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!
Well fuck her sideways, it works - the ice, Loren, everything. Cue her shocked, but happy pikachu face.
The only hitch is that they’re out of ice and their magic source is elbows deep in a God. Ice doesn’t seem like a possibility again. Her first impulse is to go after Kiada, but Amalia hopefully has that covered, so she flies by the seat of her pants with an idea, calling out to Hotaru and Loren. “Ru, come back! Loren, can you push him away with telekinesis? I’ll use it to repel lava on this end.”
That would, of course, mean that Ru needs to move, lest she get burned by Tanau. And she can use her bracers to help with the lava over here, or protect Loren. Hoping that he hears her, Wessex waits at the edge of her power radius for whatever magic Loren throws her way, and will try to use it to push away any lava splashes that come their way
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Wessex uses Magic Re-resonance to continue to protect the group from lava splashes
Magic: Magic Re-Resonance | When abandoned magic is cast within 10ft of Wessex, she can duplicate the ability at its upgraded level once.
Type: Grey | Rank: Upgraded
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It was all Loren could do not to scream as the fire and heat rolled over him. However, he managed to grit his teeth and focus on the task at hand. Or rather, in his hands: although he'd gotten a grip on the object, it was still lodged inside the being.
Dimly, he heard Wessex's words. His telekinesis had never been his strongest magic, but he tapped it anyway. Using his magic and his body in conjunction, he continued to try and yank the object out, pulling it with arms and his spell. Something seemed to unfold within him, giving his magic a boost he didn't know he had.
Loren tries to pull the object out, using his telekinesis to augment his efforts.
Base Telekinesis: Can move small objects in a 5ft radius.
Type: Grey | Rank: Basic
Living in Halo means at some point you've digested a small amount of mageglass. As long as you live in Halo, you can increase one of your magics to a higher level, once per PQ/PQ+/KQ/Drop. (In order to use this ability, you must specify the magic to be increased at the bottom of the post in which it will be used.)
Using this on telekinesis
Type: Grey
Mageglass Pendant | A large, prismatic stone suspended from a chain of silver. This pendant doubles the power of any magic that the user wields.
08-15-2020, 07:07 PM (This post was last modified: 08-15-2020, 07:08 PM by Hotaru.)
moral of the story is, i will gut you if i need to
i will carve my way out
Her eyes may be tracking between the god and the lava surrounding them, but Hotaru’s attention never fully leaves Kiada hovering in the sky. As such her voice cries out in tandem with Amalia when the girl is struck and immediately begins to hurtle downward. Already she’s stepping away to run, to help, only for Wessex’s cry of her name to halt her steps. Amalia is already running towards the girl and Hotaru is - useless, you’re useless and replaceable you fool - so instead she grits her teeth and whirls around to go running towards the Ascended. Bracer up and ready as she moves positions, trying to have faith that Amalia will succeed.
She positions herself at Lorens back, facing outward towards the lava to attempt to use her bracer to deflect anything that may hurtle their way. Her free hand reaches back to hook into his clothing, hoping the breadth of his body and the fact that only his hands are enveloped in the god’s chest will keep her from being burned. Hotaru begins exerting pressure, helping him pull slowly without off-balancing him hopefully.
Hotaru runs over to Loren to stand at his back and deflect any lava with her bracer. She uses her free hand to help pull on Loren if he needs it.
Items/Abilities:
During PQ/PQ+/KQs/Drops, you roll with advantage on luck-based rolls and receive an extra name during drops. (In order to use this, make sure to note the ability at the bottom of each post)
Lightning manipulation: Can create and control Lightning. Must be within a 30ft radius.
Type: Dark | Rank: Mastered
Type: Dark
Ornate Leather Bracers (Upgraded) | The wearer can, at will, redirect both magical and physical attacks. For magical attacks, can redirect them within 10ft. Physical attacks must be within melee range to be directed, and can then be redirected within 10ft.
with only my teeth
HOTARU
Hotaru has a passive magic that makes her glow with an internal golden light; it makes her appear youthful and her hair seems to look like moving sunlight. Can only subtly illuminate dark spaces.
It’s now or never - victory and tragedy all in one.
Loren pulls, using his telekinesis as his aid, and Tanau gives a final roar of agony as the shard in his chest finally comes free. He’s a blazing light in that moment, wreathed in flames of gold and viridian, of cobalt and lilac, and they shroud both he and the ex-Launceleyn for a second or two. It’s enough to scorch Loren, enough to singe along his arms, up the right side of his face—
And then the flames die out altogether, and the rivers of lava collapse in on themselves.
