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!
After the monster had tried to trick them in the Rathskellar, Loren had gone on high alert. Unfortunately, he was afraid that he'd been the person most fooled by the monsters. No more. He wouldn't make the same mistake twice. While he was still worried about how he might react in another similar situations, he wasn’t going to trust his instincts. Instead, he’d trust his head and cold logic.
It might get people killed, but it would likely save more lives in the end. If that made him heartless, calculating, and cruel, so be it. Thankfully, there was always more work to be done, which would take his mind off the darkness inside and outside; as he’d mentioned to Wessex, now that the monsters knew about the panel, and threatened to break through it somehow, they needed to secure it with more mundane means. So he’d found a leftover wooden plank and some nails. Next, he made two braces with his creation magic to hold the bar in place, with small holes for the nails. Now, he was standing in front of the door, arms raised to hold the brackets in place while he used his telekinesis to incredibly slowly drill the nails into the wall. If he hadn’t been worried about making noise, he would’ve hammered them in.
However, sound attracted monsters, and they were desperately trying to avoid that. Not that they could avoid it, but he was trying not to make it easier on the monsters.
She’s making the rounds, doing the things, trying not to look like there’s a fucking stormcloud over her head and she thinks more than half the people in here are going to get them killed, or are overly cautious. It’s a fine line, right? Thirty-nine LongNights have made her senses about these things probably a little better than these Outlanders. And it’s nothing in particular that’s turned her on the warpath, it’s just, you know, a life and death week.
If only they’d listen. If only, if only.
“What are you doing/” she asks Loren as she comes up behind him, silent feet on packed dirt. Her tone is more weary than sharp, more resigned than on the attack. With her arms crossed over her chest, the Queen is standing in the middle of the tunnel and watching him do something that will likely not work. The Monsters know they’re there, the back entrance isn’t guarded by the luxere, and eventually something bad will happen.
10-20-2019, 12:43 AM (This post was last modified: 10-20-2019, 12:51 AM by Loren.)
Love mends even the broken parts
What he was doing was fucking securing the door with something more than the magic that Wessex was trusting to keep the monsters at bay. Now the monsters knew about it, and had threatened, quite ominously to find someone or something with a heartbeat and open it. He wasn't trusting the magic anymore, so was trying to secure the entrance with some more. Which he’d told her he would do. His nerves were already quite frayed, and so he was barely keeping a grip on his temper. It was only the fact that she sounded tired and not critical that prevented him from snapping at her.
”I thought we should have a more mundane way of keeping this door shut, so that even if they do get through the heartbeat panel, the door doesn’t just open.” This contraption wouldn’t be sufficient but he had no way of knowing that. Without pausing, he continued to drill the nails in. They were almost secure, and when they were he’d add the plank. All they had to do was lift it to open the door. Simple but effective.
“Ok. Fine. Obvious.” She makes no move to help, as she doesn’t have any magic to help with. Instead, Wessex leans against a wall and raises her hands in a half ‘fuck you’ and half ‘what the fuck do I do?’ gesture behind his back. “What I meant was, you’re running yourself into the ground, Loren. I need you to rest. Sleep. Get Phoebe to make you a sleeping thing if you have to.”
What she’s studiously not talking about is the lack of Roana, the report she never got about the kids, the fact that he seems to think she’s a shit Queen, and yet has voiced very few (perhaps only one) concern to her. He’s inconsistent in what he chooses to say and do and when he chooses to listen to her. And she needs him to be consistent, or get his bleeding-heart out of the way.
With a final mental twist, the nails were firmly embedded. Letting go of the brackets, Loren bent to pick up the plank and slide it into place. Only then did he turn to face Wessex. He probably should’ve responded to her instructions sooner, but they all had a job to do, and no one else stepped up to do it. If someone had, maybe it would’ve actually worked. However, if she’d meant to ask him about his life choices in general and not his current actions, she really should’ve been more specific. ”I know. But we're short on hands." Indeed, the people she'd drafted to help with LongNight guarding were nowhere to be seen.
Still, he wasn't looking for an argument. "I’ll sleep now. I’d rather not take mind-altering substances, though. I have a bad history with people messing with my head.” Indeed, being tortured with illusion magic made him unwilling to take medicines that would affect his mental state. Maybe that was an extreme reaction, but he tended to have those. His reaction to LongNight was similarly over the top, he knew, but better that than he underestimate what they were facing.
Unfortunately, there were very few people in the Temple who were actually doing anything to ensure their continued safety. If the queen was concerned about his health and well-being, though, she’d picked a weird time to show it; crossing his arms, he gave her a considering look, before dropping them to head towards the main part of the Temple. Sleep sounded good, especially if he was just going to get another lecture about how poorly he was taking care of himself. He knew that. But better he run himself ragged than people die because he didn’t do everything humanly—or inhumanly possible, given his magic—to keep them alive.
