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!
Phoebe had a lot on her mind, a lot on her plate, just... a lot. But for the first time in quite awhile she felt good. Things felt manageable, she felt in control - as much as she wasn't. It meant Pim was in a good mood too, the little dragon not so little anymore, his shoulders almost hip height on her now with little silver horns having begun to sprout from the nubs on his head. The pair both wore packs, though Phoebe's was much larger so Pim could still fly. The midwife was clearly dressed in preparation for a trek, sturdy boots, pants and a tunic top, hair braided down her back.
She sought out her dear friend Remi first, hoping that by now things were...less awkward than she had left them. She knocked on the Guildhall doors before stepping in, looking for him without calling out to him in case Aoife was asleep. "Remi?" she said quietly, her steps echoing lightly through the guildhall, followed by the skitter of Pim's claws. Pim, however, had little regard for the squishy little one that resided in these halls, and roared loudly to the lion fellow whose domain this was. "Pim!" Phoebe hissed, sighing and shaking her head. So much for a quiet entrance.
Luckily Aoife was out, as was Ronin, and so Pim's adolescent cries did not cause any trouble. With a slight chuckle, Remi closed the book he'd been pouring over and left one of the upstairs rooms to casually peer over the railing. His curls boyishly disheveled and his smile instant and warm, Remi tilted his head slightly as he looked down at woman and dragon.
"If you have come to see the king, I am afraid he is out." The alchemist chuckled from above. It was still such a strange thing, not only to be married to Ronin but also to have Ronin be a king, that Remi couldn't help but mention it. "It is just me."
Making his way towards the stairs, Remi beamed at Phoebe. "I have not had a chance to thank you for your...ahh, other wedding present." He said with an awkward flush, that he quickly chuckled away. "We thought it too beautiful to use, so it is hanging in Aoife's room."
it's like sunshine and whiskey
Coding base by Sky!
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
Phoebe glanced up as Remi came out of an upstairs room, smiling a little. So Ronin and Aoife were away, it seemed. Good, then Pim's loud nature didn't disrupt anything. "Oh no, I'm here to see the Prince Consort." Phoebe said playfully, dipping Remi a low and well-practiced curtsey, her free hand held delicately to her chest as she did so. She didn't know if Remi actually held any formal titles now, this fledgling monarchy seeming disorganized at best, but she could come up with some believable ones on her own.
Pim didn't bow though - what was with all this bowing anyways? - and merely rubbed his head against a corner on the stone wall. They were quite good for scratching itchy spots.
The blonde smiled as she straightened, clasping her hands in front of her. "I'm glad you like it." She said with a warm smile his way. She was glad to hear her more traditional present was appreciated. Perhaps they could all forget about her awkward blunder, even if she had meant well by it. "I was wondering if you would like to accompany me into the Greatwood? I know you've had more luck making your way around there than I have...and they Fae have been less than helpful in my research of the blight."
"Consort, mm? That makes me sound horribly cheap, I think." The alchemist mused with a wry grin. Seeing her curtsy however made something twist in his chest, and he immediately shook his head with a bright laugh. "If you ever curtsy to me again, by whatever power I might have by being married to the king, I will throw you in prison." He declared with a smile.
The mention of the blight made the alchemist stiffen, his smile halting its progression across his face for just a moment. It was a very weighty subject for Remi who was of course now married to a man dying from it. Did Phoebe know that? He couldn't recall. At once it had seemed like a secret, but now? Remi would happily accept Ronin's anger at having spoken of his weakeness if only it meant he was alive to do so.
"Happily. Let me grab my things." He said. Walking towards a table, the alchemist slipped a notebook already full of worn-pages into his leather page, along with several sticks of charcoal. Anything else he might need he could make on the way, save for the notes he'd already taken.
"Amalia mentioned you were working with Frey on the blight.."
it's like sunshine and whiskey
Coding base by Sky!
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
Phoebe grinned at him as she straightened. "Good thing you're Prince Consort then. You've a price only royalty can afford." she teased. "Pretty soon you'll be dripping in silks and diamonds no doubt, too fancy for your lowly midwife friends." she sighed dramatically, a teasing grin on her face. The thought of him throwing her in prison over a curtsey made her laugh though. Of course Remi would be adverse to formalities. "Alright then, I'll start working on my bow."
