Vhalla Yarl Solaris

Empress Vhalla Yarl Solaris
"'Vhalla stood, not as a common-born library girl, a soldier, a sorcerer, or a lady, but as an Empress.” ― Elise Kova, Crystal Crowned"

Background
Vhalla Yarl was raised on a farm in Leoul, Cyven, in the East. At the age of 7 her father went away to fight in the war of the Crystal Caverns against the taint. While her father was away at war, her mother died of autumn fever. At the age of 11, after the war had concluded, Vhalla's father got Vhalla a position as a library apprentice in the Imperial Library in the South. Despite being a farmer's daughter, Vhalla had been taught how to read by her mother.

Air Awakens
Vhalla is awoken late at night by the sound of horses outside of her window. She looks outside and sees that one of the princes has returned from the war and is wounded. Shortly thereafter, one of her friends and fellow library apprentice comes to get her. All of the library apprentices were summoned to the Imperial Library to research Northern poisons as the prince was poisoned. Previously, the handsome, golden prince Baldair had caught Vhalla as she fell off of a rolling ladder while shelving books. Fearing for Prince Baldair's life, Vhalla throws herself into the research and note-taking for the clerics, staying up all night, long after the other apprentices had retired.

In the morning, the Minister of the Tower of Sorcerers, Victor, comes to fetch her. She refuses to accompany him because he's super creepy, so he chloroforms her and she wakes up in the Tower. Victor tells her she's a Sorcerer but she refuses to believe this. She finds out the prince she saved was not the wonderful golden Prince Baldair but his older, much scarier brother, the crown prince, Prince Aldrik, a master firebearer.

Vhalla leaves the Tower, still in doubt about her magical abilities. She notices that the Tower is keeping tabs on her as a black-clad figure haunts her as protection for others in case she Manifests her magic violently. She discovers a note in a book reprimanding her for her selfishness and recklessness over not joining the Tower and risking the lives of innocents out of her own narrow-mindedness. Thus begins her notes with the Phantom. One of the apprentices of the Tower, Larel, gifts Vhalla with a book on magic, telling her if she just reads a bit on it then she'll learn there is nothing to be afraid of. The Phantom further encourages Vhalla's learning, becoming her teacher and guide as she learns more about magic.

After having a dream of a dark-clad figure in the Imperial Library, Vhalla has the sudden urge to go there. Sprinting to the library, she encounters her Phantom who turns out to be none other than the foreboding Prince Aldrik himself. After a talk, Prince Aldrik convinces Vhalla to let him introduce her more to magic.

So, he takes her to the top of a really high tower and shoves her off.

After somehow surviving the fall, Vhalla wakes up in the Tower, receiving serious medical treatment from the Tower apprentice, Larel. Vhalla is displeased with Prince Aldrik for pushing her off a roof and almost getting her killed. She is hesitant to trust him again but he reveals to her that, because she saved his life, they have a Bond. The Bond prevents Aldrik from killing Vhalla and she from killing him. He reveals that the notes she wrote to the clerics were vessels that held some of her magic and that magic saved his life.

Victor informs Vhalla that she will need to join the Tower to learn to control her magic but Vhalla says she would like to be Eradicated (which is having all of her magic sucked out of her so she can go back to being normal). Victor is hesitant, because she is the first Windwalker in 150 years, and tries to talk her out of it. She bargains for a month's time to make her decision and Victor begrudgingly agrees.

During this month there is a festival and Vhalla's other best friend asks her on a date. Vhalla believes that this will probably be the best opportunity she'll ever get for a better life as library apprentices are only slightly above servants in society, so she agrees. On the date, the two of them are noticed by Prince Aldrik who is talking with Senator Egmun. Prince Aldrik pretends not to know Vhalla as Vhalla attempts to lead her friend away.

Later on, Vhalla sneaks off to the rose garden in the greenhouse of the castle. It's technically off-limits to mostly everyone, so she sneaks into the garden via window. There, she encounters Prince Aldrik who just so happened to be there at that exact time. He's okay with her being there and he invites her to sit with him and they read together. Senator Egmun and Prince Baldair enter the garden to inform Prince Aldrik the Emperor has summoned him. Senator Egmun reveals himself as a creep and Prince Baldair offers to lead Vhalla out, having remembered her from their library encounter.

