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!
Sometimes it wasn't about strength, it was about leverage. And sometimes it was just about reaching out to a friend, however brief the contact. "That's how it was on my world," Jigano agreed, though his voice was equally wry, for neither of them were where they had once been. "Healing magic, at least, was usually a blessing from the gods. It's just our luck the ones here don't see it that way." Oh, he referred to his magic as a curse often enough because he knew Safrin had never intended for him to have it - though she would probably would see it as fitting that he be 'cast down' among the Abandoned for his hubris - but in truth he was too relieved to have it back after a year without to let that sense of worthlessness linger too long.
"Though that's pretty convenient, too," he added with a grin as Loren dried them off and cooled them down. "Thanks." It made the lounging in the sun much more comfortable, even if they didn't need to 'capture' it anymore.
"Mmm. That does sound ominous. Then again, Adam managed to win me over in spite of his various habits, so I might be able to take it. And besides, when I have I ever walked away from an answer after asking the question?" he teased lightly, tilting his head to arch a brow at his friend. "So, what's going on?"
Sighing a little, Loren shook his head. "I meant more that it's not exactly a blessing needing to be healed all the time." However, despite the words, he was uncertain if he actually believed that, and a bit of that seeped through the bond.
Nodding at Jigano's thanks, the healer settled into his chair. Sipping from his flask, he glanced at the bard. "Not much, really." The Launceleyn tapped a finger against the wooden armrest, and smirked a little, though it was more bitter than amused. "Unsurprisingly, life has little, well, life in it for me these days. So I've taken to finding whatever fleeting moments of emotion I can, where I can, with who I can." Waving the flask in demonstration, he turned to watch the white-haired man's reaction.
"Ah, there is that," Jigano grinned sheepishly at the correction, agreeing whole-heartedly with it. "Usually I'm better at dodging, but clearly I have more practicing to do." He felt Loren's uncertainty, and it piqued both interest and concern for his friend, tasting the self-destructive edge of that hesitation and finding it a bitter draught.
Supposition and guesses wouldn't get him anywhere though, and so he asked his question outright. At least he wasn't surprised by the answer when it came, nodding gravely at hearing that Loren's life was lacking the spark that made it worth living with Abasi's passing still so recent. "Drinking, whoring, and brawling?" he double-checked, putting Loren's fine words into crasser terms, but without any judgment behind them. "Adam could probably hook you up with some, hm, substances of questionable provenance and varying levels of stimulation or numbness, depending on what you're going for." Jigano had turned the offer down for himself, but it sounded like the sort of thing Loren might want to take advantage of in his mourning, and if Adam was around to use his experience to keep things from going off the rails, well, maybe it would give the summoner a brief reprieve from his pain.
Loren smirked a little at Jigano's comment. "Happy to throw more things at you if you need the practice." It was a joke, but there was a kernel of truth to it.
Toasting to the bard's guess, the healer nodded and took a long pull from his flask. "You got it. Pleasure and pain is the name of the game." Perhaps it should've bothered him (and some small part of him buried deep within was disgusted) but it was better than that void he'd found himself in in the days after Abasi's death.
At the mention of Adam, the Launceleyn snorted. "Yeah, no, I have no desire to see Adam." The words were dismissive.
"I'll probably take you up on that,"" the bard agreed with a chuckle. He suspected Loren wasn't the only one willing to throw things at him, but at least the summoner could put him back together if their sparring got too rough again. Probably not the healthiest mindset, as the other man had just pointed out, but Loren wasn't the only one who danced on the edge of self-destruction.
He was just the one who'd fallen off that edge most recently.
Jigano had nothing to toast with, and no desire to encourage Loren on his downward spiral, but he nodded at the toast and hid the sigh that would probably come across as too judgmental. "That's a rough game to play," was all he said, keeping his tone light. "If you keep it up too long. Even your magic might not be able to put you back together." Everyone mourned differently, though, and he wasn't sure that the previous detachment and numbness was any healthier than this latest dip into hedonism.
