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.
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!
She should have known that her answer would break him, would cross that line that he had kept so carefully hidden. She’d known him long enough, long enough to know how deep the wounds ran despite his careful attention at keeping them buried down, short words, short responses, but she can hear the internal growl that goes on within. She doesn’t need eyes to notice that. She can hear it in the way he tells her it’s unwise, and she nods in understanding, but a quiet hum of a snort leaves her. “I know it is.” She offers quietly.
But he starts to drift down that rabbit hole, and all conversation and thoughts on the matter drift away as soon as he tells her that the monsters want them to be unprepared, to be woefully lost and separated, trapped and added to the growing numbers of the creatures armies. And she frowns, realizing her misstep, hearing the shift in his posture and body as he leans forward to rest his head on his hands.
She’d broken him, unnecessarily. She hadn’t meant to, entirely unintentional, and she hurts for what she’s done.
So she stands, sure of where his location is, from the location of his voice, hands outstretched to feel for him and his arms. “Deimos.” She says once she’s found him, hands small in comparison to the build of his arms as she tries to pull them away from his face, to approach to the side of him and lean over the chair, over him to dare to hug him tightly, to comfort her oldest friend. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it.”
Despite his gaze on the floor, Deimos saw none of the hardened, wooden grains, the lines drawn, the possible blemishes and stains of paint, of life in the cracks and folds. Instead they were haunted and torn apart by wraith-like memories, things he’d pushed down, down, down, even from the moment everything had occurred, the despair tracing its way back over his heart and lungs, clenching at muscles, sinew, flesh, and bone. Rexanna: damaged almost beyond repair, impaled, impaired, eyes gone and riddled, plucked away, barely clinging on – and the images just kept shattering, just kept their taut, tight grip on his senses, things he thought he’d processed, things he thought he could handle. Before, before, before had been days where anything threatening them were mangled in his touch, were decimated, were destroyed, were ravaged and savaged, sometimes no one the wiser, sometimes returning to the ice and snow with blood and gaping wounds; better his than theirs. He couldn’t do that here. They raced off in their own directions, and his protective stance didn’t quite matter as much, didn’t hold the same breadth, the same threshold, the same guarding, shielding ferocity. He could only do so much. He could only drag a beam out of her chest. Zuriel could only heal some broken, barbed tensions and marrow. He wasn’t certain what bothered him more – the fact that his weaknesses kept crawling, kept provoking, or that they all continued to spiral through their same patterns, and he couldn’t do a damn thing about it.
He didn’t want them hurt. He didn’t want them unraveled. He didn’t want to see them scorched and beaten and distorted again. He didn’t want them close to death.
He’d been there. He knew its touch from the enchantments laden in his soul. He knew its efforts from the way demise had courted his own figure, pulled at his soul, and took his final breaths, his final beats. Was his purpose now to watch them all fade in the exact same way? “It already happened to you before. I do not understand why you would want that again.” The Sword grumbled and growled, not the Reaper, who’d never shown them much more of feeling or sentiment than the lift of a brow or the slightest indentation of a callous smirk; and he wanted to hide then too, tuck himself away in the cloaked shadows, where no one bothered, where no one chased, where he could wallow in his misery and despair and no one would give a damn.
The monolith heard her coming, but didn’t move away, uncertain of where else to go and stow himself, and then concerned she might trip and fall on her way over – not expecting her hands to go around him, the apprehension coiling off of him in waves. Very rarely was he ever comforted; most left him to his own devices besides Amalia, because he didn’t know what to do, and he didn’t know what to feel, and he didn’t have anything to batter against in someone else’s hold, in Rexanna’s embrace. She peeled his hands away from his features, and he thought about fighting against it, every instinct unraveling to tell him to defy, to curl back, to unleash something other than sentiments. But she was there and he had no escape, no evasion, remaining in his stupefied, bewildered expression that she couldn’t see, but likely sensed. “There will be other ways,” he rasped in her grasp, other means, other measures, than continually placing herself in danger.
Perhaps it was their downfall that they were so incredibly similar, that they’d race off and throw themselves into the thick of things to protect those they cared about. And as she hugs him, holds him close, she can tell the lines that are drawn, the line she had crossed despite having seen him cross them too. They both were guilty of it, and it was difficult to see it in the end. But Rexanna knew, and she imagines deep down that Deimos knew too, that somewhere, somehow, Deimos’ perceived weaknesses were Rexanna’s self-sacrifice.
