SARONA GAYLE

Creativity wasn't just built on the back of survival. It's built on the wings of people's need for more than what they have in the now.

stats

NAME: Sarona Gayle (Say-roh-na, Gayl)
NICKNAME: Saeri (Say-ri)
DOB: 09/19
AGE: 17
SCHOOL: Aurora Academy
CLASSIFICATION: Runist
AFFILIATION: Inkmetal Forge
PB: Original art and Manga PB from Mikarun X by Takatou Rui.
APPEARANCE:
6’1”/185.5cm. Slender, but curvy, athletic build. Olive green eyes and thick, curly dark blue hair that she keeps meticulously maintained whether natural or straightened and curled. Sometimes she pulls it up but usually she leaves it out, just pinned back away from her face. Dark brown skin with warm undertone to it. Walks and sits with straight posture. Walks tall with purpose, carries herself like she always knows where she’s going. Has seven tattoos, four of which are more visible, the long one on her right arm (with a long scar running through it), the two on opposite sides of her breastbone, and the one on the palm of her hand. Three other ones are on various parts of her body.

basics

Prodigy of a Rune Guild with the philosophy it is the duty of those with power to help those without, and to wear the proof of that proudly. She's a bit arrogant and thinks she's more benevolent than she really is. Loyal and protective of the weak, but also very little patience for people who enjoy mediocrity (in her opinion). Her family has been affiliated with a specific guild for generations and it's all but demanded of the children to be good enough to join it (as the guild is extremely selective) and if not at least help to support and fund it. But she aligned herself with The Inkmetal Forge instead. This Guild is known for tattooing the Inscriptions onto their own bodies for the sake of enhancements and quick access to specific abilities, including the ability to summon weapons and tools or power large machinery/armors.

She came to the Academy to get more indepth studies outside of her Runework and is expected to finish top honors to achieve a specialized Inscription from the Head of the Guild to allow her to gain her own personalized Armor that she call upon at will. Got kidnapped once, her brother tried to leave her to die in the Mystlands, and she survived there for a year before getting back to Earth. Got sent back to school to figure out the obsidian stone her brother and his guild had been after and also plotting revenge, not that she told anyone that.

She’s 17, playful, pushing, demanding, and very much a lesbian. Flirts with all the attractive ladies, this includes older women, she’s not shy about that. But doesn’t really expect anyone to reciprocate (not that she’ll choose to consider why she thinks no one would reciprocate). Backs off as soon as someone turns her down.

setting

Sarona was created as an OC for the Daybreak Academy setting (

daybreakacademy), now retrofitted a bit to exist separate from that setting in her own verse I call Runes & Myst.

Her Earth is similar to our own, only magic has always existed in this world and technology is much more advanced than it is in our world today, thanks in part to magic helping to further technology and vice versa. It looks like our world in a lot of ways, but in some ways the world could look Very Different. Some people are more aware of magic than others depending on where they live and the influence of magic in the culture/region. Organizations exist that cultivate this magic, although in various ways (some in more secretive ways than others but all fairly out of the public eye).

Sarona was born in California just outside of Los Angeles in the very wealthy suburb of Hillside. Hillside is a newer suburb with people who have an annual income of $750k or more, due to the cost of living. Her family were one of the first to move into the suburb twenty years previous. It is also known as the Academy Suburb as many private schools exist here that wealthy people and celebrities send their children to.

Magic in the US is a lot less acknowledged than in places such as many European or Asian countries, but the secret organizations are prominent in their own ways, just for different reasons that “legitimize” them more to the unknowing public. It is always so easy for people to ignore things they don’t want to think are real with the right circumstances telling them to look the other way.

It’s the year 2050 and things such as basic Mobile Armor (what some might call Mecha thanks to Japan’s influence) and Advanced Industrial Mobilized suits (AIMs) exist. Mobile Armors/Mecha are treated much like one would tanks, submarines, fighter jets and other militarized weaponry, created for one person to “pilot” by themselves instead of a group of people. AIMs are essentially high-tech construction machinery. They could be fitted with weaponry, but their primary purpose is construction, research, emergency services, and the like.

There are different forms of magic that people can have an affinity toward and different names for those people. There is being a Mage which involves casting spells using verbal magic with an assisting conduit (such as a wand, staff, amulet, your own body, etc). There are Runists, who use written spells with scripts of specialized and/or ancient languages, sometimes called rune mages, but they are not exactly the same. One could be both a mage and a runist mixing the two together. Then there are Elementals, who are compatible with magic based in nature and natural forces. Next are the Engineers, who are those who study magic and how to meld it with modern technology. An informal word for them is Techa. Like with mages and runists, Engineers aren’t necessarily One Thing and can be a mix of the other areas of magic. One could be an Engineer who studies Runes and how to use them to power Mecha and AIMs, or who builds specialized conduits for Mages.

And there is Magic from beyond The Gates. The Gates is the name for the barrier that exists between the human world and the Mystlands. The Mystlands is a world made almost entirely of magic and where non-human magical beings originate from. The magic of the Mystlands is not like that of Earth and can cause conflict, but it vast and diverse a world as the Earth itself and many different peoples and creatures live there (including some humans). Demons, Angels, Lycans, Animal-people, Fae…all of these people exist in the Mystlands within their own regions and/or kingdoms. Many areas of the Mystlands are deadly to humans who travel there without proper protections or can cause their minds/souls/bodies/magic to be corrupted, which is known as Greying, because of the influence of The Myst.

To prevent the effects of Greying influencing the Earth itself, thousands of years ago, The Gates were put in place after a powerful war between different factions of humans and Mystlanders. They provide a buffer between the two worlds. But as years have gone on, the Gates had been worn down and stretched thin, causing tears and breaks to occur in the walls, which can lead to beings passing through from either side into the other. Humans can accidentally get lost in the Mystlands or demons and other creatures can come forth and affect the world. For example, Werewolves and other Were people exist because beings called Lycans found their way out of the Mystlands and into our world, attacking and infecting those people until they were, too, changed. After a thousand or so years, these people created clans and factions of their own in the human world, disconnected from the Lycans of the Mystlands, but the longest lived of them know where the Change first originated. Some Mystlanders have the power to travel back and forth through the Gates at will and use that to gain a strong influence on Earth.

