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 goes under again, the waves crashing over his head before he manages to appear again – sputtering, tugging aimlessly at his leg. He can feel the tear and pull of skin, the warm stinging feeling of blood as the wound opens. And then, then he shudders – twitching when the gunshots ring off. Sahib, Sunjata’s father, immediately turns to the commotion, words slipping from him as he stalks toward the edge of the river – spying Ronin and ready to tear the gun out of the other guard’s hands. Sanem, his mother, stumbles back into the guard that crowd around her.
And Sunjata? Sunjata continues to fight against the current, his father stealing the gun and lowering it to the water, following the sight as he spots the guard that broke rank slip into the water. But the river is powerful, it’s strong, and as far as Sahib is concerned, they’re both a loss. He’s already made plans for the announcement to come – that the lion wasn’t a lion at all. But he’ll stay, just to ensure it – that either the boy survives and forsakes everything, or they both drown in the river.
When Ronin arrives at Sunjata’s side, he’s panicking – tugging and tearing more with the log that’s trapped. Ronin makes quick work of it, however, freeing Sunjata as the log begins to break free – ramming into the both of them and tearing them under again. The boy gets a mouthful of water, sputtering and coughing, trying to grasp onto anything because he can’t swim his way out of this. He latches onto Ronin with small hands, clinging to the guard, trying to get air.
i said i saw you in the water
No permission needed for power play!
Feel free to use magic/force on Sunjata, without killing him <3
Sunjata speaks with an Australian accent and has a passive magic that makes him produce a subtle scent that matches exactly to whatever those around him most desire him to smell like.
Ronin knows nothing of what plays out above the water, because he’s tearing at the log with gloved hands, weighed down by his gear and cursing out a stream of bubbles. As he finally frees the boy it feels like the river grabs them anew, tearing them along the current. And they bob up, briefly, Ronin gasping in a full breath of air, which is more than he can say for Sunjata. But they find each other, in the flood, and he hauls the boy up by the back of the shirt to keep his head above the water, anchoring him against his chest.
”Don’t struggle. We can’t waste our energy,” he pants. ”I’ve got you, just hold on. You’re okay.” Already Ronin feels the malleability of change infect the dream, the way things have played out differently, and it’s a row of dominos that begins to fall. It’s what allows Ronin to fight against the current with ease, until his feet find the mud of the bank, until he’s striding out of the river with Sunjata in his arms and a face like thunder.
The dream shifts again, sputtering as Sunjata manages to grab a lungful of air, coughing and sputtering against the burning at the back of his throat. He hears Ronin’s instructions, clings harder to the man that he should know – but there’s both confusion and curiosity in the boy, red rimmed steel eyes soft and terrified as he looks up at Ronin’s face. “Y-y-y-you shouldn’t…” He manages through a gasp, voice quiet as if it’s a conspiracy of sorts.
‘You shouldn’t have done that.’ It’s finished instead by his father, gun in hand, approaching the guard with an equally aggravated edge to his face. ‘Unless you plan on keeping him.’ Death or orphaned, those were the only options for those that are useless in their roles. ‘He’s useless to me now.’ Because even if Sunjata had survived – which he had if the events had gone accordingly – the boy had made it up in his mind to try and be that soldier his father wanted, to take his place, until he defected thirteen years after this event in his life.
Sunjata, still in Ronin’s arms, clutches the Star closer (both here and on the bed). It’s a sorrowful whisper. “I can’t go home now.” The dream flickers, parts of the city around them shifting to the mansion, cold and cruel, of a bedroom with white walls and no toys, nothing to show that he’d ever been there. Don’t get attached echoes from somewhere around them, returning them back to the riverside with a familiar steel gaze sharp enough to tear through both Ronin and Sunjata, his hand shifting on the rifle.
i said i saw you in the water
No permission needed for power play!
Feel free to use magic/force on Sunjata, without killing him <3
Sunjata speaks with an Australian accent and has a passive magic that makes him produce a subtle scent that matches exactly to whatever those around him most desire him to smell like.
