature who had tried to bury them in the tunnel, and had him by the throat when a Rewakan gorilla lifted him off the ground and threw him across the room. The gorilla named Aero as the killer of his brother and of Jensaad, dosed him with rhinespire and had him carried to the Varaar Colosseum. Aero pushed a small bunny plushie, the only thing he has left of Ferra, into Reagan's hand before he went under. The Viper was left on the floor by the counter and not recovered.[10][3]
In the arena he was blindfolded and put into a collapsing maze against a sand timer while Reagan, bound on a ledge above, shouted directions down to him through a crowd throwing tomatoes at her. He got out as the last grain fell, was knocked flat by Aloeissa, and rode out of the colosseum on her back.[11]
Tab gave him a plain sword to replace the Viper before they parted.[3] Crossing the desert toward Zybersia, he and Reagan fell in with a crew hauling a wagon of hexaflares for Obellius Kalaar. Aero pulled a burning stick out of the fire with his bare hand, threw it at the wagon and covered Reagan as it went up.[6]
At Elmryn's Castle he waited at the foot of the stairs while Reagan went up into the Sacred Chamber alone, and could not force the doors when they slammed. He reached her after they opened by themselves.[12] He told her afterwards that a Book's choice of Ruler cannot be undone, and that she is Eslurian because her parents were. The two of them followed the tunnel map on the Chamber walls down the rope beneath the walkway, bound for the Sacred City.[13]
Relationships
Noran Daharshi was his first and only love. Her last request set the terms he has tried to live by since.[1]
Ferra Ellisvat is the sister he joined two organisations to find and never did. He told Reagan that he no longer trusts himself to pick her out of a crowd.[3] Ferra herself is alive at Veskadoth, held there by an enchanted necklace that would kill her if she left the island, and commanding Nelazgian forces under duress. Nothing in the books shows Aero learning what became of her, and the two are not brought together.[14]
Tabitha Glowdish was in the Sarakyan with him under Elmryn, and the two fell out when it collapsed. She has held a blade to his throat at least twice and travels with him anyway.[5][4]
Reagan Hideaway has been beside him since the road out of Varaar. He bandages her and she bandages him, and neither of them says anything about it.[2][3]
Reslyn Keiser keeps the Avonbourn, which Aero calls his second home, refuses his money and kept his sword on her wall for the years he stayed away.[1][7]
Behind the scenes
The pronunciation guide at the back of both novels gives the name as Arrow Ellis-vaat.[15][16]
Aero is the viewpoint character of The Heart of the Kella, the first story in A Sacred Tale Collection, which is set before Sacred: Eslura's Calling.[1]
The books describe his wrist mark twice and do not reconcile the two accounts. Asked what it means in Book 1, Ch. 18, he answers that it is a symbol for liberation and does not explain further; he later names himself a member of the Nelazgians and a warrior for liberation in the same breath.[5][4] The same design, two intertwining circles pierced by a split tree, is worn on Nelazgian armour, Drayzuzian claws it into Tab's wrist as a mark of allegiance, and Reagan identifies it in the desert as the sigil of anyone sworn to the Nelazgians.[17][4][6]
See also
- The Viper
- Heart of the Kella
- Ferra Ellisvat
- The Sarakyan
- The Avonbourn
- The Heart of the Kella (short story)
References
- ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 1.10 1.11 1.12 1.13 1.14 1.15 Collection, Ch. 1.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 Book 1, Ch. 16.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 Book 2, Ch. 16.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 Book 1, Ch. 23.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 Book 1, Ch. 18.
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 Book 2, Ch. 20.
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 Book 1, Ch. 19.
- ↑ Book 2, Ch. 3.
- ↑ Book 2, Ch. 4.
- ↑ Book 2, Ch. 8.
- ↑ Book 2, Ch. 13.
- ↑ Book 2, Ch. 23.
- ↑ Book 2, Ch. 26.
- ↑ Book 2, Ch. 22.
- ↑ Book 1, Ch. 26.
- ↑ Book 2, Ch. 28.
- ↑ Book 2, Ch. 11.