Then there are the Psychics, people born with unique abilities that exist outside of the typical Laws and Rules of Magic. Seers, Telepaths, Shapeshifters, Unique Family Bloodlines abilities (such as body-mass manipulation), etc. It is believed that Psychics evolved from the influence of Magic and Myst on each other, but it doesn’t have the aura/signature of either. Psychics have existed for thousands of years. They were rarer in the past but have become more and more common in the couple hundred or so years. Thus, the question of their existence and how their abilities work and manifest so randomly (or hereditarily) has become more prominent.

Many young people who grow up within these communities are trained within their specific community. Mages taught and trained by Mages (usually within their own clans), Runists by Runists, Weres by Weres, etc. But this is not always the case. Hunter Guilds exist that recruit from all over the spectrum of people to fight against the “darker” forces at work. They are fairly diverse in accepting even beings of the Mystlands into their ranks if they can prove themselves. And there are some private academies that exist to allow these children to interact outside of their bubbles and gain a wider awareness of the world at large. Aurora Academy is one of these such private institutions.

Secreted away on a hidden, magically-enhanced island in the Northern Pacific Ocean, Aurora is actually one of the newer Academies of its kind, a sister school to much older and more “well-known” schools in Europe and the Americas, Aurora has only existed for the last 150 years. The island is home to the school staff and students, but in the last century people who left the school but chose to remain close by have fostered a bustling and active city around the sprawling campus on a hill.

Despite the island’s disguised and shielded status, it is actually quite easy to leave the school as there are portals set up at three strategic points to take you to Friendly Locations, or places in various cities and towns around the world with Mirrors of their own to allow people to travel through. From that location students and staff can travel to wherever else they intend to visit. To return to the island, they must have their Academy Ring or Badge (students have different ones from the staff) or a Pass permitted by the government for leaving or entering the island. The only way to return to the Academy through the mirrors is to use the Ring or Badge and a drop of blood to activate its magic. The Academy is very involved in the local government and has two seats on the council. One for the school’s Council of Directors and one from the Teachers’ Guild.

The only reason the island is even hidden is because of an attack on the school 100 years ago, by a group of demons seeking a special artifact the school had recently come into possession of. This lead to major destruction to the school and deaths among the student body and faculty. And so, the island is now shielded from view, only able to be found on special maps or through approved means. It was after this attack, that the Seers of Aurora began to gain more influence and value in order to prevent something similar from happening ever again. Of the 10-person Council of Directors, 4 of them are Seers.

But Aurora Academy was not only a school for learning. It was also a school for preparation. Students were being trained to go on missions with faculty as their supervisors and deal with supernatural threats around the world. It was their way of protecting Earth as the Gates became weaker and weaker, and also preventing magic from being abused by humans and Mystlanders alike. The missions could be commissioned to the school by others, such as governments, businessmen, etc, or they could be influenced by visions compiled by the Seers of the Aurora. Some of them could be simple, such as finding a missing artifact, or as dangerous as having to travel into the Mystlands themselves to deal with a threat. To avoid potential issues with governments about the legality of this in certain states and regions, the school never classified these outings as the missions they are, instead calling them “Field Trips.”

magic system

On this Earth there are currently three forms of Magic. There is Earth Magic which is broken down into two categories, Nature Magic and Soul Magic, there is Myst Magic, and then there is Psychic Magic.

Nature Magic is magic that inherent in the Earth itself and the ecosystems that exist on it. Everything on the Earth can be used for magic if done properly, but some materials and tools have stronger magical signatures. Soul Magic is magic inherent to anything that has a soul. It's an offshoot of Nature magic, but has evolved over the millennia into something unique but similar.

Myst Magic is magical energy that comes from the Mystlands, and can be broken down into its own categories, usually by what aspect of the Myst has influenced it. It is extremely varied and works in opposite to Earth Magic without proper care and manipulation. Myst energy can even corrupt and corrode Earth Magical signatures, something called the Greying.

Psychic Magic on the other hand seems to be inbetween the two. It is believed that Psychic Magic (which is naturally more resistent to the Greying) is a mix between earth and myst magic, but no one has proof of it. Still, Psychics have existed for thousands and thousands of years, just not in great numbers. But in the last hundred years or so more Psychics are being born. Psychics can travel through the Mystlands without needing extra protections, but also have a weaker defense against Soul Magic than they do against Myst Magic. It does combine in a more complimentary way with Earth magic than Myst Magic though.

history

CHILDHOOD
Sarona grew up in a prominent upper-class family who was well-affiliated with the Runesmith Guild, one of the more affluent Runist Guilds that has several branches spread in multiple locations, even in other countries. If you are part of a Guild or in the know about them, you’ve probably heard of the Runesmiths for their money and exclusivity. For being so “large” the Guild doesn’t admit many new members each year per branch (3-4 only), but they have been around for so many years that they’ve had time to build up their base. Once a Runesmith, it’s unlikely that the person will defect to a different Guild. There is too much status and prestige linked to being a member and defecting could lead to being blacklisted by other Guilds affiliated with them.

Sarona is the youngest of three with an older sister and brother. She was born premature and with congenital heart disease, selective IgA Deficiency, endothelial dysfunction, and asthma, which led to her needing major surgeries before she was 10 and being in the hospital several times as a child due to pneumonia and other infections. She grew up sickly and couldn’t involve herself in a lot of physical activity due to how easily fatigued she would become and the likelihood of setting off an asthma attack or heart issues. She didn’t even start going to school until she was 7 years old because of complications but being homeschooled allowed her to greatly advance her own knowledge in standard academics and about runes and magic. If there is one thing Sarona loves above all else, it’s runes.

The Gayles are well-known within Runic circles for their support of the Runesmiths and fundraising for them, having had at least one person every generation accepted into the Guild, but often more. But her parents didn’t just expect one of their children to be good enough to be recruited by the Guild, they expected it of all of them, or so they said. Saeri has always had a natural affinity for Runeworks and Inscriptions. By the time she was five she had already learned how to inscribe stones to glow so that she had extra light in her bedroom (allowing her to stay up late reading or studying) and was building small Golems that she would Inscribe specific action Runes onto that would have them perform little jobs around the house to assist the housekeeper, and her son, Kal, who was Sarona’s best friend.

