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!
Fault and anger could be directed later if there was a later but tending to the wounded took precedence in the moment. Jigano was as gentle as he could be as he field-dressed the wound to Sam's hand, relieved to see that his friend lacked the torso punctures that afflicted Rex. He couldn't be certain of what internal damage the bookmaker might have, and the maiming of his fingers was heartbreaking enough, but Jigano drew in a steadying breath, forcing himself to be calm for those who remained. A quick glance up showed Amalia calming the luxere and Deimos lifting Rex gently in his arms. Remi looked...
Remi looked like hell, but Amalia seemed to think she could get him in safely so Jigano sent a pulse of reassurance to them both as he stood, wrapping Sam's good arm around his shoulders and his own arm around his friend's waist to support him. The bard was not the same weak man he had once been after a year on Caido. He stood easily, lifting Sam and steadying him as he led the redhead back to the guild and the light of the door Lily held open for them. He nodded gratefully to her as he helped Sam inside, settling his friend on a chair not too near the hearth before he turned to begin preparing a table as Deimos followed.
A table was quick enough to clear, people swift to vacate their seats at the sight of Rexanna's terrible wounds, and Jigano pushed another against it so there would be room enough for her slender form. He pushed back his cloak and tied up his long sleeves while Deimos settled the Penumbra before he looked to them with grim eyes. "What do you need?" He didn't know Deimos's skills in healing, though he trusted Zuriel's power over both of the humans' abilities. Still, without hands that bar would be no easy thing to remove, and it would probably take two people to do it - one to hold Rex down and another to pull it out while Zuriel healed the damage in its wake.
He can grab her horns..he can stand, probably. But oh, how he wants to sink into the darkness bleeding around his vision. The vignette calls to him softly and lovingly, and without a warrior's training, he sees nothing wrong with succumbing to it. Only...Ronin isn't here. Surely he'll be inside with Aoife, not risking the girl's safety to step outside, and why should he? Not with so many of them with capable hands and shifts.
Gods he wants to see his husband. Then he'll collapse. It's as Amalia said: they'll be alright. They can bring up the rear.
Shakingly opening his eyes and nodding, Remi sighs appreciatively into the warmth breath deposited from her muzzle into his blood-soaked curls. Reaching up to grab her horn and bracing himself against her shoulder, he manages to stand, but not without a significant hiss of pain. Clenching his fingers into Amalia's mane and gritting his teeth against the pain, he looks dazedly at the staff and shield. Tugging at them with his magic they rise, and with them the alchemist turns to the darkness, snarling at the shapes that still pace anxiously against the diffused light.
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.
and indeed, just think: in many ways, body and soul,
i have been more a battlefield —
It doesn’t take long, while her systems glitch and glitch, starting and restarting, before Deimos is there. She can’t see him, but she can feel the arms that swarm her, strong and corded, his voice that breaks — she’s never heard him this way. It breaks her heart, where it would be if she were normal, where she’d have likely died had she not Ascended. But she can’t react, can’t do anything other than whine softly as he lifts her in those broad arms, careful and gentle as though she feels what’s happened to her.
Her systems try to start again, shuttering, and fluid continues to seep from her eyes, from the hole in her chest small tiny streams that will turn to rivers when the beam is removed. Dark hair a halo of a mess around her face and shadowed, lost eyes. Her clothes have been torn at her feet, her shirt and jacket having bore most of the brunt tear around the beam. And she still can’t move.
She’s set upon a table, her systems shuttering again and again, her clear fluid seeping from all parts now, soaking through the fabric of her body. Through it all, she does manage to turn her head toward Deimos, a semblance that she’s alive. After all, they can’t check for breath, can’t check for a pulse, she’s a walking ghost… if only she could walk. And she waits, waits for the pressure to relieve around her chest, a hiccup of a sound leaving her as she wonders if perhaps it’s better to give in and bleed out her fluids.
She will absolutely need to feed after this, if nothing else.
She’s so far from her goddess, so far from the comfort of static and light and being bright when all she can see is darkness.
He couldn’t think of her as broken, even when his eyes glanced over the foundations, over the features, where a familiar gaze should be, the tears and dishevelment, the beam, the flicker of circuits and shudders; she’d never been in such a way, in such a state, in such a mess. He refused to acknowledge fettering states, swallowing, consuming, the bile coating the length of his throat, down into his chest, rendered speechless while he carried, and then tenderly placed her on one of the tables. Her whine, a silent plea, tore something in him, and he shoved it down, down, down into the sanction of his soul, later, when there were not a thousand other things to secure, destroy, heal, and mend.
