Mayna and Ariz
| Also known as | Demise's hounds |
|---|---|
| Powers | Passage through solid ground; a bite that leaves blackness under the skin |
| Companions | Demise |
| Family | Demise, their father |
| Status | Free of the curse and tracking Beatrice Tidal |
| First appearance | Sacred: Eslura's Calling |
Mayna and Ariz are the two shadow hounds of the Shadow Reaper Demise, summoned out of the smoke of his claws to run down Beatrice Tidal.[1] When the curse on Demise breaks they are cured with him and turn out to be dogs, and to be his own children.[2] Whether the hounds of a Reaper are always their own family is not established anywhere in the books; Demise is the only Reaper named and these are the only hounds shown.
Appearance
As shadows the two are indistinguishable from one another. Demise stands with his hands at his side, calls their names, and his hands begin to vibrate; black smoke pours from his claws, pools on the ground and slowly forms into two wolf-like creatures. Their eyes glow red and their fur spews smoke across the floor.[1] Smoke cascades out of their mouths, their teeth are black and drip smoke, and their growls carry up through floorboards.[1][3] Bowmidge Talorn calls them demons.[1] When Demise's claws stop smoking, they go out like smoke in the wind.[1]
As dogs they are told apart easily. Their fur is rough to the touch, like dried grass, and their noses drip in an endless stream.[2] The books give neither of them a pronoun.
Mayna
Mayna is the larger of the two and a deep charcoal.[2] Recognised at last, Mayna plants a wet kiss on Demise's cheek, and howls as the pair set off north on Bea's scent.[2]
Ariz
Ariz is the smaller of the two and a shimmering silver-blue.[2] Ariz barks where Mayna howls.[2]
Personality
Under the curse they are obedient and nothing else. They circle, snap, swat and pin on command, hold when told not yet, and vanish out of the way when Demise brings his axe down.[3] He calls them his darlings and rewards them aloud for a job done.[1]
Cured, they are exuberant. They burst out of a bush in an explosion of leaves, twigs and muddy paws, bound at Demise until he braces for a bite, and lick him from head to foot instead. Their tails wag and their behinds shimmy, and when he finally says their names they jump up and down and bark as though he had produced a steaming hot chunk of meat.[2]
Background
Nothing is recorded of either of them before Demise's service to Obellius Kalaar. Demise's own account is that the curse Obellius laid on him took his hounds too, that they had been shadows so long he had forgotten what they used to look like, and that they are his own children. Their mother is not mentioned, their ages are not given, and neither is said to have been anything but a dog.[2]
Nothing establishes whether making hounds out of one's own family is what a Shadow Reaper does, or what was done to this one. Alistair Archibald begins to explain what a Reaper is and is cut off after a clause, and the books never return to it.[4]
Story
Sacred: Eslura's Calling
Demise calls Mayna and Ariz by name for the first time in Bowmidge's house, when the gully keeper refuses to give Bea up. He raises his claws above the two wolves' heads and orders them to bring her to him. They sink into the floorboards and swim through them like fish in a pond, circle the table and advance on the mailroom door. A wolf's head pops up out of the floor in front of Alpin Loomin; Barnaby Britto knocks the gopher clear and takes the bite himself, and an inky blackness seeps under his skin. The hounds keep circling inside the floorboards, their low growls carrying up through the wood, until Bowmidge's gullys fly at Demise's face and break his concentration.[1]
They are with him again in the woods outside Galecrest, forming out of the smoke as two snarling wolves beside a man. They circle Bea, one snapping its teeth beside her face and the other swatting a paw at her back, and step back when Demise tells them not yet. On his command they lunge and pin her to the ground, spilling smoke over her face until she is blind, and then vanish so that his axe can come down.[3] That is the last of them under the curse: the gold light from Bea's Sacred Symbol strikes Demise and the hounds together.[2]
Sacred 2: Flames of the Awakened
The two find Demise where he wakes, deep in a forest with no one else in it. Braced to be taken down by a couple of mutts, he is licked instead, and notices afterwards that they are too friendly to be wild and wear no collars. What gives them away is not their faces but their fur patterns, the texture of their coats and their eyes, which had looked at him with the same longing before, though not in that shape. He names them, and they answer.[2]
Demise pulls his axe out of the tree roots for the scrap of Bea's cloth stuck to the blade, holds it out, and the two sniff it several dozen times before looking up at him. He tells them to find her. They swivel their heads, sniff between the cloth and the air, and take off north, Ariz barking and Mayna howling, with Demise following.[2]
Relationships
Demise. Their father, and the Reaper who commanded them as shadows. He curses himself for having forgotten what his own kin look like and reckons they have forgiven him.[2]
Beatrice Tidal. The quarry they were sent after twice, and the source of the gold light that cured all three of them. By the close of Sacred 2: Flames of the Awakened they are tracking her again, this time to reach her before Obellius Kalaar does.[2]
Behind the scenes
Both names appear in the pronunciation guide at the back of Sacred 2: Flames of the Awakened, which gives Mayna as May-nuh and Ariz as Uh-rizz. Neither is listed in the guide at the back of Sacred: Eslura's Calling, although Demise shouts both names in that book.[5][6]
The two are covered in one article because the books never separate them. They are summoned together, commanded together, cured together and named in the same breath every time either is named at all.