Demise
| Species | Shadow Reaper, formerly a man |
|---|---|
| Affiliation | Obellius Kalaar, formerly |
| Powers | Soul taking, shadow hounds, travel as smoke |
| Weapons | Double headed axe |
| Companions | Mayna and Ariz |
| Family | Mayna and Ariz, his children |
| Status | Free of his curse and searching for Beatrice Tidal |
| First appearance | Sacred: Eslura's Calling |
Demise is the Shadow Reaper who carried the Heart of the Book of Fire into Morgaedion and put it in Obellius Kalaar's hands, the theft that begins the crisis of the series.[1] He hunted Beatrice Tidal across Eslura on Obellius's orders until the gold light of her Sacred Symbol threw him into a canopy, and he woke long afterwards a man again.[2][3] He is the only Shadow Reaper the books name, and much of what he is is left unestablished: his name before the curse is never given, and no one in either book finishes explaining what a Shadow Reaper is.[4]
Appearance
As a Reaper, Demise walks as a man with no eyes. His robes are long and black and flick up in the wind to show grey beneath, and his brown hair is tied in tight braids that fall from his hood over muscular shoulders. He speaks in a low growl and laces claws over his lap where a man would fold his hands.[5] Where his eyes should be there are pits, a nothingness of shadows hallowed by suffering, and smoke rolls out of them when he is angry.[1][2] He smiles jagged shark teeth.[2] A belt of corked glass bottles hangs at his waist, each holding a soul he has taken.[1] Hiding from footsteps outside a window, Bea rules him out on the grounds that the Shadow Reaper had had no feet, at least from what she had seen.[6]
He arrives as weather before he arrives as a figure. Lamps go out, a cold chill comes in under the door, a bright afternoon turns black, and smoke filters in below the doorframe and covers the floor.[5] In the woods outside Galecrest he and his two hounds are at first nothing more than a swirl of black smoke, which then takes the shape of a person and two snarling wolves.[2]
After the curse breaks he is simply a man. He has eyes again, and blinks them several times wondering what colour they will be. A large scar spreads across the middle of his chest where the gold light struck him, and he cannot recall how it got there.[3]
Personality
Demise plays at courtesy and enjoys the performance. He lets himself into Bowmidge Talorn's home, kicks his boots onto the table, breaks two teacups, and complains about being stared at. When Bowmidge denies hiding anyone he laughs, clutches his stomach, carries the act on until it grows close to awkward, and wipes a fake tear from below his empty eye sockets.[5] He calls his hounds his darlings and rewards them aloud.[5]
He is also entirely without pity. He sets a prisoner's hand alight for touching his boot, watches the flames spread to her rags and boil her alive, thinks of her as pathetic scum, and then takes her soul.[1]
Under Obellius he is reverent and small. He feels a quiver in his voice addressing his master, kneels with the Heart held out on two open palms and his eyes trained to the floor, and thinks of the day as the first in his life when he was more than a collector of souls.[1] He never asked why Obellius wanted the girl, and Obellius never expanded on his reasoning; it was his job as a Shadow Reaper to serve and obey with no questions asked.[3]
Freed, he is quick to forgive. Sitting against the tree with his hounds licking his face, he decides that they have forgiven him and that he will forgive himself and his past, and he counts himself from that moment in Bea's service and owing her his life.[3]
Background
What a Shadow Reaper is, is not established. Alistair Archibald begins to tell Bea and is interrupted after the first clause.
The books never come back to finish the sentence.[4]
Where Demise came from is unestablished in the same way. Two accounts of Reaper origin stand side by side without being reconciled: the bestiary appendix says Shadow Reapers are said to be brought to life by the god Nelazgus himself, while Demise's own recollection is that he was a man first.[7][3] On his account his past had been cursed by his old master. He was forced as a young and clueless man into a role he never asked for nor wanted to take, a role meant to put him in a position of complete submission and to steal away his freedom, before Obellius decided he was to become a Shadow Reaper.[3]
Nothing further is given. His name before he was Demise is never stated, nor where he lived, nor how old he was, nor who the mother of his children was, nor how long he served. Demise is what Obellius's servants and enemies alike call him, and it is the only name the books use.
