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!
the fire can't touch me for I have burned too many times
There was an incessant need for flames, for fire, for ignition, for conflagration, and it built, it built, it built around him as he walked, as he wandered, as he followed after the war drums droning in his ears. A command, from some general lost in his memories, and not from his own beleaguered efforts, like a lot soldier striving to find his regiment. There were ghosts in the highlights and the trumpet flares, casting him aloft, and the maddening pulse of fatigue was ignored for pressing on and on and on.
Until he came to the ruins, which reminded him of other years, other lives, where battered acrimonies, hostilities, and antipathies had driven them to exactly the same reaches, watching as the hallucinations, the chimeras, the flickering, bounding forms scattered into lights, into factions –
Battle. Skirmishes. Instinct drove him to muscle memory and contortions of old – and the embers, the cinders, rose around him in a mighty crescendo, circling, swarming, and surrounding. An inferno, a kindled, rapacious edge, until there was no end and no beginning, but the spiraling press of fire courted and contorted around his frame.
Now the world couldn’t swallow him whole.
Because maybe he’d do it first.
the sea can't harm me for I have been drowning all my life
Fire. He smelt it before anything else, the familiar scent of burning, of smoke, of dried leaves and sticks and anything becoming kindling. Fire was something he was familiar with, something he'd grown up with, something all Australians knew well how to manage and survive.
So as he came through the portal, he told Auni to remain in the Glade, and took to the skies in his eagle shift without hesitation. The vision and vantage his avian form gave him made it easy from there - and he spotted to area of concern swiftly, tilting his path towards it.
It was more of a pillar of flame than a fire like the one he'd experienced in Australia. And that was when he began to suspect magic was at play - devastating, scorching, sweltering magic, wielded by a master within the Ruins of the Hollowed Grounds.
"DEIMOS!" He had shifted back human, standing as close as he could get without being burned himself, shouting over the crackling flames, recognising the outline of the monolith of a man amongst them. Where was Zuriel? What could he do?
Running a hand through his hair, he tried to take another step closer, tried again to shout, but th1e air was hot, it stole his breath - he shouted anyway, trying to penetrate the inferno, trying again and again until he managed to pierce it. "DEIMOS!"
the fire can't touch me for I have burned too many times
He was one with the flames and he’d make them see.
Make them pay. Make them suffer. Make them understand who the Reaper was; an unfurling mechanism, a machine, a beacon of violence and vehemence. Do your worst he could proclaim and shout and howl, and then he’d do the same, embarking straight into lines of fissures and demolition.
They were clear as day now, similar formations and ilk from lifetimes ago, hastening on the edges of their misty, foggy precipice, yearning to claim, to have something not rightfully theirs. Beckoned by goddesses of the moon, shaping manipulations to their illustrious biding, wanting and craving and yearning to snag and ensnare.
Not today. Today he could change things. He was far more powerful. Far more brazen. Far more determined. He knew the stakes at hand. He knew, he knew, he knew –
Someone was calling him through the conflagration, and he twisted his head away from the delusional figures, the towering structures of a world not like this one at all (mist, the cliffs, the ramparts of the sea breaking and blasting), confused. He recognized the figure, but not the reason.
Chulane hadn’t been there, guarding a kingdom they were doomed to lose.
But he didn’t relent on the fire, and only shifted so he was behind a tree, wide enough to hide his bulk (a pillar; barely standing upright). “Best take cover,” advice towards the youth who hadn’t been born on battlefields, who hadn’t been hastened and called to bloodshed. “The Qian are coming.”
And with his warning, he sought to strike first, unleashing a torrent of fireballs directly at the shadow herself, Mirage (another pillar).
the sea can't harm me for I have been drowning all my life
"The what?!" he shouted over the crackle of the flames, over the burning, the inferno created by the Sword. He was confused, looking from side to side, around the ruins of fallen stone and concrete, the pillars of a civilisation that had risen and fallen eons ago. He watched as Deimos behaved like a soldier at war, as he shot and directed his flames at seemingly random structures.
Was he training? Was this some kind of simulation, some game he used to test himself, to improve himself?
It was almost convincing to the vet, almost likely enough that he might've gone along with it… if it weren't for the way he didn't check the flames, didn't keep them restrained, didn't care about the wanton destruction and potential disaster his actions might wrought.
"There's no-one there, Deimos!" he shouted again, striding forward, closer into the line of fire - a foolish action, to be sure, reckless and wild, but he did it anyway, as if to prove the point. "It's just me!" Arms spread wide, he declared it loud and clear, tears springing to his eyes against the heat and effort to keep himself from coughing. He stood before the Sword, pleading with him to come back from whatever delusion had taken him, not knowing what else to do in this moment of reckless abandon.
the fire can't touch me for I have burned too many times
She didn’t go down; even when the flames struck, even when all his potency, all his rage, all his abhorrence flowed and flickered through each assemblage. More his mind corresponded, it meant more – to chase down the shadows, to unravel the chimeras, to uncover the lies and hypocrisies, their love of peace not enough to undo the lasting effects of war. He’d put every fiber, every mettle, every torrential acrimony into his movements and motions, ducking down further until he could see the whites of their eyes, and then he’d unleash hell.
