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!
My body is a temple
But I don't believe in God
So knock it down and build me something new
Adam waltzed into the Rathskeller ready to drink himself in a stupor just alive enough to get home. Right up to the bar, leaned on it, took a breath to speak...then...paused. Something (that had a voice that sounded suspiciously like Amalias) made him not want to drink. To take a night off. To let himself just be himself, sober.
He asked for some water and went to sit in the corner, boots up on the table (not all bad habits could go in one day). Coffee curled up next to him, and Adam occasionally tossed him little scraps of meat from the food he'd gotten. Just another evening, really. It was a little terrifying how quickly and easily a routine began.
Though...there were still little surprises. Looking up, he saw a man he recognised from around, whom he had always smiled at. He looked like someone Adam would have hung out with back in his world. Dark make up, clothes that could be described as 'pirate-y'...and a hell of a smart smirk. He thought he might have even gone to the guy's wedding, but he hardly remembered it past the buffet and booze table.
He was alone today, the husband and another other companion not at his side, and Adam figured that he could do with some company. He waved the man over, nodding up at his as he approached. "Hey. Come sit with me. Er...Congrats, right? On the getting married and shit?"
Alone and drinking? Ah, but Ronin was reminded of earlier times. (Simpler, though not necessarily better, what with the pulse of a heartbeat against his fingers). And he supposed he wasn't exactly alone, with the pale dragon curled up around his shoulders. Still, the newly crowned apparent-king was looking forward to enjoying one of the last nights where people didn't treat him any differently, and he had just grabbed his drink when a voice rang out across the way. So much for that then.
Still, glancing up and raising his glass politely to Adam, Ronin headed in the direction of his table and sank down into the free seat there. "Hey, er... I don't know if we've actually met before." He smiled, recognising the man in kind but never recalling a conversation with him. He held out a hand to shake.
"Ronin," he introduced, his smile softening a touch at the congratulations. "Thanks," he said, "the getting married and shit was pretty good, it's true."
My body is a temple
But I don't believe in God
So knock it down and build me something new
Ronin didn't looked super thrilled to be sat with him. Adam had to swallow his offence, remind himself that here in Caido he wasn't the local legend he had totally been at home. The people here just didn't love him as much; he was sure they would in time.
"Good food, at the wedding. Oh, uh, I'm Adam. Pikely." Accepting Ronin's hand and giving it a lazy shake, he pointed with his thumb towards the dragon chewing a stubborn bit of gristle. "And that's Coffee." Coffee did not look up to acknowledge Ronin.
Taking swig of his water as if it was the best beer in the place (he had to keep up appearances), Adam tipped his mug towards Ronin. "You look fantastic, by the way. Love the pants. What d'ya do? Most people around here dress like shit because I guess being a farmer or whatever means you don't have to try."
"Glad you thought so. Personally it used to be the only thing I'd attend a wedding for - until it was mine, of course." Ronin grinned back at Adam and shrugged, unable to blame the man for focusing more on the feast than the celebrations. "Coffee...? Oh, heh. Snap." Lifting his shoulder to nudge the pale reptile around his neck, Ronin reached up to scritch her under the chin. "This is Sugar," he introduced; she opened icy eyes and snorted a cold blast of air towards Adam in greeting.
Tipping his mug back at the other man and sipping at his drink, he raised an eyebrow and glanced down at himself. "Er, thanks," he said, grinning. "Me? I hunt monsters." Not a king. Not him. Nope. No siree. "I mean, sometimes they hunt me. But you get the idea. What do you do?"
My body is a temple
But I don't believe in God
So knock it down and build me something new
"Ha. Yeh. S'only thing I'm ever gonna go to weddings for." Adam said confidently. Marriage had been a one time experiment for him that had gone very wrong. In fact, the only good thing about his own wedding had been the food. Sure, he and Heidi had had a messy, awful divorce, but he often wished he could have the beef pastry appetisers from their party again.
"Oh, shit! Nice. Coffee, meet your new best friend." He gestured for his dragon to approach, Coffee huffing out small, smoke-scented hot breaths in response to Sugar's icy ones.
