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’ll apologise to the girl later. The one who shared a ride on his nimbus, the one who tended to the man who looks just like Remi. Ronin will apologise and explain, but he needs to take care of his husband first. So he’s gotten Remi home, he’s carried him into the cool, running water of their shower, and he’s carefully washed him from head to toe. In an act not unlike the one taking place in a tower somewhere in another city, Ronin cleans the ash, the soot and the blood from the Lullaby, before wrapping him up in a towel and bundling him into bed.
Now Sugar is dutifully keeping a bowl of ice cream cold for breakfast (obviously), and the Star has folded a cold, damp cloth to rest it over Remi’s forehead. He’s also cleared their room of anything that might be remotely dangerous, reducing the possibilities of his husband trying to light flowerpots with knives. ”Last time I fall asleep first, he says softly.
Thankfully Remi has stayed quite unconscious this entire time. Whether lost in fever-dreams or held asleep by his own treacherous magic he cannot say. All he knows is that there are ghosts with blue eyes calling his name. He tries to follow their calls as he once followed lantern-light into the Woods, but every step he takes brings with it the hollow sound of breaking bones.
Where has the rib bone gone? The one with which he was going to fashion himself a new friend? The one he was going to keep secret and hidden until it was restored and resplendent? He shivers, the wings sprouting from his back hold no muscle or feathers; they're merely skeletal fingers that stretch outwards, longingly. Suddenly heat screams from beneath his feet and the ground heaves mightily. He has been pushed. Betrayed. He has been—
—saved.
"FINN." Sitting bolt upright in bed, wings very much feathered and muscled shoot from his sides knocking aside anything in their path. The word is a scream and the Lullaby's eyes are wide with panic and confusion.
But there's a light up in the attic and i swear it's calling me
Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
Ronin is forced to stumble back as Remi lurches up, Sugar taking flight with the bowl of ice cream in her talons (and there is no protector as fierce as the reptile for sweet treats). Still, everything else is knocked asunder; the side table Ronin has set up, the jug of water - which thankfully doesn’t shatter - and any other tinctures and remedies that he’s brought up to try and help Remi’s fever.
Even so, at the Lullaby’s cry Ronin is straight onto the bed, grasping his husband by the shoulders and filling his vision with the sight of him. ”Not Finn. It’s me, just me. We’re at home, you’re safe. Just nightmares, Remi,” he whispers, smoothing his hair back from his face. ”Take your time. It’s okay.”
Remi's nostrils flare repeatedly with every hastily sipped breath. He doesn't see Ronin at first long lashes over blue eyes, stubble by lips which are far too close, hands on his shoulders. It's all reminiscent of something else. Someone else, and the image grabs the Lullaby by the back of his eyes and forces him not to see what's right in front of him.
"I think I.." Lied to him? Saved him? Gods Remi doesn't know. He doesn't think he lied, but surely the memories in his mind couldn't be the truth. He remembers reaching into the man's chest, feeling his heart softly thudding in his palm. He was going to...to pull it out? No; he was going to beat it. Was going to keep it going on the right rhythm for Finn, for...ever, if that's what it took. Only..he had fallen, and his hands are empty now, and, "...Ronin I think I might have killed someone." He whispers, suddenly seeing very clearly his husband before him.
Looking down at his trembling hands, he's surprised to find them clean. That in itself is more alarming: they should be covered in blood.
But there's a light up in the attic and i swear it's calling me
Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
”Hey, hey... Slow down.” Ronin’s voice is soft, and he watches the panic and fear and fever wash over Remi in stages, wishing he could just reach in and smooth it all away. Still, it would be a lie to say that this wasn’t in some way preferable to the confusion and whimsy that he’d been dealing with for the past few days, even if what the Lullaby has to say is hardly encouraging. ”What...? Who?” he whispers, brow furrowing as he sits back a bit.
He reaches over Remi’s shoulder to stroke down ruffled feathers, trying subconsciously to slow the heartbeat on his finger to one that more closely matches his own - not that he’s capable of such magic. ”I found you out on Apopo with that man from the Order - the Spyglass, I think he’s called. He was unconscious as well, and one of his people took him away.” He assumes, anyway. ”What do you think happened...?”
09-07-2020, 08:01 PM (This post was last modified: 09-07-2020, 08:38 PM by Remi.)
REMI
the lullaby
I don't know who I am, & I don't know who I'll be
"Finn." Remi snaps irritably, his mind moving a thousand miles a minute. He can feel his feathers being plucked out, can feel the lava burning away his consciousness until there's only those damned blue eyes, and the snapping of rib-bones.
Flinching as his feathers are touched, Remi shoots the Star an accusatory stare before seeming to find himself more properly in the here and now, and calming slightly. Not entirely sure how time works anymore, Remi just shakes his head and runs a rough hand over his eyes. "We...were trying to...to fix something. I had something he wanted. I'd..taken it I think." Or did he give it to me? "And he wanted it back. I said he had to wait until we were at the top, but he..." Wouldn't listen? Listen too well? "..pushed me, and we fell. Only...gods Ronin, I remember cutting him open." Green eyes suddenly sharp and dark focus on the Star as he sips a quick and unsteady breath of air. "I remember reaching between his ribs...I remember the beat of his heart..."
But if that was true...Ronin wouldn't have described Finn as just being unconciousness. "What do you think happened?" He asks, repeating the huntsman's question back to him.
But there's a light up in the attic and i swear it's calling me
Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
”Okay. Okay... Finn,” Ronin repeats, his hands flinching away from the other man as he becomes so irritated, doing his best to remember Remi’s state and taking in a slow and deep breath to centre himself. He hears the other man out, frowning and nibbling at the inside of his cheek, shaking his head softly. ”You both looked a little more worse for wear... covered in ash and cuts and bruises,” he says slowly. ”I admit I didn’t give him much of a look - I was there for you. But there was nowhere near enough blood to look like you’d done anything like that.”
