Reagan Hideaway
| Also known as | Red |
|---|---|
| Species | Eslurian |
| Title | Sacred Ruler of the Book of Fire |
| Affiliation | Sacred Rulers, Camp Tossbridge |
| Home | Montana, Earth |
| Powers | Fire |
| Weapons | Two daggers with purple hilts |
| Companions | Aloeissa |
| Family | Elmryn, her father |
| Status | Alive |
| First appearance | Sacred: Eslura's Calling |
Reagan Hideaway is the Sacred Ruler of the Book of Fire and was a counselor at Camp Tossbridge before she followed Beatrice Tidal through a cave into Eslura.[1][2] She is the daughter of Elmryn, the Ruler who held the Book before her, and wore the Eyearke Stone around her neck from infancy without knowing what it was.[3][4]
Appearance
Reagan has bright red hair and a freckled face, and wears a collection of gold and silver rings on her hands.[5] The hair is a liability in Eslura, and Tabitha Glowdish made her keep it covered and calls her Red for it.[4]
She has collected injuries steadily. A rock opened her forehead in the Kella Desert and Aero Ellisvat cleaned it with migplye and bandaged it.[6] Drayzuzian tore open her side at Galecrest, and Millennium Loftwind healed the wound with dragon spinal fluid.[7] A crowd at the Varaar Colosseum pelted her with half-ripe tomatoes until she was covered in welts.[8]
Personality
Reagan is competent and practical, and treats keeping other people alive as her job. She is also blunt about her own position: told that a Book had chosen her, her first move was to walk up to it and order it to take the power back.[2]
She is quick to trust when trusting is the only option left, and quick to decide who is worth protecting. She argued Tab into hearing Aero out at the edge of the meadow when Tab had a blade at his throat, on the grounds that they had no other way into the city.[9] She unbolted the chains of a spiked harness off a caged Aloeissa in a stable at Varaar when there was nothing in it for her, and the beast remembered.[10][11]
Background
Reagan grew up in Montana with an aunt, having been told her parents died in a car wreck shortly after she was born. She had never seen a photograph of them and nobody seemed to remember them.[12][3] Her father gave her a purple stone on a gold chain when she was small, and she wore it for years believing it a cheap amethyst.[4][12]
Reslyn Keiser kept a photograph of a red-haired man and a blonde woman holding a freckle-faced baby, and gave it to Reagan at The Avonbourn, telling her the two would have been her mother and father had Obellius Kalaar not got his claws on them. Tab said outright that it could not be so, because Rulers are forbidden relations of that kind and she could not see Elmryn being an exception.[3] Piercio made the same objection when Tab announced her parentage inside a circus tent.[13] The prohibition is real and is sworn: Lumikki Otsby laid her right paw on the Book of Water and swore away every hope of falling in love, under laws made to keep the Rulers dedicated to their roles, and a breach costs the Ruler her position and her partner a cell at Morgaedion.[14] The books record both the law and Reagan, and reconcile neither. Reslyn's photograph was burned in her fireplace the same night, at Tab's insistence, so that it could not fall into Nelazgian hands.[3]
Reagan was a counselor at Camp Tossbridge and had been in the running for lead counselor.[2]
Story
Sacred: Eslura's Calling
Reagan met Bea on the bus to Camp Tossbridge and handed her the name tag she had not been given at the front desk.[5] When Bea ran into the woods after her sketchbook was torn in half in the mess hall, Reagan went after her, found her with an arm sunk into the wall of a cave, grabbed her free hand and was pulled through into Eslura with her.[1]
She spent the first days in Eslura baffled that anyone should pay her any attention at all, until Tabitha Glowdish dropped out of the trees, took her captive at knifepoint and rode her into the Kella Desert. Tab had recognised the Eyearke Stone on her neck and appointed herself its guard, meaning to deliver it to the Council at the High Moon Festival.[4] Reagan offered her the necklace outright and Tab refused it.[4]
The two went to Varaar for Aero Ellisvat, whom Tab hired as protection. He treated the cut on Reagan's forehead, and later taught her how to hold a knife.[6][12] At the Avonbourn a crocodile Nelazgian broke into her room after the stone, pinned her to the floor and hooked the chain out of her shirt with a claw. Reagan killed it with a dagger and found the stone afterwards stuck to the drying blood on her shirt.[3] Reslyn recognised it, and gave her the photograph.[3]