She was raised to believe that her family was truly among the Elites of the craft. That their connection to the Runesmiths and prominent Runists made them better because they earned their place among the guild’s ranks. It was expected of them, but it wasn’t just given to them, she thought. Of course, this seemed contradictory to a young girl who had to wear thick glasses because of her eyes and got sick so easily she spent at least a week or more in the hospital over the course of a year. Her older brother, Wynston, picked on her a lot because of it, mocking her looks and poor health daily (and sometimes probably trying to kill her).

But what Sarona lacked in physical prowess she more than made up for in creativity, ingenuity, natural intuition and intelligence. So while she grew up seeing herself as lesser than her brother and sister, Dahlia, in some ways, she had an ingrained belief that she was better than most other people in most ways and certainly better than them at the Runework they were expected to excel in. The housekeeper, Ms. Halli, always supported her and even gifted Sarona her favorite book, The Scarlet Sentinel (The Scarlet Pimpernel for Runists, basically).

This all came to a head when her brother got into the Runesmith Guild when she was 10. Wynston, who positively sucked at Runic Inscription work. Her brother who had been jealous of her skills to the point of finding various ways of bullying her for years, but somehow managed to get into what she’d always been told was the most exclusive and demanding of Guilds? No, something wasn’t right there. And so she did her research. She casually asked questions of guild members she had some acquaintance with, and even some of the children. And when in doubt? She would speak to the servants. She knew the people who knew everything would be the people the Elites often ignored.

And what she learned changed everything for her. Sure, the Runesmiths were exclusive in their recruitment and had a vast amount of wealth behind them, but rather than using that wealth to promote greater advancements that would help all people, they horded the wealth while demanding more and kept all the benefits for themselves. And if you happened to have the right amount of money, you could gain the status of the name even if you wouldn’t be nearly worthy of the alleged difficulty of their entrance tests.

It was all a sham. Her parents gave them money and so her brother got to join the ranks as if he had earned it. As if he actually had the skills and motivation to be of any worth as an Runist.

And so it came when she was encouraged to join at 12 years old—a full five years younger than her brother had been—she hesitated. Because what was the value of putting so much effort into joining the guild now? Would her parents still expect her to excel enough to pass the tests and get in on her own merit? Would they simply pay off the Examiner to get her in without any of the fuss? Would she be able to push the guild into helping people, really helping people? Not just those with money and status, but the people like Ms. Halli and Kal, who didn’t have the luck of that privilege?’

MEETING THE INKMETAL FORGE GUILD
Then the storm struck. A storm that may as well have been the Greying itself. The wealthy suburbs on the hill where Sarona and her family lived were marginally affected, but the poorer rural area where many of the house staff and employees lived was devastated. Trees ripped out from their roots, roofs torn from homes, cars destroyed, flooding from the river, there was so much destruction. Did the Runesmith Guild step up to help the people? Of course not.

But the Inkmetal Forge did. And Sarona would sneak out to watch them as they worked, seeing them use their AIMs to move debris or using special tools to help rebuild the homes, some even repairing the cars. And on each Runist she saw, there were these beautiful, flowing tattoos on their bodies. Inscriptions. It was awe-inspiring to her. And sometimes they would stop and talk to her, and she would ask them questions. So Many Questions. She wanted to know everything about them. She learned that they were a small guild that often traveled hundreds to thousands of miles across the country to help out during natural disasters and other major incidents to help rebuild the areas, either at a major discount if they were called, or completely free of charge.

It doesn’t take long for Saeri to make her decision after seeing the Inkmetal Forge in action. She all but begged them to recruit her, and when they initially reject her, the leader of the guild not believing she was serious (she was only 12 after all), she refused to give up. She stalked them around town, providing them golems and tools with her own Inscriptions, and helped where she could. This led her to falling ill and she would have collapsed off a tall ladder had one of the Inkmetal Runists not caught her and taken her to their makeshift hospital on site. They looked after her, but since she had never actually told them much about herself, they didn’t know her family name to call her parents. So for days they nursed her, even worrying that they would need to call the nearest hospital that hadn’t been affected by the storm, and somehow her family never even came to look for her.

It was Ms. Halli who revealed who she was, having come to their camp to provide a hot meal as a thanks to the Guild members. They asked her about the young girl that had been stalking about their camp and insisting on helping them and Ms. Halli knew immediately who it was, as she had noticed Sarona missing from her family’s estate days ago. They contacted her parents because they were actually responsible adults, only for her parents to collect her by way of telling Ms. Halli to bring her home with her.

When Sarona was better, she found out that the Runesmith Guild had heard about her efforts to assist the Inkmetal Forge and the Runework she had done helping them, which led them to pressing her even more to join the guild. Her parents for once actually seemed proud of her. They praised her philanthropism and her creativity—of course turning it to make it seem as if they were fully aware of her actions and even encouraged it—but Saeri was done with all of this. She rejected the offer right to their faces and said she’d already accepted an offer from the Inkmetal Forge (which, in reality, there had been no offer, but Saeri knew what she wanted and wasn’t going to settle for something less than that).

And in the fight that followed between her and her parents—most of which Saeri couldn’t even remember because so many harsh words were said and done—Sarona had come to one conclusion. Her parents were too flawed for her to obey. They were biased and corrupted by their own desires for wealth and status and there was nothing they could say she would believe anymore (of course she was also 12 and full of hurt feelings and anger herself). And she said it right to her mother’s face. So her mother told her that she would either abide by their wishes, or she would be shipped off to a reform school overseas until she came to her senses. She wouldn’t be living in their house acting the way she was. No child of hers would be running off with some traveling Guild that covered their bodies in runes like “Old World savages.”

So Sarona snuck out once again—as her parents couldn’t keep her locked in when she could just Inscribe her own exit wherever she wanted. She left a letter of warning to her parents to not try to stop her, then struck out for the warehouse the Inkmetal Forge Guild had been renting while doing their reconstruction work. She banged on the door until someone let her in and demanded once again that they accept her as a new recruit. She told them she would follow them all the way back to Michigan if she had to. They either accepted her now, and let her prove herself to the Guild, or she would make them accept her eventually. Really, it would be much easier on them if they got it over with now so they could move on to the actual training and apprenticeship.

