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Xeraphine Yldore

Xeraphine Yldore

The Iron Whisper
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Seriously Likeable I Lore Maker I
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Character Biography
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Outer City, Alliria, Forger's Alley


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Xeraphine rubbed the coin between her gloved fingers. She turned it, appraising its two sides. On one side, a hempen rope encircled a skull, its teeth clamping down gaily on said hemp. One eye held a tiny fragment from some red gem. Perhaps a flawed ruby fragment. The other side was shaped like a red tear, or a drop of blood, formed from the same glittering stone fragment.

A most curious mintage, to be sure. She glanced between the low-roofed smithies that crowded this alley, belching out black smog from their furnaces, some ringing harshly with the work of their masters. It was doubtful any of them would trade this coin for so much as pig iron, even if the red fragments might be worth something. But even someone capable of appraising its worth might turn away from sheer superstition and fear of curses.

No. If anyone could help her make use of this tiny piece of iron, it would be her contact.

Her black dress shifted like the billowing smoke of the smithies yonder, away from the alley and towards the humble tavern on its corner. The Smith's Hammer and Tongs, it called itself, making no fuss about its purpose, that of serving the smiths working in the area. Pushing open its creaky, blackened door with a hand wrapped in velvet, she settled in, finding the seat and table reserved for her and her guest of honour. It allowed her the opportunity to glimpse through the grimy windows of the tavern, espying anyone else who might approach the establishment.

She kept her stiletto tucked neatly below the table, tracing its blade with her index-finger, feeling gentle heat billowing unnaturally from it.
 
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Xeraphine Yldore said:
It allowed her the opportunity to glimpse through the grimy windows of the tavern, espying anyone else who might approach the establishment.

She kept her stiletto tucked neatly below the table, tracing its blade with her index-finger, feeling gentle heat billowing unnaturally from it.
Click to expand...

The smoke-charred door of the inn... flew open!

Well, it almost did - but its rusty handle happened to catch on the sleeve of the person who tried to open it through putting all their weight into the action. As a result, the robed woman entered into the establishment face-first, muttering various exclaimations of displeasure from under her pained breath. Before any patrons could approach her, she raised herself from the ground and looked around, bobbing her head in various directions as to become accustomed with her new surroundings.

Following this, she urged the few people who thought to assist her to return to their seats, assuring them that she hadn't been injured, and that she wasn't being pursued by anyone.

With that having been established she slid further inside in an effort to determine which empty seat was the most accomodating to her. And, as fate would have it, her eyes magnetically moved to the table which was currently under Xeraphine Yldore 's regime.

With a newly-found dumb grin plastered on her mug (slightly bruised, too!), she stepped closer, grabbing onto the back of one of the available chairs on the table with her hands, and made a simple inquiry.

"Is this here seat taken?"

Xeraphine Yldore
 
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The simply-dressed woman bumbled into the establishment, causing a mild stir, a few chuckles and many an old chivalrous craftsman eager to help her, though she waved them off fussily. Xeraphine kept half an eye on her, half-lidded and languid, though most of her attention was still claimed by the view outside.

It was only when the commoner approached her table that Xeraphine's spine grew taught and alert. Her one eye uncovered by coal-black hair narrowed, at once suspicious and guarded.

She had no physical description of her contact. Only a time and place. Zenith at this establishment.

Could this be the one? Perhaps the woman's befuddled entrance was but a ruse, the skill of a expert mummer on display. In that case, it was an impressive performance.

Or it could indeed be a chance encounter with one of the denizens of the Outer City. Only time would tell.

"Please, sit," Xeraphine bid the woman, neither confirming nor denying whether the seat was taken. There was natural command in her crystal clear tone, sharp and pristine as glass, an imperious air of nobility in her long neck and arching chin. Her hand shifted its grip on her stilleto below the table, hiding it behind her crossing legs, looking like an innocuous fold of her hands in her lap.

The pause that stretched between them was long and agonising. Xeraphine kept observing her counterpart, waiting for her to break this silence, to betray her purpose. A silent test loomed in Xeraphine's even gaze, testing how the other woman might react, the coin hidden and pressed against the handle of her thin blade.