She still loved him dearly though, a brother, a king, and despite their faults and lines crossed, lines drawn. And she listens while he grumbles and growled, showing so much more feeling and words than he ever had before. Had she been able to see him, she’d see the cracks, the refortified Sword, the shift from the cool and calm, aloof Reaper, for the man that sat before her, that her arms wrapped around, providing a cool pressure because her body no longer gave off warmth, but she tries all the same. “Why do you do the things you do?” She asks quietly. “To go again and again into the base of the Spire despite knowing how dangerous it was? To go again and again to the front of the danger, tearing down the Monster Hunter’s Guild while the rest of us made it to safety.” There’s a hum of amusement in her voice as she squeezes his shoulders gently.
“As much as we hate the danger we put ourselves in, you and I are much the same.” A slight chide, a way that perhaps he could see it, see the similarities between them. And as he tells her that there will be other ways, she nods to him, agreeing silently and quietly, that yes, there would be other ways. And she’s certain the right choice will be made in the end.
The sacrificial tendencies had existed long, long, long before he’d ever been thrown into Caido’s grasp – fueled and irked and ensured by crowns, by soldier endeavors, by general tactics, by the Machiavellian upheavals in which he’d always lived his life. Why let someone else be harmed? Why let another of his own bear the burden? The beast had always found himself capable of holding a scorching, menacing, overbearing weight across his shoulders, no matter which world, no matter which form, never voicing exhaustion, fatigue, or the soulless incantations of loss. It’d been normal, it’d been habitual, it’d been routine, to proffer himself to the slaughter, to the rituals of violence, chiseled and sculpted into the fiber of his being. Sometimes it’d simply been expected: the protector, the guardian, the Reaper, unleashing torrents of wrath, of contempt, of barely-concealed rage, to let the world know the Basin wasn’t to be trifled with. He bore wounds and scars and stigmas to prove it, permitted their existence to carve their scorn into his wake, because they meant survival, because they meant someone else didn’t receive the blows, because something was protected and honored and he defied them all. But Rexanna’s words hit harder than he expected, and he knew the knife of hypocrisy dangling before him too, scattering and scything over his bones, touching upon the enamel even light, even airy, as Rexanna called into the quiet.
Because I do not matter settled upon his tongue. Because there were a thousand souls whittled and manifested just the same as him, nothing but battle, but sedition, but bloodshed in their hearts, in their minds, fervent to maul oblivion if given half the chance. Because they weren’t the world-changers, because they were vices, because they were weapons, and he’d been amongst that soulless enterprise from the moment he was born. In his nature, in his foundation, to clench his jaw and barrel onward, drag lacerations across adversaries, to open pathways, to sculpt and ravage, to rampage and destroy. “So no one else has to.” He answered at first; not even half of the conflagration beating within his chest. He was not a necessity, he was not a diplomat, he was not a sovereign, not here; even within the Basin, at the base of his demise, he presumed they had naturally filled in the hole. It probably hadn’t even been gaping, someone stepping up from within, the Reaper cold and gone and the world moved on. Perhaps it would happen again, in time, when he continued onslaught after onslaught, movement after movement, already thrown and launched into precarious, perilous situations time and time again. “So no one else was hurt,” he murmured, quieter now, the vocals merely a low rumble in his throat while she clutched and he didn’t know what else to do. The monolith was a replaceable element in a sea of citizens; and he understood that was how she mustered her way through too. Much the same; idiotic, perhaps, but firm in their beliefs of protection and resolution. On nothing much more than instinct and melancholy, he leaned back into her squeeze, into her gestures, the sigh evident through his spine.
It isn’t expected. It isn’t wanted of him to do it. There’s no reason that he should be the one to brunt it all for the benefit of everyone else, when he mattered so much to those around him. What made him the one to need to bear all the burdens of the world? For protection? Ensuring people’s safety? He wasn’t the King of the Basin anymore, he wasn’t the protector of a realm. He was simply Deimos Ignatius, the Resurrected Sword, a beloved friend, boyfriend, and a powerful man with powerful friends and allies. A man that mattered so much to so many. Who always has, even if they didn’t show it before.
