Mavis
| Species | Olphin |
|---|---|
| Affiliation | The Olphin Survivors |
| Home | Morgaedion, formerly Treenode |
| Status | Alive |
| First appearance | Sacred 2: Flames of the Awakened |
Mavis is one of the Olphin survivors hidden inside the walls of Morgaedion, and the eye that Barnaby Britto found watching him through a gap in the stone.[1] She is the one who brought outsiders into the camp, and the one who talked the survivors out of it at the end.[2][3]
Appearance
Mavis is a young Olphin girl about Barnaby's age, with brown skin, webbed hands, and a brown pectoral fin. She has only the one. Where the second should be there is a jagged, healed-over stump, which she strokes when she notices someone staring at it.[2]
Personality
Mavis is direct about what has been done to her and refuses to be pitied for it. Catching Barnaby staring, she told him, "I'm not ashamed, I just forgot that most Olphins have both their fins", and then answered the question none of the three visitors had dared ask.[2] Having answered it she changed the subject herself, to the toad on his head.[2]
She is the one who goes up to the wall. She keeps at it in the halls of the prison against the standing objection of the camp's elder, Ofie, and has looked out through the eye hole every day since the raid. Another Olphin's verdict on the arrival of strangers was that "It's always Mavis".[2] Her nerve is founded on observation rather than bravado: she and Monagan had been telling the camp for moons that the Nelazgians were gone, and both had been ignored.[2]
She is kind in small practical ways: shaking a toad's hand when she is introduced to him, taking charge of him when his Olphin has to go somewhere dangerous, and defending an absent friend against a stranger's suspicion.[2]
Background
Mavis was among the Olphins of Treenode shipped to Morgaedion, and she has lived inside the prison's walls since the Nelazgian raid.[2] Most of the survivors are missing fins or limbs: "It was Obellius's way of punishing us", she says, and adds that nobody worked out what they could have done to avoid the blade. Her own accounting is that she got off lightly: "I'm one of the lucky ones; it's just my fin."[2]
She had a toad of her own once, as every Olphin did, and lost it. When Obellius Kalaar raided Treenode and put the Olphins under his control they turned into monsters, and "Our toads didn't recognize us". They left and have not come back, and she does not blame them.[2]
Story
Sacred 2: Flames of the Awakened
Barnaby put his eye to a gap in a prison wall and found another eye looking back at him. Alpin Loomin shouted at it and it vanished; Barnaby talked to it instead, and after a pause the wall shook, a secret door slid open, and Mavis walked out of the shadows and gave her name.[1]
In the hallway she answered Barnaby's questions about her missing fin, met Mauz and shook one of his tiny hands, and said she missed her own toad. That led to the fact the novels build the bond on: "Toads can only bond with one Olphin one time".[2] Barnaby had heard as a child that toads bonded to Olphins and had written it off as one of Mr. Pemadee's bedtime stories after meeting Tab, who has no toad. Mavis read Mauz's staying through everything as proof of a very special connection.[2]
She then took the party back to the camp, going in first to warn the others. The elder, Ofie, met her with a lantern and a threat to bonk her on the head for being at the wall again; Mavis answered, "They're gone, Ofie", and waved the visitors through anyway.[2] The camp panicked at the sight of them, and Mavis argued them down: the Nelazgians were never ones to play games, and if these were Nelazgians the camp would already have been taken.[2]
Asked about Lumikki Otsby, she remembered seeing her long ago, right after the initial raid, and remembered the robe, and had thought that if she ever got out of these halls she would find one like it.[2] She reported that Monagan had not been back in two sleeps, defended him against Alpin's suggestion that he had simply walked out, and doubted the theory, put forward by Monagan's wife, that Relagatra had eaten him, on the grounds that the spider had never eaten anyone before.[2]
Barnaby went after Monagan alone and left Mauz with her. She held the toad to her chest and got a wet lick on the cheek for it.[2] She was waiting when Barnaby came back with Monagan alive, handed Mauz over cross-eyed with the report that "This little guy was interesting company", and pointed out that Monagan could now show them where Lumikki had gone.[3]
When a letter from Mr. Pemadee reached Barnaby with the news that Ovallia had been invaded, and Alpin argued that a baby dragon, a mouse, a gopher and an Olphin could not take on the Nelazgians alone, Mavis came out of the shadows with a dozen more Olphins behind her holding broken pipe, shards of glass and jagged spears.[3] "It's about time we left this place," she said. "We've been scared for far too long, and seeing you come in here, it gave us hope." Hiding had never worked, and the only way to stop Obellius was to band together.[3] Ofie named Barnaby their leader and gave him a spear, and the survivors went down the Nelazgian ladder after him.[3]
Relationships
Barnaby Britto is the outsider Mavis chose to trust through a hole in a wall, and the first free Olphin the novels show her meeting. She gave him the account of the toads, minded his toad while he was gone, and put the camp behind him when it mattered.[2][3]
Mauz she was introduced to formally, looked after for the length of a spider hunt, and gave back with an affectionate complaint about his tongue.[2][3]
Ofie is the camp's elderly leader, who wobbles on a cane, forbids the trips to the wall and is overruled by events. She is the one who hands Barnaby the spear at the end.[2][3]
The Olphin Survivors blamed Mavis when strangers appeared at their door and followed her out of the walls a few days later.[2][3]
Behind the scenes
Mavis appears in Book 2's pronunciation guide, which gives May-vis, and not in Book 1's.[4]