Random Woman
 
Xeraphine Yldore said:
"Please, sit," Xeraphine bid the woman, neither confirming nor denying whether the seat was taken. There was natural command in her crystal clear tone, sharp and pristine as glass, an imperious air of nobility in her long neck and arching chin. Her hand shifted its grip on her stilleto below the table, hiding it behind her crossing legs, looking like an innocuous fold of her hands in her lap.

The pause that stretched between them was long and agonising. Xeraphine kept observing her counterpart, waiting for her to break this silence, to betray her purpose. A silent test loomed in Xeraphine's even gaze, testing how the other woman might react, the coin hidden and pressed against the handle of her thin blade.
Click to expand...

She rubbed her lower face with the smile still solidly formed by her lips, and prepared to sit down. No attempt was made to pull the chair away from the table, even though she had earlier planted her hands on its backrest. Instead, she moved slightly to its side, and slid between the little space available between the table and the chair. Firmly on it now, she used her feet to push it slightly back, which ended up making it audibly scrape the floor in the process.

"Thank you!" She added, now sitting in front of Xeraphine. "I'm Kid, it's nice to meet you!"

Her eyelids fluttered as she went about inspecting the woman. She raised her right hand up to her face, tapping her lower lip with her index finger as she continued.

"The weather is really, really bad here. Worse than the forest."

Xeraphine Yldore
 
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Xeraphine cocked her head slightly, like one might watch a curious critter act against its natural instincts.

Most folk of Kid's class would have better sense than to engage Xeraphine in conversation. Much less approach her with such a cavalier attitude. Her dress might not be as opulent as it once was, and her finery more limited, but she still wore a fully black and dark-grey dress with puffed sleeves at the shoulders, long, tightly laced gloves reaching her elbows. A cravat of silvered threads and high collar banished all doubt as to whether Xeraphine hailed from wealth.

But to this one's strange credit, her new acquaintance seemed all but insouciant towards that. Perculiar.

Slowly, a thorny smile bloomed on Xeraphine's features. It would not be unlike the Gallows' Court to send a living prank like this, a jest in the flesh, flaunting her with how far she had fallen.

No matter. She would entertain this 'Kid' with idle conversation, if only to pass the time before the arrival of her true contact. Or until she decided to drop her droll mask of cheerfulness.

"The weather has indeed been foul," Xeraphine said, her gloved index-finger rising to skirt the edge of the table, as if drawing an invisible line between them, the rest of her hand clutched around a small token. Then she glanced at her fingertip absent-mindedly, noting the grime left on her glove, a click escaping her tongue. "Alliria can be as treacherous as the seas."

Pointedly, she didn't exchange greetings. Instead, she hovered her hand above the table and allowed her token to drop. The coin clattered, wobbling on the old wood, before coming to rest. The skull minted on the iron coin leered up at Kid with a red wink.

Xeraphine stared, watching carefully for Kid's reaction, looking for anything: recognition, fear, surprise, or any other emotion too ambushed to be feigned. A ghost of Xeraphine's wry smile remained, looking much like a card player anticipating the next move of her opposition.

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Xeraphine Yldore said:
Pointedly, she didn't exchange greetings. Instead, she hovered her hand above the table and allowed her token to drop. The coin clattered, wobbling on the old wood, before coming to rest. The skull minted on the iron coin leered up at Kid with a red wink.

Xeraphine stared, watching carefully for Kid's reaction, looking for anything: recognition, fear, surprise, or any other emotion too ambushed to be feigned. A ghost of Xeraphine's wry smile remained, looking much like a card player anticipating the next move of her opposition.
Click to expand...

“Oh, if it were up to me, I wouldn’t name this place Alli-rah.”

She moved her chin down, allowing it to dig into her upper chest in order to look at the coin on the table. Her eyes went round and round its unclipped edge, until she raised her head up again to stare at her table-fellow. Her smile persisted as she raised her right arm slightly above where the coin had been abandoned, and tugged on her loose sleeve with her left. A few small acorns poured out of the sleeve, clinking one after the other against the metallic cranium.

“Crowded would do just fine! Or moist. Moist-Crowded? Oh yes, that would be much more fitting.”