But he seemed to clam up as soon as she mentioned the blight, and she wasn't terribly sure why. She hadn't heard about Ronin yet, though she had seen Amalia's note about Safrin. It did add an extra bit of weight to the issue, knowing that Safrin was Ronin and Remi's deity of choice. She waited patiently for him to collect whatever he needed, glancing over at Pim...who had managed to make himself bleed scratching his horns against the wall. "Oh Pim, really?" she sighed, hurrying over to him. She had long since stopped worrying that he was hurting himself when this happened, as it was simply part of his horns growing in - rather like male deer when they shed their velvet. But that didn't mean she wanted him bleeding all over the guildhall.
"Yes, they asked me to research it using the microlens you made me...but it has been slow going." she said, her voice hardening with frustration. She pulled a rag out of Pim's pack and cleaned off the wall, then applied a little ointment to his horns to soothe the itch and prevent infection. "I've had some success with a sulfur treatment slowing the progression of the blight in plants, but that's not much to write home about. I think I've figured out how it is affecting the cells but as far as what it is exactly?" she sighed and shook her head, carefully putting the cleaning rag back in Pim's pack. "Frey said the blight began at a tree called the Mathair. I've been trying to find it to study the plants and animals there...and maybe track down the root cause of all this."
Crinkling his nose, Remi shook his head. " I hope not." He replied earnestly, not that he was particularly worried. King Ronin may be now, diamonds and silks were not really his style. Power could change a man to be sure, but Remi doubted if even a crown could turn his husband into some douche-ruler. Rolling his eyes with a snort, Remi waggled a finger at the midwife. "Don't you dare."
"Sugar will definitely kill him for that." The alchemist noted, nodding towards the blood on the wall. Not that blood was an uncommon sight in the guildhall, but Sugar was more than a little protective of her home.
At the mention of success, Remi perked up for just a moment until Phoebe mentioned that it had only to do with plants. Raising a brow at her choice of words—root cause—and wondering if the pun was intentional, Remi placed his bag over his shoulder and shrugged slightly. "I..mmmm." He said, drifting off as thoughts of Ronin and the symptoms he'd been experiencing took over.
"If only Ianto were around. He would know the way." Remi said, breaking out of his reverie and heading towards the door. "Though I have not seen him in weeks. Have you?"
it's like sunshine and whiskey
Coding base by Sky!
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
Phoebe laughed a little as Remi wrinkled his nose. "I'll let you know if you start turning into a royal jerk." she said with a grin, knowing the pun she made. As he continued on to forbid her from learning to bow she just laughed, deciding she would most definitely learn to if only to tease him on occasion. She had to keep his royal consortyness humble after all.
"Well, he'd deserve it even if he didn't mean it. Apparently growing in horns is a very itchy and bothersome process." she said. Pim shook his head, like a dog shaking water from its fur as the ointments began to calm the irritated flesh around his newly sprouted horns.
Phoebe straightened and followed Remi out of the guildhall. "I haven't seen him, no, and I'm a bit surprised given the number of times I've ventured into the Wood now." she said. But she wasn't too worried. Perhaps he had other things to do - he was a travelling merchant after all. "But Remi...are you okay? You seem...tense." she said, tilting her head to the side to consider him.
"I can only imagine." The alchemist said, offering the dragon a small shrug of camaraderie.
"Mmm. Me as well." Remi said with a sigh. "We...well. After what happened with Ronin, Ianto and I did not leave things on the best terms." The alchemist explained with a sad shrug. As in love as he was with the hunter, a part of his heart would always be with the fox. Though he might not have changed anything, that didn't mean he couldn't lament the way it had all happened just the same.
With a sidelong glance at Phoebe, Remi offered her a small smile as he sighed. "The blight has not just effected the plants." He said in a low tone. "Safrin contracted it when she went into the Spire...and...because she has it.." Remi swallowed, the smile on his cheeks hollow and pained. "...and so Ronin does as well." He finished, feeling the familiar prickle of tears behind his eyes and the sensation of ice in his stomach.
it's like sunshine and whiskey
Coding base by Sky!
