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!
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Court of the Fallen was created in October of 2018 by Odd, Honey, and Crooked.
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10-27-2019, 02:15 AM (This post was last modified: 10-27-2019, 09:59 PM by Jigano.)
He was not proud of their retreat. They had been underprepared, unprepared to face a winged foe, and his strength was nothing against an enemy he couldn't reach. He had thought that they might yet reclaim victory from the jaws of defeat, but how? They would need upgrades to trade if they couldn't fight, but oh, he wanted to fight. To wound and tear the beast that had mocked them, but he couldn't do it alone, and Kiada was in no shape to go back out again so soon.
It would have been so easy to retreat to the room with the dead, to brood and turn inwards on himself again, to savage his heart for the choices he had made that led to Rory being alone and Kiada returning empty-handed. In the end he had let both of them down, and he was unlikely to forget that anytime soon. But he was not the only one who was hurting in the Guildhall. There were others far worse off than he, and if they could bear up so gracefully beneath their injuries, who was he to hide away?
" Rexanna ?" he called softly, knocking on the frame of the door to the room he was told she'd been given to rest in. "How are you doing?"
She doesn’t know what they’ve set out to do. All she knows of what her daughter has been up to, is of the blight and hopefully the recovery from it. Everything else is up to Deimos, in her eyes, to deal with. And she trusts him to take it on, because she is absolutely in no position to do it. Nor is she in much of a position to help, unable to see, broken, bits and pieces missing, having to be led from place to place. She’s thankful for the bandana that Deimos has made her, if only for the comfort of covering her eyes from the darkness within.
But it still doesn’t really stop the black streak marks that cascade down her face like tears. Bruising perhaps?
A familiar voice reaches her, one she hasn’t heard in a long time, and she remains sitting in the chair they’ve placed her in, thinking over her thoughts because what else can she do? She can’t sleep, and so she’s ran through her systems over and over and over again. Her head lifts toward the sound, some form of curiosity coming through. “Jigano?” She asks, because she’s uncertain. Because she can’t see the bard.
“Better, I think. It feels the same, really.” She offers in honesty. Without feeling pain? There wasn’t much to go off of. “Thank you for helping me, by the way.” A shoulder rises and falls in a shrug, but she tries to aim a small smile his way. “How are you doing?”
She looked like hell. He might have been in bad shape, clothing torn and bloodied where the rocks and spears and sticks and stones of the monsters had struck him, an evil black gunk clinging to him, but the unicorns had at least been able to make him whole again, unlike the woman who sat in the dimly lit room without eyes to see it.
He hummed a soft affirmative when she called his name, slipping in to come and kneel beside her. Her hands were splinted and wrapped so instead he rested his fingers lightly on her arm above the damaged areas to let her know where he was. "How is it that even while bearing such grievous wounds you still remain so radiant?" He asked her gently, gallant as the day they had met. It was a lie, perhaps, but then again perhaps not. There was more than just her outer beauty to be admired, after all. "I'm just glad I was near enough to do something."
Her question earned a crooked smile that she could not see, a brief flinch of the fingers on her arm as he exhaled slowly, gathering his thoughts. "I... have been better," he said diplomatically. "Though given that it is LongNight, everyone can say that." He paused, looking away for a moment before he spoke again with a voice that was lower and quieter and edged with regret. "Kiada and I went out to find her lost lover's soul but... the monster that held it was too strong for us and we were forced to bargain with it instead of battling it cleanly." Not that there could have been a 'clean' fight given the amount of sludge being slung around, but... well, you get the idea.
Part of her still feels like hell, if she’s being honest. Her scans coming up red every time. But at least she was alive and couldn’t feel the pain of it all. Just the immense exhaustion and frustration of not being right. But, his compliment falls slightly on her mood, and she tilts her head to face where he rests his fingers to gain an idea of where he is. “I think it might be the only thing keeping me going.” She admits, perhaps a bit darkly before her shoulders rise and fall in a shrug. “Everything is still broken according to my scans. But I think the Voice can help.” She doesn’t tack on at the end that she hopes her goddess can.
