Kira Vesteros

"'Some people just want to set the world on fire. Unfortunately, she might actually be able to.'"

Also known as the Pyromistress or Priestess of Flame, Kira Vesteros is a pyromancer, the strongest in Engelain and possibly the strongest in the entire world. Her life's goal, one that she has made no secret of, is to see the entire world consumed by fire. She is a wanted criminal, her bounty currently higher than any other, and her crimes include thousands of counts of murder, arson, and heresy. Beautiful beyond compare, Kira is well-versed in the arts of seduction and sex, and takes great pleasure in utilizing those skills on those she deems worthy of it.   

Origin

Although her goals and powers today are deadly and terrifying, Kira's beginning was actually quite normal. Born to a family of farmers as the eldest child, a girl by the name of Melina Koranas, she was a strange-looking girl, posessing a somewhat lopsided face and an overly large nose. The only thing that was the same about her as a child as current day was her intelligence and her obsession with fire. She was always smart, smarter than the rest of her family, and always felt that she was somewhere that she did not deserve to be. In fact, she hated pretty much everything about her life, but her less-than-stellar appearance meant she would never have the option of marrying into a family better than her own.

It was only in fire that she found solace. Ever since she could remember, staring into flames had been both comforting and invigorating, something about it giving her a feeling of rightness that nothing else was ever able to. She was constantly berated about it, and more than once she was punished for starting a fire just so that she could see something burn. Everyone else gave her strange looks when she spoke about how beautiful fire was, and before long nobody wanted to be near the creepy girl that spoke about nothing but fire.

Yet it was through fire that she met her first friend, something that spoke to her from the flames. It wasn't until later that she realized it was a demon, but that was not important until a while into the future. Every time she looked into the fire, her friend whispered to her, and she would have whispered conversations with the flames for hours on end. She didn't even realize it, but as time passed she became more and more obsessed with making others see the majesty and perfection that she herself observed when gazing into the fire.

Surprisingly, it wasn't due to her own actions that her family met their end, but it was due to those events that the pyromistress Kira Vesteros was born. Their end came from bandits, a group who had been terrorizing the countryside for weeks before finally making their way to the Koranas farmhouse. Killing half of the family outright, they looted the house and then locked the rest inside, setting the building on fire and laughing as they watched it begin to burn.

While the few remaining family members cowered or burned themselves futily while trying to find a way out, Kira simply watched. Even trapped inside, she saw that it was beautiful, and held no fear about being taken by them. It was then that her friend spoke to her once again, and asked her a simple question.

"Would you like to make a wager?"

Nobody knows what the wager was, for Kira has never spoken of it to anyone. All she will acknowledge is that it was through said wager that she first gained the ability to bend flames to her will, and it was because of those abilities that she was able to escape the burning house. Her family she left inside, not caring about cowards that were too afraid to understand the perfection that was being offered to them. That was not enough, however, for she could tell that the bandits who had set the fire did not properly appreciate it either. They saw it only as a tool, something they could control for heir own amusement, and she, as the living embodiment of flames, was going to show them how wrong they were.

Not much is known of her for several years after the night when the bandits mysteriously vanished and were never found, but it is undeniable that her return to the civilized world brought chaos in its wake. Whatever had been in her that night had died in the fire, for the woman that came back was not the little girl with the big nose. The woman that returned was perfect, a being that made everything in her presence look plain. She turned heads everywhere, and it wasn't surprising to anyone when multiple nobles were accused of taking her as their mistress.

That was when the problems started, though, for those were the least of her crimes. One by one, small villages began burning down, and eventually a survivor or two turned up, claiming that a "red woman" had burned their homes to the ground when they refused to accept that "the flame was perfection, and more worthy of their worship than the nonexistent gods they prayed to".

The strangest part to everyone was that Kira didn't even begin to deny these accusations. In fact, she admitted flat-out to them, telling everyone that what she had done proved her words. Their gods had not saved them from her wrath, and the power of fire was much stronger than the misguided faith that she had destroyed. If they wanted to have faith in something strong, then they could have faith in the perfection of flames, the force that would eventually consume the world.

Her actions inspired a cult - or a few cults, really, as worship was split between actually trying to cover the world in flame and revering her as a goddess - to form, and although they are all shunned by the normal religions it has not stopped them from having an effect on the world. Most cultists are little better than glorified criminals, but since such actions mirror the one the cults were inspired by it makes a certain amount of sense.

Since the time of her reveal, Kira has traveled the continent, attempting to show others the glory and perfection that is fire by subjecting them to it. She has little difficulty and no doubts about burning whole towns to the ground, and it reached a point where everyone could recognize her but nobody would dare do anything about her presence. She dines in towns like a normal individual would, for everyone knows what will happen if they go against her wishes.

Only once was Kira arrested, but that was by her own design and is a story in itself.