Private Tales The Blade of Night

[Darkweaver]

Spoiler: Music

Spoiler: The Mansion

The mansion in Tussel Square stood singular and aloof, surrounded by a distant ring of workshops. Orange lanterns burned like small furnaces, enchanted with continual flames, though their light seemed unable to penetrate the smog making the rounds with tar-black smoke belched out from hundreds of chimneys, all pouring out from a bleak landscape of tanneries, smithies, glass-makers and dyeworks. The smoke was as persistent and permanent as the enchanted lamps, adding a general miasma to the streets and the sky above, rendering it difficult to parse dawn from dusk. A confusing tapestry of unnatural smells suffused this, spilling from these fumes as wantonly as the chemically coloured gutters running with toxic dyes, the ammonia escaping from tanneries or sauntering tanners, baked together by the oppressive stench of soot and charcoal.

A low iron fence ringed the squat mansion, as if half-heartedly guarding its angular and pointed edges. The building positively bristled with spike-adjacent contours, affording it a prickly and hostile stance, as if expecting a siege any minute from its surroundings. The same orange glow emananted from within its stark windows, a fiendish pulse of candlelight, beckoning pedestrians like ships to a false lighthouse.

Lilette's directions had led her to this strange home, set before a grim background of the Outer City, near where it bordered the Areck Slums.

Lilette Blackbriar

 

[Lilette Blackbriar]

One would think a few months in Vel Anir would one make used to human architecture, but it did no such thing for Lilette. It felt so... hostile, unwelcoming, even in these cities where all were welcome.

She paused at the doorway, trying to shake the feeling that an arrow awaited her from one of the many windows angled ominously toward her, or that it should be a servant braving the door while she watched from the safety of a carriage.

Or it would have been, a long time ago.

Nevertheless she knocked, perhaps more harshly than she'd meant.

For all this oppressive smog represented—an absence of the nature from whence she came and the gloomy atmosphere of peasant's quarters—it offered one comfort;

Her powers had returned, freed the sun's bitter shackles.

In fact, she pulled her hood down, from which spilled hair like white silk over her should. She might've looked the part of a fair maiden come to do business on behalf of her house, were it not for the sword sheathed across her back.

---

Xeraphine Yldore​

 

[Xeraphine Yldore]

A few long beats followed, the military sanctity of the house disturbed by harsh knocks. The doorknob and knocker presented the ghastly iron heads of gargoyles, dented from time and use, snarling at any would-be visitor, seeming more intent on intimidating beggars or lepers from disturbing the hallowed confines beyond than welcoming any guests. Even the door itself, fashioned from dark oak, carried steel reinforcements and studs, seeming more akin to a miniature castle gate.

Eventually, a muffled rattling of keys and a long string of cursing could be heard beyond. Not one click, but two, three, four, preceded the opening of the door and even then it only opened by a sliver before arrested by a taught chain. An eye at about the height of four feet glared up at Lilette through that gap, revealing little else but a scarlet coat and short-cropped hair. The beady gaze sized up Lilette's presentation with a pawner's ruthless scrutiny.

"Aye? Name? Purpose? What cheer? Ye come to engage in custom desired commerce or a socialite visitation?"

The questions rained over Lilette like hail in a sleet storm, spoken with a harsh, grating accent that mixed all the worst tendencies of dwarven vernacular in the mould of Common and Crook Cant, the speech patterns of those found in the Areck Slums. Yet some of the words belonged in a whole different sphere of reality, that of high-born ballrooms and mansion parlours, inflicting new meaning on terms like 'socialite' and 'custom desired commerce,' like one might brutally chop up and make mince-meat of fine, honey-glazed venison.

Lilette Blackbriar

 

[Lilette Blackbriar]

She could hear footsteps before the keys, preternatural senses given room to breath in this overcast place. They keys however grated on her pointed ears, as did the barrage of questions.

"Lilette?" she answered when given chance.

"Tis commerce what brought I hither, I doth believe the smith wert to ink thee a letter ere mine arrival."

The Elf spoke with an accent befitting of such woodland creatures as herself, though her vernacular resembled the antiquated speech of Human nobility long extinct more than any child of Fal'addas.

She craned her neck to the side, peering through the doorway with what little appraisal one might glean through a crack. The woman was likewise difficult to discern, save that she had strange, silver eyes and was pale indeed.

"I wert told to speaketh upon the ears of one "Yldore", about a blade o' strange properties."

"Be this thou...?" she asked nervously.

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Xeraphine Yldore​