Court of the Fallen
for a scrap of armor - Printable Version

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for a scrap of armor - Deimos - 01-16-2020

He knew ruins: had been one for a long time.

But today he was not laden amongst their bones and sarcophaguses, their carcasses and catacombs, refusing to bend or break like bleached enamel and bloodied marrow. Too close, too certain, too sure, a marching ministration of goals and convictions, glancing along earthen floors and vast warrens of a world too far gone. His eyes were not for them, his soul was not to wander into its midst, his entity not confined to its mystical, enigmatic edges, to definitions of what must have been and couldn’t. He didn’t dwell on those notions, hell-spun and resolute, drifting closer and closer to the outskirts instead, to the boughs extended over old roofs and collapsed shells. To leaves, meant to either signify life or their destroyed, muddled aspects, the jars containing others held in the bag over his shoulder; inspecting, collecting, determination melded and molded into his brow – the piercing juncture of his stare reserved for branches and brambles, for the surface of serrated blades and fronds.


RE: for a scrap of armor - Wessex - 01-22-2020

There’s a lingering anger and a lingering guilt, mixing together in what would surely cause heartburn if she’d had the capability for acid reflux anymore. So instead of physical and mental discomfort, it’s just the latter, sitting there, saying fuck you, to certain people over and over again.

The only thing that disaster had prompted was the ability to heal herself. Which doesn’t help Amalia right now. Neither does half-moping around, but even demi-god Wraiths have their bad days. It would be good to have some sort of distraction

The sight of the big man staring up at leaves is peculiar; Wessex slowly comes to a stop in the middle of her meanders, arms crossing over her chest in more of a hugging manner than anything else. Watching him for a moment, she cannot help but take in the bag he carries and the resolute expression on his face. Why? What interest do the boughs hold for him that the infirmary does not?[say] “Hey Deimos,”[/say] she says quietly, an unspoken question in the jut her head as she indicates the greenery above him.


RE: for a scrap of armor - Deimos - 01-22-2020

There were a myriad of other places the General could’ve been: but action took precedence over moping and gauging himself into the earth, but promises, convictions, and quiet resolutions took credence over the hollowed-out shapes of his carnivorous vessel. He’d toiled back and forth for days on end now, and for some reason the voice calling out over to him did nothing to shirk him out of that carved out nuance. The depths of his eyes wandered from the branches and to Wessex, standing within ruins as if she owned them, and maybe she did, maybe they all had stark rise and falls of the ancient monoliths, took turns feeding into the beliefs that they were nothing. [say]“Wessex,”[/say] he acknowledged in his own quiet assertion, a nod between warriors; a blank canvas of ruminations and motions, maneuvering beneath another fold of brambles and fronds, before deciding to explain his actions. He’d caught the inquiry there, laden in tucked silence and fortitude.

[say]“I need a leaf for a quest from Safrin. For Amalia.”[/say] He didn’t really care if the goddess’s name bit down onto layers of acrimony or strife, didn’t really care how many times he’d uttered the same phrases over and over again, didn’t really how care how foolish he looked, staring into canopies as if they were lifelines and tethers. [say]“One almost dead.”[/say] Withered and decayed, the slightest amount of life remaining. As if that made any more sense than anything else.


RE: for a scrap of armor - Wessex - 01-25-2020

Well, he has the right of it - moping and beating yourself into the earth will do nothing to help Amalia heal. It won’t even make Deimos feel better, it’ll just do… nothing. And they are people of action - even the wrong action, sometimes - but action nonetheless. Idleness is the enemy, when there are people to be saved and weapons to be forged and blades to be polished. And leaves to be collected, apparently.

She accepts his explanation without additional query - it is what it is. Asking why won’t get it done any faster and Wessex knows nothing of the Goddess’s magic anyway. So the Wraith nods slowly, mentally turning a ‘he’ into a ‘we,’ because by telling her, he has invited her to join the task.[say] “Does it matter what kind of leaf?”[/say]  She asks, just in case. They might have more luck with half-dead bushes around here than trees - something that’s losing its tenacious hold amongst the stone, or something like that. Ivy? Seedlings the deer have gotten to? Her eyes begin to go to the lower bits of vegetation whilst Deimos seems to take the higher ones.


