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!
He had failed Kiada. He hadn't been able to save Ru'in's soul and now it seemed as though it would remain in the monster's keeping for another year, the Harpy too distraught to try again so soon, with so little to bribe the beast with.
Ru'in wasn't the only soul lost in the dark, however, and he had oaths to keep, even if only to himself. No matter the guilt and self-recriminations he tried to drown himself in they couldn't entirely overshadow the draw of his duty. Duty had kept him going when he had little other reason to continue, and it did so now as he buckled the gorget around his throat once more and took up his weapons and shield. The shadowy tar had been burned away and his injuries healed by unicorn horn, and he no longer needed to use the spear as a walking stick.
He had found a harpoon in the piles of weapons Deimos had scattered around the Hall, however, and that was now attached to his cable-rope and slung across his back with the crossbow. He didn't expect to run into that particular monster again without Kiada...
But fuck if he wouldn't prepare, just in case. He was going to bear that creature a grudge until one of them was dead, no matter how long it took.
He didn't hide what he was doing, nodding grimly to those in the main hall as he took his lantern and stepped into the foyer, making sure someone would lock the door behind him as he left. He waited to hear the locks click behind him before he stepped from the threshold and raised the lantern, beginning to sing Ludo's song as he stepped away from the circle of luxere and into the dark, beginning to make his way towards the Temple in the hopes of collecting any souls that might have been lost between the two safehouses.
Strange when you're singing, how hard it is to hear what is going on around you. What with all that melody warbling around in your inner ear, reverberating through your skull. It would give a much better acoustic sound were you to remove all that flesh; had you considered that?
No souls came bobbling out of the darkness to settle into the lantern’s protective light, but no monsters slavered and snapped at its edges either. For the moment Jigano decided that the balance was acceptable, but he desperately needed something to go right in this darkest of weeks. Failure after failure had followed him for days now. He had failed as a friend to Amalia, Sam, and Rex. He had failed as a mate to Rory, leaving his love alone to help Kiada only to fail in that as well. He clung to the task he had begged for the right to take up, to the duty he had bound himself to at no one else’s behest but his own, desperate to prove to himself that he had something of worth to offer. Something other than criticism, judgment, and pain.
Was it a flaw in his singing that kept the souls from finding him? Ludo’s song had drawn them near last year when he had walked with Amalia. This year, though, he walked alone… was it not the song at all that had brought them to their sides, but instead the Shield of Safrin?
No. No, he buried his envy deep, refusing to acknowledge it. Perhaps the souls just couldn’t hear him properly.
Jigano did not even notice when his hand left the hilt of his sword and rose to wrap around a hank of white hair, tugging idly at first but with increasing insistence, as if to pull it out by its roots.
10-28-2019, 08:29 PM (This post was last modified: 10-31-2019, 07:52 PM by Random Event.)
but why did you
move the mirrors?
Or maybe the souls can hear the songs, but they are not able to get to Jigano through the seething darkness. Maybe there’s something else out there too. Something hungry. Something grinning.
Teeth snap and the sound of shattering glass and children giggling fills the air. Jigano would feel those teeth sink into his heel as his foot leaves the ground. The jaws tug, insistent and playful, before fleeing back into the dark.
Shattering glass and pain echoing through a crowd of giggles, and Jigano gasped the current note and jerked his foot away, spinning to shed the lantern's light upon his attacker.
Except, of course, there was nothing there but the teethmarks in his boot, though he continued to sing through gritted teeth. The pain at least shook the earlier voices from his head and he released his hair with a startled flinch, realizing only then what he had been doing. Out on LongNight without a dreamfish or Amalia's staff. He had made smarter choices before.
Hadn't he?
It was getting hard to remember when, but the lantern's glow gave him courage and a purpose, however bad he was at it. He had a home to return to, and people who would mourn his passage, even if they were fewer in number now than they had been before. Isla had been lost on a night such as this. Emmett was swallowed by the eternal night below the ground. Edrei had ended her days in the pitch black belly of a landshark. And Caiside...
It was too soon to think about Caiside. All he could do was sing, voice rising stubbornly in the night, calling to the souls of the dead.
Calling to the living, should any be out and in need of guidance.
Calling to the lost, whoever and wherever they might be.
10-29-2019, 09:16 PM (This post was last modified: 10-31-2019, 07:53 PM by Random Event.)
but why did you
move the mirrors?
At last.
Jigano’s voice rings like a bell through the black of night, a clear and pure tone that cuts through the madness and sends the creatures fleeing back into the dark. In their wake, in the spaces between, they come.
Bobbing and dancing, little more than orbs of light in some cases, in others full ethereal visions of those who had lost their lives out in the darkness, they come. Drawn by the lantern and the song, they flock to Jigano, desperate for their salvation.
He felt the shift when it happened, as the madness fell away and the lantern's light seemed to reach farther than ever before into the dark. Confidence bred confidence and the song rose, clear and steady, calling, calling. Not coaxing anymore, but triumphant and welcoming, his voice reaching out beyond the edge of light to guide and welcome.
He was out on LongNight, being anything but sneaky, and he knew the risk he ran. His voice could call stronger monsters as well as lost souls, but too many had already been lost to the night. Too many. Isla, Ru'in, Cera, Caiside, and so many others. He had asked to walk where Ludo's strength could not reach and now, for this moment, as the spirits gathered and swirled around him, he felt the fierce pride of having won something back from the devouring dark.
He held the lantern out to those who came, offering its light, its refuge until Ludo and Mort could return to bring them home. His voice in song reassured and invited, welcoming those who sought its glow and he trusted to Ludo's construction to shelter as many souls as could be drawn from the night that had sought to trap them.
