From being an Abandoned who had rarely left the Hollowed Grounds, to embracing the call of adventure, to dying and being reborn first as an Ascended and then as an Ancient, Maea has gone through quite the amount of changes in her life. One thing remains common, though, in her attempts to find out just where she belongs; she’s always had a craving for knowledge which has brought her to so many places and to meet so many people here in Caido. We can’t wait to see what else is in store for her!
Congratulations, Maea!
Credits
Court of the Fallen was created in October of 2018 by Odd, Honey, and Crooked.
Skinning and hosting by the epically talented Kaons, and functionality fanciness by the coding magic of Neowulf. If you ever see either of them around, make sure to show them some love!
By now Edy knew her way down, so long as Lucas hadn't gone and changed anything on her. Still, as she approached the townhouse through the back under the cover of darkness her heart beat faster than she might have liked. A sound that the ascended would hear no doubt, as annoying as that was.
Perhaps because of this, or in defiance of it, fire blossomed at Edy's fingertips. Lucas might be able to sneak up on her, but he'd receive a fistful of fire for his troubles. Just because he'd been polite in public when Zariah's notice had gone up, did not mean he'd be so gentlemanly in the dark.
Since finding the bastard thing on the shores of the Stonesong it had been nothing but... a box, and he felt that he had been somewhat cheated by it.
Glancing around at the very soft sound of footsteps - and a heart all a-flutter in a rhythm he was sure he recognised - Lucas sat up and waited patiently for Edy to appear.
"Fire?" he drawled. "And I thought we were friends."
"Mmm, so did I." Edy purred, heart skipping slightly as she whirled lightly to face the oncoming devil. "But you don't call, don't write? I didn't take you as a flowers kind of man, but not even a weed to acknowledge my promotion?" Edy tsked playfully under her breath. Though she'd brought it up casually, the new structure of the Hollowed Grounds was precisely why she was here.
There was Lucas, and then there was Zariah, and she was in bed with both.
The only question was to whom her actual loyalties lay.
"Seems I may have beaten you to the crown." She added with a mischevious smirk, brow raised, very much doubting that he saw it that way.
07-06-2019, 03:16 PM (This post was last modified: 07-06-2019, 03:17 PM by Lucas.)
lucas
please allow me to introduce myself
"Oh, did my note of congratulations get lost in the post? A shame, truly." Lucas rolled his eyes at Edrei, the box tucked under his arm by now. He motioned for her to follow him through into the underground hideaway, placing it on the table and turning to face her. His opinion about her promotion was clear by his willingness to turn his back on her, evidently.
"Is that so? I wonder, then, why my head is still attached to my shoulders?" He arched an eyebrow. "You who have beaten me to the crown. You who have no doubt told your little queenie-poo all about the treason going on beneath her pretty little nose?"
"It does look so much better where it is. Much more expressive, anyways." The Launceleyn tittered in reply, her shoulders shrugging casually. Then, raising a brow, Edy looked at the box on the table as if that was the most interesting thing in the room and not the plot underfoot.
"Treason? What treason? Here I thought these were all nice and friendly chats among not-quite friends. Besides, you never mentioned not wanting a queen." Edy said with a shrug, the ambiguity in her wording vague enough to rival even the fae.
"Oh ha ha," Lucas drawled, turning to lean against the table beside the box, following Edrei's gaze to it and arching an eyebrow. "You like? I found it down on the Whispershore. I've been trying to decide what I should keep in it, given that this place is missing riches in abundance."
Raising his eyebrows at her needless dancing around the subject - something distinctly not-Edy, as far as Lucas was concerned, the Ascended folded his arms across his chest. "Why are you here?" he wanted to know. "You're well aware of the purpose of this place. Either spit it out or fuck off and don't come back."
"And here I thought you had standards when it seems that any old box will do." Edy chimed brightly.
And then it was all out in the open, and for once Edy didn't know what to say.
Biting her lip, she scrutinized Lucas' face for a moment. Behind the charming green eyes and the oh-so fuckable body, there was something else. Something of which Edy had absolutely no idea. But this was a point of vulnerability for the young Launceleyn. It was, as the ascended had so rightly pointed out, treason. Treason against a family-line that was quite literally all Edy knew, and for perhaps the first time in her life, to move forward she needed to be handled carefully.
Something not well suited to Lucas.
"I don't normally spit it out, which I suppose you'd know had our little rendezvous happened in that magical room and not an alleyway." Edy said, her smile bright but the fire in her eyes was not her usually smoulder, but something far more volatile. Moving back towards the door, Edy glanced over her shoulder towards the box on the table. "Have fun playing with your box, Lucas."
"This is hardly any old box, my dear. This is a box that I found buried beneath the earth," Lucas gushed, the sarcasm all but dripping from his voice. Unclasping the lid and flipping it open, he gestured mysteriously towards it. "And it's in my favourite decor too! Bland and vague." He rolled his eyes.