When the leader, JD, asked her how she planned to stay with them, considering she was still under the age for being on her own without her parents’ approval, she merely told them she’d already thought of that and would handle her parents if the time came. Because Sarona had taken more than enough time to gather evidence against her parents that could cause them not only legal trouble, but the undoing of their social status and prestige. If they wanted to avoid the kind of scandal she would bring down on them, it would be better if they let her go. So in the end, they agreed to take her with them back to Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Not that her parents ever did come for her. The one time since she joined the Inkmetal Forge that she had taken the chance to call home—mainly to check on her older sister, Dahlia, who she actually got along with—her mother had overheard them. She all but told Sarona that she was dead to them and the only children she acknowledged were the ones worthy of their family name. Sarona hung up and never called back again.

She threw herself into the new Inscriptions she was designing and the experimental ink she’d made for her Base AIM rune that would allow her to control all of the AIMs that the Forge used for their work. She had JD himself put the first inscription on her, a health rune she’d finally perfected that would boost her immunity and prevent her from getting sick as often, stabilize her heart condition, and cure her asthma. The second rune, her base AIM operation rune, had a different outcome. The rune itself worked perfectly, but the ink she’d spent weeks designing herself turned out to have the flaw of turning all the hair on her body a new color. All of it. So she went from having thick curly dark brown hair to hair that was very, very blue. Not that she minded, but it was an unforeseen complication that could not be adjusted once the ink had settled into her body.

AURORA ACADEMY
It was only weeks after she got her first rune that Gina broached the subject of Sarona continuing her schooling with the Runist she had been apprenticing under, Roan, and he agreed that something should be done. He insisted that if she were to stay, she had to continue her schooling before she could truly progress her Runic studies. And he would expect nothing less than excellence from her, because only hard work would prove her worthy of the next stage in her lessons. But she couldn’t go to a normal school, so Gina and JD helped compile a list of schools for her to choose from. Saeri took his advice and chose Aurora Academy, believing that with a school as vast and varied there had to be more she could learn that would surprise him. Impress him.

And she learned a great deal indeed. In the two years she’d first been studying at the Academy, Sarona had already jumped a grade due to her loading herself with extra courses and even taking weekend seminars if and when they are available, which helped her gain the flexibility and additional knowledge she needed to complete her next two Inscriptions, a rune that would temporarily boost her speed without causing her to burn an excess of calories at the same time, and an long, descriptive Inscription to allow her to manipulate and warp any metal with her right hand. As the school focused more on credit accumulation (and difficulty ranking of courses) as the standard for what grade a student was “in,” she could have been pushed up two years but she had to drop two classes due to time constraints.

She may not always have been the most well-behaved student and she may even have gotten into trouble at times for back-talking or contradicting her teachers, but she thrived on the depth of the knowledge and learning at the school. At Aurora, she was not the only prodigy by far, but she was doing everything she could to prove she was the best at what she does. She had already become fluent in Japanese in just the two years of studying there, as with the high percentage of Japanese students (and faculty), she wanted to be sure she could communicate with them effectively. By the time she was 17, she already had more than enough credits to graduate, but things transpired that led her to not being present for the final exams and she’d have to retake some courses later on (which would be very distressing for her because it felt too close to failing).

During holidays, if she didn’t remain on campus, she returned to Michigan or to wherever her Master Runist was currently stationed for work in the States to continue apprenticing under him and helping with whatever his current job was.

She made some friends, flirted with a lot of girls, got turned down by older women doing the undergrad studies at the University level...and basically every other girl, too. That was fine with her. She made friends with Romero, a young guy who had been cursed into being a skeleton who had been sent to the school to learn how to use his soul magic. She even created a rune for him that would allow him to stop his body's decay until they could find a way to break the curse after the glamour and protection stone he'd been using had been shattered. Tattoos were more permanent and he was less likely to lose one of his bones...usually. She also did some extracurriculars like the robotics club, although she was far more interested in how to use the concepts for making rune golems. She went on "field trips" with her class and helped people and came back to school to keep doing what she was doing. Things were going well for her.

LOSS IN MOTION
Then, Sarona's Guild leader JD died unexpectedly. Because he was technically her legal guardian (based on the paperwork they had done in Michigan), she had to return to the States and make sure things were taken care of. She spent some of that time training again with her Master Runist, Ro, but most of it was smoothing out the legal concerns that might have required her to return to her parents' custody. Her parents of course did not seem exactly pleased with this (her mother still acted as if she didn't exist when they had to travel to Michigan for two of the hearings), but they also put on the facade of "doting" parents for the sake of the public in case any of it got out in the news. They were just loving parents doing what they could to support their child’s whims, of course. Upper class wealthy people whimsical decisions.

The Courts, as usual, don't move as quickly as some would like and the Inkmetal Forge Guild is on the "down low" for most of its funds and activities, so it was a slow process to set her up with a new legal guardian (this time her Master Runist himself). Eventually things were settled and she was allowed to return to school. She kept up with her studies as best she could, as the school had given her permission to stay away longer without needing to dis-enroll for the quarter. At the time, she hadn't expected it to take nearly two months for things to be settled, but it did. Then she just wanted to get back into the swing of things and not think about how close she came to being forced back to the family that didn't even want her (at least on paper, Sarona now how to disappear in ways that she would never have to go back there if she didn't want, but an irrational fear was still there).

MYSTY ENCOUNTERS
Only a few months later, while doing a large scale extended “field trip” to France to investigate some unusual magical readings and paranormal events (requested by a former student), Sarona and some other students and staff were kidnapped by a Lycan clan called the Kraal and forced to build and upgrade weapons for them using her Runework. Some of her RAs and other classmates were also held hostage. She didn’t want anything to happen to them, and she was punished for refusing, so she went along with it. But she built fail-safes into the weapons, so she knew how to disable them or to cause them to malfunction. Others came to rescue them, but they had to fight their way free. Then they took down the Kraal, by in so much as damaging much of their infrastructure, before escaping out of the Mystlands and back to Earth, but Sarona was left with a feeling of tension and wanting to make sure that never happened to her again.

So she trained and she studied and she gave herself a new tattoo left on her arm that provided her a level of invulnerability. Because being tortured sucked. “Field trips” kept happening at school, some small and others large scale battles against powerful Mystland beings coming to destroy the world, and life went on. Only then she called to check in on the Inkmetal Forge Guild and how everyone was doing and found out that they’d been spread thin since JD died because so many natural disasters and emergencies kept happening between the US and Canada. They were going to help but there was only so much they could do.