Prince Baldair takes Vhalla to his room and realizes that Vhalla has feelings for Prince Aldrik and says he'll be her fairy godmother and get her into the festival gala for the nobles, assuring her no one will be the wiser. Vhalla agrees and he tells her servants will meet her at the servants' entrance to help her get ready and brings in a designer to design her dress for the following day. Vhalla chooses a black cloth, intending for it to be a silent admission to Prince Aldrik of her decision to join the Tower after all.

Vhalla's friend from the beginning corners Vhalla and asks if she has feelings for their male library apprentice friend. Vhalla realizes her friend likes him and Vhalla tells her to take her place as his date the following night. Her friend storms off and Vhalla thinks about how normally they'd just shrug off their fight with a joke.

The following night, Vhalla goes to the gala and is the only one wearing black, besides Prince Aldrik, who always wears black. The two of them escape the gala and have a dance in the gardens when they hear an explosion go off in the distance, in the direction of the town square where Vhalla's friends were. Fearing for her friends' lives, Vhalla runs into the chaos of the burning town, discovering it was an attack by some Northerners who were getting revenge for what the Southern Emperor had done to their people.

Vhalla discovers her friends, only one having lived, the male one crushed under the debris of a bakery where he'd been waiting for her, the female passed out. Prince Aldrik, having followed Vhalla into the town in an attempt to stop her, and Vhalla are cornered by four of the six Northerners that had attacked the town. Aldrik fights them but is soon overpowered by their numbers and the fact that he has not entirely healed from the poisoning he'd suffered in the beginning. Vhalla gets dragged over for one of the Northerners to torture as a weapon against Aldrik. When they're done playing with her, one of the Northerners moves to kill Aldrik but Vhalla accidentally makes a wind-hurricane to protect him, brutally killing the Northerners and saving the last of the town. Vhalla passes out from the exertion, not remembering killing the Northerners.

Vhalla wakes up in a jail cell and, under Senator Egmun's command, they beat her up quite a bit before taking her to face the Emperor and the Senate for her trial. Her crime is the attempted murder of the Crown Prince Aldrik. Thanks to Victor, the master of the library, Larel, and Prince Aldrik himself, Vhalla is allowed to live and found innocent of the attempted murder. However, for disguising herself as a noblewoman and lying to the royal family about being a noble, she's conscripted to the army and must win the Emperor's war to take the North to earn her freedom.

Fire Falling
Vhalla, Larel, and their happy best friend Fritz are now in the Sorcerer's division of the military under the Sorcerer General and Prince Aldrik. A Northern-looking woman from the West, Elicia, joins them and does not hide her resentment of Vhalla. Prince Aldrik attempts to help Vhalla learn how to control her magic. She's too traumatized from the "Night of Fire and Wind" (the terrorist attack where she saved Aldrik in Air Awakens) to do any magic, so she ends up hanging out with two of the soldiers. When Vhalla was on trial, the guards that beat her up under the command of Egmun were murdered and replaced by two of Prince Baldair's Golden Guard, a small force of elite fighters that exist solely as Prince Baldair's bodyguards. One of the two, an Easterner named Daniel, becomes Vhalla's best friend.

Prince Aldrik summons Vhalla to his tent to help her learn to control her magic by opening her Channel, where all of her magic is. She can't figure it out so, using their Bond, Aldrik performs a Joining (touching her temples and focusing), to enhance their Bond so she can learn directly from his mind how he accesses his Channel. The next day, while training with Aldrik, Larel, Fritz, and Elicia, Aldirk has Elicia and Vhalla pair up to spar and Vhalla beats Elicia using Aldrik's own fight style by synchronizing herself with his experiences through their Bond. Elicia's pissed and Vhalla doesn't realize how she'd beaten Elicia but is still glad she won.

