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!
The boy remains. Constricted by his sexuality there is no way for him to follow the now-naked Finn into whatever hell he's about to find himself in. But because this is a dream Remi doesn't internalize his anguish and confusion; he simply shatters. Like brackish waters or blood in the moonlight, he falls to the ground. Black and highly reflective, he bleeds into the floorboards adding his own sorrow to the stained wood. He was here too late, or perhaps too early, to be of much use. And now not unlike his shirt in the kitchen, he'd merely soiled and better left forgotten.
As Finn opens the door it will be to see a man hunched over a bed. The woman within looks as though she's been dead for a while, but he's still scowling over her as if his annoyance might keep her tethered to the world. "Y'the replacement, then?" He grunts oafishly over his shoulder, not bothering to turn around.
Like you'd get your knuckles bloody for me
Code taken from Sky who is utter perfection
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
Finn lingers in the doorway like a ghost. His eyes flicker over the scene, both taking it in and recoiling from it all at once, feeling bile burn in the back of his throat. He can’t take his eyes off it all, because if he does - if he looks down at himself - he’ll see the pattern of bruises along his thighs, his hips, his biceps and shoulders. Marks of teeth and fingerprints, the shapes of hands adorning his body where clothes should be.
”I suppose I am,” he says from somewhere deep within himself. The pulse within the walls is screaming now, beating hard enough that surely this structure, black and dripping, must collapse under the weight of its horror. But Finn steps forward because he doesn’t know how to do anything else, reaching out to shut the door behind him and seal out the darkness. Or is he sealing it in? He’s not sure, at this point.
Somewhere outside this nightmare, the Spyglass is soaked with sweat and writhing in his bed, praying for wakefulness.
Spinning abruptly, Ennuncio turns a sickly green gaze on Finn. Unlike Remi's sea-glass green, his father's eyes are an infectious emerald, like radioactive waste. Looking Finn up and down, clear disgust on his face, he spits at the prostitute's feet.
"Fuck you think I am, boy?" He asks. Naked like Finn, this man is all thick muscle hidden beneath layers of beer-gut and filth. "This a test of my loyalty? See If I'm still following all the rules, even way out here?" He grins, his teeth yellowed from lack of care and tobacco, and snarls closer, a hand reaching for Finn's throat. Ennuncio is so close now that had either man had an erection, they'd likely be touching."Well you can tell 'em I passed." He grunts, meaning to close his fingers around Finn's windpipe. "And I'll take my whore, now." His gaze dips down Finn's chest, before rising. "Yer age. Mayhap a little younger. With a cunny." The man adds with a ghoulish laugh.
Like you'd get your knuckles bloody for me
Code taken from Sky who is utter perfection
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
Finn doesn’t know what the older man is talking about and he doesn’t get a chance to ask; the stink of sweat and filth wafts over him as a chunky hand reaches out to grab at his throat, his breath stuttering and freezing in his chest. He can’t draw another, and long fingers scrabble for purchase around Ennuncio’s wrist, trying and failing to peel the fingers away.
His face starts to darken, stars creeping in at the corners of his vision, and whilst Finn has endured much at the hands of the Silk Houses, whilst he’s feared for his sanity and his future, he’s never been afraid for his life. Not until now. His struggles grow more frantic, a knee coming up to try and sharply drive it into the other man’s groin, to provide some degree of separation between them.
Finn's knee is well aimed. The larger man tumbles backwards as his hands go to his throbbing groin. A stumble-step or two has him tripping over his own feet and tipping over backwards. Flailing for purchase on whatever he can grab, his hands find only the silk of the drapes and down he goes. The back of his head cracks flatly against the floor, upon a broach as it happens. A rather nice one too. It was probably how he meant to pay for all of this. Blood slowly pools away from his slack-jawed face, glittering beautifully against the dark wood floor.
"I thought you said it wouldn't be you." A voice wonders from the darkness. No soon has he spoken, shadows pull back to reveal Remi sitting casually against the windowsill. He frowns at his father, dead and fat and mean on the ground. Glancing up towards a much more youthful Finn, this iteration of Remi is not as bothered by his nakedness. Not outwardly, anyway.
"An accident yes, but you said it wouldn't be you." His voice is free of judgement, just as Finn's had been downstairs in the kitchen.
Like you'd get your knuckles bloody for me
Code taken from Sky who is utter perfection
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
Finn doesn’t really see what happens; darkness has clouded his vision and all he’s aware of, at first, is that he’s breathing again. Gasping, in fact, collapsing back against the wall. He’s massaging his windpipe as he gazes at the suddenly dead man on the ground before him, Finn sliding to the ground and wheezing his way back to seeing clearly. ”It wasn’t me,” he manages eventually, the new voice sliding into his subconscious like something slick and dark and strangely welcome.
The sight of Remi, recognisable suddenly against the windowsill, has tears prickling at the corners of the not-Spyglass’s eyes, and he’s honestly not sure whether they’re happy or sad. ”He did this to himself,” he mutters, his voice made rough by his handling. ”He deserved it, though.”
"No?" Remi wonders. His tone is both condescending and amused somehow, but the mathcing expression on his face fades quickly. "Then who?" Whether it's a trick question, or one meant to inquire as to who the sunken and naked man on the floor is—not the dead one, but the other one. The Finn-shaped one—isn't entirely clear. Leaning forward from the shadows so that they curl around his shoulders just as they had done earlier beneath the stairs, Remi nods his head in agreement.
