One of my favourite characters from the “Salvos” series is Clayton Skyshredder, the Headmaster of the Mavos Academy.

Initially, he looks like a stereotypical administrator of an academic institution, the stern, rule-abiding type. Nothing to see here. But then the story progresses and you think: wait a minute, there’s much more to this guy.

Initially, when Salvos flies into his academy unannounced, he gives her a stern talk, but his actions later on show that his intent is to see the nature of her character. Is she a rebellious, marginally sane person who will make trouble there, or is she someone who can work within a system of rules? He’s quite surprised that she seems to be all-but-resistant to his “Inflict Fear” skill, which made other students drop to their knees, while having barely any effect on Salvos. She’s obviously a hardened veteran fighter, someone who experienced horrors completely beyond the scope of normal students – but those attend the normal course, the College of Aspirations, that takes you at lvl. 40 and graduates you at around lvl. 70. Salvos is lvl. 106 at that point and he intends to enrol her in the advanced course, the “Aspiring Elites”. She looks completely calm where her friend Saffron is shaking and stuttering. But then again, Salvos killed the Lich of the Plaguelands while Saffron dealt with gossip and fashion. It is expected that it would take more than a stern talk to make her lose her cool. But later, when they talk about the conditions she needs to fulfil for the enrolment, one of which is reaching her second class advancement, she responds that in her understanding, the condition is to reach it, not undergo it, and she wanted to give herself more time instead of making another impulsive decision; after all, she is there to learn to slow down. She didn’t seem convinced by her own argument, but Clayton showed true appreciation for her thinking. She phrased it the way a lawyer would have: within the system of rules, and weighing the meaning of words very carefully in order to argue her point. This argument alone showed him, more than anything else, that she takes the rules seriously and intends to work within them, rather than being a half-crazy adventurer who lives in the woods and causes chaos. Also, it puts her calm confidence in context – she’s not some insane arrogant person who doesn’t care about anyone but herself. She takes things seriously and precisely, thinks things through, and the confidence is here because she successfully dealt with all sorts of hard problems before and knows what she’s capable of.

He keeps an eye on her, because he has Full Appraisal and her stats don’t look human. She seems to be some kind of a Druid, because her human body is too good to be a result of shapeshifting; maybe some kind of a Spirit. He took precautions and put her through the truth detector with questions specifically formulated to ferret out a hostile inhuman agent, and she passes everything easily, which means she’s clearly not malicious and her actual and apparent intentions match exactly. He keeps an eye on her and asks the professors about her, and at first it’s obvious that she’s struggling because she never attended any kind of formal education. She works very hard and spends all her time reading, and soon starts to catch up. Then she begins to excel. Soon, she gets distinction grades and even starts tutoring other students. Her behaviour is carefree and informal, but exemplary – she’s kind to others, extremely intelligent and competent, and her dislike for rigid rules never goes beyond informal and carefree behaviour; she keeps the form casual, while respecting the spirit of the rules.

At one point, her father Sal appears at the school, and acts somewhat disorderly, even throwing the space magic professor out the window to prove a point. Clayton sees him out, and it’s obvious that this person is not really human either, and he’s also of incredibly high level, beyond Clayton’s ability to inspect, but other than making his point to that professor, he allowed Clayton to guide him out and didn’t even protest, let alone fight him, which reminds Clayton of Salvos and seems to be where she got it from – they both go only to a point with undisciplined and disorderly behaviour, but they respect the authorities and the rules. That’s also good, because from what Clayton managed to appraise from Sal, he’s an equivalent of a human Elite, meaning level above 150, but Clayton just felt that this one is incredibly powerful, to the point where he couldn’t rule out the possibility that it’s the Spirit Lord himself checking up on Salvos. Obviously, something is at play here and the actors in question are benevolent, but extremely powerful, and while they stay within the rules, he saw no reason to antagonise someone who might be doing nothing wrong other than staying incognito for some political reason. After all, he checked out Salvos’ history, and it’s an incredible account of good and useful actions packed in two years worth of time. She literally never did anything worse than tiny mischief, such as punching the guards who treated her roughly, or punching some adventurers who aggressively imposed themselves on herself and her friend. For an adventurer, that’s all but angelic behaviour. In both cases, she used minimal force to teach someone a lesson about disrespect, enforced her personal boundaries, and then paid the fine calmly and went on with her business. For someone who looks chaotic, carefree and slightly unhinged, her actions were remarkably deliberate, calculated and within the rules; hit someone just hard enough to make a point, pay a fine for disorderly conduct and then proceed to destroy a cult, save a town or liberate the Plaguelands. This is not a troublemaker; she has all the signs of someone who treats herself and others with dignity and demands respect.

