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!
I will not be told where to stand
I will not be told what to say
Morgan sat behind her desk with her face more serious than it even was usually, stormy eyes watching the door and waiting for her guest. After the last 'meeting' in the Hall had occurred she had decided to inform Loren of his dismissal whenever she last saw him...but then he had actually gone to the Voice, had given her the metal and enabled the cure for all who needed it. It had made her reconsider.
Amalia was still very much in her bad books, but Amalia wasn't on her council. One thing was for sure: her and Loren needed to have a talk. While Morgan wasn't often in the business of delivering hefty reprimands, trying to be forgiving when she had the chance to be, this situation would irk her if she did not strongly discuss it with Loren.
Having asked her guards to find him in the Citadel if he reappeared, they were to (gently) guide him to the Council Hall for a meeting with her. She'd had word of his arrival only ten minutes before and had spent the time thinking of what to say, hands folded before her and her foot tapping against the floor the only sign of anything other than calm.
Loren had reappeared. The guards had found him in the Kraai and escorted him to the Council Hall. Although he'd darkened his hair with some dirt and worn a hooded cloak, it hadn't been enough of a disguise to prevent him from being recognized.
Still, he'd had a bit of time to collect some of his things. They were in a bag he'd slung over his back. Astra wasn't with him today, so he entered into the Warden's chambers alone. Well, plus the guards.
Taking a few steps into her office he stopped. Standing there, he took in her posture, her tapping foot. Pressing his lips together, he met her gaze. Hitching his pack further up, he remained quiet, not planning to speak until she did.
I will not be told where to stand
I will not be told what to say
As Loren entered Morgan's eyes glazed over him to the door, nodding to the guard that had let him in to shut it. She let silence fall between them for a moment, knowing how to let tension build when it had to, then she stood, turning to look out of the window as she formulated the words in her head. "Loren. I am going to be very direct to you, because I feel you deserve that much." Hopefully he wasn't easily offended.
Turning back to face him Morgan walked around her desk and sat on the front, facing her healer. "Your position in my council is tenuous after your conduct over the last few days. You will have a chance to defend yourself, but I wish to speak first." She held up a hand to pre-suppose any objections, hoping he'd let her speak before jumping in.
"When you receive something from a God, especially when there is such an emergency going on as this illness, I expect my council members to tell me things like this. If you had, we could have come to the conclusion it would cure people before we did and alleviated suffering." While her council members did not have to share their entire lives with her, Morgan expected to be kept informed of deity-related developments that might effect all of them. "That you hid this from me for so long worries me. You were well after drinking the water from the springs, yet did not mention it to me then. Do you not trust me, Loren?"
She wasn't really asking, and kept speaking. "Then when I came to confront you about this, I find you seriously discussing with Amalia the possibility of giving away this item to the Old Gods, effectively ensuring that the Ascended would not be cured - or at least, that it would be very unlikely. Halo and it's government does not discriminate against the Ascended; I made the mistake of judging first before understanding and I am trying my best to repair our relationship. This will not help, if it comes out you considered her way." Morgan had so far tried to avoid making it personal, but she couldn't help saying: "Your own brother may have been among those doomed to be without a cure."
That was the end of all her complaints, and her postured shifted to something a little more casual as she looked away for a moment, letting out the harshness of her voice with a sigh. "All of that said, I am not telling you that you are off the council. I can tell you are passionate about your work and you have saved me with your skills. You did finally go to the Voice and give the metal to her, something you did not have to do." Shifting her weight, Morgan looked up to Loren. "So. All of this to say: if you agree to be from this point on transparent with me, to discuss things with at least your other council members and to keep in mind that we wish to aid the Ascended...then I will welcome you back, willingly forgetting this entire incident. If not...then you are not banned from living in Halo, but you are no longer a member of her government."
The silence didn't bother Loren in the slightest, nor did he feel the tension Morgan was so obviously trying to build. Instead he just looked tired. He stood there in front of her, quiet and unmoving. Although the muscles in his cheek clenched as he gritted his teeth from time to time, and he shifted his weight from side to side occasionally, those were the only outward signs of his thoughts and feelings.
His eyes tracked her as she walked and spoke. When she finished, he didn't respond right away. Sliding his hands along the straps of his pack, he adjusted it higher. "Alright. Is that all?" He pressed his lips together, meeting her gaze directly.
I will not be told where to stand
I will not be told what to say
Morgan was expecting Loren to give explanations, argue, accept but debate...anything other than what he did, which was barely a response at all. Not sure if she ought to be offended or impressed at how little he seemed to care, she stood up from her desk and paused for a moment to think, then nodded. "Yes, that's all. Have you made a decision?"
