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!
“I don’t know.” She begins again, pausing, the silence drifting between them. And he understands, internally, the implications she means with as little of a statement. He returns back to his work on the shelving, lifting and ensuring it’s solidity, the straight plane of it until she continues on. “I want to fight something too.” He begins, quietly, thoughtfully, despite the typical rage he held. “I want to scream at the world, at all of the worlds for the unfairness of it all.” An agreement. But that there was nothing they could do, nothing to make pay for the unfairness of it all.
Perhaps they were both drowning under the weight of the unfairness and uncertainties, taunted further out to sea by those drawn close to them in terms of family and friends, only to watch them be taken away like nothing they’d been mirages, dissipating beneath their touch, beneath the weight of their gaze.
He begins to nail one of the shelves into place, propping it up and ensuring its location, when Melita speaks again. To tell her about her. He can do that. The one thing he has control over, with nothing to fight. He could at least ensure that her life survives off of stories. “Well, what do you want to know? Who she was in Korofi? How the first time I saw her she told me – and I’m quoting – ‘get the fuck off my table’ because I’d gotten hit in the training ring and blacked out and she had to stitch me up?” There’s a ghost of a nostalgic smile that crosses his face.
rely a bit too heavily on alcohol & irony
BASE INSPIRED BY ODD <3
No permission needed for power play!
Feel free to use magic/force on Sunjata, without killing him <3
Sunjata speaks with an Australian accent and has a passive magic that makes him produce a subtle scent that matches exactly to whatever those around him most desire him to smell like.
The wilderness, the savagery, the ferocity, could not be sated, not now, not when there’d been an explosion, an inferno, between her heart and lungs, pulsing and pervading through her ribs. Even if he wanted to fight, to scream, it was much too quiet, much too hushed, much too covered and contorted in the realm of oblivion – a place she refused to visit until it was her time to sink into its threshold and never return. “Then we should.” Let them scream. Let them fight. Let them gnash and rip and tear and collide into something; maybe into the walls of the bar, scaring anyone passing by with the howls of war or maddening, smothering rage – or they could always bound their way towards the Bone Bridge, where the monsters rested below and they could stab and lacerate and destroy in the name of people who’d died and disappeared at their hands.
Despite her clenched jaw and fists, the ravenous, scathing, blistering energy surrounding her entity in waves of crimson and ichor, she followed his movements, gathering the timber for shelves, for trinkets, for pictures, for memories that would mean something or naught at all. Pieces and portions for those gone, gone, gone, and now Lusea amongst them all over again. Stupid. This world was so god damned stupid.
Why did any one of them bother finding families and loved ones, when they were only torn away?
At his voice though, at his smile, one of her own curled, much less marred by fury and nefarious qualities, and more of the impish intonations – listening to Lusea’s introduction, to the stitches and seams of broken beings and how they reassembled before crumbling again. “Yes. All of it.”
help tonight to split its seams
Give the bruises out like gifts
He’d be willing to scream, to fight, to throw anything into the endless abyss of his own sorrow, and yet he can’t. At least, he doesn’t think he can until Melita says they should. That they should scream into the night, into the abyss, and he thinks of where they could do that here in Caido… “The Ruins or the Bone Bridge?” A quiet offer, steel eyes sliding over to look to her fiery hair, a shrug of his shoulder. A place they could go to let it all out without bothering anyone else, perhaps? He lets her decide, after all – it’s her idea.
But they begin working, and the ghost of a smile crosses his face at the mention of how Lusea had met him, how he’d thought she was an angel in the night despite the fact she was stitching him up without any form of pain relief. But he can see the slight curl of a smile gracing her own, and he buckles in tight while they work to tell her his story. “Well, there were different sections of Korofi. Different County’s that did other things. Mine was the house of laws and justice.” He begins, pausing to nail in the last screws on the first shelf. “Your fathers was weapons and ammunitions, for reference. And he and I were pretty similar, in the way that we were sons of the leaders of each county. So everyone knew who we were, knew our faces, things like that. And when I joined the resistance, they only let me fight. I think it was a way to get the aggression out of those that my father had wronged, but anyway.” A light chuckle.
