Niki, the Carmelite is a discalced Carmelite nun who descended with the Florentines into Hell, where the Dark Queen turned her into a dragon rider. She appears in the chronicle after the fall of Fernandín.
| Type | Character |
| Faith | Militant Christian; discalced Carmelite |
| Lineage | Descendant of Zenobia |
| Companions | Florentines / Invisible Heroes |
| Houses of the Cycle | ☷ House of the Descent · ⛎ The Throne That Is Not Named |
| Spanish entry | Niki, la Carmelita |
Description
Niki is a barefoot ascetic of the four elements, who prays with her whole body, heals by laying on of hands, and has no roof but the sky. Her faith is Christian and combative; even in the worst places she repeated “the Lord preaches love and peace”.
History
She was found alone, tied like a kid for sacrifice near the mark of light, inside a fortress of concentric walls that Hell had made bloom into a garden of delights: forking paths, butterflies, blood-stained snow falling on the battlements. There a power calling herself a goddess — a widow longing for a pristine past taken from her — courted her as champion and vizier. Niki refused the vassalage and the pact (“there is no going back, one has to go forward”), but accepted the other gift.
The Dark Queen transformed her into a dragon rider. Scales grew on her skin; though she asked for a mount of the gold and metal of the good dragons, she ended up riding the red dragon. From her breast, for riding it, was born an orb — the Orb of the Draconic Lineage — a seed to be thrown into the center to loose the dragons against the invaders of the pit. She left by the boulevard of the vanquished.
Lineage and image
She descends from Zenobia, the captive queen. She is depicted with angel’s and eagle’s wings and a crown of stars: the pregnant woman of the Apocalypse, about to give birth.
Her flaw is blindness.