Hye Su

## Aspects

Learn

Perfect

Transcend

"*I am the Ranger. I hunt those worth hunting. Rejoice, for you qualify.*"
―Ranger
Hye the Ranger is a half-elf villain that was part of the Calamities until the Conquest. Later she created Refuge. A small village serving as a dwarven protectorate, where she trained Named in combat.

## Background

Hye is a half-human, half-elf. Based on her unique physiology she has lived a long life; rumour says at least 200 years. This has meant she had to face threats from both elves and heroes, resulting in a hardened killer.

Being the Ranger, Hye Su will seek out worthy opponents and duel them to death to perfect her own skills. After doing this for a long time, she joined the Calamities looking for new challenges. She stayed with the villain band for at least two decades, before leaving on the eve of the Conquest.

Some years later Hye created Refuge, after picking up a potential student she wanted to train. This made her the Lady of the Lake, and Refuge - while essentially just a very small village with a few shoddy huts - served as a dwarven protectorate. Here she gathered five core students. The Archer, the Hunter, the Beastmaster, the Concocter and the Silver Huntress.

## Appearance

Hye Su has an elven mother and a Teoteul father from the other side of the Tyrian Sea. This means a lot of people mistake her as having Yan Tei background, even is her father was not that.

Hye is tall and has honey-coloured skin, pointed ears, dark brown eyes, long hair and a sharply angled face with high cheekbones. After the fight with the Queen of the Summer Fae, Hye has burns on the side of her face. After the fight against her apprentices, she has three scars, one on each cheek, and one across the nose, which remain red and fresh.

Hye wears a very distinctive hooded cloak, making people that has seen her years before able to recognize her from a far distance.

## Relationships

Amadeus: While not sharing in his vision to change the Role of Praes in creation, Hye became interested in Amadeus because he wasn't boring to her. Eventually the two fell in love, though given their natures it was not a typical kind of love. Hye helped Amadeus form a group known infamously as the Calamities. She left Black and the Calamities when Black was forced to choose between his vision and the love of his life and he chose the former. However, she has now joined him on his mission to become Dread Emperor of Praes, even as the Emerald Swords have begun hunting her once again.

Indrani: Her most skilled apprentice who she personally tasked to go on missions outside of Refuge, the two share many commonalities in terms of combat. In particular, her apprentice has also adopted a dual-wielding combat style, though unlike Hye, she prioritizes the bow above the blade, whereas Hye seems to prefer her blades.

Catherine Foundling: Ranger has very little respect for Catherine beside her title as Amadeus' apprentice. Therefore, though she spares Squire and Hierophant from the Summer Queen, unlike the legions who she doesn't bother with, she still doesn't see them as anything but a nuisance. This plays out when Catherine offers to try and help fight the Summer Queen, and is faced with such directed killing intent for the suggestion that she feels the idea as a physical pain, though no wounds are actually made. This respect has changed since Catherine has become the Warden, as shown when they battled wills, and Catherine won. Ranger hates Catherine for what she did to Amadeus at the base of the Tower, and has challenged her to a duel to the death once the War is over.

Alaya: There is no love lost between the two women, Hye did not like Alaya in the past nor does she in the present. She does not support the empire but has advised her agents not to entangle themselves with Praes. If Black were to rebel however, the Ranger would, without question, support his endeavor over Alaya's, as suggested by Scribe and now shown by her joining up with Black as he escaped from Alaya's agents via the Twilight Ways.

Trismegistus: While not considered a companion by any stretch of the word, the two have a a common respect for one another, mostly revolving around his inability to actually cause her harm, and his ability to make an obstacle course to test her limits. Hye has infiltrated his kingdom for fun at least four times and is greeted to a banquet of her favorite foods in his palace. She is the only guest that is able to come and go as she pleases, though this is more to do with her ability to overcome his defences than any true good will on his part.

## Powers

She is incredibly skilled, able to go toe to toe with a feral Captain without outright killing her, as well as single-handedly infiltrating the Dead King's domain and reaching his palace. She did this in the span of three days without any food or water that weren't poisioned, in a country designed to be so lethal that the very air is dangerous and against forces that have routed Crusades. Once at Keter she then fought and killed hundreds of lesser undead, before facing two of the greatest undead, both of which were made from heroes, and still had some of the power of their Names. Her skills are infamous throughout Calernia, as well as across Creation. Hye is even respected, and sometimes feared, by the Fae, repeatedly stealing a Prince of Winter's eye for jewelery and facing and wounding the Queen of Summer in the part of Arcadia that is Summer. She can also kill entire groups of Elves a thousand years old, the Emerald Swords, even when they actively hunt her.

Her early skills are likely due to her mother's training, though she also credits her father, a human male. Since then she has spent more than a hundred years, and possibly much longer, honing her craft against opponents she feels are worth her time, until she can effectively kill gods. Due to her success, as well as her reputation as being practically unkillable (Masego mentions an exercise of Black and Warlock is to come up with a plan to fight any enemy in Calernia, including the Dead King, Fae, and Elves; they have at least one possible way for everybody else but when asked how to fight Hye, they simply say "don't"), the Ranger controls a small patch of land known as Refuge. In this land her word is law. She trains apprentices, of which there were five at the start of the story, that are each incredibly skilled. Her least talented apprentice, Hunter, was able to go toe to toe with a demon while missing a hand and otherwise wounded, while her best apprentice helped to capture and kill fae up to the rank of Princess of Summer. Ranger herself has personally challenged the Queen of Summer, considering her one of the only two Fae left worthy of being hunted, the other being the King of Winter. In the case of Summer, she even initiated this fight in Arcadia in Summer territory near the capital.

Her Name as Ranger is a martial name that works to increase her already impressive skills, as well as help with the aspects like infiltration. It is unknown if her abilities can affect magic-based skills as well as martial-based ones, as thus far most of her techniques have been wielded against martial-based names such as Captain or the Sage of the West, though it is noteworthy that she stopped a magical attack from the Queen of Summer simply by raising her blades. Her aspects are: Learn, Perfect, and Transcend.

### Aspects

**Learn**: This is an alternative version of the common aspect that Squires have, since they can only apply theirs to things they are actively studying, and nothing involving direct combat. Ranger, on the other hand, is able to learn techniques that her enemies use, but more importantly, there appears to be no effective limitation on how much she can learn in martial skill. However, just learning a move does not mean her body is accustomed to using it, or even physically meant to, so she has to be careful to use techniques she is sure will work.

**Perfect**: Allows her to perfectly execute any martial move that her enemy has used, and to perfect any she hasn't herself already mastered.

**Transcend**: Allows her to overcome the previous user's use of a technique, allowing her to improve upon what she has **learn**ed, taking it beyond the normal limits that apply.

## References

1. ↑ Extra Chapter - Regard
2. ↑ Book 3 - Chapter 32: Close
3. ↑  Book 4 - Chapter 18: Cradle
4. ↑ Extra: Regard