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!
Sam could feel, as he and Amalia spoke, the tension in their conversation rising and rising, the scant relationship they had had before falling through the ground and leaving forever. It broke his heart and he didn't even really know why; it wasn't like he'd ever treasured a closeness with Amalia. Yet this felt significant, like this was the point where he chose The Voice over his old connections, where he severed the line for good.
"I don't know. But do you know the reasons for all the Old Gods do?" He asked, feeling once again like he was being made to justify his Goddess far more than the average person ever would be. Then it was his turn to laugh bitterly, as Amalia said the Old Gods loved 'us', when she meant herself. "Vi loves me? Rae loves me?"
As for all the rest...Sam was exhausted. He had no idea who 'the prince' was and honestly, did not care to know. It would just be one more thing to obsess over. One more thing to be upset over.
The last thing Amalia said though, it struck a nerve. Sam laughed again but this time it was sharp, desperate; when he spoke it was shouted with a hand to his chest, far more passionate than he usually allowed himself to be. "She gave me far more thought than my family, than you, than the rest of our town ever did! None of you thought to ever ask me how I was - no, you were too busy with Evie. You saw me get hurt over and over and you did nothing." Maybe this was unrelated to their divine argument, but when it came to Amalia, there was a personal element inherently woven into the fight.
"You don't know how she loves me. You've never been there while she talks to us, so don't you dare pretend you know about her. She made me see I'm not worthless and I owe her for that more than I'll ever owe the Old Gods." He found his face had curled into an angry sneer, his hands had been gesturing wildly as he spoke. Struggling to take some control over himself, he forced himself to stand up. "I love The Voice. I believe in what she's trying to do. Regardless of what you think - because you have never cared for me the way she does."
Ah, so this is where he wants to go. Old wounds, jagged scars, things unhealed that have nothing to do with gods or portals. Crueler than any argument about the Voice are the barbs Sam flings about herself; each one slices on her skin, wounding and enraging the sharp temper within. "You never asked!" she explodes in reply, her voice ringing furiously through the empty snow. "You never said anything to any of us! You just sulked and blamed Evie for your problems- and you never saw how hard she had it, because you were so busy feeling bad for yourself!" There's a twinge of guilt, defensiveness in her tone: maybe if she had done more, if she'd reached out, if she'd helped him...
No. Sam did this to himself. She meets his snarl with one of her own, fangs glinting under pulled up lips. "At least you have a family, you asshole. It's more than most of us can say. You have parents, and a sister, and hell even Remi, and all you've ever done is resent them." She knows she is getting into dangerous territory, but a strange sort of cruelty coils in her throat. Hurt him, I want to hurt him-
"Remi suffered and lost again and again, and what did you do? Abandoned him. Erased him from your memory, like a fucking coward." Another step toward him; they're dangerously close, now. "Evie never hated you, but you treated her like a monster. Don't pretend you're so long-suffering. None of us ever called you worthless. You're the one who shut us out."
12-30-2019, 10:13 PM (This post was last modified: 12-30-2019, 10:14 PM by Samuel.)
When everything and everyone
Becomes my enemy
"Oh, I was supposed to ask the people joining in with the mockery? Watching quietly while--while--" Sam's voice cracked, dangerously close to tears that he desperately did not want to fall; he could not afford to show that weakness in front of Amalia, not now. "Don't you dare say I have a family. My parents were never that. Do you want mine? A father that beats you for breathing and a mother that wishes you were never born? What am I meant to do, Amalia, love them? Thank him as he breaks my wrist against our floorboards?!"
As for Remi, he felt himself take in a shaky breath at the mention of the name as he felt the conflict rise to a new level. "You weren't there. You don't understand how it all happened. I regret forgetting it, but it's done and me and Remi have worked out our differences - because he has a heart, unlike you. He's a portal guardian too, but he still talks to me like an equal. Like I'm allowed to choose to follow The Voice. He isn't coming after me for this."
They were so close now they were almost touching. "Have you ever considered, even for a moment, that The Voice is worth listening to? Or did you just take it from the Old Gods? You do have a family, Amalia, and I worry they're worse than my parents. They have you running around like their dog with no plans to improve anything at all. Do you really think the Old Gods care about any of us? I've never felt any love." Oh, these were ugly words. Uglier than he'd wanted to get into - but now that he was here there was a perverse sort of relief in finally letting out the anger he'd kept inside, even if it was misplaced.
...as he breaks my wrist against our floorboard...
She can feel the air leave her lungs, the anger knocked out of her sails as quickly as it filled them. "I didn't know," she whispers, pleads, begs him to understand. She'd been a child, just like him, blind to the world outside herself. Evie spent so much of her time with them, and Amalia knew she disliked her parents, but she hadn't known, she hadn't known, hadn't seen anything beyond her own damn pain--
It hurts to think that she has failed him, just like the rest of the world. And it hurts to think that he believes her heartless for it, that she would ever have condemned or attacked him. Gritting her teeth, the girl says nothing, letting him spew his accusations and vitriol as the space between them grows dangerously thin until she cannot hold it back, until the fury bursts out again, accompanied by a dry, mirthless laugh: "How in Vi's name is me trying to keep the Voice from poisoning the world even remotely worse than you trying to help her kill it?"
Where once was a friendly, if tentative, truce, now only acid and ire remains.