Outside Galecrest, Aero confessed that he had told the Nelazgians she and the Ruler would be in the city at the Festival. Reagan chose to go along with his plan anyway, and was walked into Galecrest with her wrists roped and a blindfold on as his prisoner, while Drayzuzian clawed the Nelazgian mark into Tab's wrist beside her.[9] Aero brought them through the tunnels into Elmryn's old study and barred the door.[9]
In the fighting in the city, Reagan stepped between Bea and Drayzuzian and told him she was not losing her again. He knocked her aside and opened her chest and side with a claw. She was carried off by Millennium Loftwind in dragon form and healed.[7]
Sacred 2: Flames of the Awakened
Reagan left Galecrest with the others, and gave the Eyearke Stone to Bea outside the ruined castle at the Sacred City, telling her it belonged to her. She kept reaching for her bare neck out of habit for a long time afterwards.[15][16]
She travelled on with Tab and Aero into the Kella Desert, into the drovig tunnels after the deterrent stone Tab had lost, and from there to Varaar.[17] At the Avonbourn Aero was drugged with rhinespire and carried off to the Varaar Colosseum by a gorilla of the Rewakan gang.[18] Reagan was taken with him. Bound and set on a ledge above the arena, she was made to call directions down to a blindfolded Aero as he ran a collapsing maze against a sand timer, while the crowd threw tomatoes at her. He got out as the last grain fell.[8]
The gang head then released Aloeissa into the ring. Reagan recognised her, put her bound hands out and asked whether the beast remembered her. Aloeissa licked her face, bit through the rope and carried both of them out through the gate, taking a spear in the hind leg on the way.[8] Reagan pulled the spear out herself, and told Aloeissa to leave the city and stay free.[11]
Tab stayed behind in Varaar to get Fawn and the other women out. Before they parted she handed Reagan the deterrent stone for Bea, two daggers for Reagan and a plain sword for Aero. Reagan made her promise to stay safe.[11]
Reagan and Aero rode for Zybersia and her father's castle. She climbed alone to the Sacred Chamber where the Book of Fire lies, and the marble doors slammed behind her. Reaching through the basketball-sized hole in the Book's spine where its Heart had been torn out, her arm was caught, white lightning ran up it into her chest, and her sight turned entirely red. A figure with fire-red hair stood at the edge of it and called her name.[16]
Erwin burst in demanding the deterrent stone and threatening her eyes and then Aero. Fire came out of Reagan's open hand, threw him off the walkway and followed him down.[16] Aero told her afterwards that when a Book chooses its Ruler the act cannot be undone, and that she is Eslurian because her parents were. She lit the room with her own flames and found a chalk map of Eslura painted across the corners of the room, every line a tunnel and every line running to the Sacred City. Beneath the walkway hung a rope into a hole. She went down it first.[2]
Relationships
Beatrice Tidal is the camper Reagan followed into another world and has protected since. Reagan has stepped in front of a Nelazgian's claws for her and regards leaving her behind as a failure of the job.[7]
Tabitha Glowdish began as her kidnapper and became a friend. Tab calls her Red throughout, and cried when they parted in Varaar.[4][11]
Aero Ellisvat has been at her side since Varaar. He bandaged her, taught her to fight, and she has patched him up in turn; the attraction runs both ways and neither of them says so.[6][11]
Elmryn is the father she never met. She grieves him through Zybersia and his Sacred Chamber, and took up his Book without meaning to.[16]
Aloeissa is a havarrak Reagan freed from a spiked harness in Varaar, who repaid it in the colosseum and was let go free afterwards.[10][8][11]
Behind the scenes
The pronunciation guide at the back of both novels lists Reagan Hideaway without a pronunciation, alongside the names that carry one.[7][19]
See also
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Book 1, Ch. 4.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 Book 2, Ch. 26.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 Book 1, Ch. 19.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 Book 1, Ch. 10.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 Book 1, Ch. 2.
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 Book 1, Ch. 16.
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 Book 1, Ch. 26.
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 8.3 Book 2, Ch. 13.
- ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 Book 1, Ch. 23.
- ↑ 10.0 10.1 Book 1, Ch. 14.
- ↑ 11.0 11.1 11.2 11.3 11.4 11.5 Book 2, Ch. 16.
- ↑ 12.0 12.1 12.2 Book 1, Ch. 18.
- ↑ Book 1, Ch. 21.
- ↑ Book 1, Ch. 7.
- ↑ Book 2, Ch. 2.
- ↑ 16.0 16.1 16.2 16.3 Book 2, Ch. 23.
- ↑ Book 2, Ch. 4.
- ↑ Book 2, Ch. 8.
- ↑ Book 2, Ch. 28.