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!
dont know where the lights are taking us but something in the night is dangerous
You know… she tries to play nice. She really does. But Jigano (and Amun) have proven time and time again that talking doesn’t fucking work with some people, or in some situations. Like with magical guardians who are enslaved and are never going to voluntarily leave their post. Or exiled, hungry Halovians. Or with super angry and grieving husbands.
When the avalanche of rocks comes down, Wessex decides to hell with it, she’s going back in. Without biting Amalia, because we all know how that would turn out, even if it wakes her up.
“Sorry, Jyoti. Scream if she comes to.” and then without any idea about the Ascended dogpile on the Ronin(s) the Wraith teleports back in to the Temple, trying to place herself behind where she last saw Ronin (the one that blasted a starbolt at her). As soon as she materializes again, she lets a biopulse loose, hoping to disorient him so she can hit him across the temple (his head temple - not hit him across the building) and knock him out.
However, if Sam succeeds in biting Ronin, she will refrain from hitting him and instead let another biopulse loose to keep Ronin ineffective. Depending on how close Jigano is, he may be caught in the crossfire.
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Wessex leaves Ama and teleports back into the Temple, aiming to land behind where the starbolt-Ronin was. She lets loose a biopulse and either attempts to hit him across the head from behind and knock him out OR, if Sam is successful in drinking, use a second biopulse to keep Ronin down.
It isn't about them; it isn't about Jigano's fisticuffs, or Amun and Sam getting their sharp little teeth into him, or Wessex's biopulse. This is between Ronin and the gods and his dead little girl, and he will be damned before he goes without his retribution. (Perhaps he already is).
His arm is useless and his chest burns; it hurts to breathe. It hurts, really, just to exist in this world without Aoife and Remi (for the arm with the hand with the heartbeat ring has been torn from its socket, and he can feel little from it), and then suddenly there's an Ascended pile-on and that boiling, prickling feeling within him simply... overflows.
Ronin might have been screaming - from the biopulse? from the bite? from the dogpile? - and there's a lot of light, a lot of heat, and he's not sure what he's done anymore.
Ronin drops his astral projection and does a Supernova on accident. >.>
12-31-2019, 04:28 PM (This post was last modified: 12-31-2019, 04:28 PM by Court Official.)
As Amalia continued to be unconscious, the starwhale's pleas reach high into the heavens, into the celestial realm and do not go unnoticed.
As Amun rushes towards the projection and Samuel rushes towards the real Ronin, the bookmaker will feel himself slow dramatically. Or at least, dramatically for an ascended. A death gift from Roana, one might say. One final fuck you to the ascended. Her ring on Ronin's hand bleeds him (and soon, Wessex) of their ascended strength and speed...
..and then it all goes white and hot and who does what is impossible to know. There is light and falling rocks, muscles weakened by a bio pulse and ascended made more or less human-like in their speed and strength.
And that is when the ceiling collapses...
Sam's bite misses.
Wessex's biopulse hits Ronin and Jigano
Ronin's supernova hits Wessex, Jigano, Amun, the Temple, and Sam
12-31-2019, 04:28 PM (This post was last modified: 12-31-2019, 04:30 PM by Court Official.)
..but it does not fall.
The garish and sickly light of Ronin's mad supernova bleeds away into something soft and starlit. More powerful to be sure, but easier on the eyes. It is Safrin's way, after all.
"Enough." She says in a voice like radiant thunder, her eyes a shade of supernova-white. Bits of ceiling and wall hover around them, bloodied and broken as they are. Hands outstretched and a look of mournful anger on her features, a snarl briefly contorts the goddess' perfectly painted lips before it is smoothed away. "Enough of this, Ronin." Safrin adds, her adoration for her fallen star a candle in the wind compared to her own vanity. She would in fact see him destroyed before her shrine, but she'd avoid both if possible.
Outside, Amalia will find herself conscious again.
Ronin raged, and Jigano knew a shadow of that anger. He had not lost a child, but he had lost his parents when he had been unable to protect them, in the wrong place at the wrong time.
But he had not lost a daughter and a lover in the same day.
Even so, he couldn't let Ronin destroy himself and the Temple they all sheltered in at LongNight. He could empathize, but he couldn't stand back and do nothing while it happened. He had hoped only to distract Ronin into a less destructive outlet for his violence, but that wasn't going to happen, it would seem. And then the Ascended were moving, going on the attack, and Wessex reappeared with her damn disorienting power-
And then the world went white, and Jigano could do little but be buffeted by starlit power and falling debris until suddenly-
"Enough." And oh, he knew that voice, little though he cared for it. Amalia's Lady, she who had put his heart to the fire and found him wanting. Even though her temper wasn't directed at him he still quailed from it.
