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!
Perhaps not the best thing to bring up on the heels of their near disaster, but Amalia has never been anything if not prone to putting her foot in her mouth. Deimos faux-blase answer is met with an apologetic squeeze of her hand, the girl looking down and biting her lip, anxiety rising once more in her gut. It is another thing she can never understand, has no reference or context for. Losing and losing without hope of ever regaining...
"I'm sorry," the Shield says softly, not meeting his eyes.
Instead she looks at Zuriel, a silent greeting passed through Attuned prowess, a preemptive apology for the sorry state she has put the unicorn's companion in. Jyoti naps in the air nearby, floating neatly in the equine's shadow, a large eye opening as the par draws near. She trills a note of curious greeting, concerned, a little quieter of late, preferring to linger close to home, away from the dangers of the world. Flipping so she's right-side-up, the whale swims to Deimos and attempts to tuck herself behind his hair.
"We can make lanterns for them this year, if you want." It is all she can offer, a simple gesture but one that holds deep meaning for her people, this place. Reaching a hand out to Zuriel, she glances back at the Sword. "And if... if you wanted to talk about them... I'd love to hear it. So they can live in my memories, too."
Loss long since shaped him into this disheveled mess of flaws and greed: avarice for more and more and more before the earth dropped out from underneath him, grasping for things he likely shouldn’t have ever thought he could have. So moments stretched after Adam, after Peter, after LongNight, after Cera, after everything else, were just frayed, patched ends barely knotted together, conformed and contorted in his stoic haze. An outward shell while an inward, haphazard wake of suffering, grief, and agony, craving, yearning, longing to protect those that mattered the most (so he didn’t lose again and again and again).
Amalia had nothing to be sorry for though – not her fault that part of him would always be carved out of demise and fatalities, lethality and destruction.
He lifted his gaze from the ground and to their house, to Zuriel approaching, a haughty, demanding demeanor pulsing through his wake, at her irritation for not being permitted to go along with them. The beast was half-tempted to stare at her in derision, because what would she have done along Adam’s threshold, clenching his jaw tight again, swallowing down the harsh affects. The unicorn turned her head to Amalia with a narrowed, speculative eye, not advancing, likely calculating her next move, and Deimos was suddenly, infinitely, grateful for Jyoti’s calming essence, a soothing, buoyant mass tucked along his hair. His shoulders eased, breath loosened from their taut, tight accords, uncertain how much longer he was supposed to be keeping himself together.
The Sword tilted his head, indicating he was listening, while he opened their door, invited them all into the fold of their sanctuary. Releasing Amalia for the moment, he lifted his bag and placed it on a hook by the aperture, free of its confines, before turning back to her. There was consideration in his eyes, pondering if it mattered; glowing lights and flickering flames for those he wouldn’t see again. Something built behind his gaze again, unfurling, unwinding, and he so wanted to hide, tuck himself back into shells and vessels. He nodded in agreement, choking down a range of sounds and tones, before maneuvering into the expanse, before he cracked and splintered right across the threshold.
Zuriel’s slow procession and movement was a more measured air, shoving her muzzle into Amalia’s hands, before following the General inside. Out of habit she went to nestle herself before the hearth, even if there was no fire going. His own presence didn’t seem to understand where to go, a little lost, a little misplaced, before finally settling at the table, leaning against its surface. “I would not know where to start.” He’d never shared them before – his and his and his, the plumes of anguish and sorrow making him all the more covetous of things he’d cherished. But it was an extension, and he appreciated it, for the efforts she was striving to make. “If you wanted to share yours, I will listen.” Keep them in refrains, in memories, amongst the long-extended accord of those beloved and gone.
Zuriel's slight greeting is at least something; the Shield has never really been sure if the unicorn likes her at all. She watches Deimos retreat inside, accompanied by Jyoti and followed by Zuriel, the baker bringing up the rear. She closes the front door gently behind her, listening to the latch click closed. The outside world sealed firmly on the other side.
Now there is only them.
