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!
They continue on in familial playfulness, Amalia fighting with fork and laughter as Deimos attempts to abscond with her food, briefly and blissfully distracted from the clothing, growing discomfort that irks and itches in her mind. Something is amiss, but she doesn't known what. Perhaps the foreignness of this experience, the strangeness of family dinner...
Yes, that must be it. It has to be.
There's talk of the mother they don't share, of Evie's ascension, of other things. Amalia is content to sit and listen, eating slowly and stealing sips of Deimos' wine, her intentions of sobriety tossed aside. It's when Deimos speaks again that the Shield doubles down, finishing the Sword's glass and wrinkling her nose against the ascerbic burn as she returns it to the table.
"Gods- imagine. The lives that could have been saved, the heartaches prevented." Shaking her head, the Shield looks to Sam, something haunted in her eyes. "Why couldn't it have been this year? Two people died in my arms, Sam, not to mention Rexanna and the other one- but no. The Voice had to wait." There's anger and pain in her voice, and the scars on her face glitter silver in the candlelight.
Was Deimos aware of how grateful Sam was for his question? A chance to take it all into something mundane was very welcome at the moment. "Partly, yes. For the moment I'm going to be copying maps that already exist of the sea. Inland will be easier, for me as a beginner, I think." With buildings and definite areas, not just infinite waves, Sam felt like it would be easier to find his bearings.
But of course, Amalia was determined. Sam had already thought the dinner had reached the height of awkward pain, but he had been wrong, as his sister put her foot right in the matter. For a moment he stared down at his empty plate and considered just nodding, just agreeing; but Sam knew Amalia would only find out later and it would be all the worse then. With a sigh, he looked up and gave her a pleasant, if strained, smile. "Actually, The Voice and all of the Ascended wanted to go ahead with it. ..Except me. I made us wait."
Sam was certain she would be mad, so he tried to get in the explanation quickly: "There are very few strong Ascended, and not that many overall. Many of our family members would surely die in the fight and I doubt we could have eliminated all the monsters. It would have resulted in more death this Longnight, not less."
The figments of mirth, light merriment in a familial setting, remained for some more instances. Back and forth chides at one another, playful absconding of food and drink, a few snorts given as Amalia thought to render his glass empty. As he went to refill it, with an arched brow in her direction, he nodded at Samuel’s first response, understanding the meaning, starting slow, copying over materials so there were more – similar, perhaps, to the bookshop he’d left behind in the Grounds.
Then, all the easygoing filaments seemingly died – driven straight into the floorboards, decimated mid-air. The tension in the monolith’s limbs coiled into rigid, impassive things, his features taking on a stony countenance as he drank more of the wine, prepared himself for the onslaught. It took him a moment to contemplate the range, and sudden rage, circumventing through Samuel’s claims. They’d had the chance, and he’d been the one to cease it.
His jaw clenched – because how many times had they all put their lives on the line, to ensure everyone else was safe?
And the monsters had been allowed to carry on, to destroy and distort, to thrive in their darkness one more season, one more year. There could’ve been ways – providing shelter for ones not strong enough, cooperating and working together, not everyone coming apart. Perhaps that was an idealistic view, and given his previous attempts at safeguarding, he couldn’t much. The Sword stared down at his plate, resisting the urge to curl his fingers around a knife, letting them grasp the wine glass a little too hard instead. The voice following the response was a hardened rumble, a controlled, composed tone, not allowing for the disappointment and fury to become immersed in its coiled vocals – but his piercing stare was reserved for the Ascended. “And this year? Will it be more of the same?” Putting it off, putting it off, putting it off while the rest of them died?
Amalia can feel the anger radiating under her skin like lighting, electric, amplified by the alcohol, by the indignation, by the awkwardness of this situation as it is. All her hopes of a happy family dinner shatter under the weight of Sam's confession, an admission of terrible, unbearable guilt punctuated by a Voice-cursed smile.
"You made them wait." Amalia's voice is flint ground down by steel teeth, gunpowder in the making as a spark of fury rises in the pit of her stomach. Everything she thought she knew about the situations, all her assumptions and beliefs- dashed. Destroyed in a moment, burst at the seams like the boy who died in the Shield's arms.
