Aria: the God Tamer

From Grand Origins
Aria was born in Sul, to a Professional Duelist and his wife, the daughter of an aristocrat family. Her father is named Asterion Goldensun, and has never actually been in a war. He won his fame from the Xerom dueling circuit, which he had been training on for most of his life. Her mother, by the name of Agenus Stellun, has never worked a day in her life, and has never had to: her servants did anything even remotely challenging for her. Asterion was almost never home because of his work, which took him around the country. Aria herself was in a similar situation to her mother: Because of Asterion's fame and wealth, she never knew any hardship, but also had no friends.

Aria had been raised to idolize her father, who barely pays her any heed. So she began to imagine her own God, who looked very similar to Asterion and she called "Father." Her imagination was already overactive, and with her creation of Father, she was able to imagine a world in which her real father actually cared about her.

The Duel of a Lifetime
As Aria grew older, her relationship with Father grew as well. Eventually, Asterion returned home, where Father challenged him to an honor duel. Father wins the duel, but Asterion chooses to keep fighting, but he keeps getting injured more and more to the point that Father actually kills Asterion. Agenus was out of the house at the time, so she never knew anything about it. Father proceeded to take Asterion's place with the knowledge of no one. He soon announced Asterion's retirement, in order to improve his family life. Aria was seven years old at this time. She spent the next four years honing her abilities to connect with her God, while still living a relatively normal life with her "Father" and mother. By the time she turned eleven, she was able to change Fathers appearance, domains, and size.

When Aria was 12 years old, her mother was mugged by a group of Kios for her jewelry, and died from her injuries. Afterwards, Aria didn't talk to anybody for three months, she just hid out in her room, trying to get over her grief. Whenever she was finally able to talk about it without crying, she had a conversation with father. During that conversation, Father pointed out that the only thing keeping her in Sul was her pseudo-nobility status. Aria knew very little about the world outside of Sul, and wanted to learn about the world. So she and father made the decision to leave Sul to travel abroad.

To Explore the World Over
After deciding to leave Sul, Aria travels south to a port that takes her around the Ashen Strait to the Western side of Velo Island. The ship she hired landed not too far away form the Ashen Barrier, about 5 miles or so, so as not to be detected by the Mantatra. Upon landing, Father cuts down a rather large tree with which to make a shelter for Aria out of. He builds the hut rather quickly, and in the middle of the night she is found by a tribe of wandering Velo. That tribe spends the next 6 months at and around the shelter, teaching Aria about their way of life. After that time passes, the girl decides she wants to travel with the group for a while. She follows their route until they reach the southern end of the island, where she hires a Mikaina merchant vessel to take her to Baotai. Before she leaves, she is given a civilian headband by the tribe's chief. Aria is grateful for the hospitality that the Velo have given her, and she wears the headband. Aria is almost 14 when she leaves Velo (13 years, 9 months).

The trip to the port town of Light only takes a week from the port in Velo. During that time, a man on the boat named Anat Pynni told Aria about his homeland, the Mikaina Tribe of Midoniwi, and she was interested enough to want to visit soon. After a week of wandering around the city, she walks into Rage's Roadside Raid Resources, where she meets the proprietor, a woman named Rage. She instantly takes a liking to Aria, and offers her a place to stay in exchange for food, a place to work, and a bit of money. They had been talking for two hours at that point, and Aria at warmed up to her. She accepted Rage's offer. Aria begins working the register, running various errands, and performing other odd jobs for Rage for the next three years. During that time, Rage teaches her employee some of her Spirit Magic. When Rage told Aria she had nothing left to learn from her, she dcided to leave to see the rural part of the island. She is nearly 17 when she decided to leave. Aria traveled around the countryside honing her skills with her new found powers. She spends 4 months doing this before heading back to Light to hire a ship to take her to Adalih North, or more specifically to the Midoniwi Village.

The entire crew is made up of middle aged Chaule men. They decide to make a move on Aria about halfway through their journey. There were 6 men on the crew, all of whom were in on it. They waited until she was asleep one night, and started stripping her clothes off. She awoke about halfway through their process with six or seven hands on her. She started fighting back. Eventually she got a knife out of one of the men's hip holsters and slashed away. She put her Rage Magic to work, astronomically heightening her strength. Even after they begged her to stop, she kept spraying their blood around the room. Aria only lowered her knife when her spell wore off. There wasn't much left of the old soldiers when she finally calmed down enough to see properly. After that, she called Father out to talk.

