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!
Unanswered prayers were normally nothing new, but after the ravages of LongNight Jigano couldn't help but worry after Ludo. Not that the masked god needed his worry, of course, but he might have once thought that about Safrin, too, before she had suffered the blight no less than any mortal. Indeed, she might have suffered far more, and he doubted it had sweetened her temper towards the Voice any.
Which didn't particularly bother Jigano any. He was racking up his own list of accounts against the iron goddess, and only Sam and Rexanna's friendship kept him from chipping away at her support with more than words.
But she wasn't why he had come to Safrin's Shrine today, candle in hand along with one of the sweet loaves Amalia had taught him how to bake for Fiat Lux last year. He had made this one alone and it showed, lacking the grace the Shield put into her culinary creations, but the taste almost made up for it, honey and lavender, and a star decorated the top of it.
He lit the candle at the shrine, setting the loaf in its towel to keep it warm and clean upon the altar as he bowed his head. Isuma buried her little face among the twilight-colored flowers as he prayed, delighted with this new place and especially the windchime that sang in the quiet twilight.
"Safrin, I know I'm not one of your favored, but I'm worried and I don't know where else to turn... please, hear my prayer."
"I hear a great many things." Her voice is serene but as cold as a galactic wind. Appearing at the top of the shrine-wall, the goddess looks down with only a warm smile for Isuma as she investigated the periwinkle blooms.
Drawing her knees effortlessly up and crossing her legs at the ankles, Safrin peers down at the Sage with an unreadable cosmic gaze. "What is it you'd like me to hear specifically, Jigano?"
Perhaps he hadn't quite been expecting an answer today, either, after the silences his previous prayers had received. Those had been to Ludo, but the masked god had shown Jigano patience and favor before. The starlit goddess was a more distant and aloof figure to him, one beloved by Amalia and Ronin to be sure, and he had seen the way her light fell gently upon them, but he had experienced a different side of her, as cold as the stars in the midwinter sky. He had prayed out of worry and desperation, but now that she sat before him he found himself hesitating.
He had at least learned caution to some degree.
Unfortunately, his dancer's flexibility made it all too easy to get his foot into his mouth, no matter how good his intentions.
"Thank you for coming," he said formally, deciding to err on the side of the courtesy. He had a sudden flicker of doubt, second-guessing his decision to pray to the star-eyed goddess for his answer, but in the end he didn't know where else to turn, and at least she had answered. "I'm worried for Ludo. I haven't seen them in almost half a year and... well, if they're simply busy elsewhere I'm sorry for wasting your time. But if something has happened to them, like the blight, I want to know if there's any way I could help them... the way Amalia helped you," he added impulsively, gesturing around at the shrine that Amalia had built to help the goddess recover.
It took a special sort of mortal to think they had the stuff necessary to help for a god. It was an arrogance that led them to believe they were on the same level, and a self-importance that made them think they were at all capable. In those like Amalia in manifested itself in a sweet sort of naivety. In those like Jigano, it merely came across as being full of themselves. And gods such as Safrin who were particularly prone to pridefulness and hasty judgments, was not one to easily change her thoughts about someone once they'd been set.
"Nothing like the blight has happened to Ludo." Safrin replied. Whatever contempt she seemed to manifest from time to time for her raggedy counterpart, she'd not speak ill of it. Not to the likes of Jigano. "There is nothing that you can do for it, where it is now, other than wait. But by all means, go bring it a rose if you like. Bring it hundreds and see if that does the trick."
Her first words were a relief, though Jigano kept his shoulders straight and his expression as carefully neutral as possible. If Ludo wasn't sick, though (and never would he have thought gods could get sick before Safrin had come down with the blight), it left the mystery of where they were, and if something else had happened to them.
Safrin's next words were a mystery wrapped in rose thorns, and Jigano had been pricked by enough of them over the winter to recognize their sting in the goddess's voice. Humility failed him momentarily as he lifted his chin, blue eyes flickering with stubborn pride. Maybe it was hubris that made him fond of the raggedy god, but he was; protective and worried about the masked spirit guide, and he would not flinch from Safrin's cutting words. "Gladly," he said quietly, voice level and gaze rising to meet the infinite cosmos that looked at him from atop the shrine. "Only tell me where I can find them, and I shall bring enough roses to make even you smile at their bounty and beauty." Except, of course, that they would be for Ludo, not Safrin.
But what was in a name? The flowers would still smell as sweet.