"Your family?!" A half-hysterical laugh leaves her, shocked and indignant as she stares wide-eyed at Sam. "Your family? Good to know where we stand, right?" she exclaims, glancing pointedly at Evie with fury flickering in her face.
But her anger has a target, and it is quick to zero in. Amalia rises, hands on the table, turning the full weight of her rage and hurt onto Sam. "You... you... I protected you. Defended you! And you betrayed me - betrayed everyone in the Grounds, everyone, while you hid out here on a fucking beach like a gods-cursed coward---!"
Leopard fangs and curls of smoke and claws that rake into the table and an angry, slashing tail. Horns and black eyes and bristling fur---- she is less human now than something else, monstrous, devastated, betrayed. In this moment more than ever she can feel the feral anger of her animal shifts rippling beneath her, itching to be freed.
08-07-2020, 10:37 PM (This post was last modified: 08-07-2020, 10:41 PM by Samuel.)
Samuel
Hope for the best
Prepare for the worst
Well, there goes the awkward tension, replaced with all out gut-wrenching anger and upset. Deimos, characteristically, didn't say much, only one question: Sam turned to answer it, happy to at least talk to someone willing to temper his voice, but then Amalia, who was very much not willing, began to speak.
Yell, really.
He took it all silently. The words, the anger, the partial shifting; Amalia had done all this to him before and he'd been scared once, but now he found that he was mostly angry himself. Tired of being misunderstood, of being stuck in this endless argument about Ascended that he'd never wanted to be a part of, yet always seemed to be in the middle of.
Putting down his cup with a gentle clink, he turned to her, quiet and cool for the moment. "...Amalia, do you really think the Ascended could fight all the monsters and win? There's hardly any of us strong enough to take on one monster." He'd explained this to the Ascended too and they hadn't seemed to understand, but Sam refused to give up on this point: it was arrogance from the Ascended and assumptions from everyone else that they were somehow strong enough to take on the whole threat.
"I have two families. This one, and the Ascended one. What would you have me do, Amalia? Leave them and die? We went to Safrin. She didn't have a way to help." It was basically out of the bag now that he'd gone back to the Voice now, so he supposed he may as well justify it.
"So you'd want all the Ascended to die in an attempt to end the monsters? We have choices now that we have the portals, and those people chose to stay in the Grounds. I took people here with me to stay over Longnight and they were safe. You just...you just want us to redeem ourselves in your eyes. Face it, Amalia. You'd rather have a dead brother, than an alive Ascended one." He had been managing to keep a calm composure up until this last part, but now his voice was unsteady and emotional, his eyes boring into her with an intense precision.
The world snapped and sizzled around him; Amalia’s rage pervading through senses, igniting the cold, hardened fury curling rapidly through his own. He couldn’t recall the last time he’d ever been so disappointed and enraged by another – perhaps not since Helovia, when he’d had to lecture or dispute with one of his own. This was entirely different though, because there’d been a chance, an opportunity, and they hadn’t taken it. Sam hadn’t taken it. The monolith finished the last of his wine, letting it smolder down the back of his throat, reach down into the pit of his ferocity, of his wrath, stirred and contorted, melding with flames he so often kept away. They quelled through his jaw, his bones, his limbs; doing nothing to cease and desist in the rising tension, in the folly of idiocy. The calm tones didn’t betray his inward contempt and abhorrence, but struck in piercing notes, in the way his stare, narrowed, dangerous, treacherous, refused to leave the Ascended’s. “You think this is fine to live through, year after year.” Fine for others to die, at the hands of the Voice’s former claims. Fine for ghosts and demons and infidels to rise up. Normal. An eternal nuance. A perennial circumstance. Nothingness.
Muscles undulated and bound together, and he forced himself to remain sitting, to not rise from the chair and grab ahold of Samuel by the throat, the slow, numbing realization crawling up the back of his spine. “Is this why you helped me with the door?” To assuage the guilt? To facilitate something else, when he’d been too weak, too cowardly, to march against those who plagued them?
