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!
Leave my loneliness unbroken! - quit the bust above my door!
Chores be damned, he needed to breathe. To get away from people, and be himself. Dark wings had carried him from the town before dawn, and it was with a deepseated sense of relief he flew for the Fangs.
Nothing cleared his head like flying. The simple exertion in moving, and the exhilaration in riding the wind, with the landscape flashing past far beneath was like a balm, let him forget about everything else. Passing over herds of luxere scraping lichen and moss from the barren soil, without having to hunt them. Stalking the tracks of a scarred old Ursur, with no need to fear it. He found a half eaten carcass picked over by wolves, and made it his own meal for the day, sharp beak pecking loose strips of frozen flesh without concern.
And when he took to the sky again, he found a set of footprints in the snow to follow, for no other reason than to sate his curiosity.
After all the reports of increased cannibal activity, Loren had decided to check out the rumors for himself. Flying high above the Tundra, he looked for anything unusual, out of the ordinary. Unfortunately, all he saw were the usual beasts, and the occasional hunter.
That and the Fangs, of course: they dominated the landscape, and he found himself drifting closer and closer to the peaks. When he was soaring above them, he noticed a set of footprints. It was probably just a hunter, but he followed them anyway for lack of a better destination in mind.
It didn't take him long to spot a semi-familiar black shape in the air in front of him. Korbin? It came out tentatively, both because he wasn't sure of the raven's identity and because the healer wasn't sure of Korbin's reaction if it was indeed the other man.
Leave my loneliness unbroken! - quit the bust above my door!
Relaxed, free, away from prying eyes and thoughts, Korbin had let down his guard somewhat. Eased off on the shield, letting his emotions rage freely. All that ended quite abruptly when the sound of wings behind him - and a too familiar intrusion on his thoughts - made him aware of another presence in the air. Immediately the wall was there again, any stray emotions from him sharply cut off, and with an angling of the wings he found an updraught to carry him higher in the sky, instinctively seeking elevation over the larger bird. Some small advantage, anything, with their last altercation in too fresh memory.
Korbin clapped his beak unhappily. Trust this one to turn up where he was least welcome. He wanted nothing more than to just ignore Loren, fly on like he hadn't heard, like he was just another raven on the tundra. But... already his sharp reaction would have revealed that he wasn't a normal animal. And just ignoring the other was perhaps too rude, even for him.
"What?" The response was dry and clipped, distant and withdrawn like the howling expanse of the Tundra itself. Far from welcoming. And still it was there, the sense of intrusion whenver Loren's thoughts touched him - a shuddering nausea that he had no idea where it came from - that made him want to howl, lash out or break down and cry. Honestly, he didn't know what was worse.
As the other bird flew higher, Loren instinctively found himself climbing as well. It took all his willpower to allow the raven to get higher than the healer, to stay at the altitude he was currently at. When Korbin's voice finally rang in the Launceleyn's mind, he gave the mental equivalent of a sigh. Even he couldn't say if it was relief or annoyance or some weird hybrid of both.
Nothing. I was just confirming it was you. His own thoughts were gently polite. That done, he fell silent. Continuing to follow the footprints below, he would occasionally glance up at the other man. Mostly, though, Loren was content to leave Korbin to his own devices.
Leave my loneliness unbroken! - quit the bust above my door!
Dipping a wing, he veered off to the side, to escape being tailed. Gaining the higher ground eased some small bit of the tension inside, but only marginally. The response Loren sent was almost timid, and silence followed after, somewhat to his surprise. But he didn't complain, certainly not, and made no attempt to communicate either. At least he tolerated the presence of the other, refraining from trying to run him off.
Korbin had no idea why Loren kept following him, and didn't really care; he kept his focus on the tracks below, curious to see who it belonged to. One of the hunters from Snowcloak, or someone else? It was unusual for them to go out alone though, at this time of year.
Sharp black eyes spotted another set of tracks up ahead, this time by a multitude of feet. Three, maybe four people had intersected the lone wanderer, and after a while, they melded together. From this elevation, it was impossible to tell who had been there first, the group or the lone wanderer. But the sight still made Korbin's gut crawl, and without thinking, he pushed the wings down harder, picking up the pace. Something about this was giving him a bad feeling.
Loren continued to eye Korbin almost warily. However, as the extra sets of tracks appeared, the healer found most of his attention taken up by the scene below. Although he knew better, he found himself dipping lower so he could take a closer look. It didn't clarify anything, though, so he returned to his previous height.
Similarly, he picked up his pace, wings beating furiously. He pulled ahead of the other man slightly. Making no move to slow down, and no move to speak, the Launceleyn kept the unease he felt strictly under wraps. Unfortunately, the weather, unsurprisingly in Halo, wasn't the most cooperative. A wind sprang up, and with it a slight snow flurry, which threatened to obscure the footprints below and make flying inadvisable. Still, he pressed on.
Leave my loneliness unbroken! - quit the bust above my door!
The goose kept up the pace, even pulled ahead at one point, but Korbin didn't let it bother him. As he winged his way onward, he soon spotted dark spots on the horizon, half obscured by the flurry. The wind jostled him, but his wings were made to navigate tricky gusts and he had no trouble staying aloft; perhaps his pace dropped a bit, but it wasn't like he was trying to outrun Loren anyway.
No, his attention was on the figures up ahead. Rising higher up, just in case they were hunters with arrows and good aim, he squinted down through the drifting snow. Nausea gripped him even in this form at what he saw; blood had scattered red and wet over the tundra, the snow trampled and kicked up during a desperate fight. It was over now, but the outcome... ah, it was as bad as he'd feared.
Two people lay dead on the ground. And the other two... were busy cutting them to pieces, wielding axes upon the corpses like they were so much dead lumber. With no apparent regard for whether the fallen were friend or foe - all the cannibals saw was meat.
