Obellius Kalaar
| Also known as | The usurper, the rightful king |
|---|---|
| Title | Self-styled king of Eslura |
| Affiliation | Nelazgians, Shadow Reapers |
| Home | Veskadoth |
| Powers | Fire, mind control, the making of Shadow Reapers and of cleansed dragons |
| Weapons | Elmryn's staff |
| Status | At large |
| First appearance | Sacred: Eslura's Calling |
Obellius Kalaar of Veskadoth is the usurper who made war on the Sacred Rulers in the War of Shadows, was beaten and shut in Morgaedion for it, and returned to take Zybersia and seat himself on Elmryn's throne.[1][2] He is the master Demise served, the king the Nelazgians fight for, and the reason the Olphins are in prison.[3][4] What he wants is the Eyearke Stone and the Sacred Head who can use it, and by the close of Sacred 2: Flames of the Awakened he has neither and has not been found.[5]
Appearance
Obellius is a tall man, thin but muscular, with long white hair like snow and red eyes.[6] Alistair Archibald, hearing that description from Beatrice Tidal, recognises him at once but says he has never seen the red eyes before, and cannot help connecting them to the Book of Fire gone from its Chamber.[6]
Morgaedion had reduced him. In the cell he is an old man whose once flowing white hair is matted and tangled, with a beard like a nest of thistles on his chest, his bulk gone, his skin dull and grey, his eyes beady and glistening with rheum, and pus and blood on his wrists, ankles and neck where the shackles chafe. He grins with black teeth.[3]
Free, he dresses in what he has taken. He wears the dead Ruler's ceremonial robes with the garnet cloak behind him, carries Elmryn's staff and pets it softly like a small animal, and lets his white locks fall to his chest when he pulls back his hood.[2] Fire scorches the ground behind each step he takes, and his leather boots leave imprints in the burnt earth with tiny flecks of flame shooting up as he walks.[2][7] Under the cloak he wears a belt hung with corked glass bottles, several already full of black swirling gas.[7]
Personality
Obellius is courteous while he destroys people, and enjoys the gap between the two. He asks a captive Sacred Guard for his name, burns a hole through his back with the staff when he will not give it, calls the answer a treat when it comes, invites him to join the celebration and has his goons help their dear friend up. Later, when the man crawls over and grabs his leg, he kicks him off the platform and down the steps.[2] He tells a caged dragon not to be afraid and that it has been chosen for a great honour, then empties it.[7]
He is a mimic of the man he killed. He moves Elmryn's throne out of the collapsed grand hall and sits on it, but discards the cushions, and uses a crouching Nelazgian as a footstool.[2]
His contempt is specific and public. He calls the Olphins webbed freaks and finned freaks, refuses to let Alyria be helped up the steps on the grounds that she should carry herself as she carried the rest of them, and burns a hole through her fin when the crowd will not kneel.[2] He no longer needs the stone that once controlled the Olphins, on the reasoning that they will listen if they know what is best for them.[2]
What he promises is not paid. Reagan Hideaway, listening to a desert crew boast of the promotion they expect for delivering him a wagon of explosive flowers, doubts he has given their reward any thought at all.[8] Ferra Ellisvat, who serves him under an enchanted necklace, expects that once he rises to power the Nelazgians will be slaves to him as well, because that is what everyone is in his eyes.[9]
Background
Obellius comes from Veskadoth, the Nelazgian city, and the books give him no birth, no family, no age and no species beyond calling him a man.[1][2]
Seely supplies the one account of where his power came from. A Knower of Many Things exiled from Galecrest for asking why a peaceful race turned overnight, Seely had heard tales of the people of Veskadoth contacting the god Nelazgus and channelling his power through objects, and tales of Nelazgus bargaining his god-like powers away to those below him. His conclusion is that Obellius Kalaar struck such a deal, as many of his kind did before him, and obtained the power to control the Olphin race.[1]
Before the war he was inside the Rulers' confidence. Tabitha Glowdish's summary is that Obellius gained the trust of the Rulers, found out the secrets of their world, and betrayed them.[5]
The war itself is not dated. Obellius led it, claiming he meant to restore Nelazgus's land, with the Nelazgians, the Olphins, the Shifters and the Shadow Reapers on his side.[1][10][11] Amelia Lunala fought him and did not destroy him, and is remembered mostly and unjustly for that failure.[12] He was locked away in Morgaedion for longer than anyone cared to count; the stone by which he had controlled the Olphins was broken in the fighting; and the whole Olphin race was sentenced to the depths of the prison for having fought for him.[11][2][4]
Story
Sacred: Eslura's Calling
Obellius spends the book off the page, named before he is shown. He is first seen as the old king shivering in the last cell on the left at Morgaedion, waiting for Demise to bring him the Heart of the Book of Fire. He tears it from the Reaper's hands, splits it in two with a twist, takes the fire into himself in a blinding explosion, and gives the order that drives the rest of the series: find the girl and bring her to me.[3]
Nothing in Eslura yet knows he is loose. Millennium Loftwind, finding the dragons of Galecrest cold as stone, notes that Zybersia has no Sacred Ruler because the last was murdered by the usurper Obellius Kalaar.[13] Alistair produces a warning Amelia had given him, that a hundred years would go by and Obellius would rise again with the power of the Book of Fire, and admits he dismissed it because he had assumed her mind had succumbed to the shadows.[12]