"He did, yes." He agrees softly. "I think I'm glad to not know what became of him. It would feel...unjust with who and what I am now, to know that he was alive somewhere." The edges of his lips curl into a sad smile as he looks over to the dead woman in the bed. Almost angelic he appears, leaning over her with shadows for wings and eyes too kind for this bedroom.
Like you'd get your knuckles bloody for me
Code taken from Sky who is utter perfection
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
The appearance of Remi as a shadow-shrouded angel brings with it an eerie sort of calm, but that does little for the state of Finn. His confidence eroded the moment he headed up those stairs, and now his fingers and his lips are numb, his throat burns and there are two dead bodies in the room with him. ”Why are you here?” he wonders, not knowing who he’s speaking to, really. All he knows is that for all of the calm, Finn doesn’t feel safe here. This is still a nightmare, perhaps one worse than the one that preceded it.
His knees pulled up now, Finn rests his forehead upon his forearms, unable to bear looking at the stillness and the blood for a moment longer. ”Why am I here?” The second question is softer, confused and sad. Finn has no magic, he has no knowledge of which is a dream and which is reality. All he knows is here and now, and the cold insanity of the situation he finds himself in.
I'm the one who belongs here, Remi almost says, but doesn't. "It was my memory. My dream, or...nightmare I suppose if you're here." Because it would be a nightmare, with Finn in the same brothel as him. As his father. Too many variables to keep track of. Too many ages and changes. Too many doors with locks that whisper to be used.
"I was...skating, before this." The Lullaby says, not answering Finn's question. His fingers fall softly on the woman's eyes, and as she does so, he'll breathe her out of existence. Unless Finn stops him of course. It is his dream after all.
"We're dying. I think that's why we're here. Why we're together." Looking across the bed where Finn's head is on his arms, the alchemist gives his head a single shake. "We might be all that's left." He whispers. '
Just us, and the ghosts.
Like you'd get your knuckles bloody for me
Code taken from Sky who is utter perfection
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
”I don’t understand,” Finn whispers, and if he listens closely he can hear his mind creaking with the effort to remain intact in the face of all of this. For all their similarities, he is not Remi Taliesin - the Spyglass is boiling alive in his own mind, and he won’t last however long it takes to find a cure. ”All that’s left?” When Finn looks up he’s no longer naked, no longer young and clean shaven.
No, Finn is fresh from Apopo now, streaked with soot and ash, bloodied and battered with eyes red-rimmed from fever. His lips are dry and he tilts his head back against the wall, his chest heaving with sobs that won’t come. ”I don’t want to die like this. Not here, not back here,” he says hoarsely, rubbing at his forehead.
"Look around. When I am not here...what do you see?" The ocean and the Tower? Faces made murky by time, old smells and sex? This place was losing all of its tenacity. To prove his point, Remi brushes a hand through the wall, which warbles and gives off a ghostly cry that he can feel in his bones.
"I thought I killed you. I was so.." Worried. Relieved.
"You know how to wake up." Remi says softly, voicing a truth he desperately wishes could go unsaid. Sitting back down on the windowsill, now one empty dead and one dead body away from Finn, the Lullaby mirrors the Spyglass's movement as he rubs at his forehead. "If you want to go, then go."
Like you'd get your knuckles bloody for me
Code taken from Sky who is utter perfection
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
”I don’t want to look around.” Finn doesn’t mean to snap - or perhaps he does. He’s lost and adrift in a madness that he can’t climb out of, made all the more infuriating by the man opposite. A man offering answers to questions he didn’t ask, sitting smug and compliant in this murderous not-reality. He merely shakes his head and swipes at his eyes at the insistence that he apparently knows how to awaken from this, that he knows how to get himself out of this predicament.
”What do you want,” he demands suddenly, the fractured storm in his blue eyes appealing for truth. ”You’re everywhere - everywhere. I can’t get away from you, you’re inside me, I—” His voice cracks away from the rest of what he wants to say; Finn feels like he’s burning, like the walls and the floor are sticky and swimming, like soup.
The man Remi is now and the boy Finn had left outside merge together for one shaky moment. Kindness radiates from him in waves that undulate without end. His scars are gone, replaced by laugh lines and boyish awkwardness and joy. Whatever mystique he has been forced to bear is gone as well. There is positively nothing special about him; just a man with a penchant for alchemy who can slide into the skin of a rather unremarkable bird when he chooses.
But as he opens his mouth to answer Finn's question it all falls away. Tarnished and tired, Remi closes his mouth before he can say anything. He is like his old self in that what he wants is forbidden and confusing, and he knows for his own sanity and survival he must hide it. So he does. Even mad and weary and in this dark wonderland with Finn, he hides it.
"Sweet dreams, Finn." Remi whispers with a weighty sadness he can't give a name to. Or won't, as it happens. He won't be back. He'll not subject this man to his merciless quest to identify whatever it is he thinks he's found in Finn.
On the bed is a white feather and a knife, and this time it is Remi's turn to take both before he disappears.
~FINiwahahhh
Like you'd get your knuckles bloody for me
Code taken from Sky who is utter perfection
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
