An Arcanic teen who survived the Great War, and slavery at the hands of the Cumaean witch nuns. Ruthless and haunted, she is determined to uncover the truth behind her mother’s murder––and her mother’s secrets––in the hope that she can free herself from an ancient and dangerous god called a Monstrum that is imprisoned insider her body and fills her with an otherworldly hunger for human flesh.
Maika Halfwolf is a seventeen-year-old Arcanic and the main protagonist of Monstress. She is one of the last direct descendents of the Shaman Empress, bearing the Mark of the Eye, and inheritor of Zinn, a Monstrum living under her skin. She is the daughter of Moriko Halfwolf and the Lord Doctor, the niece of the Warlord and the only granddaughter of the Queen of Wolves.
Personality[]
Maika is an angry, mistrustful teen who is haunted by the murder of her mother, her enslavement at the hands of Cumaean witch nuns, and surviving the Great War. Before the events leading up to the war, she was described as being a happy child with an infectious smile and who loved to dance.
Behind her hardened and ruthless demeanor, Maika is terrified of her hunger and the otherworldly power she cannot control. She's prone to posturing when confronted with her fears and questions she can't answer. While once driven by her desire to avenge her mother's murder, she now wants to discover who she is and her role in the upcoming war between humans and Arcanics.
Maika is a keen strategist, highly intuitive, and an adept fighter, knowledgeable in historical warfare and successful tactics of important military campaigns. She is also an eerie reflection of her mother's teachings, proving capable of murder and torture as a means towards achieving her goals. She is also unforgiving of betrayal.
Despite the grief she suffers, Maika is still capable of love as seen in her relationships with Tuya, Kippa, and her goddess-father, Seizi Imura. She fears that she may unknowingly devour loved ones––as well as innocent people––and is willing to sacrifice her life to keep innocents safe from her inhuman hunger. She is described as somewhat of an idealist, only fighting for a person or idea.
Appearance[]
Maika is a wolf Arcanic with a remarkably human appearance. She closely resembles her mother: inheriting her long, black hair and lack of Arcanic features. She also takes after her father's brown skin and red Mark of the Eye at the center of her chest. She has her grandmother's blue-green eyes.
Notably, Maika is missing her left arm, which was sacrificed to Zinn as a means to sedate him during the Battle of Constantine.
Background[]
Maika is the daughter of Moriko Halfwolf and the Lord Doctor, leader of the Blood Court and direct descendent of the Shaman-Empress. She was conceived in Moriko's bid to control the power in the Shaman-Empress's blood. She was born in Seizi's ship at sea and was raised by her parents until Moriko took her and ran away from the Lord Doctor for unknown reasons. Maika grew up traveling with her mother, never staying in one location for too long, and evading the capture of both the Blood Court and the Warlord.
Childhood[]
At an undisclosed time in her childhood, Maika was taken to the Federation to be educated at the Sethihar War School, where she came under the tutelage of then-retired Colonel Anuwat. She enjoyed her time there and took a liking to the art and science taught at the academy, even making a friend. She lived there for four months before her mother continued their travels. Maika was mostly educated by Moriko, learning how to fight and survive and chiefly never to bend to the will of others, not even Moriko herself. Everything changed during a ruin expedition in the desert with the witch nun, Yvette Lo Lim to uncover lost artifacts of the Shaman-Empress. A fragment of the mask was found, a gate was opened and Yvette promptly betrayed Moriko. Before dying, Moriko managed to save her daughter's life and whispered a name she "must never forget."
Childhood Slavery[]
While wondering the desert, Maika met and befriended Tuya before being captured by raiders and sold as slaves. The girls resided in various Cumaean slave camps before ending up in Constantine for an indefinite amount of time. They relied on each other to survive starvation and the brutality of the witch nuns.
Constantine[]
At some point, both were present at the Battle of Constantine, where Maika saved Tuya and six other children from a massive infernal explosion that wiped out the city and left few survivors. Maika and Tuya then managed to escape slavery.
