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!
The walk up the hill to the shrine took longer than usual, a fact that Ronin couldn't deny and yet wouldn't admit to himself. He reached the half column of stones bathed in starlight, spending a few moments to stoke the little fire beneath, to get flames and warmth licking at the night air.
That done, he arranged his offering - a bottle of some of the best wine he thought that Remi had ever made (and if anyone deserved a fucking drink right now it was his goddess, he thought) and a fingerpainting that his daughter had made of the night sky. Above him the stars glittered, one in particular beaming down at him. Smiling weakly, Ronin and shifted to sit down before the fire, pulling one of his knees to his chest.
Behind him, the Hollowed Grounds sprawled sleepily away into the dark. Ronin squeezed his eyes shut, like the place would disappear if he imagined it hard enough.
For a moment finger tips trailed along Ronin's back, from one shoulder to the other. Should Ronin open his eyes, he would find Safrin holding the picture of the stars Aoife had made, her plump fingers having made the most wonderful swirls and impressions of light. "And here I was led to believe artistry was not hereditary." The starlit lady mused, almost more so to herself so soft was her voice. But that was merely the blight talking (or not, as it happened). Out of everyone, Ronin would understand the strength it took simply to speak at times.
Turning her gaze towards him, where once Safrin had been the paradigm of beauty, now she was pale and weary looking. Eyes that once sparkled with the infinities in her grasp were now hollowed and sunken like long forgotten craters on some distant moon.
The touch of fingertips against his back and shoulders had the tension in them releasing without Ronin even having noticed it was there; a smile flickered across his face, and he finally opened his eyes to behold his goddess, as weak and flickering as she was. "Hello, Safrin," he said in a low voice, bowing his head respectfully. Once he might have made a quip about the finger painting, but... he just didn't have it in him.
"...They made me king," he continued quietly instead, rubbing at his forehead with the heel of his hand. "A dying man. I don't... Safrin, I don't know what I'm doing. Everything used to be so clear, so straightforward. But since..." Since he was brought back, he wanted to say. But he didn't want to sound ungrateful, even though he knew the goddess could see his thoughts plain as day.
"Since then, it feels like nothing I do makes any sense."
"Does it need to?" She asks simply, placing the painting down onto the stones where it melds against them; Aoife's masterpiece forever cemented as part of the shrine.
"Make sense, I mean." Safrin adds with a soft shrug. Her fingertips move to softly brush the curve of Ronin's jaw, then slide along the flat of his cheek, her thumbs stroking the swell of bone beneath his eyes. "What would it even mean for things to make sense?"
Unable not to smile as his daughter's painting became a part of the shrine forever, Ronin glanced up as Safrin approached, his eyes closing under her gentle touch. She felt safe, even though they were both dying - even though it was precisely because she was dying that he was suffering the same fate. "It would be nice if it did," he said gently, his smile turning lopsided before he opened his eyes to gaze up at her.
"It would mean doing things, and not doubting them," he murmured. "It would mean believing that I was taking the right course, without wanting to look over my shoulder to check that everything I hold dear is still standing." His brow furrowed and Ronin sighed. "I'm being silly, I know."
08-05-2019, 05:48 PM (This post was last modified: 08-05-2019, 05:48 PM by Safrin.)
the devil is not as black as he is painted
With the beginning of a laugh that seemed to fade away before it could start, the goddess gazed at her Fallen Star. Frowning at Ronin, having heard sentiments very close to those she was hearing now from Jigano, the goddess pulled in a breath. "Is that what you want? To simply keep everyone safe? They will all die eventually, as will you. There are things you might do to prolong it, but I did not bring you back simply so you could cease living your life so that you could simply lay it down for those around you."
And the suggestion he was being silly, Safrin merely nodded in easy agreement. He was. It was part of being mortal after all.
He considered her words, rubbing at the back of his head and gazing up at her as she spoke. "Of course I do," he said slowly. "I died once already to keep them safe - that hasn't changed." He shrugged; right or wrong, it was still true. Though he was no longer the man who had gone to the stars on a goddess's kiss, and they both knew it. Would his feelings change, too, over time?
"Why did you bring me back?" he blurted, unable to help himself, though no sooner did the words leave his lips when he winced and shook his head. "Forgive me, that was impolite. I don't mean to sound ungrateful." He flashed her a weak smile.
"Well, then it seems as though you have your meaning. You wish to be a protector. What's stopping you?" She asked gently, pulling her hands away and softly folding her arms across her chest.
For a moment, Safrin merely regarded Ronin. Her eyes ever enigmatic gave no indication of what she was thinking, her expression neutral. Eventually she did speak, turning her chin upwards to regard the stars. "Yours was a story I wish to see finished. Dying because of a trick that the Voice came up with...That is not how your story ends. And perhaps.." She hadn't with Remi, been vulnerable that is. Told the whole truth. But the Fallen Star was special long before his fall. Perhaps he did deserve to know that.
"..selfishness as well. I have lived eons, Ronin, and for the most part you are all the same. Your motivations, your lives. You live and love, fight and pillage. It is how you are. Rae finds it interesting, but I suppose I don't. Not usually. But you...you are different. Special. Even a death among the stars and free from Mort seemed and illfitting fate. But...it wasn't actually me who brought you back. Even in my heavens, it was still Mort who had to pluck you down. Truly it is he who you owe your thanks...or anger? for this new life."
