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!
Returning from the Climb seemed far easier than trekking out towards it, even with the winding tunnels, even with trudging through Halo. Perhaps it was the fact that they hadn't detoured this time, that they'd come straight home, instead of stepping into the grounds, or perhaps it was just sickness, washing away any struggles they may have stumbled over.
Nate has been... strange, in a way, since they've come home. Quieter, thoughtful, and sinking deeper into the embrace of delusions, swaddled up tightly and spoon-fed delusions until there's nothing else. It's late now, dark and quiet, and as much as he wants to be upstairs, wants to be in bed with his husband, he can't manage it, can't force that stillness. He won't leave the boxing ring, not again, but he will be restless within it.
At the moment, he's pacing around the edges of the large main floor, shuttering windows and locking them, double, triple checking before he moves onto the next. Voices whisper from just outside, tempting him, trying to trick him into the dark, and Nate won't stand for it, can't. He refuses. Pemota drifts in a lazy circle around him, her light enough to keep him safe, barely, but the danger is lurking in every corner, and he has to finish this.
The door is overlooked, for whatever reason, less important than the windows. Moonlight floods in through it, making any creeping shadows obvious. Nothing will sneak up on him through the door.
There’s a cry in the dark; the truth is that it’s the happy screech of a companion announcing their arrival to her friends who live there, Haai and most recently, the cool little starwhale. Loki trumpets again, trilling into the air as she does little acrobatic swoops outside, her bonded looking far worse for the wear. She is concerned, of course, but the Wraith’s state is becoming de rigeur and Loki is young and adaptable.
Wessex looks around with a slightly confused expression. She recognizes the Slagveld but she can’t imagine why they’re here. Shouldn’t she be looking for the metal? Or leading the Grounds. Well, there must be a reason, because she rarely does anything without a reason, so… maybe Nate or Sunjata or Magrethe know.
The light, wherever it is, hits her back and makes her a silhouette, her shadow stretching before her to mingle with the other shadows flooding through the door. Loki, too, is little more than a more animated dark shape.
There’s a sudden shriek, Nate stilling completely, standing in the relative safety of a corner with the windows closed tightly, too dark for the shadows to reach him here. Pemota answers the call with a coo, less fierce than he would have hoped, and drifts away from him, her touch in his mind soothing, safe. She recognizes this sound, is happy to swirl around Loki, welcoming the dragonling.
Though he wants to smile at his companion, this friend she’s found, Nate’s distracted but a shape at the door, a shadow. The newest shadow is strange for its stillness, for the sharp relief of its shape. Nate isn’t sure if he should cower or attack, this beast deeper and darker than the rest.
With nothing available to him but his own hands, Nate steels himself, and begins to creep forward. It feels as if he’s wading through each other shade, their digging claws and barbed tongues ignored for the threat of their leader. It’s only at the last second, when he’s about to pounce, to strike, that the shape grows clear, that he throws himself back so suddenly he topples onto his ass. ”Wessex?” The confused whine comes from the ground.
Loki returns Pemota’s coo with a chirp, swirling around the starwhale in companion-conversation. Wessex’s affection for Nate transfers through their bond and the dragon recognizes the two as family, much in the way she thinks of Haai and Sunjata.
Something creeps out of the shadows towards her; for the first time in the sickness, the Wraith feels invincible, delusions of grandeur replacing feelings of weakness and despair coursing through her only a day or so before. She is the keeper of shadows, the commander of dark entities - this shape that creeps is hers to manipulate - this lowly thing on the ground. She raises her hand to symbolically take control (Goddess only knows what she thinks she’ll do), until the thing whines and knows her name.
Wessex?
Immediate confusion strikes. Is this not a shadow? It is… not. It is… someone she knows. “... Nate?” The name sounds right. Even if it doesn’t match the shape.
Pemota is immediately, utterly smitten with Loki, and will be every time she sees the dragonling, her master. They feel like family, and perhaps that's the catalyst for Nate's sudden change of heart, the burst of warmth in the back of his mind. Somewhere in a corner of the boxing ring, Pemota rises above Loki, showering stars and static down onto the dragonling.
Nate is dazed for a moment, as he falls, stays sitting still on the ground. Some part of him screams, worried about the shadows, but the impact seems to have knocked something loose, nothing happening behind his eyes until a hand rises in his face, focuses the world around him again. Until recognition clicks, so suddenly he nearly gasps, that he does gasp, when Wessex says his name back.
"Wessex!" At once, Nate rises, some of the worry bleeding away from him. He doesn't step into the light bleeding through the door, doesn't trust his own shadow at the moment, but he does step closer, a crooked grin on his lips. "Why are you here?" He asks, head cocking this way and that, one eye still scrutinizing the demi-god.
Her name is a trigger, a propulsion. The shadow darts into the light and reveals the familiar blonde woman - the same as she’s always been - if worse for the wear. Her eyes are brighter than usual, reflecting the overheating of their systems, the constant check-in → something is wrong → forget exhausting her in all the ways one can be exhausted. But she is hear, she is hear to - hug? Do they hug?
Sick Wessex hugs, apparently. She opens her arms in the most awkward invitation ever, and if he accepts, pats him on the back and then, oddly again on the head.
“I have to…” What was it again?
“Tell you something?” Yes, it’s still a question. Wessed peers around the taller man into the light of the Slagveld, where Loki has already gone (it’s a familiar playground, after all). “Is it safe in there?” Half for her, half for him. He has to be safe. She has to make sure.
The invitation to hug is surprising, but tantalizing enough that Nate does step forward, his own arms wrapping around Wessex and squeezing tight, an amused him rumbling through him as his back and shoulder are patted in turn. The appropriate time to step back comes, and goes, Nate not seeming to realize he has to step away until Wessex speaks.