Soon, he saw her in combat, when the Elves sent a tactical squad to disrupt the auction, and Salvos guarded Yvonne the Trader with her life, using just enough force to kill and deter the immediate assailants, but at all times kept it defensive and precisely controlled. Also, for someone who looks like she doesn’t care, she consistently displays a pattern of defending the social order against disruptive elements. Without having to be told anything, she immediately did all the right things there and helped him control the situation. Clayton began to seriously like the girl.

He heard the rumours that she saved the Merryster family from the Primeval Demon at Nightsveil, after which she calmly returned to the school and finished her exams with multiple distinction grades. Somebody else would make a big fuss about it, but to her, it was obviously business as usual – she’s not trying to make herself look like a hero, she just routinely does heroic and impressive things.

One of those impressive things was when she returned from the vacation, radiating Divine Essence like the Watcher, and not even mentioning it as anything special, instead asking Clayton to help a group of Monsters she rescued from the Bloodied Gulf, where she killed an Ancient Centinel. He temporarily lost his shit when he saw that one of the Monsters in question is a sapient Centinel, and even more so when Salvos routinely shielded her from his offensive Skill as if it were nothing. Clayton found this impressive in so many ways, but the fact that her first instinct was to come to him for help, and then control the outcomes of his impulsive action so that no harm would come of it, that was just fascinating. The girl didn’t even think about doing something clandestine behind his back; no fear, no sneaky behaviour, just straightforward, trusting action and courage, followed by instinctive protective competence when he acted rashly. And then her Grand Skill fizzled out and she passed out cold from exhaustion, obviously having been fighting terrible foes for weeks at that point, without any rest. From how protective the Monsters and the Spirit acted around her when she seemed hurt, it was obvious how they felt about her; as usual, she saved everybody by risking her own life, and the story from the Bloodied Gulf must have been quite something. That was obvious from the state of the Breastplate of Alexander, which was in pieces. In order for such a Mythical artefact to be destroyed, she obviously fought multiple terrible battles against overwhelming force. Considering what he saw of her combat proficiency at the auction, where she was protected by nothing more than a jacket and still managed to easily deal with lvl. 100 foes, something that inflicted this amount of destruction to the Breastplate of Alexander must have been an incredibly hard battle, which Centina confirmed. Also, from how the Grand Spirit kept hovering protectively beside her while she was unconscious, it was obvious what he thought of her and her actions. She’s a truly heroic figure who tends to just deal with things and move on, while the legend behind her grows, and, apparently, the legend seems to be quite accurate. If he were to mentally reconstruct the person who did all the things that were factually proven by evidence and witness testimony to be her doing, he would expect her to be two meters tall and a hundred years old. And yet, this carefree young girl that could be his granddaughter was arguably giving the Watcher a run for his money.

He was further impressed when she kept bringing important political survivors from the conflict in Elutra, and later the noble Vampire families; she obviously saw him as an impartial arbiter and a figure of authority who could be relied upon to act rationally and take steps to fight the Demon invasion. It was obvious that she acted like a protector of the world – and her new Title of Secily’s Sentinel showed that the world agreed. She seemed to effortlessly coordinate all the human forces to oppose the Demon threat, and the way she kept showing up covered in blood of her defeated enemies made it obvious how she was leading those efforts. In fact, he regretfully thought she’s doing what is supposed to be his and the Watcher’s job, but the Watcher was not responding to his hails for a while now, and he had a Title that forced him to protect the school, the staff and the students above all, so he could only observe from the distance and work on fixing the Breastplate of Alexander.