Because I'm weak and now I'm dying, Ronin wanted to say, and he bit his lip around a wry smile as he realised Safrin would hear it nonetheless. "Nothing, I suppose. Apart from being tired out easily," he said instead, taking a long, deep breath through his nose and letting it out again. A protector, then. That had been his purpose all along, he realised, seeming to make utter sense when it came from Safrin.
Shifting to sit cross-legged, sitting on his hands so that they wouldn't shake, he raised an eyebrow and heard the goddess out. A flush of pink rose in his cheeks, and a starlit glow surrounded him; he couldn't meet her eyes for a second. Special? Different? Unfinished stories? It seemed egotistical to embrace such a thing, but... here he was, he supposed. Sent to the stars and pulled down again.
"I remember," he said. "Mort's mercy, and Ashe's love. I owe all of you everything." He tilted his head back, gazing up at Vanya in the sky as well. "And I promised her I wouldn't waste it. I... I am not angry. Frustrated, is all. The world kept marching on without me, and I feel a little left behind for the moment."
"In time you will be stronger than you ever were." The goddess said in response to unspoken thoughts. "Though the effects of the blight will not cease until the source is found. Though...I have been watching the plants and animals effected. Death may not be what is in store for you." She said, though there was no sugar coating her words. For as much as she cared for Ronin, she cared for the truth as well.
Inhaling, the goddess raised a brow looking surprisingly skeptical and less empathetic than Ronin might have expected. "Is your strength all you are Ronin? You say the world is marching on, but you are simply letting it. You are more than your muscles, more than the effort it takes you to stay awake now. There are other ways of protecting those you love, like being a king for one. "
Ronin teased at his lower lip as she spoke of how strong he would be if he didn't... you know, die from the blight. He rubbed at his eyes. "The source," he echoed. "The Spire gave it to you, so the source seems obvious to me. A friend of mine, Phoebe... she spoke to Frey, who advised it began in the Greatwood with Mathair. And that's where Roana was spat out after jumping into the pillar of light in the Spire..." And round and round they went.
He shrugged his shoulders. "Who else could it be? The barrier fell, and the world got sick." But Safrin had more to say, Ronin arching an eyebrow as he gazed up at her. "You mean I'll live?" he echoed, unable not to sound hopeful.
He was even smiling at that, nodding rather than balking at her frank tone, her questions about how he was choosing to respond to the world. "...I know you are right," he said softly. "And I will do better."
"I only have my suspicions. I can't say with any certain what the blight is or what's causing it. I did get it from being in the Spire...but plants are not all that place holds." She said, her voice suggestive as she gazed up at the stars. "It is not a place I am allowed to be." Safrin added in a whisper, lines of worry and pain etching across her face. Glancing up as Ronin mentioned Frey, her contempt for her counterpart obvious, she merely sighed and shrugged. "I am not sure how much I would trust Frey in this. If anyone knows the cause it is Rae...and if they know, Frey knows." And just as implicitly, if Rae knew, Vi might know as well. That this was all a punishment for her actions related to the barrier was an oppressive cloud in Safrin's mind.
"Mmm." The note was one of discord as the goddess's head tilted slightly. "Not dying is not the same as living. So yes in a sense. Your body will not die, but it won't be you who inhabits it. The plants I have seen...they become something else. Something dark and wild and destructive." Nodding towards the hunter's hands, buried beneath him though they might be, Safrin was well aware of the scabs on his knuckles.
Ronin was unsure what to make of the machinations between the gods and their fellows, but for Rae and Frey to know and not to do anything about it, to allow Safrin to suffer... He wrinkled his nose, unable not to feel a similar contempt for the gods of nature. (And perhaps it was Safrin who put those thoughts in his head, who knew?). "We will find out what else it holds, once those plants are gone," he said decisively, somehow fuelled by what he had learned so far.
But before he could get to his feet, Safrin dropped yet more news upon him, and all the colour drained from Ronin's face. It won't be you that inhabits it. He inhaled sharply, shakily. "No," he said. "No, it can't. That's..." Worse. It was worse than death. Some old fire lit in Ronin's eyes, something that had been sparked once upon a time in Northaven and hadn't quite gone out, even if the world had tried.
"We will cure this," he said. "You, the forest, all of it. I'll do all I can."
"I can't enter a second time. You will be alone if you enter. And weakened as I am, I'm not even sure what good I would be to you from afar, either." Safrin said with a long sigh. Perhaps there were things they could do for the mortals, but for the infected goddess? Well. No one seemed to be to worried about that. Not her fellow barrier-gods, not Vi either. So it seemed anyways.
"Yes." Safrin agreed in a whisper. It would be worse. A monster wearing Ronin's face, the hunter's mind held captive deep in a dark recess. "You always do." She mused, a hand tangling into his dark hair. It was nearly a misnomer after all; Ronin would do all he could, because that was all he could do. Sadly, the redundant platitude meant little to one who had birthed the stars that twinkled above.
