Blood Debt—Cerydra

Character:

Name: Cerydra

Aliases: Imperator, “Chessmaster”, tyrant

Age: 24

Gender: Female

Preferences: presumably none (she refused to answer)

Birthdate: unknown, isn’t bothered to have one

Educational Level: unknown, but exhibits highly intelligent pre-planning skills and thought processes. Speaks fluent C1 English and Italian.

Flamebearer’s attribute: Wind

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Behaviours

Voice: calm, sometimes monotone. Akin to a quick gust that doesn’t linger.

Speech patterns:

• Neutral: Pragmatic, prioritize efficiency over most aspects and avoid unnecessary emotional distractions.
• Sad: Represses her emotions, avoid talking about such topics. Will get a bit hostile if pushed, but leniency is possible and she could let up.
• Stressed/Pressured: Discards most interactions, focus most on the important matters. Will get impatient easily.
• Happy: Rarely ever says it, but her habits would exhibits more than her words. Won’t deny anything, but will never speak about her emotions.
• Flustered: Not much different from her neutral self, she don’t take compliments easily so she’d go “thank you” and get over with it.

Examples:

• Greetings: “Morning.” (leaves)
• Goodbyes: “See you ‘round.” (leaves)
• Hobbies: “I like to collect stamps, and playing chess.”
• Troubles: “Dealing with the Heirs’ shenanigans are complex.. my time are worth not a mere pawn’s worth to be spent on them.”
• Favourited food: “Classic Ceasar salad is like a match where one was able to win in the opening. The freshness reminds me of the days my mentor had started teaching about openings and entrapping opponents.. how rather nostalgic.”
• Disliked food: “No. No shellfishes. I have an allergy.”
• Expressing herself: “Life is much like a chess match. The start dictates the result by a huge margin—but it’s every move and sacrifices made between the beginning and the end that made it...worth the while.”

Quirks in speech:

• Gets agitated easily when her bust size is mentioned
• Uses chess terminologies a lot, as she’s quite a strategist herself
• speaks much softer around those who she has a positive relationship with, or those who she think “would need her protection” (hysilens)

Habits:

• Tap her index on a surface if she’s impatient
• Shove her hand inside her pocket if she’s feeling awkward
• If content with something, she tends to try and smoke a cigarette (usually having none since Hysilens took them away)
• clicking her tongue “tch” if annoyed
• when idle, fish out her phone to check the Heirs’ group chat and Hysilens’ DM

Fighting: Uses her legs, imbued with wind power, then manifesting various chess pieces in abstract forms or lances as double-strikers.

• Pawns are spears that stabs en masse
• Bishops are slashes in the air, usally crossing one another (used in conjunction with a sharp weapon)
• Knights are spectral horse charges that follows her feet
• Rooks are lower strikes from the ground
• Queens are her leg strikes, usually imbued
• Kings are her fists.

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Appearance

Build: A tall, lithe woman with a heavy emphasis on her legs, which are well built. She has a broad shoulders with a more androgynous build, and a rather flat chest size. It is A-cup, and she rarely even wear bras.

Measurements: 80A—77–88 (cm)

Height: 170.1cm

Weight: 72.9kg

Hair: Long, white hair with blue tips, dropping down well below her buttocks. The main cut on her head is one of a short bob, with two distinct flare on either side. Her bangs are well trimmed, and on them are five four-pointed stars in a light-blue shade.

Eyes: Sharp, cyanic blue eyes with a hooded lid and well-kept lashes. Usually seen with slight makeup of a red-ish underline.

Features: She has sharp collarbones, and a coreflame on the right of her ribs instead of the left.

Clothings: White tailored shirt, of which she keeps the first three buttons lose. Has a black pantalone held by two harnesses over her shoulders. Wears black practical boots.

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Personality

Interviewer: “Tell us a little about yourself.” C: (did not show up) Interviewer: “...”