Having been expecting somewhat more of a bite back than what Edrei delivered, Lucas raised his eyebrows and folded his arms across his chest. Normally he would have let her go - she was the one who had showed up in the fucking first place, after all, but the little matter of that treason he mentioned earlier prevented him.
"You came here for a reason," he called after her. "We both know it wasn't for a friendly visit, too. Are you really going to storm out because I said some words to you, Edy?"
"Huh. Never would have pegged bland and vague as your thing." Edy said, the hand on her hip meant to insinuate something about the contrast of the box to, oh I don't know, fucking a woman who was anything but bland in an alley.
Stopping, Edy licked the inside of her cheek, and then let her tongue continue over her teeth. Edy had never said she was mature nor emotionally stable. If anything she was more than stunted in that department, so when the treason being discussed was in direct conflict with her family, that got her a little tongue-tied. "It's why most people storm out." She pointed out, leaning against the doorframe with her own arms crossed.
"What's the plan here, Lucas? It was all fun and games in the beginning, but now there's an actual Queen in place. One I happen to be related to. I get why you were all smiles when Zariah put up that notice, but here? Alone with me?" Edy paused, caught in a three-way tug of war between wanting to ignite the too-cool smile on Lucas' lips, jump his bones, or continue with her original plan of storming the fuck out.
"It was sarcasm, dear. And not nearly as effective if I have to explain it," Lucas drawled, pulling out one of the chairs and slumping to sit in it whilst Edrei lingered around the door and tried to decide if she was going to be a big girl and walk out on him. "It is, but you are hardly most people," he pointed out, smirking and taking up one of the pieces of parchment on the table so he could lazily fold it.
"There isn't an actual Queen, Edy." He laughed, shaking his head and examining the paper aeroplane he had made. "One of your relatives has stood up and given herself a fancy title. Why should that have any effect on my plans? I can achieve my end goal while she sits pretty on her throne. Again, though, I'm wondering why you didn't rat me out the moment she came to power."
Lazily he tossed the paper plane through the air, where it landed in the box.
07-08-2019, 07:21 PM (This post was last modified: 07-08-2019, 07:21 PM by Edrei.)
Edrei
"Well, you would know a bit about being not as effective." Edy purred back, the needle of her mental state wanting very badly to slip into the fucking category, but finding it instead caught between childish and wounded, hence the snotty reference.
"What is a queen if not someone who wears the crown. Doesn't much matter how they go about it so long as they have it." Edy remarked. "And that's my point exactly. What is your end goal? Last time it was such to rule or some such. But why?" Watching the plane drift lazily through the air and into the box, Edy tilted her dark gaze back to the ascended. "You don't really seem to want a day job."
Crossing her arms, Edy glanced at the side of the doorframe, pressing a finger against it and causing bits of it to splinter with her magic. "Maybe I have. Maybe this is me bringing you in."
"Oh, Edy, who the fuck wants a day job?" Lucas wrinkled his nose and rolled his eyes at the mere implication. "I don't commit to anything lightly. I would have happily ruled this rock to feel like half the person I once was. But with a Queen, oooh, I suppose I had better behave, hadn't I?"
She caused needless damage to his doorframe, something which had him drumming irritated fingers against the arm of his chair. "I would have believed that, if you hadn't been storming out not two minutes ago," he said, letting out a long sigh. "Listen - I still haven't the faintest idea why you are here. You've not suggested that you're anything other than loyal to your new queenie, so is there anything left to say?"
Edy raised a speculative brow, wanting very much to make a suggestive remark about half-proportion Lucas, but finding the words strangely lodged in her throat. For once she found herself needing to be serious and already the urge was getting tiresome.
Raking a hand through her curls, Edy sidled over to the table, leaning her hip against it and snapping the lid to Lucas' stupid box shut. "I dunno Lucas, is there?" The fire mage wondered, dark eyes scanning the too-charming jade eyes looking back at her. If he let her walk out that door, there would be no bottling what was to come. No shoving the cat back in the bag. What made it vexing, for them both likely, was that Edy didn't know what she wanted to hear. A plea for her to stay? To work both sides? To hear Lucas' master plan, to be included in it?
Narrowing his eyes as Edrei came sauntering over to smoulder down at him, Lucas rose slowly to his feet before her. What was annoying, he thought, about the whole fucking situation, was that not even he knew what he wanted any more. When the Hollowed Grounds was ripe for plucking, what a master plan he seemed to have, but now... well. Now Zariah and his inability to flick her off this speck of dirt like a bug was a harsh reminder of what he was now... and of what he wasn't.
"What have you told her about this place?" he wanted to know eventually, resting his hand atop the lid of the box she'd shut (coincidentally, it meant his hand landed over hers, too). "That a group of ne'er-do-wells sit in a basement and plot a takeover? Or is it that you haven't said anything? If that is the case, why?"
