Ramona

The keeper of the Awakener records has moved her file to the Student Administration Office more than once, and every time she has carried it back herself, to be buried again under the mountains of paperwork.

"Just leave it here. It'll have to go over eventually."

Her voice is as calm as ever. Her eyes are not.

What kind of storm is she keeping under all that calm?

Unlocks at: Awakener Level 1

Ramona's first appearance on campus caused an uproar.

At Mythag University, where Awakeners wander the halls and oddities are everywhere, silver hair and mismatched eyes were hardly worth a second look. What made Ramona the talk of the school was that she was the professor's daughter.

Everyone crowded outside the mathematics department office, hoping for a glimpse of the young Miss Dexter. There were so many of them that the professor finally had to call on Miss Lotan before the crowd grudgingly broke up.

Once Ramona was a little older and the professor was finally willing to let her roam the campus on her own, the students Lotan had chased off got their chance to talk to her after all.

"What is Lady Dexter like? I'm afraid no such person exists yet. I'm an orphan. My father was kind enough to take me in."

To be rid of them, the little girl stated the facts without flinching, then strolled off while they stood there feeling guilty.

Unlocks at: Affinity Level 3

From the age of ten, Ramona was a fixture at the university training grounds. A human girl willing to take instruction from the black-clad swordsman, plenty of Investigators admired her for that alone.

Once she formally began the preparatory courses, her flawless memory, her perfect papers, and her elegant, lethal swordsmanship pushed her standing at Mythag higher and higher. Discipline and excellence became her other names.

What puzzled so many was that for all her brilliance, Ramona was never cleared to take a mission on her own. Admitted early, she spent a full five years in preparatory courses, watching class after class of Investigators leave for the world of the occult.

What was she waiting for? What purpose had been laid on her?

The question was answered when the new Keeper enrolled.

Unlocks at: Affinity Level 5

Dreams are memory thrown back at us, daily life in miniature, the sum of a person.

Since she was small, Ramona has had the same dream again and again.

She floats in warm, clouded water, pressed close to something unknown, while a hollow, monotonous drumbeat sends ripple after ripple through the water.

When she wakes, there is always a hollow somewhere inside her, as if something had been taken out of her life and erased.

But to keep her father from looking worried, to keep from adding one more burden to her already overworked teachers, Ramona swallows the questions clawing up her throat and goes back to ordinary days.

Unlocks at: Affinity Level 7

She knows everything.

She knows the bell tower rings when there's an emergency, that the Eridanids will come again in ten years, that a different kind of power runs in her blood.

She knows nothing.

She doesn't know the secret spice in the cafeteria curry, or how to calculate a planet's radius after annihilation, or where her own future is being pulled.

She can't bear to give up anything around her, and she can't resist the road her instincts point down.

On the way toward truth, Ramona needs steady company, someone to hold open the road back to ordinary days.

Unlocks at: Affinity Level 9