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!
This evening wasn’t ignited for weaponry checks, for staff inspections, or for billowing discussions about upcoming Long Night preparations. Instead, it was for routine, for habits formed deep in the cluster of caves, mountains, and valleys, when he’d been savage predilection and glorified violence, a designated pattern of nefarious qualities and enigmatic disasters. He’d guarded there, in the Basin, beneath its brilliant lights and aurora shards, a wraith, a phantom, taking to the wintry expanse with its chilling, frigid endeavors, with its haunting exploits, with its powerful fundamentals, and orchestrating them as a haunting machine, a broken, dispatched weapon.
Here though, he had no territory to protect, no citizens to secure, no adversaries to conquer, destroy, and remove. It was only the rose nearby, tucked in the conglomeration of rocks and shoreline, precious and a quandary in its own right, his frame, figure, and mind indebted to its efforts, to its survival, without a reason or motivation behind it. As if compelled, drawn to its thorns, to its petals, he hovered nearby, tucked in a tree, his blue eyes narrowed, a predator’s, avian complexion, absolute fortitude and certainty in his role. He was a defender – intending to launch from the branch with outstretched talons, with ferocious intervals, if the merest chance of another blighted individual loomed nearby. Even now, after the last planting disaster at the Spire, he kept a piece of a broken, thorned stalk in his clutches, tucked into his grasp as he blended into surroundings, as he forged guardianship of a flower in the middle of midnight oils and frigid, unwavering chills – alive and irreverent, waiting, waiting, waiting.
It’s this thought that has her following him, along with the anger that has returned at the sight of those ghastly roses. She’s returned back to normal, whatever this normal was. The blight within her writhes, turns black sludge from her beak and drips from her crimson eyes. She looks like a monster, and she feels like one too.
And she’s been following him for awhile.
He perches in a tree, and yet she still can’t get over the idea that he’s attuned now too. And for a moment, she lets the fury of it writhe within her as she remains a great deal away from him. He didn’t tell her, didn’t think it was worth something for her to know. Didn’t care enough to. And where once upon a time, she’s sure he would have told her, they would have enjoyed the idea of flying together and scouting from the skies, all she can think of is wishing to pluck the feathers from his wings. To show him her darkness she’s tried to hard to get away from.
But she’s a monster, and always has been.
On silent trembling wings, she lifts from the branches she’s hidden in, aimed directly for the target in the trees with black and gold feathers. Aimed directly to take him out, pluck, destroy, to make him pay. She gives nothing of her arrival, and as she nears the Sword, she extends her talons, aiming for tearing and destruction.
KIADA
Kiada has a large X scar on the right side of her neck.
No permission needed for power play!
Feel free to use magic/force on Kiada, without killing her <3
Becoming Attuned hadn’t been a secret – just one of the many things he didn’t invoke or shape into the atmosphere, spread amongst the fathoms of news and gossip circulating through day by day. He kept himself tethered and lined, an assemblage of reticence even amidst the pride, the same as always, never stoking or stroking an ego. The only one who knew was Amalia, because the baker had waited for his presence to drift down on clouds and dust – only the day after everything had spiraled, fettered, and twisted apart, cycling back into destruction, demolition, and mayhem, friends torn asunder. What would his alterations have mattered, in the grand scheme of things, in the ongoing dilemmas, in the turns and revolutions of blighted friends and chained nuances? What would it showcase? What could it call forth? So he’d gone about his duty, tended to plants and flowers, watched as cherished brethren altered further and further into a demonic wake.
He’d watched the Harpy, from a distance, all but shattered against Remi’s manticore emblems and banners. He’d called to her, and it didn’t do a damn thing.
Because he couldn’t accomplish anything.
But the beast could guard, could protect, could uphold some sacred vow emblazoned in his chest, compelled, instigated, invoked into these series of movements. He waited in the darkness, senses plucked and gathered in his sights, and only had the briefest second to hear a quiet descent –
A flash of talons, aiming for him, him, him.