I hunt monsters was such a cool phrase to slip into casual conversation. Adam made a mental note to try and use it himself sometime. It was kind of true, wasn't it? He'd gone after a minotaur that one time. "Damn, nice. How'd you get into that line of work? You just wake up one morning like 'aw fuck, I wanna go chop off an Ogre's dick today'?
What did he do? Adam took a breath then paused as he realised he didn't have an answer. "I--uh...I...I used to be kinda a big thief, back when I was in my world...Here I just kinda do what's available, you know?" Chuckling awkwardly, he took a drink and changed the subject. "So how'd you get your dragon?"
Ronin gave Sugar another gentle nudge as he shrugged his shoulder, and the dragon flapped her wings and swooped down to settle on the table between them. Snuffling at the air, she inspected Coffee closely; she'd met the pink dragon that the woman sometimes brought to the guildhall, but this was a different one again.
"Hm?" The hunter raised an eyebrow, having been a touch distracted by the two dragons, and laughed softly. "You aren't far wrong, you know. I saw that there were a lot of creatures in the Hollowed Grounds that had a habit of attacking people. So I started a guild, for hunters to group up and take them down."
A small smile tugged at Ronin's lips as Adam admitted to being a (former) thief, and he tipped his glass to him in a toast. "Everyone has a past," he said, as if in consolation. "Oh, Sugar? I found her egg in the Oasis last Deepfrost. Something disturbed the ice under the water, and a clutch floated to surface. Only she survived, though. How about you?"
My body is a temple
But I don't believe in God
So knock it down and build me something new
"Yeah, I've uh...seen that. The first night I got here there was some massive fucking bird on fire outside, though that didn't seem very angry." It really had been a shock, going from the brown and dull walls of his home city to the sight of a burning phoenix in the town square, and the image stuck in his head even almost a year later. "And I've fought a minotaur by this point."
Just finding an egg sounded wonderfully calm compared to how Adam had found his dragon and he raised his eyebrows at the little ice dragon - was she softer than Coffee? Perhaps she was unsuited for tough life out in the world if she had been domesticated from birth.
"Coffee...I found the little bastard trying to find these big worms by the Oasis. I shot them for him. Didn't I? Yes, I did." This last part was addressed to Coffee, Adam scritching the top of his head. "Since then, he hasn't left me alone. Waits outside when I go to piss."
For a moment he just sat and smiled at his small scaly friend, glad to have a constant companion in the often harsh world. "I do wish we could explore more around here. Find some goddamn roads so I can start working again."
"Yeah, some of the creatures seem benevolent. But... well. It's difficult to wait around and check that's going to be the case, especially when a lot of them are the 'bite first, ask questions later' type." His dragon was the same, actually, but Sugar seemed to respect Adam a little more for having a dragon-friend of his own. She snuffled around Ronin's drink, purposely breathing a fine layer of ice onto it (hahah!) before moving to investigate the rest of the table. If Adam wasn't careful, she'd freeze his glass of water up entirely too.
"A minotaur?" Ronin raised his eyebrows, impressed. "Where did you find one of those?" And then there was the story of Coffee's arrival into the other man's life, Ronin grinning as he listened. "Friend for life, huh? And we can explore a little more now, at least. The Greatwood isn't as off limits as before. Just a shame about those storms, else you might be a free bird by now."
My body is a temple
But I don't believe in God
So knock it down and build me something new
"Are you that type too?" Adam asked, with a smirk on his face, though he wasn't actually sure what point he was trying to make. If he had been a man of strong moral conviction (which he really was not, his highest standards of decency being not hurting people too much, just take all their shit and injure if necessary) he might have been making a point about the nature of Ronin's work, but as it was he really just wanted something smart sounding to say.
He had not gone looking for the Minotaur, particularly, and now Adam wondered if he had missed a chance to sell the other horn. "Oh, Ludo asked me to go down into the ruins, and it was down there. Had no hope against these babies, though." Adam quickly drew his guns and pretended to blow smoke off one of them, as if this motion would mean anything to Ronin.
"I've heard about those storms...are they really that bad? Can't we just get some coats and put up with a bit of rain?"