“I got knocked out and when I woke up I thought she was some kind of angel, but she stitched me up on my side, and generally was a pain in the ass after that. Anytime I got hurt, she’d be the one to fix me up. She’d curse me out the entire time. ’I don’t trust you Sunjata Senzaok.’ Every. Time. But she did, eventually, trust me… That is.” He snorts, shaking his head again. “And then they started to give me a bit more responsibility in the rebellion, so they let me make deliveries to places. I stopped at the leader of the resistances’ house once, since nobody else wanted to do it. He had a tendency of being… Rough around the edges. Low and behold, he was Lusea’s father.”
rely a bit too heavily on alcohol & irony
BASE INSPIRED BY ODD <3
No permission needed for power play!
Feel free to use magic/force on Sunjata, without killing him <3
Sunjata speaks with an Australian accent and has a passive magic that makes him produce a subtle scent that matches exactly to whatever those around him most desire him to smell like.
Some vestiges of quiet acceptance seemed to glide along his melancholic ethers; and she’d take anything at this point, the fire in her veins coursing along movements and motions, in her nod, in her brandished embers. “Either one.” It didn’t matter, not really, when they howled and harpooned, when they unleashed all those tirades and angst-riddled furies, screeches and bellows along the voids and abysses. Maybe when they were done they could wander, see where molten paths took them, the girl always eager, fervent, to do something rather than wallow and circle the drain.
Then she listened while she worked, placing the shelving accordingly, taking momentary steps back to survey their distinctions, their assemblage; nothing haphazard or impulsive here, in regards to their loved ones. Houses of Laws and justice, her father maneuvering back into the myths and tales, weapons and ammunitions conspiring from his existence (and she wondered if he actually did anything about that; or it was just in title, in glory only). But it wasn’t time for her to inquire, head tilted, occasionally drawn over her shoulder to watch him, attention placed between her two tasks. Resistances, rebellions, seditious little things she wished she could’ve inspired or instigated; maybe one day, when the world twisted and turned again, Lusea the angel (she muffled a quiet laugh; because Lusea had never made that impression on her; ferocity and cinders, maybe, but never a seraphic presence), stitching, fixing. “I mean, who would trust you?” She interjected and teased, a wrinkle to her nose as she glanced away. She did. She trusted him. Eventually Lusea had as well. When the story curled and coiled away to Lusea’s father, her brow arched again. “Oh dear. Then what?”
help tonight to split its seams
Give the bruises out like gifts
“We can flip something for the decision.” He offers with a small smile, unable to decide between the two which would be better. Both would suit the purpose they required of it. So he grows silent, working while Melita works beside him, telling the story of Lusea, of when he had met her and when they’d grown close, of when nothing could stop them – well, except for Melita’s father and his own. But that comes later, much later.
He snorts at Melita’s interjection. “I ask myself that a lot.” He replies with a smirk, feeling the edge of the sorrow drift off in place for the stories he’s telling, the webs woven with Lusea at the center, him hopelessly dragging along. “Well, he asked me to bring in the items, and gods there were a lot. Furniture, boxes, things of the like. And eventually when we were done, he invited me in to chat.” A brief shrug at the thought. The way that her father had felt more like what a father should feel like, a feeling he’d never received and would never again. “So I did. And he sort of… Inducted me then? Gave me a new shirt, one that signified I was a part of them. But Lusea had brought it over when I was shirtless and she was so close to biting the head off of her father.” He chuckles lightly.
“Nobles there weren’t allowed to mark their bodies unless it was scars from battle, so tattoos weren’t something we could get. But he suggested if I really wanted to tell my father off I should get some.” Steel eyes slide over to her again with a smirk. “So I did a few days later. I got the wings on my shoulders.” He pauses, recalling that Melita had likely seen them before. “They started treating me like a member of it then, since it’s permanent, so they began to let me do more things. Lusea hated every minute of it.” He snorts, reaching back up to place another shelf. “But then they let a picture out that had me in it with my tattoos, and my father found out. Threatened the life of my mother if I didn’t reach out and tell them the location of the headquarters.” A frown replaces the smirk that was once there. “And we didn’t really think he had it in him, honestly. He’d never… Been that bad before.” Not to him. He never threatened his life, per say, but Sunjata can still recall the bruises and marks left behind. “So I didn’t. I didn’t believe him. I should have though, believed him. He killed my mother that day.” Over the rebellion of the tattoos, over a son that wouldn’t come back.