His head shook, fists forming on the table. “How many times have we sacrificed ourselves to try and fix the Voice’s mistakes?” Into the Spire, nearly dying, to try and eradicate whatever they knew about the Blight? Traversing with thorns and loved ones chasing them down. “And you sit over there, making your damned maps."
Deimos hadn’t forgotten how the other had almost gotten Rexanna killed in the previous LongNight; though perhaps it didn’t matter much now. The bitterness chiseled and sculpted, carved a niche, until nothing was left but cold, glacial, fury, blistering at the back of his eyes. Would’ve died? How many times had all of them nearly died for their attempts, their trials, to overcome whatever dastardly force threatened their world? “Who is to say you would have? You did not bother to try.”
i'll plant a row of daisy seeds in the space beneath each eye
Evie holds her tongue and watches it all dissolve into chaos, calmly draining yet another glass of wine. As the shouting begins to rise, she closes her eyes, and in a moment she's in a house far from here. The voices that scream and spit hatred are still familiar to her, but their tones do not belong to her siblings. This is as familiar to her as breathing. The wilting of her shoulders, the magma of rage in her breast that burns away all sense and reason, the white-knuckled clench of her hands around her glass. Until finally she stands, chair screeching loudly before it topples, and Evie just barely refrains from shattering the glass upon the floor. Restrains herself from using her magic to forcefully shove her siblings into their chairs and keep them there.
"You are a murderer Samuel," she says with a voice like death, calm and unwavering. Her eyes are blank and shadowed. How she is keeping her infamous temper down, even Evie doesn't know. Everything just...doesn't seem to fucking matter. "If you still lived in the Grounds, I would arrest you, regardless of our blood, because your guilt is undeniable." So stated because that's all these two care about. Blood, kinship, family. Already they've gone at each other's throats on the meaning of the word alone. Ascended family versus some sham of an idea of 'real family'. Amalia falls childishly prey to it just the same, if not arguably worse than Sam. But Evie? Evie can't involve herself in that battle anymore. She's the fucking Queen, Gods damn her for taking the position, and her people have to matter more than any blood in her veins. "You elevated the Ascended over the safety and continued life of everyone in the Grounds. I had to sit behind that damnable door and sentence Millicent Scotch and her babies to death because of you. You are the reason I will have those nightmares. You are the reason those children will never grow up. All because you couldn't move past your infamous cowardice to even fucking try to put an end to this cycle of misery."
This is her final stand, it feels. Letting loose all she thinks, all she has held inside and let spoil and ferment like a poison she can't suck out. How long has she suffered, silent and compliant beneath the hands of her parents? How long has she been caught between them and her twin? How long has she tried to mediate, desperately refusing to take sides between Amalia and Sam? "I would have done it. Do you get that? If I were in your shoes, I would have risked myself, you, Amalia, Deimos, everyone I consider family if it meant destroying the monsters once and for all. I would have tried, and taken my last breath, knowing that I did everything I could to save our friends and family. It's called sacrifice." If this doesn't get through to him to show him his wrongness, what else will? "Don't you dare try and hide behind Safrin's name and cast the blame away onto your shoddy attempt at making up for your mistake. Don't you dare throw yours and Amalia's ridiculous fucking war of racial opinions in our faces to hide away from the fact that your cowardice killed OUR PEOPLE!" Finally the calm breaks, and she shouts the last bit, face going immediately red and removing all evidence of her freckles in the tsunami of color that overtakes her skin. Like a boiling kettle, she has finally reached the whistling point, and she feels the heat on her skin like steel bars. Confined and trapped.
She tries to pause to give her breathing time to adjust before she continues, but it refuses to calm from the hyperventilation it has accelerated into. Tears begin to drip down her cheeks, and she wipes them away with her palms roughly, though they continue regardless. An expression of empathy and grief that she is ashamed to display. A weakness she can't fight. "I've tried and tried to mediate between you two since we were kids. I've tried to see both your sides. You two put me through hell every single day, a tug-of-war between right and wrong, old and new gods. But this? This has no sides, there is no grey area. You're a murderer Sam, and I am disgusted by you." She can't even look at him. Gods, she can't. He's her little brother, and he's the reason her people are dead. Evie's shaking hand comes to lay over her eyes, tears slipping out beneath, and she turns away from the table to walk a few unsteady paces sightlessly. Knowing that he will pipe up again with his own pitiful defenses, knowing that her job as big sister is to stay here and mediate. To try to keep the peace.
