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!
Finn knows almost everything about Remi Taliesin except for what he looks like. It’s a lie that he isn’t glad when Cian takes his leave, allowing the researcher to walk the trails up to the homes beyond the lighthouse. The rain is a serenade against his umbrella, a quiet hush against the scratching in his mind.
But when the house - the Governor’s house - comes into view, his peace flees him, and he remembers why he is here. Not one demigod but two - two men forged from a deity’s whim, one foot in the mortal realm and another entirely elsewhere. So Finn does what he does best. He stops, he analyses, he takes stock, watching the patterns of light and dark upon the roof, the ribbons of colour that show the footsteps of the two men... and others.
He is lost already, forming hypotheses, sifting through less likely scenarios, dropping threads that make no sense.
How Finn will react when he learns that not two but three demigods reside in this house, is not at all what is on the Alchemist's mind as he comes back towards home. He doesn't bother with an umbrella; Remi is made of much harder stuff than sugar, and the rain is quite refreshing. Soon it will be dangerous, but just now the water is closer to a balm than a hindrance. Perhaps it's from all those traumatic events that ended with Ronin's arms around him beneath a shower of water that makes the rain feel all the more healing for the Alchemist.
See a man standing as if displaced in time, umbrella over his head, didn't immediately ring warning bells in Remi's mind. But the ropes were ready to chime them in an instant. Was this man a lingering monster come to haunt Ronin? A deviant with eyes for Seren? A mark for him to kill, sent by Ludo? Or perhaps just a Torcher the Alchemist hadn't yet met, too intimidated to knock on his door.
" 'help you with something?" Remi said, accent think and voice only just hinting at being conversational.
i'm holding onto the pieces of my heart's debris
Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
The voice does not stir Finn, not at first; he is elsewhere, sieving through theory and hunches and trying to fit together puzzle pieces that no one else can see. But eventually he blinks himself back, turning slowly in the rain to face the owner of the voice, the heavy accent taking a little while to filter into his mind—
But suddenly he’s face to face with what he swears is himself, Finn lifting the umbrella a little higher, blue eyes widening a fraction behind his glasses. ”Hello,” he says, anything that Remi might have called out utterly lost on him now. Because this is Remi - he can see it in the lines and contours of aura, in the way the man holds himself, the posture, the scars. ”I— sorry. I... this is very strange.”
For a moment Remi's expression matches Finn's: green eyes widening slightly, words failing, confusion setting in. Maybe it's the rain that makes it all the more disorienting, but suddenly the Alchemist feels extremely cold and unnerved. He wants to do little more than rush forward and remove the stranger's glasses, to wonder at his blue eyes and lack of scars. At no point does his mind wonder why he is here any longer, though.
"Yes. It is." Remi agrees in a voice that shouldn't sound so distinct. Beneath wet lashes the Alchemist's pale stare drinks Finn in, starting at his own dishevelled curls, his unshaven cheeks, his uncomfortable posture. Gods, how much of himself he sees in that, and not only because of the physical resemblance. Though Remi isn't holding an umbrella his fingers feel as though they are, or to put it another way, he thinks he could imagine precisely what it is to stand in Finn's spot just the way he is.
"Do you know who I am?"
i'm holding onto the pieces of my heart's debris
Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
For a second - just a second - Finn thinks he should have gone to the brothel and let Cian take this one, if only so he could imagine the look on the Eye’s face at seeing... well, this. This man who is himself but not. If he believed magic was not so abhorrent he might have wondered if it had caused this. But of course Finn does believe magic is terrible, and so he would never put himself in a position where he could appear in the future, and... oh, he’s just staring at the man now.
”Hello,” he says again, unhelpfully. ”I... yes. You are Remi Taliesin. You are Torchline’s Governor, and... and you are marked by Ludo.” He swallows, rubbing at the scruff on his chin, slowly taking his glasses from his face and tucking them away. This is weird enough without aura. ”Do you know who I am?”
Remi recognizes the long pause for what it is—internal rambling. He too used to lose himself in such lapses, though he hasn't had the luxury of that lately. Hadn't realized that he'd missed it, actually.
Name. Job. Divine Status. That was...more comprehensive of an answer than he'd expected. If Finn had known only one of those things it might have given Remi a clue as to why he was here. That he knew them all? Swallowing hard as well, perhaps subconciously mirroring his duplicate, the Alchemist wished that the stranger would put his glasses back on. Without them, his face looked dizzyingly familiar.
"Unless you're my doppleganger...No, I don't." Remi said after a moment, almost apologetically. "Why..do you look like that?" He asked, brows furrowing beneath curls growing increasingly wet beneath the rain. "Why look like me?" It was clear Remi thought it was magic. Some illusion or item that only nearly-replicated appearances. It seemed handy and understandable enough, though why it was being implored here the Alchemist had no idea.
i'm holding onto the pieces of my heart's debris
Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
Well at least there’s that - if Remi had known him in return that would have been probably terrifying. Finn lets out a breath he doesn’t realise he has been holding, glancing back over his shoulder briefly at the house, though he doesn’t know what he’s expecting to see. The real Remi Taliesin, who doesn’t look like him? Does Ronin look like him as well? ”It’s alright,” he says quickly, as if for some reason there needs to be forgiveness that the other man has no idea who he is. Finn of course is doing nothing to rectify the situation even now, and he realises it abruptly.
”Finn Rosencrantz,” he introduces, lifting the umbrella out a little, like a silent invitation for the other man to keep himself dry. ”I don’t understand what you mean... I was born looking like this, sorry. I can’t be any other way. Do you want to take a walk? There’s a reason I’m here.”
