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!
It didn’t matter. Nothing seemed to. He could feel the weight of everything crashing down over him, smothering, suffocating, and he was going to drown right there, on the damned couch, with nothing and no one at all left. His breath clogged through his lungs and he choked back something, couldn’t tell, didn’t know, as he began to slowly coil, contort, and ravel back into all those frayed strands he’d fought so hard to keep tethered. “I do not understand.” Murmured, rasped, grated, because he didn’t, he didn’t know what was going on. “How…how have I prevented you from being who you are?”
The final words were enough anyway. They told him all he needed to know. All he needed to comprehend.
He’d been here before, but not in so many words. When he’d tried to love, and when it hadn’t been enough to keep anyone there, or alive, or simply around him. When he froze and cooled and became walls upon walls, when he bit into savage torrents, when his existence couldn’t materialize into anything anyone needed, or wanted. When he was a machine, and he tore into the world because that was all he had left.
He could feel the earth moving beneath him, desperately trying to consume and devour, wreck him, pull him asunder to where he’d always belonged. A pattern, a cycle, where he merely tried and lost, tried and lost, tried and lost. And he couldn’t stay there another moment, with the world pulling at him, rising from the couch, peeling away, away, away, where he had nothing and no one left.
The Sword made it as far as the stairs, before crumbling, before sitting against the wall and curling, taut, rigid, unyielding into shadows and nothingness, put here again because he’d dared to try to cherish, and it still wasn’t enough. “Then go,” a whisper, clinging to his knees. “Just like everyone else.”
It feels like everything is going wrong, but if she's being completely honest Amalia doesn't think there's a right way to do it. "It's not you-" she interjects helplessly, hating herself for making him say it, her heart crumbling along with his expression. Her grasp on her legs tighten, and her voice is miserable when she speaks again. "It's nothing you've done. It's me."
She expects... she doesn't know what she expects. Feelings, reactions, for him to fight for her. Instead she watches him rise off the couch, the distance between them unfathomably wide. She watches as he sits on the step, collapsing because the foundations she laid were not strong enough. And she listens as he tells her to go, pain and guilt and anger rolling stormily across her face.
"I'm not going to leave you like this." Exhaustion rakes across her suddenly; she sighs, uncoiling enough to rub her temples, elbows on her knees. "Talk to me, Deimos. You can't tell me I'm shutting you out if you won't talk to me."
08-25-2020, 10:00 PM (This post was last modified: 08-25-2020, 11:40 PM by Deimos.)
DEIMOS
He could hear her, but the words were murky, hard to register through the abyss threatening to take him down. It had for a while now, biding its time until he truly collapsed, broken and disassembled, no more walls left to burn down. His trappings were of his own making, the snare wrapped tight around his neck, a noose, pulling, binding, bearing until everything was hard to grasp, difficult to maintain. “What do you want to hear?” A harsh intake of breath, a rumbling whisper, choking on some bizarre conflagration of rage and despair, because he really couldn’t take all of this anymore. “That I would be fine?”
A snarl threatened to take over his features, but he hid it, tucked it against his knees, poured everything back inside himself – just the same, a common mechanism to stop and cease the pain. “But I am the one who will suffer.” Except it never really worked, and she’d be gone too, and if he was lucky enough he’d see her some other day, when she’d realized he wasn’t worth the agony, the trouble, or she’d pilfer off into the sunset, find something better, something brighter, something more fulfilling than him.
The weight seized and coiled, and he had no way to remove it, no way to explain, no way to do anything but fester and decay inside, back to the decrepit motions, to what he’d always understood. “I have always tried to give, and give, and give. I could protect them. I could shield them. They would live.” If he threw his heart and soul into the fire, into the brimstone, they’d be safe. They’d be secure. They’d withstand, tall and proud, while he bled out on cobblestones. “But they do not. They make promises they cannot keep. They disappear. They die. I am not enough to keep anyone here.” With me went unsaid. Hadn’t he told her before?
Another whisper, quieter and softer, followed through. “And I am alone again.”
Amalia takes a shuddering breath, moving her hands down to her knees. She wishes he would show her something, but it is still stone and ice and careful control, leaving her feeling isolated and exposed. She has no right to be hurt, she knows this, and yet she can feel the pain and anger rising inside her, her body tensing as he speaks. "That's not fair," Amalia whispers, tears stinging her eyes, hands balled tightly enough for her nails to cut into her palms. "None of that was your fault. You do give so much. It's not your fault that the world keeps taking." Not hers, either.
Yet here they are.
"But Dei... you can't, can't put that weight on people. On me. I can't be everything you have. I can't hold your happiness only on my shoulders." The tears are falling faster now, staining her cheeks, dropping into her lap. "Not when I can barely hold myself."
08-26-2020, 09:57 PM (This post was last modified: 08-26-2020, 10:02 PM by Deimos.)
DEIMOS
“Maybe it was. Maybe I matter very little.” To her. To anyone. To anything. Maybe that was why it was easy to leave him behind.
But the rest of her words sparked and sizzled over the agony filtering through his spine. And a snarl erupted, clear and stark over his features, unsettling, unraveling, not understanding the lengths and chords she now tightened around his neck. “I am not.” What weight? That they’d live? That they’d stay? They never did. He mattered so little to those who remained, perhaps save Hotaru, and he wasn’t about to go wander into Torchline, to place suffering upon suffering. Not when he was already here, coiled and knotted and coming apart the seams.
The accusations gnashed, and his jaw clenched, eyes narrowed, a rumble in his throat, in his chest, beating and bleeding from the inside. Why was this being thrust back upon him? Moments before, he’d been the one who’d apparently done nothing wrong, and a moment later, thrust back into this ridiculous hellhole. “What have I ever asked of you? When did I ask you to do that?” The confusion intermingled with the fury, with the blades crashing and twisting through his backbone, and he looked away from the tears and the torment, staring down at the floor. “What weight am I putting on anyone?” The salt burned at the back of his eyes, threatening to spill over, anger subduing for torment. "Because I love you?" A palm went to his cheek, dashing away the contents eventually rampaging down. "Everyone keeps dying. I do not have many left."
08-26-2020, 10:40 PM (This post was last modified: 08-26-2020, 10:43 PM by Amalia.)
Amalia
A deeper conversation is all I want from you-
The words feel wrong before they evaporate, more fueled by hurt and anger than anything else, but it's too late for her to recant. She can feel the tension mounting within her, tensing her body, a bubbling in her belly that threatens to bubble over and explode. "I know you love me," she exclaims hoarsely, desperately. "I love you, too. But I can't keep... I don't... I'm sorry, Dei."
She rises from the couch at last, hands clenched, eyes downcast. Her jaw clenches, the muscles rippling as she searches for the words to make this better and finds there's nothing there. It was never going to be easy, or pleasant, and Amalia can already feel the guilt rising within her, threatening to consume her, to drag her down.
"I... I'm going to go. I'll come back for my things later and... we'll talk again in a little while, okay? I just... I need some time." She turns away swiftly, vision blurred by tears. At the door to their shared home she falters, looking back over her shoulder and taking a shuddering breath. "I'm sorry, Deimos. I love you. I... I'm sorry."