But what peace even remains? Evie has no place on either side of this war. And she is so, so tired.
so they'll remind you of your beauty when they bloom each time you cry
"You could have tried. We would have helped you." Brows furrowed, dark eyes wild with disbelief and pain. How does he not see what he's done, that in giving up before even attempting he condemned countless who had no choice to death? And perhaps the Ascended alone would not have succeeded, but they wouldn't have needed to work without help. Amalia, Deimos- they would have put their differences aside.
But Sam, it seems, values his own life more than any other. And Deimos is right: at the end of the day, he didn't even try. "I'd rather have no brother than a selfish coward," she hisses harshly, leaning forward, claws tearing into the wood. She might have said more, might have done more, but it is then that Evie stands.
Evie. Her sister in more than blood, her best friend, her guardian. Evie who is beautiful and fair and balanced and wise. Evie who has hidden herself away for years in order to keep the peace. Evie who Amalia loves with every fiber of her heart, who she has clung to like a life boat in a storming, unsure sea, who she depends on and adores and has always knows would be there for her, no matter the shadows, no matter the cost.
Evie, who in breaking open breaks the Shield apart.
She is more eloquent than Amalia could ever be, cutting directly to the heart of the matter, the truth of it all. The girl falls silent and lets her speak, anger tempered by admiration for her sister, her Queen. Better at both than she deserves - Rexanna allowed this to happen, after all, and Wessex as well - and now fit to boil as Amalia watches, her dark eyes wide in surprise, then admiration, then agreement, then guilt.
It is only when she turns away that the spell is broken, Amalia at last moving a half-step to follow, extending a hand to lay on her shoulder. "Evie," she whispers, wishing her sister could feel the ache of her heart through the Attuned bond, that she could somehow convey her sorrow and remorse and pride.
Hand still on Evie if she allows it, Amalia turns the weight of her emotion back to Sam. Hard as stone with eyes like flint the Shield glares across at her brother, the weight of the leveled accusations electric in the air between the four of them. "Well, Sam?" the girl asks softly, alto voice thick and dark as smoke. "What more do you have to say, that might possibly justify your sins?"
Sam had not realised quite how much his words would open the floodgates of criticism and abuse from his family; he sat there silently through it all, watching each talk without too much sign of outward emotion: just a hand picking at the skin on his wrist, tightly pinching. Honestly though, despite this old self-punishing habit...he found himself more frustrated, angry, than upset or guilty.
Frankly, he cared far more about what Amalia and Evie had to say than Deimos; partly because he seemed less angry at the moment and partly because he was not one of Sam's sisters, people who he desperately wanted to try and be close to despite all their differences; he had made so much progress in his relationship with Evie, but now she was calling him a murderer...he didn't flinch at that, but inwardly he felt his heart sink.
When Amalia finally asked her last question, there was a long silence. Sam knew he could likely be in danger here. After all, Amalia and Deimos were wildly powerful and Evie had a ruling position in his home town. Still, he had given up on begging for people's acceptance, tossing away his dignity for nothing...the hand came away from his wrist and he laid both on the table, keeping himself still and steady.
"Nothing, Amalia, because you're already calling them sins. You don't care about my side of the story. All three have you have immediately made assumptions, called me a murderer--" He glared at Evie. "Nothing I say is going to make any difference, because you've all decided I'm what you want Ascended to be anyway. Selfish cowards, murderers, killers. It's things like this that make me think the Voice is right about everyone like you and your Old Gods. If it's not your way, if it's not traditional, then it's evil and you won't hear any different."
