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!
“Yes.” He confirms her suspicions, of the man that had created the ever watchful guardians of the North. Despite their decrepit stance, their crumbling pieces, she had always thought they’d do something. She was always under the impression they were standing at the ready; prepared to protect and fight and bring fear into the hearts of those who dared. But it had been her home too, those statues were as much a part of her memories as they were with the rest of the Basin. And she knew it would never change, despite Deimos’ confirmation they couldn’t be fixed by anyone but Ulrik himself.
And she nods, head tilting as she thinks about it before she snorts. “I never knew they didn't work.” She admits to him with a small smile. She hadn’t been in Helovia long, but the time that she was, she had never even questioned the capability of the monoliths. Had just assumed. And so she watches him next, as her question hangs in the air. What of the children? Because Rexanna had always been too motherly of a soul, despite the masks and poetic words. She would always cease for the innocent young.
And she nods when he tells her of the peace treaty, too, and she tries to imagine what it’s like to move toward such a thing when past events could cloud judgements. But what she knew of Deimos, he was level headed when he needed to be — she had never heard him not be collected. Something of him she envied and strived for. She releases a breath she doesn’t need when Deimos mentions it had worked, a small smile crossing her face.
Until he reveals one had chosen to stay and her brow lifts in response to this too. “Who stayed?” It hangs in the air too, her uncertainty as to what kind of things would keep them there, to make them choose to remain rather than move on, to go home.
“A secret,” he murmured with a smirk, a snicker, pretenses aligned and ignited at the height of his reign. They’d tried to piece the fragments back together, but without the main composer and engineer, the efforts had gone to waste. They had worked, once, during massacres and upheavals, when they spread sedition through glory and failures. They’d been a brilliant, seething part of their imposing, intimidating force, something to behold, something to shudder beneath, something to honor and cherish; but not infallible, not infinite. None of them were. Eventually, things wore out, diminished, faded away – he’d done the very same, the lights gone out, death calling and crooning, siren sway of knells and dirges.
Peace treaties and truces were never something he thought he’d have to concoct or produce; never a diplomat, but always a strategist, a surveyor in calculations and machinations, understanding the weight of their loss, the reasons for it, behind it, and why they’d come to clash, foe upon foe upon foe, for what felt like an eternity. A warrior through and through, ready to fight, ready to wage, ready to terrorize; but not at the expense of those suddenly under his care. He’d always watched his soldiers, always praised their efforts, always admonished their poor tactics, and when the mantle of monarch suddenly settled around his shoulders, he realized he had to protect the entire kingdom – not just children, not just his comrades, all of them. It had led him down pathways he’d never ventured or sojourned along, not so thorned, not so brambled; those would come later, later, later, when tides turned and churned, when sickness molded into onslaughts, when new terrors rose.
Then she asked of the lone child who lingered behind, who chose a home he’d been forced into – his grin falling to withdrawn lines, not a frown, but not a glimmer of triumph either; trust Rexanna to ponder over the wherewithal of another babe. He would’ve laughed had it not burned its way into his mind; he’d never found the boy again to ask him. Why did you not want to come home? Had it been his father? His mother? Or something else altogether – the strife, the dramatics, the blistering hate and bitterness thriving in the Basin’s roots? The way they’d sculpted their foundations? Or had the new kingdom been something more to his tastes? The answers wouldn’t ever be heard – he shrugged, relished another swallow of his drink. “Sacre. One of D’art’s children.” He paused, furrowing his brow only slightly, uncertain if she’d been acquainted with the Doctor, his poisons, his experiments. “Did you ever meet either?”
She snorts with him, nodding along as though it made sense. And in a way, it did – something so few knew kept loose lips from revealing the secrets. Though there was a part of her that wondered why she wasn’t a part of the secret, for the time she was a high enough rank likely to know. But she doesn’t say anything, the past is the past and it remains there – along with her mistakes, her terrible choices, her betrayals. And she looks to her friend, with a certain attachment in her gaze that nearly threatens to suffocate the hues of her blues – so similar to his own. Born worlds apart, to come together once more.
Souls and bodies born from the mountains they had found refuge in.