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
Pim grumble-growled at Remi, shaking his head again before happily trotting alongside the human pair.
Phoebe frowned a little and reached out to take Remi's hand. "I'm sorry, Remi." she said gently. "That's...hard. I know." She smiled at him a little though, hoping to be able to cheer him up. "But as you always tell me, it will get better with time. Maybe he just needs his space and is keeping himself busy." she suggested. It seemed a likely scenario to her. That was what she did when she got upset after all - she buried herself up to her nose with work, so she was too busy with that to think about how upset she was.
Of course, the upbeat attitude turned on a dime.
The young midwife paled, her expression turning serious. "Oh...oh Remi I didn't know..." she breathed, her brow furrowing. Things really did just get worse and worse, each day the blight went unknown, more people and creatures suffered. If he had let her take his hand, she would squeeze it a bit, looking at him with determination. "We will find out what this is. Between us, and Frey...we will figure out what this blight is and find a way to cure it. There simply is no other option." she said with a little nod. She remembered how depressed her friend had been when Ronin died the first time...she wasn't confident he could bear it again.
Already she was trying to reconsider everything she already knew about the blight, twirling her braid in her hands, having not considered that tying her hair back like this would reveal the top half of the dark hickies that had been left on her neck and were only partially hidden but her tunic collar. "What are his symptoms?"
Remi squeezed her hand back and nodded. "You are definitely right. Space is probably just what he needs. " Chuckling to himself, the alchemist shook his head. "It is me who does not want him to have it, if I am being honest. It is unfair, I know." His shoulders shrugged, the selfish-honesty coming easily to him. That was the whole problem with he and Ianto after all, what the pair wanted had never quite matched up.
Looking down at her with a soft smile, Remi nodded before sweeping his curls out of his face with his free hand. There is simply no other option. Oh how he wanted to believe that. But he knew it wasn't true. There was another option, one that loomed large. It was failure, and it would lead to Ronin's death.
Eyes focused on the ground before them, for now, the alchemist's studious gaze missed his friend's love-bites. "I have them documented.." He mumbled, gesturing to his bag. "Changes in mood, appetite...he seems weaker, not that he would admit to it." Remi's smile was wry, but dark. "His hands tremble and there is a darkness about him." Vaguely waving a hand towards his eyes to indicate that this darkness might just be an artifact of his strange new vision, Remi shrugged.
it's like sunshine and whiskey
Coding base by Sky!
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
"Feelings aren't about fair or unfair they simply are." she said, giving advice she thought Frey might give her in such a situation. "They are still valid, still important, but that doesn't mean you need to act on them either. Just recognize they exist." Sometimes, that was all they could do. There was not solving for them, no good answer to every problem, and they couldn't hold themselves accountable for every problem they encountered - the lesson Frey was constantly trying to beat into her head. It was easier said than done, but the advice was sound all the same.
Phoebe tilted her head to the side, considering quietly as Remi listed his ailments. "I've seen in cells that they seem to replicate themselves, occasionally making exact duplicates of themselves to grow in number. In the plant cells, with the blight, I haven't seen any do his successfully - if they manage it at all they always have blighted bits in them and eventually stop all together. The blight appears to interfere with the part of the cell that creates energy. So...my thought so far is that without energy, the cells can't duplicate, which is ultimately what causes the whole plant to die." she said, talking through her process. Neither she nor Remi were scientifically trained, but they weren't stupid either. If anything seemed illogical, he could point it out she thought. "So...if the same is true in human cells...then I would think that would present as tiredness. If the cells can't behave like they are supposed to, I would think all of those things possible side effects...and with your sight changed, perhaps you are actually seeing that process as the darkness? The blight itself is sort of black and inky." she explained.
Remi raised a brow at the midwife. "Oohhh, well look who is all emotionally mature now." He said with a laugh, nudging her slightly with his hip. She was a far cry now from the girl who could barely talk about having a first kiss without endlessly blushing. Her advice was quite apt as well, and the alchemist found himself nodding at her wisdom, however surprising it might have been.
