Nylian Elvaris

**Nylian:** Chapter 1

**How to make a “Diplomat”.**

           **L**ife, for me has existed within a curtain call of all its beginnings, middles and ends. Its valance falls in an eternal, Cimmerian shade. A prologue of false promises. A palette of monochrome fibers, that try as they may, can never encapsule the darkness they have been woven to hide. In a court full of stark aristocracy, it is the diplomat that possesses the cruelest and most concise bite. These are the stories of my many, many rendezvous.

           Summer is quite the miserable season, even throughout the highlands of Treaq. As a young-ger boy, I recount scuttling about with my lads, our hands, mouths, and hair tangled with cascading dandelion seeds. The scent of seasonal bread and ritzy drinks was striking, their aromas practically painted across Treaq’s busy cities. At least, that is one of the many experiences that I have fabricated for myself.

           Reality’s painted picture is often flawed in comparison to its past reflections. I would say it painted a rather pretty one of me, though. As pretty as a darling image in a broken picture frame. My reality lies primarily within the capital city of Treaq, confined to a comfortable bath house. To assume I was a regular there would be correct. In a sense, anyways.

           “Ori'onna! Please replace the token for bath C! Their water has been settlin’ fer’ a few dozen minutes now! I don’t want it ta’ be gettin’ cold, dear!” My mother would so often speak to me.

She is not quite the woman you would expect to run a bathhouse in Treaq. Hardworking, stingy, and most abstractly- human. A lithe, slender woman who is surprisingly tall for her race. Handfuls of human men were likely to cower at her build, as she was a woman who had been both blessed and cursed to have been built like a lanky slat. No matter the physical work she had endured, I have never once seen even the slightest muscle build itself upon her body. Yet there was a beauty to her. She was human, yet she had carried the alure of an alpine, glass window. She was kind, even when she had needed to scold me for my aloof behavior. Her demeanor was hospitable, and I suspect we had so many ‘regulars’ because I could always feel the warmth she cast from her eyes. Like glass, shedding a ray upon me that the sun had willfully carried. There is no doubt within my mind that our regulars came back frequently for her enthusiasm and hospitality.

            My small legs would carry me sparingly. I was always a clumsy child. A shame, because out of all the positive traits that my mother could have offered, I would have gone back to pray within my mother’s womb if it meant I could inherit any of them. I did manage to adopt her lean stature and dark hair, but neither of those qualities were particularly remarkable when it came to my attempt at being a hospitable person. No, the plain truth was that I was never particularly empathetic. I could not care less about most types of people. While I was not particularly great at working within my mother’s business, I eventually learned. I adapted. My life was an in and out of tending to guests, running their baths, catering to their every whim.

It was not always a lucrative business. My mother and I cooked up dandelions for dinner more times than I would care to recount. However, even if I had to suffer through the occasional cold longer than your average child, I never once cried because of it. I knew that I would survive through my plights, lest my mother reach into the realm of Gods and pull me back herself. And yet, throughout my life of poverty, I had recognized that I possessed what a regular person would call a ‘miraculous ability’. I was, in a peculiar way, a superpowered, living being. A smite against the Gods themselves.

My ‘power’ was both simple, and abstract. Vexing, yet entirely stupid. As it turns out, my existence was so uniquely mundane, that it is as if my spirit almost refused to be remarkable in any way, shape, or form to people. No matter what I said or did, I would cease to exist within the memories of others. The benefit of being an impressively unimpressive person is that you can exist anywhere and nowhere. Like a terribly written, overlooked passage upon a page, that ceases to absorb itself into the thoughts of others. That was me. I was so unimpressively impressive in fact, that not even my elven father cared to remember that I was their son.

In any work I performed, even my mother noticed my keen ability to remain unseen. Unremembered. Was it a burden? Many, many times I would spark conversations with others my age who had come to the bathhouse. I would see them come back on later days, yet when they spoke to me there would not be the slightest hint of remembrance of me within their eyes. It was as if the memories we had made together had vanquished themselves from their minds. This plague spread not only to my interactions, but to anything that I produced. From the smallest sketch, to the longest poem. The most subtle of gestures from me, any slathering of colors I placed upon a canvas, all my words- screamed or whispered, all forgotten. Dissolving themselves like lost time memories.

On the bright side, I suppose I was always a gentle child. At least, that is what my mother always said. ‘Gentle’ or was I just a ‘Loser’? Good-for-nothing. A Fool. I realized that I had become a fool to everyone around me and thus, my identity, as shambled as it was, grappled for something that it could cling to. My claws found their way, wrapped around a Pierrot’s mask. My palms ran along its broken indentions, its broken smile. From the moment that I adopted my place as an unfortunate fool within this world, I disqualified myself from being mortal. And from that point forwards, I found my will to live. For the sake of existing as a fool, for the sake of my poor, poor mother. My poor, miserable mother who had birthed a failure of a son… And just as miserably, she had perhaps, the most pathetic of pathetic ‘husbands’.