And she quirks a brow to him when he tells her, Sacre, a man she had never met but she had heard of. It isn’t until he mentions the name of the father that it makes some form of sense, and her brow furrows briefly before she shrugs. “I never had the pleasure, I don’t think.” She says honestly, her thoughts muddled on it the more she lingers on it. But she still raises her glass to Deimos with a wicked gleam to her smile as she regards him once more. “For being a successful king.” She says to him, cheering him before taking another sip and humming a quiet laugh to herself.
“I have another thing to ask of you, related in a way to Helovia.” She mentions with a light tilt of her head, setting the glass down to reach into her pocket and pull out her golden ring with scarlet stones – like her fireworks trapped in stone. “I am… Getting married in Deepfrost.” She lets her gaze linger on the stones before she reaches over toward him to offer the ring to him should he wish to inspect – to see the love and care that went into the design, to see that perhaps the man she’s chosen to be with had already proven better than Tembovu once had.
“And I was wondering if maybe you wanted to be the one to give me away?” Her eyes flick up to his face, hoping for a glimpse of surprise, of questions, of the refusal. She hoped he said yes. That the man she considered a brother, as close as anyone could be to her, knowing her past and her present, would want to be a part of such a thing. She also wondered if he knew who Bastien even was, aside from what she had told him. But the smile on her face gleamed true happiness and the best feeling she’d ever had. At least this way, he’d be a part of it – to know she wouldn’t be whisked away into the night, to become something more than just a child bearer for a man who couldn’t keep his lineage with one person.
For a beast who harbored hundreds of secrets, furtive, deceptive measures, tight-lipped and coiled, the notion of not sharing the implication of the guardians didn’t bother him. How many measures and machinations had the rest of the world never told him? He’d allotted the information to very few – and by then, it likely hadn’t mattered anymore. They’d had enough soldiers. They’d had enough guards. They’d had him – and for a while, before pouring rain and drowning emblems and sunken banners, it had been enough.
The Reaper, the Sword, masked the laugh threatening to flicker out of his chest at her insinuation of meeting D’art as a pleasure – it depended on one’s preference – because the Doctor had been a snarky, calloused, cold, but intrepid, valiant thing, particular in his pursuits and persistence, meticulous in some of his designs. Deimos had considered him a formidable ally: D’art and his nurse had also been prolific in their meetings, either conspiring to fill the Basin with their children or simply take over the earth with their poisonous aspirations.
But that was all gone now – and she raised her glass a moment later, a wicked inset to her grin he couldn’t quite fathom until she cheered, until she relished, until he tilted his head. “Successful,” he tasted the word on his tongue, and didn’t think he met the standards – yearning to shake his skull at the implications, but settled for sighing instead, taking another swig of his drink instead of having to respond with self-deprecation again.
What had he done that was ever successful?
Her next statement caught him, secured and rooted him to the spot, tilting his head to indicate he was listening, the piercing depths and fathoms of his gaze segmented, riveted, to her. He watched her movements with obvious meticulousness, taking in the motions until he realized what she was displaying: a ring, gilded, crimson stones, like fire, like flames, like infernal, bestial representation of things she already had her grasp. “Congratulations,” he extended with a cheeky grin, memories of the last wedding curling along his mind (dick fireworks included), taking the offered item in his fingers, in his palm, with an applied reverence, studying and perusing as they fell to silence. As long as you are happy echoed upon him again, because she deserved it, a man who wasn’t a complete fool, who could treat her with respect (the notion and memory of Tembovu was a reverberation of frustrations and enmity; but without him, there would be no Kiada; he replaced the growl with something like indifference). “I have only met Bastien a few times.” The first had been in the midst of Long Night, opening doors to permit others to cross the threshold (a still Amalia in Edrei’s arms), helping to hold the baker down while she was mended and brought back to life. “I do not know him well. But if he makes you content,” he smiled again, acceptance again in the darkness, in the flickering embers and coals, in the glow of unicorn horns. Even the ability for her to be able to make her own choices, to not follow anyone else’s guidelines, conform to their rules, adhere to their commands, and demands, should’ve been celebrated.
The warrior, the mountain, didn’t expect the next set of words. His head snapped back up from his inspection of the ring, eyes widening – the uncertainty suddenly looming large in his mind, in his membrane, as it spiraled and divulged. The initial instinct was to shy away from it completely, not good enough, not worthy, not deserving, surely there was someone better in the midst who wasn’t pathetic, who wasn’t ineffectual, who wasn’t entirely inept at everything. But then he presumed it must have taken a lot for her to even ask, to even inquire, and they’d been together through a multitude of mistakes, blights, ruins, and upheavals – triumphing somehow, through thick and thin. He followed her smile, wondered what he’d done to earn such a regard. “I would be honored,” sprung from his mouth, finally, giving her away, but not damned and doomed to part.
