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!
(This takes place about 2 weeks into Sam's Halo exploration, where he has taken a break to come back to the HG and get his fingers with The Voice.)
Sam was exhausted; he felt like he'd been busy or tired in one way or another for weeks. With exploring Halo, gathering the things for his fingers, arguing with Jigano...it had been thing after thing after thing and he was finding himself at the end of his mental tether, both in depression and simple burnout.
He'd meant to come out of Halo, go to The Voice, spend a night at home then set right back out - but he'd found himself wanting desperately to go for a walk instead, wanting to just be somewhere quiet and think, to convince himself not to jump off the nearest cliff...it was probably a bad idea to walk to a cliff, yet he found himself at the Bone Bridge.
Sitting a distance from the edge (he'd learnt his lesson) he thought of the Kappa down below, the unseen beast he'd stolen from, of the kiss he and Remi had shared in forgotten memories...life had truly happened to him all of a sudden in the last couple of years; he was beginning to find it got too complex and difficult after a while. Sighing, he poked at the ground with his finger, the cold hard dirt crumbling away.
Not as a manticore, nothing so grand as that, but merely a simple hawk. The thing he had always been. The part of his past that not even memory loss could erase.
Despite how high he was, he could make out Sam easily below. Tilting his avian head as he banked in a lazy circle, he watched his friend sit down near the cliff's edge and poke at the soil. Something about the movements seemed sad, though perhaps that was merely an effect of the haze between them. Gliding towards the ascended and offering a bright trill of greeting, Remi shifted in midair. He landing with elegance and ease, the change something as familiar to him as breathing after all these years.
'Playing in the dirt?" He asked playfully, colour high in his cheeks from the exertion of the flight. Slightly breathless, Remi sat down next to Sam, ruffling a hand through his curls as he tried to take slow and deep breaths to calm his racing heart.
you return like autumn and i fall everytime
Coding base by Sky!
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
The trill of the bird above him caught Sam's attention; he glanced up and smiled as he saw Remi appear. The Alchemist was perhaps the only person he was glad to have come into his quiet time besides Nate, the only one he trusted enough to allow into his private moments.
He laughed quietly at the question, shrugging and looking at his finger with a dusting of dirt over it. "I suppose I am, but I was more thinking about things...while playing in the dirt." Looking sideways at Remi he added: "Though given one of us turns into a raccoon, I'm sure you've done it plenty of times."
It was going to be difficult to pretend he wasn't miserable, though, at the moment. Sighing as he looked ahead over the gorge again, he shook his head. "I...there's a lot on my mind. It's been a very trying few weeks. It's odd; a year or so ago I would have just jumped off the edge, but now even though things are much worse, I feel something holding me back. I suppose that's probably...growth, or maturity, or..something. Perhaps."
"Well as long as you were thinking about things while playing in the dirt, that is all right then." Remi chuckled back. "Shush, you say that like you've not been a raccoon yourself and thoroughly enjoyed it." Nudging the bookmaker, the alchemist reached forward to scratch at the earth with a finger as well, as if to prove Sam's point.
Quickly though the flash of mirth seemed to fall away from the ascended, and Remi felt the weight of it keenly against his heart. Turning towards him, pale sea-glass eyes softly scanning the (once again) now-familiar lines of Sam's face, Remi waited until his friend was ready to speak. He knew better than to rush Sam of course, and it wasn't as though he was in any hurry to begin with.
"A certain doctor, perhaps?" The alchemist wondered with a soft sort of adoration. Kind and gentle as he might have been, Remi didn't flinch at the mention of Sam throwing himself down into the gorge and not just because as an ascended, he'd probably survive it. The alchemist had had more than a few tastes of despair and depression in the proceeding years, and much as he hated seeing the signs and hearing the colour of it in Sam's voice, he did understand.
you return like autumn and i fall everytime
Coding base by Sky!
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
"Perhaps I did." Sam admitted with a soft laugh, leaning to tap against Remi's shoulder. "Maybe we should just accept that we both like to play in the dirt, then." There were far worse things to do, as he had learned well.
Remi's suggest made him blink a couple times and glance over. "Mmm...Nate is wonderful but..I think it was beginning to happen before I met him anyway. He's helping me stay where I am, definitely." A smile played on his lips but did not last for long. Whether or not he had Nate, his life was still overall messy at the moment - in some ways because of Nate. After all, Jigano had made it sound so plausible he'd forced the doctor into Ascension, which had brought with it a whole new wave of guilt.