He was surprised to hear that Loren had some sort of beef with Adam. Peter-related, maybe? But it didn't seem a good time to press or pry. "Ah. Have you been pursuing your new hobbies mostly in Torchline, by chance? What can you tell me if this 'new' land the Voice has granted us?" And if his voice was a little bitter at the end, well, Loren could probably understand why.
Loren shrugged, not at all put off by Jigano's warning. "So what? I'm already broken. Might as well finish the job myself." Taking a swig, the healer found himself turning a challenging expression on the bard, as if daring the Sage to criticize such a clearly dangerous point of view.
Letting out a huff of laughter, the Launceleyn shook his head. "Here, the Hollowed Ground, Halo. I've been busy." Smirking slightly, he paused at Jigano's question about Torchline. Finally, he shrugged. "That it's full of tough and independent people who will rob you blind with a smile and probably try to fuck you over in another way while they're at it. They trade in favors, and have a free spirit."
Ahh the belligerence of the young, drunk, and hurting. Not that Jigano hadn't been there himself before, and more than a few times. It gave him more patience to deal with it now, being on the other side of the interaction, and he arched a curious brow. "Broken? How so?" As for 'finishing the job' that could wait until later, he hoped. Though Loren seemed given to spiraling tempers and drama, from what he recalled of their initial meeting.
The warning was well-taken, and he nodded thoughtfully. "I haven't met any locals yet," he admitted. "I prefer to scout a new area out in animal form for a while first, but it's good to know I can't be too trusting here. Favors, though... that's a dangerous currency." He glanced to his friend. "A 'free spirit' sounds like what you're looking for now, though. Would you ever hop aboard a ship in that harbor down there and just... sail off?"
Loren gave Jigano an unimpressed and unamused look. ”Really, Jigano?” Letting out a huff of bitter laughter, the healer took a pull from his flask. ”I might not be the most introspective or thoughtful person, but even I can tell you that I’m hardly the healthiest person and that I’m prone to increasingly frequent bouts of insanity.” Leaning his head back against the chair, he shrugged, unbothered by that.
"And that I have terribly self-destructive and destructive habits, and that I push people away when I need them the most." Taking another pull from his flask, he drew his knees up to his chest, sitting curled in a ball on the chair.
"No." He let his head loll to the side so he could look at the bard. "I've done the whole running away from my life before, and I'm not interested in a repeat performance. I'm trying something new this time." Shaking the flask, he smirked as the liquid sloshed inside.
"Who have you met here is healthy?" the bard asked, darkly amused himself as Loren seemed to describe at least half the people in the Hollowed Grounds, and probably just as many in Halo. "And what sort of insanity are you prone to, that isn't driven by grief?" Even if it was destructive, Jigano believed that the Launceleyn was due his time to mourn for his lost love.
As for the rest? He nodded slowly, looking up to the blue sky dotted with a few wispy white clouds. "Do you feel guilty?" he asked softly. "For surviving, when others have not? For moving forward while those you cared about are buried and will never move again? Do you think pushing those that remain with you will make it easier to walk away from them when they die, too?" It wasn't as though he was a stranger to those habits himself, though he was trying to claw his way past them.
He glanced over at the sound of the flask shaking and snorted softly. "Trying to get the Warder to fire you from your new position already?" It might seem like it, if Loren abandoned Halo and buried himself in the bottom of a bottle too often. "How's it working out so far?" He was genuinely curious of Loren thought it was helping, or if it was simply something new enough to keep his interest.
Loren snorted, and shook his head sadly. "Does it matter, what causes my madness? What excuses I use? And does it matter if others are equally broken?" From his tone, it was clear that he thought none of that mattered.
Laughing humorlessly at Jigano's question, the healer took a long pull. "Of course I feel guilty. How could I not?" Honestly his voice was a bit incredulous. "And if I never let them in, I won't miss them when they're gone." Even in the depths of his despair, though, he didn't really believe that, and he screwed his eyes shut as he tried to block out the tendrils of guilt and unease the question brought up.
"Haven't heard any complaints yet." Toasting to that, he smirked a bit. "Haven't heard much of anything at all, really from him or anyone else." Opening his eyes, he looked at the bard. "As fine as anything else in my life."