RE: for a scrap of armor - Deimos - 01-26-2020

Action, action, action – the only eloquence he’d ever be able to muster. Forcefulness in movement, in motion, in existence, a candid display of arms and munitions, of weaponry and defiance. Not to be left amidst his own despondency and decadent annihilation, broadening the expanse of his nature by simply remaining tied and rooted to the earth, by planting his feet firmly into the soil and pressing onwards; savage, nefarious, sinister. Perhaps he’d take it as a personal challenge, to remain upright and callous when the world kept rampaging, perhaps he’d catch himself in the fire and burn the entire earth to the ground when everything else dared to fall apart. He wouldn’t dare the kingdom to do its worst, but he’d unravel at every seam until some sort of rendered justice had been upheld. Never idle. Never nothing. He’d unwound amidst Greatwoods and Fae villages to get back loved ones. He’d twisted deadly enchantments into Spires. He’d insisted upon rebellions. He’d gained trust and accord with a new, foreign world, where others would’ve left him to sink into devastation and oblivion. This was just one more thing.

Just one more.

And he let that be an echo, a hiss, a sibilance wrapped across his mind, seething and sizzling into his movements, into his keen, quiet observations. He wouldn’t be bested. Amalia would be healed. There’d be something for them after all this damned mess had been sorted.

Gratefully, Wessex didn’t press, didn’t wonder, didn’t ponder any farther, except for the typing. [say]“No,”[/say] shaking his head in response. No ornamental description of which kind, which flower, which sprout; just stages of decomposition. He’d yet to look into things beyond trees, so the notion of bushes or brambles had him nodding his compliance in her search. He didn’t ask why she wanted to help – the connection to Amalia would’ve explained it all – and instead, persisted, clambering further into ruinous plights, scanning canopy lines.


RE: for a scrap of armor - Wessex - 01-28-2020

A damned mess it was, and Wessex is about to make it messier.

Like Deimos, she seethes and broods, but to a lesser degree. Maybe it’s that her face isn’t made for the scowling that dark beards and eyebrows and long hair seem to invite. Maybe it’s beause she hasn’t been to see Amalia, hasn’t really had anyone to decompress and debrief with about the whole fiasco. There was physical healing, but that doesn’t work on the soul, which requires action and words. The very thing Deimos is doing, really.

She wanders along for a moment after he says it doesn’t matter what kind of leaf, peering into the crevices for something.[say] “Fallen off the limb almost dead, or curling on the branch almost dead?”[/say] Which isn’t want she actually wants to say, but fills the silence and opens her mouth, allows for impetus. As if by saying something, she can inch forward to what she actually wants to say, explosive and volatile as it is. And in her next not-breath she’s there, resolved to say it, consequences be damned.

[say] “Did Jigano help you find any leaves?”[/say] she asks, quietly bursting with bitterness.[say] “He could have prevented this, you know. Twice. Had more than enough opportunity to heal her and he didn’t. Tried to single-handedly be the hero instead of reading the situation.”[/say] For all his ‘love’ of Amalia, he left her to someone who had already successfully engaged Ronin away from the Temple. Who could have teleported him out. And what did he do? Told Ronin to fight him, like that was going to do anything. Could have dragon-ed and didn’t. Goddess only knows what he could have done and didn’t.

A growl echoes somewhere in her chest as she finds some leftover mother-like anger. For all of the many, many differences between herself and Amalia, there is also a deep, protective love for the girl, and it is stronger than their rifts.


RE: for a scrap of armor - Deimos - 01-28-2020

[say]“Fallen off the limb,”[/say] he ascertained, some level of death taking over the fronds and leaflets, something near perishing, something near deceased and gone. He hadn’t expected the next set of her words, content with utter silence while they worked, studied, or examined, left to his own musings or stifling parameters, lost in the haze of thought.