So, when she came back to his school and publicly and loudly challenged him to a duel in order to force him to join the war effort, he had mixed feelings about this. On one hand, he felt she was completely right, and everybody present agreed with her as well, but on the other hand he couldn’t do anything about it. So, they fought, and he was fascinated to see how she made a very convincing appearance of trying to defeat him and losing, because she didn’t use her Grand Skills; she obviously never meant to fight him seriously, and she was there only to make a calculated point with her defeat, and it worked – the entire school instantly volunteered to join the war effort and he had no choice but to lead them if he were to protect them.

While they talked, she left him a book – [Path to Divinity – A manual passed down by the Spirit Lord, detailing the methods to achieve ascension and destroy the corruption] – by Melissa the Oracle of Light; arguably the most precious literary artefact in the world, and she just gave it to him without making any kind of fuss about it. She did things like that – wrap something extraordinarily precious into actions that seem completely common and mundane, which makes you overlook the incredible proportions of her actions. To someone who just saw her, she would seem like a proud, almost arrogant person, praising her achievements; but when you looked deeper, she would keep doing incredible things and shrug them off casually, which would indicate a truly humble person who’s pretending to be arrogant as a disguise. Also, she would talk to him casually, not using his proper name and Title, which annoyed him, but then again her actions indicated incredible respect and trust, since she relied on him to take care of her friends and act like a political arbiter. There was a big discrepancy between what the casual behaviour would mean for other people, and what it seemed to mean for her; in reality, he seemed honoured to have earned the trust of such an incredibly virtuous person. She was annoyingly informal, but she was also impressively down to business; she said she’d get her team together and have the Primeval Demon killed, and soon he heard the news that Salvos, Orgaf, Willy, Edithe and Daniel indeed killed him in the Brilsum Ruins. When she took on a job, she got things done. She would throw a fake tantrum like a child, but she did so only if she really liked you.

The girl was incredibly trustworthy and reliable, and he came to rely on her as much as he relied on the Archmage Helena Warshade; when she was accidentally left to defend Lunaris, recovering from her injuries with the rest of the wounded and tired adventurers, she killed Ira and, incredibly, ascended to Lesser God at lvl. 150, sprouting angelic wings and outwardly manifesting the appearance that matched the feeling he had of her already. When she attacked a target, she would overwhelm a higher-levelled foe with ferocity that bordered on lunacy.

And then, in the last battle, he got everybody killed. He misread the nature of the ritual, walked into the trap, and sent Salvos to fight Levithus, the lvl. 174 commander of the Demon King’s army in the Mortal Realm, and she won; and they all lost, because Regnorex and his 100 Primeval Demons were about to be transported to the Mortal Realm and kill them all. They were defeated, without options, about to die; and then Salvos, with half her wings torn off, with half her body covered in terrible burns, covered in her own blood as well as the blood of her enemies, modified the spatial characteristics of the Portal and sacrificed herself by traversing it in reverse, spending its accumulated energy and foiling Regnorex’s plans, heading to the other side where all his forces resided; wounded, exhausted, with all her Skills on cooldown, to be killed.

Everybody else was in shock because she revealed herself to be a Demon. Not everyone, apparently; her companions, Orgaf and Helena knew already, but everybody kept her secret, which didn’t surprise Clayton one bit. Had he known, he’d have kept her secret as well, because her species might have been a secret, but her character was well known. He had to watch the most virtuous, brave, precious person he had ever known go to her death because he fucked up in his job as the head of all human forces. And now, he had to live with it, because others relied upon him to just deal with things stoically.

That’s why I like Clayton. He’s all about duty; he knows the world doesn’t stop because he feels like mourning; he’s no gen Z brat musing about his mental health and feelings. Duty first, and as he does his duties, he pays it forward, he does things Salvos depends on him doing, such as protecting her children, giving Willy a job, keeping the world sane and working, because someone has to, regardless of how he feels. We can glimpse at his actual feelings when he looks at the monument to the killed defenders at the Academy, but he quickly recovers and puts up his standard facade. That’s why I would expect him to completely lose his shit when Salvos returns, alive. He doesn’t know she’s dead, but he knows the odds and he’s not the kind to delude himself with false hope. It’s eating at him, the knowledge that it was his responsibility to keep everybody alive, he failed, and she had to die doing his job.