Ayala
| Affiliation | The women of The Hollowed Shadow |
|---|---|
| Home | Varaar |
| Weapons | A sword |
| Status | Alive |
| First appearance | A Sacred Tale Collection |
Ayala is one of the women held as dancers at the Hollowed Shadow in Varaar, and the one the rest of them look to. The Way Shadows Live introduces her as a tall muscular woman, "like a mom to the dancers behind the scenes", and Sacred 2: Flames of the Awakened calls her "the self-established mom of the group, the fighter, the one no one should have ever dared to mess with".[1][2] She fought the club's bouncer to get the other women out of the building the night the Shadow burned, and carried Fawn away over the rooftops afterwards.[1]
Appearance
Ayala is tall and muscular, twice the size of Hybie beside her on the dancing stools.[1] Tab, carrying Fawn through the alleys with her arms burning, wished she had spent more time on her own physique the way Ayala had.[1] By the events of Sacred 2: Flames of the Awakened she is "a tall, broad-shouldered bald woman", and Reagan Hideaway, raising a fist at her, could not make her loosen her grip on anything.[3]
The books do not say what species Ayala is.
Personality
She reacts first and asks afterwards. She was the one who moved when Tab walked back into the Shadow years later, half standing and reaching for her sword hilt before anyone else had left their seat, and the one who had Aero Ellisvat against a wall inside a breath of recognising him. A hand on her shoulder was enough to make her let him go.[2][3]
Her humour is dry and lands hard. Told that Tab needed the women's help, she suggested she try the travelling circus instead, since she had heard their main act had just up and left.[2] She holds a grudge with the same steadiness: years after Aero stole a handful of presps from her she still knew his face, and his defence that the money had paid off a man who would otherwise have mounted his head on a wall got only the answer that she would have loved to see it.[3]
What she is protective of, she puts herself in front of. Facing down the bear on the front door in a house filling with smoke, she stepped between him and the other women, told him he was outnumbered and raised her fists.[1]
Background
Ayala was one of the women Burkhan held at the Hollowed Shadow to dance for the highest-ranking members of the city's gangs. She and the others lived in a cramped room with three beds up a corridor behind the club's red door, and for many moons the velvet walls of the Shadow were all they had known.[1] Burkhan gave her orders directly: when Fawn was recaptured after running, he told his doorman to take her to the girls' quarters and have Ayala clean her for the wedding night.[1]
The dancers kept one secret from the gangs, a hole in the wall behind a barrel in a supply closet, and used it to come and go after their shifts. Ayala's account of it is that as far as they knew it had been kept between the girls.[1]
Story
The Way Shadows Live
Tab first sees Ayala dancing on a stool at the Shadow, scolding Hybie for flipping her hair into her face.[1]
After Tab killed Burkhan and set the club alight, she collapsed in the courtyard below the dancers' quarters, burned and unable to climb. Ayala heard her, leaned out of a cracked window and hauled her up the brick wall by the wrist and through the frame.[1] Inside she gave Tab the news that Fawn's injury was only a concussion this time, and, when Tab said the Shadow was gone, asked her plainly whether she had set it on fire.[1]
With smoke coming under the door she took charge of getting everyone out. She sent Hybie to wake the rest of the girls, led Tab down the hall to the supply closet, and had the five of them heave the barrel away from the hole behind it.[1] Kayloo, the one-eyed Khaylant bear who kept the front door, filled the doorway before they finished. Ayala put herself in front of the others, told him "Back off, Kayloo, you're outnumbered", and when he came on anyway she screamed, threw herself at his waist and got swatted off.[1] She was also the one who stopped the fight: as Tab reached for a second blade she threw out a hand and shouted at her to wait, and the bear lifted the barrel clear and revealed the hole himself, telling them he had spent his whole life serving the gangs and that they were not the only ones looking for freedom.[1]
On the roof of the neighbouring building she pulled Hybie under her arm and told her they could celebrate later, then said they should move before anyone thought to look up.[1] Tab's arm and foot were both nearly useless by then. Ayala offered to take Fawn, and Tab handed her over with "Keep her safe for me, okay?" and watched her carry Fawn away into the dark.[1]
Sacred 2: Flames of the Awakened
Ayala, Hybie and Fawn moved back into the burnt-out basement of the Shadow once the gangs had abandoned it, and they hold it as their own.[2] Tab found the three of them around a dying fire when she came back to Varaar to ask for help, and Ayala's first words were that if it really was her, she had made one heck of a mistake coming in unannounced.[2] While Fawn worked through the years of silence between them, Ayala asked the practical question: whether Tab was ever going to get around to saying why she was there.[2]
When Fawn brought Reagan and a badly injured Aero back to the Shadow, Ayala was on her feet before they had crossed the room, and had Aero pinned against the wall by the arm hard enough to split his wounds open.[3] She let go when Tab put a hand on her shoulder, said her piece about the presps, picked up the dishcloth she had dropped and went back into the kitchen. Fawn's assessment was that she would come around.[3]
The last the books show of Ayala is Tab staying behind in Varaar rather than riding on, because she owed it to Ayala, Hybie and Fawn to see them out of the city before the gangs came for them.[3]
Relationships
Fawn was held at the Shadow with her and lives in it with her now. Ayala and Hybie patched her up after the beatings Burkhan's men gave her, and Ayala carried her away over the rooftops when Tab could go no further.[1]
Hybie is the youngest of the women and the one Ayala mothers most visibly, scolding her on the dance floor and holding her under one arm on the roof.[1]
Tabitha Glowdish gets both trust and suspicion from her. Ayala pulled her up through a window and took Fawn off her hands when she could carry her no further, and she also greeted her return years later with a hand on a sword hilt.[1][2]
Aero Ellisvat robbed her of every presp she had before either of them met Tab, and she has not let it go. Asked whether the two of them knew each other, her answer was "Know would be a stretch. Loathe, more or less".[3]
Behind the scenes
Ayala is listed in the pronunciation guide of A Sacred Tale Collection, among the cast of The Way Shadows Live, and again in the guide at the back of Sacred 2: Flames of the Awakened. Both guides give the name as Aye-ah-lah.[4][5] No surname is recorded, and neither is her species.