His reach shows up in other people's histories. Reslyn Keiser tells Reagan that the couple in a photograph would have been her mother and father had Obellius not got his claws on them.[14] Elmryn's letter, written in haste and never delivered, says the Eyearke Stone must not fall into the wrong hands, that Obellius will pursue it until his death, and that Obellius knows he has it and will come for him.[5] Elmryn was killed, and Tab and Reagan work out afterwards who killed him.[5]
He also reaches Bea directly, in dreams, standing further off each time and then closer, which is how Alistair identifies him.[6] The book ends with Officer Kazke dragging himself to Galecrest out of Morgaedion to report that Obellius has escaped and is coming for the girl.[15]
Sacred 2: Flames of the Awakened
The second book opens with Zybersia already burnt and Obellius on Elmryn's throne in the citadel above it, taking the surviving citizens as an audience, appointing a captured Sacred Guard as his own, and forcing the head of the Olphins to her knees in front of her people.[2]
At the core of Alakyer he works through three caged dragons in a row, laying a hand on each snout until a black aura closes over the beast, bottling what he draws out, and raising them as black-eyed soldiers to walk at his side. He leaves a standing order that any dragon returning to the core is to be captured and brought to him for cleansing. Alpin Loomin's reading is that Obellius has found a way to turn not only people into Reapers but dragons, and that there is no telling where he stops.[16][7]
His mind control is treated as a live danger rather than a past one. Tab hunts down a translucent grey stone swallowed by a drovig because it shields its bearer against his powers, and sends it on to Reagan for Bea.[17][18] Mavis, one of the Olphin survivors at Morgaedion, says most of them are missing a fin, that it was his way of punishing them, and that when he raided Treenode and put them under they turned into monsters their own toads no longer recognised.[8]
What he is building runs underground. Crews in the Kella Desert gather explosive hexaflares by the wagonload for personal delivery to him.[8] Zybersia itself he leaves empty behind him, its spire brought down and Elmryn's Castle half destroyed and stripped of its tapestries.[19] A map chalked across the walls of the Sacred Chamber beneath that castle shows why. Every line on it runs back to the Sacred City, seven big red crosses are marked along the way, Zybersia is labelled an entry point, and a hole about the size of a semi-truck drops away beneath the walkway with a rope hanging into it. The lines are the Veskadoth Tunnel System.[20] Eslurians are taken and held: Lumikki Otsby and Remidigon Otsby beneath Veskadoth, Reslyn somewhere along the tunnels, and Pemadee when Ovallia falls.[9][21]
He never meets Bea. He reaches her once more the way he did in the first book, inside a vision the Eyearke Stone gives her at the Sacred City: she sees herself holding the stone out over her kneeling friends, and a red-cloaked figure comes up behind her, cups her shoulder, drops his hood and smiles at her.[22]
The book closes without him. He is not found, not fought and not stopped, and the last anyone knows of his position is the direction the tunnels point.[20]
Relationships
Demise. His Shadow Reaper, who called him the rightful king and served without asking questions. Demise's own account of the arrangement is that Obellius cursed him, a young and clueless man, into complete submission, and that the master never explained why he wanted the girl.[23][24]
The Nelazgians. His army, and the people who call him king. He uses them as guards, as footstools and as diggers, and Ferra expects he regards them as slaves in waiting.[2][9]
The Olphins. The race he took over and spent, and who took the sentence for it. Seely's conclusion is that they were never willing.[1][8]
Elmryn. The Ruler of Zybersia he had killed, whose castle he sacked, whose throne he sits on, whose robes he wears, whose staff he carries, and whose daughter is hunting him.[2][19]
Amelia Lunala. The Sacred Head who fought him and failed. Alistair says Obellius had a great deal of power over her, in physical strength and emotionally as well.[12]
Beatrice Tidal. The girl he sent Demise after and has never met, who sees him in dreams and visions before she knows his name.[6][22]
Behind the scenes
The pronunciation guide printed at the back of both novels gives the name as Oh-bee-lee-us Kuh-laar.[25]
See also
- Demise
- Dragon Cleansing
- Morgaedion
- Nelazgians
- Nelazgus
- Olphins
- Shadow Reapers
- Veskadoth
- War of Shadows
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 Book 1, Ch. 17.
- ↑ 2.00 2.01 2.02 2.03 2.04 2.05 2.06 2.07 2.08 2.09 2.10 2.11 Book 2, Ch. 1.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 Book 1, Ch. 1.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 Book 1, Ch. 3.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 Book 1, Ch. 25.
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 Book 1, Ch. 23.
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 Book 2, Ch. 14.
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 8.3 Book 2, Ch. 20.
- ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 Book 2, Ch. 22.
- ↑ Book 2, Ch. 7.
- ↑ 11.0 11.1 Book 1, Ch. 10.
- ↑ 12.0 12.1 12.2 Book 1, Ch. 8.
- ↑ Book 1, Ch. 5.
- ↑ Book 1, Ch. 19.
- ↑ Book 1, Ch. 26.
- ↑ Book 2, Ch. 11.
- ↑ Book 2, Ch. 4.
- ↑ Book 2, Ch. 16.
- ↑ 19.0 19.1 Book 2, Ch. 23.
- ↑ 20.0 20.1 Book 2, Ch. 26.
- ↑ Book 2, Ch. 27.
- ↑ 22.0 22.1 Book 2, Ch. 17.
- ↑ Book 1, Ch. 15.
- ↑ Book 2, Ch. 28.
- ↑ Book 1.