Maika Halfwolf is an arcanic and the daughter of Moriko Halfwolf. She is the main protagonist of Monstress.
Personality
Maika is an eerie reflection of her mother's teaching, proving capable of murdering, torturing, and manipulating as a means towards achieving her goals. Cold, mistrustful, Maika does not embrace compassion. She is driven by her personal desire alone, and lacks empathy for the masses.
Appearance
Background
Maika has forgotten most of her past. At one point, her mother and Yvette were on an expedition where they uncovered a mask in a ruin. Yvette betrays Moriko, and thereafter, the ruin was set aflame. Maika was left alone to wander the desert where she met Tuya. Both girls were found by raiders and sold as slaves. The girls resided in a slave camp for an indefinite amount of time before managing to escape. Despite her newfound freedom, Maika plans to return to human territory, so she can learn about her lost past.
Volume 1
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 runes 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 retrained 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 three-tailed necomancer, Ren, Maika wakes up in a wagon with Kippa and the mask are 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 necomancer 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 hideout of the Dusk Court.
The Mother Superior desires Maiko 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, Maiko transforms into a dreadful force, strong enough to destroy the the room and everything in it. Maiko 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 2
Having escaped her ordeal with the Dusk Court and the Cumera, 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. Maikai asks Seizi to research the two forgotten figures in the photo she found at Yvette's place. Before they part 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 may 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 hoard 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 ancient fox Ancient, bound by chains, at the center of the isle. Now, they are faced 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 3
The Jolly Ravenger lands
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