⚔️Serberia

Jan Dere had previously demonstrated a capacity for unconventional leaps in the flight of his thoughts, but this time he surprised even the more ordinary, beginning a new opus by demonstrating a grasp of aesthetics—rough and shallow, perhaps, but a grasp nonetheless—which Alessia had never expected from a man, especially one from a still semi-wild country. The author's pomposity no longer surprised her and was more amusing than off-putting; even the clumsy jokes, such as the path of the star, which were an embarrassment to literature by any standard, turned out to be entertaining to see when juxtaposed with Dere's more subtle, stinging irony. In general, the adventures of this quartet in a land populated by various peasants and monsters—with the ratio favoring the latter—seemed to Alessia not like a heroic epic, but like a satire about strong and stubborn, yet not very bright, sorry excuses for paladins. Stories about attempts to convert monsters to Arterianism or attempts to fight some unreachable winged creatures, stunning them with nothing but choice profanity and demands to descend immediately, only failed to make the cut due to a lack of pages. How brave Jan performed the most important work, standing on a peak forgotten by Arteria... No, Alessia certainly would not have chosen him as her favorite among the Knight, but she would surely have made him her favorite among jesters.
She had actually hoped to be imbued with a knightly spirit and to conceive something under that impression in the vein of Marion culture, but alas. However, it was interesting to see a familiar surname, and interesting that the intellect-hero Teodahad emerged as the most pleasant personality of the absurd quartet. Furthermore, she now knew that Theia Bors likely had fair hair and light green eyes. This was something she could work with.

She needed something coarse, solid, and bright to please the boorish king, yet elegant and light enough to suit a young lady. Perhaps something visually heavy and archaic, so that those who loved playing at being ancient knights would appreciate it, and yet extravagant and luxurious, to satisfy the fickle tastes of high society. In tones light enough to complement Theia Bosch's appearance and not disrupt the integrity of the image, but not so light as to get lost within it. Indeed, Alessia had never had to work with such a combination before.
Naturally, she had to make a necklace—it would be difficult to embody all these requirements at once in a small object. The primary material would be yellow gold—that way, the king would at least not doubt that the piece was truly precious, and it would fully satisfy knightly retrogradism. Stones... Perhaps pearls and emeralds in various combinations would suffice, but again, for the sake of chic, Alessia decided to include a diamond in the composition.

Following the classic Marion jewelry style, it was decided that the main links of the chain would be shaped like aster flowers, with the edges of the metal petals finished in white gold filigree and a pearl placed in the center of each of the six figures. Alessia envisioned the central figure in the spirit of traditional Arterian symbols, studding the edges of the figure with small emeralds and placing a diamond beneath it in a wing-shaped setting, such that the setting was half the size of the symbol, but since it consisted almost entirely of yellow gold against the yellow and white of the symbol, it equaled it in brightness.

However, Alessia's personal preferences always leaned far more toward strict geometry than botanical motifs and religious imagery, which she considered a hopeless relic of the past and even a kind of barbarism. This conviction already manifested in the choice of the aster as the basis for the model, with its strict, sharp outlines, rather than the flowers traditionally revered in Marion. Two thin strips of metal, first crossing, then forming two opposite loops, one through the other, repeating three times between the links—this was how Alessia planned to join the seven links together, calculating it so that the share of the main fragments constituted exactly one third.

Having thus conceived her piece and stained more than one sheet of paper in the process of sketching, Alessia remained quite satisfied with the result: fairly traditional and impressive due to the pearls, religious, and botanical motifs, yet refined due to the reimagining of those elements and an overall lightness and lace-like quality. Mindful of the time constraints and wishing to ensure she avoided mistakes, she intentionally simplified some moments, but for Marion, where the artistic value of products was most likely still measured by the mass of metal and minerals used, it would be more than sufficient. Perhaps two things were missing—things for which the best of her mentor's works were usually famous: integrity, subordination to a single idea, and individuality, the jewelry's own character. There was no more "idea" in Alessia's project than in a conversation about market prices in the morning, but as long as the work was technically sound, it didn't matter. She set to work immediately and left the workshop only when she felt that sleep was completely overcoming her.