Shizel

Shizel (シゼル) is the primary antagonist of Tales of Eternia. She is the surrogate ruler of Celestia and mother of Meredy.

A Tragic Meeting of the Worlds
Shizel was a young female Celestian living a regular life, until one day when she met Transon Balir, 30 years before the start of the game. Balir was an Inferian who came into Celestia through the Bridge of Light, which he had discovered upon Mt. Farlos in Inferia. Shizel helped him and the pair eventually fell in love, and together they had a baby girl whom they named Meredy, over a decade after he first finds himself in Celestia. But most importantly, the couple believed that their destinies were intertwined, sharing a unique vision of the future, an ideal realm beyond the material world where all pain and suffering would cease to exist.

Taking on the name of Balir, he cut all ties with his homeworld, perceiving himself as a Celestian at heart, in spite of the sentiment of racism held by members of Celestia's government. The strength of their racial hatred led them to overthrow the Celestian king, using Balir as a scapegoat who would receive the blame of murdering him. One of these officials, an advisor to the king named Birial, planted false evidence to frame Balir as the one who assassinated the king, using this as an excuse to take control over Celestia's military forces, leading them on to besiege Balir and Shizel's home in Luishka.

Aware that their family had been betrayed, Balir tried to facilitate Shizel and Meredy's escape from Luishka by acting as a decoy, in order to split Birial's soldiers. Intending to seek help from her brother Hyades, Shizel brought Meredy with her, protecting her daughter with her spellcraft as they push through the military forces. However, upon meeting Hyades, Shizel discovered that he had collaborated with Birial in a bid for power, fully aware of the other man's intention of pinning the blame on his own brother-in-law Balir as an excuse for his execution. Hyades readily delivered his sister and neice to Birial, and the accomplices held Shizel and Meredy hostage to force Balir to reveal himself and surrender to his forces as a traitor. Knowing that his family was in danger, Balir gave himself up, but Birial merely commanded his soldiers to shoot all of them. Balir rushed to Shizel's side to shield her from the bullets, causing him to die in her arms.

This act horrified Shizel, but Balir's final words to his beloved were a reminder of their combined goal, to seek what cannot be reached. At the same time, a voice whispered to Shizel, telling her to entrust her heart to it, and Shizel submits herself completely to this unknown force. It is at this time when Nereid, an ancient godlike entity that had been sealed by Seyfert 2000 years prior to this era, finally broke free from the seal that kept it from interfering with the combined realm of Eternia. Shizel's hatred for Balir's murderers quickly became a hatred for the material world, and this enabled Nereid to unite its will with Shizel's fury, providing Nereid with a means of posessing her body and escaping its prison. As the soldiers continued to shoot Shizel, their bullets could not kill her body, and Shizel unknowingly uses Nereid's powers to envelop the area in the power of her Dark Aurora, completely leveling the village of Luishka and annihilating nearly all of the people around her.

The Grand Fall to Madness
Following the cataclysm, only Hyades and Meredy survived, somehow spared from the destruction due to their shared bloodline with Shizel, which was now bound to Nereid's fibrill. But this did not save them from Shizel herself. She began a series of cruel and inhumane experiments upon both of them in order to learn how to control the Dark Aurora and use it to her advantage, unaware of Nereid's malignant spirit which had tainted her mind with evil thoughts. Both Hyades and Meredy were forced to endure the experiments, and as a result, Hyades soon gave in to his own growing insanity, haunted by horrors which extend far beyond guilt for betraying his own family.

However, at one point before her coming of age upon her tenth birthday, Meredy was able to escape from Shizel's experiments with the aid of a Craymel researcher named Galenos. Meredy and Galenos settled into hiding in Imen, where Meredy began to study under the sage as an apprentice. However, Meredy had a misunderstanding of the events that had occurred during her youth, believing that the destruction of Luishka was somehow caused by Meredy's father Balir. Meredy went on to believe that her mother's cruelty following the event was also the fault of Balir. Because of this, Meredy sought to learn how to control the power of the Craymels in order to defeat Balir.