But Ronin was hurt, badly hurt, and too angry to back down now, Jigano worried. The ceiling remained above them, caught in a goddess's power, and he trusted in her own possessiveness over her place of worship far more than any concern for him.
He didn't trust the Ascended, though. Sam's cowardice might serve to keep him safe, but he didn't know what Amun or Wessex would do, and Wessex had shattered what little trust she'd built with him during their little adventure in the Spire. Again the bard shifted to silver scales and a sinuous length, keeping crouched and low to the ground as he curled protectively in a ring around Ronin and breathed out a wash of the paralyzing gas he had discovered when training with Remi to drop the Fallen Star and keep him down for a bit. Opal eyes swung between Wessex and Amun, a low growl of warning in his throat for them to stay back from the wounded Demigod. He could do little to protect the Star from Safrin, but he did what he could to make himself a physical barrier between Ronin and the Temple, and the Ascended and Ronin.
Jigano shifts into dragonform and attempts to curl protectively around Ronin while breathing a colorless, odorless paralyzing gas to try and get Ronin to stop blasting things for a moment. He is using his body as a physical shield to both protect Ronin from the Ascended, and to protect the Temple from Ronin in case the demigod is able to keep blasting while down.
Amalia is not aware of the chaos, the danger going on inside. She comes to slowly, her long lashes fluttering gently upon her cheeks, dark eyes slowly coming into focus as she attempts to process what just happened, how she got here, where she is. All she can see is a large, starry eye staring down worriedly at her, a stream anxiety and relief and terror rushing into her mind.
"Jyo? What- oh, Mort."
Ronin. The temple. The rock.
Rising unsteadily to her feet, Amalia blinks around through the haze, trying to get her bearings. She's outside now, through some unexpected twist, and the temple, while still standing, is not in good shape. Jyoti is screaming, or something, but it's hard to make out; her ears are still ringing, and the world is spinning. Stumbling forward, Amalia lunges toward the crumbling walls, shifting as Jyoti follows behind and trying, in owl form, to find a way in, while calling to Jigano for a status report.
Ama shifts to an owl and tries to fly in through the collapsed roof while mentally asking Jigano for a status report. Jyoti follows, calling out to Wessex.
Amun felt weirdly sluggish as he reached for Ronin’s duplicate thingy and attempted to bite it. However, the potter’s attempt was in vain, as the second Fallen Star disappeared. Amun’s eyes narrowed and he spun to face the group of people gathering around the real Ronin.
Before the potter could move towards them, however, a false of harsh light burned through him. Then there was a rumbling sound, and the ceiling fell in. Amun stumbled backwards, but there was nowhere to go. After that the light changed, softened somehow, and a being appeared, a being that the potter could only assume was Safrin given the circumstances and her impossible beauty.
She seemed to be holding up the ceiling, but Amun did not trust that for obvious reasons. So he stumbled backwards, as far as he could get from the goddess and her demi-god, attempting to find a spot that did not have a chunk of ceiling hovering above it.
Amun backs away from Ronin and Safrin and attempts to find a spot where a piece of the ceiling won't fall on him.
Sam's gait was already awkward and slow as he headed toward Ronin; the extra effects of Roana's ring completely ruined his attempts to get closer to the demi-God. Falling he cried out as he saw the ceiling begin to crumble and Safrin appear, both just as terrifying things as each other. Instinctively he backed away, trying to get as far from both the falling chunks of the building and the Old Goddess.
Curling up he made himself visible again, hoping that if someone sympathetic enough to him still saw that he was injured (and it was obvious, his foot still hanging at an impossible angle) they might come to help and heal; he was going to find it difficult to get out quickly otherwise.
--
Sam crawls away from Ronin/falling ceiling bits as best he can and makes himself visible again.
01-01-2020, 06:17 PM (This post was last modified: 01-01-2020, 06:49 PM by Wessex.)
dont know where the lights are taking us but something in the night is dangerous
Light. Pain. It feels like she’s been hit by a tank. The ceiling begins to come down and she’s walloped again.
