Kos, Of the Devouring Light

Summary

In southwestern Lophern stood the land of Donfaed, so named after the city-state. By the late 1900s, it was a beacon of safety and prosperity in a land otherwise beset by war. Though scarred with its own share of blows, many held their heads up high for the future. To the modern day they remain so, timeless statues cradled in a tomb of a city.   So marks the passage of Kos, the heroine, the savior: the one who would slay evil, forever.   Years prior, an unremarkable band of adventurers called the Split-Hammers adopted a young chimaera. Her parents, either killed or having abandoned her, were never found. So they named her Kos, a shorthand for saying someone is 'fighty'. Unburdened by her rough childhood, Kos took to the adventuring lifestyle like a fish to water. In time, she grew into a formidable fighter, and the center star of the Split-Hammers.   Although they had national acclaim within Donfaed, the Split-Hammers never really went abroad. Adventuring was, ultimately, a way to build fortunes off one's blood and sweat. While many of the of the original members retired, Kos continued on. She drank the wine of heroism, believing in it completely. From the tiny problems to the issues that made queens sweat nervously, Kos tackled them all. Upon her back the Split-Hammers grew, and a powerful guild arose around her.   Countless deeds fell at her feet, either by her hand or by those yet influenced by her. Kos' starry-eyed bravado, however, left her blind to a growing corruption. Rich and powerful forces, hampered again and again by her heroic acts, turned their blades upon her. It wasn't through violence, though–Kos was simply too powerful. Instead they tarnished her reputation, slandered the Split-Hammers, and poisoned the minds of the people. It took years, but the once great heroine turned into a pariah.   Kos, all the while, caught onto the scheme, though in her mind it was the deeds of an evil cult. The more she routed them out, the greater the public's opinion turned against her. Ally turned to enemy, and those who adored Kos scorned her instead. The heroine lost friends, family, colleagues, and everyone else as the insidious trap closed in. Her ultimate mark on Donfaed became a tumultuous exile, and the disbandment of the Split-Hammers.   Despite all that happened, Kos never abandoned heroism. Even as those who she protected scorned her instead, she sought out evil to destroy. The harrowing realization of how powerful evil could become, though, ever shadowed her mind. She couldn't simply destroy what she found; the ideas that birthed evil, too, had to be killed. The years dragged by, and hardship bore its toll upon her. Kos remained convinced, yet unable to find an answer to the quandary.   Some would say madness finally befell her. Others believed some stray, zealous thought came instead. Whatever the reason that only Kos herself knows, the heroine disappeared into the western mountains. Eventually, Donfaed forgot about Kos, a name only remembered ruefully by her once-close companions.   Then, Kos returned.   Changed by some inexplicably radiant power, her whole being had transformed. A single-mindedness gripped her completely, a determination to finally save everyone she could. The veltron beneath her warped and twisted, suffused with radiant mana. Dirt became stone, animals turned into statues, and people followed soon after. Yet those who changed became like Kos, sharing in her singular purpose of expunging evil forever.   These Light-Devoured fell upon Kos' flanks, an expanding army of anyone and everything consumed by her encroaching light. Faced against Kos' incredible might and her unfathomable magical powers, Donfaed fell. Not as any other city might, or had, for its denizens ever remained apart of it. Not all consumed by Kos emerged as the strange, quasi-living beings that followed her so faithfully. Those who remained stood silently, trapped forever in their stony prison.   Long after the downfall of Donfaed it became clear she'd turned into some kind of Forsaken. Kos' all-consuming hatred of evil had found the answer she'd long sought. Only by blindingly illuminating the soul, the scouring of every possibility of difference, would evil be slain forever. Those felled by her light join in her chorus, singing without voices to realize the pure world Kos dreamt of.   Donfaed's neighbors, in a rare display of unity, moved the entirety of their militaries to assault Kos. They met the Light-Devoured in open battle, a brutal slugfest even the most unsavory of descriptions would struggle to capture. Kos herself, seemingly slayed, marked the end of the fearsome battle. Donfaed, suffused with her wicked radiance, was cordoned off and condemned until the mana finally dissipates.   Were it could be that would mark Kos' infamous tale.   Over the decades since, Kos' Light-Devoured would emerge again and again. Whether in Lophern, nearby Aerthen, or even as far as Nerzin and Sa-kemet, Kos would return. Village after village would be swept away, and so many more would come to fear the coming light. No more than Atenkhet despises her, for she is seen as an abominable perversion of Akenra's sunlight.   It remains unknown how Kos came about her 'newfound' power, or what continues to bring her back. Even among the more exotic types of Forsaken, she and hers are supremely unusual. Some even argue she isn't actually a Forsaken at all, but something completely different. Whatever the truth may become, the lives she takes is quite real.  

Would you keep going, no matter how many of them cursed your name? Would you scale even the tallest mountain, nothing but your bloodied hands to drag you up? How far would you go for those you love?

— Kos, asking a knight-captain in central Aerthen.