At the same time, Shizel used the chaos generated by the loss of the Celestian king and the destruction of Luishka to claim sovereignty over Celestia as Balir, knowing that the claim would not be taken seriously if she had done so using her own image. Due to the Celestian belief that the ruler of the world should be the strongest in the world, her claim to ruling all of Celestia as Balir was put into question by the onset of rebellion groups, most notably the Shileska Freedom Army led by Max and Ayla. To secure her position of power, a castle was constructed in the middle of the sea, protected by barriers generated by Shizel's Dark Aurora. This castle became the final resting place of the actual Balir, as his deceased body was carefully placed upon the royal throne, where it would start to rot until only his mummified skeletal remains could be seen years later.

From this position, Shizel encouraged the onset of anarchy and warfare, keeping the whole of Celestia fragmented so it could not unite and remove her from power. But she had no interest in the affairs of politics and law, so she withdrew herself and the image of Balir from public view so that she could concentrate more on attaining the power to achieve her ultimate goal of destroying Eternia and returning everything to nothingness, fulfilling her maddened interpretation of Balir's dream. This matched Nereid's own desire to destroy Seyfert's creations and restore the primordial state of reality where Nereid once held its domain, Vatenkeist. To accomplish this, she started to gather the power of all of Eternia's Craymels, absorbing their energies to complete Nereid's fibrill and enhance the destructive power of her Dark Aurora. Envisioning the destruction that had occurred in Luishka on a scale that affects all of Eternia, Shizel used her power to slowly accumulate dark matter on the Orbus Barrier, increasing its gravitational force upon the twin worlds of Celestia and Inferia.

Discovering that the distance between the two planets was decreasing, as well as the appearance of dark matter within the Orbus Barrier, Galenos theorized the onset of the Grand Fall, an apocalyptic event in which the two worlds would impact each other with such devastating force that even the worlds themselves would be annihilated. Aware that such a catastrophe could not be possible by human hands, he concluded that it is the power of the Dark Aurora which he and Meredy believed was controlled by Balir. To avert this disaster, Meredy volunteers to travel to Inferia in order to gather the Greater Craymels of that world, as well as any technology or friendly forces who would support her in defeating Balir.

Vanquishing Vatenkeist
Upon returning to Celestia with the Inferian Greater Craymels, as well as a bearer of Seyfert's fibrill, Reid Hershel, Meredy and her party join the Shileska Freedom Army in order to discover the whereabouts of Balir's Castle and the means of penetrating its magical barriers. Upon infiltrating the castle, the group makes its way to the throne room, eager to defeat Balir and put an end to the Grand Fall. However, they discover Balir's dead body upon the throne, and they are surprised to learn from Shizel that she was the one who had been controlling the Grand Fall. She insists that she is carrying out Balir's will through the destruction of all material things. At this moment, a unit of Shileska rebels commanded by Max also makes its way to the throne room, but everyone in the room is quickly overwhelmed by Shizel's powers.

Before Shizel is able to destroy everyone with her Dark Aurora, she is stopped by Rassius Luine, another bearer of Seyfert's fibrill. However, he has failed to complete the Seyfert Trials, so his Divine Aurora is incomplete and is no match for Shizel's powers. Still, he uses all of his strength to shield the party from Shizel's Eternal Finality using his Aurora Wall, and the impact of the resulting explosion throws everyone out of the throne room and into the courtyard of the castle. Ras dies due to being overwhelmed by the dark energies that Shizel posessed, while the force of the explosion also injured Shizel. As Balir's corpse falls forward from its seated position on the throne, Shizel transports herself onto the Orbus Barrier, within her own domain within the dark matter, a nightmarish realm that expresses a reflection of her inner soul, a physical manifestation of Vatenkeist itself.

Undeterred by the death of their friend Ras, the resolve of the party to defeat Shizel grew significantly, and Reid pursues the same Seyfert Trials that Ras failed to complete. After discovering Meredy's past and the events that led to Shizel's sorrow and madness, Reid attains the full power of a god, that of Seyfert himself, through the completed Divine Aurora. With this newfound strength, the party could now face Shizel and endure her Dark Aurora, which was also nearing completion. Nereid's persona manifests itself more and more clearly, until Shizel's soul could no longer maintain its control upon her own body. Nereid takes full posession of her body as a result, and when the party recognizes that Shizel is no longer herself, Nereid uses Shizel's body to fight the party.