Acorns deposited, both arms fell on the table’s surface from her elbows to her hands, whose palms were open and facing down, pressing against the alcohol-veneered surface. Her lips snapped proudly shut, as if both the action and the verbal reply had been some sort of punchline to an unannounced joke. She appeared rather proud of it as well, maintaining an upright sitting posture, unlike the average patron who might’ve benefitted in keeping a low profile.

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With the precision of a vivisectionist, Xeraphine's finger stabbed the coin, sliding it out from its bundle of acorns. Kid's intent but otherwise vacant expression, coupled with her proud smile at her own humble display of acorns, sealed Xeraphine's conclusion. It was almost endearing, reminding her of a village child who might think sea shells could buy them bread, or a steppe-elf attempting to pawn off goat-cheese or hide in exchange for services rendered.

Kid seemed as guileless as the woods she no doubt hailed from. A forest sprite having lost its way into Alliria's urban claws. Poor thing. An impish chuckle nearly escaped Xeraphine, though she killed it before it could find full release, emerging as a mild and bemused scoff.

"Well, it is certainly clear to me now that you are not from here," Xeraphine said, allowing that judgement to hang in the air for an intentional moment, before venturing on: "otherwise you would have known the city by its plethora of names. The City of Coin or the City of Walls, as some call it, though I personally find such delineations rather gauche and superficial."

She made no attempt to simplify her speech for the country girl, nor did she bother looking in her direction, having lifted one of her acorns for her inspection. She mused aloud as she turned it:

"In the Areck Slums, it is known as the Grand Onion. Fitting enough, I suppose." She scraped the surface of the acorn with a finger, as if she might scratch off its shell. "First the outer layers of the onion suffers rot, while its inner layers are preserved for longer. So too do the walls cushion the Inner City." She put the acorn down gingerly. "Until you peel through its rotten core, of course. Then you'll quickly find it just as decrepit as its tarnished shell."

A new darkness had entered her tone, and the light through the grimy window played on her features strangely. The hair that shrouded much of her brow and left eye rendered the rest of her ivory mask sunken in gloom.

"In the Shallows, they speak of it as the Cobble Cook. Entire lives spent trudging on rickety planks will give you a disdain for solid stone, I wager. And do you know what the residents of the Inner City call it?" Her puckered lips stretched slowly into a crimson wound of a smirk. "The Splash. Like it's nothing more but a grand bathtub to them."

Random Woman
 
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Xeraphine Yldore said:
"In the Shallows, they speak of it as the Cobble Cook. Entire lives spent trudging on rickety planks will give you a disdain for solid stone, I wager. And do you know what the residents of the Inner City call it?" Her puckered lips stretched slowly into a crimson wound of a smirk. "The Splash. Like it's nothing more but a grand bathtub to them."
Click to expand...

Kid initially tried to laugh along with Xeraphina, allowing her chuckle to linger a little longer than hers. Hearing all of the names that the city had made her bob her eyebrows in a sophisticated and understanding manner, but by now it should've been obvious to her partner that all of this exposition was news to her. Listening and nodding along every once in a while, she slowly recovered most of her acorns back into her sleeve.

“You must be very well travelled, eteri. It’s truly a really large place. I don’t understand how everyone here remains fed though.”

She lifted her palms a good distance away from each other…

“I haven’t seen a lot of farmsteads so far.”
“In fact, the closer one gets to the place, the more they seem to dwindle.”

And slowly brought them together. Point made, they fell flat against the surface of the table again.

"I do like the 'Grand Onion' one though..."

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"By my father's soul, you hit the pin." Xeraphine scooped the coin up into her palm with all the dexterity of a cardsharp. Her smirk masking injury transmuted into something more intent on hurting than healing. A slash of red lips, curling with devilish delight. Her palms extended outward, then upward, toward Kid's hands that lay flat against the table. The gloved hands of a deity hovered above them, teasing a supplicant with the touch of divinity. "Food. How would the Cobble Cook sustain itself with little agriculture to speak of?"