Jigano was at his side, and Zuriel, queen of the forest, nestled her way through the crowd, steady and stalwart in his place while he chiseled foundations of long since passed. He’d never been someone to assuage, to tend, to soothe; not in his repertoire, not in his talent, only meant to sever, to destroy, to unleash hell, a weapon, not a restorative, not a cure for anything but havoc and upheaval. But the medic tents had been familiar, once, their ivory flags and bastions a portion where he had carried comrades, where he had watched, where he had seen these moments in times before. The Sword didn’t look to the Sage, but his voice was there, a command, a demand. “I am going to remove the beam.” His hands gilded a firm, ghostly glow now, in the patchwork of veils and shrouds, in the nettles and thorns and barbs, bandages upon bandages rendered across his fingertips, then handed over to Jigano. “As soon as I take it out, press down on the hole with these.” It wouldn’t be blood, but Ascended lifeforce, whatever ichor they had to restore their form. He’d need to staunch the bleeding. Deimos was powerful, potent enough, to retrieve the impaled venture himself.
Zuriel, quiet and obliging in these grave, perilous moments, when she knew her bonded was at his wit’s end, when she knew strife had marked them again, had already begun her work. The length of her horn hovered over Rexanna’s form, striving to catch and sew together all the jagged, wilted pieces, all the wounds, all the lacerations.
Before his hands wrapped around the beam, they flickered over to hers, a firm squeeze, even if it wasn’t felt in her haze, as a notion of reassurance. I have you. She was safe. She was sound. She’d be all right (he couldn’t afford any other mode of thought; strength and conviction in those paralyzing junctures). Then the calloused palms held the impalement, no warning when she couldn’t feel pain, when she wasn’t in agony now, grabbing hold and pulling, pulling, pulling, maneuvering aside when it was fully in his grasp, empty of her frame, so the bard could place the bandages. He released it from his grasp with a dull thunk as it hit the floor, before producing more of the gauze and wrapping, quick, efficient, action over anything else.
He hopes everyone is in behind him. He hopes Lily has shut and locked the door behind Remi and Amalia and Melita, keeping the monsters out. He hopes it very much, but for the moment he puts his trust in them and keeps his attention focused on Rexanna, waiting to hear what Deimos intends.
And in a way it makes sense for Deimos to remove it. Jigano knew something of wounds even before Isla had taken him on as her pupil, and though she had been taken from him long before she could complete their training, at least he was better equipped now than he had been before. No as well equipped as when he could heal magically, but what he had now was better than nothing.
He took the piles of bandages in hand, shifting to stand behind Rex's head and lean over her, clearing her sides for Deimos and Zuriel to work. "Hang in there," he told her softly. They hadn't spoken in far too long but he couldn't lose another friend to LongNight. Not so soon after Caiside. He steadied her shoulders as Deimos began to withdraw the shrapnel beam, and the moment it pulled free of her (with a horrible wet sucking noise, metal parting from meat with the utmost reluctance) he was putting pressure on the wound, holding it together as best he could with the gauze and trying to staunch the spill of fluid until Zuriel could work her particular brand of magic upon it.
and indeed, just think: in many ways, body and soul,
i have been more a battlefield —
He may think that his only purpose is to destroy and demolish, but if his care of Kiada and now her is any consideration to the shift in the once-Reaper and how Caido and separate lives had changed him, it’s made him into a very accurate Sword. To protect, as he might not have done out in the middle of the alleys of the Settlement, but here, as he has shown – scooping her up and bringing her inside, ensuring he can save her. And while it doesn’t hurt, it’s more of a mental panic, as the systems within her don’t start like they should, as her arms and legs don’t work like the should, it’s the fear of always being like this, trapped and hurt and missing pieces.
It doesn’t help that everything is black, that she can’t see them as they prepare. But Deimos’ words, instructions of what to expect, are heard; then his instructions to Jigano as well, and she braces mentally for it – because she can’t physically do this. But she’s thankful for the squeeze to her hand, trying to squeeze back, thankful for the touch from a man who once to do such a dare was certain death.
And she had dared once before.
His hands wrap around the beam, and with the slight pressure change of just that, something shutters within her and she grits her teeth, fangs bared in the odd, terrible sensation of the pressure shifting. But he doesn’t pause long, not as he pulls immediately after grasping, and as metal glides against metal and circuits and whatever else she’s made of, the feeling is too much. It’s too much. She has enough sense within her to cry out at the vibration that occurs of the metal leaving her body, of her systems shuttering and restarting, a chugging feeling within that she hates.
