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!
In the haze of her addled, entangled mind, within webs of anger, hostility, and acrimony, she remembered a promise she’d made.
Days ago – between infirmary disciples and sickened chambers, trembling hands that hadn’t yet become claws, quivering, shaking multitudes that had yet to spring true talons – to make her way down to the Spire’s basement, along rocks and crag, to snag whatever strange substances were left, to assist in whatever research could remain from poking and plucking at sludge.
She’d awakened to onyx blood on her pillow, funneling down from her nose, stinging the inside of her eyelids; had screamed into her blankets and furs, had cried ink-black tears, had alarmed Fangorn until he was just one more restless, fervent wake in her presence.
Then she lifted her gilded gaze out through the windows, towards the sun, and there was no thought, no processing, no reasoning for the madness creeping, crawling through her movements – limbs working like pistons, all on their own, rampaging out the door with only a bag on her arm. She was still in her nightgown, without shoes, tramping down the lanes towards the blackened monolith as if it were a beacon. Fangorn was at her heels, growling and hissing, and she couldn’t hear his warnings, his beckoning calls, spiraling in her insistence, a promise, a promise, a promise her heart sang while her skull revolted.
And when she came to its ire, to its presence, her feet already raw and red, she must’ve looked no more than a disturbed child, crimson locks like fire, blistering around her shoulders, no fear, no trepidation, nothing, nothing, nothing at all in her being but a slow, simmering, bestial inferno.
help tonight to split its seams
Give the bruises out like gifts
Blood. She smells blood. That tangy, metallic smells raises the Queen’s alarm far more than her powerlust today. Like an animal, her nostrils flare and keen eyes begin to look for traces of it, but all she can find is trampled grass and the occasional dark droplet - more like ink than blood. She knows what the blight is doing to body fluids, she’s heard the description, but seeing it for her own eyes is something else. Thus far she’s really only encountered the blight!personality changes in Ronin, Jigano, and Phoebe - and none of them have left her as concerned as whomever is in front of her.
She would have gone home to sleep, weary from the constant work, but this - this cannot be ignored. Cloaked and hurrying as best she can, Wessex comes upon the little firebrand staring up at the Spire, looking for all the world like someone had kidnapped her and she’d beaten the shit out of them to escape. Wild. Distracted. No, not distracted - focused.
Something isn’t right. Fangorn is distressed. She’s half clothed in the middle of winter. Wessex can’t feel the wind as it bites her pale skin, but she knows that Melly can.
The Queen slowly approaches, a look of genuine concern on her face. With an outstretched hand (to welcome or ward off, who can say?) she calls to the little warrior, “Melita? Melita, what are you doing out here without clothes on?”
it's me and the moon, she says
and i got no trouble with that
cause i am a butterfly and you wouldn't let me die
Normally Wessex’s presence would’ve sobered, toughened up the youth. She would’ve yearned to appear her best, to impress, to try and apply all her methods, all her techniques, all her trainings, so that she looked mightier, stronger, in the Queen’s eyes. The Ascended had taken her under her wing and showed her tactics, invested her time, thought her worthy of something –
But that was gone now, absent from her mind. Instead her skull was filled with convictions and biting, gnawing things, so much so that as she turned towards their royal majesty, there was not much left of Melita to go off of – the golden entanglements of her eyes bright, but with hysteria and madness, a sense of something wrong, otherworldly, not controlled by the body it inhabited. She tilted her head, the blackened blood still dripping from her nose, never brushed off, settling there on skin, staining remnants until it was Stygian against pale, white flesh. The honeybee’s gaze darted towards the outstretched hand, the call to another world, staring at it as if she couldn’t account for its measures or purpose. Her frame shivered involuntarily on a gust of wind, then she plunged forward, raw, red feet sinking deeper into the snow, towards the Spire’s gaping mouth, its open depths, its plunging declarations. “I’m fulfilling a promise.” Her voice was singsong, but almost faraway; as if she were elsewhere, anywhere but in the winter’s threshold. The wind snapped at her nightgown and she continued on, maneuvering towards the basement entrance.