And he knew those claws, those munitions, felt it in his hesitation, in his abrupt, jerky movements, not the soldier now, but an eagle confused, muddled, puzzled, perplexed as the conditions of pestilence severed and sizzled. Kiada, he called out to her in one keen bellow from their forged connections, enough. He swerved to the right, wings spread out, descending in a feral plummet, uncertain about how or why or when, but the boundaries of his nefarious heart were cracking, and he couldn’t fathom, couldn’t understand, the measures of her hate, the ferocity of her savagery, when they’d never been to such blows. What had he done to become just another victim in her plaguing bouts?
You are nothing the world hissed again.
He would mock and he would tease, but he’d also protect her with his life. Something about these moments carved far deeper than others; her weaponry rankled over his plumage and pierced into flesh. He didn’t scream or screech out, but continued his dive, hissing away at the searing pain glimpsing over his back. His talons still clutched the stalk of thorns.
Maybe, he considered. It had seemed to work for them at the Spire, and he twisted back around, striving to come from behind her presence, intending to puncture, to pierce with nettles – and not orchestrating the same brutality he faced.
Oh he hears her, it’s evident in the way he slips from the branches, still unused to the form he finds himself in. No longer the wall of a man, but a lithe graceful predator of the skies. At least Kiada has that advantage. Her wingspan is larger, her body is bigger, and she’s a beast of a creature meant for breaking bones rather than sweeping fish from lakes and rivers.
Only she’s never used it against those she loves.
Instead, the blight doesn’t care. The blight sees him as a means of spreading the roses, of giving her body back to her, and she’s pissed. She almost caws happily when she hears his booming voice though their bond, a demand. Ah, but he’s not in the position to make demands.
And instead of any words coming from her side of the bond, all she sends is dark, blustering laughter toward him. Enough? Never. It was never going to be enough. For all that she has suffered in her life, she needs to take it out. And she has a target painted here as her taking grasp and pull, lifting feathers and tearing flesh. It sends a thrum of happiness within her at the sensation.
But he twists, and he has the advantage of his smaller form to attack her. But training with Jigano had taught her a thing or two, and when he shifts back with the thorns in his talons, she dives through the brambles and branches, coming away with pine stuck to the blighted bits of her beak and her chest. And she hopes her weight and gravity gives her enough of a distance between them before she circles to take him head on in the clearing.
It’s never enough, Deimos. She puts it simply. Her voice almost mocking, dark, tainted, so unlike her as her large wings beat against the winds. Oh, she wouldn’t let him stick that thorn in her until she said what she wished to. What am I worth to you? Am I worth knowing about this secret? Am I worth enough to be a part of anything you do? You and Amalia run off to fight for spires and wars and you leave me back home. Never involved. She mocks.
It isn’t really her, deep down, but the blight within her knows where to strike hard.
I told you I needed and wanted a purpose. But... I may have just found it. She snickers, diving again for him.
KIADA
Kiada has a large X scar on the right side of her neck.
No permission needed for power play!
Feel free to use magic/force on Kiada, without killing her <3
Maybe he deserved it; the bounding course of mocking laughter. The jeers and taunts scorched and reeled, desolate and forsaken, and the beast had found himself somehow returned to those days where he was a useless, tattered shell, bent and broken, snagged and bleeding, existing with nothing to show for it. No matter what he’d done, the patterns and cycles had come back to haunt him, always another edge to their knives, to their daggers. Why hadn’t you done more? a blur on the horizon. Why didn’t you save everyone? A piercing blade to his heart, an unraveling in his chest that had nothing to do with the blood staining the tawny surfaces of plumage he’d been proud to display for mere, strangled, strained seconds. It cursed him now, much as she did, and the weight of everything else punctured at his shoulders, at the lines of wings, at things he’d strived for and carved into so desperately. His eyes focused on harpy lines and conjectures, but he couldn’t shake away the echoes, the boundaries she segmented, ridiculed, beating, beating, beating, ominous, motions and movements he’d heard before, in different world, in different layers, in different alterations – but the gestures, the results, the anguish all the same. It blinded and bound him, deliberately not hanging his head and descending, understanding the nuances, the strife, of the blight’s edges; but the kernels and granules of truth had simpered and slithered out, given no restriction, granted freedom in its hate and discontent.