"Ah, and here I thought you said you wanted to be like Amalia. She managed to find her own roses. I trust someone as skilled as you can surely do the same." The goddess replied with a sarcastically sweet smile.
If the Sage wanted to waste his time plucking plants for a god who couldn't care less, that was his prerogative. No doubt he'd weave some importance into the gesture, as he had done the last time the goddess and the Sage spoke.
He felt the flicker of annoyance rising in his chest as she deliberately misunderstood him once more, but tried to quash it. He remembered what had happened last time and didn't want to offend her so again, but gods she took offense so easily...
As did he, not that he wanted to admit it at the moment.
"Find my own roses I shall indeed," he said a little stiffly, his language growing more flowery along with his frustration. "I was asking where I could find Ludo rather than the blooms. So that I can deliver them to him." Flowers and souls both, he hoped, if only he could find out where the god had gone, and if there was a way for a mortal man to follow him there.
"Why its shrine, of course." The goddess replied with a raised brow, putting special emphasis on it to imply the Sage's improper use of him, and taking unfair advantage of the writer's accidental pronoun use. "Then again I have seen you pray to it, and how you have heard nothing in response. Such a pity. You would think given how instrumental you are in so much of what happens here, so much of what Ludo does, that it would have found a way to contact you." Her shoulders shrugged casually, her voice sweetly pushing the needles of her words in.
"Almost as if perhaps you are not even on its radar. Almost as if all of this endless importance you place on yourself with respect to those around you, the importance you think you share with the gods...is all in your head."
Indeed, all the times the sage had 'failed' to be the savior, and still the world went all. All his successful and failed attempts and really, what had he accomplished? What had it ever mattered?
11-03-2019, 09:37 PM (This post was last modified: 11-03-2019, 09:38 PM by Jigano.)
He bristled again at the emphasized jab, but that needle was nothing compared to the knives that followed, or the expert way she flensed back his defenses to lay bare his secret fears and internal demons. He froze as she shrugged, caught in shock at how easily he was seen through, though it shouldn't have been a surprise. She had done it before, after all, when he had been far more vulnerable and desperate.
He had thought himself better prepared to face her today, willing to brave her sharpened silver tongue to find word of Ludo, but he had overestimated his strength when pitted against that of a goddess.
Not that he hadn't done so before, and come out the victor then despite all odds, in a different world, and against the iron god Unity.
Memories of that battle, of what he had faced before and overcome, what he had learned and paid in blood and the brightness of his soul, stiffened his spine as he faced Safrin down with deceptive outward calm, even as Isuma peeped soft warning at him to back off, sensing her companion's stubbornness rising to the occasion and knowing it wouldn't end well for him.
"And yet the same could be said of you," he said, his voice calculatedly cool in contrast to the rising heat within him. "When the barrier was raised and nothing you did could reach Vi or convince him to open the barrier from the outside, without the assistance of meddling, 'unimportant' mortals. When all you wanted was to help him again. I would think you would understand why I'm worried about Ludo and want to help it, if I can, even if there's currently a different sort of barrier between us now."
That Ludo was being kept away? That was easier to believe than the spirit guide abandoning the bard, capricious though Ludo could be. He would not presume to call them friends, but he would not let even Safrin shake his loyalty to the masked god who had given him a purpose and a chance to redeem himself in his own eyes.
"Do you think yourself so clever Jigano, that you would try and compare yourself to me? That you, arrogant enough to be called The Sage would think knowledge gained here, in just over a year, gives you a sufficient enough understanding?"
Oh, she could defend herself herself with words all she liked. He might think himself the cleverer of the two, but she had eternity with which to toy with him. With which to grind his soul into dust. He however, did not. So she'd break the self aggrandizing streak out of him with far greater urgency.
"Then lets have it bard. You, who are important enough to measure yourself against the gods. Lets not end it there." Her voice grew cool and thin as the world around swam, blurred, and disappeared. The universe stretched and condensed until it was only Safrin's galactic gaze, and Jigano as bright as triumphant as any sun amidst the darkness.
But he was bound to the void with chains that sparkled with enigmatic intent. The way to break them would become clear enough though.
"Isuma, or Rory." In the darkness, both the gryphon and the farmer would appear. Rory with his sun-kissed skin and kind if not mysterious blue eyes. His strong hands, soft despite the many callouses. How those hands fit so easily into Jigano's, as did his lips and limbs. And then there was Isuma, she who knew intimately the bard's mind. She who had protected and comforted, brought joy and laughter to his life. She who was bonded to him, and who he owed his protection. Two different bonds, but only one answer. Jigano would find himself unable to do anything but utter one of the names. If he tried to say more, his breath and lips would fail him. If he stayed silent? So be it. Safrin had a lifetime. Jigano did not.