"Why? Why would they be so desperate as to do something like that?"

"Men are not always in charge of their actions. The predicament your biological father put himself into, and now this are just examples of that."

"Don't these people have any morals? Don't they have any respect? I can't imagine how many times those men got away with something like that.  Is there anything else we can do about it?"

"Revenge is always an option, isn't it?" Father suggested.

"Hm. You're right. The Xerom took my dad, the Kios took my mother, and now the Chaule try to take my dignity.  I'll make them pay, I'll make them all pay!" Aria was just over 17 years old when this event took place.

Justice
She does her best to clean up the mess that she made, and readjusts her course to a Sonekei village, thinking that the Eastern side of the mountain would better serve her purpose of revenge than would the Western side. She takes the knife as a trophy, renames the ship to "The Dawn of Rage" and completes the journey within another month. When Aria sails into the Sonekei port, she throws a few coins at the dock hand and tells him about the mess she made, and to not ask questions. She tied up the boat and wandered around until she found a pub; once inside, she began to talk to the bartender. She was looking for a seasoned merchant who could tell her everything he could about the Chaule. She was given directions to the home of an older man who lives in the nicer parts of the city. By the time she arrived at the house, it was late afternoon and the servants took a bit of convincing to let her see the elder. Trajlnam was the man's name, and he is the youngest of the Elders at the age of 64. He was 56 at the time of his induction into the council, and was the youngest at that time, as well. Aria walked in completely unannounced, so the Elder was taken aback when a young Xerom girl walked into his study. She demands that Trajlnam tell her everything about the Chaule. Under quite a bit of duress, he does so. From what she learns, Aria wants to recruit a group of Sonekei warriors to take on the Chaule. This will not be an issue, but Aria wants to be completely sure that she is ready to fight. She located a trainer who would instruct her in sword combat, and spent the next two and a half years under his tutelage. When she thought she was skilled enough to exact her revenge, she recruited six Sonekei warriors and sailors (That she thought she could take on herself if need be) to sail to Ekya, to test her skills against the Guardians. Aria is almost 20 years old when she leaves for Ekya.

After a few weeks of searching, she and her crew finally stumble upon a young Homebound girl and follow her back to her village. Before she found the girl, Aria had already killed 5 Guardians while her crew watched. She went down into the Ekyan village and boasted of her achievements. Of course, they were skeptical at first, but that was before she took the chief priests up to the surface to show them the corpses. They were amazed at what they saw, and asked her how she accomplished this feat. Without a word, Aria started channeling her Spirit Magic, making her hair turn white and stick up, and turning her skin a vibrant red. After a moment, she ran forward to a tree and cut it cleanly, allowing the wood to fall without a single splinter. The priests were greatly impressed with what they saw, and offered her a position of honor within their society, but Aria turned it down, not wanting to be held down to Ekya. So instead, the Homebound gave her a sword that is a replica of the Blade of Zawla, the sword of prophecy that led their kin to safety. Aria stayed for another month to prepare for her assault on the Chaule Islands.

Aria sails south to Chaule, where she and her band practice not-so-subtle guerrilla warfare while making steady progress towards Cunegund's Palace. There was not much to destroy because most of what she could have wrecked had already been done by the people living on the islands. By then, the rest of her crew dies, leaving only her to complete her mission. A recounting from an onlooking survivor is as follows:

A young girl, aged 20 years walks up to the Opal Chair despite a multitude of protest from the Opal Palace’s innumerable guards. She looks up at the chair’s inhabitant as she ties a clasp around her neck and loosening the sleeves of her jacket from her arms.

“Aria Goldensun the Black, I thought I would be seeing you here someday.”  Cunegund says, mocking the girl before her.

“Cunegund.” Aria spits, refusing to acknowledge the princess by her full name.

“Ooh, a feisty little one, aren’t you?” Cunegund says as she stands up and walks down the stairs to be on level ground with the invader.

“That’s what your men said right before I tore them limb from limb.”  She crossed her arms at Cunegund, and lowered her head slightly, for she was a head taller than the royalty before her.