Phoebe's newfound vocabulary was still a bit confusing, but Remi's mind was clever enough to follow along despite his lack of familiarity. As for his eyes? He didn't need it for some of Ronin's more...obvious symptoms. "He has vomited black occasionally. And sometimes his sweat appears dark as well." Honestly, to the alchemist it didn't seem so much that Ronin was dying, as being taken over by something. Though he wasn't surprised at all that the blight culminated in death, for now at least, it didn't seem as though Ronin was withering away precisely.
"There are plants in the basement of the Spire that are poisonous. I am not sure how it is all connected, but Deimos and I are going to try and eradicate them if we can. They are deadly, but a creature below said that with enough magic of various kinds, we might be able to eliminate them." Chewing his lip and offering Phoebe a thoughtful side-long glance, Remi hummed under his breath.
"You know...the way in certain forests, the trees are all connected, although they appear separate? Do you think the blight is like that? Is it one thing, or many independent ones?" The alchemist just realized that if it wasn't some sort of hive-minded thing, then taking out the plants in the Spire would likely do absolutely nothing for Safrin or Ronin.
it's like sunshine and whiskey
Coding base by Sky!
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
Phoebe huffed, flipping her hair braid from one shoulder to the other. "First of all, it is much easier to give good advice than it is to take it." she said, then smirked at him. "Second of all, you just complimented advice from Frey, more or less. Maybe they aren't so bad after all?" she said. Slowly but surely she would work at Remi's fear of the deity. He didn't have to like Frey or even visit or worship Frey, she just didn't want him being terrified every time she mentioned her god-friend.
Her newfound vocabulary was mostly made up, so he shouldn't feel too bad for being confused by it. Phoebe had no clue what she was looking at most of the time, so she had to develop her own way of explaining it. Her brows furrowed at the new information he provided though. She pulled her notebook off of Pim's back and began making notes about what Remi said. "You know...clearly plant's can't vomit but the blighted ones get these inky sort of boils on the outside of them. Perhaps that is their way of trying to expel it?" That's what vomiting was afterall, the body trying to rid itself of a poison or an illness. She paused then, almost missing a step as she walked. "Though...though it makes me wonder if it is a parasitic borne illness or a poison now..." she muttered, jotting the thought down to return to.
She also made note of the plants Remi mentioned. "If you are able to keep a sample or two without causing yourselves harm, I would be interested to see them." Phoebe said, tapping her chin with the end of her pencil.
Remi's idea about the blight made her pause, head tilting in thought. "Well...it is possible that it has a singular source...and that once one thing is infected it simply continues to spread...Which now that you mention it seems plausible. I haven't seen a single parasite or anything that appears to be the direct cause of the blight, only its signs growing within things. But that is why what we find at the Mathair will prove important. If that is where it started, perhaps we can find the source. Frey seems more concerned with figuring out that first. If we can find it, maybe they can deduce the cure." she explained.
With a grumble, Remi playfully glared at his friend. "They might have good advice, but they nearly forced me into having sex with you the day we met and took away all my feelings for Loren." He said pointedly. Now of course that all seemed a world away, and while Remi wasn't necessarily holding a grudge, he was keeping his respectful distance from the god.
Hearing about the boils, Remi nodded thoughtfully. "It could be. Expelling it however they can, though likely by that stage it is already far too late." He added grimly. Had Phoebe not said anything, Remi very likely would have tried to decimate everything within the Spire that he could. But her suggestion was a good one, and he made a mental note to save Phoebe what he could. "I am sure that I can. "
Twitching his lips, the alchemist shrugged. "Safrin said it only seemed natural. I thought it was like a parasite too, but now I am not sure. " He looked imploringly at his friend, wondering if Frey had said anything to either support or contradict this.
"Mathair." Remi repeated, his eyes narrowing slightly as he tried to search in his memory any mentions of it. "Is it not...just a tree?" He said finally, finding that he couldn't drum up anything of real import about it that he'd heard thus far.
it's like sunshine and whiskey
Coding base by Sky!
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