Ronin chuckled at Adam's question and shrugged his shoulders. "Sometimes, but aren't we all?" he said. "I like to think I try to find a balance between it. There are occasions where biting first and asking questions later can save lives, you know." He grinned to the other man. A grin that grew even more impressed at hearing that Adam had come across the minotaur by request of a god, the hunter settling in his seat and taking another sip of his drink.
Adam's 'babies' meant absolutely nothing to Ronin, though they certainly piqued his curiosity. "What do they do?" he asked. "Some kind of magical weapon?"
Drumming his fingers against the table, he could only shake his head as talk turned to the storms. "Were that it was just a bit of rain. The storms are magical in nature - tornadoes, earthquakes, lightning storms... I've heard too that there are illusions to throw you off the right trail, and that the landscape even seems to change as you travel."
My body is a temple
But I don't believe in God
So knock it down and build me something new
Adam tilted his head like he agreed, though really he was always hesitant to shoot unless he actually feared for his life (or a barrier was there just asking to be shot, sorry Lucas). Sure, he'd get his guns out plenty of times, but to actually shoot..? That was rather rare. Even when he had been robbing highways, he had only usually shot into the air as a warning or at carriage wheels.
"I guess you could say they're magical in a way." He smiled, holding out the gun to show Ronin. "It shoots out bullets, uh, these things--" Opening the chamber he slid out a bullet and held it in the palm of his hand. "--really fast, and it can kill someone in one hit if you aim it right. They were pretty normal back where I was from." Putting the bullet back in and rolling the chamber back in with a flick of his wrist, Adam sat back again.
Ronin's description of the storms sounded more like a challenge to Adam rather than anything else. "...Huh. So do we know why they're there? One of the Gods not want us to go that way?"
Raising a brow, a boyish curiosity on his face that Ronin could barely remember these days, the hunter examined the gun as Adam showed it to him, explained its purpose and the bullets within the chamber. "Like an automatic slingshot," he said, hoping the explanation wasn't too awkward or doing the weapon a disservice. He nodded, giving the guns the respect they merited and moving to scritch Sugar under the chin as he also sat back in his chair again.
"The storms... I think they are there to stop the Voice from getting any further out from the Hollowed Grounds," he said slowly; while only speculation, it would certainly make sense. "But then again maybe they have always been there? We wouldn't have known, behind the barrier..."
Changing tack suddenly, Ronin shot Adam a smile. "I don't suppose you have a deck of cards?"
My body is a temple
But I don't believe in God
So knock it down and build me something new
"Yeah, kinda! Just...imagine a slingshot thats a lot stronger and makes a loud bang." Once, he might have been offended to hear his guns described so, but now he was just happy to hear someone sort of getting the concept.
A lot of people seemed to hate this Voice person. Adam didn't really get how someone so disliked wasn't already dead, what with the amount of strong and powerful people about. In his world you didn't last long when you were that strongly hated; was she so strong no-one could dream to hurt her? Ludo had certainly seemed uncomfortable at the idea. "I kinda wanna meet this Voice lady. She's pretty fucking infamous, huh?"
Ronin asked for cards suddenly and Adam grinned, reached down for his bag. "As it happens, I do, but they're a bit grubby. Lotta bars like this." Pulling out a tattered, cloth-lined box, he put it on the table and pulled out a set of uneven cards, each painted crudely. They were not fancy at all, but he'd bought them years ago and now couldn't bring himself to throw them out. "Why do you ask?"
"Ah, so definitely not a stealth weapon." Ronin grinned. "I'll keep my ear sharp for any sound of it, then." If he had known he really didn't want to be around such a thing when it went off (or into people), perhaps Ronin would have changed his mind. He was, however, too curious to be wary at this point. Kicking his heel absently against his chair, the hunter wrinkled his nose as Adam mentioned meeting the Voice, shaking his head gently.
"Be careful if you do," he said. "She is... well. She's the goddess of the Ascended, and the reason that the barrier existed," he explained, guessing Adam for an Outlander by his questions alone. "Infamous is definitely a good word for her."
Oh but then there were cards, Ronin's blue eyes lighting up, a matching grin on his face as Adam showed the deck. "Because I haven't had a good game of cards in literally years, and you have become my new hero of the hour. Want to play? Game of your choice."