But that didn’t mean that he needed to go headstrong into the battle, as much as he wanted to. And the more Rexanna thinks on it, the more she realizes that the same could be said for her. Nobody had asked them to, but it was their nature to do it so nobody else has to. So nobody else has to suffer. ’So no one else has to.’ She hears him say, and she squeezes his shoulders a bit tighter. She understands. So no one else was hurt. She understands that too. But at the same time, perhaps Rexanna realizes now in this instance, that nobody had asked them. They had people that cherished them and their safety, as evidenced here with Deimos’ concern about Rexanna offering herself up for the LongNight monsters.
She bites down on the inside of her cheek for a brief moment, squeezing him again. “I suppose I should take some of this advice that I’m telling you.” She says lightly, trying to lighten the mood a small fraction. “But… Nobody asked you to do that. Nobody asked you to bear the brunt of the burdens of everyone else, did they? You matter so much to so many of us, Deimos. And I know it was hard to see me broken and battered over LongNight. But it would be hard for us to see you the same too. Kiada, Amalia, Hotaru, Remi, all of us.” She hums quietly, resting her head along his shoulder as she holds him tight. “You matter so much to us.”
There was never any thought of Deimos avoiding danger. Instinctual, inherent, inborn, to rampage straight into the fray while others bounded away, a shield, a structure of monolithic vehemence, to delay, to destroy, to ravage, and savage. Barbarous, remorseless, hardened, primitive enmity, laden in his bones, in his flesh, in his movements, seething, abhorrent disdain amongst and amidst foretold gallows. For eternity, the arcane, reticent rapier: devouring discord and harboring strife, heathen brushstrokes and feral, glacial, frigid mayhem; a step of antagonistic prose and poise for eternities, for multiple lives, for days spent layered in ruthlessness, for beacons and people and citizens not to be immersed in primordial treachery, for his impassive wounds, for his strength to unfold for them, for them, for them. It didn’t really matter to him that he was no longer king. He was still formidable, he was still chilling, he was still terror in unwinding motions of argent domination, simmering contemplation, smoldering, smoldering, smoldering havoc, yearning to wield havoc and carnage beneath ruin and friction. Piercing, penetrating, howling, arcane and primeval, ensuring no one else had to ache and anguish under bedlam, under terror, under vile, deplorable, horrible manifestations. Do you know how many I have lost? he wanted to utter beneath an unholy growl. Because he couldn’t get to them in time? Because he wasn’t enough? Because for all these distinct, marred, layered efforts, his potency, his prowess, couldn’t safeguard, couldn’t cloak them all, couldn’t ensure they were alive and well at the end of the day? His eyes fell again while she talked, while she proffered advice he likely wouldn’t take.
Some had asked, and he’d gone. He’d heard screams and followed them. What was he – compared to so many others? “Old habits,” he murmured, as if it was an excuse, and not his entire being, the core of his existence. The other strands she poked and prodded at might’ve raised a growl if he wasn’t so damn tired, wondering when this had turned upon him, just because he hadn’t wanted her to rampage out into a monster’s grasp all over again. An argument brewed and blistered behind his teeth the moment she said he mattered, simmering along his tongue, immediate sedition and defiance to things that couldn’t be true. It snapped and coiled along his flesh, tucked her in embrace, swallowing down the choking bile, the smothering alms, not sinking into their materials, their filaments, their surface, as if he were some irreverent shard, desperate to remain afloat in his beliefs. They would all manage without him – they had before. If he could muster his strength to ensure their survival, their continued presences, then maybe it would be enough. Humoring her, a bitter entanglement pressed along his mouth, a long sigh dwindling from his chest. “Then what should we do instead?” Let them all fumble around in disaster? Let them all die? Watch them disappear over the horizon? Become haunted by their ghosts?
What had he told Amalia, when they argued about going into the Spire? I cannot bear to lose you. Except now it conformed to so many others, and he’d willingly sacrifice himself again and again and again.
Old habits. Old habits. She almost snorts to this, keeping him held tight, locked down until she’s sure he won’t crumble as soon as she lets go. She knows him, knows him well enough that she could give him all sorts of information, all kinds of advice, and he wouldn’t take it. He’d pretend, like she does, to understand and hear, but when the heat of the moment arises, when feelings and emotions override the rationality, they’re back in the same places they were before.
Strange how that works out.
But the comment takes her somewhat off guard, asking what they should do instead. And well, she can’t really give a solid answer to that. Because she’d been struggling with that very same question all of her life. “We protect those closest to us, our family.” Because there’s no way that this talk of sacrifice and selfless tendencies would ever work when it came to family. But others? “We train the others, we give them all the tools they need. And then we trust they do the right thing, the smart thing.” Give them all the tools and if they perish, would it have made a difference if they had been there instead?
