Piercio
| Also known as | Metal Mouse, 'Cio |
|---|---|
| Species | Mouse |
| Affiliation | The Sarakyan; Albertuous and Company |
| Weapons | A sewing pin |
| Companions | Long Paws |
| Status | Alive |
| First appearance | Sacred: Eslura's Calling |
Piercio is a mouse a few inches tall who wears a full suit of armour, fights with a sewing pin, and belonged first to the Sarakyan and then to a travelling circus, losing both.[1][2] He guided Barnaby Britto and Alpin Loomin over Alakyer to Morgaedion in Sacred 2: Flames of the Awakened, bickering with the gopher the entire way.[3]
Appearance
Piercio is only a few inches tall, small enough that Reagan Hideaway misses him standing beside a dog's foot on a lit stage. He is clad in gleaming silver armour and carries a sewing pin as a sword, holstered at his belt. His ears are oversized and pierced, and he scratches between the piercings when he is thinking.[1] His voice does not match him: it is unusually deep, and it carried to the back of a full circus tent.[1][4]
He beds down in a bed smaller than Reagan's foot, sits on a chair with his head far short of the table, and rides on Long Paws's head or shoulder when he wants height.[1]
Personality
Piercio is bossy and he is rarely wrong about the thing he is bossy about. He is on stage taking applause one moment and shouting at the cast to get the exhausted digguno something to eat the next, and when a muffin finally arrives he thanks the room in a snarl and feeds her by hand.[1]
Needling Alpin Loomin is close to a vocation. Told he is always having to one up the gopher, he answers "That is my second job".[5] He is quick to deflate him and quicker to defend him, drags him under a shared blanket in a blizzard rather than watch him shiver, and covers for him when his feelings for Lumikki Otsby show in front of strangers.[6][5]
He is vain about his own competence and about his size. Warned that a climb needs long strides, he puffs out his chest and says "I may be small, but I'm a bit more agile than you", then adds that he avoids the pastries these days and Alpin does not.[6] He also does not tolerate the name Long Paws uses for him, and asks her "How many times do I have to tell you to quit callin' me that?" while pointing his pin at her foot.[1]
Under pressure he volunteers before anyone asks. His plan for two armed Nelazgians is "Throw me.", delivered with a nod as though it were the only logical solution.[7]
Background
Piercio joined the Sarakyan, Elmryn's group of Eyearke Stone hunters, alongside Aero Ellisvat and Long Paws. By Aero's account the three of them were nobodies and outcasts with nowhere left to go, who joined hoping the group would lead them to good fortune and nothing more, while for Tabitha Glowdish it was a family.[2] Elmryn's murder ended it, and saying the name aloud is still dangerous years later.[1][2]
He and Long Paws went into Kantankerous Albertuous's travelling circus and stayed for years. Their act closed the show: Albertuous billed it as "the pyrotechnics of Metal Mouse and Flint Paw", and Piercio worked the crowd with his pin before calling "Feast your eyes, my fellow Eslurians, on Flint Paw." He lit the fuses on the bombs in Long Paws's paws; she juggled them blindfolded and launched them over the audience, where they burst open and poured out bioluminescent river spores instead of shrapnel.[1] The two shared a tent with two beds, one of them tiny.[1]
Story
Sacred: Eslura's Calling
Tab and Aero came backstage after the show. Tab congratulated him with "Nice show, Metal Mouse", which he could have lived without, and then asked the pair to help her put the Sarakyan back together and take the Eyearke Stone to the Sacred Rulers.[1] Piercio refused. He had nearly had his neck snipped the first time around, and said "It's too risky. We've worked so hard to have a decent life. Why take the chance?" Pressed, he set out what the circus had given him: "at least we have a roof over our heads, food in our bellies, and people to call family".[1]
He changed his mind. He and Long Paws turned up at Elmryn's Castle in Galecrest by blowing a hole in the wall of Elmryn's study, having followed the trail of Nelazgians setting fire to the streets, and admitted that Albertuous had fired them both. They led the party out through the castle tunnels, arguing the whole way about which fork they had come in by, and Piercio gave in and told everyone to follow the big mutt.[8] He, Long Paws and Aero held the rear when the Nelazgians broke through.[8]
