LARKSPUR ANEURIN
Details
Full Name: Larkspur Aneurin
Race: Siltori
Sex: Female
Age: 23
Height: 6'2
Weight: 168 lbs
Birthdate: Frost 84th, Year 96, Age of Steel
Birthplace: Sil-Elaine
Profession: Currently Unemployeed
Housing: A Small Cottage in Atinaw
Partners: N/A
Titles: N/A
Factions: N/A
Fluencies: Common and Silvain
Conversationals: None
Ineptitudes: None
Appearance
Larkspur carries herself with the air of an illustrious woman who should have been born nobility. Perhaps a great many years ago, she would have been. But that isn't the world she was born into, unfortunately. No, instead her beauty has only ever brought grief. She shares many of the features typically do, from the pointed ears to the soft body smooth skin. Like most of the more recent Siltori born, she also has a notable oddity to her appearance. Along her arms, legs, and her back trailing down her spine are spiderweb-like patterns, reminiscent to fractures almost. The marks themselves are a very light shade with almost hints of blue, though that could just be a trick of the light.
The rest of Larkspur is a pale color that borders on silver. It matches quite fittingly with the silver hair and the piercing silver eyes. She carries herself like a woman who knows she's beautiful. With regality, elegance, and a dismissive kind of grace which can easily morph into disgust when lesser things sully her time for too long. Walking like the world is hers and just has yet to know it. As though she's got some grand master plan in the works and is simply flaunting it a little ahead of schedule.
Despite all the effort she puts into looking borderline divine, there's always a hollow sorrow that's left in her wake. Tainting the hole she leaves when she's gone.
Personality
As everything said about her up until now might imply, Larkspur acts like she knows she's better than most people. At least, that's how she acts around anyone who isn't a Siltori. Cold and unwelcoming. It's never said to a person's face that she thinks this, but it's implied in the way she carries herself and behaves, with a dismissive kind of boredom. Like you can't even keep her entertained long enough to be worth remembering. With an icy chill like the season of her birth, she pretends she's completely forgotten the existence of anyone who she doesn't seem entertaining enough.
But that's never quite the case.
Her mind is always working overtime, carefully tracing plans that most believe she doesn't actually have. The air of arrogance is partially true, but it's also a ruse. The mask of someone who's learned that the more confident you act, the more higher-level nobility and men looking for companionship they can pay for roll their eyes. That's the lesson her mama taught her when she was little and it's a lesson Larkspur never intends to forget. Trickery and lies is all she needs to survive, as long as she keeps her wits about her she'll be fine. Or so she hopes.
In the presence of other Siltori, she tends to warm up quite a bit. Never unguarded, never quite on the same playing field, but friendly. Warm. Compassionate and understanding, but a little bit patronizing occasionally. She always alludes to bigger plans.
History
It was during the tail end of the cold season I was born, a rarity to many. I shouldn't have existed. The reason? I had an older sibling. Yes, yes, I know how unbelievable that might be for some of you. Hey, don't snort you uncultured pig! Excuse me! As I was saying. I was born at the end of Frost with an older sibling, a full twelve years my senior. Deep in the slums of Sil-Elain. It never quite bothered me. The fact I had an older sister was enough to keep me sheltered. Docile. I didn't care for thinking about what-ifs or the future. Even as I grew older, I never took to that childish whimsy. The question of what if? What if things could be better? I knew better than that, even as a child. I looked in the hollowed eyes of my mother and knew there was no better. Not here. Not on this earth. We live in a fester cest pit that the gods had the malignant grace to forget, and I won't be convinced otherwise if they descend from their glorious thrones of ineptitude to personally kiss my ass.
~~~
Larkspur was considered a rare case, one of the few born to parents who were somehow miraculously fertile enough to miraculously have a second child. Larkspur's older sister, Lantana, was 12 years older than her and already well acquainted with the cruelties of the world. It was for this reason that Larkspur was comparatively sheltered. Lantana quite quickly took to her younger sister, as older siblings sometimes do. If one of them survived, it should be Larkspur. And Lantana was going to make sure of that.
Both her parents and Lantana worked tirelessly to try and provide for Larkspur growing up, but Larkspur herself the older she got started to believe the endeavor to be more and more pointless. Why even bother? All four of them were going to die like dogs, festering in their own decaying flesh. There wasn't any hope.
~~~
A liar!? Is that what you just called me? What do you mean no one escapes Sil-Elain? Of course, they do! They just usually die on the way out, much like my father did. He tried, but he was pathetic and weak, just like most other people are. I'm not. It was at that moment I realized what a true taste of freedom was like. What it felt like. No one could take it away from me after that. The day we were able to escape, I tasted life. I didn't care what I'd have to do, I was keeping it.
~~~
After a grueling number of years, the family was able to save up enough money to smuggle three members of the family out. Unfortunately, there were still four of them. It was at that moment the family needed to decide who would go with the smugglers to the outside world, to try and survive and spread awareness about what was going on, and who was going to stay behind. At the time, Larkspur was 8, might made Lantana 20.
Lantana decided that she should probably stay. With misty eyes, the family bid goodbye to the oldest daughter who immediately started making plans for her own escape, promising one day to reunite with Larkspur. Modern-day Larkspur would never admit this is something she still hopes for, but the child wailed and begged her sister not to go. She had to be pried off. Regardless of the stories she told, she didn't actually care all that much about her freedom. About getting to leave. She didn't think ruthless thoughts. She just missed her older sister. It wasn't long before her father soon died as well, some preventable disease from the terrible traveling conditions provided to the family as they finally made their way out of the city they'd called home.