Perhaps this was what he was after anything and everything: furtive and hiding himself away from the world, isolating, forsaking –
He understood what it meant to be ineffectual and ruined; but he’d never thought of Kiada in such a form. He’d wanted to protect. He’d wanted to defend. He’d wanted to wrap all of his cherished things in armor and chainmail and somehow presume they’d never be annihilated, lacerated, or punctured again; but it wasn’t how any kingdom worked.
He didn’t know she would’ve wanted to go to the Spire. He hadn’t asked. For all his intentions at keeping her safe and guarded, he’d restricted, he’d defied, he’d mired her purpose. It was the opposite of what he sought, but there were too many contradictions lined in its brow and onslaught, in the torture and terror. Could he have witnessed her, potentially dying there in the Spire’s basement, lost to poison, to vitriol, to vehemence? Wasn’t it better that he sink into the fires, into the drowning, overwhelming, overbearing tidal waves, than any of them?
Some part of him wondered if he should just let her pluck him out of the skies and let it end. Another contortion to him tried to drown out the noise, the pain, the melancholy.
She dove, but he was faster, faster, faster, even with the wounds; a smaller form, answering her challenge with silence – because no matter what he said it wouldn’t have mattered, it wouldn’t have bludgeoned past the pestilence, would’ve given more fodder for the fury.
At least this way, Deimos knew where he stood – paled in comparison to anything and everything – specks of dust and shards of yesteryear. He rose on the wind, ascending, doubling back, intending to hover and harpoon above her, talons and thorns angling down, down, down along her spine.
Silence. Though was she really expecting anything else?
Another mocking laugh is sent through the attuned bond, full of lacerating and punctuating venom behind it. Back to the brooding king, huh? She huffs back. He may have been protecting her, but there was a difference in the creatures mind between protecting and containing. And she was done being contained, done with the endless you have nothing to contribute. Because she does, she has everything to contribute to a cause worth fighting in.
The cause right now is to fight back against her oppressor, even if it’s entirely wrong. The blight within her doesn’t care.
Still, she manages to miss him, swooping and diving through the tree tops as she finds enjoyment in the chase – his blood still on her sharp talons, and if she could grin with her blackened beak, she would have. Nothing to say? I fought hard for you and the Basin, to grow our numbers when I was ten years old. And you rewarded me for it, and for what? For me to leave, you to die, and Kaos to come and destroy what was left of the world after it all? Her words grow sharper, deeper, harsher the more she thinks about it.
It doesn’t matter anymore, does it? I’ll always be that young child to you. I’ll never be enough to not need protection. I can protect myself you know, I have the fucking scars to prove it. Where it was once playful and sharp, now it cuts her just as deep, and the flame and fury within her brims to the surface threatening to spill over – a volcano waiting to erupt. And she begins to get sloppy. I want to do something. Something to stop thinking about Ru’in and gods and monsters. She grits her beak as she sends the thoughts down like wind through an open doorway. Hollow and cold. I want to be the monster now. She admits with nothing short of frigid delight.
Her flight slows just enough for her thoughts to spiral, and for her to lose visual on the Sword – until it’s too late, until the thorns have left his talons like tiny missiles, four of them hitting her in the spine and burrowing beneath the plumes she bears. And all that flame and fury is replaced by a small amount of relief, enough relief to realize what she’s done, and she freezes. She begins to dive toward the snow covered ground below, falling and falling and unable to stop until she hits the ground hard with a thud into the icy earth below. He should be able to feel the shift in the bond, where venom and darkness had spiraled down the pathway, now nothing but sorrow and fear lay between them.
KIADA
Kiada has a large X scar on the right side of her neck.
No permission needed for power play!