She nods at his comment of being there, though, and focuses on how he mentions he has been better. “LongNight has a tendency of doing that.” It’s why she hadn’t wanted to leave last year, that opening the door to Jigano and Rory were terrifying enough. And here she was, heading straight into the mess, the massacres. At the mention of Kiada, her head lifts lightly as she recalls. “Ru’in?” It comes out softly, the freckled boy of the Basin, a crafter. She had known him in another life.
“He was Hotaru’s son.” She tells him, because she’s uncertain if anyone has. And since Hotaru is here now, perhaps it was important that he should know how intertwined their lives had been. “I’m sure it was hard.” She frowns, thinking of how headstrong and fiery the girl could be. Perhaps she got that from her in the end, the flame and stubbornness, paired with the strength and even thinking of her father. But she can’t accurately say.
She faced him, and the bandana over her eyes was as much a blessing to those around her as to herself. He had seen terrible wounds before, but faced with those gaping, empty eyes he might have flinched from the reminder that he had not been there for her, either. The bandana was a reminder without being a recrimination. "If she doesn't I'll storm her shrines myself until she relents and fixes what she broke," he promised, an edge of steel beneath his bantering tone. Given half an excuse he would absolutely risk the goddess's displeasure to convince her to return Rexanna to wholeness.
Ru'in's name was a reminder that Rexanna, too, had some connection to Helovia even if it wasn't as clear-cut as Kiada's and Deimos's tethers. He exhaled a soft sigh, tilting his head to look up at her, even though she couldn't meet his eyes. "Yes," he confirmed softly. "A worker in stone and bronze, she said. He came out of the darkness to her, a grey shadow with one clear eye, and one mad one."
He drew in a sharp breath at the mention of the connection to Hotaru, another measure of weight added to his soul at their failure to free the blond woman's son. "I didn't know..." He shook his head, fingers flexing lightly against Rexanna's arm as he swallowed and adjusted to this new shift in lives and ties and connections within the Outlander population. "Ludo sent Kiada to kill what was left of Ru'in's body, to free his soul from the monsters so we could bring it back and free it to Mort's keeping. She cut his head off..." Abrupt. Cruel, even. But what choice had she had? "But there was a particular bastard that was holding his soul hostage. It flew and cast this tarry muck on me when I tried to reach it in the sky. We couldn't reach it, and its minions were wearing us down. Kiada especially. The bargain..."
He didn't look away. There was no point; she couldn't see him anyways. Instead Jigano sighed wearily. "It wants Ascended upgrades. Kiada thinks it might be trying to make another Spire Demon, and she's probably right. Nor can we trade mere baubles for a man's soul. I think, though, that if we can get some together we can use them to maybe lure it close enough for us to attack it on our terms. Sam said something about Remi making a net that caught a monster when you were out...?" He left the question open, hoping Rexanna could maybe describe it in more detail - and would know what happened to it.
Jigano’s promise brings a snort to her. The bard doesn’t need to do any of that, and she’s grown weary and tired of so many willing to sacrifice over and over for her benefit as though she’s worth all the rage and fury of the worlds. “She is kind to us. It’s not her willingness I’m worried about, it’s her ability.” And it is, because what if she broke something too much, unable to be fixed or replaced, simply left to be and remain as a hollow shell.
She suggests Ru’in’s name, and is met with an explanation of the boy. Dark skin, freckles like constellations. She knows him, very well. “I know who he is.” How could she forget her daughter’s true love? “One blue eye, one black.” The boy had always kind of looked a monster. But if Kiada was happy, then she was. “His father was… A strange man, spoke to the stars through a mirror.” Quietly, she wonders if she should mention that in that different time and different place, that her first living child had been with Ru’in’s father. That the two shared a half sibling out there in the wilderness, among her other variety of children.
It dies on her thoughts as he mentions he didn’t know, and she shrugs lightly. He hadn’t asked. That their families had been intertwined long before any of this, before Caido, before tragedy. The mention of the quest, however, does draw a contemplative look to cross her face, eyes unseeing but mind still churning. Imagining. And suddenly, there’s a small amount of burning frustration within her at the mention of a bargain.
