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!
It's just another difference that he has to deal with, and while Clemente had sworn years ago to never have kids - a drawn face, shaking hands, distant gaze, the rumble of his own stomach, the ache of loneliness and forced maturity - it's a disappointment that only deepens his frown though he says nothing. Though Rexanna doesn't hesitate to assure him that she will explain everything, Clem's head ducks and his fingers spasm uncertainly around her palm at the word 'home'.
There is no such thing. A romanticized notion at best. You are born, you live - in structures, under the sky, beneath the ground, it doesn't matter - and then you die. Home meant connections, relationships, love, and those are just fancy words for garrote wire that forms a noose around your unsuspecting neck. He can feel the cold of it against his skin as she squeezes his hand back, staring down at their joined fingers like they're a death sentence. Bearing witness to his own downfall.
There is nothing but the crunch of their feet upon the snow from that moment. Until manmade light, its glow cast feebly out against the grasping curtain of darkness, catches his gaze and lifts it from his feet. The following announcement doesn't matter much to him, too busy taking in the appearance of the abode she has brought him to. It's far sturdier than he's used to, a house instead of a crumbling apartment complex that checks every violation off like a to-do list. Habitually his eyes glance down the empty street, checking for watchful eyes. But they are the only nocturnal beings this night, and he is not necessarily breaking in. When the door swings wide he steps in slowly, body still tense as he takes in the entryway. Then he turns uselessly towards Rexanna, unsure what to do.
"I can't pay you back for this," Clem finally blurts, panic setting in. People always want something. Always. He could have haggled with her in his homeland, used his meager savings or collected valuables to pay her back for a day of rest. But here he has nothing but his crumbling attire and his foul mouth, and neither of those are useful to her. Rexanna had already denied any interest in his body, and that leaves him at her mercy.
She leads him back to the home, where once before she Ascended, she had planted flowers for the gods after spring had begun. Where she had planned her wedding. Where so many memories had happened, and now it stood there almost collecting dust – quiet and soft and gentle despite the creaking of the wood beneath the weight of the snow on its rooftops. She finds she misses it to an extent, but she doesn’t comment on it. Not until she closes the door behind the two of them and he blurts out what seems like a fear.
She pauses by the door, turning to look at him when he looks to her, unable to figure out what to say, but knowing the feeling all too well. She doesn’t expect payment, doesn’t want it. She wants him safe, despite knowing nothing about him. He’s young and the maternal instinct that still sits within her has been drawn to him, like a moth to a flame. And with how he’s reacted so far, it seems that might be all he wants too – a figure, someone to help, someone to care about him. And she can do that. She wants to do that.
So all she does is shrug her shoulders before she moves toward the coat rack, slipping off her furs and jacket to hang, leaving her in a blouse of sorts. Short sleeved and revealing of the pale arms and pale brand along her collarbone. “I don’t need payment.” She tells him softly, moving past him toward the kitchen for something familiar. “The Ascended numbers are small… We’re like a family. And people drop in here all the time, but rarely like us. I just want you to be safe. Consider yourself a part of this family.” She tells him, pouring a glass of water, before she turns to him and hands it to him, a fanged smile on her face.
“Besides, someone has to show you the ropes around here.”
Watching her shrug off her outer layers only increases his panic, arms coming to wrap around his gangly body as if to conceal it from her sapphire gaze. He's not much to look at, but what does that matter to the carnal side of things? Clem can't take her at her word, it's the greatest mistake any person could ever make. But his eyes, wraithlike and gauzy, find the mark upon her neck and stares blatantly at it. It reminds him of the brands that gang members have, tattoo needles unable to pierce their tough skin. Oh god, is that what she is?!
Before the panic has time to set in her soft voice is touching his ears once more, slowing the pounding of his heart. Clemente still doesn't believe her. Yes there are charitable people in the world, but trusting in them too quickly is just a death sentence. Cruelty loves to wrap itself in the fleece of kindness. It makes the eventual pain so much worse for the sting of betrayal that accompanies it.