Feel free to use magic/force on Kiada, without killing her <3
The brooding king, the silent throne-keeper, the icy scepter: keeping it all together in his stoic, reticent interludes because otherwise he’d crack, fissure, and fray, returning to the numbed contortions, to the days where he would slip behind enemies and unravel throats. He could’ve said a thousand things, but none of them would’ve mattered, weighted and overwhelming, only to be devoured and consumed by the madness flowing through her. Weren’t they truths, after all? Weren’t they tangible, corporeal things, the moments and intervals he strived to avoid each and every day, the haunting layers and lacquer, the instances of barbed shards – she knew exactly where to hurt, where to maim, where to torture. And though he wouldn’t give the acrimony, the torture, the noose a voice, the vicious venom was enough to slowly erode into barbarity and defeat.
The lines were blurred and choking, cloaking, as they flew in a hunting, carnivorous rapacity. The blood on his spine flowed and trickled down onto the ground, cascading droplets of ichor and anguish, reverberations of his hushed suffering. The Reaper, the Sword, knew she’d fought hard, had recognized it from day one, had sought to behold it in the stretch of those winter worlds – then she departed with her mother, and he died, and everything clattered and crashed. Wasn’t she the one who had admittedly consigned herself with the false god? How was this his fault? Or was it more torture, because he wasn’t there, because his last breath had been lost in the channels of snow and ice, beneath soaking rain, because his heartbeats no longer existed, and the plains of his presence had been vanquished? Did she believe he would’ve done it all over again, to be consumed by his own damned magic, to be heralded straight back into hell before he could do anything for them?
Wanting to do something; chants of maddened convictions, beyond Ru’in, beyond gods and monsters and becoming the savage – but they were all the same now, living in and amongst twisted barbarity, and he yearned to proclaim that he’d been trying to do things too. That they hadn’t mattered. That they’d been immaterial, meaningless, flickerings of success only to be rankled into paltry, trifle moments.
He’d wanted to protect everyone – not just her, not just Amalia, not just those riddled with pestilence.
Not enough, not enough, not enough, his feral, stiletto anthem, a knife in his heart, a dagger in her echoes.
Even now, when the thorns rankled into her hide, he bore the weight of the action, hurting her to save her. For a moment, he merely hovered above her, wings flapping, blood spilling, everything aching, hurting, crushing, until she began to fall. He plummeted with her, a diving stretch of muscles, sinew, flesh, bone, feathers, and plumes, striving to get to the ground before her, to descend recklessly in hopes of catching; turning and shifting and lifting his arms so the earth didn’t meet her so wickedly. Even then, he failed, wounds hampering his speed, her form a loud thud into the ice.
He could feel the darkness shifting away, an asphyxiating mechanism over his throat, along his mind, crawling and curling until it lingered no more; replaced by despair, by terror. Perhaps she thought he’d return the favor, slink into the barbarity, into the cruelty, finish and rip her apart. Were she an enemy, an adversary, he wouldn’t done just that – shown absolutely no mercy in the frayed strands and filaments, ensuring ferocity was unleashed, owed, indebted in the torturous decibels.
But he had no anger for her. No rage. No vexation. No vehemence. It was just quiet misery, a sort of wretchedness peeling away in more than lacerations and scars – a reopening of stitches and seams he once thought closed, tucked away, hidden. Kiada, he spoke into their bond, a heavy word now, a proclamation of exhaustion, of fatigue, too world-weary as he landed.
She plummets, falling to the ice and snow like a meteor, like a falling star, leaving trails of black blood seeping through the thorn pricks. And when she hits the snow piles beneath, there’s a small dull sound of a crack, a muffled landing amid the feathers and snow. But she lands, wings splayed, snow and ice kicked up to cover her form while her wings tremble uncontrollably. She’s there, back, but she doesn’t know what to say. Doesn’t know what she can say as the realization of her words come over her like a crashing wave.
How she didn’t mean any of it.
How sorry she was for uttering it.
She hopes the blight disappears soon, hopes it gets cured, because she doesn’t know how much more she can take of hurting the ones she loves and cares for. Doesn’t know how many times she can say sorry before it stops having meaning. Doesn’t know what she can do to change it, to make it better.
And she digs herself in deeper into the frigid snow, burying her face into it with her beak while he lands and strays near her. And his voice that reaches her causes her to turn her head away from him, still in the snow. Ashamed, broken, terrified, pain. His words are weighted with much of the same, and she can’t bear it. But she can’t say she’s sorry yet, can’t say it because she knows it’s all she could say. So instead, she grits her beak in the snow and closes her scarlet eyes tight. I didn’t mean any of it. Exhausted, weary words that leave her to him, filled with sorrow and agony where it had just been ice and venom. You should leave before I hurt you more.
It almost comes out in a sob, ashamed. She doesn’t want to do this, doesn’t want any part of it. And yet? She has done it. She can’t take it back, but she can try to prevent the worst of it.
KIADA
Kiada has a large X scar on the right side of her neck.
No permission needed for power play!
Feel free to use magic/force on Kiada, without killing her <3
There was familiarity to succumbing to pain amongst the ice; a home, a shelter, a sanctum in its embittered glory and anguish, the side, the spin of despair, a despondent outset crawling, slithering, out of snow and ash. Their rancorous edges were cast in feathers and long-lost fury now, drenched in the outset of the cold, the chill, the madness; and he simply stood there, ineffectual paragon of protection, who could nothing at all. She burrowed into the powder and his talons clutched into its soul, longing for days that weren’t so tired, that weren’t so scarce, that weren’t so desperate and destitute, his eyes containing ghosts, maneuvering away from her to glance at the night, at the evening spoils, at the damnation sparking and sizzling around them. Then he hung his head, not upright, glancing down at ridges and lines, at the stalk in his grasp, at the riddling of thorns, at safety being an immeasurable designation. The Sword caught her slightest movement, away from him, and the shame clutched at his chest, a far deeper wound than the ones he already bore; a restless sigh clinging through his lungs, exhaling the void, the abyss, aching for it to leave, to depart –
But her words wrapped around his skull and perhaps they hurt more. I didn’t mean any of it coiled throughout his soul, but there were no apologies, no regrets; and Deimos understood he earned this semblance of hatred and vitriol from the very beginning, simply because he’d left out monumental moments, because he’d thought about protection over her fire, her fuel, her invocations, because somewhere along the way he’d strangled her plans, her motivations, without ever realizing it.
Did he become angry, enraged, and ferocious when they left him? Did he snap and assault? Siege and unravel?
No – but his disappointment, his silence, had always spoken far more volumes.
The thought spiraled, his eyes narrowing into the rime – not her fault, not her mother’s, just age-old, primordial beckons of scythes and claws, lacerations that never truly closed. I did not try to keep it from you, pervaded along their connection, attuned elements and shards of things he thought would always be there – but he’d been too stupid, too daft, too ineffectual, constantly along the lines of ignorance. His alterations hadn’t been a secret – poor timing at best, a day before everything clustered into one giant mess, and there’d been roses to plant, to save, and people beloved to try and proffer deliverance. She’d been too far gone to have ever heard his excitement or pride. He would’ve been damned no matter which option he took – and out of habit, out of routine, he simply said nothing at all.
Then she told him to depart, and too tenacious, too obstinate, too defiant, too irreverent in the shade of power and condemnation, he remained. Would she try and mark him again? What was one more wound? One more blow?
He didn’t leave, because it was all anyone had ever done to him.
“I did not try to keep it from you.” He tells her, and she believes him so deeply that her reaction to it hurts more than she originally thought. T causes her to bury her face, feathers, blight, and all deeper into the snow. I know. She admits, though her words come through broken and sad, as though she’s swallowing hard against the sorrow and shame that overcomes her. She doesn’t want to hurt him, has never wanted to hurt him. And she hates the blight for what it’s done to her, what it’s done for her relationships.
She hates all of it.
And she hates it more when he doesn’t leave. Her feathers tremble, as she rises from the snow, tucking a wing into her side as she lets her black flecked eyes drift toward him. The blight within me doesn’t care. She tells him quietly, continuing on from what she’s said previously. It’s… like I’m not in control. It wants to destroy, to devour, and I’m helpless. It’s not an excuse, but an attempt at understanding.
It isn’t her.
How many times can she say that to herself and still believe it?
I’m so sorry. This makes apology three, so far. How many more would she have to go? Does it still even mean anything?
KIADA
Kiada has a large X scar on the right side of her neck.
No permission needed for power play!
Feel free to use magic/force on Kiada, without killing her <3
He wondered, briefly, in the weighted mass of all their broken, bent things, if the blight merely gave them an edge to say what they truly felt. If, in its destruction, in the height of its dominion, it scalded and peeled back the layers of emotions trapping everything else: allowed them to sputter, permitted them to ignite. Even if she knew his silence had just been another portion of his stoic, reticent enterprise, if days on this earth had done him well and good but he couldn’t erase those moments of absolute silence, never revealing too much of himself, seditious in his surrender of layers and lacquer, it still seemed to matter. It still seemed to shatter. It still remained there, poised and aloft, and his avian head tilted, his talons inclined forward, his back seethed with the tormented movement; pondering if she wanted to know the tale or if it would even muster a notion, a fathom now. If it was too late. If the pestilence and poison seeping through her lungs, her bones, her skin, had done more than just ignite and unfurl, but divide too, and she, like so many before her, merely wanted nothing to do with him.
He understood. He always understood. The monster had seen them go, disappear into smoke, into mist, into bands of snow. The Reaper hadn’t called them back. Just tucked himself further and further away from any moral, mortal ground, stamping down the masses with iron, with blood, with knives and twisted, gnarled fathoms; as much the demon they’d believed him to be.
Deimos inched closer. You have never been helpless, he tried, he strived, he dared to impart, eyes on her sunken shell, on the remnants of the Harpy; of the things they’d tried so hard to put back together again, and how the earth managed to rip them into pieces, into portions. It was as if they’d been deigned and designated to unravel despite power, despite bonds, despite devotion and convictions. Of all those suffering, blighted, he’d never thought of her to be so consumed – eternally strong, a firebrand, capable of unfurling even the most ferocious of savages. Perhaps he’d underestimated everyone and everything. Maybe he was a fool, to constantly believe in others, to dare to crawl and slither out of his shadows, out of his hollowed shell. Life had been easier (sadder, lonelier, forsaken, desperately abandoned) when he was alone. When no one cared. When no one gave a damn.
Kiada’s apology curled in their bond, and he stared at it, at its saddened, despondent, cumbersome molecules, at its sighs, at its gnarled indications. Why couldn’t they stop this? What had caused the suffering? Why was it so prolonged? A thousand theories spiraled and none of them amounted to anything. A gruff intonation rumbled through him, frustration and ire and desperation too, a command, a demand, not harsh, but there, yesteryears blending, blurring in his mind. Get up.
He inches closer, and she has half a mind to bury herself into the snow again – to get away before the feelings return, before the thorns that still pierce her spine begin to fade, before she causes him more pain he doesn’t deserve. Even if he thinks somewhere deep within him he does, she could never imagine it. She loved him, so deeply, that she holds nothing but regret within her for what she’s done. Unantagonized, other than the rose, there’s nothing within her that would ever want to do such a thing.
But here she is.
He tells her she’s never been helpless, and she wants to laugh at it. If she wasn’t helpless, she’d have control over what she’s doing. But she doesn’t. She’s incapable of separating herself and the blight, and it cuts at her heart with every passing moment. Instead, she shrinks into herself. She can feel the tether between them, and a part of her wants to sob with the feeling of it all. If anyone should slip away into the night, into the darkness of hiding and hibernation, of keeping people at a distance, it was her.
Because everyone around her left or died anyway. That was her plague, that was her curse. Ru’in, Kianzo, her father, her siblings, Deimos, Romina, Rixen, Khairi. A tally in her mind, a tally for those she’d failed. How many more does she need to add to the list? Amalia, probably, from the attack at the Spire. Remi, too. She was a mess, a monster, afflicted or not. And she needed to leave until it’s over.