They make it to the Crossroads in the West, a bustling city that is the last city before they enter the North. On their first night, Vhalla, Daniel, Fritz, and Larel all go out to party and get smashed. Daniel and Vhalla find themselves ditched by their friends and they talk for a bit and Daniel notices that Vhalla's in love with Aldrik.

The next day, Vhalla and Daniel go to the market and Vhalla gets some candied lemon peels, a dagger, and meets a fortune teller. Agreeing to a reading, Vhalla picks out three items to burn and one to keep, as the fortune teller, Vi, instructs her. Vhalla chooses a feather (for the library), wheat (for her home), and a rose (for the rose garden) to burn and a pocket watch (that reminded her of the pocket watch Aldrik kept) to keep. Vi informs her about a downfall and I think death if she chooses the dark over the sun or whatever.

Later on, Vhalla is bringing the candied lemon peels to Aldrik in his hotel. Prince Baldair let's her in but tries to make her go away and they bump into a shirtless Aldrik. Elicia emerges in her nightgown and Vhalla assumes the worst and runs off. Larel comforts her as they fall asleep.

Vhalla wakes up to a weird feeling and comes face-to-face with the two Northerners that had gone missing on the Night of Fire and Wind. One stabs Larel in her sleep and Vhalla barely manages to escape the hotel. In the street, she's struggling to face off against the two Northerners when Fritz and Daniel save her by killing one. Vhalla borrows Daniel's knife to kill the other one. Larel ends up actually having died in the attack, along with a few NPCs, and Vhalla is really broken up about it. In order to help protect Vhalla against further attempts on her life, three decoys are chosen. One is to ride with Baldair, another with the Emperor, and the last one, a regular girl named Tim who looks the most like Vhalla, is set to ride with Aldrik. The three royals will take different paths through the forest into the North.

Aldrik reveals to Vhalla that Elicia is his cousin and that the plan is for Vhalla to ride with Aldrik's group to the rendezvous point. Vhalla would be disguised as Seiran Leral, a common footsoldier whose name she and backstory she chose to honor her fallen friend, Larel. When the groups are being split, however, the Emperor reveals that some people would be switching groups. Serian Leral was one of those cases, being moved to the Emperor's group. Aldrik couldn't protest against this on account of Vhalla needing to remain hidden, so they had no choice but to comply.

In the Emperor's group, Vhalla completely surrenders herself to the guise of Serian Leral, throwing aside her former self in favor of the cold-hearted foot-soldier from a small Western mining town. Daniel happens to be the commander of the squad she's in and he ends up teaching her sword fighting. On the way, the Emperor's group is attacked and Serian saves the Emperor's life by using Vhalla's magic to stop an arrow about to kill him. The next arrow kills the decoy Vhalla Yarl.

Just before the rendezvous point as they're walking along the Pass, a large canyon with a very long drop to the bottom and a wide chasm separating either side, the Emperor's group spots Prince Aldrik's group under attack on the other side. The Emperor's group also falls under attack and Serian abandons her guise to become a semblance of Vhalla again while still retaining the war-mindedness of Serian. Vhalla rallies the troops in the Emperor's group and has them fighting back the enemy alongside her. Vhalla notices Aldrik under attack on the other side of the chasm and watches as some Northern earthbenders break off part of the cliff where Aldrik is standing, sending him plummeting to his death. Vhalla runs and jumps off the cliff after him, using her magic to propel her forward. Since wind cannot hurt her and their magic can't hurt each other because of their Bond, Vhalla does her best to try and save Aldrik from certain death. She almost does it but the wind starts trying to protect her just before she can grasp his hand and save him (still not entirely sure how falling is the wind hurting pretty sure it's the ground that kills you not the wind but what do I know I'm just a Commons). Vhalla blacks out again.

Quotes:

“I heard you were to be family.” Baldair’s usually booming voice was soft and rich with sorrow. Vhalla couldn’t stop her hand from flying to the watch at her neck, confirming his words with a single action. “How did you know?” “When Aldrik came to his senses, finally, he went to Father and begged once more for you.” “Begged?” “He said that he loved you and that he had already promised his heart and future to you.” Vhalla stopped in place with shock. “He said that, to your father?”

Excerpt From 4-Water's Wrath