Fangorn pleaded by Wessex’s ankles, uncertain, apprehensive, growling and hissing because he couldn’t explain, couldn’t fathom, couldn’t understand the reaches of what was occurring. The youth’s head snapped back, over her shoulder, ghostly, phantom-like, a wraith in soulless form, barely even tying herself to the air around her. “Did you do this?” She rang, haunting and poignant, not explaining what this could’ve been: the Spire itself, the spread of the blight, the haze of distortion and ruin – Phoebe’s blanket statement about Ascended laying somewhere in the pockets and corners of her brain.
help tonight to split its seams
Give the bruises out like gifts
The black snot dripping from Melita’s nose causes the Queen to recoil ever so slightly. Having heard what happens to the blighted, she nevertheless hadn’t seen it up close and personal before. But then the dark liquid drips again and Wessex can pinpoint it as the source of the smell. Her jaws clench, teeth grinding against each other in an effort to stay calm and collected.
Anyway, who would she rage against? Herself? Her Lady? Ha.
It’s only a moment before Melita rejects her offer, continuing towards the Spire and Wessex is hot on her trail, hugging her cloak close under the weak rays of the Deepfrost sun. A promise? What promise? is on her lips when Fangorn’s worry and agitation instead, compel her to pick the vampire gourd up as she follows their wasp to the basement entrance of the black (black like the blood on her nose, in the color of her eyes), half-collapsed obelisk. He’s tucked into the crook of her elbow, safe and sound for now.
“Do what?” Wessex calls, trying to follow the conversation and clearly unable to. There is no rhyme or reason to it. There is only the drive, and the Wraith will stand witness to it and protect Melita’s shell as best she can.
She was lost in the way all ruined things were, tarnished and beholden to nothing but the onslaught piercing in her mind, scorching through her skin, a singsong obliteration hovering on her lips. If she noticed Wessex’s complete, utter control, she said and thought nothing of it – something in the back of her skull crawling, wanting to hurt, wanting to punish, based on nothing but another girl’s sickened measures and machinations. But there she was, peering into the basement, eyes not really seeing, brain not really thinking, pure utter instinct casting her down into rocky depths, not bothering to ponder over footwear, over the shudders and shivers her body quivered within; humming beneath her breath, songs with no tunes, distances with no melodies. “A promise, a promise,” crooned and exalted, as if sludge were worth something, going down, down, down stairs and rapacious interludes; she might've skipped, if there weren't snow or stones impeding her path.
Fangorn was beside himself, but picked up in Wessex’s safeguarding measures, he breathed some ounce of relief, still calling for the daughter of sand and desert, growling, hissing, incapable of understanding what was happening to her. This wasn’t Melita – but a mirage, a hindrance, a faction of decadence she never would have wanted. His eyes shifted to Wessex’s, eerie, but he couldn’t voice his concerns – a gourd, a pumpkin, no connections, no foundations, no speech.
The Wraith called to her, from above, and a light giggle cursed and coursed its way from Melita’s throat, bubbling and brewing, not even remotely kind, compassionate, or beneficent. They were foul, savage little snippets, as if she’d become some darkly woven, earthen fey, known for their keen notations. “Don’t you know what your actions cause?” Then she slipped further into the darkness, hands sliding along broken walls and fallen columns.
help tonight to split its seams
Give the bruises out like gifts
She follows - is there anything she can do but follow? Down into the Spire, down where she’s never been before, but heard of a group of them going time and time again. Something she was not invited to and had no interest in doing at that time. It wasn’t worth the risk, given her newfound responsibilities and lack of magic.
Trying to close the gap between them, the Wraith picks her way easily over the stone and snow, sunlight still streaming in through the holes, but her footing sure and agile. “A promise? Melita, come back here, you don’t owe anyone anything,” she says loudly, trying to reach through the black haze in the young woman’s mind. But what comes back at her stings, harsher than the accusations of others. Do you know what you’ve done to me? it says, and for the first time, Wessex actually cares if someone dies.
She thinks for a moment about the rose in her cloak pocket but doesn’t stop the downward descent, hell bent on retrieving Melita. “I’m sorry,” she says, more softly than before - hoping that the girl can hear. Hoping that the words mean enough to cut through sludge. Hoping that whatever the Gods have in mind will work.
The wobbling stones and the faulty columns failed to persuade her in ceasing – there was no desisting in her clambering motions, the singsong notions still on her lips, across her teeth, over her tongue, brandishing fire and vitriol in her wake. She would have liked to see this damned thing topple down too – every inch of the Spire laden into dust, the blackened contortions of her mind warped to regard everything and anything as a threat, as an omen, as an ominous, foreboding challenge. The Wraith’s words had little effect, naught stopped her movements now, clinging to sides, sliding over rock and marble, as if she were one of the Naiads, gone and lost their way across human and earthen-made floors. There was a habitual, monstrous dance in her wake, in her otherworldly essence, shattered savagery and flickering bouts of irreverence, missions of devilish proportions, staff in her hands, clattering into the wayward expanse, the riddled, mired contortions of more rubble, more ruin. It was like her heart, like her mind, in shambles, in fragments, in torn, embittered traces. “I keep my promises,” she uttered, loud and strident against monuments and the beckoning unknown, slithering in amongst the flecks of sunlight and shadow, a part of them, every inch of darkness and light.
The softened words from Wessex’s mouth were the last things she ever thought she’d hear. A Melita without the blight would have dulcet regrets and shelled rancor, caught in the tides of forgiveness and despondency – this honeybee girl embellished stings and torment. Did the Queen want her forgiveness? Did the Queen want her to say everything was fine? Did the Queen want her to bow and pretend that naught was altered, changed, or morphed? Should they all go about their merry ways, on pretenses, on stages? “That’s all anyone ever says.” She was quick and swift, at Wessex’s side in haunting, fleeting movements, not caring about her blood-soaked feet, not drawn into the chill, only a persistent, fanged infidel, hackles raised, a petulant, consigned beacon. It had soaked into her irritation, her exasperation her consternation, the weapon across her palms drawn closer, wicked and cold and feral. “But does that make it any better?” Then she swung, no warning except her untamed existence, aiming for the Ascended’s skull – and even if her body could feel no pain, no agony, she hoped it would somehow simmer and sink into senses, into sentiments, so Wessex could understand, so she could fathom, the loss, the madness, the bloom of disaster written across once halcyon pages.
help tonight to split its seams
Give the bruises out like gifts
09-19-2019, 01:51 PM (This post was last modified: 09-19-2019, 01:51 PM by Wessex.)
WESSEX
the wraith
Melita isn’t the only one who keeps her promises; down past the platforms where they fought the earth guardians, down past the walls that saw death and poison, electric-fire, a hundred million bugs, transformations and tulmnhainars - all the things that Wessex had never seen. All the things others had labored and almost died to accomplish and for what? They would destroy the symbol of the Voice’s imprisonment, and Wessex would let them. Sure, tear it down. The Old Gods built it, after all. Their rage towards her Lady (while justified) are oddly misdirected, but you’d never hear Wessex tell anyone that.
It’s the same old persecution story, time after time. Beat someone (or a group down) and then when they retaliate, use it as justification to do it all over again. Until you have a war on their hands.
Maybe the Spire would tumble down on them, here and now. Maybe they would be saved from witnessing whatever will come next to the Hallowed Grounds. And maybe they’ll look on from wherever, and be glad for it.
At least Melita finally comes to her, or so she thinks, when they reach the bottom. Wessex has only just touched the base when the redhead is at her side, heedless of blood and cold and fueled by a black strength usually reserved for her own kind. And then there is only instinctual movement, as the Ascended ducks under the swipe at her head, curling over Fangorn perhaps a little too tightly for his comfort - he has, unfortunately, been forgotten. It is only through habit that the Wraith doesn’t drop him.
And then there’s the next decision: a split second one that has to be made - does she retaliate and try to physically fight Melita, or does she take another path? All Wessex wants to do is sweep the girl’s legs out from underneath her, but the stones are numerous, the ground is hard, and the potential for damage is too great. Someone else, perhaps - she might have tried that with someone else. But not Melita. The little spark is too precious to her. But where there is listening, there is a shred of reason, and so the Wraith, ignorant of the blighted’s desire to destroy the Roses, scuttles back against the wall in her crouch. She fumbles for a moment in her pocket, but manages to pull out the rose and hold it out to her mentee, as if it were some magical charm.
“This will,” the Queen says with conviction - steady and strong as a skin-chilling breeze whips down around them.
Fangorn’s panicked hisses, imploring growls, went virtually unheard; the girl’s sibilance were reserved for Wessex’s dodge, the uncanny maneuvers ensuring her staff has committed to nothing. It was stupid, it was ineffectual, the way her mind wanted to suddenly burn the whole world down, had there was nothing else but the choking, cloaking maelstrom in the back of her throat, down the edges of her spine, reaping the benefits of an insurmountable rage. The only thing the youth managed to accomplish was Wessex’s flight towards the wall, and from her same position, the honeybee child, all sting currently, she picked up a few stones and starting hurling them in the Wraith’s direction, prolonging one another’s agony. Hit, she clenched her jaw and howled inwardly. Bludgeon, she murmured into the intoxicating void. Ruin, she crooned into the venomous debacle, a blighted hope sinking into her lungs and pouring through her soul – vicious and undermining everything Melita had ever stood for.
Her eyes flickered to the rose for an instant, loosening another growl from deep within her chest – more animal than girl, more beast than child. Her head tilted into an uncanny angle, as if studying from all directions and regions, positioning herself in slow, steady, methodical movements (more signs that Melita wasn’t in control; the disease was). A warning grated its way through her teeth, pushing past fangs and irreverence. “An abomination – put it away.” Or maybe she had an opportunity to maul it, to rip and tear the gilded rose apart, thorns and petals and all; one less virtuous source left in this world.
help tonight to split its seams
Give the bruises out like gifts
If the indignity of being backed up against the wall by a girl isn’t enough, Wessex finds herself having to cover her face with her arms in order to avoid the stoning the angry hornet is trying to deliver. And really, that is quite enough.
The Queen’s patience for her blighted mentee suddenly evaporates, her fangs slipping out in both frustration and anger. Is it not enough that she’s here, trying to coax the young woman out of the dangerous winter weather, is it not enough that she’s endured rage from every angle, is it not enough that she takes it, and offers nothing in retaliation? Oh, but we hurt those we love the most, and whether she wants to admit it or not, Melita’s actions cut her and she cannot - will not - take them any more.
And so any warning the redhead gives goes unheeded, cast to the wind that would bring chills to anyone’s skin and yet the two of them stand there and take no notice of it. Something tells Wessex that she needs to try and get Melita to touch the rose, to hold it, but not destroy it, and her own tighten around the fragile stem. Wessex growls back, slipping her lips back to show her teeth in a very predatory, animalistic way of showing dominance. She will make the little firebrand listen if she has to. Her eyes narrow as squats to put Fangorn down, and then stands back up again.
“No.” Defiance. She’s done apologizing. It’s time to fight back. “Touch it nicely and then I’ll take it away.”
Good she thought as the Queen covered her face with her hands. Good, she thought as she ignored the insistence of the rose. Melita didn’t care, not anymore, about how much the world strived and tried: how many times had she done the same? How many moments had it simply not mattered? How many times had it been ineffectual, weak, and worthless? Better to play her part of a monster, of a beast, haunting this damned, stupid tower with all its rumors and iniquities, a little savage, a little feral, and every measure accorded and accounted for in her blinded, blighted haze.
The youth had absolutely no intention of going anywhere near the flower. It represented a multitude of things she couldn’t name – just an ongoing, agonizing pulse of wrong clutching over her seams, bounding into her veins. In her better days, without the range of sickness slinking its way into her bones and flesh, she would’ve heeded the animalistic growl, the blunt, keen warning echoing from the Wraith. She would’ve bowed her head and waited for some sort of lecture (that she likely wouldn’t listen to), would’ve asked for forgiveness or some other form of guidance. This Melita, punctured and brutalized by her own existence, did nothing of the sort – glancing casually at fangs and predatory means of dominance without batting an eye. Instead, she raised her jaw, her gilded gaze emblazoned with an aura, a gesture of defiance, narrowing her own stare, tilting her head, proclaiming sedition with insurrection, incapable of backing away when she should. A pattern, a cycle, a fortitude, a certainty, that at least the old Melita was still in there, enhanced viciousness and audacity aside.
