Sindy Kindle

Sindy "Cinder" Warde is a human girl and one of three POV characters of the third trilogy of the Chronicles of the First Flame, alongside Vaekosa and Dogarn Bexator. Originally a peasant with dreams of adventure, her life is thrust into turmoil when the koschei Caeloth massacres her village, leaving her as the sole survivor.

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

Her village is destroyed by Ariadne the Night Hag and her wight servants, but Sindy hides in the wreckage after being for some unknown reason ignored by the hollow ones and is retrieved a couple of days later by Elias Torindor, who has been forced to associate with three unsavoury characters in order to brave the southern wilds - it has been rumoured that the villages and smaller communities of Andar and Sandoria have been assaulted and razed by an unseen force.

As the five travellers journey east towards the blasted heaths of central Andar, where Elias believes the two of them can find a path northwards towards Irum'Vemak and from there the Ichthys River, Sindy dreads the three outlaws terribly and when they brutally attack other travelling peasants, she flees into the darkening trees, pursued by Elias, and becomes assailed by minor demons in the forest. Elias barely cuts the fiends down in time to save her life, although the spirits do seem to go after him much more fiercely than they had assaulted her, which he notices and remarks upon. He implores her that they must suffer the company of the monsters for a short time longer, and the two of them return to the main road to regroup. Their kyasid companion, Mordak, a devout follower of the Devourer Wurm, mocks Sindy and hints that she may be the next to be consumed.

One night on the open hills of Andar, shortly before Elias pans to depart with Sindy to the lands north of their encampment, Mordak makes good on his threat and stalks Sindy up a rocky outcropping, intending to torment and devour her. Unable to defend herself against this advance, Sindy is once more saved from trouble by the sword of Elias, who runs the foul druid through and sends his body tumbling to crack on the dark stones below them. In the morning, Jerren and Waazig ask where the wolf fey has gone and Elias hints strongly that he was the one who killed Mordak. For a moment it looks like there will be a fight, but then the ogre and his pech accomplice leave, heading south.

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Razog leads Sindy and Elias to the ogre tribes' sacred mountain, where tall monuments of rock stand in impossibly sheer and columnar fashion, and their guide explains that it is fabled that when the gods Kaath and Tormnthur clashed in these lands long ago, these stones were left behind as their titanic bodies cleaved great trenches through the rock. The tribes are indeed gathered here - thousands upon thousands of ogres convening to discuss the fate of their people. A great beast in the south has summoned their tribes to answer her call to war, although initially it is not made clear that this beast is the apophis Vaeliang, or that the war she declares is upon Creation itself. The ogres are met with a simple question: to join with the power of shadow as their traditions and indeed their god, Kaath, is said to require of them, or to refuse the banner of night and migrate north, escaping the battles to come and abandoning Naen to its own battles, as they have always been treated with contempt by the humans and other folk of the southern cities of Mireport, Delekosk and Lypter.

After a great meeting, in which the heads of various tribes state their cases for endorsing one side of the argument or the other, the consensus is that over two-thirds of the tribes, in the wake of the Shadow Scourge, decide that they and their children have bled for the creatures of Oblivion for too long. The moot closes, and the tribes return to their encampments to prepare for their journey north to the continent of Araia and the Arktoran Mountains once held by their allies, the arawn, in ages past, to occupy the evacuated fortress-cities within the stone. Night falls, and Elias and Sindy walk alone together along the edge of the encampment, star-gazing and discussing the significance of the ring which the dark knight bears. He explains that it is a trinket of sunlight created to locate something "of great importance", but when asked by her why he does not wear it, but rather keeps it concealed, he tells her that he fears it to be cursed.

As Elias turns the ring over in his hand, however, they are attacked en masse by frenzied vampires and their spawn, who enter battle alongside their allies amongst the treacherous ogre tribes. Elias is struck heavily by a stone from an ogre sling, sending the ring flying to the ground, an Sindy rushes to snatch it up. As the conflict grows ever more dire, a vast black shadow descends from the sky as Vaeliang, furious at the ogres' defiance of her master's will, emerges to utterly destroy them. As the dragon spews death and disease upon the ogres, Sindy is told by Razog in the midst of the chaos that their only hope is to call upon Kaath - but will their god answer in light of their decision to rebuff the dragon? Ogre priests stand atop the towering stone columns, chanting and raving to implore their creator for help. As the two become separated in the conflict, Vaeliang spots Sindy from the air and drops to land, seeking to engulf in her jaws the "lambent roundness" in her possession. Believing she meets her doom, Sindy chooses, instead of cowering as she had done when faced with the demons and with Mordak, to stand her ground and charge the beast despite its futility. Before her nemesis can lunge and grab her, lightning flashes deafeningly overhead and the sides of two columns either side of the dragon collapse, partially burying her under tons and tons of rock. With enemies closing in behind her, Sindy dons the ring of light and dashes inside the heartless hollow in the dragon's unliving breast, hoping against hope that the trinket protects her from the foul things lurking within.

After the battle, which was won after numerous other columns of rock had fallen, favouring locations that were most dense with traitor ogres and their undead allies, Sindy is dug from the rubble and taken to see Elias, who is dying from his injury due to internal bleeding. He has few words left in him, but she tells him she put on the ring and he sighs in acceptance, telling her briefly of the Flame that Dances at the End of the World, and of his mission to find the Flame. He tells her she must lead where it pulls her, before dying at last. Sindy, finding that she cannot pull the ring off, parts with the ogres, bidding Razog farewell, and begins to head alone, south - back towards the lands of Sandoria, home to the profaned and dying Protectorate faiths.

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

Sindy travels through Sandoria and braves the plagues of undead and demons infesting the southlands.

Sindy reunites with the second half of her soul, attaining the Flame Aeon and re-living briefly the death of Ember at the hands of Seth, her absorption of half the Aeon as he held her, and the coming of Alizan Droh to the site to plant the rose ring.

## **Book IX "Light Bringer"**

Sindy enters the Tomb of Saints with Dogarn, and the two open the Seal using the Flame Aeon assembled with the unity of Sindy's soul and the fragment of it yet residing within the ghost of Ember.

Sindy is gifted with all nine Aeons, which enter her soul from the Seal.

Sindy enters Mikhul Delvin at the base

Sindy enters Mikhalinn's chamber and confronts the arch-warlock.