Overview
Arcanis is a Malverand researcher, inventor, and engineer under Barachiel. His teams build essence lights, spell-containing devices, god cores, shards, gates, skyship systems, vault protections, and advanced artifacts for Malverand's expansion. He is Malverand's god-forger.
Appearance and Manner
Arcanis has wavy dark-blond hair and blue eyes. He stands slightly taller than Eira, stands shorter than Jareth, and tends to hunch over his work as if every object around him needs to be examined and understood.
He is brilliant, restless, impatient, and intensely curious. He dislikes waiting and unnecessary meetings, moves quickly from theory to experiment, and values invention. His closest personal bond is with Barachiel, and near the end of his life he trusts Eira with his remaining work.
Magic and Engineering
Arcanis uses air magic and origin magic. His rare origin magic lets him read magical instructions inside matter, bodies, and spells. On Vireen, Arcanis reads Eira's unusual instructions, recognizes her unknown magic as the same magic he used to create the gate schematics, realizes she is from the future, and trusts her with the work he leaves behind.
In ancient Malverand, Arcanis captures spells into devices, creates essence lights, develops essence-storage systems, designs god cores and shardlike derivatives, studies first- and second-generation cores, plans gates that bend spacetime, and builds the Malverand vault protections that keep the cores' voices from reaching the guardians. His teachings also preserve knowledge about Malverand hearts, artifact activation, stasis systems, sight-enhancing viewing artifacts, and the vault mechanisms that Eira later operates.
History
Arcanis comes from Lumeria. His unusual perception begins in his earlier years, before Barachiel brings him from a village in Haverloch into his vision for Maraveth. Arcanis asks for mages, materials, and a large place to work, then builds the research center where his teams develop Malverand devices, gates, cores, and artifacts.
In Maraveth, Arcanis captures spells in devices. His early spell-capturing research leads to essence lights and spell-containing technology for preservation, travel, industry, and daily life. As Malverand grows, he designs gates, cores, engines, weapons, shield generators, and vault artifacts alongside Barachiel, Michael, Raphael, Eremion, Uriandel, Jeremiah, and Malverand research teams.
Arcanis's god-core research creates artificial divinity from accumulated essence, will, and personality. Cores that develop their own voices and wills are dangerous, so Arcanis warns against unsafe activation and designs protections for the vault beneath Maraveth. His cores and shards give later guardians and shard wielders enormous power, but they also leave dangerous relics that outlive the empire.
Arcanis also pushes Malverand beyond Valrindor. He maps nearby worlds, names Vireen, includes Corthis and the distant Tyrren system in his survey, and prepares the Vireen expedition. Eira, living in the past as Aruviel, studies under him, works in his research center, and earns his backing for the Vireen project. He builds the enormous essence-powered skyship that carries the expedition away from Valrindor.
The Aethrendar Gate collapse ends Malverand's expansion project. After Michael and Eremion cross safely, Barachiel enters the gate and disappears when the passage collapses into the void. Arcanis later follows through the damaged gate passage in search of him. While trapped in the void, he uses a sight enhancer to locate a distant red light and navigate onward with air magic, while the broken matter-stabilizing function tears his body apart. He reaches Vireen already cracking apart, entrusts Eira with his remaining work, gives her responsibility for his heart, and dissolves into white particles. Eira keeps his crystalline heart and takes the geometric core from his pockets.
The aftermath carries Arcanis's heart into the atraxi future. Eira later implants Barachiel's and Arcanis's hearts into two dead atraxi bodies, revives the future Belanor and Jareth, places the geometric core with Jareth, and sends both through the void toward atraxi gates. The hearts preserve enough of their original bearers' bodily and essence instructions for Belanor to carry Barachiel's remnant and Jareth to carry Arcanis's. Jareth later gives the core to Nahm.
Relationships and Aftermath
Barachiel is Arcanis's patron, collaborator, and closest friend. Barachiel backs Arcanis's research in Maraveth, and Arcanis follows him through the broken gate after Barachiel disappears.
Eira studies under Arcanis as Aruviel and later uses his knowledge to operate Malverand machinery, open the vault, preserve god cores, and understand the Vireen expedition. Eremion relies on Arcanis's judgment when Aruviel joins the expedition, consults with him on magic and engineering, and later searches for answers about Barachiel and Arcanis's disappearance. Michael, Raphael, Sigvariel, Uriandel, Jeremiah, and Barachiel's guardian circle use or guard Arcanis's gates, cores, vault protections, and other devices.
Arcanis leaves later inheritances through his Malverand heart, the Geometric Core, and the research Eira carries forward from Vireen. Jareth carries Arcanis's heart, mirroring the way Belanor carries a Barachiel remnant through Barachiel's heart.
Significant Events
After Barachiel vanishes through the Aethrendar Gate, Arcanis follows him through the void, reaches Vireen dying, reads Eira's unusual instructions, realizes she is from the future, entrusts his remaining work and heart to her, and dissolves into white particles.