When Larkspur and her mother arrived in Cathena, they were well and truly alone. Left in a city that couldn't care less for them or their plight. The job of caring for the pair mostly fell on her mother's shoulders as Larkspur was far too young to hold a job. That being said, she tried to help out as much as she could. Doing small tasks while her mother worked long and laborious hours, constantly hopping between jobs and being fairly unable to hold anything down for an extended period of time.
When her mother finally did get a stable job, it was a whorehouse.
~~~
Yes, I suppose my mother did whatever she had to in order to keep the two of us alive. What's that? My old master. Yes... I remember him fondly if that's what you're asking. I suppose I do him some level of thanks since he did initiate me. Let's change the topic, shall we?
~~~
The man who ended up taking Larkspur's mother into his brothel wasn't a particularly cruel man. Not at first. But he wasn't kind either. Hours were long and practices weren't completely safe. It was fine, he reasoned, it wasn't like Larkspur's mother could possibly get pregnant and she'd get paid extra for doing special requests.
Apparently lightning does strike twice, or perhaps Larkspur's mother was just unfortunately lucky. The last of a rare breed of Siltori who hadn't been completely trashed by their fate. Larkspur was 13 when she first learned she was going to half a halfsister from a father unknown. Suddenly she realized she was standing in Lantana's shoes and she didn't know what she was going to. Her first response was to panic, her second response was to try and work even harder. To try and be a good older sister like her own had been.
Unfortunately working extra jobs wasn't going to help her. Her mother instantly began struggling and the owner of the brothel didn't really care that much. He did, however, agree to cut her a deal of sorts. He'd initiate Larkspur into both of his magics, then and there. Larkspur would be able to start taking... special jobs within his employment that wouldn't involve getting anywhere near her mother's line of work. The catch was that Larkspur would entirely belong to him, for the rest of her life most likely.
Larkspur, unfortunately, got very little choice in the matter. Her mother agreed without hesitation, sighing away the life of her second child. Was it desperation to do well by the third? Or maybe it was self-preservation. The older Larkspur got, the more she noticed the frenzied and panicked look in her mother's eyes. The desperation to be free. She was 14 when the initiations themselves actually happened.
Onto each hip, the man pressed his fingers and scorched into her skin two different runes. One of Affliction, and one of Summoning.
~~~
Oh, my initiation. Such wonderful memories. Such wonderful, painful memories. The first one was Summoning. He said because it would leave less of a lasting impact I'd need to recover from. Tell me, have you ever had something forced on you? Like you've been violated? Like a crawling sickly presence has forced itself inside you so that it could take root and curl around your insides, declaring them its instead of your own? That's what it's like to be initiated into Summoning. There's no choice, it's all instinct, and you can only say yes as a being so far beyond your understanding presses down on your chest and forces and forces until something breaks and cracks and there's no going back after that. You're changed, forever and always. If you asked me then, I would have probably said no, but ask me now, and I'll without question say I resent my mother for what she put me through. At the very least the pathetic mongrel of a wench made me strong with her mistakes. It wasn't like she had many other options though. Her best decision would have been to drown me the moment I crawled out of her.
Affliction was... something else entirely. It's hard to say which was worse, honestly. While Summoning was a pervasive force tearing something open, Affliction was just like what the name implies. Boils and rashes broke out all across my skin, lumps of festering puss which rendered my beautiful skin quite unsightly for days if not weeks afterward. Fevers and chills all at the same time! Every touch felt like fire and I wanted to be left by myself, but I couldn't stand the thought of being alone. Of dying alone. I think my younger sister was probably born during all of that. I can remember being alone for a while, the sound of screams echoing through the building. Or maybe those were my own. Who's to say?
~~~
After her initiation Larkspur was put to work. Not as a whore like her mother, but as an assassin. She was good at her job for a couple of years, plucking off targets one by one and sentencing them to death. She didn't care for the work, but she didn't mind it either. Life started to mean less and less. The next four years that followed that were just a blur. A dispassionate and disassociated blur.
She hated every moment of it.
She had no way to escape.
She wanted to die.
The thing that jolted her from her stupor was her 18th birthday. It was the moment that shook her to her core and shattered the disassociative stained glass she'd been peering at life through. It was on her 18th birthday that her mother's boss, the man who initiated her, the fiend she so hated calling master, tried to pull her into his private chambers and 'introduce her' to her mother's line of work. Quite blatantly stating she'd be picking it up for some of his personal guests, as well as himself. The world turned sharp, clear. For just a couple moments there was a crystalline understanding of the world and her place in it. It was almost enough to make her laugh. Or maybe cry. Everything was starting to blur together.
She took the knife from her belt and without hesitation went for his throat. He'd trained an assassin after all.
She shoved the knife into his body, laughing the entire time. Or maybe crying. She wasn't sure. All she knew was that a slurry of terrible emotions were pouring out of her. Finally released for the first time in her life, she bled him and she bled her own heart dry until the blood turned dry, cold, and tacky and.
She left after that. She didn't give the guards time to discover what had happened. Didn't give her mother the time either. She left without her mother, left without her younger sister too. The four-year-old, half Siltori and half Hytori, was something she'd decided she didn't care about. She hopped on a caravan and left, stopping in the first city they decided to stop in. The world was dark, a picture that's been broken into a thousand sapphire shards which were dipped in ink and tears. And at the center of it all stood her, a creature who could change it.
It was at that moment she realized that the world was a terrible, wretched place. But she was strong and she was smart. She could still change it. Forcibly she could change it. If the world would not give her a home, then she'd make one, and she'd invite all the other people who'd been torn apart and shattered like fractured glass. Just like she.
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