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!
The conversation was terse and silent. Words were hardly needed, not with the mental pulses of anguished agony that coated what little Remi did have to say. Cera is dead and apparently the Rathskeller has burned down. He said to Deimos, and Amalia, knowing the information would get passed on to the others—Kiada, Jigano and so on. He'd already told Ronin what Loren had said. With a mental shake to indicate that no, he didn't have more information he looked at the duo waiting to see who would accompany him. They could all fly, but there was no reason for them all to go. No reason for any more than 2, really. As a manticore Remi could carry Cera back, but he'd need help for any number of reasons.
Deimos, it was decided.
We will be as quick as we can. Remi said before moving towards the door to give the couple whatever moment they might want. He knew he always kissed Ronin a moment longer when he left during LongNight because...well. It didn't really need saying.
Standing at the door and waiting for Deimos, Remi pulled in an adrenaline fueled breath. I have never seen them fly, not that that is saying much.
get out of my waters
Coding base by Sky!
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
It sounded so simple, so mundane, when he first heard it. Cera is dead. It echoed and bounded over his skull for a moment, as if he couldn’t fathom or understand the complexities of a straightforward sentence. The agony and anguish echoed and pulsed by Remi curled over his flesh, and only then as he rose from his table, as he looked upon his weapons, as he pondered over means and measures and fought, with great difficulty, to manifest a staccato semblance of normalcy, the words suddenly had meaning.
Cera was dead.
The man he’d met in the woods, the maned wolf, the Golden Prince of the desert sands, far greater, far kinder, far better than a majority of them would ever be, was struck down. As if he were nothing. As if he were merely dust. As if he were already ashes, as if his life had been naught to no one; and a barbaric, seething maelstrom took over the monolith’s grasp on his weapons, on the sword in his hand, on the meticulous grind of his incantations. He wasn’t about to howl that life wasn’t fair, he knew, he knew, had experienced it first hand – but gods be damned it was tiring, it was stifling, it was difficult to keep losing all these fragments, all these people, all these things that held him together by strands and threads. Cera had been a whisper of Helovia, had been the dunes, had been the Dragon’s Throat, had been a world he’d only glimpsed upon in wars and battles. Cera didn’t deserve it. Cera wasn’t an individual to be stifled or suffocated by a monster’s claws or talons. Cera hadn’t done anything to warrant the notion – and if rumors or his Basin thieves’ information to be deemed complete - ever.
Deimos should’ve done more. Should’ve warned more. Should’ve explained. Should’ve ensured he’d made it into safety, instead of just assuming the world listened. It ground a hole into his chest and burrowed into his heart, turned over the nefarious insides and blistered, his jaw clenching, iron-clad form reaching for the anger, the vehemence, the vitriol, instead of the shards, nettles, and barbs underneath. That could come later. That could come never. That could come when he was alone and despondent and done. He owed it to Cera to at least try and pull his remains away from hell.
He didn’t even care that the Rathskeller burnt, nothing but the hollow remains. Death had been enough.
The beast took his munitions, head bowed, trying to remember what it’d been like before demise had entered his life – it’d been too long ago, it might’ve hardly been worth imagining. Instead, he glanced towards Remi with a firm nod, affirmation and adherence to the task, action and necessity contorting over his frame. Then he turned into Amalia’s orbit, understand he couldn’t stay there, but pressed a promise, a conviction, along her brow and her cheek and her lips – silent and steady and flickering between strength, maelstroms, and abhorrence. Soon, he ignited into their bond, before he couldn’t do anything else without ricocheting or falling apart, following Remi to the door. Ready.
Soundlessly, Remi nodded. Stepping out into the courtyard he waited until the door was closed. For now he would fly in a shift closer to Deimos' size; no need to be larger than they had too. Not yet.
Strangely, though there was a good deal of adrenaline flooding through Remi's body, it was anger that he felt most brightly. Anger and disappointment, both of which felt bitter in his belly. That Loren had so crassly described the scene (drunk, though he was), was excusable. Leaving Cera out in the snow? To rot alone, or worse be claimed by the darkness?
It was abhorrent, and Remi wasn't sure he'd be able to forgive the summoner that. The alchemist would endure any evils done to him, but to others? To the Cera's of the world, sweet and kind and pure, too perfect for words? No. No, and no, and no.
And so it was on as silent wings as he could, that Remi climbed with as much haste as he could, hoping to gain altitude before the monsters noticed their presence.
get out of my waters
Coding base by Sky!
