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!
The idea of continuing the fight training made her both terrified and strangely thrilled. Even when she was still regaining the use of her legs, the girl's eyes flashed, returning the eagerness she saw in Loren's gaze. She couldn't help but to grin a daredevil smile as she straightened up and pulled back from him, his healing finally rendering her able to stand properly.
"I've been rather curious to find out what your worst looks like," she told him, raking her hair back from the face; the roil of half-panic in her gut paired with fierce determination brought a rather new expression to her. A little wild. Almost savage, as if she could sprout sharp canines and calws at any moment. Ah. If only.
"I won't tell Sunjata if you don't... so go ahead. Show me what it's like to break." She backed up, creating more space between them. Keen on leaping into danger, thoughtless, reckless; a far cry from her usual reserved self.
Perhaps Sunjata would recognize the gleam in her eyes, from their weapons training. It was the same glowing delight, of thinking that maybe, just maybe this was something she was a bit good at. After all, she'd made Loren bleed. That had to count for something, right?
Light is easy to love Show me your darkness
BASE INSPIRED BY ODD <3
♦ Violence, magic, thievery is permitted with Maea at all times. DM me if you have any ideas ♦
The last thing Loren had been expecting was for Maea to actually take him up on his half-joking offer to cut loose. His eyes widened slightly in surprise. Then, though, he grinned savagely, more bared teeth than anything else. "Don't say I didn't warn you." There was something bloodthirsty about his voice.
Then he stepped back from her. Seeing as he'd healed her wounds, he did the same for his own, which sealed shut. He shucked off his cloak, tossing it to the side. Rolling his neck, his eyes narrowed for a brief moment.
Then a dragon appeared directly in front of him. It roared, shaking the icicles off the roof, and as it did lightning blasted from its throat, streaking towards Maea's feet. At the same time, a flurry of sharp ice shot up from the ground as he borrowed her trick from earlier.
"Never, I take full responsibility," she assured, and gestured for him to come at her.
His moment of focus was all the warning Maea needed. Amply on her toes know, body prepared for new onslaughts of that pain it so rarely experienced before, she closed down on the surprise at seeing a dragon appear before her, out of nowhere. As it breathed electricity at her, she leaped to the side and rolled back up on her feet, in a surprisingly good execution of an excercise Deimos had given her earlier in the season. It brought her out of the way of most of the spikes as well; one scraped a jagged line along her side, but it stung more than hurt and Maea was quite able to ignore it.
With only water magic at her disposal - at least as the only useful tool against this opponent - she summoned a great orb of liquid and tried to close it around the dragon, so that it would not be able to breathe. Should it succeed, she would freeze the water and bring it smashing down towards the ground, hopefully right on top of Loren.
Light is easy to love Show me your darkness
BASE INSPIRED BY ODD <3
♦ Violence, magic, thievery is permitted with Maea at all times. DM me if you have any ideas ♦
Snarling as Maea avoided the brunt of Loren's attack, he didn't even bother trying to have the dragon defend itself from her attack. Instead, he just dismissed it. As soon as it disappeared, he resummoned it next to her new position.
It reared up on its hind legs slightly, beating its wings to send a gust at her. Simultaneously, it swiped its claws at her from either direction, hoping to box her in. At the same time, he targeted the globe of water and ice she'd created. Shoving against it with his mind and magic, he tried to slam it down onto her instead of letting it collapse on him.
Again the girl ducked and rolled to avoid the dragon's attack, but wasn't quite as successful in dodging this time. One taloned paw managed to reach her side, and gouged a long line of jagged wounds down her side - quite similar to those Sunjata had earned in a different fight. The pain was excruciating; the ice responded quite on its own this time, bursting up from Maea in another set of spikes, aimed both at the dragon and at Loren, hoping to distract him and make him move from his spot.
The giant globe of ice was harder to deal with however. In a simple clash of wills, Loren would come out on top, so Maea tried to simply tug the ice towards herself a little harder; it missed, crashing into the roof beneath their feet just behind her with an impact that made the building quiver.
"Oops. Hope the others don't mind being woken up," she grinned wickedly, panting a little from the effort. Maea clutched at her side and got back up on her feet, readying for whatever retaliation would come next, her eyes on the dragon with the man in her periphery. So far she was doing good; cut and bleeding, hurting like all heck, but standing up.
He was not breaking her yet. Maybe he wasn't trying hard enough?
Light is easy to love Show me your darkness
BASE INSPIRED BY ODD <3
♦ Violence, magic, thievery is permitted with Maea at all times. DM me if you have any ideas ♦
Loren didn't bother actually blocking Maea's spikes. He simply let them pierce him, all over his body. Thankfully he halted them before they could do too much damage, and he dismissed his dragon again. Blood dripped from his wounds, but he ignored them. Once more summoning the dragon this time in the sky above her.
It blasted down at her with lightning. At the same time, he attempted to repeat his trick from earlier. Gathering up all the ice and snow and water he could, he sent it directly towards her with crushing force. If he could, he'd entomb her completely, not even leaving her head free this time.
Slightly horrified by his blatant disregard for his own safety - it must be nice, knowing you could heal yourself at any point - Maea dodged away from the dragon's lightning breath a second time. Her body tingled from the residual electricity, enough that she staggered and couldn't get back on her feet quite as quickly as she should... and the water slammed into her again, from all sides. Again there was that crushing, suffocating agony as she was closed in, like a giant hand of rock-solid water grasping hold on her, and again she could not parry it.