Sarona couldn’t leave her guild to do this without her and got permission to come back temporarily to assist. She took a Mirror portal straight out to California where landslides had been causing major problems for some of the smaller mountain villages up north. Only to run into her brother outside of town in one of the little cheap gas station she knows he would never be caught dead in. Why would he be in the region? Were the Runesmiths claiming they were “helping” to raise their status?

Turns out, nope. Her brother was working with another guild, that he called the InGravers, that maybe had a vested stake in these not-so-natural landslides because they were searching for something in the mountains. Which Sarona only found out because she didn’t trust him and spied on him after putting a temporary tracking rune on him after instigating a confrontation. She relayed all of this to Gina, the current guild leader and they set up a plan to stop the InGravers. Except someone in the InGravers found her tracking rune and was expecting someone to do something.

Sarona gets caught and tortured…or attempted torture, since her invulnerability rune kicked in. Only problem is that it has an hour-time limit before it starts overwhelming the other tattoos on her body and making them inert. She had to shut it down before her health rune shut off and she ended up having an asthma attack or cardiac arrest right there. Which was fine because she had been planning to use herself as bait the whole time, only the problem was she never expected it to happen as soon as it did. She hoped the plan she and Gina and Ro had come up with would still work with a moved up timeline.

The plan worked, they stopped the InGravers, but they found the black obsidian-like stone that they had been looking for. She fought with her brother to get the stone and when she got it away from him it shocked her bare hand, going up her hand and over her arm like an electrical burn. Bad enough to leave scars that disrupted her metal-bending tattoo on that arm. She couldn’t warp her staff anymore. Her brother used that moment to open up a rune gate—the one Runework he was generally good at doing--and she jumped in front of him, refusing to let him escape. Turned out, no, the plan all along was to send her through it, right into the Mystlands. But not before telling her how their mother had been showing him the best place to leave the “Trash you never want to deal with again.”

His mistake was not realizing that she’d taken the stone with her. So here she was trapped in the Mystlands, her dominant hand and arm injured, no food besides some protein bars and a bottle of water, and her Rune-pack. She quickly used her other hand to break her staff in two and used part of the staff to create a carrying case for the stone she’d taken from her brother. Unfortunately, that didn’t change the fact that the gate disappeared and for some reason she couldn’t open a new one.

SURVIVOR: MYSTLAND EDITION
Being trapped in the Mystlands in a region where the landscape keeps changing on her like a rubik’s cube wasn’t easy, but she did what she had to do. She fixed what she could of her metal-bending tattoo, adding some strengthening runes to block out the nerve damage. Being mostly ambidextrous did work in her favor, but her right hand was going to need some physical therapy to get back to where it had been. She kept moving, traveling until she could find a new location that a gate could be opened.

She also gave herself two more Tattoos while she was out there. One was a permanent anti-Greying purification rune that she put on her chest on the opposite side of her health rune—not easy when you’re using your less dominant hand, but she did it as meticulously as possible. The other was an alchemy rune on the palm of her hand that could be used to manipulate the properties of Mystlands flora to make them edible for her. Not that there was much to find in the first week or so she’d been out there, but she needed to eat what she could. She wasn’t going to die in the Mystlands, forget that.

Surviving alone for almost a year in Mystlands was not a fun time, but she did it. Three months in, she figured out what she thought was the pattern in how the area seemed to be "shifting" around her and used it to follow the pattern to find a crossroads, but it took another three months of time. And once she crossed the boundaries into this new area, it was as if she was in a completely different region altogether. She didn't know where she was, but it wasn't whatever the hell she'd been dealing with before, so that was a step up. She continued to travel through, fighting different creatures that tried to eat her (because of course THIS area had to be full of huge carnivores), and made it into another region by crossing a huge gorge that she almost fell into. This area of course happened to be more desert than anything else and Sarona was very low on supplies and she knew she might be in trouble. Thankfully only two days later she ran into a Hunters Guild on a mission. They weren't looking for her, but they did help her with getting out back to a place where she could open a Gate back to Earth.

She immediately went back to her Guild and told them about the stone, which she had of course been studying as much as she could while she was in the Mystlands. So far what she'd found out was that it had almost like anti-Psychic properties and reacted badly to magic. She wondered if it was originally from somewhere in the Mystlands, but couldn't tell for sure without more research. They told her that she should take it back to Aurora with her and get away while they figure out if anyone was looking for it. She was more interested in getting back at her brother, but Ro and Gina convinced her it was better to get the stone out of the States and to a secure location where it could be studied. Back to school she went. Only to find out she’d have to retake a bunch of classes because she’d missed nearly a whole year of schooling along with the previous year's finals.

A MEANS TO THE END?
But what Sarona didn’t realize is the stone is actually a piece of a much larger puzzle, the heart of a sleeping Mystland creature called the Soulcarver, that once awakened may wreak havoc beyond what anyone has ever seen so far. The more she experiments on it and the more she attempts to figure out what it belongs to, the more like the other pieces of that scattered puzzle might wake up and start seeking to make itself whole again.

And that is exactly what happened. During the year that Sarona had been gone in the Mystlands, the InGravers had been slowly accumulating more of the Obsidian Shards, trying to access their power and not knowing their true nature either. They understood more than Sarona, but to them, all they knew what that it was a magical stone that had been broken and when reforged could be used to manipulate the magic of others and attempt to control it. They didn’t know that the stone was alive.

They had two-thirds of the Shards by this time and being the impatient and power-hungry lot that they were, some of them attempted to try and activate the “stone” while it was still incomplete. And seeing as Sarona had been also experimenting with the shard she had…it caused a chain reaction in the other shards. Sarona’s shard began to throw out massive anti-magic energy, destructive enough that her dorm room had to be shut down and evacuated because people were getting sick and having negative reactions to the energy. Sarona was caught at the center of it. Anyone with magic had to be removed to the other side of the campus and two of her Mystlander professors had to go in to get her because they were not affected by the anti-magic energy in the same way.

