Aquilo

Aquilo is a blue-clan sea dragon, 'daughter of Surmidon and Asofo,' and one of the most fearsome powers in the world. She is over a thousand years old, yet young by dragon reckoning: the ancient sand dragon Pustynio calls her a 'tomboy girl' and dotes on her like a granddaughter. In human form she is a seductive blue-haired woman with luminescent, glowing eyes and two small horns; in dragon form a wingless, blue-scaled body more than fifty meters long, larger than land dragons. Sea dragons gave up their wings for life in the ocean and are all but invincible in the deeps.

The pirates of the Archipelago worship her as a Sea God: the four 'pirate kings' are merely her subjects, and a 'Festival of the Sea God' has been held in her honor for half a century. Sailors fear even to speak her name — a century and a half ago she woke from sleep and destroyed the fleet of the Kingdom of Soldun, and her record includes wrecked ports and sunken ships. She is called the 'Evil Dragon of the Eastern Seas,' a name that makes children weep and fishermen's hands shake. Evil she truly is — she delights in the torment of mortals — which makes her genuine kindness to Theodore all the more striking.

Theodore meets her when he and Randolph are stranded on the Pirate Archipelago, her domain. At first she is predatory: she tests him with a jet of compressed water that punches through a stone ceiling, drugs him with narcotic smoke and tries to seduce him to spite Ellenoa and Veronica, whose scents she catches on him. Mithra slaps her hand away and Theodore firmly refuses. The turning point comes when the sin-grimoire Superbia (Pride) attacks the dragon: Theodore and Randolph stand with her, Theodore summons Fafnir, and it annihilates the foe in seven seconds — the first time in a thousand years that humans have saved her.

In gratitude Aquilo grants three wishes and brands Theodore with a mark of her blood — a 'treasure' that binds their fates: should their bond turn hostile, the mark self-destructs. The mark grants the Sea Dragon's Blessing, the right to summon the adult Aquilo (worth two or three sword-masters) and a path to the Dragon Words. Fused with the Muspelheim Ring through the Art of Onmyōdō, it forms the legendary Artificial Yin and Yang: his right hand Aquilo's icy storm, his left the flame of Muspelheim. Her blood becomes one of Theodore's four elements alongside Mithra's earth, Muspelheim's fire and the wind.

Capricious, proud and sensual, she calls him 'boy' and plots a leisurely seduction to outdo her rivals — only to be refused again and again. After he heals a mortal wound of hers, she confesses for the first time: 'Boy, I love you.' In the Age of Peace, Aquilo finds the ruins of Atlantis on the sea floor, and with Theodore, who carries Poseidon's divinity, they pass through it and mercifully release the maddened Medusa from her torment. Trapped there for two weeks, a trembling Aquilo confesses that she fears to die alone like Medusa: she has no one to share eternity with but him, and she will wait a thousand years if she must. Theodore accepts.

Aquilo commands water and cold: she freezes the sea to the horizon, raises tsunamis by collision and strikes with Water Breath, an ultra-high-pressure jet sharper than any blade that splits boulders. In human form she fires dozens of water-bullet droplets faster than Titania's arrows, and with Dehydration she dries an enemy's body to instant death. Her Dragon Fear paralyzes and subdues crowds, and the Dragon Words — the tongue with which dragons command the laws of nature — compress whole volumes of knowledge into a few syllables. In the deeps she is five times stronger than at the surface and all but invincible — a grown dragon is worth two or three sword-masters.

Her weakness is her human form, in which she is vulnerable (she was nearly killed by the wind-prince Hodai), and the long summoning: even Theodore needs almost an hour to prepare. Wingless, she stays aloft by controlling moisture, and reaches anywhere in the world along the sea-waves.

Aquilo's blood mark grants Theodore the Sea Dragon's Blessing (a sharp rise in water affinity and speed at sea), the right to summon the dragon, access to the Dragon Words (three times a day) and strong magic resistance; should their bond turn hostile, the mark self-destructs. Fused with the Muspelheim Ring, it forms the Artificial Yin and Yang: his right hand Aquilo's icy storm, his left the flame of Muspelheim.

For a thousand years Aquilo has ruled the eastern seas from her domain — the Pirate Archipelago, ringed by her fog-border — gathering tribute in exchange for protection. Here Theodore and Randolph are stranded. After a predatory 'introduction' — a lethal test and a failed seduction broken off by Mithra — the dragon is attacked by Superbia. Theodore and Randolph fight at her side; Fafnir destroys the grimoire, and Aquilo, having twice escaped death in a day, is for the first time in her life saved by humans. The debt of honor she repays with three wishes and the blood mark, then disbands the Archipelago's blessing and departs.

From then on Aquilo returns to Theodore now and again, comes at his call in great battles and endlessly bickers with Veronica of the red clan. Gradually her predatory interest turns to love: when Theodore calls her kind she freezes in shock, and after he heals a grievous wound she confesses to him plainly. For years she takes charge of Theodore's seas — straightening, for instance, the waterways and rivers of Austin.

In the Age of Peace, five years after the war, she calls him — no longer 'boy' but 'darling' — to ruins she has found on the sea floor: Atlantis, a refuge for the gods who did not march on Ragnarök. There they battle false gods and meet Medusa, driven mad by a thousand years of solitude, whom Theodore mercifully slays with a reconstructed Trident of Poseidon. Locked in for two weeks, they grow close, and Aquilo confesses her love; in the end she is one of his wives, to whom he comes on a rare day off to share a glass of wine on a clifftop above the sea.