A muscle feathers in his jaw briefly. “So… I did sort of what I’m doing now. Holed myself away in my room. Lusea came to the door that night with a bottle of her father’s best whiskey and stayed with me that night.”
rely a bit too heavily on alcohol & irony
BASE INSPIRED BY ODD <3
No permission needed for power play!
Feel free to use magic/force on Sunjata, without killing him <3
Sunjata speaks with an Australian accent and has a passive magic that makes him produce a subtle scent that matches exactly to whatever those around him most desire him to smell like.
More shelving, more ways of keeping herself busy, perpetual movement, motion, fire and recoil while he talked, while he spun a web of stories and pathways she’d never experienced – inductions and tattoos, rituals and beliefs, systems her father might’ve been immersed within too. There was only a thin layer of resentment reserved for Gaal now, mostly indifference and intolerance for his appearance once before her at all – her existence applied to his, but only just. So she limited her thoughts and notions upon him, and back to threats, back to ultimatums, back to wings on shoulders and Lusea’s hatred, beams of scattered remnants. For some reason, she couldn’t fathom the death of his mother, a sharp turn of her head over her shoulder, gilded eyes glancing from her stool, from her hammer and nails and every other weapon notched and embedded between. “I’m sorry,” because maybe there would one day be a world where mothers were allowed to raise their children without fading, without dying, so soon, so quickly, permitted to experience more than just the turn of demise.
Perhaps Lusea had been regretful, remorseful too, offering her condolences, and that’s how it’d all truly began. Her expression softened, slightly, and then she narrowed her eyes again, glancing back to the wares they’d already instilled, installed. “And then what?” She whispered, pondering just how on earth they’d ever fit so many memories, so many lifetimes, so many beacons along this one wall.
help tonight to split its seams
Give the bruises out like gifts
Her apology is greeted with a nod. He’d gotten past it, dealt with it, Lusea had helped immensely as well as the Resistance, it had helped him fall into the good graces with them because he hadn’t offered up the location of their headquarters. It had helped him, in the fact that even despite how much the Resistance wasn’t fond of him, that nobody should have to watch their mothers die. It inspired more anger, more hatred toward his father, and they suddenly had something far more in common than just the words over his dislike. They had proof, now.
Her inquiry wondering what happened next is greeted with a small nostalgic smile despite the sorrowful blip of his tale, and he continues to work on the wall with Melita’s help as he figures out how to respond to it. “I think we just talked all night?” He rumbles, though the memory was incredibly hazy due to alcohol and how long it had been since that night. “But a few weeks later I decided to go back to training. I hadn’t seen Lusea since that night, I’d stayed in my room for the most part. And I was put up against a few people I’ve never fought against. I… Fought hard, didn’t back down when I should have, and on the third opponent I ended up blacking out again and getting a concussion.” A quiet hum of amusement lingers in it.
“I woke up… I don’t know how long it had been, but Lusea was there again, they’d moved me to some medical place and she had fallen asleep with her head on my arm. And her father arrived and told us to cut the bullshit and talk about it. And me, being daft and unaware, thought he was talking about the alcohol she’d stolen, when it was about our feelings for one another in the end. To which Lusea denied initially.” A breathy laugh leaves him, figuring Melita despite what little she knew of Lusea would understand that fiery denial that would linger hard and strong before chipping away slowly.
rely a bit too heavily on alcohol & irony
BASE INSPIRED BY ODD <3
No permission needed for power play!
Feel free to use magic/force on Sunjata, without killing him <3
Sunjata speaks with an Australian accent and has a passive magic that makes him produce a subtle scent that matches exactly to whatever those around him most desire him to smell like.