It seemed like he had, and she wanted to know what it was before he left, which it seemed like he was getting ready to do. If he didn't care too much about the position, it was best he no longer filled it; she wanted her council to be active and passionate about how they could serve the Citadel and work as a team with their Warden and fellow council members.
Shrugging at Morgan's question, Loren shook his head. "No, I haven't. I have to think about it." His nostrils flared. "Because you were direct with me, I'll be direct with you: I have to decide if I can trust you again as well." Gripping the straps of his pack so tightly his knuckles went white, he narrowed his eyes at her.
For a moment he fell silent, chewing his lower lip. Then he sighed. "Can I ask you why you didn't come to speak to me about the metal in private?" Taking a deep breath, he finally looked away from her. He studied the papers on her desk, though his eyes weren't actually taking them in. He was just looking for something to distract himself.
However, his gaze snapped back to her. "Also, for the record, I have absolutely no quarrel with the Ascended and I was never intending to turn the metal over to the old gods."
I will not be told where to stand
I will not be told what to say
Morgan was trying to not show emotion during this exchange, had for the most part so far found it was easier to slip into the role of hard leader and distance herself from it. However, hearing that Loren would have trouble trusting her...her eyebrows shot up in incredulous surprise, her hand resting on her hip as she moved her weight over to the side and watched him speak.
"You lost the chance at a calm, private discussion when you kept it hidden for so long. By the time I had found out about it, Remi had already arrived. There were people suffering actively every minute longer spent debating it, and I had that day learnt that your item held a cure, after my meeting with Remi. Had you come to me earlier, we could have discussed it in private." The discussion between the five of them had not gone ideally, but it had happened in the first place because of Loren's hesitation to act earlier.
She nodded at his last statement, shrugging. "It seemed to me like you were entertaining Amalia's idea of not helping them. Perhaps that was not the case; I did, admittedly, not have all the context."
Gritting his teeth at Morgan's response, Loren raised his eyebrows at her. "There wasn't time. I found out the day before you came to speak to me that, according to the Voice the metal was a cure. This was communicated to me through Nate, who was sick, and Sunjata, who is an incredibly unreliable interpreter of the gods' will, so I was skeptical of their message." Spreading his hands a bit, he sighed, shaking his head.
He took a deep breath, forcing his shoulders to relax as he did. "Before that, I had repeated assurances directly from multiple gods that the metal would not lead to a cure." Hands clenching and unclenching, he added, "I had also discovered another potential cure. So, what I told Sunjata was that I wanted to try the cure that didn't involve gods before trying the one that did. If it didn't work, I was always intending to bring the metal to the Voice." Biting his lip, he felt his foot tapping until he stilled it.
Pausing, he studied her features. "And yes, I did not approach you about the metal as soon as I recovered, but I was very much under the impression that while it had been part of spreading the illness, it was nothing more than a chunk of metal at that point." He crossed his arms and jutted out his chin.
I will not be told where to stand
I will not be told what to say
"How is it then that I received letters from both Sunjata and Remi about this artifact before then? How did they know before you, if you had it in your possession?" Morgan asked, still feeling that there was something about the story that just didn't add up; whether it was Loren's side of things she wasn't sure, but he certainly seemed to contradict himself a lot. "And if you were so sure it was just a piece of metal, why ask the Gods about it at all?"
Sitting back on the desk, she folded her arms. Right now she wasn't going to give him apologies, not when the situation was still so unclear. "What was this other cure? I haven't heard of a solution that does not involve the Gods." The lilies which grew around Frey's Breath were quite obviously related to the Old Gods, in her mind. There was also the matter of how much time his cure would have needed: the matter was urgent, and they did not have time to waste.
Shrugging, Loren rubbed his eyes. It ended with him pinching the bridge of his nose. "I don't know, okay? All I know is that the day after Sunjata and Nate came to talk to me you all showed up at my office." Or maybe two days, but it definitely hadn't been enough time for him to reach out to the Warden. Because OOC and IC timelines got really tangled. The messengers must've been sprinting back and forth across the Tundra or something. He groaned in the back of his throat.
"As for the metal, I wasn't sure. That's why I went to Frey. I figured if anyone knew what the metal was, it was the herald of nature, and they told me it was nothing but a bauble at that point." Sighing, he felt his free hand twitching as his anxiety found an outlet.
Lowering his hand, his brow furrowed and his mouth parted as he stared at Morgan. "The...the lilies. They don't involve the gods directly intervening." He blinked, still a little slack-jawed at her question.
Then he took a deep breath. Meeting her gaze, he clasped his hands behind his back. "Look, I messed up, okay? Both by not telling you about the metal and by not bringing the metal to the Voice when there was even a hint that it might cure the Ascended. I'm sorry."
