Vaekosa

Vaekosa is a major protagonist of the Chronicles of the First Flame series, one of the three POV characters of the third trilogy. A kyasid hunter and warrior of the Tribe of the Wolves, she is initially a proponent of the Dark, but comes to fight for the world's salvation as she is exposed to other peoples and cultures in her journeys, which take her from the Blackwood of her birth to Tolnor, the Jewel of the North, Mireport of talfar rule, the eastern continent of Vaishun and even to the mysterious land of the orcs, Urchano itself.

## **Book VII "Sloping Altars"**

As the kyasid Tribes are united for war against the humans of Araia by Nazlaieqk the Reclaimer, arch-warlock of the Blood Moon tribe, Vaekosa and the rest of her pack join the battle at the eastern fringes of the Blackwood, where they engage in a skirmish with the battalion of Tolnorian soldiers which have been garrisoned there. During the battle, her brother and she become separated from their pack and with humans in pursuit of them, her brother falls from a cliff edge to his death, and she is incapacitated. With the battle soon over and herself captured by deserters, she is saved from molestation by a Tolnoran captain who slays the vile men and names himself as Cade of the house Venzor. Cade takes her as his prisoner but treats her respectfully despite her animosity as the pair of them spend the night on the dead, silent battlefield.

In the morning, Cade takes Vaekosa with him back to Tolnor itself, where he says she will be treated with civility. However, upon their arrival, the public are rioting and the fraught city guard throw her into a cell in the dungeons beneath Sam's Palace. Through the aid of agents from the Tribe of Midnight's Hands loyal to the forces of Nazlaieqk, Vaekosa escapes imprisonment and is taken to their hidden headquarters, where she learn of the arrangements the Midnight Hands have made with the talfar financiers of Mireport to bankrupt the city from within. Stress is put upon the importance of keeping this conspiracy from the main body of the Tribe, who have become loyal to the crown over generations within city walls. At this point, Vaekosa knows Nazlaieqk only as stories told her have described him - a hero who seeks the protection of his people through the destruction of their enemies. At the end of the meet, she is to be guided to a secret escape from the city from where she will return to the Blackwood. However, she is followed and spoken to by an infiltrator of the Tolnorian loyalists, who informs her of a second reason the people of the city are in uproar - not only are the villages of the western country under attack from the wolf fey, but within the city itself there have been dozens of children who have gone missing despite the efforts of the guard - who are stretched thin at this time - to catch the abductor. When Vaekosa demands to know what concern this is of hers or her people, the agent leads her to an alleyway, where the two of them witness the snatching of a young girl by a man Vaekosa recognises - the city's most beloved street jester, whom she saw entertaining youngsters in the streets on her way to the cells. Confused and somewhat horrified despite the child being a human, Vaekosa listens as the loyalist agent reveals that children are being taken beneath the city, and that it is not only humans that are being taken - a number of kyasid have been snatched as well.

Vaekosa and Caravee infiltrate the Blood Moon Tribe's camp at the edge of the Blackwood, and enter inside Nazlaieqk's temple to Oblivion, where they discover numerous items of black sorcery. Terrorised by the revelation of what is truly directing their people, they are discovered by the Reclaimer and his servants, and in their fleeing, Caravee is impaled to a pine by the moonbow of the warlock, but Vaekosa manages to escape and travels at full speed to the rock plateau upon which Pastraea Vokunda is on the brink of ordering a massive assault upon the humans. At the top of the plateau, she confronts her tribe's mystagogue, who has fatalistically accepted their people's fate in the grand plan of the Annihilator. She refuses to do likewise, and the old kyasid attacks her, but she overcomes him relatively easily and throws him off the cliff-edge to break upon the boulders hundreds of feet below. With the mass kyasid attack now delayed with the death of their foremost leader, Vaekosa rushes at full speed back to Tolnor to warn the humans of the threat their city faces, in the hopes of saving her own people from destruction in the name of the Dark Primordial.