When she turns back Zuriel is settled before the empty fireplace, and Deimos is leaning on the table, and Amalia is not sure where to go. She hovers a moment before finding a nearby wall, pressing hip and shoulder against it and letting her body slump. The comment on not knowing where to begin nearly earns a fresh spark of ire; instead she swallows, shaking her head, similarly at a loss. "The people I've lost... You know about them. My mother and grandmother, and the friends, and Adam..."
She trails off, her dark eyes drifting to the empty hearth. Each loss still hurts, embers in her throat. Running a hand anxiously through her hair, the Shield licks her lips. "I feel so guilty every time. Like I should have done more. Or gone in their place." Again she glances up at Deimos, a silent do you understand? in her eyes.
You know about them were vague glimmers; he knew of their presences, but not everything else. He could imagine their faces, the impacts they had on the Shield before him, the way she’d been molded from their influences, and those he’d learned and trusted in her stead. But the weight of loss was heavy and eternal, an enduring wake pressed upon hearts, no matter how withered, no matter how stalwart. His eyes glanced over her, at the way she gazed away too, as they stood upon thresholds of sanctuaries and still didn’t know where to turn. It shouldn’t have been this way, and yet, that was where they remained, suffocating, the world pressing in.
Deimos so desperately wanted to shake it all off.
He maneuvered towards the hearth, an ease of action in the otherwise still spirals, kneeling before it as Zuriel seemed to crave it; especially after the frigid wakes, where they’d all barely survived. The General obliged her, a pat on her neck before unfurling the fire from his palms, where they stoked, kindled, and burned on the logs already resting there. Steady. Beating. Living.
“My father was strong and ridiculous, and I wanted to be just like him.” A soft laugh, while he gazed into the fire, his mind conjuring images of blades, of FireSwords, of a man larger than life – sending it along to her, if she wanted to see, if she wanted to peer, if she wanted a peek at the influential tandems of his life. “My mother was enduring, formidable, quiet, and stern.” He tilted his head, memories curling over stones, rocks, as if she were everything earthen in its wake, doing the same with pictures, with recollections. He rose then, eyes coming back to her as she spoke of guilt, the notion of comprehension settling in his stare, yes pummeling and pervading in their wounds. Too alike in that way, the way they harbored and strived, attempted and tried, and results still bearing down on them. “I was gone to war when they were slain. I always wonder if I could have saved them.” If he could’ve saved anyone and everyone; his body a weapon, a rampart, an unyielding, rigid oeuvre to massacres, demolition, and annihilation; doing everything in his power to ensure they survived, lived on. Except it didn’t really matter, in the end.
She maneuvers too, chess pieces moving across the board, ships afraid of careening into each other and crashing upon the rocks. Taking up a position at the table he just abandoned, she scoots herself up onto the wood, her bare feet running nervously over each other while she traces circles with her thumbs. Jyoti leaves Deimos with a final pulse of comfort, swimming further from the fire and settling in the Shield's lap.
The story begins in a baritone, smoke curling in the room between them, history released into the light. Wrapping her arms around the whale Amalia listens, silent and enraptured. Father, a thing she has never known personally: strong and ridiculous, the imagery telling more than his voice ever could. Mother, stern and serious and not unlike the figure the Shield was raised beneath, women with the strength of stone and sea.
In response she offers imagery of her own: her grandmother, the older woman holding Amalia and underneath the stars, a wealth of stories past between the oldest and youngest Chandrakant. Her mother, forcing her to sit and learn and review the different herbs and plants of Caido. Both of them gone too soon, a wealth of could-have-beens and regrets weighing on her soul.
"My Nani died on LongNight. I was at the infirmary with my mother, and when we came home, she was just... gone." She looks at the whale in her lap, the unsaid implications there. If only they had stayed together, if only Amalia had been at home. If only, if only, if only again. A thousand if onlys, and it's never enough.
Too many ends and not enough beginnings; the infinite lines of loss grating and bristling, hovering over and under his breath while he proceeded away from the fire, back into the moldings of the table, the kitchen, surroundings meant to be comfortable even when the subject matter was not. Everything felt heavy and cumbersome, but he leaned against the wall, taking shape and substance from its fortification, while he felt tired and listless.