"I tried to listen," she hisses back softly, staring down with slitted gaze into the slightly shorter man's eyes. "I literally just asked you to explain. But you can't- all any of you ever do is make excuses. Claim she has our best interest at heart, but nobody can tell me what that means, or how it's worth the cost." What guarantee do they have against another blight- or something worse? The word of a liar, an abandoner, a betrayer? The promise of creature with love for nothing but herself?
Amalia's instance that she didn't know only drew a disbelieving laugh from Sam as he finally stood back, crossing his arms and shaking his head, looking down into the snow. Perhaps it was unfair, but he found it very hard to believe her claim. Everything that had happened to him had seemed so big, it had encompassed his entire life, had absorbed the town until there had been nothing left but his terror; how could they have not seen it? Had he really been so invisible?
"Kill it." He repeated, flatly, unsure how Amalia had gotten that at all from everything that been said. It felt almost pointless to argue, really - he had his side and she had hers and they weren't going to move. All of a sudden he felt himself gripped by a cold apathy, a stoic sadness.
Yet she continued. A beat of silence followed her words, then he looked up. "I have told you. The Voice envisages a world where we are all more connected. Healthier. Unmarked by pain or illness. A future with new technology to help us. I don't want to stay stuck where we've been for the last three hundred years. I want to grow beyond the Hollowed Grounds. This...I think, is how history works, Amalia. There are always traditionalists, but in the end..." A faint smile touched his lips as he gazed over the mountains. "New ideas take over."
There's something terrifying about the way he calms, the strange little smile, the stillness after the rage. More than anything he has said before, more than low-blow barbs and slung wounds and slapping accusations- this causes Amalia to take a step back, her own anger failing into a sudden, deep fear.
No pain. No illness. No life, she thinks, swallowing sharply, throat suddenly dry, the cold hitting her more brutally than it has before. His image of the future is bleak and black; she thinks at once of a creeping vine, or perhaps the blight itself. Of the way the infection spread between Phoebe's cells, gripping each one and staining it black, turning it from something beautiful and unique to something consistent and lifeless.
Is that what the Voice has done to him?
There's something in the way Sam describes this world that makes her know she cannot save him. That he is lost to the monster he helped to create. Stepping back further, the girl shakes her head, her eyes never leaving the Ascended. "I'm sorry, Sam," the Shield states softly, breathes in crystals of brittle ice. "I'm sorry the world was cruel to you. I'm sorry we didn't see it. I'm sorry... sorry you felt so alone. That this was your only option."
She swallows, the tears that fall from her eyes freezing upon her cheeks. "I'm sorry you never learned what love is. Because if you had, you would understand that it isn't this."
Where Amalia saw a future bleak and dark, removed from life, Sam saw a chance at utopia, at a haven giving them all a shot at a new chance, something that he felt they all desperately needed. He saw progress, the future, did not understand why people so needed their traditions and pasts, their Old Gods keeping them back.
Her apologies, after all the rage, were confusing and fell flat; he could only watch her speak with a dull stare, wondering if the words would have had more significance to him earlier in his life. Now, they just felt like empty, patronising consolation prizes.
She began to cry - Sam prepared to walk away, unsure what else could be said and hardly in the mood to comfort. Then, though, Amalia said her last words and he froze in place, felt an anger rise up in him again. "How dare you. You know nothing about my life. You don't know how I've been loved or...or how I love. Just because it isn't the same as you...I..."
He didn't want to get dragged back into it again, the pointless back and forth. Shaking his head, he sighed and walked a few steps away. "I'm going to keep going. If you want to stop me from exploring, that's your choice."
The mistake Amalia makes is thinking Sam will respond to empathy, because empathy takes being able to see things from other people's sides, and it is clear the Ascended lack that ability. (Never mind the confirmation bias going on inside her own head - if this was about Amalia confronting her own flaws we'd call it fictional character therapy, not roleplay.) He stiffens in renewed anger, declaring she knows nothing of him; the leopardess raises her lips in a snarl, shaking her head at his hypocrisy. "You don't know me, either."
There is a part of her that wants to strike him down. It is a loud part, a predatory part: I could take him, she thinks, and is surprised by the thought, shocked to find it in her head. How easy it would be to pin him here, and then... what? What is she to do with her prey once she captures it?
When nobody cares but her?
"Is there anything I can do to stop you?" Tired, defeated, she shrugs her narrow shoulders, looking into the distance somewhere past him. "I won't hurt you. I can't. And I can't convince you. So what's the point?"
It was true: he did not know her. Sam did not care to know Amalia, not anymore; once in teenage naivety he had wished to get closer to her, to see her as a sister of sorts given her closeness to Evie...but they had picked their sides, and Amalia's was the one clinging to old traditions for the sake of honour and outdated pride, Amalia's was the one that had trapped them all for hundreds of years.
He did not want to know how she'd come to that conclusion, for he knew he would never understand it.
Sam did stop at Amalia's question, but he did not turn to look at her as he answered: "No. Because...what I'm doing, Amalia, it's the best thing for all of us - including you. If...if you can't bring yourself to stop me, maybe you know that deep down." With that said, he continued on his way.
The urge to reach out and stop him returns with new and terrible force; her hand twitches at her side, long claws rising out of nails, ready to bite into his shoulder and pin him where he falls. To force him to look at her, and at his mistakes, and to win, if only once--
Instead she stands still in the cold, watching him walk away until he vanishes into the snow. Until she is left with only ice and the endless white expanse and the gnawing, burning, constant question, Did I make the right choice?