The bitterness, the rancor, that followed was a familiar tone: he’d resounded, ricocheted, and embedded himself within it last year, around this time, when the world was crumbling around tyrants and their impending treacheries. [say]“He did.”[/say] The rest wasn’t a shock – as much as it was disappointing, in the way that some things never changed, in the way that no matter what they’d ever done, some alterations couldn’t manage to sink in. Heroes instead of useful things, and in the end, none of it amounting to anything at all. They’d survived, and that was it. [say]“I am not surprised.”[/say] And then he had to decide just how angry, just how irritated, just how annoyed he was. If he needed to simply push it all aside, again and again and again, and accept that Jigano was incapable of moving past those reaches and pinnacles. That for all his boasting of loving and cherishing Amalia, this had been at least the third or fourth time he’d abandoned her to other notions. His tone, flat and nonchalant, came out as a hiss, some feral growl winding its way through him. Irritated, annoyed, and exasperated, hands fisting together, and then maneuvering onward, so he didn’t strike at something nearby. [say]“He has done this several times before.”[/say] Why they kept giving him chances was beyond him now.


RE: for a scrap of armor - Wessex - 01-31-2020

Her laughter isn’t in amusement, it’s in dark derision. This so called ‘Sage,’ self-styled gatherer of knowledge and defender of everything he deems worthy, is a manipulative douchebag.[say] “Of course he has,”[/say] she echoes back, as unsurprised as the General is at the deception under his nose.

She wonders if Amalia knows, if anyone should tell her. Would it even matter? All the what-ifs in the world can’t heal her spine, and there’s no certainty that a different course of action in the Temple would have saved her from injury. Someone else could have died. And yet the vengeful bitch inside her wants to take Jigano to task in front of those he loves the most. See what happens when someone can actually fight back and refuses to back down.

Continuing her search for a leaf, Wessex takes her search to some nearby rocks, lifting the smaller ones to find only bugs and worms underneath.[say] “I don’t know whether to tell Amalia or not. Part of me just thinks I should wait until she asks - if she asks for a recounting of what happened while she was unconscious. But if she thinks she already knows, then she won’t ask.”[/say] They have a bit of a truce going, it seems, as it is. At least until something ruptures it again - until Wessex comes to see her on a bad day, maybe, or there’s a perceived slight.  

[say] “Or to just let it lie. I know. You know. I imagine others might eventually catch on.”[/say] She shrugs, surprisingly weary of the perpetual battle against the white-haired man. Honestly, she just wants Rory to be free of him. But Rory has gone and holed himself up again.

But there - in between some mossy, overgrown rocks - Wessex dips her hand down into a crevice, feeling around for debris. She comes up with a handful of dark brown, mixed wet and dry stuff. Dropping it to the ground in front of her she sifts through it, until she finds a small, very brown leaf.

[say] “Will this do?”[/say] the Wraith asks, holding it up for the Sword to see.


RE: for a scrap of armor - Deimos - 02-01-2020

There was a level of irritation settling itself in coiling rapacity along his mind. The more he was allowed to think and mull about it, the more exasperated he became with the whole nuance, nonsense, and mess. Because Jigano hadn’t mentioned a damned word. Because they’d hunted for leaves as if it was normal, for spines to be broken, for Amalia to be caught in these torrents and tempests. Because the Sage could’ve done something, and declined once more. There were echoes of previous intervals, of lost Shields and Harpies in the woods, of tyrants coming for bakers, of open books and pathways – a very glacial hold taking root in his jaw. It knotted and gnarled there in his silence, stewing, brooding, brewing behind quiet walls and stoic, nonchalant, reticent decisions. Ultimately, he wasn’t certain where to go from here – how much truth would come out of he approached Jigano, eternally willing to correspond and correlate a narrative with him either at the forefront, or in some heroic, unassuming gesture. He just knew it wasn’t his to make. A rumble in his tones cycled back through, as his hands lifted rocks, as his gaze swept over old stones, as his predilection for menace and malice so willingly inclined toward the forefront. [say]“Last I knew, they were working on repairing an established rift.”[/say] This would just open up the seams, the strands, and the nuances all over again. Or Amalia wouldn’t care, already accepting that it was how the Sage was. A tolerance the lot of them had seemingly built up, supplied by the sagacity, the wisdom, the bard had to offer, and then a multitude of other things that came with it. [say]“But I believe she is aware of his tendencies.”[/say] Considering she’d been immersed in a multitude of them – and he’d made it readily apparent during LongNight discussions how he felt about some of the twists and turns Jigano took.