As she speaks further he frowns contemplatively. Perhaps there was some truth to her words, if the Ascended were as small in number as she proclaimed, he could understand the idea of sticking together. That, at least, is something Clem understands. The same way the street girls would huddle in a shared apartment, limbs askew and cuddled up for warmth on the dirty floor. The way other homeless children and adults would create camps; still far enough from each other for privacy and stoicism, but close enough to remember they weren't alone.
Clem takes the water without really thinking about it, sipping it carefully as he listens to her. "I...okay, if you say so," he finally relents, holding the glass close to his chest as he sips at it periodically to calm himself down. Only when it's empty does he offer it tentatively to Rexanna, feeling wrongfooted and mean in the face of her stubborn kindness. "Can you tell me about us? And where we are?" An olive branch. A gesture of kindness in return, or at least a willingness to listen and perhaps trust. Just for a little bit.
While he might be young, he’s still taller than she is. And she has to look up to him as she hands him the glass, not knowing what might be running through his mind. But he knows it’s not easy, when she was on the run and fell here, she was certain it was some kind of magical trap – to think that she had made it out, when in reality she was still there. But she wasn’t, she was here, and better for it. She doesn’t know how long it will take him, but she hopes she can make it as easy of a transition as possible.
Her sapphire eyes watch as he finishes the glass of water, before she takes the glass back and fills it up again, bringing it over to the couch – soft fleece blankets sit upon it, ones she has yet to pack away and bring. And simply for his comfort, she chooses the seat opposite of the couch, a comfortable chair, but one to face him at as she tells him about the place he’s found himself in, and about the Ascended.
“Well, for starters. This is Caido, and you’re in the Hollowed Grounds. There was a barrier here, it’s recently fallen, based around the Spire which is where you came in.” She tries to go slowly in case he has questions. “Our Goddess, the Voice, was trapped within the Spire. The barrier was built to keep her and us inside, but the land was dying. A year ago a few other Outlanders killed the demon guarding it and after, a few of us Ascended went in and freed her… And the barrier fell.” She explains, pausing again as she sits back and crosses a leg over her other one.
“As for us, we’re not… Really human.” She says lightly, unsure how to put it. “We don’t need to eat, to drink, to do anything of that. Not even sleep. We can rest, sure, but sleeping is unnecessary, as is breathing. We don’t feel physical pain, nor do we bleed true blood.” She tilts her head as she looks back to him, a serious look crossing her face. “The most important thing is that we do not go out in the sunlight, not until you're older.” It’s almost a motherly tone, of concern, of boundaries set. She's newly Ascended, so she's in the same boat as he is when it comes to the sunlight. But she doesn't tell him this, she keeps it to herself for the moment.
At least he hasn't fully burned this bridge she is offering him. Perhaps a little singed, but still functional. Clemente follows her at a sedate, ambling pace, hunched awkwardly. His height is one of his least favorite physical attributes. It draws too much attention, gives the sense of intimidation or aggression, and at sixteen he's not trained enough for the attention that brings. 'Trained'. As if learning to throw punches to stay alive fell under such a prestigious title.
He follows Rexanna to the living room, hands reaching greedily for the blankets as he makes himself into the smallest cocoon he can in the corner of the couch. Watching her from his little nest and settling in. He misses the sensitivity of his skin more than anything, but at least it means he doesn't feel the sharp ache of cold anymore. That's a bonus in his book.
What follows is a veritable deluge of information that nearly spins his head right off his shoulders. Clem tries hard to focus, to soak it all in and devote it to memory, but he just has so many questions already. Their kind are so similar (though he probably shouldn't separate the two anymore considering he was now one of them) and yet so drastically different in other ways. Only when she ends on a firm, motherly warning does he glance away from her, breaking the intense stare he had been focusing upon her. Sheepish perhaps at her maternal concern. Or overwhelmed to have it placed upon him for the first time in many, many years.
Fiddling with the blankets he clears his throat, ready to talk more than he has with any stranger in a long while. "Okay so we have a Goddess? Like, an actual one? You've gotta be kidding me." Sure they'd had minor magic back home, but that didn't mean they had literal gods. What the hell?
