Valerius Nominari

**Valerius** is a member of the king's court and the royal messenger. He joins Isadora and Terrance on their mission to defeat the eternal rulers, serving as a double agent.

## Background

Valerius was born into the Nominari clan, a wealthy, powerful family that serves as messengers for the Camellian royal family. Through materia, the Nominaris can transform into blue roosters, allowing them to fly to other kingdoms quickly, listen in on conversations, and gather intel for the royals, ensuring that Camellia's location is always kept secret from invasive empires. However, during Elisyan's rule, Corvus Nominari made a deal with Aeric, exchanging Camellia's location for money and the ability to transform into bloodhounds. The Nominaris served Aeric since then.

Aeric performed experiments on the Nominaris to give them dual shapeshifting powers, an otherwise impossible ability. The experiments succeeded, but with disastrous side effects. In human form, the Nominaris grew malformed wings and claw-like fingernails. This caused the Nomari family to go into hiding, ashamed of their appearance. Nevertheless, they continued to serve Aeric in secret because of how well they were paid.

Over the centuries, and with further experiments, the Nominaris' wings and claws became more proportionate and much stronger. By the time Valerius was born, his wings resembled angel wings more than a rooster's, and his claw-like nails were as sharp as wolf claws. Valerius was raised away from Camellia, at one of the southern islands, while his parents flew back and forth from the islands to Camellia, continuing their role as messengers. Like his other siblings, Valerius kept his dual shapeshifting powers secret and often hid his wings under ponchos and large cloaks.

At twelve years old, Valerius took on the messenger role because his parents wanted to retire early. They retreated to the southern islands with the rest of the Nominaris while Valerius moved to Camellia. Valerius' existence was kept hidden from the people of Camellia. He usually interacted with just Aeric, Kinarra, and at times, Shuiyu: a young half-ondine whose existence was also kept hidden from Camellia.

As messenger, Valerius witnessed hundreds of people die from the plague. Valerius was repulsed by his family's involvement with the plague and decided that Aeric and Kinarra needed to be stopped. However, he also knew that he was unmatched against Aeric and Kinarra, so he continued to pretend to serve the eternal rulers, waiting for an opportunity—and someone—that would restore peace to Camellia once and for all.

## Appearance

Valerius is a fairly short teenage boy with a skinny build. He has hooded eyes, a long nose, and shaggy blond hair, which sticks out at the top, like the plumes of a rooster. He has large, river-blue wings that extend from his back and he often wears a dull-brown traveller's poncho. As the silent messenger, Valerius transforms into a rooster with iridescent, purple-blue wings and long tail feathers. As Sindak, Valerius transforms into a bloodhound with black fur and blood-stained fangs.

## Abilities

Valerius possesses dual shapeshifting abilities. He can transform into either a bloodhound or a rooster at will, though only for a few minutes at a time. Because the Nominaris have relatively low materia levels, shapeshifting takes up a lot of Valerius' energy. He gets hungry faster and has to eat more often than usual to make up for the lost energy.

As a rooster, Valerius can fly over long distances at high altitudes effortlessly. As a bloodhound, Valerius has enhanced speed, agility, and stealth. He can tear objects apart with sharpened fangs and claws, and blend in with the shadows of dark places, allowing him to stay virtually unnoticed by others in the area. Valerius can also track and identify people easily when given a sample of their blood, an ability that is only possible when his victims are asleep.

As a human, Valerius has flight, enhanced hearing, and sharp claw-like fingernails that can cut through hardened objects. Despite appearing scrawny, Valerius is also remarkably strong, as seen when he carried both Isadora and Terrance through the labyrinth, and when he carried Isadora all throughout the journey to Quillwort.

## Trivia

* Valerius is claustrophobic. Following his miasma-hallucination at the labyrinth, he reveals that he experienced mirrors all around him, increasingly closing in and trapping him in a confined space. This is one of the reasons that he loves the ocean—a vast, seemingly limitless open space.