He wanted them to choke on it. Be bathed in it. Suffer just as much as the Basiners had, wandering in their upheaval, in their abyss, biding their time in the stretch of winter until time wrought them clarity.
A long, low growl rumbled through his chest, and all he could see were the enemies, Kri’s forces combining into Mirage’s, and the Edge was vastly outnumbered as they came in from all sides.
And Chulane, Chulane out there, ignorant and inept. He was distracting, honestly, and the fiend had to ceasefire, concentration adhering. They were heading towards defeat once more at this rate. “How can you not see them?” No one there with the images as clear as day, with the maelstrom unfurling right before his eyes.
He glanced up to see Monster go down, and a shudder, a chill, ran rampant through his shoulders.
“I have to fight.” Couldn’t he fathom it? Couldn’t he understand they were going to lose everything again?
the sea can't harm me for I have been drowning all my life
"Because they aren't there!" He bellowed in return. The flames struck the pillars near him, the ruinous piles of rubble and stone obtaining blackened scorch marks in the wake of the Sword's efforts. Chulane did his best to keep a distance from the fiery attacks, but he saw no other way to capture the General's attention, to hold it long enough to make an impact - it was a precarious position, but there was something wrong. This wasn't just some training exercise or some way for the man to release pent up anger - it was more than that, but to what extent, he couldn't be sure.
"You don't have to fight me." He denied, standing strong before him, stepping into the path where flames had finally ceased, stepping before the pillar he seemed so determined to class as an enemy. "It's just me, Deimos," he declared again, almost pleading the fact to the man, as if he kept saying it he could will him to believe it.
He was sweating - of course he was, with the heat from LongHeat and the Sword throwing fire all around. But he was steadfast and determined, standing before his friend, a pillar of strength of character in his own right. "Focus on me, Deimos," he instructed, loud and clear, his voice gravelly from the effort of containing the coughs that wanted to shake him. "Focus on me, and tell me, what do you see?"
the fire can't touch me for I have burned too many times
He didn’t want to fight Chulane.
Deimos wanted to fight the past – the root of so many failures and defeats, the stem from which they all broke apart. An initial burn, of anger and vengeance, conspiring and contorting until they’d been nothing left but refugees in the snow, smoldering and seething pathways.
His eyes went back to the hell unleashed, to Mirage, who might’ve been a dragon, unleashing her forces and onslaught upon his own, and the ferocity brewed inside him with such a rapt intensity that he believed he might explode: with the power, with the derision, with the rancor and bitterness lodged in his chest. “Move.” A single command, cold, impassive, Reaper tendencies, and he sought control over a nearby boulder, threatening to hurl it at the closest opponent (Kri? – he’d take her down, all her wings and feathers and daring – then there’d be no one at the Throat’s helm).
The stare narrowed as the stone carved its way closer to him, preparing to launch – piercing gaze finally following directions, perception pinpointing to the other man.
And then there was nothing else. Like smoke and vapors and plumes, the battle disappeared, and he snorted, unaware of the delirium, of the way the invasion had never manifested again. The fire around him receded, taken back in from where it’d been unleashed, and he was left bereft and wild, torn apart at the seams.
He squinted, and put the rock down along the ground, the heat pulsing around his form, the confusion apparent in his furrowed brows. “I do not understand. Where did they go?”
the sea can't harm me for I have been drowning all my life
He was confused, so very, very confused. But he had faith that clarity would come, that he could help to anchor his friend, help to provide a guiding light out of whatever maze Deimos had wandered down and gotten lost in. The command the General gave was one that Chulane stalwartly ignored, though he'd be lying if he claimed he wasn't afraid of the consequences of such disobedience.
Deimos wasn't in the right frame of mind. He wasn't Deimos the General now. He was barely Deimos the Sword - perhaps he was Deimos the Wayward Sword?
Whichever Deimos he was (and Chulane had no knowledge of the Reaper title he once claimed), Chulane knew better to obey him at this moment, and tried to assert control of the situation, to be the steady, logical, clear-headed mind. As stones were lifted and shifted, as enemies who weren't there taunted and teased the General, he stood still and tall, persisting to try and get the man's attention, to capture his focus, to bring him back from whatever delusion he'd wandered off into.
And then it happened, finally - the Sword met his gaze, anchored and affixed, holding tightly. The vet watched as the flames died down, as the heat lessened, as the pillar of a man returned to some semblance of normal, of sane. He coughed in the settling of the dust and ash, clearing his throat, but maintaining his stance before the man all the while.
A question, shot over the scorched earth to him. "There was no-one there, Deimos," his voice was gruffer, deeper, harsher than before, roughed up by the smoke, by the ash and dust and effort. But it sounded all the same, loud and mostly clear. "You're in the Ruins, General. In the Hollowed Grounds." He tried to set the scene, to bring the General back to the present moment, to help him shed the ghosts of his past that were evidently toying with his current reality.