The light - it fades and morphs and through the haze, Safrin appears (or at least her voice does), and on her back, covered with some stone, Wessex knows her part in this is likely over. She groans. Shifting under the rubble and pushing herself up to a sitting position, the first thing the Wraith sees is Jigano’s dragon and rolls her eyes. Hard. Until she sees the gas it’s breathing and the (potential) effects it has on Ronin, and dawns on her that he could have dragoned out a hell of a lot earlier and been far more persuasive. Between that and the protective stance he's taken, coiled around Ronin, and she's suddenly seeing red.
Struggling briefly under the slabs of ceiling, Wessex’s anger seems to fuel her strength and she shoves a piece off her legs. There is damage. The Ascended demi-god knows this, knows she is weaker than she’s been in a long time. Hissing as she does her best to push back from Jigano and towards one of the side walls with windows. “Are you fucking kidding me? It didn't occur to the great Sage that a dragon might be more useful than words? You could have stopped all of this -” her arms wave in the air to indicate the already half-destroyed temple “- and you DIDN’T? Ohhhh but when there’s a GODDESS in the room, you finally do something effective? Fuck off, you puss-dripping cunt, you and your fucking manipulative performances."
Jyoti's calls finally reach her ears, causing her to shake her head and heave herself up. She gives the dragon a scornful look and points. "You think you're better than Safrin at protecting him? You think she needs backup from a mortal? When he was never in danger of death in the first place?" Wessex laughs, looking at the Goddess in all her star-glory, not caring that she sees this outburst. Enough was likely directed at all of them, but there’s a purpose to her madness. After all, she'd just defended (kinda) Safrin earlier. Surely that counts for something. Surely keeping Amalia safe (when Jigano wouldn’t heal her) counts for more than something. Outside the reach of Ronin’s ring, she can feel her speed and senses returning. "No one needs you to save them, Jigano. Not the Fae, not that enslaved snake, and not Ronin. You're paranoid, and it blinds you." A sneer. Once again, he's no Sage, just an ignorant Outlander. He couldn't read the situation correctly, he couldn't work as part of a team, and he purposefully left Ama unconscious, knowing he was the only one with healing magic in the room.
By this point she's reached the base of the windows and picks up a large piece of rock, hurling it at the window in an attempt to break it and open a hole for Amalia to come in. "Amalia!" she yells towards the (hopefully) hole, "Your goddess is here!"
Help stop this nonsense.
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Wessex berates Jigano for not dragoning earlier, and then goes to a windows and tries to break it open with a rock to allow Amalia in
There's shouting. Everything hurts, within and without. His vision is blurry, but a couple of blinks and all becomes almost painfully clear. A dragon has curled around him (what?) and Sam is there again, suddenly. His fingers and toes tingle with the residual magic - foreign, unnatural, almost. That's the feeling that goes along with it.
Coughing and likely inhaling the gas as he does so, Ronin turns too-bright eyes up to the goddess before them, and for the first time in his life, Safrin is ugly to him.
"You," he growls. "Why are you here? Why now?
Power - weak, feeble after everything - buzzes in his skin. "Why did you save her if you couldn't take care of her? Why did you let me get to know her? Why did you bother?" His voice has risen and there's a ball of starlight in his hand. And then it isn't, and he's gone and thrown it at Safrin.
Providing he hasn't been paralyzed, Ronin goes ahead and lobs a starbolt at his goddess. >.>
Jigano 's paralysis is indeed effective, though sadly it works only on the body. Ronin's mind is free to fight all it likes, and while his hand gestures are rather charming, his power has never come from the movements themselves.
{Safrin\'s post to be read here}
Ronin's light is blinding, but it doesn't hit Safrin. It explodes all around, blasting at the interior walls of the sanctuary and devastating them and those around him. Jigano takes the brunt of the hit being so close, but the others are wounded by the light as well. Rocks crumble, walls and columns fall. You should all be dead, and a few of you nearly are. The only protection seems to be coming from the small owl, having flown in through the smashed window. Amalia radiates a light not of her own making, and for what you instinctively know are mere seconds, the light holds the room around you from collapsing.
Jigano will have noticed first given his proximity, that Ronin is gone. That Safrin is gone.
The light wavers and the falling room seems to fight against the temporary stasis it has been placed in.
"Why did you create her if you couldn't take care of her?" Safrin snaps back, unwilling to allow the wounded star to pin this on her. "I never promised her immortality. I have already taken a soul from Mort's realm. You. You've taken for granted the second chance you've been given, throwing caution to the wind and acting as if this life is now a burden to you. Where were you, monster hunter, when the monster attacked?"
She might have said more, but then Ronin was attacking her, and not even his charm (-ing eyebrows) were enough this time. She'd not be made a fool of by one of her own, in a temple partially built for her.
