Weapons
Laetus
Layna’s starter weapon and her favorite one to use in combat. The sword shines brilliantly with the dazzling light and joy that Layna herself possesses. It is a short blade but very keen and suits her agile sword style.
Bio
Layna is a dazzling ray of sunshine in a dark world. Her happiness and joy can be quite infectious and she maintains that playfulness, curiosity and awe present in children. However, this is not to say that she is immature, she is capable of shouldering responsibility and is quite competitive especially where her brother is concerned. Her twin brother Kenji is her closest family member but also her constant rival as he always seems to be better than her when it comes to fighting. Her narrowed mind focuses only on being stronger than her brother and overlooks those aspects of her that Kenji adores and tries to nurture.
Layna has short brown hair and similarly colored eyes. There is no better word to describe her except for cute, her features are small, her nose, her face, her frame, so she represents a very youthful type of beauty. She does not view her small stature as a drawback and utilizes it in combat to be swifter than her opponent.
She also looks up to powerful women in Aria, Alyssa especially since she won the competition that was held to determine the best swordsman in all of Aria. Layna hopes to be as successful and as skilled as her someday, but Alyssa feels that her ambitions are a bit misguided. Layna’s rivalry with her brother has moved from something harmless to outright jealousy and she struggles to come to terms with it in the novels. She must also face the harsh reality that she may never catch up to her brother’s skill in combat when she faces the Nine in the later novels.
Inspirations & Insights
Her appearance came from multiple sources, mostly video games and cartoons that had cute characters like Rapunzel, Belle from Beauty and the Beast or even Ty Lee from Avatar. This is because I felt as if these characters brought a certain joy and frivolity to the story. There is a lot of darkness present within the books and there needed to be the opposite present as well, which is why Layna was created. But Layna seemed too lonely on her own and so she had a twin who could share in her joy, very similar to Fred and George Weasley from Harry Potter. The biggest difference being that they are a bit more distinct as they are boy and girl.
Layna is one of the first characters that Christian meets in the story and it really gives him an optimistic view on his journey ahead. Meeting and being around someone like Layna can really bring joy and happiness and made it so that joining the Saviors felt right for Christian. With this abundance of joy also comes the strong desire to protect them from harm as is seen with Kenji who does anything to protect those that he loves, especially his sister.