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!
He had heard of Loren's departure for Halo from multiple sources; the notice board, of course, but also Sam and Maea, respectively. Though initially he had intended to give his friend the time and space for grief and mourning Abasi's death, there were rumors beginning to circulate through the guild that the Provost needed answers to...
And now that a bit of space had been given, he wanted to offer the summoner his support, as guildmate and friend.
A load of firewood was left with the guards at the portal for his toll and then Jigano shifted to fox form to trot up to the citadel, shaking free of the snow and his furred form only when he reached the steps to the Palace. Even within the stone halls he found he needed to stay somewhat bundled up - and with an increased chance of running into Zariah he wasn't in any hurry to dress down just yet.
Old habits, and all that jazz.
The request for Halo's newest Healer eventually led him to an Infirmary, and he knocked cautiously on the door before sticking his head in, looking for a familiar head of disheveled dirty blond. "Loren? Are you here?"
A familiar head of dishiveled blonde Jigano would find, though it was more disheveled than usual. Indeed, Loren looked pretty terrible: gaunt frame, dark circles, drab brown clothes. He stood in the center of the infirmary, which wasn't in much better condition. It looked positively ransacked, with feather and poop from ningo, messed up beds, and empty counters where medicines should be.
The newly appointed Grand Healer stood with a notebook in hand. He carefully took down his observations in the shorthand he'd developed long ago. As the bard spoke up, however, the Launceleyn turned to face the white-haired man. "I'm here Jigano." Loren regarded the Sage with a distant and cool expression. "What brings you to Halo?" His voice was as distant as everything else about him.
Loren looking like hell was only to be expected after what he'd been through recently. The state of the infirmary was... not. Jigano carefully avoided wrinkling his nose as he tugged down his scarf and tucked his hat into a pocket. He slipped in the door and closed it behind him again, keeping his gaze on Loren's ragged appearance and the distance in the Launceleyn's eyes. Between the festival and Remi things had already been bad enough. Then Abasi...
"You do," he said quietly, moving into the room on careful feet as he tried not to step onto anything noxious or already broken. "I've been worried about you. With everything that's happened..." he sighed, trailing off with a shake of his head. Loren could fill in those blanks better than he could. "I don't expect you to be 'okay' or anything like it. But I wanted to offer you my help, if there's something I can do to make things a little easier on you right now."
As Jigano disrobed slightly and expressed his concern, Loren’s eyes tightened. Turning back to the infirmary, he made another note in his journal. ”You don't need to worry. I'm coping" The words came out flatly, without much inflection behind them.
Taking a few steps further into the room, the healer inspected a shelf that had been damaged. Writing in his journal again, he shook his head at the bard's offer. "I don't need help. Thank you for the offer though." Again, while it was slightly curt, though polite enough, it was mostly emotionless, just like the expression on his face. "Is that all?" The question came out as blankly as everything else about him.
Somehow Jigano had trouble believing his friend, not with the distressing tonelessness of his voice or the listlessness of his movements. Between the two of them they could probably get this room back into working order fairly shortly... but that assumed that Loren would let him help with anything. Pressing him in his grief would be unkind, though, and Jigano let out a soft sigh of regret at the walls that had appeared between them recently.
Not entirely, no. Before I saw your notice, Sam said he thought you were leaving the Guild. He watched Loren as he spoke through the Attuned bond, letting the summoner feel his concern and the aching worry he held for someone he had grown over time to like and respect. I wanted... well. I wanted to ask you to stay, even if your home is in Halo now. Ingrid is a Halovian, too, after all, so there's precedent. He drifted further into the room, reaching down to capture a stray ningo feather and twirl it between his fingers, remembering a far brighter day when Loren had chased one through the streets of the Citadel.
As the conversation shifted from verbal to telepathic, Loren paused, lowering his journal for a moment. Although his mental walls hadn’t been up, Jigano wouldn’t have really gotten much from the healer beyond exhaustion and a dull emptiness. He moved back to his inspection soon enough. Samuel mentioned as much when I saw him last. It was unclear exactly how he felt about that conversation or this one.
As I told him, I wasn't aware membership was contingent on where I lived. I'm glad to have that confirmed, however. His thoughts weren't actually cheerful, nor did he feel happy about it, but he wasn't really sad either. Wasn't much of anything. Anything else?
He couldn't tell if Loren was numb from shock or if he had just pulled so far away from the world in his grief that he wanted to shut it out completely. Jigano listened through the Attuned bond, seeking some spark or sign of his friend's once-bright curiosity and determination to help... and found only silence and the chill of the Tundra. Leaning against a wall he studied the feather he held, watching Loren through it, the other man masked and clouded by the pale barbs and downy fluff at its base.
"Two things," he said quietly aloud, wondering how much time to give his friend to grieve in peace, and when Loren might allow people back into his life again. "Mmm. Perhaps three," he added with a faint frown, considering a recent difficult meeting in the Guildhall. "First... what happened to this place?" he nodded around at the chaos in the supposed-infirmary. "It looks like what Isla said the Temple's Infirmary looked like when she first saw it."
Turning to face Jigano, Loren held the notebook open easily in his hands. Staring at the bard with that same blank expression the healer usually wore, he listened to the white-haired man’s words without any sign of what the Launceleyn felt. However, again, all of Jigano's mental prodding would reveal that Loren's mind was almost entirely drained of emotion beyond exhaustion.