”Shh...” A hand smooths through the boy’s wet hair, and Ronin is about to speak again when a voice, smooth and deadly, breaks across the bank towards them. The silver haired man is raising a rifle their way, and Ronin both knows and doesn’t know what it does. Either way, it won’t stop him now, and fractals of starlight have started to splinter out of him as he lifts his chin defiantly.
”Oh, I plan on it,” he almost growls, taking slow and measured steps towards the other man, blue eyes narrowing to flint. ”Useless? No - get this straight, old man - you are useless to him. What the fuck is this? Why the fuck weren’t you jumping in there to get him? Why were you the one pushing him? Keeping him safe is the only job you have.”
There’s another light now, building fiercely within the core of his chest, and Ronin wonders what he can make happen here, with a supernova. He’s walked far enough for the rifle to be pressed against his chest, his free hand wrapped around the barrel. ”I’m not afraid of you,” he whispers. ”You’re just a weak man with a toy. If you want to fight, let’s do it properly.”
As for home? Ronin changes the city himself, now - images of blankets spangled with stars and dragons; shoes and clothes piled against a door; tiny footprints in the snow; the warmth of a hearth and glitter on tables. ”You can come home with me instead,” he mutters.
He soothes a bit, though his heart still hammers in his chest, trying to breathe and intake air where none had been before, where it burns when he tries to expand his lungs. Blood drips from his leg, the tang of iron spilling in the air around them. His head tilts in Ronin’s arms, scanning the starlight, finding both a sense of panic and comfort within them.
He knows this man, and yet he doesn’t.
They approach the Arbiter and Sunjata’s hands tremble, anxiety eating away at him as Ronin’s words cut through the air. Nobody – No one had ever dared to talk to his father that way. And for a moment, a splash of surprise crosses his face before a sneer replaces it and the barrel of the gun presses into Ronin’s chest. Sunjata can see the glint of metal in the corner of his eye, his head tilting down to bury his cheek away into Ronin’s shoulder.
His father, however, stares back at Ronin, the man that dares to speak back. “Safe? If he can’t manage the test, can’t manage to grow stronger and survive, what is the point? If he doesn’t drown now, he certainly will when he turns seventeen.” The gun drops, a growl slipping from Sahib’s throat. For a second before the world shifts again, there’s the sprinkling of a muddy pit within, pools of blood and bodies about – voices cheering for the winner in the background.
“By all means. Keep him. He’s useless now.” And there’s a part of Sunjata that wishes to reach out, to try and prove that he’s stronger than his father suggests. His fists unclench from Ronin’s shirt, writhing for a moment in Ronin’s grip to try and get the Star to drop him, apologies already flinging from his lips. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. It won’t… It won’t happen again.” He stammers, fighting against Ronin until the world changes.
Warmth, buildings shifting into the inside of a cabin of sorts – warmth sparking from the hearth, and the apologies die on Sunjata’s lips – steel eyes wide as he looks around to all the things he’s never had, never known before. Something that has his name on it, something that’s his, details of a life where someone loved him for him rather than a tool to use, an object to be molded and made.
i said i saw you in the water
No permission needed for power play!
Feel free to use magic/force on Sunjata, without killing him <3
Sunjata speaks with an Australian accent and has a passive magic that makes him produce a subtle scent that matches exactly to whatever those around him most desire him to smell like.
09-04-2020, 09:27 PM (This post was last modified: 09-04-2020, 09:33 PM by Ronin.)
I will fight the end
”Oh, believe me. He is plenty strong,” Ronin growls, his hand releasing the barrel of the gun as it drops, as the boy nestled against his shoulder begins to struggle, to apologise. But then, as if taking his lead, it’s Sunjata who manages to start to change the dream, and it’s Ronin’s turn to sneer. ”Already stronger than you. You’re not worth looking up to. Not worth being afraid of.” His gaze darkens. ”But you’ve still really pissed me off.”