Crumbling; there were some days he felt he could – fumble and foil and stumble straight into ash and dust all over again, when his bones were tired and his head was fatigued and there were a thousand other things pressing in. But not now, not when there was steady, stalwart, seditious resolve burrowing deep from his chest, like a knife, like a dagger, like a tempestuous heartbeat waiting to thrive on the cataclysms of others. He breathed and sighed in her hold though, cranium no longer so bowed, so broken, eyes narrowed as he pinpointed along the floor, irreverence and rebellion building behind the maelstrom of chaos in his eyes. The beast could listen, could arm himself with their phrases, their tactics, and still embellish, embark upon his own.
Because what would he alter? It’d always been for those closest to him. It’d always been for the pieces and parts that made him whole. It’d always been for mountain tops and summits, for upheaval and oblivion, it’d always been for the few he cherished, for the ones who managed to slip past his guard, stay in the nefarious vessels and chambers of his blackened, bruised heart.
And he’d already begun on her second interval, armor and weaponry for those who’d needed it during LongNight (before everything burned, decimated, ruined), training extended along the grounds for anyone who wanted it, advice where he could manage, where anyone would listen, a defensive procedure ready to be put into place to ensure fortifications. So he snorted, laughed, a little less hollow, a little less sunken. Trusting another might be the most difficult, especially he’d watched decision after decision blow up in some faces. “Very little change for me, then.” Then he chuckled once more, self-deprecating humor, the warmth there instead of the brambles, the nettles, the thorns.
She knows he’s begun exactly what he admits. The General, a Military Barracks she’d heard about through the grapevine, helping those that live within the Hollowed Grounds become better, do better, protect themselves with as much as they can for the things that the world constantly faces them with. And there’s a slight wry smile on her face when he comments that it’s a very little change for him, and she nods, head bobbing in agreement as she holds him tight to her still.
“Very little, but with a few exceptions.” She hums slightly in amusement, before she sighs slightly and shakes her head. “I’ll try to be better, too.” She comments quietly, willing to work with him if he works with her so they can work on bettering themselves, at least realizing that they matter and that they always would whether they thought they did or not. That’s just how it was.
Perhaps that’s just all their stories – intertwined measures of trying and striving and determination whittled into their blood – sometimes they would stumble, sometimes they would thrive, and as long as they managed to survive, it would be worth it in the end. But no one would be able to stop him from placing himself on the front lines, beside all the others willing to put themselves into constant endangerment and upheaval, sword in hand and might in his expanse. To ensure the rest would fit into their fold, capable of defending themselves, armed and triumphant, eager, ready, fervent for the fray; that was all he wanted, really, when they scraped away the lacquer and the enamel, when the bare bones bleached themselves in their cantankerous wakes. Because how many hours had they once spent hurtling and harpooning attack after attack, nothing mattering, nothing fitting, the weak and foolish mauled, the strong and durable reaching out to save the latter – kingdoms and sovereignties only distinguished in the lines and legends they told.
He had yet to find a way to escape her hold, tucked, snared, and hidden, so he remained, like chiseled stone and foundational marble, columns etched and sketched with molten, puncturing lines, the scars rippling over muscle and fortification, committed to his actions since day one. “Yes. Queens must be very careful.” A tease, a ruffian smile behind everything, the lightest bit of laughter summoned along his throat; because she was strong and enduring, and a monarch’s role held more than just sliding into danger (for all the things that he’d done and conducted; that had been his favorite part).
She eventually lets him go, perhaps a bit begrudgingly, and yet a hand still remains along his shoulder as she attempts to look down at him through unseeing eyes as he teases her, and her face scrunches up – nose wrinkling with the response. “Ack.” She retorts, though chuckles lightly to him before she shakes her head.
“Yes, I suppose I need to think more than just about myself.” She offers, slipping away to sit on the couch again and focus on him before her face grows a bit more serious, head tilting as she angles her face to the space she had just left. “Got any tips, My Lord?” She questions, lips curling into a small smirk as she recalls the title of the Basin, a strange new sense of roles reversed overcoming her.