And suddenly in the bond she feels the frustration and desperation. Briefly, before the command. A demand. And she has half the mind to want to tell him no, to fight back while she’s lucid enough to. To tell him she’s a lost cause – to let her go.
To stop holding onto her.
Instead, she swallows the words, biting down hard on her beak as she stands, folding her other wing in tight – head lowered as she lets her once bright crimson gaze, now flecked with black and darkness, settle on him. “What?” She snaps back at him. She’s not going back, she won’t put more people in danger because of her inability to be a decent human being. Nobody should have to wield thorns around them just to feel safe. The logical option is her disappearance.
She won’t let him take her back.
KIADA
Kiada has a large X scar on the right side of her neck.
No permission needed for power play!
Feel free to use magic/force on Kiada, without killing her <3
He didn’t let go – not this time, not after all the other moments and seconds and intervals where he allowed others to cast themselves out of his orbit. They left for warmer fields. They departed for better worlds not punctured and pierced with greed, with avarice, somewhere they could grow beneath delight and radiance instead of caustic strife. They fled for lives away from him, the mountains, the ice, the snow – and he permitted them all. He never begged. He never pleaded. His iron detachment, his forged steel, pushed aside all his sentiments, all the reeling, disappointing, scathing ventures, and simply stood, unearthed and unholy, within the chilling winds and the desolate void, watching them escape his might, his goals, his ambitions, his protection, his cold, dark erosion. Wasn’t there a reason so many turned into the mist, into the falls, into the sand? Wasn’t it he that was lacking, pushing them aside, conforming, consigning himself to oblivion? While the Reaper had stayed in those twisted, gnarled valleys, in those bitter portions of rime, the rest of them blossomed, found their roots elsewhere, scattered away from dust and dirges.
Then he died, and it was the only time he’d ever abandoned them.
But she stood, rancorous edges plucked, irritated, by his feral demand; but he was no king, not now, not again, no lord on his throne, no crown sliding down his devilish inclinations. Instead of hastening back to the skies once she was on her feet, instead of declaring some monstrosity, instead of barreling down into the feats of their weaknesses and strife, he opened up his wings and went to draw them around her. Not the same as human forms and figures: she was larger than him now, and the pain shooting through his spine and shoulders ensured his capacity was shortened, a hug, an embrace, as best he could manage under the blighted, pestilent circumstances. It wasn’t for long, but he wanted her to feel the strength rampaging through them, the might, the tenacity, and the obstinance curled and fanned in his blood – plumes of ferocity she shared. I just wanted you to know you were still strong.
Black ringed eyes watch him warily as she stands, exhausted, sad, incapable of controlling her emotions and feelings. And it’s destroying her internally. It’s painful and demoralizing, to know that she could lose control so easily. Because to her? The blight feels like nothing, nothing other than mood swings and black everything, and perhaps that’s what upsets her the most. She feels fine, capable, powerful beneath it all, but she can’t control it. And she watches Deimos warily, his eagle form smaller than hers, but still there – he’s still there, and despite her snap, he moves toward her.
She has an idea to move away from him, until his wings spread and he reaches for her with the tender tips of feathers, embracing her as tight as these forms can allow. And her eyes shutter, body trembling as she buries her face into his chest feathers, leaving black inky streaks behind. And when his voice, when the comfort reaches her through the bond, she wants to break then and there. She is not strong, she’s weak and broken, awful and terrible. A monster, out for blood, out for pain and destruction. And she hates it.
He pulls away, and she pulls back to look at him with her streaked eyes. Thank you. She tells him through what feels like and sounds like a cross between sob and uncertainty. She knows he wouldn’t lie to her, but in this form, in what she’s just done to him, she can’t imagine why he stays. But it means everything to her. Everything. She didn’t realize how much she needed to hear it, but she’s glad he said it.
She might not feel like it, but one day… One day she might.
KIADA
Kiada has a large X scar on the right side of her neck.
No permission needed for power play!
Feel free to use magic/force on Kiada, without killing her <3