Molten rock is flung out at all directions, rebounded in some cases, manipulated elsewhere in others, but some of it makes it through. Some of it hits the party. And oh, does it leave a mark.
On no one more than poor Kiada, however. She plummets, whirling, falling, and though her cries reach the birds she compelled previously, there is no help coming. They have been frightened away by the quakes, by the fire, and not even compulsion will move them.
Amalia is there, her tail extended, and the vulture’s claws reach and reach for her—
But they are too far away. She is engulfed, swallowed by the liquid earth, and nothing of her remains.
Tanau, the Longheat God
HP: ???/???
Kiada failed to call any carrion birds for aid, as they were still too spooked by the lava to swoop in. She attempted to grab Amalia’s tail, but failed in this as well. She perishes in the lava.
Loren has successfully pulled the shard from Tanau’s chest, being badly burned in the process. These burns and their scars cannot be healed with magic. He receives:
Molten Shard | This curious material was pulled from the chest of a god. It is still hot to the touch. What is it? What does it do? (The closest description for it is like that of the bismuth metal).
Loren has also earned the Legend Title: The Firebrand
Your randomly assigned post order is:
1. Kiada 0/100 (Kiada may post one final time)
2. Amalia 31/42
3. Wessex 175/259
4. Loren 74/250
5. Hotaru 53/80
Congratulations, you have successfully completed this KQ and will receive credit for it in any levelling requirements. Please feel free to post your aftermath, and I will end the thread with a final post from Tanau.
This isn’t at all how she expects it. But would she have it any other way? She’s falling, the pain vibrating through her wing, pulsing and throbbing as she goes down and down. She can see Amalia, however briefly, try to reach for her, she can see the work that Hotaru does with Tanau. But it fails, her rescue fails, and down the Harpy goes. The heat grows, her heart thundering in her chest. She’d always imagined she’d die in some form of battle, some way of getting too close or making the wrong move. She never imagined to die of old age.
But then she thinks of Chulane, how that was exactly what she had promised to him. A smooth sailing kind of life, wasn’t she supposed to go camping in Torchline with him? She won’t, now, not as she descends into the lava. She only hopes he understands. She hopes he knows she loved him, even if their time together had been short. She hopes Amalia and Deimos care for him with the tragedy that’s about to come. That they might make it easier for him.
Maybe he can take a few of the feathers she’s sure she's left behind and sprinkle them along the edges of Halo, to be back with the snows like she was with the Basin. She hopes Deimos doesn’t take it too hard, though she knows that he will. She hopes that Hotaru won’t take it upon herself for the failure of her not thinking further ahead.
Lastly, she hopes that Amalia doesn’t blame herself for it. Because she’d tried to save her. It just wasn’t meant to be.
And then, there, the lava she can feel as it engulfs her — a hot sweet embrace for a girl born wreathed in flame, born in the icy snows of a mountain, a flame snuffed out too soon, but snuffed out all the same.
why do i fear becoming a river?
what mountain gave me such shame?
KIADA
Kiada has a large X scar on the right side of her neck.
No permission needed for power play!
Feel free to use magic/force on Kiada, without killing her <3
As the light and fire and pain washed over Loren, he found himself screaming, his own voice sounding small and tinny compared to the being's roar. Then it was all over, except for the pain. Stumbling backwards, he collapsed to his knees. Immediately and instinctively, his magic leapt to his aid, cold power targeting the worst of the burns, though dimly he was aware these scars and wounds would take a while to repair.
He clutched the strange object in his hands as Astra bleated piteously. She trotted around him, trying to defend and protect him, distress ringing through their bond that she couldn't touch him. Too lost in the agony and too hurt to pay much attention to his surroundings, he was vaguely aware of Kiada's fall. But he was in too much shock to mourn her, then, the woman who might've been a friend if they'd spent more time together.
Everything is going well, yet all Amalia focuses on is Kiada. Kiada, who beats against the current of the air with the tenacity and furor the Shield has come to love so dearly; Kiada, who is bright and brilliant and broken, her shattered pieces fused with magma and that much stronger for it. Kiada who has found a place in Amalia's heart, her life, her family. It seems so probable that they will have a happy ending, that they will succeed, that they will come out of this adventure together as they have so many others. All she needs is to fly a little further, to reach a little more, to try a little harder, to be a little better---
She knows it will happen before it does, sees it flashing in front of her eyes. No- Amalia calls through the Attuned bond, a spark of agony and denial, a last flickering flame of hope--
And then Kiada is gone.