Finn absolves him of his ignorance as if...it's within his power to do so. Perhaps Remi has more ego than he'd like to believe, but there's something inside that wants to push out against this small display of power (or so Remi interprets it as). Instead, he continues to stand in the same place, water slowly soaking into his clothes and plastering his curls against his neck and forehead.
When Finn extends the umbrella, Remi gives him a look that harkens back to a wariness not seen from the Alchemist in some time. A distrustfulness and aggitation at being too near other men. Shaking his head slightly such that rain beaded down his face like tears, great tawny wings sprout suddenly from his back, arching overhead to provide cover. It is a reluctance to be too near Finn much as it's a show of power.
"I thought...since we look so alike.." Remi stammbered, before swallowing hard and orienting his thoughts. "Ludo likes to use illusions to play tricks on me. I thought perhaps you were one." Well, he could still be one. There was no reason to believe him, after all.
'You wouldn't rather go inside?' The water didn't really bother him, and Remi could absolutely get an umbrella if it was necessary (or hell, use his magic to keep himself dry), but it seemed strange to want to carry on in the rain, when his house was just a few steps away.
i'm holding onto the pieces of my heart's debris
Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
The great wings appear and Finn stumbles a couple of steps back instinctively, stormy eyes widening as he takes it all in. Make no mistake about it, the display of power is obvious, and he has to remind himself that for all the uncanny similarities, the man before him is a demigod and a powerful one at that, if his research proves accurate. And it always does.
”I see,” he says slowly as Remi explains, eyes still on the canopy of feathers keeping the other man dry. ”I am no illusion, I assure you. Illusions have a far simpler life, I imagine.” The offer to go inside makes him cringe internally; the enclosed spaces, the things he couldn’t anticipate. But there is no room for his preferences within the Order, so he offers nothing more than a tight nod.
”If you would prefer. I don’t wish to keep you out in the rain, Governor.”
Remi isn't...pleased so much at Finn's retreat so much as he is slightly consoled by it. Men who show up on his doorstep wearing his face wanting to go for walks do not for a calm-mind make. So knowing that this partial-shift is enough to unnerve him makes the Alchemist feel more at ease.
"You wouldn't be the first illusion to tell me so." Remi counters, as if this is some strange game of chess whether neither knows all the rules. "Once I had an item that let me see through illusions.." He continues, not quite conversationally, but almost as if...to lower the mounting tension he feels. "But it is at the bottom of the ocean, now."
For some reason Remi finds himself wanting to accommodate Finn's reluctance to go inside. "The porch is covered." Remi says, nodding his head towards the house where a large wrap-around porch borders the interior. "We could sit there."
i'm holding onto the pieces of my heart's debris
Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
”How many... no, never mind.” Finn stops himself - barely - from asking those questions, from digging deeper than necessary, adjusting the umbrella back over his head. ”Still, that sounds like quite the item. A shame, what happened to it.” And it is, truly. It is something the Order likely would have made good use of - Cian, certainly. And there are things about the Alchemist that remind Finn of the Eye; his sharper edges lean that way.
But the offer to sit on a porch, out in the open? To work around rather than force? That does not speak of his overseer. ”Yes, that sounds good,” he murmurs with a grateful duck of his head, motioning for Remi to lead the way. Even now his eyes drift over the wings, magnificent in their plumage, and he bites his tongue against his questions.
What happened to it? Where to begin? My shop was ransacked when I left the Grounds and a woman called Maea took it. I said she could keep it. As for the bottom of the ocean bit, well, that's where her body currently is. "It was taken out to sea and never quite made it back again." Remi answered, rather awkwardly, after a moment. He searched Finn's face—improperly reading in his own tells to what he saw there—to discern whether the man might be able to read minds.
Nodding and taking a breath as if preparing for something, the Alchemist skirts around the Spyglass and climbs the stairs to his porch. Before he reaches the last, he shakes out his wings onto the flowers planted in a basket, before they slip back into and against his body. His magical shirt makes all of this possible showing no tearing of the fabric. If only he'd made it waterproof as well.
Gesturing for Finn to take a seat, for a moment Remi continues to stand. "Can I...get you anything? A drink?"
i'm holding onto the pieces of my heart's debris
Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
”Many things suffer the same fate,” Finn remarks, following after Remi and taking down his umbrella as they reach the cover of the porch. He leaves it leaning against the steps to drip off, taking the offered seat and passing a hand through his curls, watching the wings disappear once more. ”I did not expect you to live in a cottage,” he remarks, to avoid saying things like how did you do that and can you fly and how did you get the scars on your neck.
Shaking his head automatically at the offer of anything, Finn smiles up at Remi - it’s a bright and boyish thing, gone before it’s ever really there. ”I’m quite alright, thank you. I’m here because I need your help. We all do, in truth.”
'So much better for the mermaids.' Remi comments under his breath.
Watching Finn move his hands through his hair is unnerving, in that Remi's own fingers have already moved towards his own curls to do precisely the same. Looking away, as if embarassed by this, he tries to get as much water out of his curls but hastily so. "No?" Remi remarks, offering one of the chairs to Finn. "Did you expect me to live at the foot of the volcano, like our former governor?" This was only half a question.
Just as he is about to sit down, Finn's smile and words catch him entirely off-guard, such that he stalls out where he stands. Icewater fills his veins and there is a ringing in his ears. Before long he realizes he's in a half sort of squat, his eyes fixed somewhere around Finn's collarbones. Only then does he make himself sit and gazes out towards the sea, unable to look at the man across from him.
"Sorry, I don't do that anymore." He said softly.
i'm holding onto the pieces of my heart's debris
Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