None on his hands, clothes, the ground... ”It looked as though the two of you tried to climb up the side of Apopo together, but passed out along the way,” he says, rubbing at the back of his head and letting out a deep sigh. ”Are you sure you didn’t have a nightmare...? Like when I...” When I found you, he wants to say, but he has no idea if the Lullaby will even remember it.
The look the Lullaby gives the Star then is one of distrust. It isn't a look he's ever given Ronin, not even in the depths of hell that they've been through. But his fever has twisted his sense of self, and with it his sense of those around him. "It wasn't a nightmare." Remi snaps, his wings snarling back against his skin and disappearing, leaving the Lullaby sulkily staring down at the blankets between them.
"It didn't feel like a nightmare." He adds plaintively. "Where is he now? I have to...I need to see..to make sure.." His mind is grasping at straws and in so doing can't even form a complete sentence. But Remi quite clearly knows that there's something important that happened. Something only Finn might understand.
But there's a light up in the attic and i swear it's calling me
Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
The look hits Ronin harder than a slap to the face, and the Star furrows his brow and stares down at his hands to get away from it. ”Well, you managed to do a very clean job, then,” he mutters, rising to his feet and moving to collect the things that have been knocked off the table, stacking them haphazardly back where they belong. ”Your clothes are still in the bathroom if you’d like to check them.”
Straightening up, he rakes a hand through his hair, already too warm under the baking LongHeat sun that heats up their walls. ”I think he will be back where he belongs, by now. StormBreak, or whatever. I can... wait, I guess, until the girl who took him with her comes back. If she does. I’ll try and find out more for you.”
That doesn't help at all. Remi might very well have done a neat job of things. It's just Ludo-given purpose now, isn't it? To take life as carefully and kindly as he can? That there was no blood..that Finn only looked unconscious? It means nothing.
It might mean everything.
Remi watches Ronin get up and leave with a distracted sort of stare, his eyes falling back to the place where the hunter once was as if confused by the sudden lack of him. 'We'll go to him." Remi decides confidently, moving as if to get off the bed. "You said we would anyway. And he...he turns up, almost anytime. He'll be here. If I go out, he'll be there, and then we can...go to Stormbreak." The words are an indication of the agitated state of the Lullaby's mind. If Finn was outside, there'd be no need to go to Stormbreak. If he was outside, then he wasn't dead.
But there's a light up in the attic and i swear it's calling me
Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
”Don’t— please.” Ronin holds up a hand as if to try to stop the other man from getting up and out of bed, for all the good it would do. ”We have no way of getting to StormBreak. We don’t know where it is. Those people who came to speak to us are the only ones who know more, and they know we are here. So we wait for them.” It’s the Star’s turn to sound stern, Ronin suddenly seeming a lot more tired and ragged than he’s letting on.
Maybe it’s because he spends his sleep living another life in his dreams. Maybe it’s because he can’t remember the last time he saw Remi eat or drink, and however good he might be at surviving on nothing, even he isn’t invincible. Tell-tale shadows are starting to show beneath his eyes, and there’s a string of fatigue that runs through him that’s beginning to tighten - elsewhere in the house, his projection is still taking care of everything else.
"So we wait?" The Lullaby demands, sounding delirious and exhausted. The light that sparks in his gaze with righteous anger quickly flickers out, leaving him only looking dull and lost. "When did you stop caring?" He demands accusingly, the words offering absolutely no context for the haughty tone that accompanies them. In Remi's mind he has very probably nearly killed a man, and all Ronin wants to do is sit and wait. It's a very un-Ronin response. Perhaps the huntsman is ill too. Perhaps he needs to be cleansed.
Remi kicks out a leg from underneath him as if testing the invisible waters surrounding the bed. "I have his soul Ronin. I can't wait."
But there's a light up in the attic and i swear it's calling me
Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
Ronin can taste copper with how hard he’s biting his cheek, and he exhales a trembling breath that barely keeps his frustration in check. Remi doesn’t deserve any of this, he needs patience and care and all the things Ronin is usually good at giving him, but as he’s accused of not giving a damn, the Star feels his breath stutter in his chest. ”What did you say?” he whispers, eyes narrowing.
”Yes, you can wait. And you can stay there, and quit getting up and wandering the fuck everywhere, so I know that you’re safe and not dead or killing people. You underst—”
Ronin is cut off by the ceramic clonk of Sugar dropping an (empty) bowl of ice cream directly on top of Remi, the reptile having taken it upon herself to eat while the two men argued. The betrayal earns a thoroughly shocked glare from Ronin, who wonders when the fuck she got so ballsy. ”Are you alright?” he asks Remi.
"You never were a good listener." The Lullaby shoots back through teeth that are now pointed and as sharp as his temper. Before Remi can reply to his husband's demands of him, there's a bowl dropped onto his head. It clangs something in his skull causing his ears to ring and the room to spin.
Rather than answering his husband, Remi lunges with his fingers outstretched. He falls onto his face however, having forgotten to shift. With a snarl at the headboard which has split his lip open, the Lullaby turns round, eyeing the pale dragon with a hostile sneer. Trying again, this time Remi's body shrinks down as it was probably meant to do the first time. The piercing trill he offers Sugar is loud and ear-splitting in the small space. Already airborne, the hawk unsteadily circles with his talons aimed for the dragon's spine. He whistles something bright and antagonistic as he gives chase, apparently meaning for Sugar to pay with her life for her indiscretion.
But there's a light up in the attic and i swear it's calling me
Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