He had thought himself clever, though he had never once called himself 'Sage' since the name had been uttered in giddy relief to Edrei, so glad to be not only alive but free to walk as himself again that he had let his cleverness run away with him. Accept a crown and then make Ronin king... it had all seemed so simple at the time.
As soon as it had unraveled, mere hours later, he had buried that name for the lie that it was and his hackles rose at the sound of it from Safrin's lips now. He couldn't hide how he bristled from her - and a moment later, he couldn't move or speak at all as he was caught in the space between worlds, between suns, in the goddess's realm.
Oh, he had fucked up spectacularly this time, hadn't he?
Not that he was given much chance to appreciate just how badly he had miscalculated again before an ultimatum was given and his heart lurched. Was this what had happened to Remi, when he had lost his memories? Swiftly he tried to open his mouth to speak:
Both! his heart cried, but no sound passed his lips, no matter how he struggled.
And struggle he did, resisting Safrin's demand to choose with all his heart and soul, fighting the bonds that constrained his body as much as his tongue until he felt something deep within him, across his chest, behind his shoulders, begin to tear as his body tried and failed to find a shift that would free him from the starlit shackles and let him hold onto both of those he loved so dearly.
"Does it make you feel noble, to struggle? To try and evade the choice clearly set out before you?" Only her eyes are visible in this cosmic realm of nothingness, this patch of empty space, but her voice booms all around. "I'm sure it does. Besides, when you retell this moment, if you don't struggle, how ever will you justify what comes next? The inevitable choice? Oh but I tried! you'll say. I can hear it now. The pain in your voice, the disgusting whining. And everyone will see it for what it is. An act, because at heart you are a bard after all. Why be honest when you can instead always weave the narrative in which you are the hero? The martyr? Those are much more interesting roles than say...baker. Farmer. Much better to be a hero. A provost. A soul-shepherd."
Her laughter was wide and bright, but as cold as the shackles that bound him to the void.
"Very well Jigano. If we have our roles, then let me play the villain. Choose, or I kill them both. There. That should make it easy, no?"
And indeed, on the screen of darkness before him would appear Rory and Isuma. Rory with knives slicing through his ribs, and Isuma plunged into a fire. Both all alone. Both screaming for Jigano.
11-04-2019, 03:18 AM (This post was last modified: 11-04-2019, 02:41 PM by Jigano.
Edit Reason: lines = lives yaaay typos
)
He had seen this sky before, with no air or clouds to soften it, nothing but the icy expanse of darkness and the suns that shone with a steady, distant light. He had seen it in the memory of a dead traveler between the stars, a soul transposed upon his own, mingling past and future, as that ancient sky-sailor had looked out a porthole upon the endless night beyond.
And seen the stars devoured, winking out, one by one, as the rhu-chalik servants of the Dominion of the Black swarmed the ship Divinity, shredding minds and sanity for their masters and sending the proud vessel into rout that ended upon the soil of Jigano's world in a thousand fiery fallen stars scattered across Numeria.
Safrin's gaze now brought that memory into sharp focus, the devouring darkness rekindled in the frigid caress of her voice as she mocked his struggle. He lacked the strength to fight this goddess, had no friends around him to weave their skills into a defensive web. He was alone in the night, and he knew so very well from Riz and Oni's first betrayal that a lone bard was a dead one.
He was nothing without his friends, be they thieves or bakers, wizards or farmers. And he had been so afraid of them leaving him that he had been doing his damnedest to drive them away, to sabotage his own happiness because deep down, he knew he was worth more as a dead martyr than a living bard. He had been trying to overcome that flaw that she and Ludo had both pointed out to him before, but he wasn't strong enough alone.
But Isuma and Rory had never accepted it. Not once. Of everyone he loved, they returned it without question or reservation. They cared for him fiercely, and that care made him worth something, even in his own jaded eyes.
He couldn't lose either of them.
His heart would not simply break if he did. It would shatter and he didn't know if he would ever find all the pieces again.
And then the goddess lost her patience with him, giving him no more time to struggle, no more time to think. The images she flashed before him stole his breath and stopped his heart, and if he'd been given just a little longer he might have questioned the star-eyed goddess so beloved by Ronin and Amalia threatening innocent lives...
But there was no time, and a single name was torn from his lips in a raw, wounded roar:
