A Gentleman Demon

The RP Blog of Vlad Von'strad ~Coeurl Server

[vonstrad]

Day 28: Vainglory

There’s always one in a crowd. The special ones. The white ravens, far too proud for the mundane black hue of their brethren. The peacock fanning his tail not for a mate, but simply to let the sun glint off all those feathers. Forgetting danger might be circling. How easy they were to spot. It was in the way their gestures claimed the space around them as sovereign territory. The way the lips moved around their words, making love to their breath. How they crave nothing more than the sound of their own voices. In their eyes, seeking out themselves in the world around them. If one of them gazed into yours it surely wasn’t to see you. It was to see themselves reflected there. Vlad understood that want and desire all to well. To be more than what creation intended. To be assured that you stood near the pinnacle of it. The drive and ambition to seize every bit of life and wring the sweetness from it. But he also understood the price of it. “It’s like I tried to tell you back there.” Vlad’s voice was almost affectionate as he spoke to the corpse. He spent a moment cleaning the blood off his hands with the man’s own prized silk scarf. Then he let it fall limply, stained, across the face of the dead. “Pride that outstrips ones accomplishments leads to isolation.” And predators took those the herd ostracized.

[vonstrad]

Day 20: Anon

There was a certain mystique to it all. Masks over their faces and fancy costumes, as if it truly kept them from knowing one another. Some believed in it of course, that they were suitably disguised and thus their deeds of the evening were obfuscated. It was surprising, really, how a flimsy veil of leather or wood or even ceramic demolished their inhibitions. Vlad would forever find it ironic that people were often their true selves only when they were certain nobody was looking. He was one of the other kind, those who understood that someone always knew. The host who made the guest list. Those who checked invitations. You never truly left yourself behind at these things. But there were other uses to engagements like this. As he set his glass of wine back on the tray, he slipped a folded note in amid the stems. A sweet, subtle threat to the man he was watching. A man who loved to over-indulge his vices when he thought nobody could possibly know it was him. Like tonight. Like now. Vlad got comfortable, waiting for the note to make it’s way to him. Let him see how much he liked the illusion of anonymity once he read that.

[vonstrad]

Day 17: Novel

Home. It was such a strange thing to him after all these years. A place to enter and remove his jacket. To undo his cufflinks and drop them into a box full of other such things. To unbutton his waistcoat and loosen the neck of his shirt. To leave his boots by the fire and toss his socks into the hamper. To settle onto the sofa with a book in hand and a glass of wine on the table. To pet his faithful pup who bounded up to curl on the sofa near to him. To listen to the rare rain of Thanalan spatter against his windows, a staccato contrast to the occasional pop of the fire. Home. What a novel concept.

[vonstrad]

Day 6: Onerous

“Would it kill you to smile?” His singular eye rolled over to look over at the hyurian man on his left. A newcomer to this table, he must have fancied himself charming considering the way he’d been carrying on all night. It irritated Vlad that the man was in his blind spot and required some effort to look at. “This is poker, having an unchanging face is an asset. Perhaps you’re playing the wrong game? The Triple Triad table is that way.” There was a sudden sense of tension and despite his friendly expression, the newcomer bristled a bit. Vlad checked his cards and nudged a few chips across the felt of the table. “Raise.” A pity his hand was so good. It was almost worth folding to relieve himself of the onerous task of dealing with Mister Charming.

[vonstrad]

“If the sky looks like this your head wound needs treatment. Get the blood out of your eyes.”

[vonstrad]

The Strong-Willed

Your soul has touched darkness and so you learned to wrap yourself within it. You felt fear and decided you would never let it control you again. You're not always all sharp edges and cool stares, but you refuse to be prey again. You turned your teeth into fangs so you would be the one to bite. You learned to growl louder than all the predators who stole your innocence. It may seem like you don't care, sometimes you try to pretend you don't, but i see the way you sharpen your knives when the ones you care about are hurting.

[vonstrad]

“Was I missed?”

[vonstrad]