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
Once they were out into the midnight coils, the rapacious edges were upon him – a sort of muted anger that came with the feral disappointment of another thing he couldn’t do, another individual he couldn’t save. He left the monolithic form behind and shifted to the eagle ramparts, the unfurling of long plumes and feathers bestial and natural, an inclination to the predacious fringes uncoiling through his heart. There were pulsing, pervading waves of hostility and acrimony, for Cera, for uncontrollable fathoms, pushing off the ground, ascending, ascending, ascending, chasing after Remi into the threats, the ash, soot, and cinders of the world that should’ve been brighter for those of Cera’s ilk.
He was from Helovia Deimos imparted through the attuned bond, nothing else to say, nothing more to give, his senses sharpened and honed, wondering how far monsters could traverse, if they were damned and doomed just for these antics, just for trying, striving, attempting to bring the gentle ones home. As if it mattered. As if anything they did ever mattered.
That he was known seemed to be all Remi needed to hear. It solidified something inside of him; something only merely outlined before. But now it was whole, crackling with anger. I met him. Only once. Gods how terrible it felt to say that. Like a lifetime of whatifs were now sailing below him just as the sparse houses were. Already he'd been someone to Remi, someone kind and so complex in a way he yearned to understand. The boy who'd found him in the flowers, placed a hand on his knee, and talked for what seemed like hours. And now he'd never get that chance because the darkness had smothered his light. No amount of flowery prose would change that, no-soul shattering yearning. But he'd see his body properly taken care of if he could.
The two black shapes in the night flit quickly through the skies. The distance between guild and temple was not so great, and once they arrived to see the smoldering remains of the Rathskeller, the alchemist cringed. Had he teeth to clench he would have. Had he lips to spit he might have. All he had though was the dim light below and a building resentment for the summoner who had thrown Cera's body to the wolves monsters.
Can you see well enough from here? If they do not know we are here yet, we may buy ourselves time by staying high. So saying the hawk glided in a controlled circle, eyes focused on the snow for the broken shape of the boy he'd hardly known.
get out of my waters
Coding base by Sky!
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
The Sword couldn’t acknowledge that he’d met Cera more than once either – but it’d been significant, to say the least, when the maned wolf had become a man known and revered for being one of the few great ones in their old land. The Dragon’s Throat had boasted warriors and legends, and Cera had been amongst them, renowned for his gilded potential, his glowing prowess, his kind, gentle heart – greater than the mountain occupants’ abhorrence, taste for vengeance, and all the other fickle things laid between. Deimos had expected some intonation of hatred for his form, for his presence, for the Reaper who’d led and instigated any number of upheavals and seditious intentions towards the sand, and Cera had greeted him with the same beneficence and compassion. It wasn’t just. Same, he rumbled, silent, strung voices in the dark. He belonged to the desert. As if that mattered; when he wouldn’t be able to see it again.
They drifted over settlements and stones, over darkened threads, over roaring demons. His eyes caught the fringes of the Rathskeller, the burning embers, the rush of heat and infernos; destroyed for the sake of protection, annihilation, or something else altogether. The beast didn’t ask. Decently, he responded to Remi’s inquiry, though his senses would likely be great improved in his tiger form, but the lack of flying would leave him wide-open to the barbaric seams below. He followed and circled too, sharp gaze tracing over the snow, over the ice, over the rime, looking for something other than smoldering ruins – remains, a form of a body left out in the cold.
The General could fathom why they’d done it. It’d been life or death, Cera’s already taken. It just didn’t feel right – and maybe it was only because he knew the being before life had been torn from his essence.
He caught sight of a figure that could’ve been some misshapen, mangled figure, and he nodded in its direction, circling above its fallen traces, the calculations coiling through their connection. There?
Desert...that is....without trees? Sand? The manticore asked, trying to imagine the impossible vista and seeing only an endless beach behind his eyes. Perhaps Cera might have shown him, described it even...if only there had been more time. More preparation. More something. But there wasn't. There never as, and they all continued to lose because of it.
It looks..body shaped, but the thoughts wouldn't come. A miserable shiver pulsed from the alchemist outwards as he gave a mental nod to descend. Once they had, enough to verify that yes, it was the body of the once oracle, once crafter, and now professor. I will shift to carry him, but my eyes will not be as sharp, nor will I be as agile. The implication was clear, and didn't need saying. Just as the thought likely didn't. But unlike Deimos, Remi was no warrior, and nervous chatter came far too easily to him.