"We don't even drink blood? That's what we did. We had like...donor programs and sy-uh...symee-whatever, relationships with the humans. And the blood helped our organs run. So we don't have any of that?" Clem wouldn't even be able to bleed? Well...it was kinda nice, but the idea of some other fluid was kinda gross. And not going out in the daytime, while a habit of his with his lifestyle, still really sucked. He would deny pouting to his dying day, but his lip definitely stuck out. "Where are the rest of us? Do the others like us?" There had been small factions of prejudiced humans, ones who produced and distributed Ether which had killed his mother, but on the whole they had a pleasant symbiotic relationship with each other. Clem desperately needed to know if that was the case here, if he was at risk of being taken advantage of or hurt like his mother had been.
There’s a small smile that peeks on the corner of her lips as she watches him cocoon himself with the blankets, glad that he has found some kind of semblance of comfort despite the confusion of everything else that’s happened. And of course, she expects him to grow confused with the amount of information she’s divulging onto him. So she settles back, with that deluge of information, waiting for the questions to rise up. At first, she wonders what the first one might be – and when he questions about the goddess, she nods with a fanged grin. “We do. She made me into an Ascended.” She tells him easily.
But then he mentions the blood, and programs where he was from before that helped sustain him, and her brows furrow slightly in a silent question. She’s never heard of anything like it, but she’s also never been around people like them before Caido. And she shakes her head. “We can, we can take a power from the other races if we do.” She says lightly, tilting her head. “But no, we don’t really need it to survive. We can go to the new god shrines and refuel, in a sense.” The way she says it makes it seem as though she’ll show him – which she will, it’s necessary.
“We’re around, though we mostly remain low to the ground. Our Queen, however, is Ascended.” She pauses with a light smile before it fades. “The others… They do, but there’s been a sickness in the woods that has spread to the ground and people, that we somehow caused. Our King has been effected, but we’ve all been planting roses to try and combat it. Something the Old Gods are having us do… But they don’t particularly care for our kind too much, so we’re doing what we can.” She hums thoughtfully, a bit sadly. “It’s why we’re laying low, just in case.” She informs him. It’s better he knows now, before something terrible happened. “But no need to worry, we will be fine.” She says softly, tenderly.
Okaaaaaayy. Well. Guess the whole goddess thing wasn't a joke. That's...kinda creepy. Kinda cool too, but Clem isn't used to his life being so interesting. It will certainly take some adjusting, coming to terms with the fact that he's now stuck in a land with literal deities. "Why did you ask to change?" he asks next, more concerned with that than the weird, too-big notion of gods. Rexanna's motivations are closer to home. Easier to understand. Though they both seem to regard each other with some persistent confusion over their oddly warped parallel lives.
It's weird, the idea of not even needing blood for nourishment purposes. "Then why do we need to refuel? Does it like, I 'unno, evaporate in us? If it's already there and we aren't bleeding it out, why do we need to go to the gods?" Because wow he certainly does not want to do that.
Clemente has been judged and cast away as useless too many times in the past. He doesn't need the point driven home by a literal God that he's worthless.
They'd probably just be mad that he came through as an Ascended as a useless kid to muck up their ranks.
"Queen? That's pretty cool," he admits before he can bite his tongue, eyes a little starry at the idea of some cool sword-wielding monarch. The only kind he knows, from old stories and movies. Of course the excitement only lasts until the revelation that right now, their kind aren't exactly welcomed. Clem sinks deeper into the blankets, and though he can't feel it physically, his skin feels like it's crawling. He has been running and hiding for so long, how much longer does he have to fight just to survive?
Rexanna's soft words are like fleece, and he can't help the tiny smile that wobbles on his lips. She is how Mom used to be. Kind, gentle, benevolent. How Mom should have always been. And he knows he's weak to it, but he can't help how he warms up to her slowly. Even so, Clemente is more than aware of the plague of his own presence, and his smile soon falls, fangs biting away at his already abused lip. "I can leave tomorrow so they don't have a reason to poke around ya," he offers quietly. Clem would never want to endanger someone else by drawing attention to them, not because he was simply existing and they happened to be unlucky enough to exist near him in turn.