Post-War[]
Despite surviving impossible odds and having her newfound freedom with her best friend, Maika was left severely traumatized by her experiences and missing large portions of her memories. Left with a torn picture of her mother and Yvette, Maika began searching for the old witch nun responsible for her mother's demise and began making a hasty plan to return to human territory, so she can learn about her lost past and avenge Moriko.
Biography[]
Volume One[]
At seventeen, Maika returns to the slaver Ilsa. Instead of being sold at auction, she is donated to the Cumaea, a human organization founded for the purpose of researching lilium. Maika forces her way out of her holding cell, burning and maiming through the compound's researchers as she makes her way to Yvette.
Maika demands answers: Why Yvette would betray her mother? Why were they at the ruins in the first place? Yvette takes her to a secret room, but instead of answering her questions, she attempts to disarm her with high-concentrate lilium harvested from a pureblood ancient. Unlike other arcanics, Maika is not completely restrained and stabs a sword through Yvette, killing her.
Disabling the lilium contraption, Maika finds a mask fragment. She takes the mask fragment, a trapped arcanic Yvette used as food, and a photo of the expedition. The half photo she owned shows herself, her mother, and Yvette. The other half shows a female and a young aquatic, arcanic boy as well, both of whom she had forgotten.
Maika, Kippa, and the unnamed blue-haired arcanic boy escape through a hidden passage. The monster inside Maika's left arm hungers and eats the blue-haired arcanic boy. Unconscious, but saved by the two-tailed nekomancer, Ren, Maika wakes up in a wagon with Kippa and the mask safe beside her.
Leaving the wagon, she is attacked by an Inquisitrix named Flay. The monster once again awakens, eating the Inquisitrix's right arm before she flees. Hungering still, the monster devours a dying soldier before returning to its slumber. Maika is then reunited with her travelling companions Kippa and the nekomancer Ren.
Sir Corvin D'Oro enters, telling her that the Dusk Court has sent him as an escort to lead her north. She views it as a veiled threat but obliges. In a ruined city a day's journey from the human federation, she is ambushed. A hooded figure from the Dusk Court puts her to sleep in a contraption called the Naraka Sarcophagi.
Her subconscious awakens, narrating her past to the monster. Her memories show a distant light shaped like a red, white, and black peacock feather. The image represents impending danger and so she makes a deal, offering the monster its name in return for power. Maika awakens to find that the Mother Superior has found the hidden location of the Dusk Court.
The Mother Superior desires Maika and the mask, both of which are required to open the door between this world, and the world she(it) once came from. In defiance, Maika transforms into a dreadful force, strong enough to destroy the the room and everything in it. Maika sacrifices the rest of her left arm to return to sanity before that happens.
At the end, Corvin leads them to his Swift, believing the Dusk Court should not dictate her destiny. Maika, Kippa, and Ren fly off.
Volume Two[]
Having escaped her ordeal with the Dusk Court and the Cumaea, Maika, Ren and Kippa have escaped to the sacred coast city of Thyria. In Moriko’s old base, Maika breaks through the wall to find a small box containing a bone fragment.
Maika searches the port for the infamous trade empire, Brothers Imura, led in part by her goddess-father, Seizi. Years ago, during Seizi’s piracy, he knew Moriko Halfwolf well -- and brought her to dangerous lands in her relentless quest to find answers about the Shaman-Empress. The bone key allows one to return from the Isle of Bone, but for Moriko, surviving came at a price. She was not the same after her trip. Even so, Maika is not burdened by potential perils and asks the Brother Imura to escort her to the Isle of Bone so she can retrace her mother's journey.
Word comes that the Blood Queen is searching for Maika. In haste, Seizi offers the Jolly Ravager, leaving her to the ship captain Syryssa and her crew. Maika asks Seizi to research the two forgotten figures in the photo she found at Yvette's place. Before they depart to the sea, Seizi tells her that despite her mother's grudges, she should seek the Dawn Court and her aunt the warlord.
The trip is uneventful until the being residing with Maika awakens in hunger. She drives them into the sea before he can devour Kippa where it instead consumes a spy from the Blood Queen.