The tale continued, and she only came down off her stool and ledges to replenish supplies while she listened, while it spiraled into training, into worlds where people had opportunities to do that without monsters at their backs (or were those the humans, instead, lost and whittled and feral?), shaking her head at the notion of him gaining some other wound. But then there the touches and fringes of unspoken things, curving her smile into something a little melancholy, a little bruised, already knowing the end result – death and death again – as if the fluidity of conflagrations and water, floods and sparks, had no ability to stay together. When they should’ve. When they’d tried. Maybe, if there could’ve been something else beyond these worlds, these lands, these tossed, molten sovereignties. How many chances did some souls get, until everything bled and ran dry? But at the denial, the rejection, the irresolution, she couldn’t quite cloak her giggles. “Of course,” she laughed – no experience in it herself, but from her minor moments in Lusea’s presence, a wall, veil, shield, and curtain of fire embodied the woman, failing to do anything but ignite.
help tonight to split its seams
Give the bruises out like gifts
A snort is given back to Melita’s laughter, a half crooked smile at the memory. “They left us in that room until we talked about it.” His shoulders rise and fall in a shrug. “Took a few hours, but we did, and neither of us kind of… knew, I guess.” There’s a brief pause he gives, smiling at the memory. “But then her father decided to use it as a ploy for the resistance, trusted me and her to train together and go out and fight so the photographs would have our faces on it, and they could talk about this great love story between the defected noble boy and the daughter of the slums.” He glances to Melita at this point to see how she’s following along.
But after another moment, he continues to raise more and more of the timber to the wall, nailing it in with Melita’s help. “My father hated it, but there wasn’t anything he could do to retaliate. And so we continued, fought for a couple of years. Her father became a bit more of a father to me than my own did. And we had gotten so close to taking down the entire establishment until…” He pauses slightly, tilting his head as he shoots a glance toward Melita. “Well, your father ratted out our location, and Lusea and I had gotten cut off and surrounded on a rooftop.” He can recall the way they’d watched the sunset, how he’d poised that they could leave – run to Dorobo and start a life not surrounded by violence and anger, how it had never happened until Caido, and even then it was brief.
rely a bit too heavily on alcohol & irony
BASE INSPIRED BY ODD <3
No permission needed for power play!
Feel free to use magic/force on Sunjata, without killing him <3
Sunjata speaks with an Australian accent and has a passive magic that makes him produce a subtle scent that matches exactly to whatever those around him most desire him to smell like.
Forced discussions, embellishments of romance, faces of rebellion and twisted truths; Melita wondered just what she’d missed while on the other side of the world, exploring caverns and sea beds, then struggling to fight for her life, amongst scores of others. Perhaps things weren’t so different – more politically driven, but human nature still the same, ridiculous, asinine, seeking out hope and vengeance where it best could. She smiled at the notions of defected nobles and slum daughters with their woven tapestry of love and benediction, but it was quick and fleeting, because she knew in the end it didn’t last – and that in itself was heartbreaking.
Then takedowns, a shift of her shoulders as she worked, listening, listening, listening – and then her damn father.
Which only served to show that he’d really never done much good in his life. “I’m sorry,” on repeat and refrain, for she could feel the curve of something pending and ominous, a weight born of death and desecration, of her idiotic bloodline tracing their way through oblivion and ruin. Gaal would’ve never apologized. Gaal would’ve never regretted. She swallowed down the suffocating bile threatening to rampage along her throat, thought about hanging her head in shame; out of her control, never in the midst of all this, never even a thought, a blip, on Gaal’s radar – but it was sickening to think she’d been brought partly into this world because of someone like that; and maybe it was right to always strive and escape his aura.
help tonight to split its seams
Give the bruises out like gifts
He takes her apology, unsure how to respond to it. He could say it was okay, that the past was the past, that despite it all he’d still gotten a chance with Lusea again after. But it wasn’t okay, none of it was okay. And so his shoulders rise and fall in a shrug, a quiet thanks given to her apology, even though she had nothing to apologize for. But also as though it were some way to make sense of why he’s so set on teaching her the Korofi way – the right way. But he doesn’t comment on it, focusing on the rest of the story.
“We tried to jump from the rooftop but they grabbed us. And a few weeks later, well, they brought us before my father and he killed her.” His jaw clenches slightly before he shakes his head and continues to nail the boards into place with her help. “I held her until she died, and a few hours later after they’d healed me of my injuries, they brought me back into the room and my father told me that he’d arranged a marriage for me and Saar. I was to marry some woman from a different county, and Saar was to marry your father.”
rely a bit too heavily on alcohol & irony
BASE INSPIRED BY ODD <3
No permission needed for power play!