He doesn’t have to let go of the boy for what happens next, his right arm hooking around to try and slam into the curve of Sahib’s jaw. ”You have nothing to say sorry for,” he mutters to Jata. ”Show me more? Of this?” He nods at the surroundings, where the world has already begun to crack and change from pouring rain to cabin warmth.
It happens so fast, so fast. Sunjata’s apologies die on his lips, the fight against Ronin growing into nothing, the young boy clinging in wonder as the sound of a fist hitting a jaw hits. And he flinches, because he knows intimately just what that felt like. Except typically Sunjata was on the receiving end, a secret he’d kept close and only told Maea. A secret that he hadn’t even summed up to telling Nate just yet.
Yet Ronin would know.
So he shuts it out, tight, like the lock of the door to the cabin as Ronin’s words reach him, pulling his soaked head from Ronin’s shoulder where he’d buried it to feel the warmth of the hearth, the smell of cinnamon and vanilla spread throughout, of warm blankets and books that he can smell the years within.
He slips out of Ronin’s grasp, blood still dripping lightly from his leg as he hits the ground – but he doesn’t notice it, doesn’t notice the pain of it as the surprise of what’s occurring before him bewilders him. He stops for a moment, tentatively wanting to reach for Ronin’s hand but recalling the way his father had reacted.
So he picks up his speed, darting into the dining room and trailing his hand along the oak of the table until he comes around the other side of it and peers at Ronin from just over the table. “Is this mine, Ronin?” His small voice pipes up tentatively, afraid of the answer – yet knowing and not knowing the Star’s name – as pieces of the cabin shift to flicker and filter in the home they sleep in now, the one Sunjata had built for himself twenty years later. In the distance, a crashing sound of the sea can be heard like a balm.
i said i saw you in the water
No permission needed for power play!
Feel free to use magic/force on Sunjata, without killing him <3
Sunjata speaks with an Australian accent and has a passive magic that makes him produce a subtle scent that matches exactly to whatever those around him most desire him to smell like.
The old man goes down and the world suddenly shifts, jagged, fractured. He can feel it, for a second, a strike against his own jaw, like a phantom. Only it isn’t his - he’s not the one being hit. It’s the boy wriggling down from his arms, and suddenly the rage building within him boils over. Sunjata is already running into a world of his own making, and Ronin’s supernova lights the place up like a firework. It burns away the rest of the dream - the bridge, the bank, the rain - and when he can see again, it’s just the cabin.
It’s just quiet and warm, cinnamon and woodsmoke. He forces his shoulders to relax, forces himself not to say the words he’s thinking: If I ever see that man again, I am going to kill him. Ronin swallows, drawn out of his reverie by the sound of a child. He manages a smile, wiping at his wet face and walking around the table to stand with him, guiding him gently by the shoulder towards the hearth where they might be able to dry off.
”It is,” he said. ”If you want it, that is. If you want something else, we’ll imagine that instead,” he assures him, still radiating starlight and sinking down to sit in front of the hearth, patting the space next to him for the boy to sit. ”Are you alright? Didn’t drink too much of the river?”
He watches, waiting as Ronin becomes himself again, as the light flickers away into darkness again and the Star moves to guide him to the hearth. And he follows – trust built in an instant with the way Ronin had broken rank, had saved him, had faced his father as such a force that nobody else had ever done before. And somewhere deep down in that subconscious of the dream, he knows Ronin would never hurt him.
So the boy lets himself be guided, standing before the hearth and running his fingers along the river rock there, letting the warmth of it seep into his bones. His question is answered, and there’s uncertainty that crosses into the dream, as if the boy needs permission in order to keep these things, regardless of how much he’d wished for them.
But he sits when the glowing Ronin does, a swift and exaggerated bob of his head in response to the other question, pulling his leg up onto the edge of the hearth to peer at the gouge in his leg – one that once the dream was over, Ronin would find scarred into the edge of his calf. “I’m okay.” A quiet answer.
