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!
Again the alchemist's breath hitched. Never mind the manifestation of Safrin into a more corporeal being, never mind the lantern filled with starlight, never mind a goddess softly embracing Amalia and Ronin...all the alchemist could hear was the blood rushing both into and out of his head, his ears pounding with sounds reminiscent of the ocean. "The—" He felt like he couldn't breathe and his body had gone quite cold. With eyes wide and unabashedly frightened, Remi looked from Ronin to Safrin and then back again.
"—the blight is in him?" He repeated dumbly, having heard that it was quite clearly. At his side, the alchemist's fingers tightened into a fist hard enough to make his forearms tremble.
"No." Remi whispered softly, more to himself than anyone as he bit down hard on the inside of his lip. He had only just gotten Ronin back. He couldn't lose him again. Not so soon. Not ever.
"What is it? What can we do?"
i meant what i said when i said until my dying day
Coding base by Sky!
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
We're lost in the space between
who we are and all that we're trying to be
While infant stars burned and crooned, while a goddess waxed and waned back into life, while he stared and surmised the blight situation, the Reaper mulled over the possibilities, the reasons, the madness. The fact that Ronin was also infected with the affliction was enough to give him pause – it had been only plants before, curling and coiling its plague motivations through the Greatwood – the Fae unhappy, discontent, worlds threatened. Now it was people too. He clenched his jaw, glancing over at Remi, who appeared unnerved; Deimos surmised he’d be the same if it was Amalia in Ronin’s place – and he very solidly, stoically, placed a hand on the alchemist’s shoulder, supportive, for as long as the other would endure it. The chill suddenly settled over their forms; the warmth of the endeavors and efforts seemingly forgotten, with more trials and tribulations ahead. If it wasn’t Zariah, it was something going on with the Fae, and if it wasn’t the Fae, it was the blight – then they had the pending LongNight to think about, and combined together was a mass of issues and dilemmas pressing down, down, down along the ridge of his spine. He didn’t understand how none of these people ever seemed to break.
But to the Goddess, his eyes lifted, musing out loud. “Did it come from the Spire?” Could they simply destroy the remains of that vile hellhole, and be done with the spread of the disease?
DEIMOS
Stop trying to show how to save our souls
It takes dying to know
How to live as ghosts
Jyoti coos adoringly at the acknowledgment, her love of the starlit goddess who reminds her of home knowing no bounds. She does not need words to communicate clearly, the weight of her affection infinite, cosmic. Similarly Amalia does not need words to speak: adoration is written neatly in her eyes, onyx gaze reflecting the starlight that flickers in the lantern. What neither of them loves is the effect it seems to have on the goddess, her already incorporeal form flickering with the effort of performing the magic, becoming less tangible, unsteady and insecure.
At least the stars restore some of her strength, celestial bringing light to her figure, making the goddess appear closer to whole. A smile eases her hesitant face, reverent, delighted, awed and entranced. She does not anticipate Safrin's embrace - cannot, will not, never expecting to be wrapped and bedazzled in a goddess' touch. Electricity crackles through her skin; he blood is a hymn, her breath held in wonder, as she hesitantly reaches up to lightly, carefully, return the embrace. "Anything," she avows again, not needing gratitude, not needing praise. All she has ever sought is purpose, and Safrin has given it time and again.
Even if she were not pious, Amalia would love her for that alone.
But oh, how quickly the most wonderful of moments can flip and turn and drop her stomach out. If Safrin's embrace was a balm her next words are a wound, a slap in the face of all she has accomplished, dashing down her fleeting feeling that maybe something has gone right. "The blight..." is in her. The baker can feel her knees threatening to buckle as the air leaves her lungs and her body grows limp, her head spinning wildly, blinking in shock. The blight is in her. The blight is in her. The blight is in her.
She is going to die.
Suddenly Zariah is the least of her troubles. Suddenly nothing else matters at all. "We'll stop it," she says, an echo of Ronin, just as reverent, just as determined. "Is there... is there nothing Vi can do?"
Weakened as she was, the goddess had more than enough life left in her to feel positively undone by their optimism. "Vi has...large things to worry about." Safrin said, a finger slipping down Amalia's cheek. I will not die, not the way you think. She thinks silently. The death of this consciousness is not enough to worry Vi. In other lifetimes, I would not be enough to worry her either. But there is Ronin to think about now, the star she pulled down and made whole again. If he dies a second time, it will be because of her and there will be nothing she can do to bring him back again.
Tilting her gaze towards Deimos, the goddess could only shrug. "Not...from the Spire exactly. The Spire is just stone. It is what is inside...who, is inside I believe." She shook her head again. "I should not have entered. It is no ones fault but my own." One does not bite a poisonous snake and then blame the creature for the resulting illness, after all.
Straightening, Safrin gazed up towards the stars and closed her eyes. Her form began to waver, darkness pouring through and making her seem nothing more than an etching of a woman. "I will be here if you need me. For now though, I must go. I need to rest."
Safrin began to waver and Ronin swore that he felt it within himself, some thread connecting them, fraying with her waning strength. Swallowing hard, he listened intently to the goddess's explanation about the Spire, the hunter frowning at the ground. So it was the new gods who were tainting the world anew, who had seeded a sickness in the Greatwood, in Safrin... in himself.
"Rest well," he implored her. "We will find a way to reverse this." And in the meantime... well, to say that Ronin had a lot on his mind was an understatement. He would remain at the shrine until dawn as planned, standing vigil for Safrin.
We're lost in the space between
who we are and all that we're trying to be
He listened to her, Safrin, a god, despite his constant, consuming irreverence, despite the agonizing way in which the world had ensured he was ignored. She didn’t glide away from him, however, even as she started to waver, and he thought it so odd, so strange, to see an omniscient being weakened. Because of them? But it wasn’t the Spire itself, not the stone, not the marble, not the ruins curling and crawling up towards the sky; what is inside, who is inside…
His first thoughts were measured towards the plants; their odd colors, their poisonous distinction, how he’d pressed into their existence with deadly incantations and they’d done the same right back to him. Vai had even blistered with her fire, and the result had crushed, blistered, and simmered against his flesh; was it more than those bestial things? It was the who portion that truly concerned him – because what else lurked within those threads? The serpent Jigano had mentioned? Or more, more, more – and were they doomed to reenter that hellhole again?
Then she flickered, like the stars, waning and faltering, only a glowing outline of ethereal, otherworldly incantations in the end. He nodded towards her, uncertain of anything else to say, unworthy and undeserving; but grateful just the same.
DEIMOS
Stop trying to show how to save our souls
It takes dying to know
How to live as ghosts
"You mean the Voice. And the Core." It is less a question than a statement, the accusation rising easily as anger flares up in her veins. She remembers the New God's adamant denial, the insistence that she hadn't stepped into the woods. It means nothing- the Voice has already proven she is able to influence things without a physical form. Just because she has not gone through the woods doesn't mean she has not spread her pestilence, cast the plague of herself on the world and damaged it with her false idolatry.
And now she has tainted Safrin, too, and Ronin by extension. This the girl cannot abide.
She nods her head as the goddess moves to leave, adamant determination in onyx eyes. "We will make this right," she whispers, vows, certain because she has nothing else but certainty and passion and love.