Her history and images came to life in his mind thereafter too – shared semblances of beings they’d once been, molded and crafted, shaped and whittled. He bore witness to the woman who’d bene her lifeline, a bridge to stars and galaxies, to a whirlwind of myths, legends, truths, and stories, and a mother who insisted on knowledge, on information, on sagacity, and wisdom to tangible wiles too. The Sword almost snorted; raised within similar parallels when it came to matriarchs; likely certain their children would’ve been foolish and naïve without their support, without their stern brows and guidance.
But her words didn’t invite humor, laughter, or anything other than his quietude: another lost during LongNight, it’s merciless stretch of monstrous intonations. Just gone; no demons, no infidels, no claws, taken along the intertwining expanse of midnight and doom.
Nothing they could’ve ever done, and it haunted them both. Just how many more lives would press across their shoulders? Or when would it no longer be their responsibility? Happenstance and naught more? Did the guilt ever wash away?
His gaze lingered on the floor, then rose to her; and he felt empty, useless, another vessel with only intakes of air and an exhausted, fatigued mind. His movements followed, walking, wandering, to bridge the gap, arms unfolding, offering support and comfort when he wasn’t certain what else he had to give. And maybe he needed it too, tired of reliving the melancholy, the anguish, the ghosts in his head.
Her story had been too much: too serious, too deep, too selfish, too raw. His silence feels damning and overwhelming, and for a moment the girl wonders if perhaps she has drowned them both once more in darkness, the shrouds of the past threatening to encompass them both in a haze of sorrow. Dropping her head to look at Jyoti, the Shield lets her eyes fall shut. On her retinas dance a million images, faces and moments and blood and regrets, the deaths they've endured, the ones they will never have back-
Then his arms are around her, engulfing, encompassing, a comfort she does not deserve but leans into nonetheless. She presses her forehead into his chest, exhaling a long and shuddering sigh, inhaling his scent and letting it fill her. For a minute she is silent, her mind falling open to allow him in, the images spinning out into existence and easing between them, a flowing river of experiences and thoughts. Days of laughter beside her grandmother, nights of mourning for her losses; smiles and stories and fights and flights of fancy, the things she never told anyone about, the memories she kept for herself for so long. She lets them out and invites him to do the same, to think them if he cannot speak of it. Good and bad, smiles and tears, sickness and health and sorrow and mirth.
And when she is finished, when she has thought over all that is gone and lost and missed and mourned, when the flood of history Pandora's Box is at last freed, there at the bottom is hope. Hope for the future, hope for them, dreams she feels guilty for having but cannot hold back. Happiness, that they have a home together, that they will be married; dreams of serving gods and preserving life. Friends and family and sisters and brothers-
"Oh right," she mumbles into his chest. "I have a brother and sister now. So uh. Yeah."
Had there been a time when he wasn’t drowning? That he wasn’t scrambling for the surface, head slightly above the darkness, lungs grasping greedily for air? It’d always been a suffocating weight on his chest, on his shoulders, on his existence, a sculpting, a harpooning, a carving along scars inward and outward, lined upon his skin. The silence wasn’t damning, at least not from him, a normal circumstance when he was trying so desperately to tread water. But everything hurt, and his jaw remained still, arms going around her, clenching, cherishing, offering what he could; his cheek pressed into the top of her gilded crown, long, extended breaths filling the void.
And then more and more and more; images flashing through his mind that were not his own, and he stared, peering into their depths. Laughter and warmth, grief and vanquishing, matching accords for days extended in bliss and harmony, shuttered thereafter on other quandaries and enigmas. The release of his own were entangled and warped in boyhood stretches across the sea, running, rampaging along dampened sands with his friends, the crying of gulls beneath patchworks of moonlight; his father’s pride when he’d signed up for the militia, his mother’s stern, reticent stare. Being knocked to the ground multiple times when he first wielded wooden blades, laughing amongst his fellow-would be warriors as they trained, as they played, as they pretended to be something they’d eventually regret, cherish, or die within. Kneeling before a shrine, begging for Huyana to be healed, head bowed, hands pressed into the earth, grabbing hold of grass like a lifeline, like a tether, as his pleas were ignored.