“I’ve never… Had my own things before.” They always got taken away, even the things he’d made for himself. He pulls the other leg up, wrapping his arms around them both, propping his chin up on his knees and lets boyishly soft steel eyes focus on Ronin. “Why did you do that?”
Why did you save me?
Why hadn’t anyone else?
i said i saw you in the water
No permission needed for power play!
Feel free to use magic/force on Sunjata, without killing him <3
Sunjata speaks with an Australian accent and has a passive magic that makes him produce a subtle scent that matches exactly to whatever those around him most desire him to smell like.
He watches, a warmer smile trying to tug at his lips as he watches the boy sit, though he does notice as he props his leg up on the hearth. Ronin sees the cut, the blood, and he wrinkles his nose on Sunjata’s behalf. Dreams make it easy for him to reach back to find a convenient roll of bandages and a damp cloth, the Star nodding at the boy’s leg as if to ask to see it. ”That looks like it hurts,” he remarks. ”Shall we clean it up a bit?”
There’s something massive and heavy that presses against his chest at that admission, quiet and sad, that he’s never had anything of his own before, and Ronin lets out a long, slow sigh. ”Well, that changes starting now.” He gives the boy a lopsided smile. ”What’s the first thing you want for yourself?”
Then the inevitable comes - the question about his actions. ”Because someone did something terrible to you. And that was wrong,” he says quietly. ”Saving you was the right thing to do. You didn’t deserve what happened. Or anything that happened before. I promise.”
There’s bandages there, and tentatively the boy releases the hold he has on his knees, stretching the injured leg out toward Ronin to bandage up. “Are you a doctor?” He asks quietly, watching the wrapping. A few short years later, the very same leg Ronin bandages will be broken, falling from a tree, where surgery and a metal bar will be placed to ensure its straight. “Doctors are always nice to me.” He tucks his hands into his lap, turning his gaze to the fireplace once more.
“I want… A dog.” Perhaps it’s subconscious, but its obvious by now that he hasn’t had any friends. And he fidgets with his hands when the question leaves him, the reasons why Ronin had saved him, and eventually Sunjata looks toward Ronin to try and find the lie, to search his face. Its far more open than his fathers, the marble etched mask Sahib had always worn.
He’s quiet for a moment as he digests it. “He wanted me to be just like him. But I’m not. And that’s wrong.” He says quietly, ducking his head before a sudden realization hits and his stomach drops.
He’d forgotten. How could he?
He scrambles from the hearth, trying to remember where the door to the cabin is. “Ronin, we forgot Saartjie!” He calls, reaching the door but too short to reach the doorknob. “I told her... I told mom I’d save her.” He can't help the panic that takes over his body, the tears that rim his eyes.
i said i saw you in the water
No permission needed for power play!
Feel free to use magic/force on Sunjata, without killing him <3
Sunjata speaks with an Australian accent and has a passive magic that makes him produce a subtle scent that matches exactly to whatever those around him most desire him to smell like.
”A doctor? Not exactly,” Ronin says with a soft laugh, carefully cleaning up the injury as Jata shows him, wiping away blood and making sure that it’s not too deep before starting to bandage his leg. ”I’m a soldier. We get taught to do this sort of stuff, as part of our training. We have to be good at everything.” He winks. ”But I’m glad that doctors are nice to you. A mean doctor would be terrible at their job.” He finishes off the bandage and nods, happy with the result.
Still, he can’t help but frown as Sunjata meets his eyes, Ronin hearing him out and sighing softly. ”I don’t think it’s wrong,” he says. ”You should grow up to be just like you. And how are you supposed to know who that is, if your father is trying to make you act the way he does? Also, between you and me?” His voice lowers, like it’s a secret. ”He’s a bit of a prick.”
The Star lightens up a little to hear that the boy wants a canine companion - because Ronin, of course, knows that he gets one - but before he can comment, Jata is up and gone. ”What...? Who?” he asks, scrambling to his feet and moving after him. He reaches down to easily scoop him into his arms again, reaching out to place his hand on the doorknob.
”Then we had better get her, hadn’t we?” he says. ”You close your eyes and just picture where she should be, okay? That should get us there.”