Feel free to use magic/force on Sunjata, without killing him <3
Sunjata speaks with an Australian accent and has a passive magic that makes him produce a subtle scent that matches exactly to whatever those around him most desire him to smell like.
And just like that, the story snapped into its inevitable turn, a wrinkle on her nose, a downward slide of her gaze, onto the floor, away from the shelving, away from the tools in her hands. What would it have been like, had she lived, had she survived, had none of them plotted and plagued and brooded in their conflagrations? If her father could’ve shut his damned mouth? If the stretch of sedition wasn’t so widespread, if there wasn’t anything to rebel against? Maybe the inquiries didn’t matter, but they still burned their away along the fringes of her thoughts, another apology yearning to be rendered behind her teeth and tongue, but still not to blame in these circumstances either. Arranged marriages thereafter, Gaal’s name on the list too, as if anyone else deserved to be chained, tied, and tethered to an individual unworthy of such a cause. Sometimes she wondered just what her mother had been thinking, to be seduced by such a cretin – but had she not succumbed to him, Melita, Clementine, wouldn’t have been on this earth. Circumstances unraveling, nooses straightening, too many crosshairs curled in the masses – a sigh on her breath, in her lungs, when she finally turned her head back to him.
“How did she return here then?” It’d been an inevitable curiosity every time she heard of someone’s resurrection, how their souls embarked back upon these rolling hills, rumored mountains, and stretches of enigmatic copses, groves. How had she managed to live again? And if Lusea had been granted and given another opportunity, however short and insufficient, did that mean others could too? Could her sister? Could her mother? Could any of those sacrificed under Kisamoa’s power and precision be rendered whole? Or were there other things involved, and those little wishes, hopes, and dreams, were naught but something to chase and never catch?
help tonight to split its seams
Give the bruises out like gifts
Before she questions how Lusea arrived, Sunjata continues on briefly. “So I left, went to Dorobo for a few years before I ended up here.” A point that would become important as soon as Melita asks about his Flame’s arrival into Caido. A question he was curious about the answer to as well, not quite understanding, not fully realizing the abilities the New God has. He had chosen a life with Safrin, a life with the stars, constellations of sorts that reflected in the freckles on his cheeks. One of the few things he does not regret.
“I’m not sure why she was brought back. But time was different for her.” He says softly, putting up the sides of each box with Melita’s help. “It had been over three years since she died when she arrived here, and for her it had been seconds after she’d died.” He tilts his head as though he’s inspecting the section they had made when in reality he’s contemplating what it means. “I got my compass tattoos and quite a few more scars since then. She told me how strange it was to see them on me, like she was walking into a house that was home and yet the pictures are different, the things within changed slightly.” He murmurs, turning today look at Melita then with a small shrug.
rely a bit too heavily on alcohol & irony
BASE INSPIRED BY ODD <3
No permission needed for power play!
Feel free to use magic/force on Sunjata, without killing him <3
Sunjata speaks with an Australian accent and has a passive magic that makes him produce a subtle scent that matches exactly to whatever those around him most desire him to smell like.
If she were to beg the gods, would they have listened? If she were to ask for her sister’s soul, her mother’s heart, to return into the sanctions, could it even happen? Her thoughts raced while he continued, tilting her head to listen, to study, as they lifted boxes and placed in more shelving, her hands busy and her mind churning. Why hadn’t she contemplated these things before? Had she been too invested in mourning, in melancholy, in surviving, to ever believe those moments or parallels could exist? Or was it a losing venture, and somehow, someway, she’d known before she ever believed in venturing down those routes: their bodies gone, on another earth, on another tide, and the only resurgence and renewal that would ever occur was in her thoughts, in her memories, in the bright, blistering light of the Dragon’s Throat (gone, vanquished, never to return)?
Time different, altered, reborn circumstances blending passing years together into naught. Three years with no semblance of warning, as if she’d never left? “That sounds difficult.” And yet, Lusea had appeared to seethe and sear and sink into assimilating constitutions and fortitudes, until the inevitable. “Did she like it here?” A half-hearted smile blooming along the corners of her mouth; as if it mattered, altering courses and lands, as if anyone had a choice.
help tonight to split its seams
Give the bruises out like gifts
