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!
He required familiarity – a constant that didn’t falter, didn’t break, under the claws biting and stabbing at his soul. If he kept moving, kept maneuvering, kept circling around, maybe the darkness stretching out beneath his feet wouldn’t catch him, wouldn’t swallow him, wouldn’t consume him.
Maybe he’d let it – set the snare, watch as the rest of the world came toppling down around him, an echo in his ears until it was nothing at all.
For now, he raised the blade above his head, pulling all the force, all the ferocity, all the gods-damned rage, confusion, torment, and agony into the billowing motion of muscles and brawn. It careened and sliced, rampaging down, down, down over the target, and there was still little satisfaction when he stepped away, when he saw the entrails of its stuffing torn asunder. A snarl emitted, hackles raised, and he sharpened a quick, swift thrust into the guts, pretended it was something he could control, obliterate, annihilate.
"Careful where you swing that thing!" The gravelly voice comes from a grey-haired old man who emerges from the shadows of the barracks wall. Muscular despite his obvious age, the man stalks toward the general, his arms crossed over his chest.
He stops beside Deimos, prodding the thoroughly battered dummy distastefully with his foot. "Wasteful. In my day we practiced with real opponents - but we weren't as soft as you young folk are." There's a terrible, choking noise from deep in his throat. Turning his head to the side, he spits a huge wad of mucus into the grass. "Say, aren't you that so-called general? I've a bone to pick with you."
No time to survey the carnage wrought on the immobile device before a voice emerged from the wall. He shrugged his shoulders at the veiled insults, clenching his jaw, eyes narrowing dangerously – so utterly done with anything and everything the world kept flinging at him. Perhaps it made him more treacherous, more vehement, more violent, or merely exhausted, fatigued, worn around the edges, waiting for the next cataclysm to fall down around him.
Behind his teeth, the words were bit out, heavy on the air. “You are more than welcome to try your hand.” Disdain undulated through him on the next motion, but he kept it at bay, smothered it down with the rest of the emotions battering and barreling around him. Gaze swept out along the training grounds, pondering notions of evasion or escape. None seemed to jump out at him. “Yes.” His head swung back, fingers tightening around the hilt of his blade. “What do you need?”
Entirely unperturbed by Deimos' attitude, the squat old man takes a bold step forward, glaring up into the General's face. "I wanna know what you're plannin' to do about all these Ascended." He positively hisses the last word, wadding up another glob of phlegm to spit expressively. "Everyone knows they're bloodsuckin' monsters, but I don't see anythin' gettin' done. It ain't natural an' it ain't right."
He takes another step forward and lowers his voice conspiratorially. "At least the monster queen got what she deserved, eh? Good job on that one, General. Everyone knows it was you who made the door." His brown eyes glitter hatefully.
What a contemptuous creature, and Deimos unfortunately tied and tethered to not wrapping his hand around the man’s throat. Regardless, a seething maelstrom began to brew within him, from between the columns of animosity, the structures of all his recent failures, misfortunes, and misgivings, and the abhorrence cycling through the air. Systemic breaths collided against the temptation to merely decimate and obliterate the man from where he stood, but instead he looked down his nose at him, eyes narrowed – the pulse, the pervading countenance of age-old incantations threatening to spiral around him.
It only spiked and blistered once more on the other comments – notching against his spine, malice within the self-loathing, barbarity amidst the guilt, Rexanna the monster queen. You were anything but that he would’ve curled into the ether to send after her soul; but instead all the warnings, all the forbearings, traced over his essence. Only a fool wouldn’t be able to read the message. “What would you prefer?” Whispered between clenched teeth – knowing full well it wouldn’t be wise to destroy the elderly man right then and there, but it was enticing.
If the old man realizes he's treading on dangerous ground he gives no sign of it. Maybe he's got cataracts. Maybe he's just lived enough of a life to be fresh out of fucks. Whatever the reason, he continues to glare up at the General with a cruel, crooked grin of yellowed teeth. "I'd prefer if there were doors like that on every building," he replies. "I'd prefer a leadership that keeps us good folk safe, instead'a protectin' the unnatural element."
At last he steps back, almost nonchalant. "'course, you Outlanders wouldn't know unnatural if it grabbed you in the dark and fucked you raw." A third time he spits, though it's somewhat less impressive by now. "You don't know shit about what my ancestors went through, about the war, any of it. That's why you're fine being weak, swinging swords at straw."
He’d done very well here, a majority of the time, with not immediately slaying everything that irritated him. He gave warnings. He gave ultimatums. He assured repercussions. He didn’t entangle idle threats. But gods, it was very difficult to keep the energy, the restlessness, the depravity in his bones from not seeking forth and skewering the man where he stood. Nothing subtle, the man continued to glower and glare and utter forth his condemnations for everything in sight. This had been exactly as Safrin had informed – the vile hatred and abhorrence, the need for vehemence to snap and sizzle against the Ascended.
Maybe he didn’t know. Maybe he did. Maybe there were fine lines and no right or wrong. Maybe there were choices they all made that bordered on stupid or brave or brazen, and anywhere in between. Maybe everything was harsh, and in the end, they’d all come to the same slaughter anyway.
He ignored the Outlander quip; old hat by now. The elderly beast didn’t know anything about him either.
But he’d heard enough.
“No one is keeping you here.” Least of all him. Perhaps the man could go live elsewhere, surround and barricade himself from the void. It might be more beneficial for everyone else in the long run. "Though, you could always run for council." What a King.
And perhaps Deimos was weak, and could only go through the motions, staying his hand from murdering the fool outright. The Reaper would have long since tossed him over a mountainside.
The Sword had to keep his composure, his control, because this cretin wasn’t worth it. “You are likely as ignorant.” A shrug of his shoulders, a callous disregard, a level of apathy and antipathy settling over his brawn.
Then he left, collecting the sagacity in the back of his mind, for the goddess who had warned him.