Story
Sacred: Eslura's Calling
Demise walks into Morgaedion in daylight with the Heart of the Book of Fire burning beneath his robes, welcomed with forced bows by hostage Sacred Guard whose prison his men have already taken. Remidigon Otsby and Officer Kazke open the cell block with the S, and Demise goes on alone. On the way to the last cell he burns a prisoner alive, draws her soul out on his claws and corks it into a bottle, reckoning it worth another thirty-two moons of his life. He kneels at the bars, gives the Heart to the old king, and watches him split it in two in a blinding explosion of fiery light. The king's order is to find the girl and bring her to him.[1]
A Shadow Reaper is on Bea's trail from her first hours in Eslura. Smoke takes the shape of a man across the lake and follows her and Reagan Hideaway into the woods, and Alistair outruns it on Kuma and seals the path behind them with roots.[8] Millennium Loftwind, told that it has not only returned to Eslura but retained its powers, remarks that Shadow Reapers have quite the knack for sucking all light and life out of a situation.[9]
At Bowmidge Talorn's gully post he introduces himself by name as a chosen servant of Obellius Kalaar and asks to be spared the trouble of a search. When that fails he calls Mayna and Ariz out of the smoke pouring from his claws and sends them through the floorboards after Bea. One of them bites Barnaby Britto's arm and leaves an inky blackness spreading under his skin. Bowmidge's gullys fly at Demise's face, his claws stop smoking, the hounds go out like smoke in the wind, and the party escapes through a window.[5]
He catches Bea alone on the path outside Galecrest, holding a double headed axe as tall as he is. He has the hounds pin her, then swings the axe down. The blade meets her open hand, gold light bursts from the symbol on her wrist, and he is thrown backwards. He recovers, drags her wrist open with his claws, and is still boasting when roots come up out of the path, pierce his chest and carry him bellowing into the canopy.[2]
The damage he did outlasts him. Alistair explains that a single stroke of a Reaper's claw can take half a victim's lifespan, and Nordwelg adds that part of the Reaper stays inside the prey and eats away at the energy that lives there. Bea's Sacred Symbol darkens from gold toward black, and the only remedy is to reconnect her to the Books.[10]
Sacred 2: Flames of the Awakened
Demise is absent for most of the book but keeps turning up as a comparison. Watching Obellius cleanse dragons at the core of Alakyer, Barnaby recognises the belt of corked bottles as the same arrangement Demise wore and the dragons' blacked-out eyes as the ones that will never cease to haunt his dreams.[11] Standing at the foot of the stairs to the Sacred Chamber beneath Elmryn's Castle, Aero Ellisvat says no Eslurian other than Elmryn and his predecessors was ever allowed past them, not until Demise broke in and stole the Heart.[12] That does not quite match Book 1, where the Sacred Rulers speak of the Book of Fire itself as taken from its Chamber; what Reagan finds in Book 2 is the Book lying where it always lay with a hole the size of a basketball through its spine.[9][12]
The last chapter of the book is his. He wakes against a tree with the sun in his eyes, an axe lodged in the roots by his leg, small pink flowers grown up around and between his legs, and a scar across his chest he cannot account for. His stomach rumbles for bread rather than for lives. Two dogs burst out of a bush, lick him rather than bite him, and turn out to be Mayna and Ariz in the shapes he had forgotten. He works it out from there: the girl's gold light and the mark she left on his chest undid the spell Obellius cast upon them all. He pulls the axe out of the roots for the scrap of her cloth stuck to the blade, holds it out to the hounds, tells them to find her, and follows them north.[3]
Whether he reaches her, and what a freed Reaper is, the book does not say.
Relationships
Obellius Kalaar. His old master, and the one he calls the rightful king of Eslura. Demise served him without asking questions and thought of himself on the day of the theft as a messenger rather than a collector of souls. Afterwards he names Obellius as the author of the curse and wants only to reach Bea before he does.[1][3]
Mayna and Ariz. His hounds, and per his own recollection his children. As a Reaper he poured them out of his claws as smoke and commanded them; freed, he embraces them as dogs and reproaches himself for having forgotten what his own kin look like.[5][3]
Beatrice Tidal. The girl he was sent to bring in, and the one whose power broke him out of the role. He remembers her name only as a bright flash of gold and a young teen, decides he owes her his life, and sets out to find her.[3]
Barnaby Britto. Bitten by one of the hounds at the gully post and left with black under his skin, Barnaby is the one who keeps recognising Demise in what Obellius does later.[5][11]
Behind the scenes
The pronunciation guide printed at the back of both novels gives the name as Duh-mize.[13]
See also
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 Book 1, Ch. 1.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 Book 1, Ch. 20.
- ↑ 3.00 3.01 3.02 3.03 3.04 3.05 3.06 3.07 3.08 3.09 Book 2, Ch. 28.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 Book 1, Ch. 23.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 5.6 Book 1, Ch. 15.
- ↑ Book 1, Ch. 13.
- ↑ Book 1, "The Many Creatures of Eslura".
- ↑ Book 1, Ch. 6.
- ↑ 9.0 9.1 Book 1, Ch. 8.
- ↑ Book 1, Ch. 22.
- ↑ 11.0 11.1 Book 2, Ch. 14.
- ↑ 12.0 12.1 Book 2, Ch. 23.
- ↑ Book 1.