Vaekosa in the court of King Saam Vintoras, at Sam's Palace itself. While the court (which is corrupt due to the Midnight Hands' involvement) dismissed the "wild" claims that she makes, a messenger bursts into the court and announces that Prince Saam, the king's son and heir, has disappeared without trace. The news roused the King to sudden action, and a troupe of soldiers are rapidly prepared to investigate the subterranean tunnels beneath Tolnor's streets.

Vaekosa, Cade and the royal guard invade the sewers beneath the city, discovering and destroying the Oblivion cult which lurks there under the rulership of Cade's possessed sister, Kelsi. The sacrifice of the Prince is prevented at the last minute, and so is the summoning of a dreadful demon named Lagasse. Knowing the warlock Redvaks Bok inhabits his "sister"'s body, Cade ends his unlife with a sword through the black heart, which sends him tumbling down a ledge to crack on the stone below. The cultists are a mix of corrupt noblemen alongside kyasid members of the Tribe of Midnight Hands in addition to their hideous procurer. The remains of all the missing children are discovered in a side chamber, rotting in filth, their bodies apparently having been exsanguinated.

With the demon Lagasse having been prevented form entering the sewers, Alizan Droh states that Nazlaieqk will forstall the attack on the city in the knowledge that Redvaks' cult has failed in dispatching the monarch's son. Vaekosa comforts Cade as best she can, but knows the events of the day will haunt him for the rest of his days. She is invited nominally into the Tribe of Midnight Hands, where she swears temporary allegiance to the king until the coming wars are over.

## **Book VIII "War Hero"**

Having been accepted into the Midnight Hands' sect within Tolnor, and already possessing sufficient skills and motivations to undertake a mission alone, Vaekosa has arrived in Mireport and gained passage to the Cavern-Vaults while posing as a noblewoman wishing to visit her holdings there. She is taken directly to the manor-house of Mere-Phre Aiataar for an audience. Having been deceived by her talfar escorts, she is abandoned inside the haunted building and left to her own devices. When she comes across the head of House Aiataar, she finds him a catatonic ghost suspended upon a buoy of sinister shadow. Mere-Phre invites her to join him and his family in the "Sacred Dark". Repelled by his frightful visage, Vaekosa retreats down the vast stone hallways, coming across the withered and rotten corpses of the talfar's sons and daughters, extinguished by hateful shadow upon brown-stained altar stones. Horrified, she confronts Mere-Phre, still drifting gently after her, with the murder of his own children, which sends him first into apparent confusion, then despair, then violent rage, and he attacks her viciously with tendrils of shadow. Just before she is consumed by the Dark warlock's fury, Mere-Phre is ambushed from behind and seized by a gigantic spider, which in turn devours his flailing body. Equally terrified by the spider, Vaekosa expects herself to be next, but then it speaks to her, introducing itself as an ogumo spirit in service to Ceccylya, the Hidden Goddess. Thanking her for finally allowing the spirits entrance to the manor so that Mere-Phre's filth could be cleansed from the temple of the goddess, the arachnid monster states that in thanks, she will not be eaten. It informs her that House Aiataar intended to collapse the wealth of Tolnor, Lypter and Seraphis using the subversive systems of debt it had intentionally sought to establish for its Hidden Lady. It would be done so that the city could easily be razed by the armies which even now march towards it from the southern jungles. While the cult of Aiataar has now as good as fallen, the attack will still take place - and the spirit warns Vaekosa that should she reveal the plans of Ceccylya to outsiders, she will meet a grim end, as she has eyes everywhere. Urgently, Vaekosa departs once more for Tolnor and the court of King Saam VIntoras.

Back at Tolnor, Vaekosa divulges the information to King Saam, who sends her on a mission to warn the people of Seraphis of the coming dark armies.

Arriving in Seraphis on griffonback, she is accompanied by ranking clerics of Manus to the palace of the Califzar.