”Tell me something?” That’s funny. He could swear there’s something he’d meant to tell Wessex as well, something... maybe not important, but perhaps relevant. The best way he can find to voice the thought is a rather eloquent snort of ”Tell you something,” his voice nasally and sharp.
Nate turns quickly, his eye darting along the perimeters of the Slagveld, moving from window to window, before he turns back to face the moon washed figure and nods. ”The corner there, beside the stairs. There’s safest.” One arm rises to point out where he means, while the other moves around Wessex, to close and lock the door, cutting off the last shard of outside light.
Following with her eyes where Nate points, she nods. There, then. That’s where they’ll talk. While he locks the door behind them, she navigates her way across the Slagveld to the designated “safe spot.” On the way over she scans every inch she can see and so far - he’s right. Seems safe.
She puts her back to the corner and crouches down so that she’s half sitting and half squatting. Waiting until Nate joins her, she peers out at the not-darkness, trying to recall what she was going to tell her brother. “I’ve done some things, I think. Did the Queen thing, did the exploring thing,” she ticks them off on her fingers without explanation, “tried to get the metal…” at this, she hangs her head and sighs.
Wessex takes the prime spot against the wall, but Nate trusts her enough, trusts that she’s who he thinks she is, who she thinks she is. They’re shrouded in darkness in this corner, but instead of paranoia, it brings a kind of comfort, the illusion of security. The ascended matriarch won’t let anything creep up on him, on them.
Instead of focusing out on the room, Nate locks his eye on Wessex. ”Thats a lot of things.” It’s a compliment, as much as it’s nothing at all. ”Queen thing?” It’s the one thing he has the chance to actually question, before she talks about the metal, and Nate’s face twists into a mask of rage.
”Loren.” Teeth gnash around the name, as if his anger was anything but impotent. ”We tried, talked to Her, then to him,” more snarling, more gnashing, ”but... no metal.” Nate doesn’t even have some small victory to fall back on, defeat slumping his shoulders.
“Mhmmmmm,” Wessex hums, keeping an eye on the shadows behind Nate. He’s right about at least one thing - she wouldn’t let anything happen to him or Pemota. He’s got more guardian angels than he might know what to do with, but that says an awful lot about him (or does it say more to his protectors?), doesn’t it? “The Queen… thing.” She mimes putting a crown on her head. “Evie’s gone.” No idea where, but that left a hole and someone had to step up. “And Oliver isn’t a king,” she adds, with a little chuckle and a shake of her head.
No, he’s just a skinny boy.
“No metal,” she parrots back, making a face. “It’s okay, we’ll get it eventually.” That, at least, she fervently believes. The Voice won’t let them die. Even if she’s scared of them like this, she won’t let her children die. She won’t, she -
“Did you know Loren’s a lion? We went to a waterfall and it was terrible with all the water there, but he was a big lion and I almost left him there, but -” she ends up shrugging, gaze falling to the floor, where she’s taken with some dust. “Cats really hate water.” It is known.
”Oh, well.” Nate blinks owlishly, eyelid managing to flutter over his ruined eye in a somewhat gruesome gesture of surprise. ”Congratulations, your majesty.” It’s impossible to tell if he’s teasing or being srerious with the title, as things are probably better for that fact. ”I would uh, offer you a drink, but,” his head wobbles as he turns to glare at the bar, brows pulled together tightly, ”I don’t trust the spirits at the moment.”
They are an echo chamber of disappointment, sick animals afraid of everything they don’t understand. ”Eventually. Everything’s eventual.” One bright blue eye swivels, finds Wessex’s face in the dark and focuses on it, searching for an answer, for reassurance in the matriarchs face.
The subject change is appreciated, even if it is one of Nate’s least favourite subjects. ”I thought Loren was water?” He couldn’t be a cat and water at the same time, could he? ”I... stole it from him once.” No small amount of sheepishness accompanies the words, Nate shrinking down between his shoulders, fangs worrying his lip.
“He’s a dick is what he is,” Wessex suddenly snorts, her on again-off again disdain for the not-Launceleyn suddenly flaring up. Be it lion-dick or water-dick, it didn’t really matter, did it? They couldn’t make him do anything, and therein lay the problem. Stubbornness gets you nowhere, and she would know, wouldn’t she?
Her eyes continue to occasionally swing back and forth behind them, watching the area behind Nate dutifully and then occasionally at their playing companions. Nate’s worried look doesn’t go unnoticed, she just… doesn’t fully register it for a while. “What’s wrong?” the Wraith asked, as if it could be pared down into a simple explanation that he could easily get out. “Is it the Fae?” Because that is indeed worrisome and that is on her mind. A lot.
An uncontrolled bark of laughter leaves Nate, the sentiment about the summoner one that's been simmering, threatening to boil over since their conversation, though now that the chance to vent has come up, he's silent, mind blank. Ain't that just the way.
"The... the fae?" Is that what had shadows creeping in his chest, what dragged claws down the inside of his head until he was tense and paranoid and utterly exhausted? "I don't... yes, er, maybe? The fire." A soft trill echoes from Pemota, somewhere deeper in the ring, stopping off the spiral before it can really get going, Nate blinking once, twice, three times, before tipping his head up to find Wessex's face again.
Except, he doesn't really seem to see her, the face he sees on the edge of familiarity, the sense throbbing in the back of his mind like a missing tooth, a hole he can't seem to keep his tongue away from. "You... You should stay." Until he can figure out who she is. "Until it's safe to go."
It's a cycle that will repeat, he's sure, for as long as Wessex stays, as long as the dark shrouds the bodies and the sickness shrouds their thoughts.