It exhausted him further, to relive it all. His mind felt empty of its machinations, of its calculations, of its experiences, drawn and drained, so his vessel was a lifeless thing, clinging to particles and Shields. The hope that followed, followed, followed filled in those gaping holes and fissures, springing along a skull once filled with so many Machiavellian properties. They resembled contentment, happiness, moments he’d had so few and far between – arms around her tighter, reassurance in the encouraging, inspiring whims, something they could grasp, they could hold, they could unfurl for themselves.
The last notes, however, seemed to slide along the wake in a torrent of confusion. He lifted his head off of hers, stepping back only to stare down at her. “Quite a discovery. What happened?” An invitation to explain, if she was so willing – presuming she’d been an only child, something else had been snatched and snagged in the whirlwind of lives.
They trade their stories in pictures rather than words, in feeling rather than strict recounting: intimate, eager, reliving rather than retelling, thoughts and memories melding together into a shared experience. She wraps her arms around his waist, anchoring them both to the table, the floor, the world of now, afraid to be swept up in the torrent of memory and regret.
It's almost a relief when Sam pops into her mind, that new and most unsettling part of her history drawing her mind back to the present. Not releasing Deimos as he pulls away, Amalia hums a thoughtful note, turning so her cheek is pressed against his chest, the rhythm of his heat beating comfort into her ears.
"Ah... I only found out recently." Worrying her lip between her teeth, the Shield exhales a thoughtful sigh. "I guess my mother, um... she had an affair with David Wordsworth. Evie and Sam's dad." It feels bizarre to say aloud, a torrid affair she would never have expected from her stoic mother. "So he's my father. Or, was. He's dead."
The attuned nature of their bond made the stories easier: he was no master linguist or storyteller, wouldn’t have been able to do the events, the motions, justice. She must’ve known he’d be lost in them – world-weary and suffocating under all of the pressure, all of the monumental moments he was forced to relive (giving them life and images now; instead of the distinct memories coiled over his boundaries, his fringes, his edges, his lines). His efforts to draw away had only been to stare upon her in wonder, though the notion hadn’t escaped her – clenched tighter, grasped, lifelines, anchors, bulwarks, and foundations hooked there. So he settled for listening, placing his arms along shoulders, leaning his head back upon hers, still, silent, and stoic.
The details about her parentage caused his eyes to widen slightly, Wordsworth, the name belonging solely to Sam and Evie, Amalia’s mother drifting amongst the sanction, then harboring such secrets and revelations. Affairs, dalliances, liaisons, a stretch of bizarre underpinnings. Did it alter or change anything? Evie and her had been close anyway; the once-separation of blood likely didn’t matter. But Sam? His chest rumbled on musings, thoughts pulsing, pervading. No judgement, ascertaining the circumstances – situations meandered much the same along either Isilme or Helovia. “How do you feel about it?” Did she regret not having a connection with the man, since he was deceased? Did it change anything – especially with Sam’s role with the Voice?
How does she feel about it? Sam had asked her the same question, and Amalia finds that her answer remains the same today. "I don't really know." Shrugging within his embrace, the Shield at last pulls back slightly, making sure to keep his hands on him in some way lest they be separated by their insecurities again. "It's... strange. I always wondered, but I never actually expected to know. And now that I do..." Another shrug, the uncertainty palpable. She wishes she could have asked her mother about it, confronted her on the circumstances, on why. Evie has been a constant presence in her life regardless, but Sam means another person to care about.
Another person to lose.
For another long moment she is silent, staring at Jyoti in her lap. Pushing a lock of hair away from her face, Amalia at last looks up at the Sword, her dark eyes still puffy and rimmed in red. "I promised to make you dinner," although she makes no move to leave, still clinging gently to the man, fearful she'll sink if she lets him go. Another second passes while she searches his blue eyes, seeking answers to questions she doesn't know how to ask. "What do you want?" For dinner, from life, from me?