He glanced at the less than clean infirmary before looking back at the bard. "I found it like this when I was given my appointment. My best guess is no one maintained it for quite a while before I arrived." The healer tilted his head. "That's one." He stood there patiently.
It did beg the question about what Neron had been doing about his sick and wounded within the Palace for the past however-long he'd been in power, but at least Loren was taking it under his wing now. They'd talked about setting up a little healing stall together in the market at one point... before they'd thought things couldn't get any worse.
It had been a simpler time, all of, what, a few weeks ago?
"If you wouldn't mind a hand getting it cleaned up and ready to go, I'd like to help," he offered, a little hesitant and unsure of where the new boundaries were being drawn now. "Secondly, I wanted to ask if we could do some training together sometime soon. I'm trying to learn more about my magic, and you know more than most about the practical application of it. Here, or... well, at some point I suppose I should go to that new region everyone's talking about," he admitted with a faint grimace. "Torchline?"
”I’m making plans for that as we speak.” That was quite literally true, as Loren held up his notebook and waved it around vaguely. ”Thank you. I appreciate the offer, and I may take you up on it. I’d like to determine if I need to make renovations before I clean it up, though.” Again, it came out politely and evenly.
Legitimately surprised by Jigano's next comment, the healer blinked. "Torchline, yes." It came out automatically and a bit distractedly. Slowly, he nodded. "Sure. We have training facilities set up for mages in Halo, so I believe it would make more sense to practice here." With that, he raised his eyebrows, waiting for the bard to broach the third topic.
He nodded at Loren's displayed notes, recognizing that the topic was closed for the moment. He had offered, the summoner knew that he had help if he wanted it... and if he didn't want it, there was nothing Jigano could do about it except make things worse. "Of course," he murmured, letting it drop until Loren was ready to reopen it again, in his time and on his terms.
Torchline. A paradise, from the flying rumors, of sand and sun and blue waters. The closest thing the bard had ever seen to a sea was the Sea of Glass, frozen and still, dark and deep in shades of black and navy and ice-whites. He still hated the portals and how they prickled against his skin, and Sam's petty note on the Temple board was true enough, but he felt adrift these days, swimming against a current and getting swept further from the shore.
"I'd prefer to go somewhere where I'm not going to risk running into Zariah and causing a scene," he admitted with a faint grimace. "The Fangs, perhaps, or the Tundra." The last thing he needed was to start a war he didn't have time to fight. "Though... that does lead to the last thing I had to ask of you. Do you know Maea?"
Loren narrowed his eyes slightly at Jigano’s comment. ”I haven’t run into her yet, so I wouldn’t be too worried about that.” However, the healer shrugged. ”Whatever you’re most comfortable with. Just tell me when and where.” He genuinely didn't care where the training took place, considering he'd been subjected to harsher conditions growing up.
When the bard brought up Maea, though, the Launceleyn displayed his first strong emotion of this conversation. Nostrils flaring, he closed his notebook and lowered it to his side. His eyes flashed with a bit of protectiveness. At least his voice stayed even while icy anger uncoiled in his gut. "I know her. Why do you bring her up?" Patiently, he waited to hear what the white-haired man had to say.
Jigano nodded gratefully at Loren's patience and willingness to work with him. At some point he probably needed to talk to someone about Zariah, and the summoner would have been the best choice... but with Abasi's death on top of Remi's attempted suicide and all that had occurred at Fiat Lux, it wasn't fair to burden his friend with his own problems. The bard exhaled slowly, ruffling the feather he held before he tucked it into a pocket. "Thanks. I'll send a note in a few days and we can set it up then." Perhaps after he'd finally gone to poke around Torchline. Neutral ground sounded like a good compromise; a place without bad memories for either of them.
Well. Yet. Give Caido time and there would always be another tragedy.
The reaction to Maea's name was unexpected, Loren's physical cues answering Jigano's question before the words left the summoner's lips. He paused for a moment, taking in the protectiveness curiously. She had been back a few weeks, and already had gained such staunch defenders, wrapping Sunjata and Loren both around her little fingers? Not that she hadn't done the same to him, and more than once. He let out another sigh, reaching up to run a hand back through his hair and push the looser tresses that always came free back for a moment. "She came into mastered magic recently... water magic," he explained, not knowing how much Loren knew, how well he knew Maea, for that matter. "She wants help learning to control it. She got wind of Zariah's new school..." Here the bard grimaced slightly, but held his temper at the Tyrant. "From what Edrei told me about life as a Launceleyn, from what you've said... I'd rather she learn from someone with at least an ounce of compassion. Who won't teach her just to weaponize her or use her. I know you have great deal on your plate right now, but you know water magic, and you're the Loreseeker expert on things magical on Caido. I wanted to ask if you would take her under your wing." Not a small favor, no, but from Loren's reaction to her name... perhaps not as big a one as he'd thought. She was the first and only thing he'd seen the other man care about since Abasi's death.
Nodding at Jigano’s comment about the note, Loren watched the bard carefully. As he revealed that all he was going to ask was that the healer train Maea, however, he relaxed, the tension draining out of him. "I already offered to train her and she accepted." The words came out flatly, the way he'd spoken before his slight bought of concern for the woman.
However, his eyes narrowed slightly as he continued to stare at the white-haired man. "Did you issue Maea an ultimatum, and if so why?" Again, the Launceleyn's words came out carefully, and he studied Jigano's features as the healer waited for the answer. For now, his expression was inscrutable and he walled away the hints of anger at the thought of forcing her into a choice.