Day 11: Preaching to the Choir

Warning: Violence, Blood ================== “This is a rather vulgar circumstance.” He stood quietly inside the jail of light, his black blood staining the flagstones. Every time he moved to pull the dagger out from between his ribs though the light constricted. Being crushed to death slowly was one of Vlad’s least favorite ways to die so he’d stopped trying to pull the weapon from his flesh and instead resigned himself to losing the slacks as well as the waistcoat and shirt. “Shut up! Shut up! Shutupshutupshutup!” His captor was neither the most eloquent nor the most stable of entities. He waved a trembling hand and the prison constricted again, leaving the xaela with even less room than before. Idly that single ruby eye wandered along the sheets of astral aether, seeking a weak point. However, while he’d been told to shut up, his captor didn’t seem to have the same compulsion. “You think you’re so...smooth, don’t you? You sweep in here with those clean looks of yours. That elegance. All /refined/. Like you’re some sort of lord when really, all you are is a criminal. Same as me! SAME AS ME!” Vlad quirked his uncovered eyebrow. He was wearing the remains of an expensive suit patent leather shoes and this mad arcanist was in muddy burlap and rag strips for foot coverings. The same? Hardly. He tuned out the madman, resuming his assessment of the spell he’d gotten himself in the center of. Quality work but never meant to catch someone like him. “PAY ATTENTION! LISTEN! You know that’s the problem with all you rich folk, you /nobles/. I don’t know what land you hail from but it can’t be that different from Ishgard. You’re /just/ like them. Bet you’d have me scraping and bowing just like they did. Well I don’t serve anyone anymore! Nobody but myself! I should send you all mashed back up to wherever you came from as a display exhibit! Show them that nobility bleeds too! THEY BLEED TOO!” Ah. There it was. His opening, both of them. “You’re right you know, nobles bleed too. Where do you think I got this coin? I took it. From them. During their bloody war...I took it.” He edged closer as the arcanist stared at him, brows furrowed as if confused. “You...stole it?” “No. I offered them what they wanted...then I claimed their coin and their blood. You and I, we’re the same. I’m no different from you. You just need a suit and a bath, right?” He smiled his most beguiling smile, extending a bloody hand toward the man. “I’m your ally, not your enemy. You said it yourself, you don’t even know where I’m from.” Now the arcanist licked his dry lips, coming closer to the prison to stare at his supposed ally. “Where...are you from?” The barrier shattered, Vlad’s black blood eating away at a wavering point of light. His other hand shooting out to catch hold of the man and lift him up. “The hells...give my regards to the others who live there.” With that the dagger found a new home and Vlad dropped the man, pacing around him and watching to make sure he died. “A pity, we did have a lot in common. Maybe before you yell at your captives you should check if you’re not preaching to the choir.”

[vonstrad]

Day 5: Honesty

Vlad observed the man across the desk from him the same way one might observe a particularly valueless specimen of a particularly unpleasant species. That single eye projected a depthless boredom with a hint of malice, like a cup of black coffee with just a touch of cinnamon sprinkled in the grounds. He was calm as he reached out and picked up a cup from his desk to take a sip of the dark roast within. He was waiting. Waiting for the man’s nerves to throttle him. Waiting for the dam to break and whatever excuses were inside the twitching, sweating shell of a man to flood forth. He didn’t have to wait long. “It wasn’t my fault! It was that Gridanian! He was late and his goods weren’t up to par! They didn’t get the job done! They-” The clink of a cup being set slightly forcefully against a saucer cut him off. “I don’t recall asking you to outsource the work? You told me you had more than enough resources to see this through. That is why we had a contract. If you made that contract knowing that you could not see it through then we bargained in bad faith. I promised nothing I couldn’t personally deliver so why did you?” “It’s not like that! I can’t just conjure a poison out of thin air! I’m no-” A hand was held up, forestalling the rest of the pointless words. “When you sat down with me and we made our bargain you told me, most emphatically, not to worry. That if I dealt with the mage you’d deal with the noble. That you’d been planning for months and all you needed was this one. Little. Thing.” Vlad stood and began to slowly walk from around his desk. Calloused fingers found the cuff of his sleeve and began to roll the crisp, white fabric up. A powerful forearm, armored in black scale and decorated with a single straight scar was revealed before the process was started on the other side. Like many before him the man took a step back, then another. It was pointless, there was no where to flee to. The door didn’t have a handle on this side, the mechanism to open it hardly obvious. So all the panicked man could do was press himself against it as Vlad advanced on him. “I believe a lesson in honesty is in order...” ==================== Prompt word provided by @ritsuka-aoki​

[vonstrad]

Day 4: Baleful

“Do you know what makes a monster?” The question is casually asked, that bass voice rumbling almost absently from the broad chest of it’s owner. The big xaela stares intently at nothing but from the tilt of his head it’s clear he’s listening. Seeing if anyone has an answer to his question. One finger taps the side of his drink, the manicure a strange juxtaposition to the callouses from hours of swordplay. The tapping stops, the drink is lifted to his mouth and when the glass comes away again there’s a bit of a smile there. The weight of his gaze comes to rest on the only other figure in the bar. There is only one eye, the red limbal ring glowing with a baleful light that sends a chill through the guts. But the silence is still unbroken. So the man in the suit is forced to answer his own question. Perhaps that was the intended outcome all the long. “We do. We make monsters.”

[vonstrad]

“Simple things are comforting. We all have our routines.”

[vonstrad]

“Now, where were we?”

[vonstrad]

“It has been requested that I show my softer side. In lieu of that please take this meaningless image of coffee and a rose and leave me alone.”

[vonstrad]

“A villain need not be threatening all the time. That becomes tiresome. Enjoy frivolity of motion when not on the job.”

[vonstrad]

“The problem with that is it implies I’m a cup of coffee when the truth is I’m a pot that has been left on the hot plate far too long. There’s no amount of cream or sugar that will redeem me. Best to serve me to your enemies and hope I poison them.”

[vonstrad]

“There are many paths to wisdom. Pick one and follow it to the end.”

[vonstrad]

“My greatest fear? Knowing I cannot fathom eternity but realizing I am damned to try.”