"Do you...think I'm...manipulative? Or...or unwilling to see things the way they are? About The Voice, I mean. Am I a bad person for wanting to stay with her?" He pushed his finger harder into the earth, chewing at his lip.
”Agreed. Though I won’t tell if you don’t.” The alchemist agreed with a warm smile.
”Oh? I seem to remember talk of running away to the woods. Quite a few times, actually.” This was playfully said but the sentiment behind it was genuine enough. Sam had always seemed to Remi a bit flighty; from what he remembered and was told the bookmaker agreed to run away with Remi when the barrier fell. Then there was the time Sam hid himself in the woods and that fact that, for all of Sam’s softness and quiet temperament, he had aligned himself with some fairly reckless friends. Remi included.
“Manipulative?” Remi breathed with a latent smile. “No.” He replied instantly with a shake of his head. “You are too easily read to be manipulative Sam.” The alchemist added, letting his smile grow despite the uncertainty he saw writ on his friend’s features. As for being unwilling to see things how they were? “We are all guilty of that. you no more than most.”
Tugging in a breath, Remi looked distractedly at where Sam was pressing into the dirt. Small white flowers began to grow around the hole as Remi ran an uncertain hand across the back of his neck. “Well...is that not what faith is? Believing in things that others might not understand? Believing sometimes against reason?” This sort of comforting did not come easily to Remi for he knew not what to say. But for Sam he would try. He’d always try. “I think anytime there are gods, there are going to be those who think they are doing something wrong. Who think their followers are wrong.”
you return like autumn and i fall everytime
Coding base by Sky!
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
"That was ages ago!" Sam insisted, laughing. He had only become romantic with Nate in the last couple of months, after all, and he was hesitant to attribute all of his mental recovery on his lover. It seemed unhealthy, as much as he had an eye for those kinds of things. "Besides...I did run away to the woods, for a while...and I discovered it was not as wonderful as I hoped it would be." He was quiet for a moment, the knowledge that that trip had started the blight sitting awkwardly with him.
He wasn't sure if being 'easily read' was a compliment or an insult, but at least the Alchemist did not consider him to be manipulative. It was something that terrified him, the idea that he had twisted Nate's arm into Ascending or had tricked his friends somehow. That he was secretly evil, secretly everything he didn't want to be and just didn't realise. "If you say so, then."
The little white flowers appearing made him smile and he drew his hand back to look over to Remi. "That's true...but are those people ever right? To think the followers are wrong, I mean. After all, I'd say the people that stood by the Old Gods when they waged the war years ago were wrong. They probably felt like I did, though. Sure of what they were doing. It's just...hard, when it's turning people against you. I...spoke to Jigano." He admitted, a little laugh in his words as he provided the explanation.
"I think he thinks I'm terrible, now. I struggle with it myself, sometimes. But I am not responsible for everything The Voice has done just because I continue to help her...and I think she has good intentions, I really do."
To this the alchemist only chuckled under his breath and nodded. "Living in the wilderness indeed has its drawbacks." Remi agreed, having had to do precisely that for months on end as a boy. It was why he was taking such pains to make his wagon livable, so as not to subject his husband and daughter to those some hardships unnecessarily.
"Yes, they probably did. But...I think so long as you feel that what you are doing is right for you, then..it almost does not matter what happens in the end." So saying the alchemist drew his knees to his chest and wrapped his arms around them. "No one knows ultimately what is going to be. I think you just have to live your life in a way that you can stand by and be proud of, regardless of what comes to pass." Hearing Sam say he'd spoken to Jigano, beginning in the tone he was, crushed something inside of the alchemist. He wanted to reach over and draw Sam against him and just block out the world, but such wasn't his place anymore.
"I know you care about Jigano and what he thinks, but...what he believes, rightly or wrongly, is not all that there is. Not when it comes to gods, especially. Besides, you are an ascended. It is not as if you could simply abandon her. You are what you are and you are making the most of it.. And as you have said, you are not responsible for what she does, simply because you help her with other things."
you return like autumn and i fall everytime
Coding base by Sky!
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
"I think I discovered that even though I find people overwhelming a lot of the time...being on my own so much isn't good either. I fall too far into my mind." Sam had been in dark places many times, but he had found it was much easier to access them when he'd been sat by himself in the often silent forest, with only leaves and birds for company. "And...it turned out it had all caused something horrible."