He asks why she changed, and it’s a moment where she has to decide just how honest she’s going to be with him. But he’s young, and she’s lived here for a whole year, and while she’s not sure what he’s been through, she imagines he needs to know what kind of world he’s walked into. “Because I wanted to be stronger and better.” She pauses, a small frown forming on her lips. “Magic users are called Abandoned, because we’ve been abandoned by the old gods. And I came through the portal with magic, already abandoned to begin with.” A small tilt of her head as she gazes at him. “And our previous Queen was a family of magic users, and her rules were strict. My husband, at the time, had been imprisoned, and I went to go set him free by bargaining with her. So I had to work for her, from that. And after, she tried to arrange a marriage between me and one of the family members when I was already in a relationship. So I told her no, and she locked me in the room. I broke out through the bathroom, grabbed Bastien, and he took me to the Voice where I asked to Ascend.” She says softly.
Because nobody would mess with her now, she’s made certain of that.
Her eyes drift from him to inspect her hand, the rings adorned on her finger. “He Ascended previously, almost a year ago now. And we weren’t even sure it would work… I was Abandoned. The only other ones were Accepted, the normal humans. But it did, and I’m here as both.” Her eyes lift to look at him with a small smile. “I guess you could say I’m very disliked by the old gods.” Despite not having even gone to see what they thought of it. She’s sure she’ll be smited on sight. “But the Voice welcomed me. And in order to Ascend, I had to give up all my ties back to home. So this,” she pauses to gesture to the world around them, not just the room, “is my home now.” There’s a brief moment where she contemplates the next question, uncertain the reason why herself. “Well, our insides aren’t the same as they used to be. You won’t need to use the bathroom, or eat, or drink. Instead, I imagine we just… burn off what fluid we have within. Though I’m not really sure how it works.” She shrugs.
But he comments on Wessex being Queen, and she smiles. The Wraith is a lot like what he’s likely imagining, and it causes a bright smile to cross her face. “You’ll meet her, I’m sure.” She hums thoughtfully. “People call her the Wraith.” She adds, if it helps his imagination. She doesn’t know what people call her, that they call her the Penumbra. Nobody has said it to her face, yet.
But soon enough, she watches as he begins to grow aware of it all, as she tells him they are outnumbered and disliked, and despite the sorrow to his voice she snorts. “No, Clemente, it’s fine. You can stay as long as you like.” It’s an honest answer. “I have friends in high places, and people know me around here. Nobody’s going to come for me, for us.” She tells him, bright, cheerful, all smiles. Because she knows that if they do, with ill intent, they will pay for it. Much like Wessex had done for her, accepting her with open arms into the little band of Ascendeds, she's doing the same. With a bit more of a motherly touch.
At first it's a little weird to hear Rexanna's entire backstory in one fell swoop. Like...kinda an invasion of privacy y'know? But it's also a little soothing. Knowing Rexanna trusts him with her past, one that definitely doesn't sound easy, melts a little of the ice around his heart. The part of him that had grown up angry, violent, and hurt is proud of her for refusing to be locked down and sold off like a piece of cattle. Clem respects that in her. In anyone. The will and fight to survive in a world that seeks to stop you.
"She sounds like a bitch," he grumbles, careless of his manners. They were useless things anyway. Then he eyes her sideways, and if he were capable of blushing anymore it would turn his entire face tomato red. Expressive as his face is, it's still blatantly obvious. "Is...is that why ya can't have kids? Cuz uh...guys can't um..." holy shit why is it so hard to figure out how to word this in an elegant way? "...get it up?"
Nailed it.
Aaaannd moving on from that awkward conversation...
The idea of people having titles boggles his mind, and Clem is already completely convinced that he loves this Queen of theirs if she's that badass. "I can't wait," he whispers vehemently almost to himself, eager for the day when he gets to inevitably shove his foot in his mouth in front of the Queen. It's going to be glorious and worth every shred of embarrassment.
Rexanna's comfort is meaningful, but he can't help but still doubt her. There's always danger. But...he supposes he can stay for a little while. Get back up on his feet. She has seemed trustworthy so far, so he nods tentatively. "If you say so," he mumbles, fidgeting with the blankets and drawing them tighter. Glances up at her from his little nest. "What am I supposed to do now? I just...every day was trying to stay alive, I don't know what to do now." Rest was a foreign concept. Surely he had to make himself useful to earn his keep somehow?
