The Sons of Ares leader and former Helldiver who tutors Darrow's disguise and keeps him fixed on Eo's dream.
Dancer takes over half of Darrow's training, softening his accent before a holomirror and preparing him for admissions testing three months away. He reveals his own past: once a Helldiver himself for several years in his home colony, the best dancer there, his neck scarred and his limbs ruined when he fell into a nest of baby pitvipers — a story he turns into warning, for they are tossing Darrow into just such a nest at the Institute. He and Darrow drink and reminisce over blood soup and perennially losing to Gamma, a rare warmth, but Dancer's eyes go cold when he insists Darrow stop hating his golden guise or be found out and killed.
His creed cuts against Harmony's: Darrow must fight not against the Golds in vengeance but for Eo's dream and his living people, for he is "a good man who will have to do bad things." Darrow suspects, from the deference even Harmony pays him, that Dancer may be Ares himself; Dancer denies it.
Thick and powerful, in his forties, near six feet; dark rust hair with white at the temples, twin pitviper-bite scars along his neck, bright true-red eyes, a fatherly smile over menace; withered left arm and dragging left foot.
Sons of Ares leader, ex-Helldiver, and Darrow's mentor in disguise and purpose.