She wants to ask what they’ve offered, but Jigano is already starting on it. “I think she’s right.” She agrees, a small amount of pride bubbling up and mending the frustration. And with it, she sighs lightly. “Yes, there’s a net that Remi made that captured it. I’m not sure what happened after that.” She tells him. “They took my eyes after that, so I didn’t see much.” But the mention of bribing with Ascended upgrades?
She recalls the vibration of them trying to take them. How they’re built into her. How she doesn’t know where they are without taking herself apart. And she’s already broken enough as is. A frown finds her face and she sighs, reaching up with the back of her hand to press against her temple. “The upgrades though, they’re parts of us. They can’t be easily removed without tearing us apart.” She only has one now, after all. Having used the invisibility chip in her fleeting attempt to leave.
"Kind enough to ask you to kill others who were merely defending their home?" he asked softly, remembering the Fae at the Mathair, their mourning, their dead. It was an unfair question, perhaps. An unkind one. But it was frustrating to see his friends so blinded by the Voice's bribes and blandishments.
Ru'in's eyes had certainly been memorable. Black madness and blue sorrow. Still, Jigano's lips quirked into a wry smile at the mention of the man's father. "My mother did similar things. Oracles have an odd relationship with the sky, no matter the world." His lighter tone faded to a wince as Rex shrugged and he hoped she wasn't causing more damage to her ribs. They probably should have wrapped them but since the Ascended didn't breathe he hadn't thought it necessary. All the little gestures, though, would take their toll if she wasn't careful.
"It must still be outside, then. I didn't see it when we brought you in." Well. He had to go back out eventually. He could look for it then. In the pitch dark with no idea where it was. "I don't suppose you remember where you were at before..." He grimaced, patting her arm apologetically since she couldn't see it. "Well. Where you were right before you lost your sight?"
He hadn't meant to upset her, and he exhaled sharply at her anxiety. This was probably a terrible time to ask what had happened to Lucas's body as well, or if the Fae still had it. But there were other options. "Not always," he said quietly. "Or... well, I don't know whether they're truly upgrades, but they might still work as bargaining bait. Things like Sam's infinitely heavy cube or that flying board that almost killed you?"
“Kind enough to ask you to kill others who were merely defending their home?” He asks her, softly but the implication is anything but. There had been no witnesses, so how would he have known? “What is that supposed to mean, Jigano?” She asks flatly, uncertain. In the end, only Lucas’ body had remained behind, a sorrow for sure, but how did that in any way pinpoint toward the Voice? “Who killed who?” Because she wants to hear him say it, what he somehow knows.
But it makes her thoughts muddy, frustrated that she can’t see even more so. Why had their conversations always turned to this? Pointing fingers? She only nods to him when he mentions his mother was an oracle as well. Waiting, waiting for the comments on the events that transpired beyond the walls of the Temple and Monster Hunter’s Guild.
She can only nod when he mentions he hadn’t seen it, and instead quietly frowns while he pats her arm apologetically. “It’s all a blur. We were in the street, that’s all I know. Everything was dark, even with my ascended sight. And then it was gone.” She tells him, as if he needs a reminder that she’d been impaled and had a few more things to worry about over the location of where they had tried to catch a monster in a quest doomed to fail.
He exhales sharply, and all she can do is listen. He tells her not always, before admitting he’s not totally sure if they’re upgrades or not, and she shakes her head to him. “Technology, not upgrades.” She confirms, head lifting to look away from where Jigano sits. “The cube and the board are technologies. Upgrades are built into us.” A better explanation. “And I’m not sure where the board is. It isn’t mine to give. It’s Bastien’s.” It seems to go without saying that he would need to talk to Bastien in order to see about using it for bait.
She loves her daughter, she does immensely. But that doesn’t mean that she’ll start giving out things that don’t belong to her, to break herself down further than she already is. There has to be another way.
Was she there? He had suspicions from his conversations with others, with Remi - and with the Fae. Perhaps she was innocent. But then, he would have assumed Sam was innocent, too, if the alchemist hadn't given him vague warnings that he didn't understand until later. And the tree had been burned by fire and fireworks both when he had stepped out of it and learned the tale from its guardians. "The Mathair is dead," he said quietly. "Fae who were defending it, a sacred tree in their homeland, are dead. Murdered in cold blood by the Voice and her Ascended." The Fae knew what happened in their Woods, hadn't they all learned that already? The barrierfolk might have been allowed to walk beneath the trees now, but not without being watched. Not to desecrate and destroy. The alarm that had called the first Fae to the Mathair's defense had also called their backup, after all, warning of what was underway, and who was responsible for trying to kill their goddess-tree.