Looking down, he scuffed at the floor a bit. "But...it was one mistake. A big one, but still...one mistake." Lifting his his head again, he pressed his lips together. "And the fact that you...threw me under the wagon," buses not being a thing in Caido, "after one mistake that...it hurts." He'd served as Grand Healer, with her and under her, for a year and change, and thought he'd earned at least a little loyalty and the benefit of the doubt.
Pausing, he let a few moments pass before he spoke again. "So I can promise to be completely transparent with you moving forward. But in return I need you to promise that next time you have doubts about me, you come talk to me in private and give me a chance to explain. And if you still disagree with me after we've spoken, I will defer to your judgment." He clenched his jaw, though at least he didn't shift.
Thankfully, she couldn't see how tightly he was clutching his fingers behind his back. At least until Astra pressed against the back of his legs and he patted her instead.
I will not be told where to stand
I will not be told what to say
There were many, many moving parts to this story. Confusing times, names; it was clear that not everyone knew what had happened when and to who, not everyone knew everything they thought they did...it was all quite exhausting and Morgan found as she listened to Loren speak that while she was glad to finally hear him admit he'd made a mistake (that was one thing she was sure of), it was becoming harder to be as clearly mad as she had been before.
"The lilies are still surely connected to the Old Gods, though. And we've already seen they don't help the Ascended, neither does the water from the spring." Surely it was logical to conclude that anything further down that path would not aid those despised by the Old Gods.
She raised an eyebrow to hear she'd 'throw him under the wagon'. "You have not been punished, Loren. I intervened when I felt there were lives at stake if we did not act quickly." As far as Morgan was concerned, she had acted entirely fairly, and Loren asking that she come to him in the future, when she had not known about this issue until the worst moment...it certainly irked her, but she gritted her teeth.
Loren was admittedly a good healer and she couldn't afford to alienate people willing to work with her, not with the uncertainty surrounding the world at the moment. "...Very well. We will continue from this point then, and you retain your position. I..." She sighed, letting go of some of the tension in her shoulders. "I am proud that you did finally take it to the Voice. It is a great relief to see people cured for good, if they took it."
Sighing, Loren rubbed his temples. "Because the cure would come from Tanau and Rae." Dropping his hands, he stared at Morgan. "The seasonal spirits are fine with the Ascended and by the Voice's own admission Rae is indifferent to them." He shrugged.
Frowning, he sighed. "I'm not saying you were wrong to intervene." Biting his lip, he shook his head "But you reprimanded me in front of Remi, Ronin, and Amalia," he pointed out. Taking a deep breath, he added, "And when Remi and Ronin threatened me after I agreed to take the metal to the Voice you did nothing." He looked down, staring at the floor by his feet.
Nodding at her first comment, he glanced up. "Thank you." When she mentioned she was proud of him though, he rocked back on his heels. "Nothing to be proud of. And we should keep seeking out lilies for everyone else."
Hesitating, he glanced aside again. "In the interest of honesty, I'd like to take a few days off to clear my head." He cleared his throat, trying not to look at her.
I will not be told where to stand
I will not be told what to say
Morgan did not know much of the seasonal Gods and could not prove Loren wrong (or right) on those matters, so she nodded a consensus. When it came to how she handled herself and her council though, that was a different matter, one she was quite the expert on.
"I did not think Remi was actually going to hurt you. You held the secret of where the metal was." She had no idea if sentiment played any part in their relationship, but it had seemed they knew each other, as well; Remi might well have had other attachments. "That said, perhaps I should have stopped him. I was not intending to allow any actual harm to come to you, I assure you. No one should be hurt unnecessarily within this Citadel." And she meant that: even Neron had escaped without any physical punishment.
That he immediately asked for some time off...well, it certainly didn't endear him to her further, but Morgan was tired of arguing and simply sighed and nodded. "Very well. But after these days, you will be returning to your position?"
Mouth parting slightly, Loren sighed at Morgan's comment about Remi. "He was. He hates me. Him and Ronin. I...thought I told you that. If not, I'm sorry, I should've mentioned it sooner." The healer shook his head. "Regardless, Amalia told me he and Ronin were going to attack me. Why do you think Remi summoned the...ghost manticore thing?" Frowning, his brow furrowed as he tried to remember what, exactly, the Lullaby had done.
Nodding at her agreement, he smiled though it failed to reach his eyes. "Yes, I will." He cleared his throat. "Thank you. I appreciate it, and your forgiveness and understanding." With that, he would turn to go, shifting to move his pack to a more comfortable position once more.