Outcries and declaration boiled and blistered, and since he’d withstood so many fires before, he remained there – and despite any amount of pragmatics from him, the world churned and burned along the damned dinner table. Evie had enough. Amalia had enough. The Sword sat there, eyes narrowed, breaths taken into the fold of his lungs, striving for a calming essence while everything else raged around his ears. What more was there to say? Samuel’s defenses were weak and pathetic, marring any further attempts at justification. Deimos hadn’t condemned those beneath the Voice; but had been collected and reflected upon with the rest. He clenched his jaw, and waited, waited, waited for some of it to cease and desist, or to continue flaring.
In the end though, for Amalia and Evie had said enough, he would only partake in two phrases. Cool, indifferent, honing back to those nonchalant days where he’d witnessed infidels, idiots, and pariahs hoist themselves upon their own blades, the glacial tones pulsed and pierced. “This is not a reflection on the Ascended. They were willing.” To try and stop ruthless experiments from taking apart more of his own citizens. “This is a reflection on you.”
08-11-2020, 10:44 PM (This post was last modified: 08-11-2020, 10:47 PM by Evie.)
Evie
i'll plant a row of daisy seeds in the space beneath each eye
Despite the resonating silence in the room after her...explosion...Evie can't bear to unveil her eyes. It's a childhood habit, a pitiful one at that. The equivalent of covering one's ears or closing your eyes so as not to see or hear that which you don't like. But even with the pressure she exerts over her eyes, the tears don't stop coming. The trembling doesn't cease. It feels like her own body is falling apart faster than her family is, which is quite a feat considering all that's happening. Amalia's soft alto voice is like the beam of light through the fog that keeps her from crashing upon the rocky bank, and the hand that touches upon her shoulder makes her jump briefly, only relaxing enough to lean into it. Finally her hand drops away. No hiding, Evie. It won't fix this. She thinks that nothing will, but again that collar around her neck cinches tight, choking away any semblance of independence she may have had. Evie is her brother's keeper, her sister's too. She can't run away from this, no matter how badly she wants to stride out that door and forsake them to their squabbling. This was the task she was born to uphold, and no amount of hating it will stop the siren call.
Sam's voice rises through Amalia's last hissed words, and Evie turns around. Eyes red-rimmed and lips thin and drawn. "You're acting like a child. You know I, of everyone here, have never turned this bullshit into an 'Ascended this or that' problem. I've supported you ever since you were first turned, and there's nobody else in this family that equally despises the Old Gods." He of everyone knew that, after the Voice had betrayed her biggest, most sacred secret to Samuel of all people. She'd told him about her lack of faith, and now this is his rebuttal? "No, Sam. You disgust me because of your choice, not your race." It's spit venomously, as if her words could sink down through the floor like acid eating up the wood beneath her feet. At least that would give her an escape. "And frankly, I'm insulted that you'd try and use that pitiful excuse of a defense against me. You should be seeking penance, not to try and change our damn minds." Penance that she can't control, which vexes her. Knowing that she'd throw him in a jail cell if he still lived beneath her rule, and hurting inside all the same at that realization. "You've always been a coward, hiding behind The Voice, and the one time you step behind her shadow you gleefully sentenced our friends and family to death. Now you use her name as a shield once more, refusing to own up to your mistake. I can't even stand to look at you. You can cringe away from the word all you want, but you. Are. A. Murderer." The glass and cutlery at her spot rattles ominously as her magic lashes out, teeth bared in a hateful grimace as she tries to reign in her telekinesis.
so they'll remind you of your beauty when they bloom each time you cry
It wasn't long after that that Sam left the house, demanding as bravely as he could manage that everyone else left too - he needed space, air, a chance to get out of the mounting pressure in the room. Thankfully that seemed to be granted, though he suspected it was more out of a desire from his family to be away from him than considerate natures.
He knew he'd have to deal with this eventually (the world would surely bring it back up to him); he knew that he'd have to see the Voice soon, that this experience had moved him closer to her than anything else ever had...but for the moment, he just wanted to scream at the sea, so that's what he went to do.
{Thread ending early because of OOC reasons, assume that it was an unpleasant angry conversation and nothing got resolved lol}