He had a brief moment to feel exasperated that the woman who disdained words with such ferocity would use so many of them as she went off on her raving – and unsurprised that she chose to do so when she knew he couldn’t defend himself. He’d had his reasons, not least of which being that a large body stressing an already damaged building might well have brought the supports down on them all sooner, especially if Ronin had used his starbolts to knock the dragon around as a wrecking ball when a human body would do far less damage. If she was too blind to see that there was no point in trying to enlighten her on it now, however. He had plenty of ‘why didn’t you’s of his own to throw, but he didn’t have the vocal chords for it.
Nor the time, either.
Safrin and Ronin were having a thing and as long as it was just talking Jigano was perfectly happy to stay where he was, but Remi had shown that he could still use his earth magic while paralyzed, and apparently the same went for Ronin and his starbolts.
Whoops. So much for Wessex’s assumption that dragons made everything better.
Pain quickly overwhelmed that thought as Jigano hissed, feeling powerful bones crack under the strain of trying to contain the light. When it faded the warm body he had been coiled around was gone, as was the goddess (all of them, thank… well. Thank goodness) and the Temple was in bad shape. So were the Ascended, it looked like, and despite Wessex’s rant earlier he suspected she had needed saving; without him taking the brunt of the hit he wasn’t sure she’d still be there, or Amun either for that matter.
Not that she’d see it that way, he was sure. But hypocrisy was the least of her sins when it came down to it, in his book.
And just for a moment he felt the temptation to end it there, that rivalry and ocean of bad feeling that swirled between them. A crack of his tail, a scratch of a talon, it would be so easy. She hadn’t hesitated to attack him in the Spire, after all, when he had been distracted and trying to help another. He had no doubt that, were their positions reversed, she wouldn’t hesitate this time either.
But he wasn’t Wessex, and he did thank every god for that. His temper snarled in his breast, familiar and red as the dragon’s instincts pulled towards violence, but his training with Remi hadn’t been in vain. He held the dark urge back, shoved it down, and shrank back to his human form as he did so. ”Get them out,” he snarled at the Wraith with a jerk of his chin towards the wounded Amun and Sam, knowing it hardly needed saying but taking a perverse, petty enjoyment in ordering her to do something she would have done anyways.
Seconds weren’t going to be enough, but for the old gods – yes, even Safrin, she was buying them that precious time, after all – he’d do what he could, reaching deep into the well of his earth magic and yanking the shimmering threads of mingled green and brown. Not a gentle chord but a discordant clash of silent music rose in his ears as his magic leapt to the task at hand. Pillars of compacted earth rose up at what looked like the weakest junctures to support what had been blown away in Ronin’s rage. Seconds might not be enough to grow trees, but from the earthen pillars he attempted to grow a netting of vines to hold the ceiling debris up, as much as time permitted him.
He was probably going to get crushed for his trouble, but Remi had survived a Spire falling on him. Maybe the bard would get lucky? But he knew he didn’t have the concentration to try and salvage the temple and run for it, so he threw a silent prayer to Ludo and did what he could to mitigate as much damage as he could.
Jigano turns back into a human and uses mastered earth magic to try and create emergency support pillars of compacted earth in the worst-affected area, as well as a network of vines to contain the falling ceiling.
Amalia does not have time to notice the absence of Ronin, or that Safrin has vanished, or that the room is full of gas. She flies in in a burst of starlight, the world slowing around her for a moment, owl eyes taking in all that she can see. And she she does: figures pressed against a wall which threatens to crumble down around them, Wessex and Amun barely conscious and Sam not very far behind. The owl's heart thunders in a moment of indecision, her dark eyes glinting between the dragon and the Ascended-
-and then she dives down to land beside the Wraith, shifting back to human form and pulling out her staff and shield, the shield thrown across her back, the staff thrust into the space between Wessex and Amun, trying to touch them both. Pulling Wessex closer to Amun so she can hopefully help them both, she attempts to assess the Wraith for injuries. She can't be dead, she can't be dead, she needs to be okay, she can't be--
"Wessex- can you stand? We need... we need to get them out. Amun and Sam need you. I need you. Please. Get up."
And then, evoking the pendant Deimos made her to create a shield of starlight that will hopefully protect the others from any falling debris, the girl calls out to Jigano: We need to get them out of here, and I need magic- please!
Amalia attempts to heal Wessex and Amun with her staff. She asks Jigano to give some magic into her titanium shield. She will try to shield Wessex and Amun with her starlight barrier.