With the help of the bone key left behind by Maika's late mother, Maika and her companions make their way through ghost-haunted waters in search of an explanation for the presence of the terrible Monstrum living inside Maika’s body. After negotiating with the Ferryman, and fighting off a horde of angry sirens, they finally reach the shore of the Isle of Bone.
Ren grows suspicious and uses his nekomancy to draw out the stories of the dead. Kippa, meanwhile, senses a powerful fox Ancient, bound by chains, at the center of the isle. They come face to face with that Ancient.
The ancient, known as the Blood Fox, met with Moriko, giving her the information she so desperately wanted because in his visions he saw that Moriko's yet-to-be born daughter would one day break the chains that bind him to the island. In return for freedom, the Blood Fox would tell Maika about the monster living inside her.
Maika learns about the Shaman Empress, an arcanic who sought the powers of the Monstrum. She created a mask to control these creatures, and trapped a monstrum known as Zinn within her. Before she died, the Shaman Empress broke the mask, realizing the peril of her creation, but the monster did not die with the Shaman Empress and instead was passed through her blood into her heirs.
Moriko had deliberately conceived Maika with the last direct descendant of the Shaman Empress; the Fox tells her she must now find the remaining pieces of the Shaman Empress's mask if she hopes to control and survive the Monstrum’s influence.
After receiving this information, Maika refuses to break the Blood Fox out of his bind. He attacks, but Zinn helps injure the fox to allow Maika to escape. The illusion around the island dissipates as Maika runs to the sea. The Blood Fox catches up to them, casting his illusion while using claws made from the bones of the deceased Old God Haiji to injure Zinn. Zinn remembers more of his past and his affiliation to the Shaman Empress. He remembers the task she gave him: to continue forward. Kippa and Ren arrive, creating a distraction that allows Zinn to deal a killing blow to the Blood Fox. The group offers the bone fragment to the Ferryman to allow them safe passage off the Isles.
The fog fades, the Blood Queen's forces meet Maika and capture her, but she quickly escapes, allowing Zinn to feed and kill them. She returns to the Jolly Ravenger.
Volume Three[]
Maika lands at Pontus and attempts to reactivate its ancient shield with Zimm. When Gull wears the mask fragment and releases an old god over Pontus, Maika activates the ancient shield device as a weapon instead, seemingly killing or banishing the old god.
Volume Four[]
Maika flees the destruction of Pontus with Corvin but is captured by the Lord Doctor's servants (Yvette among them). It is revealed that the Lord Doctor is, in fact, Maika's father. He attempts to sway Maika into joining his Blood Court and his pursuit of racial domination over the other races of the Known World. Yet while he insists his aims are peaceful and symbolic, Maika discovers that he has embraced his cannibalistic nature, and begun building weapons from the blood of old gods. She refuses his offers, recues Gull from his laboratory, and flees.
Reuniting with Ren, Maika learns the cat was sent to watch over her by the cats after her birth. But when Moriko left with Maika, Ren was forced to swear loyalty to the Doctor - and later, the Dusk Court. This led him to betray Maika twice, but by the end of her time with the Doctor, Ren insists he has no loyalty to anyone but her.
For saving her, Gull reveals the location of another mask fragment. Maika is determined to recover it, but her plans are interrupted when Aurum is destroyed.
Volume Five[]
In flashbacks, Maika and Tuya are seen as children at the Battle of Constantine, where they are forced by their human slavers to scavenge on the battlefield under active fire. Many of their fellow child slaves were slain in the process.
Maika returns to Pontus to connect with Seizi, seeking answers about his marriage to her mother that he is unwilling to provide. Kippa convinces her to travel aboard Liza's airship with Corvin to Ravenna, en route to Aurum (the last known location of the third Mask of Power fragment). Corvin is desperate to rescue his sister from an imminent Federation attack, a retaliatory strike for the bombing of Aurum. En route, however, Zinn awakens and feasts on crewmembers Liza had previously imprisoned for protesting Maika's presence on board.
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