He met Alpin Loomin for the first time on the library steps with "Well, well, well, look what the cat dragged in", chest puffed out, and answered the gopher's snarl of his name with "That's what they call me."[4] He joined Alistair Archibald's party for the defence of the castle, and spent the feast afterwards ranting with Long Paws about their time in the circus.[4]
Sacred 2: Flames of the Awakened
Piercio went with Barnaby and Alpin to Morgaedion to look for Lumikki Otsby and the imprisoned Olphins, while Long Paws stayed to defend Galecrest.[9][3] He took the lead out of the gates on the grounds that Alpin did not know his left from his right and that many moons travelling with Albertuous and Company had taught him a thing or two about these lands.[3]
The route went over Alakyer. He talked the party through a blizzard and into Vendalis's house, where he took the first blanket and the first cup of tea and got a knitted blue coat with a hood cut for his ears out of it.[6][10] Inside the mountain core he spotted the two Nelazgians and their caged dragons from the ledge above, and recognised the man who walked in after them. He got the name out with difficulty: it was Obellius Kalaar.[10]
When Barnaby's legs went out from under him at the sight, Piercio and Alpin caught him and stood him back up, and Piercio drew his pin and said they would make sure Obellius never got him or his people again.[7] He then had Barnaby throw him at the guards, put the pin through a Nelazgian's eye, hung on while the creature thrashed, and slashed its ankles out from under it, which bought Barnaby the time to tip the dragon egg into the lava.[7]
He led the party out of the core onto the ledge above Cape Heladria, with Morgaedion waiting on the far side of the water, argued that a baby dragon that had not eaten them yet was unlikely to start, and reasoned that Egras simply might not know how to fly yet.[11]
Inside the prison it was Piercio's ears that found the Olphins in the walls. He heard a stone roll where the others heard nothing, refused to be talked out of it, drew his pin at an empty corridor and pressed his face to the stonework until Barnaby found the eye hole.[11] At the camp he pushed Ofie on the one-forager rule, asking whether they had really meant to starve rather than go looking, and volunteered to go after Relagatra with Barnaby before being told he was staying behind.[5] He was still there on the ground block, cutting off Barnaby's panic over Pemadee's letter, when the Olphins came out of the shadows to follow him down the hole.[12]
Relationships
Long Paws is his partner in the act and the one person allowed to laugh at him. She calls him 'Cio, he threatens to needle her for it, and he climbs her like a mountain to get to her shoulder. Aero's remark on seeing them again is that he is pleased not much has changed between them.[1]
Alpin Loomin is his running argument. They meet as enemies, are put in the same travelling party twice, and end up sharing a blanket. Piercio tells Barnaby that Alpin paced the whole time he was gone and would have sucked his own teeth out, and Alpin goes red and denies it.[4][6][12]
Aero Ellisvat knew him in the Sarakyan and greets him by name backstage. The two joined for the same reason and came out of it the same way.[1][2]
Barnaby Britto is the one he throws in with in Book 2. Piercio takes the lead when Barnaby cannot, and holds him upright when he cannot stand.[3][7]
Behind the scenes
The pronunciation guide at the back of both novels gives Piercio as Pier-sea-oh. No surname is recorded.[13][14]
The name is misprinted once. In Book 1, Ch. 21 a paragraph opens "Pericio craned his tiny neck up at Long Paws". Every other instance in both novels reads Piercio.[1]
Metal Mouse is a stage name rather than a nickname he was given. It is Albertuous's billing for the act, and Tab picks it up to tease him with. Alpin counts him an Eslurian when he groups a mouse, a gopher and an Olphin together against the Nelazgians.[1][7]
See also
References
- ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 1.10 1.11 1.12 1.13 1.14 Book 1, Ch. 21.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 Book 1, Ch. 23.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 Book 2, Ch. 4.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 Book 1, Ch. 26.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 Book 2, Ch. 21.
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 Book 2, Ch. 6.
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 Book 2, Ch. 14.
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 Book 1, Ch. 25.
- ↑ Book 2, Ch. 3.
- ↑ 10.0 10.1 Book 2, Ch. 11.
- ↑ 11.0 11.1 Book 2, Ch. 18.
- ↑ 12.0 12.1 Book 2, Ch. 27.
- ↑ Book 1.
- ↑ Book 2.