Conversations had not always been this way. Had not always been filled with fear and worry. Only since Rexanna had become dependent on the iron goddess, a tool in the Voice's holographic hand, had Jigano become wary of her loyalties.
His talks with Sam of late had done nothing to assuage his fears that the Voice was twisting and using her followers towards no good ends. The news at the Mathair had done significantly more to erode the last of the goodwill he'd been trying to extend to her for the sake of his Ascended friends.
The net was an important distraction but still a way to turn the conversation back to their immediate problems. Rexanna's point was short and sharp, and he gave a shake of his head - and a flex of his fingers - in apology. "Don't worry about it, then. It was a long shot anyways." Maybe if would still be there after LongNight... or maybe the monsters would take it with them when they went back to wherever it was they spent the rest of the year. Remi could make another, hopefully, if it was the latter.
Technology versus upgrades? He hadn't realized there was a difference, but he hummed a grateful note to let Rex know he was nodding as she explained them. "Ah. Sam didn't mention it belonging to someone else. In the end it will be up to Kiada to decide if she wants to bait the trap at all," he admitted. "We may find another way before the next time she's ready to face the beast. Or the technology may not be of interest to it at all. There's just... so much still we don't know." There was frustration there, with himself most of all, and he shook his head with a sigh.
Her head lowers as he tells her what she knows, in a show of sorrow. But at the idea of mountains? Is she really that upset? They had given the Fae a chance. The tree had been alive, been a portal, been a part of it all, intertwined. And while Rexanna isn’t proud of having a hand in it, she had only destroyed the tree and nearly died for it as well. And this tone that Jigano is giving her while he explains it, only adds to her show of sorrow, biting down on her lip as her unseeing eyes focus on the floor. “That’s terrible.” She offers quietly, but says nothing else on what had occurred there that day.
He doesn’t need to know.
“I went there to plant flowers with Deimos, and went to ensure they were still planted when Melita attacked me.” She adds, a light frown finding her lips. “Is there any idea why the Voice might have wanted it?” She wants to know what he knows, to see if he knows it’s a portal, to see if he knows what it could become. Salvation.
But she tells him that the board isn’t hers to give, and he shakes his head, flexing his fingers in his quiet apology, only able to nod to it. “She didn’t bring anyone else?” A quiet question. “It’s… LongNight and terrible out there. She might have Ludo’s blessing with it, but I’m sure you know how it is out there.” A moment recalled of opening the Rathskeller doors for Jigano and Rory comes to mind before it passes with a sigh that crinkles and crunches something quietly within her, though she pretends not to notice.
“I absolutely need to have a talk with Sam soon.” Her tone takes a hint of annoyance as she turns her head away from the bard again, frown finding her lips. “If it wants upgrades, I can’t imagine it’s for anything good. They tried to take ours. I could feel them vibrating inside me as though they would tear them out then and there.” 'And instead, I got a beam through my chest.'
They can agree on one thing, however, there’s still so much they don’t know.
Terrible? Yes. Rexanna's show of grief soothed some of his suspicion, though there was still the firework charring on the remains of the tree that was far from reassuring... and so few Ascended that he knew of who could have been sent to do the Voice's dirty work. He nodded at her knowledge of the place, but at asking why the Voice wanted it he only shook his head - and cleared his throat to give her a vocal cue of his frustration. "Honestly? No. Just before LongNight we found new information on the portals that used to cross this world... but there are at least two already within the Hollowed Grounds. There was no need for the Voice to attack the Fae and defile one of their sacred spots. Hell, one of the portals is in her own damn Spire... or didn't she share that?" And still working, too, since that's where Amalia, Deimos, and Kiada came out.
The question about going alone had him wincing, a guilty sigh escaping. "No, we didn't. She received the quest from Ludo, and I... well, I trusted her to know what they had told her, what limits were on it. I should have asked more of what had been said. I should have asked Deimos and Amalia to come with us, or at least follow us." He should have done a great many things that he hadn't, and never had Deimos's accusations of his lack of preparation stung so deeply true.