“No,” she echoed, listening to it careen off the walls in her own feral growl. Fangorn hissed and implored; the bond, the connection, didn’t even reflect in her mind, just a shell, just a vessel, of rage and intolerance. She dipped down, eyes never leaving the fellow predator, as she gained more rocks in her palms, fervent, eager, for some other cataclysm. They were at a crossroads - catalysts extending their claws.
help tonight to split its seams
Give the bruises out like gifts
The girl leaves her no choice, then: pushed to her limit, having given all the warning she can, the Wraith removes her emotions from the situation and becomes the weapon she was and is. As Melita crouches down as well, beginning to gather more rocks, Wessex shoots a biopulse her way, intending to disorient the redhead, to make her forget about her missiles and think about her body. Distract her enough to make a move.
Whether or not it works, Wessex doesn’t know - she never does unless her targets react - but she doesn’t hesitate to rush forward anyway, trying to ensnare the firebrand in her arms. Cloak akimbo, she tries to throw it over Melita, to confuse her, to twist her up, and in the melee, thrust the flower into her hands. If this doesn’t work, the Queen will go and leave the blighted to her hissing and mumbling ministrations. But she has to try, she has to show Melita the literally, physically tough love that screams in their shared language, I care about you.
The blight had a heady sensation of simply barreling and bombarding; no thought process, no plotting, no Machiavellian designs, just savagery, just nefariousness, just a beckoning hand into her savage qualities. When Wessex didn’t leave, when she didn’t balk, when she simply maneuvered (quickly, efficiently, and something in Melita’s head rang from the familiarity of it), the youth grabbed hold of her rocks once again, intending to throw, to pummel, to continue her patterns.
The expectations, the volleys, were quickly disengaged when she lost all control (or the semblance, the remains of it) of her frame, a trembling conjecture, disoriented, dizzy, staring at the ground as it swam beneath her. “What?” She managed to mumble, her eyes suddenly rolling; she shook her head, striving to get some instance of reality to curve into her sights.
That didn’t matter either.
Suddenly it was just a wall of fabric in her features, scathing over her figure, and no matter how she reeled, flailed, her arms wild and chaotic, she couldn’t get the garment off, she couldn’t do anything, and she uttered a string of curses, growls, and howls, hissing against the refrains.
The prick of the rose went unnoticed at first, with all the confusion, the bewilderment, the frenetic, bedlam energy searing and seething, Fangorn’s outcries hustling into her ears. A moment later though, Melita stilled, quiet, breathing rushed and unsteady, struggling to understand, to comprehend, what was going on. In her house one moment, and gone the next, beneath cloaks and fixtures, somewhere in a basement, everything cold and worn and stark. Gods, she was tired. Her hands still shook and shuddered, and her knees had long since gave way, sitting on the floor, under all the irreverence and shame. “Wessex?” She called out, a whisper in mounds of mantle, uncertain what she’d done or how far she’d clambered or how wide she’d created a fissure, a rift.
help tonight to split its seams
Give the bruises out like gifts
There is quite a struggle and Wessex finds herself feeling like she’s trying to tame a wild beast, to cow them with darkness and force and make them realize that struggling is futile. The Wraith holds on, even the girl collapses, her arms both supportive and suppressive all at once - until that little sound comes floating towards her - questioning and diminutive and oh, actually like Melita.
“Melita?” she replies in hope, doing her best to whip the cloak off from around the firebrand’s head as quickly as possible - to allow both of them to see. The Queen fiercely searches her mentee’s eyes for any sign of the blackness, the darkness that runs in her veins, mothering hands wiping away black crust and goop if she allows it. There is nothing hard about the Ascended woman now, nothing that screams of the steps she’d just taken to attack the girl, nothing of the soldier they both know. This is all protector, and for a moment, Magrethe sits heavily on Wessex’s tongue, until Fangorn’s sounds draw her back in.
“You’re alright,” she says finally, both as an affirmation to herself and to perhaps reassure the redhead. She’s alright. For now. Hopefully the Queen can get her back to a warm place before the blight returns.