Oh, it’s not her entire story. Just a snip of the last couple of seasons. She’s lived a long, full life so far, which much more to go. That’s only one chapter. But she still smiles to him, head tilting lightly as the information settles once more. And when he speaks, she actually laughs, a bright cheerful sound like the chime of a bell as she sits back comfortably. “Yes. She was.” She snorts, eyes softening, lidded heavily as she looks back to him and he glances sideways at her.
His next question could almost turn her red too as he says it, and she lets the smile remain on her face despite it. “Essentially yeah… But, our bites do a similar feeling.” She shrugs, before she focuses on him a bit, seeking out the boyish features of him. “How old are you?” She asks suddenly, realizing that she should likely know before telling him anything else. If he’s too young, well, it would be awkward to talk about the birds and the bees, so to speak.
But on the other hand, evidently, he’s already slept around a bit.
She passes over the information easily, like shutting the pages of a book and not willing to pick it back up until a later date. A much later date. And she focuses on him again as he almost seems to grow excited about the mention of Wessex. She’ll have to bring him to meet her at some point, to see how it ends up. She’ll have to take him to meet many people, she decides. The Voice, Wessex, Bastien, the list goes on and on.
His movement distracts her from her own thoughts as she focuses on him again. “Well, that’s the hard part. When I came through, I was sure it was a trap of some sort. But here I am, a year later, and things are going relatively well… So now is when I’ve started actually doing things. Some people adjust faster, others take longer. You can stay here however long you need to, but in the mean time just try to stay out of trouble.” She tells him with a wink, leaning forward slightly before she grabs herself a blanket and wraps it around her arms, her neck and brand on display still.
“You can help in the Settlement, sometimes the naturals will ask for help. Longnight is coming up, which will be… Rough, but you’ll have me and Bastien there. And the other Ascendeds. There's no currency here, just bartering and what not.” She shrugs, fully imagining to keep him as safe as possible.
Okay so clearly cursing is fine. Sweet. Clem wouldn't know what to do if he had to give that up. It's like, 90% of his vocabulary. Mostly because the poor kid could barely read but y'know. Semantics. And other words that he doesn't know the meaning of.
Eesh, age stuff. Clemente looks down awkwardly and shrugs a shoulder. "It got hard to keep track after Mom died and I was on the streets...I think I'm sixteen though." Birthdays didn't matter much when you couldn't keep track of the days, only watching the seasons go by. Eventually he had started marking the years by the firework displays at the beginning of each new one. It had helped, but it wasn't a solution. He still didn't know when his birthday was. Keeping the information about the bite tucked away, he gives a subdued sigh of relief at the notion that he won't be forced into sex again, but to be fair you didn't have to be able to achieve an erection for the types of acts he'd had to force his body into.
It's easier to focus on her words, on the way they sound, instead of the nightmares that prickle hot behind his eyes. Clem does deign to scoff playfully, warmed up enough to give her a fanged, mischievous grin that lights up his entire face like he should never wear any other expression. "What's the fun in that?" Trouble was his middle name after all. If he didn't find it first, it always found him.
"But don't they sleep at night?" he asks with a frown, face scrunching up in annoyance at the idea of being separated from the general populace all the time. Hopefully there were some night owls around who wouldn't mind entertaining an annoying little vampire. "And what's LongNight? Can I help?" It's a little too revealing, how he keeps offering it, but he cherishes the feeling of being needed. It's the closest he can get to feeling loved.
For a moment she almost feels so terrible for him, hearing about his mother dying. It almost doesn’t register when he tells her his age, but she nods to him regardless. “Sixteen it is, then.” She gives him a small smile and a nod, as though that would be all they’d need to know. It’s still young, but not quite as young as she had originally thought. But that, they can work with.
She rubs her hands along her arms slowly beneath the blanket, while her eyes drift back to him as she tells him to stay out of trouble, and she finds the look on his face to be a mix of both amusing and adorable, giving him a fanged smile in response. “Not much fun, to be honest.” She retorts back, a slight smirk crossing the corner of her lip before she laughs. “But just try to be safe, it’s hard out there.” She says lightly, not sure how different it was compared to his old home. But it would certainly take some adjusting.
