Sherry Cromwell

Sherry Cromwell (シェリー＝クロムウェル) is a member of Necessarius and a talented "decoder" who had attained the highest honour of emblems restoration and interpretation at the Royal Arts Academy. She has tanned skin and wears Gothic Lolita dresses. Her blonde hair is unkempt and according to Tsuchimikado, she has the silhouette of a lion. She is a master of Kabbalah Statue art and utilizes oil pastel or chalk to draw a spell to summon a golem she refers to as "Ellis" (エリス). Her sorcery name is Intimus115, "I offer everything to my lost friend" (我が身の全ては亡き友のために). She was also the former antagonist in the Kazakiri Hyouka Arc.

She is known and enjoy sculpting and is regarded as a respected artist on that field, as such she is quite self demanding when it comes to her art. She even rented an exclusive room in the Necessarius dorm for the sake of having a proper sculpting workplace.

Appearance
She’s over 25 years old, has blond hair and brown skin that’s inherited from foreign blood, the hair’s all messy, maybe due to the way it was maintained; it looked like a cheap wig for a play. If it’s were seen from the back, it would be like a lion full of mane. The pitch black clothing has frills all over the edges; it’s completely of a gothic style. However, the fabric of the dress is tattered all over the place, and the lace is slightly yellowish. Seems like this clothing isn’t deliberately worn for the occasion, but is worn as a usual wear.

Kazakiri Hyouka Arc

 * Main article: Kazakiri Hyouka Arc

Sherry appears in Academy City with the intention of attacking a person of importance to either Academy City or the Church in order to cause a conflict, -- and eventually, war-- between the factions. During her assault, she reveals to Touma that she seeks to keep science and magic divided in order to prevent the tragedy that once befell her friend Ellis, a male esper who had been sent to the Church from Academy City for an attempt to create a magician-esper hybrid. This attempt went horribly wrong as not only did the esper participants suffer major injuries from magic, but were killed by the Knights of England as the experiment was illegal under the truce between the Science and Magic sides. Blaming both sides for letting Ellis suffer and be killed, Sherry swore revenge against them by making them suffer like she had. The incompatibility of science and magic destroyed Ellis, and Sherry believed that it was impossible to reconcile the two forces and that it would only result in terrible pain for others.

The novel revealed that Sherry could only escape from the Knights of England since Ellis stayed behind to buy enough time for her to flee, the last image that she saw of Ellis was him getting crushed by several maces.

Daihesei Festival Arc
After the events in Kazakiri Kyouka Arc, she has later come to her senses and is shown to hang around Kaori and some of her friends from other branches of the church. She makes an appearance in the second season in episode 11 sitting with Orsola Acquinas in a library while on the phone with Stiyl. It appears she is someone who values cleanliness, as seen when she scolds Orsola for dropping crumbs while she eats her muffin.

Academy City Invasion Arc
Sherry later appears with the other residents of the Anglican Church Women's Dormitory when they receive a new washing machine. Unlike the others, she was the only one who was indifferent to it.

English Civil War
After discovering the intentions behind the coup d'etat led by the Knights of England, Sherry launches an all out assault against them in complete fury without any rational plan. Her attack on knights catches the knights in surprise and her golem Ellis crushes a number of them.

Abilities
Her ability allows her to summon the golem "Ellis" from any material in the surrounding area such as concrete, iron gates, wires, and more with her Kabbalah Statue art. This is done through writing out "Golem Ellis," or various other symbols on any solid surface, usually by using chalk as the writing material. As stated by Sherry, she cannot create more than one golem at a time. However, she has used this to her advantage as seen in season one where she causes the ground to collapse in order for her to escape being detained by Touma. Sherry will usually manually control Ellis with a piece of chalk and will give direct instructions to the golem, she can control the golem without directly commanding it's moves with the chalk, however she usually chooses not to since it's too taxing for her. . One of Ellis main characteristics is it's ability to self-repair damage taken by using materials such as soil, concrete or metal scraps to reconstruct it's damaged body parts; furthermore Ellis can be switched to "automatic mode" in which case Ellis will perform his commands without Sherry giving any type of instruction, for safety measures Ellis possess a "safety code" that would be the only way to destroy Ellis once it's looses control and Sherry can no longer inputs commands to him such as "self destruct". It has been stated that Ellis would also be destroyed if 90% of it's body is destroyed.

She can also create eyes by the same method as means of spying, however she can't use the eyes and Ellis at the same time. Paradoxically she can use the eyes to speak to someone from a distant location.

She can also use a levitating spell, which prevents her from loosing balance from the tremors produced whenever Ellis attacks or walks. This spell has the side effect of slightly absorbing physical impacts. She can also create a defensive magical barrier usually used for English magic rituals to protect herself from her own earth attacks.

Lastly, she has also displayed an automatic writing spell called Automatic Writing (自動書記) the spells prompts her to move automatically move her hand and write on paper info unknown to her. It should be noticed that she can not always read what the spell produces, as shown when she got Hyouka's name "Kazakiri Hyouka (風斬 氷華)" and as an english speaker she couldn't interpret the Kanji that composed the name.

Like Orsola Aquinas, she is also a decoder, which was part of the reason why the English Anglicans decided to keep her on probation after the events in Volume 6. Also, she is the head of the Royal Arts Academy .and works part-time as a lecturer a there about sculpting, .. However, it doesn't seem like she enjoyed her job there.

Character evolution
Sherry Cromwell, was a result of Haimura's effort in producing a variety of characters that are not "moe". Although the overall theme of Sherry's design remains intact, her first preliminary design had her with a different face and clothes, most specifically, she is taller and her clothes are less detailed.

By volume 12, Sherry becomes more deformed to suit Haimura's new artstyle for the series' characters.

Trivia

 * Most of her spells were left unnamed.
 * She has been known to rely on Ellis for menial tasks when they prove to be too difficult, such as the hand washing of over 250 sets of clothes.
 * Her automatic writing spell uses the same kanji that Index's John's Pen Mode activation spell Automatic Writing (自動書記), however the results seems to be completely different.

Quotes

 * (To Anti-Skill) "The ground is my strength. In front of Ellis, nobody can stand upright. Fall, be hopeless as you lie on the ground! You defeated dogs, can you still bite me now?”
 * (To Touma) “The earth is my companion. The darkness surrounded by the earth is my stronghold”
 * (Speaking about the Golem) “…When I was naming it, that was all that came to mind” -- “I was creating a puppet to protect me and when I got to the stage where I had to give it a name, his was the one that came to mind first. I’m aware it makes it look like I’m clinging on to regret”
 * (To Orsola Aquinas) "Wait. Wait a second!! Stop that! Do you have any idea what will happen if someone as clueless as you with breasts that big puts on a maid uniform like that!? Just stop, you idiot!"