He thought over what Remi said and nodded, thinking that he could be proud of what he had done. Whether a later revelation might ruin it (as The Blight had his exploration of the woods) he didn't know, but for the moment? He felt that what he was doing was important and good work, something that would later be praised.
Remi's words made him smile wide. "Oh, Remi. You're so kind - you understand what I think exactly!" Without thinking he leaned over to catch the Alchemist in a warm hug, tears just lightly falling on Remi's shoulder. "I thought everyone might think the same. That we're monsters, for helping her. I'm so glad you can see different."
"That is not on you." Remi replied softly, offering the bookmaker as genuine and kind a smile as he could. Out of all the ascended he'd spoken to, Sam was the only one who seemed to feel any real guilt over what had happened. For better or worse the rest were able to shake off their responsibility. Much as Remi wished Sam could do the same, that integrity is what made Sam Sam.
Smiling at his friend's words, Remi was surprised to find himself enveloped in a hug. Tensing for a moment—their history, Remi's missteps with Loren, his vows to ensure he'd never hurt Ronin the same way again halting his affections for a moment—he softened and wrapped one of his arms around Sam's shoulder to tug him closer. Feeling the tears against his shirt made the alchemist smile a side smile against Sam's hair as he sighed.
"Even were you to bite off my fingers like the monster did to you, I could never think you a monster, Sam." He whispered with a laugh.
you return like autumn and i fall everytime
Coding base by Sky!
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
"If only everyone thought so." Sam mumbled sadly. It felt often like he had to answer for the Blight entirely on his own, when he only really had half the answers and no way to fix what had happened, to justify the pain that had been caused. When people already hated The Voice so much, they were not willing to forgive her mistakes.
He did not notice Remi's hesitation, too happy to be understood. The words made him laugh a little and he pulled back, a hand lingering for a moment fondly on the Alchemist's arm before he moved fully away. As much as he wanted to smile, to ask Remi how he was doing and forget all this (and he probably still would do that soon) he had one last thing on his mind to do with it all: "Remi...do you...think it's going to come to a fight? The Ascended...against everyone else? We might have special abilities, but we're hugely outnumbered. I'm worried if people continue to be so mad, so misunderstanding...that we will become a target. I have already had one attempt on my life."
Sam's question was one that he'd considered as well. Studying his friend for a moment, the alchemist turned his sea-green stare into the swirling mists below as he considered. "Eventually...yes, there probably will be a fight." He replied after a few moments, turning to give Sam a sad smile. "But I do not think it will just be everyone against the ascended...I think it will be more of...new ways against old. Those who want to explore the world, to see it opened again and to leave all the nonsense between the old gods and new between the old gods and new..it will be them against those with more...archaic points of view."
Though he tried not to sound judgemental, he was doing a relatively poor job of it, indicating on which side of things he'd fall on. "The Voice brought me here...brought Ronin here. If she had not...the life I would have lived in Northaven, alone or married to a woman?" He shot Sam a crooked smile, before shrugging.
you return like autumn and i fall everytime
Coding base by Sky!
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
Sam felt his heart drop just a little as Remi confessed he did think there would be a battle of some kind. He had hoped that his friend would just dismiss the idea, tell him he was being silly, paranoid as usual. To know there was some credibility to his fears made them all the more all-consuming. "So...um...if it was between those people...do you know...who you think would win?" He asked, poking again at the ground.
"You're right about The Voice being why you're here at all...hm. Maybe I should mention that to Jigano. He seems to like it here." Then again, it seemed the bard had liked his old life too. "Do you know how Ronin feels about it all? As a Demi God?"
"No idea." Remi replied with a sad sigh. He'd not lie to Sam, not even to assuage his friend's fears. "I only hope that I am far, far away from it all should it ever happen. The war that happened before...it seems much of the continent was sparred." Splaying his fingers and shrugging his shoulders, the alchemist didn't think he needed to spell out his thoughts.
"There you have it. He would never have met Rory without her." Remi pointed out gently. Any mention of Ronin brought a small smile to Remi's lips, but it was quickly tarnished by the question itself. "I think he hates it, honestly. He came back in a body that was not quite his...remade, I suppose. With..expectations that he did not ask for." Of this, Remi understood perfectly. "He was an accepted before and I think he would have happily remained so for the rest of his life."
you return like autumn and i fall everytime
Coding base by Sky!
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