"No-" The word comes out of a shifting throat, Amalia already returning to human form and falling to her knees. As Tanau bursts with light and magma strikes her Amalia feels none of the pain; she is numb, hollow, the deep toll of loss ringing through her like a bell. Hands on her knees the Shield stares out to where the magma falls away, waiting for the figure to re-emerge, for the Harpy to rise up out of ash like the phoenix that she is--
Nothing.
"Please, Vi. Not her." But she knows it, can feel the emptiness in the attuned bond where Kiada once so neatly fit. A burst of air leaves her, energy, one last try, too little too late, soothing wounds but not enough to reverse the tides of death. It is her first task and she has failed - and oh, what a failure it is.
Amalia uses breath of Vi in a last attempt to save Kiada
Breath of Vi | Summons a gust of celestial wind within a 20 foot range of Amalia. Allies struck by the wind feel healed and renewed, while enemies are thrown back 5 feet. One use per thread.
She wants the silence but fears the solitude she wants to be alone and together with you
Looking back on this, the Wraith will see twenty points where it could have gone differently; from choosing her team to where she directed the magic, who did what, even Amalia’s appearance. It won’t do her any good, of course, but the woman will swallow her bitter pill of guilt and deal with it a very unhealthy way by not talking about it. Much like every other burden and/or trauma in her past, the Wraith soldiers on, adding little layers of what-ifs and should-have’s with every death, the thoughts invisible to all but herself and her Goddess.
Wessex will look back and see where it failed, where Kiada misses the tail and her borrowed telekinesis isn’t nearly as effective, where they’re too split in their focus and the lava threatens everyone and everything.
She’ll track the falling vulture, unable to believe what she’s seeing and unable to do anything about it - her shadow can’t reach that far. Could she have pushed and pulled simultaneously? Could they have protected themselves from the molten rock without Ru and her bracers? Could she have saved them all, instead of the majority?
Rocked by the disappearance of feathers into the magma pool, the demigoddess is shocked. Her own mind paralyses her - though it isn’t a sort of physiological reaction, she is held in place all the same. Amalia’s cry, Loren’s collapse - Ru? But Kiada is dead. Kiada won’t be going home again. And it’s partially her fault.
Feeling helpless, Wessex’s looks at the spot where the girl disappeared. The lava bubbles innocently up, as if it hadn’t just eaten an entire life. A god for a friend. What a shitty trade. Drinking from Eirachi would never be worth this.
moral of the story is, i will gut you if i need to
i will carve my way out
For a moment, a single moment, Hotaru places her faith in her beloved niece and the Shield that has devoted herself to the young woman in the time Hotaru was gone. She focuses instead on Loren, on helping pull him backwards, on the intensifying flames that explode like streaking comets across skin and vision alike. Loren’s success topples them both, Hotaru crashing to her knees and hissing at the fire that sears her, ripping away the material of her shirt wherever it tries to fuse with her skin. In that moment she looks up, eyes tracking across the sky, because Kiada is immediately her first concern even as her skin burns.
She watches the familiar flighted figure spiral, sole wing flapping hard against the scorched air around them. Watched Amalia’s long tail reach, reach, an offering of hope, a lifeline -
And she’s gone.
Hotaru never makes it off her knees, is given no chance to try and reach out and clutch that vibrant life in her hands. To switch their places. For a moment, despite the discordant noise of everything happening, the speed at which it all occurs, there is nothing but cotton softness in her ears. ”KIADA!” It’s immediately shattered by her own screeching cry, a grief so volatile and immediate that it breaks apart her chest, tears through her throat as it wildly seeks freedom from the newly broken heart that bore it. Perhaps she would beg, cry, deny. Any other woman might.
But Hotaru has watched too many children die; bleeding on snowy cliffs, walking proudly to their deaths, locked outside a door she was not here to open. This is an agony she knows well, one she goes abed with every night. A macabre, skeletal lover who will never keep her warm. So instead she merely tilts forward, still on her knees, and curls into a useless ball of grief. The tears are hot against her cheeks, but she makes no sound. Instead Hotaru curls up there, heart ripped asunder, having lost her sister and her niece within weeks of each other. There is nothing left now, and she doesn’t give a damn about the deity they’ve just saved. It will be a miracle if they even manage to drag Hotaru back down this mountain. In this moment she’d rather die here, join the young woman she’d helped raise from birth, and find her waiting with open arms and a cheeky smile somewhere in the afterlife.
with only my teeth
HOTARU
Hotaru has a passive magic that makes her glow with an internal golden light; it makes her appear youthful and her hair seems to look like moving sunlight. Can only subtly illuminate dark spaces.