And when he asks if they sleep at night, she shrugs lightly. “Some do, some don’t. Everyone has their own schedule around here.” She gives him an encouraging smile. Especially for those that knew the Ascended, who worked with them. Their schedules tended to lean a bit more toward the dark. “And besides, you can be indoors and be fine.” She adds after a moment.
But then he asks what Longnight is, and she lets her gaze drift from him once more as she looks toward the windows of the home – windows she had to patch up last year. “Longnight is what it sounds like. An entire week of no sunlight, no daylight, no nothing. Just dark, the darkest it’ll get. And creatures roam the streets.” Her eyes land back on him as a frown finds her face. “It’s dangerous. Many people died last year. That Luxere we saw in the woods on the way here, the darkness I told you it’s antlers ward off, it’s them – the creatures.” She explains before inhaling lightly. “And you can help. We’ll be helping prepare people for it, for wherever they’re staying.” She says softly.
He's grateful that she doesn't poke and prod more than necessary. Maybe in time he'll tell her his story, if she cares to know it. But today is too soon. Not when his world still feels so close, when his trust in Rexanna is still so feeble. Instead he nods to her words and moves on. He'd rather not dwell on his age, or the fact that apparently in this world he won't get any older. That's a freak-out he's gonna schedule for later, his calendar is kinda booked right now.
Clem blows a little raspberry at her when she tries to warn him about the dangers. "I'm sure it's a lot more dangerous than the streets, what with literal gods runnin' around. I'll try to be careful, but I'll go crazy in here otherwise. Can't even remember the last time I was in a house for more than two days," he comments, looking around the internal structure of the house with a curious eye. From what he'd seen of the crumbling Sanctuary when Rexanna brought them here, maybe it won't be so hard to keep a roof over his head now.
Small mercies.
Groaning exaggeratedly, he throws his head back against the couch. "Boring!" he declares loudly to the ceiling. Turns his head listlessly and fixes Rexanna with a cheshire cat grin. "We should make tunnel systems!" he declares in an excited strain of his voice, sitting up and gesturing his arms wide in childish glee, sending the blankets off in various directions. "Like moles! We could just pop up and be anywhere!" Eugh, but that would be a lot of digging. But hey, there's magic here. Maybe it could be done?
Of course the fun can't last forever, and Clemente settles down reluctantly at the explanation of LongNight. Though he remains unconvinced about the trustworthiness of the Luxere, it's a slight relief to know that something is looking out for them during that time. He scuffs a foot against the floorboards, suddenly intimidated. Monsters were just people, where he came from. This? This is a lot worse. "Okay," he murmurs. "How can I help then?" She hadn't exactly answered, and Clem desperately needed directions. Instructions. He was used to being on the move every day, there was no time to try and recapture the experience of being a child.
Rexanna isn’t one to push people to talk if they don’t want to. She has her own boundaries set, and she imagines that whomever she meets will tell her their own boundaries over time as well. Perhaps even open up after a while, but she’s never pressured them. She hopes it speaks volumes for the type of person she is – fiercely protective, loyal, strong. And she listens to him when he blows a small raspberry as she warns him against the dangers, though a smile lifts the corners of her lips.
“You don’t have to stay in the house, just don’t go running toward the monsters in the streets.” She winks to him, giving him her own form of boundaries. If she’s supposed to be protecting him, an entirely personal decision, she’d rather it be easier than harder – hoping not to find him squished upon the ground by another strange and unique creature of Caido like she almost had been. She’s only known the boy for what? A few hours? And already she’s grown attached.
And she can’t help but to laugh lightly at the comment he makes, the Cheshire grin sent her way. “You would like the Underground.” She comments, a dark brow raised in a silent question as if to egg him on. She hasn’t been in the Underground much, but there’s plenty of surprises among the Ruins, and people too for that matter.
Soon, though, the boy settles as she speaks of Longnight, and she listens to his own question. “Well, we need to gather something called Snow Moss, to put in the flooring. There’s a few places where everyone is gathering for it – the Launceleyn Manor for one. I think that might be a good place for you to be, to help out should anyone need it.” She says thoughtfully before shrugging. “But in the meantime, we’re gathering food and things we might need when the sun disappears.”