They found her trapped in her dorm, unconscious as the stone burned through her protective gear and seared itself to her hand, which had turned to stone. The affect was moving up her arm and it looked at if she had tried to cut her own arm off before the pain caused her to lose consciousness. Her professor, Arsento, had to complete the unfinished amputation to seal the stone and get Sarona to medical. The heat of her blade cauterized the wound, but thankfully the Academy healers did what they could to mitigate all of the nerve damage and pain. Nothing could save the arm.

And as the Shard reacted, the Heart woke up, but not as the InGravers expected, because being incomplete meant that all the Obsidian Heart cared about was reuniting with its missing Shards and calling its body to it. Which is exactly what it did. The Heart was reformed enough that it woke up the body, which proceeded to go on a rampage trying to find it.

This eventually led to the Soulcarver ripping right through one of the Gates and coming to Earth. All magic around the Soulcarver would be warped and twisted, boosting in strength and corrupted as the Soulcarver tried to feed itself to fill the gapping hole in its chest. That didn’t work because it still didn’t have its heart. It found the InGravers and tore the organization apart, draining many of the members, but gaining followers as well. Those who didn’t die became acolytes of the Soulcarver, ready to serve in exchange for all the power they were given. It was basically join on or die. The Soulcarver is a lot smarter and cleverer than people would assume considering it’s a Mystland beast made of stone and crystal, but a beast that feeds on corrupting magic must have ways of corrupting that magic.

It is only with the awakening of the Shards and the Soulcarver in the Mystlands that the Seers begin to have visions of it. Visions that were previously obscured by the dormant nature of the Shards. The was the coming of the Shattered End, a potential breaking of the world as it would be fractured by the Soulcarver devouring all magical energies. Now they had to figure out what to do with the Shard that most of them could not touch and the Mystland creature that was quickly gaining followers who did not seem to care that all the power they were gaining would eventually lead to their deaths and becoming food for the Soulcarver itself. As Earth had far more magic that the Mystlands, it was the perfect feeding grounds for the Soulcarver to use as it sees fit.

Sarona had accidentally started a potential Apocalypse.

But she doesn’t have time to beat herself up and hate on herself (out loud. She’s hating on herself and being up on herself plenty in her own mind), she has to fix what she broke and find some way to put the Soulcarver back to sleep. It can’t be destroyed, only broken down into pieces, so they have to find a way to rip the heart right back out of it and break it up just as it had been before. Not easy when people without magic can’t get close to it and the more power it becomes the less immune to it other Mystlanders become, too.

And Sarona wasn’t going to be left on the sidelines. She stole a Mystland-made armor gauntlet from the Maze of Warriors Memorial garden on the Academy campus and used her metal warping to fashion it into a more usable prosthetic arm and then carved runes inside of it to match her specialized rune on her back. This allows her to control the new arm just as she would control an AIMs unit, psychically. And of course, since she couldn’t stand the thought of not being able to use it properly, she forgoes sleep for like five days to train herself to use it as seamlessly as her other arm and crashes out so hard they resubmit her to the infirmary and warn her if she doesn’t chill the fuck out they will legit ground her ass and not allow her to do shit. She's been through a lot and her professors and the Headmaster of the Academy want her to take some time to actually recover and not just keep forcing herself into things.

She doesn’t understand why they won’t let her just fix things. And if she could see the shard again, she knows she could figure out how. This is her mistake and she had to get her ass in gear to make it right. She knows she fucked up bad. Her need to ignore her own trauma led her to obsessively experimenting with something she didn’t fully understand and Bad Shit Happened. As she doesn’t know that the InGravers were also involved in awakening the Heart, she sees it entirely as her own fault that the Soulcarver is awake and out to corrupt and consume all magic on Earth.

She also doesn't realize that her long proximity to the shard itself may be influencing her decisions, affecting her choices that somehow always came back to the shard. But the Headmaster and her Professors did and they were Concerned.

YOUTH & CONSEQUENCE
It finally comes to a head a six months later. Things have been getting worse around the world. People randomly spiking mystical and magical abilities, only to use them in attacks and burn themselves out quickly. When studied it would be as if their souls had been completely drained, all magical signature gone from their bodies. "Natural disasters" increasing. The Academy even had to fortify its own protective shields when massive waves caused by undersea earthquakes almost flooded the island.

Groups were becoming more visible working in favor of the Soulcarver, cults that had been waiting for its emergence for thousands of years. Saeri obsessed over all of the news, to the point that Romero went to Professor Arsento who enforced a news-ban on her. But what's happening is obvious. Soulcarver has found more shards of its soul. It's destroying the planet and drawing in people to its chaos as it goes in search of them.

She could tell by the patterns of disasters that they were getting closer to the Island, but couldn't seem to find it. If the Soulcarver was looking for its shards, it had some idea of where they were. Which meant that her school was in danger. Which meant students were in danger and eventually the faculty would have to do something about that. And they did. They intended to send away the students and put the Academy into recess, because the protections in the school made it much harder for the Soulcarver to find them and take the shard. Removing the shard from the school would make it all the easier for it to be located.

Some students stayed because they had nowhere else to go, but the only student who wouldn't be allowed to leave was Saeri. Because Saeri had been touched by a shard twice, had lived with it for nearly a year on her person. The energy of the Soulcarver's heart was burned into her, essentially altering her aura and even her blood. It's energy in her created a false resonance, which could cause the Soulcarver to assume she was a piece of its heart. Thus she couldn't be allowed to leave the protections of the Academy, less the Soulcarver or its cult hunt her down. She was at risk, and so was everyone around her.

It had been much harder for her to do her research with professors paying more attention to her, but Saeri wasn't an expert at runes for nothing. She knew how to cloak her work, disguise it, to erect privacy walls around herself. But that hadn't stopped Saeri. Especially after she finally convinced Romero to work with her. He'd been the one going to the professors and letting them know what she'd been up to. At first she'd felt betrayed, but then understood. Had she been watching someone else do what she was doing, she would have thought they needed adult intervention, too.

So they compromised. Romero let her work, but he also kept her in check. She would sleep when he told her to sleep, eat when he told her to eat, and he'd run interference with the faculty as long as she didn't keep him out of the loop. And she agreed to all of this. Except the part of about keeping him entirely in the loop. Not hard to fudge that when Romero had no idea what she was doing most of the time.