As the scene unfolded below them, Loren felt nausea grip him. Luckily, this form didn't respond to it in the same way his human one did. Eyes affixed as the cannibals butchered the bodies of the unfortunate hunters, it was all he could do to stop himself flying down them and striking them down as fury quickly coursed through him.
He managed to refrain, both because he didn't know if those were the only two cannibals, plus he had Korbin here. So instead, he managed to send a questioning pulse at the other man, more query about how he wanted to proceed than words. Underneath, the Raven might sense the Launceleyn's anger faintly, and beneath that, there was the ongoing revulsion. Try as he might, he couldn't wall those out entirely.
04-13-2020, 05:03 PM (This post was last modified: 04-13-2020, 05:03 PM by Korbin.)
KORBIN
Leave my loneliness unbroken! - quit the bust above my door!
For all that he wanted nothing better than to look away, the raven slowed and began to circle over the site. He felt Loren's questioning pulse, but didn't respond immediately. Gradually, Korbin lowered himself down, in an attempt to catch a glimpse of the faces of the dead. Of the cannibals too, for that matter. They were all men. Dirty, ragged looking, with starved faces. None were familiar to him, thank the gods for small mercies. No hunter had been claimed by the wild today.
When he'd had quite enough, he circled back up again, and beat his wings to go higher into the clouds, up where he couldn't be seen. Reluctantly, he let part of his shield down. "I don't know them. Internal squabble maybe. No point in doing anything." A notion of grim resignation slipped through along with the wordless communication, before he could clamp down on it again.
The dead were already dead, and nothing they did would change that. Adding more to the tally seemed a waste of time and effort... and lives, wretched though they may be.
There came a sudden sound from down below. A shout, indistinct voices made unintelligible as the wind snatched away part of the exchange. Suddenly a dark shape came shooting up from below, vast brown eagle's wings propelling a predator towards them.
The raven let out a startled caw, part in alarm, part to warn Loren.
As Korbin went for a closer look, Loren almost reflexively followed, and even more instinctually almost called out to be careful. Thankfully, he did neither. When the other man mentioned they should just move on, the healer pulsed acknowledgement and turned to do just that.
However, before he could, there was a sound from below, and from Korbin. Immediately, the Launceleyn wheeled around to face the threat. When he saw an eagle flying up from below, Loren's instincts almost got the better of him again, and he thought about fleeing.
It was only for an instant though. His anger rose up once more, and he made no move to hide it from Korbin. The healer just tucked his wings and began diving straight for the eagle. Although geese weren't predators, they were huge birds, and altitude went a long way in aerial combat. As he plunged down, he honked in outrage.
Leave my loneliness unbroken! - quit the bust above my door!
Korbin hadn't counted on an attack, but truth be told, he wasn't surprised. There were reasons why he had learned to shield and reign in his emotions, and this was one of them. Not everyone out on the Tundra were friends, and not all Attuned were entirely sane.
Frankly, Loren didn't seem entirely possessed of all his marbles either, the way he went after the eagle. The sharp-beaked cannibal met him with beak and talons, trying to catch a hold of the goose to drag it down towards the ground. Korbin couldn't figure out why, not until an arrow zipped past. Clipping off a corvid curse, he realized he wouldn't be able to help Loren out; there was an archer on the ground just waiting for the birds to drop far enough down that a projectile might strike true.
Swallowing down all his reservations against fighting, the raven closed itself in dark determination and dropped down, past the other struggling avians. Descending in a steep dive, he dodged another arrow and went for the face of the man left on the ground, cawing fiercely as he pecked and clawed, going for the eyes.
As the eagle pecked and clawed at Loren, he did the same. However, it became apparent that the goose wasn't particularly well suited for actual fighting. So he shifted into a honey badger. Snarling, he bit down hard on one of the eagle's wings. Ripping through it, his mouth came back bloody and full of feathers.
Screeching in outrage, the eagle broke off from the healer. As his opponent laboriously flew away, the Launceleyn shifted back into a goose. He was barely able to arrest his fall, but he managed, though he wrenched his muscles in the process.
Of course, he'd missed the arrow winging past before during his scuffle. When another grazed him, though, leaving a long scratch against his breast, he immediately started to fly in erratic patterns.
Leave my loneliness unbroken! - quit the bust above my door!
Unsure what was going on in the air above, Korbin kept up his attacks on the cannibal on the ground. The gaunt face was soon covered in long scratches, and the man tossed his bow to use both hands to ward off the furious bird. Through some lucky miracle, he caught hold of Korbin's wing, and with a sickening jolt he found himself flung to the ground.
The impact was brutal. He heard more than felt the sickening crack as the bone of his wing was snapped clean in two, and felt himself shift involuntarily from the pain. It probably saved his life; a heavy foot connected with his chest, in a stomp that would have crushed him as a bird. Now it only drove the air out of his lungs, and with a jolt of panic, he found himself staring up into the mad, twisted grin of the butcher.
He tried to move, roll out from under the man's boot, but the attempt sent a stab of pain through his upper arm, so intense that he began to black out.
As Loren continued to zig and zag towards the ground, he saw Korbin suddenly shift into human on the ground, one of the cannibals right above the fallen hunter. Immediately, the healer landed and shifted to human himself. As soon as he did, he summoned a dragon and had it roar.
The unmistakable sound echoed through the mountains. As it did, he sent a burst of his remote healing magic towards Korbin, even as the Launceleyn stalked towards the cannibal and had his dragon charge ahead. "Leave him alone." Loren's eyes were hard, and his voice dripped with menace. Ordering the dragon to open its mouth, it blasted a nearby snowdrift, leaving the charged scent of ozone in the air.