He’d always known who he belonged to – flesh and blood, resemblances and mannerisms through and through – so for the first few moments, he merely listened to understand. What would it be like to suddenly have things dropped into one’s sanction that had once been something else? A shift in position? A change in relationships? And some chances gone, vanquished before they could even begin: her father, taking his secret with him, and only extending it once he was in his grave. The meaning behind that wasn’t clear either, murky, mired, and his brow softened, eyes maneuvering away from walls and tables, and down to her as she leaned back. He didn’t have anything to grant or offer in those knotted threads and strands, except his support. A nod followed suit, swallowing down any other inquiries she couldn’t answer, or he had no business asking. More family, more friends, more companions, and yes, more fragments, figments, to watch slip away.
The promise of dinner sounded as if it were from lifetimes ago, and his gaze angled from her for a moment, sketching over the things he’d hunted that morning. The reality of the loaded question bombarded against him (but he’d told her so many times before; just you in either heartfelt whispers or ardent devotion; and this time it cycled back through their bond, silent on his lips but not in his soul). The rest was small, paltry, adornments of life. “I have a pheasant.” He maneuvered away, suddenly afraid to let go but it was a necessity for those strangled intervals, motioning towards where he’d encased the already-plucked fowl in ice. He lifted it from the container, hands already melting the bird through invocations, enchantments, and then placed it on the counter. Rifling through the pantry, he found some rice, a half-smile embedded on his lips, blue eyes equally red-rimmed, pushing through sheer exhaustion and fatigue, tempted to fall apart well before the meal. “Will this suffice? Or I can find something else.”
He pulls away, leaving her cold and empty, hands falling back into her lap. There are still so many unsaid things between them, jokes she may have made dying on her lips, drowned beneath the heaviness that overwhelms them both. Watching as he walks away Amalia feels her breath hitch and catch, a terrible fear filling her, making her heartbeat flutter and spike. What if he walks out the door and never comes back, what if this is all he can give her, what if what if what if-
But no, he's simply moved to the kitchen and pulled out a pheasant and oh if the Shield doesn't feel relieved and foolish all at once. Slipping off the tabletop she pads her way toward him, almost silent in the quiet house as he extracts the rice. Her slender arms feel heavy and small as when she wraps them around his waist, head falling on his shoulder, body pressed against his back.
"Do you want a bath first? I can cook." She wants to ease the tension from his shoulders, to wash away the heartbreak and agony from today and every day before. "Let me take care of you tonight. Please."
Everything felt tenuous, fragile, breakable; it had been seemingly eons since those sentiments had strangled him whole. He hated it, detested it, the thousand weights clambering down his spine and searing across his skin, each sigh a heavier munition, a scalding, transfixing thing. It shouldn’t have been like this – but wounds were fresh, binding, and each fragment was another old injury, another old laceration, another old scar coming to undulate between the new, raw ones. He’d borne them all before but now it felt worse, choking, suffocating, drowning, brewing along his lungs, his spine, all the rigid contortions that had held him upright for so long –
Her arms came around him, silent, quiet support for the everlasting battles they kept fighting, his eyes flickering down to smaller hands that held too much; covering them with his own, striving to take away some of the pressure, the multitudes, when everything else was already bearing down on him. What was one more? He could probably take it. He could probably handle it. He could probably reach and scorch the surface once more, and it would be like an eternity until everything righted again.
Except she was asking him not to, and the confusion riddled and rankled along his brow, on the temptation to sigh, or to snort. The enticement to deny; to cluster and coil back together on his own, because that was all he’d ever done. The Reaper would lift others or maim, rip, and tear for them, come back bloodied, occasionally get healed, rinse, repeat, a cycle of violence and detachment, apathy, indifference.
“Okay,” he swallowed down to both, body and mind honed to resist, exhaustion and fatigue wearing him down to acceptance. He made no move to evade or escape her grasp though, uncertain of how far he’d get before sinking or spiraling.