An escape from the embrace, and he wasn’t sure how to feel about the absence thereafter, save for the hand on his shoulder, arching his brow at bandannas and cloth, at the way her eyes might’ve glared or glowered at him in the makeshift mischief. His smile still remained, even as he rounded into another roll of his gaze at the lord jab; no one had called him such a thing in ages. It waxed and waned as if it only existed a thousand years ago, deadly, noxious crowns and shoulders weighed down, down, down by the heady masses. Rexanna was far more suitable for such a role – would tower and proclaim, would institute a grander, successful regime, than anything he ever accomplished.
He wasn’t certain if she’d truly want any of his damned advice, from those days spent before so many others, out of his comfort zone, longing, yearning, to return to battlefields or shadows, pressed and scalded and re-shaped, re-molded, until he was just an icy, glacial being all the more, desperate to protect and shield, but restless in his defiance. How many meetings had he held where there was uproar and oblivion? The patterns always nettled and sparked at his spine, returned in full force, dread, and apprehension, the moment he stepped into any meeting hall here. But it was still experience, and he’d strive to grant her the fumes and dregs of sagacity he’d retained. “Listen. Always be willing to listen.” A feat Zariah had attempted to accomplish, then lost along the way in her fight for power, for supremacy, for tyranny; proclaiming her convictions and then damning the people in the next. Wessex had been more open, but still, on the ethers of her shift, of her abdication, still left before the world had their say. These were people to reign over, but not to smother, not to consume, not to dictate and dissipate. There was a give and take; there to protect, to serve. “But do not be afraid to stand your ground and fight for what you believe in.” Maybe the Penumbra wouldn’t need to hear that at all; already accomplished in those regards.
If he proclaimed the idea that he thought she was much better suited for it, she’d have to disagree. At least with Deimos there had been a proven track record, years of running and managing people, ruling and protecting. For her? She’d had maybe a trial run, before ex husbands burned it to the ground and she ran for her life, abandoning her people not once, but twice. Once when she’d left them and let them fall into the ruin and rubble of vengeance. And again, when the Voice had her give up her allegiance in order to Ascend.
But he hadn’t, and so she focuses on the tips he gives her. To listen, firstly and foremost, and she smiles to that with a small nod given to him, through unseeing eyes. “I like to think I can listen.” She comments softly. Even if she couldn’t, she had enough friends and family to tell her to sit down and shut up and listen, she thinks. But he continues on, telling her that to not be afraid to stand up for what she believed in, and the smile falters ever so slightly.
She imagines she’ll have to do a lot of that, in the coming months. Another Ascended on the throne, another Ascended who had somehow managed to still effect the people of the Hollowed Grounds without realizing it, regardless of how many times she had thought it was helping. Perhaps some soul searching was needed with it all too. “Thank you.” She says softly, wondering if he has more to offer, or if he was simply listing out the things he wished he could change about his own rule.
Rexanna had far more of an affinity with people than he’d ever attempt to gain. Perhaps that had been his greatest flaw and defect, the inability to foster connections beyond a few, choosing to leave himself in the apathetic gazes, in the traces of foundational nonchalance, in the sequence of battles, bloodied and beaten and barbaric. The world had been intimidated by him and he’d craved it, their shudders, their quakes, their crushed, trembling dominions, but it also meant he was left to dwindle and decay on his lonesome, beneath the crushing weight of crowns and horizons, under the belligerent echo of all their misdeeds, iniquities, and defeats. They’d been hollowed whispers and hushed shells, a maneuvering vessel with sentiments too far gone to ever pursue – he didn’t know what he was now, could only trace some idle, familiar filaments, constantly skimming over terrain and land and moments so unfamiliar. He kept it all to himself still, in the end, not voicing those motions, not giving credence to their rising clamor, not outlining the possibilities of every other damaging enigma hovering along shadows and thralls. The ignorant wake of the undisclosed could cause every bit of tension all over again, as it’d done for Wessex, as it’d done for Ronin, as it’d done for Zariah, as it’d done for any other diplomatic figurehead.
Yes, she could listen – and he’d once done the same, burying all the other predilections in the back of his mind, to tilt his head at the voices shrieking, bellowing, and crying out their disregard, their hatred, their vehemence, or anything else along those lines. Surviving the Basin only prepared them for this hearth and heart. “Everything else will come with time and experience.” The slightest quirk of a smile before it dimmed entirely – gaze casting off elsewhere, along artistic lines and venues, paintings and tapestries, canvases that told multitudes of stories, and to continue along with other, unforeseen sagas. “Let me know if you need anything,” he added, not sure what else to give or grant, but willing just the same.