“How precious. I’d love to hear you scream to me, girly, that sounds… exhilarating.” Cunegund says, licking her lips after speaking. Wordlessly, Aria draws her sword: A blade that looks similar to a Xerom’s Gilt Blade. The blade is made of Obsidian, with an Onyx hilt. “Making a fashion statement with that blade now, Black One? I’m afraid flattery will get you nowhere.”  Cunegund dashed forward, drawing a pair of daggers as she ran. Aria screamed, hair rising from the energy exerted by it, and charged as well, blade pointed forward.

“Is this the best you’ve got? Is this your strongest fighter, Chaule? No wonder I’ve been ravaging your homeland single-handedly!”  Aria yelled as they fought. “I don’t even need Father to beat you!”

By this point, Aria’s skin was as red as her hair, and both fighters were moving at lightning speed. Onlookers were barely able to keep track of what was happening. They didn’t even know who had the upper hand.

After a few minutes of fighting, Aria spoke again: “You know, in a way I must thank those men. They were entirely responsible for making me the person I am. Yes, they took my innocence, but they gave me so much more. They opened up an entire world to me, one that I could have never dreamed existed. Their sacrifice gave the world a reason to be afraid, a reason to tremble in fear when my name is even MENTIONED!”

Suddenly, Aria jumped back and let out another scream, this time a large wave of fire emerged from nearly every part of her body. The entire throne room was on fire, and the flames were spreading to the rest of the palace. The spectators had long since evacuated, but the two young girls were still at it, kicking and screaming all the while. Cunegund manages to get one hit on Aria, slicing off her left ear, before Aria plunges her blade into Cunegund’s stomach.

“Let me show you why your people call me Aria the Black.” Aria says, standing atop Cunegund’s chest with her left foot. She brings her blade to Cunegund’s right ear, and severs it. “Chaule legend says that Opal is the strongest magical substance. How fitting then, that it should be defeated by a simple Obsidian blade. I have grown rather fond of this sword, I shall give it a name. Let’s see… How about… ooh. How about Opal’s Bane?”  Aria finishes her speech before driving Opal’s Bane through Cunegund’s neck.

Aria walks out of the Opal Palace, clearing a path through the fire via her Spirit Magic. Upon arriving at the front gate, she saw that the entire palace village was aflame. She strutted through the streets, calling down lightning (Rage of the Sky) upon the larger buildings. By this point, she had used her Spirit Magic so much that her skin was coal black. This was how she left the Chaule Islands: burnt to the ground, and no leader to raise it from the ashes. Her left ear was but a small price to pay for her revenge.

She boarded a small boat with enough food to get her to Ekya, and set off for the Forbidden Island.

Ekya was just a stop in her journey from the Opal Chair: she was aiming for Sul. Upon reaching Sulerix Prime, Aria walks up to the steps of the main Temple to AEdoxus, lowers her head, clenches her fists, and shouts:

"For years, I looked up to you, I adored you, I even worshiped you! And what have you ever done for me? A construct of my imagination had done more for me than you ever will! And yet, you've taken everything from me! You never let me have a dad, and my mother died in your name! Therefore, AEdoxus, I challenge you to a duel of honor."

The courtyard was full of people when she poured out her heart to the God of the Sul, and all went silent. After a moment, AEdoxus appears in full battle armor and says:

"Young one, your reputation has preceded you, and thus you have brought great fear to my people. I accept. Bring forth your champion."

Aria stood up and crossed her arms, and instantly Father came rushing from inside of her and charged at AEdoxus. Because of her upbringing, Aria is very familiar with the honor duel circuit, having studied it extensively in her childhood in order to keep up with Asterion. During the fight, AEdoxus begins talking to Aria.

"Why do you wish to fight me, girl? Surly is it not to make your "Father" famous again. No, there is another reason. Perhaps it is to exact your revenge against me?"

Aria replies: "You're damn right it is!" Before letting out a scream that enhances not only Aria herself with Rage magic, but Father as well. Her hair began to stand on its ends, her skin became a light shade of red. She let out another yell. This time, her transformation was complete. "I. WILL. END. YOU!" Father doubled in size after the second outrage, and lands a deep cut into AEdoxus' arm. AEdoxus demanifested.

Aria silently walks up to the top step before yelling at the crowd, which had grown to be just as silent as her. "Hear me, all you who dwell in Sul: I am Aria Goldensun, Xerom Queen of Sul! I am responsible for the destruction of an entire civilization! YOU WILL FEAR ME!"

She turns around and walks into the temple, where she hacks the golden statue of AEdoxus to bits using Opal's Bane.