Whether he believes her or not isn’t part of her concern. He had been a great king, the wisest, most fair she had ever encountered — her own ex-husband(s?) included. And she’d never think any differently about the man that sits before her, whether this skin or another. She watches as he congratulates her, and she dips her head perhaps a small amount childish, a fanged grin sent his way. He mentions he’s met Bastien a few times, but does not know him well, and she beams a small smirk toward him. “I’d dare to say he’s quite the improvement from the Elephant King.” She rumbles with a knowing look before she asks her question.
And waits.
Watching as the words sink in.
He looks away from the ring to meet her gaze, and Rexanna is nothing short of a soft exterior hiding an inferno below. She wouldn’t blame him if he said no, but she didn’t know who better to do it. Deimos had been there through so much strife, before she had been whisked away with children in tow for promises of a happier life. Deimos had been her constant. And it felt appropriate.
She grins wider when he accepts, with honor, and she grins wider. “I was hoping you’d say yes, you were my only option.” She hums with a smile, a brilliant sparkle to her eye.
The warrior somehow managed not to choke on the drink he was swallowing, but it was a close call as she smirked and uttered the improvement from the Elephant King line. Deimos hadn’t had much interaction with Tembovu, but what he’d experienced and seen with the giant was very little to write home about – storming directly into the Basin, ignoring warnings, until the Reaper arrived, and only then did they sort out the chaos and strife. “I doubt it would take much,” he arched his brow in return, finally finishing the drink he’d nearly lost. Juvenile it might’ve been to insult someone incapable of defending themselves; but Tembovu must’ve known who he was – capable of siring a great many children (not a great talent) and digging himself into deeper holes.
But then there was the wedding – giving her away - different from the past intervals where he permitted her to leave the Basin, when he watched her leave behind snow, mountains, and glaciers, ready to start some new journey with her children and ridiculous husband. She’d traded Kings, and he’d had to come to terms with it. But lives had alternating roots sometimes, beyond those grave, stark patterns, and she’d come back into his second life just as easily as the first. The Thief wasn’t leaving this time, but marking her own place, her own pathways, not guided or tethered by anyone else, power in her ministrations and machinations – exactly where she craved to be. Far be it for him to refuse her.
Only option caused him to snort and roll his eyes; he was no more special than the wind, than the rain, than the specks of dust and soil along the earth, but he’d do this for her, accept a day of contentment and jubilation when winter sunk its claws into them all (and maybe they’d relish in it instead, beasts of the rime and ice). “Let me know if you need anything else,” he proffered, clinking his drink against hers again, capable of creating whatever she required for the wedding day. He’d done the same for Remi and Ronin’s occasion: boxes for rings, braziers to jump over…and though he’d been uncertain about any and all Caido traditions surrounding matrimony, the warrior had no idea what Ascendeds demanded for their celebrations.
She watches him arch his brow at her and she hums a chimed laughter in response. But it fades when he accepts the roll, to be a part of it all instead of her being whisked away. It was the only thing she’d ever wanted, for her newfound family to have a roll in the rest of her life. To have those to lean on instead of being alone like those so many months beneath castle upon castle. And she finds it here in Caido with a sigh of relief.
But she claims he was her only option and she notices the snort and roll of his eyes before another wave of laughter leaves her and she shakes her head. “I meant I didn’t think about anyone else. I wanted it to be you.” She informs him with a wink before she clinks her glass against his and downs the rest of it like a practiced woman before she sets the glass on the table. “But I’ll be in touch!” She announces before standing, letting him think of it how he would. She was far too filled with joy to not want to shout it to the world. But she contains herself, standing and stepping to where he sits, arm outstretched to give his shoulder a light squeeze.
“Thank you, Deimos.” Her voice is softer then but a fanged smile plays on her lips. “We’ll talk again soon.” She gives him a nod before stepping over to Zuriel and extending her hand for the unicorn to sniff in farewell, before she grabs her things and leaves into the dark night.