And what she had created was a fake soul shard. A fake soul shard that would resonate enough for the Soulcarver to think it's the right one and use it, only to have the trap she'd hidden inside of it react to the merge and destroy the whole thing. But she wasn't just trying to destroy the Soulcarver. She was trying to trick it back onto the other side of the Gates. Which meant strengthening the resonance of the False Shard, while hiding that of the real one.

She doesn't know how to mask the real shard's resonance without potentially causing backlash, but she wasn't going to not try. Romero almost stopped her, but she convinced him that if he helped her as a counter point, they could potentially stabilize it. Romero agreed but only if she promised him they wouldn't actually touch the shard. He might not have flesh anymore but he knew how Saeri could push limits and get herself into trouble. He was there to keep that from happening and she had to listen him. No Touching The Shard. She agreed and promised the rune seals she designed wouldn't need them to physically touch it.

And that's what they did. They broke into the vault where the real shard was, then copied its resonance into the fake shard. The process was long and they knew they were close to being discovered. Saeri almost thought they had failed, that the resonance transference wouldn't work if the original shard was pulsing so strongly. She could feel it in her bones, the way the shard was calling out to its owner, to be one with the heart it belonged to. Yet it almost felt like it was calling out to her at the same time.

So Sarona did something very, very, very stupid. She reached out and grabbed the shard. With her flesh hand. And it hurt in a way that shouldn't have felt as good as it did. She could feel the shard, she could feel the energy, and the shard could feel her. It recognized her. It didn't attack her like it had before. Instead it pushed the energy into her and every rune on her body burned and shimmered like iridescent ink.

She couldn't see it, but Romero was having a meltdown, trying to pull her back from the obsidian shard. He touched it himself, trying to rip it out of her hand and if it wasn't for the fact he's a skeleton he probably would have had his skin burned off from the reaction the shard had to him. Instead, he was left with deep grooves, not unlike the tattoos that Saeri had engraved into him covering his hands, but he didn't let go until the energy between them burst, sending them both to the floor.

When the smoke settled, what they saw was the shard had broken. Shattered into tiny pieces. They floated above them like a cloud of glitter. And they knew they were going to be in trouble. Romero recovered sooner, but Saeri could feel that something was different, that she'd done something to herself. The same pulsing energy she'd felt from the obsidian shard now thrummed through her entire body.

She knew exactly where the Soulcarver was. And she knows it knows exactly where she is, now, too. The cloaking spells weren't enough. She could feel the Soulcarver reaching for her, trying to see her.

They had to go. Now. Before anyone tried to stop them. They escaped through the same secret wall they'd used to get into the vault before the Headmaster and Arsento arrived. They saw what was left of the shard, saw the rune seals etched everywhere and knew exactly who had done all of this.

They sought out Saeri, trying to stop her before she left the campus, thinking she would seek the town to find a way off the island. But they were wrong. She and Romero had broken into the Headmaster's office to use his mirror to get off the island. And by getting off the island she could open rune-gates to get further away. She and Romero gate jumped twice and suddenly Saeri collapsed, a burn spreading from her amputated arm to her chest. And with the burning came emotions. Longing. The feeling of the Soulcarver calling out. Then she realized she wasn't the only one feeling it. Romero was clutching his scarred hand to his chest, the black tendrils reacting the same as her runes.

Whatever she'd done to herself, she'd done to Romero, too. She maybe broke down just a bit, apologizing and crying and telling him she'd never meant for this to happen. She'd never meant to drag him into her mess like this, whatever was happening to her and whatever had been pulling her to the shard. But he told her to cut it out and let him be there for her like she'd been every time he'd needed her. She'd helped him preserve his body, gave him a glamor that helped him feel real, and stood up for him when someone thought he'd been part of an assassination plot because of his past. She was his best friend and sure maybe he was 100 years older than her, but it didn't change that and he was going to stand by her.

They didn't have the time to argue any longer because they could both feel the Soulcarver getting closer to them. So they did another rune-gate jump. But this time it wasn't away from it, but closer. They wanted to Soulcarver to come after them. That had still been their plan all along. So they followed the plan. They jumped and "hid" as if they were trying to disguise themselves. Like they weren't enticing the Soulcarver and its cults to follow them.

So the first thing was send the Soulcarver on a chase for a week. Then they booked it to Michigan. She sought out the help of the Inkmetal Forge. Roan and Gina were very Not Happy but everything they told them and they already knew some of it after a visit from Professor Arsento herself, but when they revealed the truth of how big of a mess they were in, Gina was ready to lock them down for life. Romero pointing out her was he was too old for that didn't matter.

But Saeri managed to convince Roan that their plan could work. That it would work, if they had help to get them where they needed to be. And that's how they led the Obsidian Divine, the primary and largest cult following the Soulcarver on a chase for some time, trying to look as if they were hiding when really they were strategically taking out cult members to weaken the group over the course of the next few weeks using Saeri and Romero as bait. And then they led them to the most remote Gate they knew of, knowing that this time, the Soulcarver would be coming. Just like they wanted.

And then it all went down and everything went to shit because no plan survives in tact. Which is what happens when you've been planning to fight a huge giant only to find out the Soulcarver knows how to shapeshift and can alter its form to whatever it wants. Things they hadn't known before then. All this time they had been thinking the stone the Soulcarver was made of was all that it could be, but they were wrong. They should have known it from the way the shard had embedded itself into herself and Romero, but they hadn't thought it through.

But they didn't give up. The Soulcarver was on their heels as they threw themselves through the Gate. And it turned out they were in a place that Saeri remembers all too well. The Shifting Crust, the area of the Mystlands that changed its landscape constantly, that she had spent months in, studying and breaking it down so she could find her way out. They were in a place she understood.

And she was going to use that advantage, because they had to seal the gate on their side to prevent the Soulcarver from using it to return to Earth. If they failed they wouldn't give it the chance to get back so easily. And if they succeeded, they would be stuck in the Mystlands yet again until they could find their way to the next Gate.

What she didn't expect was the Soulcarver to grab Romero and absorb him into its body.