He sighed, shrugged, uncertain of where to store all this newfound anger, fury, and tilting disappointment. Deimos was an individual to hold grudges, no matter how ridiculous, petty, or asinine; layers of the Reaper difficult to shake off. He’d given Jigano chance after chance after the initial spell into the Fae woods, after he hid and shirked around while Amalia was being threatened by the Merciless (and all because of him). [say]“It is up to you,”[/say] and here his piercing eyes swept up to hers, briefly, corresponding, warrior fathoms, when to do anything else other than strike and lacerate, devastate and ruin. [say]“Whether you want to share it with her or not.”[/say] Then his stare returned to brush and nettles, when all he craved was fire and brimstone.

Then they moved on, and his attention was fixated on leaves, on anything other than the constant, damned cycle of Jigano and his inability to change, to maneuver away from the same antics day after day after day. Before long though, Wessex seemed to have found a worthy frond, tucked within crevices and debris, holding it up so he could inspect and examine. His hands went to it, gingerly, gently, extracting it from her reach. [say]“Yes.”[/say] A nod, an interplay of movement and motion, grabbing hold of his bag to remove another jar, another container, and placing it within. [say]“Thank you.”[/say]


RE: for a scrap of armor - Wessex - 02-05-2020

They’re both the grudge-holding type, and Wessex is the kind to incur grudges against her; it’s a vicious cycle, but one the warrior knows well. She listens to Deimos, her own anger simmering against the Loreseeker (she refuses to think of him as a Sage) and yet entirely unsure of what she will ultimately do. It’s probably something she’ll have to think about, consider the pros and cons of making such a move, whether it might backfire (could it do any more damage than has already been done?)

In the end she only indicates her understanding of the situation with a nod, perhaps the thoughts of whether to or not already writing their tension across her face. But at least she’d told someone.

[say] “Of course,”[/say] Wessex replies as he places the leaf in a jar. Whatever Safrin is going to do with it - she hopes it’s successful. And then, because they are the kind of people that need not say goodbye when the task is acknowledged and done, she begins to turn to go - pausing all of a sudden when words well up and seem to vomit out of their own accord.[say] “You know I love her, right? Despite all our differences -”[/say] a heavy sigh escapes, as she runs a hand through her hair in a helpless gesture.[say] “ - she’ll always be the little girl who came crying to me with a scrape on her knee.”[/say]


RE: for a scrap of armor - Deimos - 02-06-2020

The end then – quickly, befitting the way they maneuver and rampage, turning and twisting to come back the way he’d come too (now with more substantial things to consider and seethe against, infinitely uncertain of where bards should traverse in the wake of moments to come). Except her final words echoed and bounded, enough to make his cranium incline over his shoulder, muffle the smallest, minute half-smile. [say]“Yes. I know.”[/say] He understood the wake of different ideals splitting apart, fumbling, fizzling, or enraging, how things drifted despite certain beginnings. He comprehended the wake of a mother’s love, even if not shared by blood, and how easily it could be lost, the torturous pang of loss grating and grinding, clawing and seething. He fathomed that Amalia still had Wessex, and Wessex still had Amalia, even if the world had led them down divergent paths. Even amongst disaster and ruin – he’d seen it amongst the debacle of the temple, the Wraith tending to the Shield. Where they would go and wander from here would be only more unwinding additions to the chaos, with Amalia striving for life, and with Wessex tending to the Voice’s requirements.

Deimos had more to say: that Amalia was no longer that little girl, that her motives were determined and resolute, that there was a radiant, emboldened prowess to her methods, that all those years of reserve and apprehension were unfurling, unwinding, in small shards. [say]“But she is more than that now,”[/say] and they’d have to grow with her, or be left behind. The Sword’s piercing eyes wandered back to her, a careful arch to his brow, and then his head turned again, back to where he’d come from; the acknowledgments passed, the gratitude extended. One more means of ensuring mending and assuaging for a being who only craved life, despite all the other irreverent events spiraling against her.

{-FIN}