It is done, and the echoes of Tanau’s screaming still ring distantly around the arena of floating magma isles and grieving people. The fire condenses around the god, disappearing into pale and perfect skin, and he gets to wobbly feet to look around them. He’s a delicate young man, molten eyes bright if not fatigued, standing before them looking so small compared to the magnitude of what has just happened.
”I’m so sorry for your loss,” he says in a voice rich as gold and husky as smoke. He sounds like he means it, too. ”Thank you for coming. Thank you all. Wish my sister well.” He aims a nod at Wessex. Glancing around them, at their burns, at the wasteland of the Climb, it occurs to him suddenly that they are quite unsuited for the environment,
”You are welcome here, all of you.” And a breeze as cool as those found on a brisk day in Torchline rushes over them. Suddenly the group will feel unbothered by the heat, will have no trouble navigating the crust they stand upon. With a wave of his hand, Tanau conjures something else, too - four water skins appear before them. ”These are from the hot springs below. Use them as you like.”
Tanau has granted the party protection from the heat of the Climb! They will not suffer with heat exhaustion, sunburn, or any other effects of the environment. (The lava will still kill you though).
Each member also receives the following:
Hot Springs Water | Water from the Frey’s Breath hot spring. It can heal the user with Mastered healing magic. One use only.
Feel free to reply again if you wish, otherwise this thread will be archived in 48 hours!
Loren's own healing magic was already at work, but the cool breeze from the being they'd freed was more than welcome. Standing up, the healer felt the pain recede. The physical pain, at least: Kiada's death finally hit him, and he closed his eyes and mumbled a silent prayer to Mort that she would rest peacefully in his realm.
Opening his eyes, he staggered to Hotaru, Wessex, and Amalia, placing his still burned hands on each of the woman's shoulders in turn. "I'm sorry as well." His throat was hoarse from the screaming and the fire, but he too meant it.
Turning back to Tanau, Loren bowed his head. "You're welcome. And thank you for the water, and the blessing." Despite his heartbreak at the death of his companion, he managed to lace the words with gratitude. Tucking the water away in his bag, he frowned, before tucking the shard away as well. He had many questions, but he wanted to get away from this desolate and deadly land and back home.
“I will. Thank you.” She offers Tanau a tight nod of acknowledgement, trying not to be disrespectful of the spirit’s thanks, but very much finding it lacking in the moment. Robotically (no pun intended), she goes to pick up a water skin and Kiada’s pack, her hands brushing the fabric of the Shadow Cloth, causing her to pause. It’s just for a moment before she’s moving again, encouraging Amalia and Hotaru to gather their things.
But the younger blonde doesn’t make any effort to move from her ball, so the Wraith goes and fetches the skin for her, then squats down to physically pull Hotaru’s hand around her neck. She lifts the woman into her arms, cradling her against her chest.
“I’m sorry Ru,” she whispers into the Outlander’s hair. “I’m so, so sorry.” Placing a tiny kiss on her head, Wessex turns and wordlessly begins to walk back through the tunnel, trying to make sure that Amalia and Loren are both able to carry themselves out as well.
moral of the story is, i will gut you if i need to
i will carve my way out
Tanau’s soft words register dimly, lifting Hotaru’s bowed head the slightest bit in acknowledgement. Giving him her gaze where nothing else can be given, incapable of words or physical movement. She’s merely existing, and barely at that. Somewhere in her heart is compassion and understanding, having been trapped and hurt and reliant upon others for help once in her own life. The relief from the heat makes her skin shudder, but the gift is not picked up. Pulling air into her lungs is a Herculean challenge of its own. I hope you heal, is all she can manage, hoping he is capable of hearing her prayer. Mouth frozen in a rictus of loss.
Loren’s hand briefly touches her shoulder, and though she leans into the touch it’s gone before she can rely upon it. Not that she can blame him, with how grievously hurt he is. A concern that will strike her when the haze of loss clears, and will surely pile another layer of guilt upon her soul at having ignored it. And then there’s Wessex, firm and familiar, scooping her off the scorched earth and into a tender embrace. Normally there would be shades of embarrassment, reluctance, a desire to remain unseen in her weakness. It isn’t there now. Pride has no place here, and she turns her face into the pale skin of Wessex’a neck and begins to cry. Silent and stunned, shoulders shaking as she’s carried down the mountain.
with only my teeth
HOTARU
Hotaru has a passive magic that makes her glow with an internal golden light; it makes her appear youthful and her hair seems to look like moving sunlight. Can only subtly illuminate dark spaces.