A high elf nobleman. Nylian Elvaris. Their appearance requires no description, as I simply need to say the words ‘male high elf nobleman’ and an immediate image comes to view. Whatever images lies within your mind is probably close enough to that man’s visage than I care to describe. A wealthy man with a kaleidoscope of colorful opportunity at his fingertips. And yet, with the horde of wealth he sits upon, not an inkling of it could be spared to my mother. Nor to I- but that is a rather quaint given. One could assume I am not his only forgotten child. But ah, what does it matter now?

The sound of the rain would play like lullabies, guiding me into a serene sleep. Within my stasis, I would have dreams. Carpets of chamomile covered in curtains of dandelion seeds. I can hear bagpipes contrast against the summer rain. What stands within the field is not the merry scene of a child chasing dragonflies. Rather, an image of- myself. My dark hair, its pigment fading and oozing upon the ground like a pigmented, inky mess. Splotches cascade like raindrops, staining my clothing. Marking the sand beneath. Churning the alabaster flowers black. A stain of distorted, congealed, dark ink. It is the only mark- that I could ever leave. The only mark that could be remembered. Streaks of darkness, painting even over the sunset and casting it into a state of twilight. Twilight dropped my curtain of kindness down from that point forwards and pinned it with a broken star.

I picked up the stripes and plastered them to my body. Phony markings, fastening as a prisoner within my own flesh. I accepted the laughing Pierrot’s mask that sat within the corners of my nightmares, whispering twisted whimsies and shattered dreams. I fastened it upon my face. I latched a set of daggers to my hips and sharpened them as I hardened my heart. I accepted Zom’s utterance complicitly- for I felt that they spoke the truth. Telling tales of greed, pointing out the red lines that would be painted for occupants of this word to follow- lines that led to the end of these occupants’ lives. And yet they sought their deaths almost cluelessly, blind to royal greed. Honey covering their eyes, and sugar melding into their mind. Unaware of the parasites that either would attract that were sure to lead their hosts to their demise.

           If only- If only I could state that I did what I did to survive. However, I cannot. Ultimately, I feel that I know the reason why I was so unremarkably remarkable. A soul’s imprint truly carries within one’s eyes and mine- is empty.

           Even ‘nothing’ would be an excess to describe what I feel. Inside of me is- the bleakest of nothings. Within me resides death itself. As death has claimed me since my birth, it is only natural that I be born with the talent to kill. After all, in a world where others greet death so readily, I could never even say that my behavior was… bad. Especially not when it benefits my mother. I would be hired, you see. My earnings- I would bring them home to my mother who never asked. Never pried. I did what I needed to feed she and I. I even had plenty left over.

           What is ‘bad’ other than a subjective thought, anyways?

           It was not even difficult the first time. And, fortunately enough, there was not a single person who expected an assassin packaged within a clown’s clothing. My first kill- I still dream of it. I replay it within my mind. They were a con artist. A woman who had swindled nobility and peasant indiscriminately. Before me, I saw the most phenomenal woman I had ever met. A woman with fox-like features. A slender face and body, with pointed ears and dappled freckles. Brilliant, brilliant red hair. A truly, beautiful woman. She’d tried to swindle me over a game of fox and geese.

           I remember this spark within her eye that glittered like a morning star. At that point I’d had my hands clenched along her throat. Her heartbeat resonated through my hands and tremored within my psyche as I saw the light grow dimmer and dimmer. And yet within it was a bemused glimmer, a lustrous shine of a woman who was riddled to have finally lost her hypothetical king. Someone who was tickled to finally taste defeat. To palette an ultimate end. Yet, she hadn’t realized that she’d had me in a stance of checkmate all along. From that moment forwards as I murdered her, she had captured my heart like a canary within a box. I felt something burn within me for the very first time.

           But I still killed her. I did not even know her real name. But within her I saw this… kindred spirit. Two cats playing a game of cat and cat. In my veins I felt a mare of disgust possess me for the very first time. So much so that I laid her to rest within a blanket after cleaning up any evidence and leaving a violet within her palms, and I left without reporting back to my client. That look of remorse within her eyes as she died was worth more to me than any Zill and so, I could not collect any reward money on behalf of her. A swindler murdering a swindler. A cruel, yet fitting irony. I knew that it was only a matter of time before I endured the same fate.

           So, I kept killing. Aching to feel something similar. I had even earned a name for myself. The ‘Violet Madcap’.  I became not only an assassin… but a serial killer. It was quite easy to grow addicted to it. The rush it sent pumping through my veins, peeling back my soul like a blossoming dahlia. At some point, I stopped thinking about the money while I murdered. When I killed, I always adorned my Pierrot attire and the last things my victims would see were valiant shades of periwinkle. It became so notorious, that I had started placing violets within the hands of those that I had murdered. For me, I had considered it a mercy. I simply wanted to ‘give back’ for the sins I had commit, and to make my victims beautiful even in their passing.