A mean doctor would be terrible at their job. And Sunjata’s well familiar with them, having visited them quite a bit in his youth. But it’s the light at the end that keeps his head up high, the way that Ronin frowns when Sunjata admits that it’s wrong for him to be so soft, so caring, so gentle when his father was everything but.
He meets the Star’s eyes, the question lingering within. “He is mean.” Sunjata admits quietly, worrying at his lip briefly. “But he’s the Arbiter. He’s the one that makes the rules… He can’t break them because he makes them.” It seems reasonable. Not right, but the logic makes sense to the young boy’s head.
But with the sudden memory of Saartjie, the yawning pit of despair in the boy’s stomach, he bolts to the door unable to get through it. He’s scooped up, and he clings to Ronin again, looking up at a dark face and warm blue eyes, nodding his head as he tries to focus on doing just that. He shuts his eyes tight, the warmth of the cabin beginning to leach away as they step out the door and into a different lawn of sorts. One manicured, cleaned, barbed wire fencing surrounds the outside of it. And suddenly they’re at the doors, large ones that open inward to reveal the foyer.
Everything is white marble and two staircases lead up to the second floor from the main room. And where it should be a warm, loving home, everything is cold. Trophies and military badges sit along the walls, certificates and photographs of the long line of Senzaoks that had guided the country for generations.
Sunjata slips out of Ronin’s arms again, this time unafraid to reach for the Star’s hand. He guides Ronin up the marble staircase, past antique weapons and flowers that look as though they’re wilting, moving down a pale and lifeless corridor until he finds his door and Saartjie’s. He opens it, and it opens into another corridor of sorts, one side Sunjata’s room with nothing of his own, white walls and grey blankets, pale wood tables within.
He slips past it for another door, opening the pale wood until Saartjie’s room is in view. And this room, because women are precious and don’t have to go through the trials and retributions the young royal boys do, is filled with trinkets of her own. Her blankets are a vibrant royal purple, a few toys sprinkled here and there, and a mop of dark hair peeks up from beneath the blankets fast asleep. “Saar!” He calls out to her, reaching out to shake her shoulder gently to wake her. She’s three years younger than Sunjata at this point, three years old when his swim test took place, fast asleep.
i said i saw you in the water
No permission needed for power play!
Feel free to use magic/force on Sunjata, without killing him <3
Sunjata speaks with an Australian accent and has a passive magic that makes him produce a subtle scent that matches exactly to whatever those around him most desire him to smell like.
”I don’t think that’s true. I think his rules are wrong - doesn’t matter if he’s making them or breaking them. Arbiter’s just a name.” It clenches in Ronin’s chest, the way the boy is so afraid of the man who is meant to protect him from the world, the way he is so convinced of his godlike power. But there’s more to do, and he holds Sunjata close as the boy scrunches his eyes shut to concentrate.
Before he knows it, Ronin is stood before a structure as grand, he thinks, as the palace at Northwind. The blueblood in him recognises rulership, and he gently sets Jata down so he can lead them into this monster’s mouth, over stark marble floors and cold walls. It is a beautiful building, he thinks, but this is no home, and his hand closes around the boy’s as he follows in his wake.
There are a thousand things to look at, but Ronin’s eyes and ears are open for any movement or noise that might suggest there’s a fight to be had - the result is that he’s completely caught by surprise as, all of a sudden, they’re in a small child’s room. The splashes of colour, the toys - it all takes him aback. The room is so lived in compared to the rest of the house, and as the boy goes to wake his sister, as Ronin’s eyes land on her, he nearly reels back and narrowly avoids bumping into the door again.
The tiny body, the mop of dark hair - for a moment he thinks it’s her, and he has to quickly rub at his stinging eyes to stop himself from drowning in it all. Forcing his feet forward, the Star moves to stand with Sunjata, a hand on the boy’s shoulder. ”You know how to imagine the cabin again?” He says with a weak smile. ”I’ll need to carry your sister.”