He raised his head again just as she turned away with Sam's name on her lips, and he winced, but patted her arm gently in agreement. "I've spoken with him briefly... he's picking at his own wounds. He lost three fingers and he's punishing himself by prodding that hand whenever he gets uspet. I stopped him while I was with him but I'm sure he's still doing it when he's alone." Which hopefully wasn't too often, between Remi and Nate. "But they're probably trying to make themselves stronger, strong enough to overcome the defenses we put up during LongNight and start breaking in to places," he added with a grimace. "It would make the bloodbaths from last year look like puddles in comparison. No. I agree that we can't make that trade in good faith... and truthfully, I don't think that beast would let Ru'in's soul go even if we did. We'd just bring it what it wanted and then it would attack us and try to capture our souls as well." And then there would be three souls lost in the dark, and the song and lantern with them.
She’s not sure what kind of connection Jigano thinks she has with the Voice. But it’s not the one he’s assuming. The Voice doesn’t tell her everything that is in regards to the world around them – but neither does Safrin, neither does Ludo, and Frey certainly doesn’t. It comes back to one of their previous arguments, along the lines of not needing to know until necessity arrives. “She doesn’t tell us everything, Jigano.” A flat admission. “I did not know about the Portals.” She offers – at least not the ones within the Hollowed Grounds… Just the one in the tree, but she doesn’t dare mention it.
At the mention of Kiada, however, she listens. “She might have thought it would have ruined the quest had she not brought those who Ludo specified.” shoulders rise and fall in a shrug. She can recall the girl’s father well enough to know he did things much the same. And the thought brings a frown to her face.
But Sam? She listens to what he says, nodding along. “I think that Kiada’s right, that it might end up trying to make it so they don’t need to only come out through LongNight. Obviously they go somewhere, but it wouldn’t answer the question when I asked.” Because she had asked, where they went when the sun rose again.
“Kiada is smart. She’s been through so much, that I think she will make the right decision.” She offers unhelpfully. But if there’s one thing she knows, it’s that the girl had plenty of experience in these regards, and she hopes that she doesn’t make the same mistakes as before.
"No, she doesn't," he agreed softly. That was something he'd brought up with Sam before, after all. The old gods might not share things so willingly either, but they also rarely asked for things out of the blue. 'Gather here,' 'destroy this,' 'kill them,' were not commands he had run into before with them. If others had he didn't know about it, but such tasks he knew of tended only to be given when asked for by the mortal praying, and then the point of them was often clear. He hated seeing his friends used like pawns, tools, soldiers for a purpose they didn't understand.
And, at least in Sam's case, didn't question - not to the Voice's face.
It was getting them nowhere, however, and talk of Kiada's quest was more imminent, overshadowing the questions of portals and deaths at least for the moment. "Likely," he agreed with a guilty sigh. "I would have made the same assumption at the time. We were both blighted when she told me of the quest... neither of us was at our best or thinking clearly, and by the time we improved we just... didn't think to question it." He was as much to blame for the oversight as the Harpy, and it made his failure to be enough for her even more wounding.
Not that he could speak to Rexanna of wounds right now, not with her blind eyes and broken ribs. "I suspect... it has something to do with the Spire," he said thoughtfully. "That, or the Underground. It would have to be someplace no natural light ever reaches, and those two places fit that description. Given the similarities to the Spire Demon and the connection to the Ascended, my guess is the Spire, but I've been in it several times since it was opened and haven't come across any sign of them." A mystery. A riddle. One he had worried over for a year without coming closer to the answer.
He started to smile at Rexanna's belief in Kiada, exhaling softly in fond agreement. "My greatest weakness is my inability to trust, I suppose. But... yes, I should trust her mo--" His words cut off abruptly as the room went dim, his lantern's light providing most of the remaining light, his eyes shifting immediately to his fox's gaze as he rose fluidly to his feet and looked around, invisible hackles rising. His hand rested on Rex's shoulder now, not gripping tightly but holding firmly in silent warning.
"Rex, did you feel anything just now?" he asked softly. "The candles just went out..."
