Aloeissa
| Species | Night hopper |
|---|---|
| Home | Formerly the stable behind Varaar Colosseum |
| Companions | Reagan Hideaway |
| Status | Free |
| First appearance | Sacred: Eslura's Calling |
Aloeissa is the night hopper kept as a fighting beast at Varaar Colosseum, freed from a spiked harness by Reagan Hideaway and later turned loose into the arena to kill her.[1][2] She remembered her instead, and carried Reagan and Aero Ellisvat out of the colosseum.[2]
Appearance
Aloeissa is a large black beast with thick fur, a hunched back, massive paws and big yellow eyes, with jagged, dagger-like teeth and a tail long enough to be a weapon.[1][2] She is about twice the size of Galabear, and was too big for the stable she was chained in.[1][2] Her breath is sour like rotten fish, which Reagan attributed to whatever she had last been fed.[2]
Her noises are a cat's. She hisses, growls, roars, purrs and whimpers, and the growl can be felt through her ribs by a rider on her back.[1][2][3]
Personality
Aloeissa is the havarrak the novels use to make their argument about the species. Tab, seeing her in the cage, called her "a demon dressed in black fur" and said her kind were natural-born killers who put on a good show. Reagan answered that "They're not natural-born killers" and that "They're raised to be that way", and got called "Miss Havarrak Helper" for it.[1]
She understands more than the people around her expect. Hearing her own name off the plaque calmed her mid-swipe. In the arena she stopped a charge at a pair of raised hands, sniffed the rope binding Reagan's wrists and bit it off, crouched to be mounted without being asked twice, and nodded when told to leave the city.[1][2][3] Her memory is what saves Reagan's life, and Reagan credits nothing more mysterious than that: not a power to talk to animals, but a beast that remembered who had got her out of the chains.[3]
Background
Nothing is recorded of Aloeissa before the colosseum. She was held by the Gangs of Varaar as a fighting beast, in a cage at the far end of the pergonzia stable that stands behind the colosseum and connects to it by a bridge, with a small plaque nailed to the base of the cage reading ALOEISSA.[1]
The cage was not the worst of it. Two chains ran from clasps on the wall on either side to a spiked harness around her chest, set so that the spikes dug into her whenever she moved.[1]
Story
Sacred: Eslura's Calling
Reagan came into the stable with Tab to steal a mount and found her instead. She crouched at the bars with her hands up, and Aloeissa reared, bared her teeth, hissed, and whimpered when the chains drew taut. Reagan read the name off the plaque, and the name settled her.[1]
Reagan was too short to reach the clasps with her dagger, even on tiptoe, so Tab made a basket of her hands and lifted her to one side of the cage and then the other. Both bolts came loose and the harness fell forward off Aloeissa's chest. She licked the wounds on her chest, tilted her head at Reagan, pressed her nose through a gap in the bars and sniffed her. Reagan could have sworn she saw the beast smile.[1] A stable hand burst in before she could look properly, and Tab drove him off.[1]
Sacred 2: Flames of the Awakened
Reagan was later held prisoner in that same room, saw the cage empty and the name plate still tacked to the bars, and imagined Aloeissa free in a field of flowers.[2] The cage was empty because she was being kept hungry for the ring. She was released into the arena to eat Reagan and Aero in front of a paying crowd.[2]
She struck Aero across the stadium with one paw. Reagan threw herself into her path, held up her bound hands and asked whether the beast remembered her. Aloeissa sniffed her palms, stood over her with her jaws open, and licked her face instead.[2] She bit through the rope, crouched for Reagan to climb on, carried her over to Aero and crouched again, and bounded for the only gate out of the arena floor with both of them on her back.[2]
A thrown spear tore into her hind leg and brought her down. Reagan pulled it out by the butt end, and Aloeissa howled, sniffed the wound and licked it, then bent for them to remount and ran on with a limp.[2] She swatted the last guard's spear aside, caught him around the waist in her teeth and flung him across the arena, then smashed out through the gate, through the concourse and into the plaza, where the crowd scattered out of her way.[2]
She carried the two of them into a vacant quarter of Varaar, then groaned, sat down and put her head on the cobblestones to sleep, and was still there when Fawn and Tab caught up.[3] Reagan held out a palm, let the beast sniff and lick it, and told her: "Get out of the city before they find you." Aloeissa nodded and bounded off in the opposite direction.[3] Reagan hoped never to see her again, because it would mean she had stayed free.[3]
Relationships
Reagan Hideaway freed her when there was nothing in it for her, and was repaid at the one moment it mattered. Reagan's promise to herself afterwards was that she would never go back to that colosseum, and her answer when Fawn asked what to do with the beast was that "She's free now. She doesn't deserve to be locked up anywhere."[1][3]
Aero Ellisvat was knocked flat by her and then rode out of the arena on her back, and said as much out loud on the way.[2]
Tabitha Glowdish argued against helping her, lifted Reagan up to the clasps anyway, and apologised for the grief afterwards.[1][3]
Behind the scenes
Aloeissa's species goes by two names, and Tab gives both in the stable itself: "That's a havarrak. A night hopper."[1] The wiki files the species at Night Hoppers.
The pronunciation guide at the back of both novels gives the name as Aloe-ee-suh.[4][5]