#Khair Avagnar

[blue-haired-heathen]

(commission by @sunshinemage)

Show me a fatal wound, and I will show you a woman who can heal it. Show me an indestructible fiend, and I will show you a woman who can lay it low. Show me an unlovable wretch, and I will show you a woman who can bond with them. Show me the impossible, and I will show you a woman who spits in the face of impossibility. The one thing she cannot do, cannot fathom even attempting, is forgive herself.

Here is why.

Khair Avagnar’s life fell apart for the first time when she was ten. The ambush of the Adarkim tribe on her own, the Avagnar, began with a hail of fire from the sky, summoned by black mages but reminiscent enough of the Final Days to prematurely awaken the nascent power of an especially aetherically-sensitive young mind. Trapped in a burning yurt that collapsed around her, Khair’s life was preserved—barely—by the power of Hydaelyn… the same power that would destroy her smoke-damaged voice with months of screaming nightmares.

Hydaelyn works in mysterious ways. Whether She always meant for Khair to experience visions of bloodshed, or whether that manifestation of Her power was due to the traumatic manner in which she awakened to it, only Hydaelyn Herself knows. Khair, for her part, spent months incapacitated as the remains of her tribe were absorbed by their conquerors, and every night, she dreamed, and experienced firsthand the death of one of her tribesfolk. By the time the rest of her health recovered, her vocal cords were beyond repair.

In addition to the visions of violent death, Khair developed a new sense. A little like a metallic taste, a little like a crawling sensation under her skin, and a lot like a scent, the new sense allowed her to detect where bloodshed had occurred. Living in the Azim Steppe, where ritual warfare was commonplace, she learned through experience to discern roughly how recent—and violent—that bloodshed had been.

Khair’s life fell apart for the second time when she was fourteen. By then, she had been “adopted” by an Adarkim couple, a deaf warrior and his wife, to be integrated into the tribe and taught to speak with her hands. She was separated from her elder sister and younger brother (their parents having been slain in the ambush) and expected to abandon the traditions and identity of the Avagnar. While easy enough for her, young as she was, the task was not so simple for her sister Tsetseg, who had been nearly old enough to fight when their tribe was attacked, and certainly old enough to have a strong sense of Avagnar identity.

The family Tsetseg was placed with kept a close eye on her, but it was Khair’s foster mother who eventually caught Tsetseg singing an Avagnar song and reported her to the Khan of the Adarkim. She was sentenced to death, executed as a warning to her fellow tribesmen and the other captive warriors to stay in line. Khair confronted her foster mother about it, convinced there must have been some sort of misunderstanding, but the woman was utterly remorseless—smug, even.

That night, Khair cut her throat as she slept.

~*~*~

A curious thing about Khair’s sense for bloodshed is that its potency varies based on the type of aether holding the memory. Lightning and fire are much too ephemeral to hold anything for long. Wind and water hold some of the sensation, especially stagnant air and still pools, but their fluid nature guarantees that eventually the remnants will become too diluted to detect. Ice holds onto the memory for as long as it remains frozen, and earth clings stubbornly to it, but the type of aether that contains it most permanently is the soul.

This property of the soul would be extraordinarily useful if Khair’s sense of soul aether extended beyond her own.

~*~*~

Khair fled the Adarkim the night she slew her foster mother. The sense of bloodshed that surrounded her was like none she had ever felt, even walking in the memories of the slain—heavy and sticky, as if she had bathed in blood-soaked honey. Her foster mother’s death had brought her no catharsis, not when she had died resting easy with the satisfaction of her betrayal, without experiencing any of the torment she had inflicted upon Khair.

Days of fleeing turned into weeks of surviving, which in turn became months of traveling. The sense of bloodshed on Khair’s soul never lessened, but she became accustomed to it, her senses and identity adjusting around it. Remembering the lack of catharsis brought by her first murder, she decided that if she couldn’t escape the blood on her hands, she would embrace it. She took to seeking out the sites of violent deaths, reaching into the memories of those slain, and tracking down the killers to extract the debts they had left behind—in blood, of course, but also, when she could, in pain, terror, and torment, in equal measure with what they had afflicted on their victims (if not always by the same methods, as there were lines she would not cross).

Khair’s travels eventually brought her to the Twelveswood, where she found that the soft murmur of the elementals drowned out much of her bloodsense when she wasn’t actively using it—all except the sense of her own soul. She settled there, hunting and building without harming the wilds as she had been taught, thereby gaining the favor of the elementals. Listening to their voices, she learned conjury under their guidance, and slowed (but did not entirely cease) her grim work of debt collection.

When the Calamity struck, she began to spend more time in Gridania proper to assist with rebuilding efforts and was quickly recruited into several of the local guilds so her skills and talents could be best put to use. Now nineteen and having spent entirely too long alone with her thoughts, she was skittish in social situations and anxious about letting anyone get close. She shied away from others, but found herself pursued by a masked young woman calling herself Yda (along with the girl’s harried guardian Papalymo) and it was she who eventually managed to break through Khair’s walls.

Yda and Papalymo, along with the organization they represented, were intrigued by Khair’s skills and chosen career path, and doubly so once they learned she was guided by the Echo, but it was Yda’s utter determination to be Khair’s friend, no matter what Khair said about herself, that convinced her to join the Scions. Though her image of herself was long-since cemented, and the sense of all the bloodstains on her soul certainly hadn’t faded, she joined them, discovering in the process just how much she had missed being around others.

Time passed. A cousin of Khair’s who followed in her footsteps in leaving the Adarkim (minus all the murders) joined the Lancers’ Guild in Gridania and reconnected with her. She developed other close bonds in her own guilds, often finding herself (ironically, to her mind) playing the role of peacekeeper. She and Yda dated on and off, enjoying themselves if not necessarily committing. She grew close with the other Scions and found that, though her life was very different now from how it had been on the Steppes, she felt like she had a tribe again.

As a Scion, she would go on to find purpose and conviction, but it would be many years before she would (with the help of an Ascian of all people) begin to examine and deconstruct the irredeemable image of herself painted by her bloodsense.

[blue-haired-heathen]

What if (and hear me out here)…

…a Scion and an Ascian…

were girlfriends???

First drawing is by @/floral.wizard on instagram, second is by @sunshinemage!!

Calliope (Ascian) belongs to @smoothiekins, Khair (Au Ra) belongs to me :3

[blue-haired-heathen]

woag WoL hours (another commission from the lovely @sunshinemage!!)

How does one describe Khair Avagnar? She is a walking contradiction. A ceaseless wanderer with deep roots. As dedicated a healer as she is a killer. A sister without siblings, a singer without a voice, a solitary companion.

Though she practices many trades, her chosen purpose in life is vengeance for herself and for every innocent wrongfully harmed that she comes across. She is a debt collector—blood for blood, fear for fear, death for death. The power of the Echo manifests in her as a sense, something that is not quite a flavor and not quite a prickling under her skin, though similar to both, that tells her where blood has been spilled, serving as her guide.