The blow to her head, her body was awful, and again bones fractured and broke under the impact. But unlike the first time, her grasp on the magic was firm and Maea was able to lash out at Loren, a hail of icy needles raining down on them both from above in all the thirty feet she could reach; Maea was cased in the ice already, leaving him and the dragon as the only viable targets.
Only problem was, she was blacking out again, shattered and bleeding and very still within the icy tomb.
Light is easy to love Show me your darkness
BASE INSPIRED BY ODD <3
♦ Violence, magic, thievery is permitted with Maea at all times. DM me if you have any ideas ♦
As the ice rained down, Loren bowed his head and raised his arms to block. At the same time, he had his dragon hunker down over him. While pretty much his whole body was sliced and diced, leaving an untold number of cuts to add to the wounds he already had, at least it wasn't fatal.
However, the dragon took the brunt of it, leaving him just woozy from the blood loss and in pain from all the bleeding wounds. Swaying on his feet, he clenched his fists, channeling the pain and the movement into the pressure around the prison in which he'd encased her. And he wouldn't let up until her magic did.
The prison tightened in around her, and again she felt that darkness close in around her vision. Her broken bones screamed in agony and the girl screamed too, a wheezing sound that was cut off when her just-healed ribs fractured and snapped, her body slowly crushed in that frozen deathgrip.
But somehow, Maea remained cruelly conscious, and even in the midst of her pain there was a fiery determination burning within her still. A desperate need not to give up, or relent, and it made her lash out with her magic again, and again, hailing more ice down upon Loren until... until there was nothing more for her to reach towards.
Until, quite suddenly, there was no ice left in her, nor boiling heat, and the only water she could muster trickled down like fine rain. Drop by drop... until that too ceased to fall.
And then the darkness descended upon her, and Maea grew very still. Her consciousness gone.
Light is easy to love Show me your darkness
BASE INSPIRED BY ODD <3
♦ Violence, magic, thievery is permitted with Maea at all times. DM me if you have any ideas ♦
The ice from Maea continued to rain down, so Loren continued to just stay hidden underneath his dragon, which had been pierced so many times at this point that it was barely alive. Even then, he was cut more, his body more crimson and bleeding wounds than untouched skin at this point.
Eventually the hail slowed, stopped, turned to rain. That too stopped. The healer gave it a few more moments before he dismissed his summons and pulled the ice away from Maea. This time, he wasn't close enough to catch her, so instead he just stumbled towards her. As she (presumably) collapsed, he sent a bolt of his healing magic at her, targeting any injuries that might be life threatening while he approached slowly.
She did fall, when the ice released her. Limp and bloodless, she was little more than a broken doll on the ground, with bones broken in so many places it would take more than just a trickle of magic to heal her up. Her clothes had been reduced to tattered, bloodsoaked rags, face cut up and bruised from the sharp ice that had encased her head, while streaks of crimson soaked through the long hair where it had cut into her scalp.
Maea did not move when he approached, did not even react as the magic began to work its way through her system. The only sign that she was even still alive was the sudden rise of her ribcage as air was let back into tortured lungs; she coughed reflexively but lay otherwise still. Still unconscious.
Quite broken indeed.
Light is easy to love Show me your darkness
BASE INSPIRED BY ODD <3
♦ Violence, magic, thievery is permitted with Maea at all times. DM me if you have any ideas ♦
It was probably for the best that Maea was unconscious, and that she'd been encased in ice: she didn't react to the pain, and the cold slowed the deterioration of her body. Actually falling to his knees besides her, suddenly unable to support his own weight, Loren rested a weary palm on what he hoped was an uninjured part of her skin.
And then he scraped his magic together, which was running lower than he would've liked after the exertion. Pouring it through his hands, a sky blue glow suffused her entire body, knitting her cuts closed, repairing her bruised and damaged muscles and organs, even banishing the hints of hypothermia.
Slowly, gradually, her body was pieced back together. It was a fortunate thing indeed that he had not spent himself entirely in the fight, or she would have been in quite serious danger. As it was, she responded to his healing quite without a fuss, through it was a long time before Maea felt her consciuosness return.
The blue glow was still suffusing the air around her when she opened her eyes, brought back to awareness. For a while, her gaze was blank. Distant and unfocused. But when it cleared, and landed on his face, recognition flared... and a hint of fear flashed across her face. A memory of pain, not quite gone from her limbs; she tried to move and groaned, breath picking up when it all came rushing back. The violence, the pain, that claustrophobic sensation of ice closing in on her from all sides...
Of all the stupid ideas, this might be her worst so far.
Light is easy to love Show me your darkness
BASE INSPIRED BY ODD <3
♦ Violence, magic, thievery is permitted with Maea at all times. DM me if you have any ideas ♦
As Maea began to stir, Loren shook his head. Gently, but insistently, he pushed her back to the ground. "Don't move, please." Despite the polite words and phrasing, it very much came out as a command, with all the authority that came from his upbringing and his position as Grand Healer.
He sent another burst of healing magic through her, continuing to mend her still broken and battered form. For a long while, he was silent, just trying to focus on his spell. Finally, he sighed. "I hope you got what you wanted from this." It came out quietly and honestly a bit sadly, a sudden exhaustion and malaise stealing over him.