The coin flipped instantanously from her thumb, appearing as though by magic. "Coin." A wink of dull iron in the air, before sinking back into her palm. "Commerce." Like a proficient gambler, she smacked the coin on the back of her hand, keeping its upward-facing side hidden. "The free flow of trade. It runs like blood through its veins, as necessary as sanguine life pumping through a heart. Feeding every fibre of it." A beat of unnatural glee and excitement emanated from Xeraphine - a glint of maniacal malice materialising in her eye, as brief and ephemeral as the coin that had just flipped through the air - before settling into sly intent.

"Now -- let's imagine this constant river of coin, ahh, ceases . . . what then?"

Random Woman
 
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Mesmerized by the tantalizing movements of the coin, Kid -who herself often leaned heavily into body language- froze up, listening to the monologue attentively. She struggled to keep pace, and at the conclusion of the speech, her mind wandered through her years of collected wisdom, seeking something akin to an answer.

It was a lengthy search, whose browsed contents were enough to fill an almanac multiple times over. The best analogy she could come back however - was with the linnets, and how they’d abandon their wool-lined nests every time of harvest to seek sustenance elsewhere.

“The coin-eaters leave?” she asked, uncertain.

It escaped her mouth quietly, and in combination with her widened eyes and their shrunken pupils contained within, betrayed just a tiny bit of fear taking hold of her.

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This time, a laugh managed to escape her before she could quench it. And once released - a trilling, tinny thing, like droplets of hail on a roof - Xeraphine gave only a perfunctory halt to it, by raising her hand to cover her mouth, even if the sound persisted. By concealing her mouth, she revealed the coin on the back of her hand, the skull facing upward. Bemused arrogance oozed from her features, her courtesy a thin veil, which didn't bother to hide the accompanying smirk once she lowered her hand.

"Coin-eaters . . . hah. I've never heard such a quaint term." She glanced down at the coin on the back of her hand, as though rediscovering its existence. She let it clatter back down on the table, and still it remained on the side of the skull, showing the grinning face of Death. "They might as well be, for all it feeds them. Well, to answer your question, those that can leave certainly will. But there will be many, many more who can't. Stuck between the layers of the Grand Onion, like wriggling maggots, hemmed in by its walls. Whether from obligation, pride or necessity, they will remain."

The rest of her unspoken sentiment flared through her visible eye. Indeed, there was quite a match between the single-eyed glare in the coin and that of Xeraphine's gaze, and for a fraction of a moment, coin and coin-eater seemed one.

Random Woman


 
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“I’m here in transit to elsewhere, but… you… you seem familiar with this place – and also you appear as a woman of means. Why haven’t you left this place already?”

Kid adjusted the laurels on her head. She didn’t join in the woman’s chuckling as she failed to grasp the context in which her newly-invented term could be humorous, but her gaze at the coin on her palm and then back to Xeraphine was telling - her attention remained well ensnared.

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Xeraphine's glare dimmed. Her chin dropped, eye searching the table in melancholic reflection, as if its grooves and rough edges could yield an answer.

Indeed, she could leave. If she abandoned all responsibility and all remaining familial ties. Striking out on the road, beginning a new life. Letting the rest rot in this festered, opulent city.

A retreat. That is what it would be. An admission of defeat. But perhaps worst of all . . . she would betray all that her House stood for.

"Some of us are bound by more than necessity," Xeraphine mumbled. The coin looked up at her, expectant, as if awaiting her next answer. A weary sigh left her. "Sometimes the threads woven are too intertwined to rip out, without ruining the whole tapestry. And all we can do is weave on, hoping the next spool will offer better fabric. No, Kid." She looked up at Kid, an unexpectedly tender smile lining her features. "Your fate is to roam these lands, it seems. Go wherever your feet take you. But my place is here."

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Kid eased up. From her face to her posture, she relaxed – assuming one of her earlier careless stances. Her hands closed into fists, lightly tapping the table as she continued to talk.

“I mean, unless if you have a child or like… maybe, parents? Or someone who relies on you here… that sounds like a curse. No offense though.”

“If you’re unhappy here because of the City, it’s certainly not looking like it will change any in your lifetime. It is surer that you’ll change first...”

That latter comment ended abruptly. The woman struggled for a bit, before giving up on nuance.

"Not necessarily for the better."

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