| Rielle Lazuli | |
|---|---|
| Character Information | |
| Title(s) | {{{title}}} |
| Nickname | 'The Maker' |
| Gender | Female |
| Age | 18 (in Thief's Magic)
23 (in Angel of Storms) 28 (in Successor's Promise) 33 (in Maker's Curse) |
| Species | Human |
| Nationality | Fyrian |
| Current Location | Beltonia |
| Book Origin | Thief's Magic |
Rielle Lazuli is a young lady who lives in Fyre. The second and youngest child of Aos and Ais Lazuli, she lives with them and her aunt Narmah in their house near the edge of the city. She helps out with their dyeworks business when not attending temple classes or painting in her free time. Rielle has the ability to see 'Stain', the name in her world given to the black void left by the absence of magic, which she shares with her aunt; at a young age Narmah warned her never to let on that she can do so as the use of magic by anyone other than a priest is taboo as doing so is believed to be stealing from the Angels and merely having the potential could damage her social standing.
History[]
Thief's Magic[]
While returning home from Temple classes one day Rielle took a shortcut that led her to encounter a street filled with 'Stain'. Her vision obscured, she found herself kidnapped at knife-point and led through the city by a 'tainted', a man that had learned magic and thus left a mark on his soul that the Angels would see after his death and tear it apart. Eventually Rielle was able to trick the man into revealing himself to a priest looking for him leading to his capture and later exile from Fyre. After speaking to the priests Rielle was escorted home by Izare Saffre, an artist of some renown who expresses a wish to paint her that she rebuffs knowing her parents would never approve. Later returning to where she saw the Stain, she meets a strange old woman who suggests that the tainted only learned magic in order to save his wife.
After several more meetings, talking, agreeing to be painted and improving her skills with his help, Rielle develops feelings for Izare and they begin a relationship. She also becomes friendly with a number of Izare's associates and learns how artisans are discriminated against and harassed by the priests as they are seen to be more susceptible to corruption. After leaving Izare's home studio Rielle finds herself again near where she encountered the tainted and decides to use her magical potential to seek out the corrupter to turn over to the priests in hopes that it would lessen the harassment of the artisans. Following a trail, she discovers the corrupter and claims she wants to be able to avoid becoming pregnant; the corrupter offers to help but it is a trick and, instead of teaching her to prevent conception, damages her reproductive organs in a way that achieves the same end and would require her to use magic to heal if she ever desired children. After this she is taught the basics of drawing and using magic in order to do so, meaning she will be unable to expose the corrupter without revealing her own taint and condemning herself to exile and imprisonment.
Returning home later that same day Rielle finds her relationship with Izare has been revealed to her family by a priest and runs away in fear that she will never see him again.
Now living with Izare, Rielle assists with his paintings and helps around the house. With their relationship growing more serious, talk of marriage and children, she realises she will need to use magic and heal herself in order to do so and secretly does so in a dark garbage spot near the house hoping the Stain will not be noticeable. During an inspection however it is revealed the Stain was in fact discovered resulting in increased scrutiny on the local artisans. An evocative painting Izare had begun of Rielle is also stolen during the inspection by Sa-Gest, a young priest who is attracted to Rielle and later attempts to blackmail her into having sex with him with threats of making things more difficult for her and her friends.
In bed one day Rielle accidentally uses magic while looking inside herself to check whether her attempt to heal herself had worked and leaves a Stain which she tries to conceal with laundry until it fades. Returning home later after going out in order to help hide the presence of a client of Izare's, a wealthy former classmate of Rielle's named Famere whose portrait he had been painting, she discovers priests there enacting another inspection where they discover the remainder of the Stain on their bed. Confessing to her crime, the priests initially believe she attempted to abort a pregnancy but she exclaims that she was only trying to reverse the damage done by the corrupter and that she had been tricked- the same words used by the tainted who kidnapped her, she realises. Rielle is arrested and escorted to the Temple.
Imprisoned beneath the temple, an inquest is held to determine the circumstances of Rielle becoming tainted where she explains her encounter with the corrupter and why she used magic. A number of employees from the dyeworks, her parents, aunt Narmah, Izare and the artisans and Famere are all called to testify. Her guilt having been confirmed Rielle is forced to change into rags, clapped in heavy shackles and her hair is shorn before she is led out of the city among a humiliating procession where the citizens of Fyre flock to the streets to pelt her. After reaching the city boundary her chains are removed, except for one around her neck, and she is allowed to change into more normal clothes before continuing in the presence of Sa-Mica, a priest from the Mountain Temple she is being taken to, and Sa-Gest who is being reassigned there as a result of his actions towards a number of women in the same way he had attempted with Rielle- though she never admitted to what he'd done for fear of retribution.
Journeying through the desert Sa-Mica regularly reads to Rielle from the 'Book of Angels' various stories about people who encountered Angels, including various cases where tainted were forgiven by them, in at least one case by showing remorse for their crimes and managing to produce more magic than they had 'stolen'. In a cell at a village temple one night Rielle is awakened to find Sa-Gest masturbating next to her cell door using the portrait he had stolen from Izare's workshop and repeats his offer for her to engage with him in exchange for him making things better for her, or at least less worse, at the Mountain Temple. He is caught by Sa-Mica however and the portrait destroyed.
Nearing their destination, Sa-Mica is called away briefly and Sa-Gest uses the opportunity to explain the truth of the Mountain Temple; that men are eventually allowed to become priests through repentance but women are used as livestock to breed more owing to their magical potential- and that this is the fate intended for Rielle. Horrified, Rielle draws in magic- stripping it from half the mountain- and accidentally kills Sa-Gest by pushing him off the edge. Returning, Sa-Mica understands that her actions were in self defence and explains that while the Temple did used to be a place of horror as Sa-Gest described, it is not so anymore having been radically changed 20 years earlier and that Sa-Gest hadn't been made aware of the change as he was being taken there to be imprisoned for his crimes.
Arriving at the Mountain Temple, Sa-Mica introduces Rielle to their leader and the one who had reformed it- none other than an Angel named Valhan who offers Rielle a chance at a second life. She will never be allowed to return to Fyre, but can go somewhere far away to work at redeeming herself by creating more magic than she used and save her soul.