She’d cry if she could, but there’s no difference between the fluid that’s already seeping from her damaged eyes. But she grits her teeth, baring fangs as Jigano’s hands press into the hole in her chest, staunching fluid and trying to reserve as much as they can. She’s covered in it, based off of the eerie sheen that coats everything.
She hopes they realize she’s flammable in this state, immensely so. But Zuriel is there, too, to help put her back together, to do what the unicorn can to make her last long enough to visit her goddess, perhaps enough to give her time. With Zuriel and her systems working together now that the beam has been removed, it’s enough to start to stitch the hole in her chest together, covering it but not fixing her ribs, not fixing her wrists, not fixing her eyes, nor her nose. At least she’s gotten a pretty fancy scar.
So while she looks somewhat terrible from the outside, at least the inside seems to be working okay. Her legs, at least, are healed. She curls up in on herself, rolling onto her side, pressing her face into the crook of her elbow, because that’s really all she can do while her systems try to work. Broken, until her goddess can save her.
Jigano's fear, Deimos' despair, Remi's pain- it all swirls around her mind in a cacophony of distress, threatening the clarity she struggles so hard to achieve even on a normal day. And yet somehow in the midst of all the noise Amalia feels centered, as though the anxiety in her mind is too great to even acknowledge.
Slowly, carefully, she lifts her bi-horned head, helping Remi to his feet and kneeling so he can rest on her back while keeping an eye on the goings on. In the light of the luxere and the dreamfish and Jyoti and the staff - Use it to heal a little, Remi - as well as her own harmless flame, Amalia feels surprisingly confident, safe and protective, a beacon against the dark as the others make their way into the guildhall, Shield and Alchemist bringing up the rear.
It is a tight fit through the nearly closed door, but Amalia makes it, huffing appreciatively to Lily as Jyoti darts in ahead and goes to check on Deimos' work, hoping to soothe the invalids with more of her calming light. The Shield, meanwhile, looks for a place that is quiet and out of the way, lowering her body down to the ground and inviting Remi to lay against her as they wait for the unicorns to do their work.
Rexanna had always been a potent, gilded thing no matter which lifetime he tore through. One of those otherworldly, ethereal components signifying something greater in the hint of a smile, in the juncture of a nefarious grin, in the rapacity of their cloaks and daggers. She’d had claws and she’d used them. She’d had wits and she instigated their means. She’d had strength and conviction and everything else in between – but it hadn’t saved her from the drifting void and the overwhelming abyss, the Stygian influx of too many disastrous conjectures. They’d faced molten infernos and capricious demons, they’d faced monsters of the past, but they didn’t seem to wound as deeply, or mark as proudly, than the here and now. There were so many things he could’ve said or asked, and nothing came in those feral, stretched-thin moments, his motions an embodiment of action and distraction, saving himself from imminent destruction between and beneath others’ nearby.
Zuriel’s work would take time, and he tried not to sink into Rexanna’s hisses, the bared fangs, the shuttering, the shuddering, the obvious work of her system striving to contemplate and understand what was occurring, how to cease and desist the stops and starts. While the unicorn worked, while she orchestrated more soothing motions he’d never be able to ever quantify, his eyes went to the disassembled wrists, mangled and bent at odd angles; broken, broken, broken. He’d set a few bones on the battlefields, but not enough to claim expertise – hands crafting splints and handing one to Jigano. “Put these around her wrist.” At the very least, they could hold the disfigured and damaged elements together, ensure she either didn’t damage them further, or speed up some form of the healing process – unaware that it would require the Voice’s appeals. The monolith followed on the same lines as his previous direction, gently wrapping and splinting her right hand, apologies on his lips but none of them granted; a time for that later, when they were sure she wasn’t slipping off into demise.
More than happy for her support, Remi glares once more into the darkness with a silent snarl, before allowing himself to be led back in. With a distant nod he looks at the staff impassively. Having helped make it he knows implicitly how it works, and yet it takes his mind several seconds to access the magic. The wounds on his back immediately knit shut, muscle and bone hidden once again beneath a layer of flesh. Sorry Loren, looks like I will always be scared, he thinks rather bitterly as Amalia leads them through the threshold into the house.
All he wants in that moment is Ronin, a fire, and a bed. But like the others he waits at Rex's side to see how her condition is, and to lend a hand if needed.
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.