"It might, if it's something that can be Healed or fixed," Jigano said mildly. "Though you're right that excuses and the brokenness of the rest of us doesn't matter so much. I wasn't sure if misery having company would make you feel better or not." Given the summoner's mood, probably not, but it was worth a try.
Other questions, though, hit more effective marks, and the bard arched a brow but didn't say anything to argue the point. Maybe Deimos would be proud that he was learning to hold his tongue, but he doubted he would ever know. Except in combat and the trials of training, he and the Sword didn't have that sort of relationship. But there was the catch, that little petulant cry of 'what I can't see won't hurt me' and Jigano snorted softly. "Oh, it's far too late for that, my friend. Too late by far for any of us to think that might work now." He'd tried it before, too, after all, in the wake of kings and queens and abdications. The rest of what he might have said, though, he kept behind his teeth, sensing a lack of firmness in Loren's statement.
"Ah yes, the upsides to nepotism," he agreed wryly, nodding at the toast. "But if you're going down this road of trying to drown yourself in moonshine - or is that whisky? - and avoiding caring for others, why even bother with being Halo's chief healer?" It sounded an awful lot like responsibility and caring for others, at least in a general sense.
Humming a noncommittal sound, Loren shifted in his chair. "A lifetime of pain and torment. Got a cure for that." Shooting Jigano a challenging look, the healer took a pull from the flask. "Nothing makes me feel better, really. I just get distracted from it for a little while." He shrugged, not nearly as bothered as he should be by that.
Letting out a huff of laughter, he let his head fall back. ”Maybe. Maybe not. With enough alcohol, you can forget anything.” He lifted the flask again, his new position making the flow of alcohol more smooth.
Sitting upright, he glared at the white-haired man. "Nepotism? Really? What, you don't think I'm qualified for the job?" There was some real genuine anger in his voice, and he slumped back in his chair with a hostile posture. "It's rum, and I need to do something with my time, and to get food and drink. Might as well be something I'm good at, and that objectively helps people in an uncomplicated way."
"The only cure for life I know is a rather permanent one," he said with a wry shrug. "A case of the cure being worse than the disease, in this case." Sometimes you just had to tough out the sickness and wait for it to pass, but he doubted Loren wanted to hear that right now. He was throwing himself into his grief with a vicious energy that worried Jigano, though he did his best to hide it. Unsolicited advice would go over about as well as a Sparkbird in LongHeat right now, he suspected, and he was trying to keep it to himself.
"With enough alcohol you can make the world burn," he murmured, his previous thoughts still lingering and coloring his words. "But then where will you sleep at night?" He waited to hear 'in the ashes;' it was the retort he would have made if he was acting the part of the self-destructive malcontent, with perhaps just a slight piquant undertone of 'you're not my real dad' thrown in for flavoring.
Ah, there was the foot he always eventually managed to put in his mouth, given enough time. Sometimes his superb flexibility was a real problem. He held up a placating hand, snorting softly at the swift belligerence. "I think you're the most qualified man in the Hollowed Grounds. But do you think you would have been offered the position so quickly if your brother hadn't sat on the throne? Or whatever they call a Warden's chair in Halo." He had yet to see a proper throne worth the name since coming to Caido, but that wasn't necessarily a bad thing. Hearing that Loren still considered helping people to be something he wanted to do, the bard just nodded, taking the unexpected ray of hope where he could. "Then I'm glad it's you doing it," he said simply. "And that it's something you still want to do."
Loren stared off into the distance. "Is it?" Voice quiet, it was clear he was speaking more to himself than to Jigano. Then the healer shook his head and took a long drink from his flask, emptying it.
Slipping the flask back into his pocket, his lips twisted into a grimace. "I'd rather not sleep at all. If I push myself until I pass out, at least I won't remember the nightmares in the morning." His tone was low and more than a bit bitter.
"Maybe not. Maybe you're right and the only reason I got to where am I is because of who I am." Taking a deep breath, he let it out almost as a snarl. "But is it really so shocking to everyone I know that I might actually be worthy of something?"