So thinking he descended towards Cera's body, meaning to shift into a manticore before reaching it, grab the boy with his forepaws, and race back up into the clouds.
get out of my waters
Coding base by Sky!
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
Sometimes Deimos forgot how much of multiple earths and worlds he’d seen, and others had not. His battlefield expanse, expertise, and encroaching politics had permitted him to wander into the midst of lands far beyond Isilme or his beloved mountains. Yes, he admitted at first, then sent an image much like he’d done before with the Aurora Basin across their connection – only this one was sand, shoal, crag, pictures and fragments he could recall and remember through the haze of warped memories and different lives. Perhaps it wasn’t the right time, as they coasted and drifted amongst the dark, amongst demons, but it was better than forgetting all over again. Cera would’ve appreciated the gesture. The Dragon’s Throat he murmured along the attuned bond, keeping himself calm and composed, as they alighted between threats and demons, ominous, forbearing, forewarning signs.
They descended, further and further until the body was clear, the remains known, and any composure he had left was suddenly stretched thin, tight and taut, wound and rigid. Out of habit, he wanted to clench his jaw, yearned to escape the suffocating noose of these ruminations, these bitter, entangled, rancorous efforts – but he couldn’t. He breathed and listened instead, his eyes trained on Cera, who had always been far greater than this battered, bloodied corpse. What an ending he wanted to grimace, wanted to throttle, wanted to shake something to its core. An undeserved finality, for things that were once golden.
The implications within the alchemist’s proclamations were concise and succinct; the General remained as a guard, stalwart on wings and feathers, a firm nod given in acceptance, in knowing exactly what he was required to do. He was fortifications, he was a monolith, and sometimes he was that living, breathing weapon, the Reaper far more than a sword. His gaze riveted and segmented to the abyss, to the void, watching, waiting, for any signs of upheaval, sedition, crawling cretins, fiendish demolition, and then followed Remi on his flightpath when he’d retrieved the son of the desert.
The darkness has bided its time, and as the two flighted creatures descend, they strike. First and foremost at the hawk-turned-manticore. Lunging at his hind legs as he touches down to retrieve the body, they bite into the muscles of his haunches and the tendons stretching down the back of his legs.
Don’t worry, they’ve not forgotten the eagle. Swarming around him they dart in and out, plucking out feathers, pulling at his talons, and otherwise being infuriately annoying to try and obfuscate his efforts to fly well.
The imagery was hard to focus on in the darkness, with chaotic thoughts of death and righteous anger vying for space in Remi's mind. Even so, he shivered slightly at the vastness of the desert, the sea of red sands. It was almost impossible to imagine, even when it flickered behind his eyes, and he pulsed a shaky pang of appreciation towards Deimos.
Picking up Cera's body gently and with the reverence it deserved, Remi felt a familiar jagged line of fire down the back of his legs as he leaped into the air. Snarling and trying to keep the roar in his chest to an absolute minimum, he flapped his mighty wings to try and gain as much altitude as he could even as the monster's continued to bite and claw at him, all while hugging the lifeless body of the once-oracle to his chest.
get out of my waters
Coding base by Sky!
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
The shard of appreciation, likely ineffectual in the face of everything else, sharpened over his senses, allowed him a breath in the blistering anarchy –
And then it was gone.
Their luck ran out; he could see Remi’s movements become jagged, wings flapping, and he meant to follow, meant to guard, meant to remain the stalwart Sword, when he sought ascension and the air, the air, the air. But then there were things clawing at his form, at his feathers, at his plumes, and he suffered in silence, not daring to insinuate their presence, not daring to announce they were there, call more for the slaughter. It might have pierced through his connection, he had no control over its subterfuge and reticence now, as things pulled at talons, as they seemed to make monumental efforts to ensure he couldn’t evade, couldn’t escape, couldn’t hide.
Flying was his liberation, his freedom, and they wouldn’t take it from him. He bit down on the exasperation, flapped his wings, striving to dart upwards again on swift speed and flapping precision, on bestial, barbaric movement, unpredictable escapades in altering directions. The beast’s eyes were on Remi though, persistent, sure, and true, even while feathers fell and vexation surged.
Not incredibly clever, the monsters are not stupid either. They know the ring of luxere that await them ahead, that guard the door to the guild. If they are to strike, it has to be now.
Like a fog of blackness made weighty by thousands of teeth, the manticore and eagle are swarmed. The gnat-like creatures bite at the thin flesh left uncovered by feathers, they pluck at Deimos' and Remi's plumage, at their eyes. They fly into their noses and ears.