And Saeri felt like the entire world was about to collapse from under her.

personality

Arrogant, opinionated, demanding, entitled, intelligent, giving, motivated, all of these things describe Sarona. She grew up in a culture of expectation and elitism, being constantly told she was better than everyone else below her station, while also simultaneously being treated as inferior by her family. As a child this made her work even harder to prove herself, constantly striving for some form of validation and approval from the people who it seemed she never did enough to appease. Eventually her drive for knowledge and learning became more for its own sake than for the sake of others but she will always deep inside her have that unconscious belief that she is lacking in some way, defective somehow, no matter the confidence and bravado she displays for others. Sarona’s intelligence and thirst for knowledge has always been her greatest strength as it pushes her to want to understand the world and to think critically about why things are the way they are. At the same time, that very same intelligence breeds arrogance as she sees herself as more informed and thus more suited to make decisions than those she thinks don’t know what they are doing.

She is someone who recognizes that she has had many privileges and opportunities that other people didn’t get. That for all her successes, she also had unspoken benefits that gave her the leg up that others do not have access to. So she is grateful for this and sees it as her duty to take advantage of these privileges and skills to help those who don’t have what she has. What good is a Runist that doesn’t use their abilities as they were meant to? What use is everything she’s gained if she can’t apply it in a way that betters society as a whole? It was through watching the Inkmetal Forge and connecting to their mission that she finally understood how she could put her knowledge and skills to use. Yes, she may be just as interested in fighting against the monsters of the Mystlands who sometimes break through and seek to hurt people, but millions more people are affected by natural disasters and wrecked economies from poor infrastructure than by the Greying. The Inkmetal Forge cares about all of it and that is a mission that she will devote her life to.

But the drawback of her drive and entitled nature is that is also leaves her blind to the opinions of others that may be just as important or valuable. She thinks she’s the smartest and thus she must has the answers to the problems. And if she doesn’t have the answer, then it must be someone even smarter or more experienced than her who can figure it out, not someone she sees as ignorant or too inexperienced. It’s one of her worst blind spots. She recognizes that the wealthy, elitist culture she was raised in was wrong, but can often be blind to how she herself still subconsciously falls into the very mental reasoning she was raised thinking. She cares and wants to do right by people, so obviously she isn’t as blinded and corrupted as those elitist assholes, right?

Not that she automatically thinks someone less knowledgeable than her is less than or worthless. To Sarona, the belief that hard work and effort can bring about any success with the right opportunities is important. The Inkmetal Forge makes people earn their place among them. They don’t think that brains alone are enough. They don’t think strength or skills alone are enough. Someone who is effortlessly good at everything isn’t someone who will recognize the value in the hard work they do or the support they give to those who need help, in their minds. People who have never had to struggle or experience the struggling of others in an empathic way cannot be trusted to wield the kind of power a Runist can create. It’s one of the reasons she chose to keep wearing glasses instead of using an Inscription to fix her vision, as it would be like saying she couldn’t handle being a Runist without fixing her eyes, despite it being a flaw that had not hindered her to that point. It’s more out of spite than anything.

So Sarona does value hard work. It’s why she became a tutor at the Academy. Anyone who needs help but wants to learn she will never give up on. She will push them, and demand of them, wanting to make sure they succeed and can do better, even if her methods can be harsh and unorthodox at times, but she won’t give up on them as long as she believes they aren’t giving up on themselves. People who are lazy and unmotivated are useless in her eyes except as a lesson of how not to live your life. They remind her far too much of her brother, who coasted to success despite lack of skills or care to work hard enough to gain them, while constantly belittling her interests and aspirations.

miscellaneous

Sarona spells her nickname as "Saeri" because she doesn't understand why her mother gave her a name that's not pronounced the way it's spelled.
Sarona loves bold and/or bright colors and often wears bright solid colored clothing. As a child, her poor eyesight made it hard to differentiate shades with darker colors, so she often wore bright/bold colors so she had a good idea of what she was wearing when dressing herself.
Sarona is basically blind without her glasses. She knows a temporary Rune that can help her see better for a while if she doesn’t have them, but refuses to get permanent surgery or Inscriptions to fix it.
Sarona is a skilled AIMs pilot, but she does better with making the Inscriptions that power the suits. She’s very physical as a pilot, more a close combat and brawler type.
Sarona’s one physical vanity is her hair. She takes a lot of time and uses specific products to make sure it is soft, shiny and silky. Her hair is naturally thick and curly so she used to blow dry it and keep a wavy curl to it to avoid how easily tangled it could get. She has been recently wearing it more natural, especially after returning from the Mystlands considering all the time she took to repair damage to it from her near year without proper hygiene and hair care.
Her hair isn’t naturally blue. It turned blue after she created a special ink to use for one of her tattoos. All hair on her body is blue.
Sarona does martial arts and running as her daily exercise.
Sarona learned how the play the drums and can sing, but it's more of a stress release thing and she doesn't get to do it much at school.
Due to her poor health growing up, Sarona was never allowed to indulge in things like sweets and junk food. She really enjoys cookies and pastries now. She doesn't eat them a lot but when she does she has to remind herself to not eat too many in one go.
Her glasses are Inscription reinforced to prevent them from breaking easily.
Sarona’s voice is like a slightly deeper version of Amandla Steinberg’s and she speaks clearly, but quickly.
When Saeri is angry, she stops using contractions and enunciates each word very clearly.
Sarona built a golem that could learn through observation and left it in the library to see what would happen…some students taught it a dictionary of graphic profanity in twenty languages.

abilities

RUNES: Sarona is a prodigy in Runic Inscriptions and Golem-making, and has a hobby of making small golems that do basic tasks, such as picking up laundry, or watering plants, but recently has been making more complex Golems.

TEMPORARY INSCRIPTIONS: Temporary tattoos that have an even more finite time span for their usage, but can create a greater burst of power and energy. These tattoos are made with a special ink and put on a specially treated paper that can then be transferred to a person’s body. These tattoos are generalized and can be more mass-produced than the unique specialized tattoos that the Inkmetal Forge members put on their own bodies.

MARTIAL ARTS: Four years of martial arts training (krav maga and taekwondo) and fighting Mystland creatures under her belt.

LANGUAGES Sarona has a natural skill for picking up languages and learning them. Coupled with her excessive need to perfect things, she learns them rather quickly. Currently she speaks fluent English, French, Japanese, and conversational in German and Spanish.

TATTOOS: Sarona has Seven (7) Tattoos on her body currenlty:

visuals

[OOC] Character Information and Background (Revised)

SARONA GAYLE

Creativity wasn't just built on the back of survival. It's built on the wings of people's need for more than what they have in the now.