"I can set bones," he reassured the stoic General softly, speaking aloud for Rexanna's benefit. "I can check her over for other injuries once her wrists are straightened." He had relied heavily on magic in his world to heal, yes, but he had not entirely neglected the more mundane skills, and he had gained in both practice and breadth of medical knowledge since arriving on Caido, learning from both books and Isla before her own LongNight demise. He took the splint materials from Deimos and rested his hand gently on Rexanna's head, stroking her hair with a soothing gentleness remenisent of their days in together in Flowerbirth sunshine.
"Rex? Can you relax for us a little, please? We need to pull your wrists straight and then I'm going to try and straighten your nose... I don't think it will hurt, but try to stay still until we're done, alright?" Her Ascended resiliency was likely the only thing that had allowed her to survive, and for once Jigano was glad of it as he took her wrist carefully and felt for the smaller bones, eyes half-closed as he focused on his sense of touch to make sure they were all in place before he carefully pulled her arm straight to shift the long bones back into position. He swiftly wrapped her arm at that point, using the splint Deimos had given - and a firm binding of bandages - to ensure that she couldn't bend the hand accidentally and knock anything out of place again until the healing could kick in. He looked beseechingly to Zuriel, uncertain what the limits of her abilities were, before he turned back to Rex.
"This is probably going to feel very strange," he warned, hoping it wouldn't feel worse than that as he smoothed her beautiful hair back from her face and examined her nose. If it was truly shattered he couldn't do much for her, but he could at least straighten out the largest pieces and he manipulated them with deft fingers that hadn't yet started shaking as he focused on his task, oblivious for the moment to the rest of the room.
and indeed, just think: in many ways, body and soul,
i have been more a battlefield —
She can’t see the starwhale as it approaches, but there’s a sensation of calming that washes over her, and her body twitches as she curls upon herself, continuing to shutter, to chug along until things start moving, sorrow embedded deep within her at the fear she must have brought upon everyone. How selfish it had been of her to ask for them to fix her when she was reckless and unhelpful and dangerous.
She can hear Deimos’ words about her wrists, and she realizes she hasn’t tried to flex the muscles and fingers, to feel the grating of metal upon metal once more. All she can tell is that through her scans, most of her is red, red, red. Wrong. Jigano’s voice pipes up then, at mentioning her bones, and she slowly uncurls herself, to let them continue their work, feeling and flinching slightly from the touch until she realizes who it is.
Rexanna is surprised to know how much she absolutely relied on her sight. At least her hearing makes up for it in this instance, focusing on what’s happening around her. “Okay.” Her voice is hoarse, and she does her best to relax despite the involuntary twitching of her systems that shift her chest and her legs while whatever fluid remains continues to try and power her. “No pain.” She manages, through grit teeth. Just a lot of wrong feelings around, strange vibration, shorting in her system that has her mind reeling.
Much of her wrist structure will have to be fixed by the Voice, but whatever they can do to keep her from destroying it more before Longnight is over, will help. And when Jigano moves to her face, to set her nose, it’s simply a sound of crunching and the feeling of metal scraping against metal and bone. It still does little in the end, but it keeps her nose looking relatively straight – absolutely not functional, though.
“Need… to bite.” To give her something to power off of from the fluid loss. It would make her sluggish, it would feel terrible in her system, but at least it would be enough to keep her going, to keep her stable until the inevitable.
10-24-2019, 01:53 PM (This post was last modified: 10-24-2019, 01:53 PM by Lily.)
Lily obviously shut the door after everyone came in. Tightly. She even threw her weight against it, to make sure it was shut very, very tight. No Monsters would get in on her watch (ha ha ha, like she can control that).
And then she’s at a loss for what to do. She knows very little about healing other than that peppermint is great for an upset stomach and lavender soothes a racing mind. These injuries? These massive injuries to people who do not bleed the way she does, are utterly foreign. But the entertainer isn’t gore-shy. And she’s naturally curious. So with all the hullabaloo going on, with the unicorns and the running around, she manages to stand nearby - listening and watching. And when she hears Rexanna’s request - nay, her need, the redhead steps forward.
She is needed to fight the demons. She isn’t like them. So Rex should drink from Lily, because a.) they’ve had an orgy together and the side effects don’t bother her, and b.) if the blood loss is extreme, she can sit for a few days in the corner, babysit the kid, and recuperate.
“You can drink from me, Rex,” the singer offers, maneuvering to her friend’s side and placing a gentle hand in hers. It’s ok. She doesn’t mind.
lily
as if you were on fire from within the moon lives in the lining of your skin