           My final job within Treaq was when I finally hung up the pointed hat, so to speak. Imagine my colorful expression when depicted upon the killing-card for an uncultured number of credits was my own face. Except, it was not my own face. It was one almost identical to my own. The face of a snooty, has-it-all high elf. One with brilliant, alabaster hair. My father was my target, unbeknownst to my client. I suppose it was only a matter of time. After all, my mother and I could not have been the only ones that that pitiful sod had wronged. I narrowed my eyes, quietly viewing the request through the indentions within my mask. My father’s death was sought after for his quiet attempts at-

           Plotting to assassinate the queen.

           Within me at that point was a boisterous, whirling torrent of each emotion that had ceased to ignite itself within my body throughout my existence as a child. I humbly accepted the request as I usually did and when I head home, I cried for the very first time. My ability to play the part of a Pierrot upon a rope had faltered, and I fell. I screamed. I hurt myself. I laughed. I still recall the taste of my own tears as they slithered like mocking serpents along my jowls. Not at the fact that I had been assigned to assassinate the man I had loathed for so long, but at the plain fact that in that moment I realized that he and I were the very same. He was surely my father. And I was surely his worthless, halfling son. And both of us were treacherous, tainted people who had truly gone to the voidhounds. I bellowed and yowled until my throat nearly burst, and until I practically shed blood from my eyes and nostrils. I hit myself in my maddened state, all while jittering and cackling like a genuine fool. By the end of it, my face had swollen, and I looked like a bruised apple from a tree.

           But I still killed him. My father. A fool, more foolish than I. A crook. A truly despicable man, only as capable of an intelligencer as he was a fraudulent copycat. I will never forget the look upon his face as I uttered that I was his son. Our faces with how we had aged- looked identical. Our eyes were both a shade of sickening heliotrope. We could have been twins. It would have been a more believable tale over us being father and son. With the knife he had intended to strike the queen with, I drove it through one of those orchid eyes. My hand shook upon the blade as I scrapped it around, lodging it deeper and deeper whilst his throat rattled almost thankfully.

           No need to thank me, father. Your rattling resonates like rich poetry. Through it, I hear the shattering screams of your soul. How you wish to feel- anything. I know that the pain of death will be worth it. Funny, isn’t it? You have spent all this time forgetting me, and now I am the last thing that you remember! Still, the sadness within your decaying eyes tells me that I did you a mercy. Your words utter that they love me, even if you are dead and speaking only where I cannot hear you. Has this room become hot? Everything feels wet and it tastes of rich metal. It is odd, isn’t it, father? How the flies seem to know to flock to every orifice seconds before a living creature has died? Smart, those flies are. You know, there were still so many things that I… wanted to ask you.

           Like, have you ever run through fields of dandelions within the Summer? Have you had to eat them before? Did you ever chase fireflies? Do you enjoy the sound of rain, too? Did you even… ever love my mother?

           Oh. Well. What does it matter now?

           Shades of scarlet dahlia dribbled from my father’s throat, his veins succumbing to the bend of my blade. For the first time, I knew what Zom had been trying to tell me. Blood dyed his hair like thick, blotchy ink. To shed this curse, to be carried with the wind like a curious breeze, to lose this aura of unnoticeability… I simply needed to become someone else. To follow in my father’s footsteps, just as a proper son does.

           His silverite locks of hair darkened in a bath of dark ink, shading themselves in shades of sultry monochrome. I dyed my own tresses and savored the scent of bleach within my nostrils, my lips lifting into a smile as I turned towards the mirror at long last. My body inclined closely towards it, so close in fact that my breath fogged up the reflective glass. The ‘Violet Madcap’ was dead. I had killed him. And become my father. My father who no longer had to carry the burden of how abominable he was alone. Intelligencer? A what? Ah, what does it matter? When you kill, you see more of people than one does when you watch them live. In their final moments you see their dreams, their sorrows… everything that composes their souls. You learn. And for a creature such as I, who feels nothing, you can adopt any of those reflections that you see and replicate them perfectly. There was not a seed of worry that’d carried itself within my soul.

           After casting my father’s corpse out and swapping our clothes, his body was so forgettable that it was never even actually claimed. Due to this, I wrote my mother telling her that I had simply left for an expedition. I have not heard word from her since.

           I am sorry for the death of your beloved son, mother. But the truth is, he had died at his own dawning. I was never meant to be as I was. Birthed as the wrong creature- the wrong gender. From the very beginning. You are a good woman. You deserve profoundly good things. Not this wickedness that has been drawn to you like a leech to a river of warm blood.

           From that day forwards- I have become a diplomat. An ‘intelligencer’. Or as I would prefer to put it- a very, very, very good liar. A nobody, capable of becoming anybody. A high elf nobleman. Nylian Elvaris. Their appearance requires no description, as I simply need to say the words ‘male high elf nobleman’ and an immediate image comes to view. Whatever images lies within your mind is probably close enough to that man’s visage than I care to describe. A wealthy man with a kaleidoscope of colorful opportunity at his fingertips.