Calamity
| Also known as | Cala |
|---|---|
| Affiliation | Obellius Kalaar, the Nelazgians |
| Powers | Shifting of physical form and of voice |
| Status | Unknown |
| First appearance | Sacred 2: Flames of the Awakened |
Calamity is a Shifter in the service of Obellius Kalaar at Veskadoth, and the only Shifter shown alive in the books.[1] She poisoned Lumikki Otsby in Ovallia wearing another face, held her and Remidigon Otsby prisoner beneath Veskadoth, and fought her at the city's docks.[2][1][3] Whether Shifter names a people she belongs to or an ability she happens to hold is not settled: she speaks in one breath of us Shifters and of her gift, and the books elsewhere call shifting a special skill.[1]
Appearance
Calamity presents as a woman with knee-length purple hair, long enough that Lumikki is surprised she does not trip on it coming down a staircase, and eyes Lumikki finds ice cold.[1] The hair is what identifies her: hidden in Ferra Ellisvat's office, Lumikki knows her by it before she has seen anything else.[4] Her eyes are purple, and turn black while a borrowed voice is in use.[1] Lumikki rules her out as a Nelazgian on sight, because she has none of their skeletal features.[1]
Whether that is her own shape, or a shape, is not stated. What the books establish is that a Shifter changes form in two ways, physical shape and vocal tone, and that each leaves a tell: a shifted body casts a shadow that does not match it, and a borrowed voice turns the eyes black. Most of Eslura knows both signs, and after so long an absence has stopped watching for them.[1]
At the Veskadoth docks she takes a human face on the body of a snake, quick enough to overtake a sea serpent, with scales and a tail long enough to coil a Sacred Ruler and squeeze. Her blood is purple. Torn open at the side, she grows a fresh tendril out of her midsection with a mushy squishing sound.[3] Nothing in the books sets a limit on what shape a Shifter may take, or for how long.
Personality
Calamity treats cruelty as entertainment. She tells Lumikki she would have turned her and her brother's fur into booties because her feet get cold, teases her with half-clues about the poisoning until she works it out, and asks whether an appeal to her feelings was really her best attempt at a distraction from being strangled.[1][3] She is proud of her work and wants it admired: she picked out the right petals, worked hard on the scent, and thanks Lumikki for the wave that gave her a stage for her new body.[1][3]
She is casually brutal with her own side. Told that two prisoners are missing, she knocks a chair over, storms out of sight, slaps the messenger and threatens to have them thrown into the water for the sea monster to eat.[4]
With Ferra she is something else again: needling, sulky and openly hurt. She complains that Ferra has been pushing her away, that she had thought it playful at first and is now starting to think Ferra is losing interest in her.[4]
Background
Almost nothing of Calamity's life before Veskadoth is established. She is not said to have a home city, a family, an age or a way in. What she offers herself is a single line about the aftermath of the War of Shadows: an attempt was made to get rid of the Shifters after the first war, and it only made those who slipped through the cracks stronger.[1]
Lumikki had read that the Shifters were all exterminated in that war and believed them extinct.[1] Obellius loved Shifters for a number of reasons, chiefly that they were easy to use to manipulate others, which is the only reason the books give for her employment.[1]
Story
Sacred: Eslura's Calling
Calamity is not named in the first book, and the one scene later attributed to her is seen from the other side and only identified as hers in Sacred 2: Flames of the Awakened. Amid the chaos of an afternoon's audience in Ovallia, a travelling merchant claiming to live in Blighburrow gives Lumikki a jar of pink and red flower petals and translucent green stones, promising it will relieve the thoughts that have plagued her all day. As he hands it over his sleeve slides back and Lumikki sees an unfamiliar marking on his wrist, which she puzzles over with her guard on the walk home.[2] That evening she pours the jar into her bath, and she nearly dies.[5]
The poisoning is what sends Lumikki to Morgaedion to check on her brother, and so out of Ovallia at the moment the shadows return.[5]
Sacred 2: Flames of the Awakened
Calamity appears in person in a cell beneath Veskadoth where Lumikki, Remidigon and a third prisoner are held, and introduces herself as someone Lumikki already knows. Lumikki, cut off from water and from the Book of Water, cannot touch her. Calamity works round to the jar, the petals and the nagging headache until Lumikki understands, then answers the objection that the merchant was a man by closing her eyes, opening them black, and speaking in a low scratchy voice. She says the disguise was to keep the Sacred Guard hunting a man who does not exist. She refuses to take Lumikki up to Obellius, says it is not her time yet, and leaves her in the dark.[1]
Lumikki does not see her again until the escape has already happened. Hidden in the wardrobe of Ferra's office, she hears Calamity arrive to flirt, kick her boots onto the desk, tease Ferra in a borrowed voice and complain that the final stages of the plan and the nearly finished tunnels leave no time for anything else. A knock interrupts: two prisoners are missing. Calamity flies at the messenger, then hauls Ferra out to search the city herself.[4]
She catches up with Lumikki at the docks, in the serpentine body, after a wave has torn out the harpoons and freed Trelluby. She plucks Lumikki off the ground with her tail, coils around her, chokes her, and is dug into by Remidigon and bitten by Trelluby before she throws them clear. She snaps Lumikki's forearm, tells her she will never use her powers again, and drops her. Falling, Lumikki summons water with her other paw and shoots it up through Calamity's midsection, cutting her serpentine body in half in an explosion of purple.[3]
Calamity falls howling into the sea. The books do not show her again, and do not say plainly that she is dead; what Lumikki takes from it is that Calamity will not be able to hurt her brother or her best friend any more.[3]
Relationships
Ferra Ellisvat. The Eslurian commander at Veskadoth, and the one person Calamity treats as anything other than material. Lumikki, listening from the wardrobe, reads the two as closer than colleagues, and later tells Calamity to her face that she can tell she cares about her.[4][3] Ferra, held on the island by an enchanted necklace, is meanwhile helping the prisoners escape.[4]
Lumikki Otsby. Her target twice over, first by poison and then by hand, and the one who cuts her in half at the docks.[1][3]
Obellius Kalaar. Her king, in her own word. She holds his prisoners for him, expects him to be delighted by news of them, and fears his displeasure enough to hunt them down herself.[1][4]
Behind the scenes
Those she works with shorten the name to Cala.[1][4] Calamity is not listed in the pronunciation guide at the back of either novel.[6]