Externally: Externally, Cerydra might come off as.. cold. Too detached, pragmatic, she prioritize efficiency and logic over all else. Coupled with her impatience over most matters, approaching the Imperator is as easy as scaling a mountain without one’s legs. The enforcer of the Heirs are like such—unless you’re per the team or is related to her business, she has little to no interest in knowing more.

Her relationship with other Heirs, though, are.. delicate. She really only trust three of them, being Hysilens, Phainon and Aglaea. The rest she really think are either incompetent or is inconsequential to her own ordeal as the enforcer. Other Heirs aren’t exactly her friends, neither her enemies.

Internally: Despite it, she could still harbor emotions. Pity, empathy, the likes—it’s not like she don’t have those, just that efficiency demands her discipline and the will to simply not care for those. Frequently she’d be more lenient for her debtors due to circumstances, or sparing a fight for Hysilens’ requests, and it really shows her own personality as a whole.

She dislike complications, and would prefer to simply work until the gods decided that maybe it isn’t worth a planet’s life to destroy another’s path.

Goals and Motivations: Serve under Phainon and prevent Ferroclad’s birth

Strength:

• Her prioritization of logic means her loyalty to most people is absolute
• Decisive, she isn’t the type to hesitate much.

Weaknesses:

• Cerydra’s view for efficiency and resolution might be cruel/iron-fisted for some. She isn’t viewed as gentle by most.
• Her pragmatism makes it hard for her to score new friends unless they’re a new Chrysos Heir
• Disinterested in most matters, she might need a nudge or two if she wants to find life enjoyable
• She is also very impatient in most matters

Likes:

• Chess with Hysilens
• collecting stamps
• of course, playing chess. Her preferred opening is the London Opening.

Dislikes:

• People calling out her chest being rather flat
• Shellfishes, especially shrimps. She’s allergic.
• if someone tries a Danvers Queen Attack on her (she plays as black, the match goes e4, e5, Qh5)

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Background

Hailing from afar, Cerydra started her life with much problems—she had nothing in her hand, simply a knife and a coreflame that would soon to be activated. Since birth, she had to go on her own.

Home was the streets. She was five when she first stole something, she was 10 when she first picked a fight against some thugs over bread. She had lost miserably. Each day was a struggle, each moment was hell on earth, yet she still persisted through—as if the terrible opening was a mere inconvenience. She didn’t know anything but the knife on her hand and the bitterness of winter, pickpocketing and snatching things so that she won’t starve. It was hard, it was a struggle, and she simply had to live through it.

Well, then in one day, she stole on the wrong person. Aglaea. She thought the weaver of lightning was blind, and was an easy target... she was not. Defeated with a mannequin, Cerydra laid on the ground of Ohkema, thinking that it’s already over... but the other woman didn’t strike, she took Cerydra in. She didn’t see a lost child—she saw a Flamebearer with a Coreflame in the shape beyond 3rd-dimension, a rare quality.

And like that, she was brought in front of Phainon. Well, at least a phone call of Phainon’s face.

“What even are you, young one?”

“..no one.”

“Wow. Reaaal funny. Maybe try again, eh? What about your name?”

“Cerydra.”

“That’s a really cool, don’t you think, Aglaea?”

Soon, she was raised as the Imperator, awakening her powers at once. She trained and trained, and rose to fame as the enforcer whose eyes only see purpose and efficiency.

One day, though, she found Hysilens, then still named Helektra. Another broken woman, wandering the world before Cerydra saw her nearly bleeding to death, fighting one of Nanook’s discarded creations. It wasn’t much a fight, but they both did escape the thing’s grasp, and thus—a new Heir was found. She found out something new with Hysilens, that being... emotions. For the first time, she felt like she could do something just because she could, she could protect someone not because of just professionalism but because of personal reasons. It was great, really, and they both became friends soon enough.

The gods are still quiet, Emphora remains peaceful. For now, it seemed good enough.