However, Shizel's soul, while shamed by her own actions, still has enough willpower to resist in whatever way it could, to prevent herself from hurting her daughter Meredy as much as possible. Genuinely confused by her resistance, Nereid fails to understand her feelings and the concept of positive change borne from strife and chaos. Nereid transmutates Shizel's body into a grotesque, draconic form, while Nereid itself is manifested as a massive shadow that hovers over its host. Engaging in battle with the party once more, Nereid attempts to use its completed Dark Aurora to engulf everything with its dark energies using Finality DeadEnd, but Reid counters it with his Aurora Wave, using his godlike powers to reverse the damage and vanquish Nereid from Shizel's body.

Unfortunately, this fails to stop the Grand Fall, since the worlds of Celestia and Inferia had reached the critical point, after which the gravity of both worlds would be irreversible, drawing them closer together until the inevitable collision. Realizing that a powerful force is required to separate the two worlds, Reid and Meredy decide to fringe their Divine and Dark Auroras, thereby destroying the union of Eternia as created by Seyfert using his own fibrill. In the process of activating the fringe process upon the Seyfert Ring, Nereid tries to use this opportunity of extreme physical and mental pressure to enter Meredy and posess her body, but Shizel stops the process, in spite of her heavy wounds from the battle. Reminding Meredy that farewells are not the end and that they will be together for all eternity, Shizel shows Meredy that she has regained full control of herself and is willing to sacrifice herself to atone for all that she has done. She takes Meredy's place and resumes the fringe with Reid, and Nereid is pulled once more into Shizel's body, which again starts to mutate, this time becoming a tentacled creature. She is pulled into the core of Seyfert Ring, again sealing Nereid while the force generated by the fringe breaks apart the Seyfert Ring itself, fracturing the Orbus Barrier and reconstructing reality so that Celestia and Inferia would become two completely separate planets.

Fighting Style
In battle, Shizel is a dreadful mage, possessing several powerful spells with almost no chanting time. While she is playable during Reid's third Seyfert Trial, Shizel has access to four spells, two of which are Spark Wave and Cure, which are not available to her during her battles with the party. As an enemy, when she casts her spells, she generates an aura of dark flame which damages anyone within melee range, protecting her from being interrupted by close-range attacks. She has access all of the basic spells of each Greater Craymel from both worlds, as well as some unique spells which are not accessible by the party, such as Fear Flare and Summon Demon. At low health, she can activate one of the Maxwell summon extensions, Eternity Swarm. Since her abilities are focused greatly on magic, her physical prowess is not as significant; her normal attack consists of creating a large orb in front of her, which she projects forward for a short distance, throwing her enemies into the air.

While fully posessed by Nereid, however, her physical abilities become a much greater threat, due to the mutation of her body into something that can channel Nereid's powers more easily. In this form, Shizel's body gains rapid speed while moving across the battlefield, and Nereid's shadow can attack with Soul Shot, an arte which launches projectiles rapidly across the battlefield. This arte can be activated even while Shizel's body is casting spells, as the body and the shadow are two separate entities, although only the body can be damaged. While casting spells, Shizel's body becomes fully invulnerable to damage and stagger effects, causing her to be immune during the full duration of any spell's animation if she initiates the casting of her own spell before the party's spells are activated, due to the game engine's limitation of having only one spell animation active at a given time.

In both forms, Shizel has her own signature attack, Eternal Finality, which deals massive damage to all party members, unless they can counterattack it by using the powers of the Divine Aurora. This means that Reid must be participating member in battle in order to counter Eternal Finality and take advantage of the healing effect from a successful counter using Aurora Wall, although it is still possible to fight Shizel without Reid in the active battle party. If Reid is in the party, then Nereid will use Shizel's body to activate Finality DeadEnd at the end of the battle, and Reid must successfully counter it with Aurora Wave in order to win the battle. Failure to do so will result in the gradual loss of health of the entire party until death, without any means of recovery or healing, which in turn results in the party's automatic defeat. If Reid is not in the party, Finality DeadEnd will not activate, and Nereid can be defeated through the normal means of reducing the HP of Shizel's body to zero.

Tales of Vesperia
In Tales of Vesperia, Shizel makes a cameo appearance in the 200 Man Melee Coliseum challenge in Nordopolica as the second of four Tales characters the player must fight. She is given the name Sorrowful Queen of Darkness, and her mystic arte is Eternal Fatality.