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 one thing that could be said for certain about the last season, with it's illnesses, alliances, shifts in power and exploration of new lands, was that it had been hectic. Morgan's plans for the Citadel had been considerably delayed as her attention had been split elsewhere and the smaller working cogs of the city, talking to merchants or settling conflicts between fighting families, had stacked up into a lot of work going often long into the evening.
Perhaps it was irresponsible, but she'd decided to take just one evening off. Working from dawn til dusk, she stretched at her desk and stood, going not to where she might usually to take suggestions from the public but out the door and to the Kraai, where she'd asked Deimos if he might like to meet her for a drink. The General was a good man, surprisingly fun once she had gotten to know him, and as her newest council member, she wanted to get to know him.
Ordering an ale from the bar (and probably exchanging a few sniping words with Neron before he took on other customers) she went to sit at her favourite place by the fire, even Longheat in Halo cold enough that it's benefits could be well felt. Waiting for Deimos she closed her eyes and enjoyed its heat, the quiet pop and crackle contrasted to the hum of conversation in the air.
Today had been a better day; not restless, not plunged headlong into delirious thoughts or haunting refrains from the corner of his eyes, not shackled with the scraping, gnawing feeling of the sickness making a return. The beast had wandered along outskirts, attempting to stake memories, routines, and patterns into this new life, transferring methods he’d employed within the Grounds, or even along the Basin, into structure, regimen. There were alterations to be made, there were plans to unfurl, there were tactics to deploy – but it would come with time. He could instill patience again, grant and give himself a chance to recover from the spurning and weight of grief, the inflections of change, and then everything else spiraling around, against, or upon it.
The notion of relaxation, of repose, however, had always been such a foreign concept. He’d had it before, with friends, with family, with loved ones, but as the losses grew, as the burdens multiplied, as the agony sizzled, the sanctums and sanctuaries had been difficult to find, or even muster the will towards their discovery. But he’d found thresholds here, people once more amenable to giving, to trying, to instilling friendships and camaraderie with him.
Which still struck him as bizarre, even years later. A machine, a weapon, a Reaper had become used to being utilized as naught more than a bleeding blade.
In another series of moments, Deimos would’ve fought it. Would’ve sunk into his anguish and dug his heels into the melancholy, formed blistering enamel so the walls were too high to breach, so the fortifications were too unyielding to bear, so no one would bother him again. He’d been hurt enough. He’d been strong for so damned long that the semblance of being weak, of being useless, of being a vulnerable vessel again ensured he held his head so seditiously –
A breath, and he’d made it to the bar. The Sword couldn’t recall Morgan trying this before, when he’d been deranged and bleeding from his skull, but he’d try. He’d try because the Warden and Chulane had attempted, strived, and offered him a place, when he didn’t deserve it. When he didn’t deserve anything.
He’d come too late to witness the sniping between Warden and barkeeper, snagging at his own drink from the counter, obliging the man with a nod, before piercing eyes caught sight of her before the fire. The monolith, despite his size, masked his presence with silent precision, too many lifetimes built and orchestrated as a predator. Deimos was sorely tempted to simply sit while her eyes remained closed, make no noise at all in the realm of mischief. Instead, he lifted the chair at the same table, ensuring it didn’t touch the ground, dragged upwards, before placing it quietly down on the wooden floor, and then himself planted on its sanction. The only resounding noise he permitted thereafter was the sound of his glass hitting the table – eyes purposefully waiting for a reaction.
Morgan sensed somebody around her; Deimos wasn't the only one that had training and experience as a warrior. She was always focusing on her surroundings, even when at rest, and as soon as she was aware that there could be a person behind her she waited for any further confirmation. The sound of the glass hitting the table was enough and Morgan simply slowly opened her eyes and smiled, nodded at Deimos.
"General. Thank you for coming." Sitting up, she reached to take her own drink back into her hands. Morgan didn't comment on his sneaking up, though she did find it a little funny; it seemed that Deimos had a playful side, once effort was taken to know him.
For a moment awkwardness threatened to settle in, but Morgan determinedly began to speak before it could, turning in her chair towards him, tucking her legs up in a way that was perhaps unfitting for the Warden. "How are you feeling? I've heard that some people are still experiencing symptoms, even when cured with the water...or by the Voice." She paused, took a drink, then glanced back to him: "I also heard you did not take her cure. Is that right?"
A lack of surprise or jump would’ve incited a pout, but he smirked instead, the etchings of its lines beginning in the corner of his mouth. “Warden,” he extended thereafter, already pausing to swallow down some of his drink – eyes flickering elsewhere in the modicum of predator inherency, before pinpointing back to Morgan, a nod at her gratitude, and then waiting for something else to be funneled.
It came on the topic of sickness, and he placed the drink back on the table, leaning back in his chair, retaining his own mode of comfort. A tilt of his head might’ve ensued or incited the thoughts whirling behind the piercing gaze, running through the symptoms, afflictions, and sickness still rampant in his form. “It comes and goes.” A shrug yearned to curl over his shoulders, to wave off the disaster as he’d always done - I am fine - when it probably was anything but. Perhaps he needed to cease and desist with the pretenses, with feigning, with billowing away concerns after concerns. Even that motion of thought was a struggle, so innately used to shoving his own lacerations or distresses away from the limelight. The contempt of vulnerability, the fabrications of weakness. His stare slowly rounded back to the table, upon his drink, fighting off the urge to clench his jaw. “Mostly tired. If I try to do too much. Or the hallucinations come back.” Then he’d take a drink of water and stave it off. Ritual, routine, but likely no good in the long run.
The last statement ensued a snort, his fingers casually drumming on the resin. “That is correct. I did not.” Stubborn, obstinate, and tenacious in his thoughts on the goddess, the deep rumble of his tones offered brief explanations. “I do not trust her.” He ceased the movement of his hands, stilling, instantly an unyielding portion of controlled menace. “Years ago, she and the Ascended caused the blight, a sickness that afflicted friends and family.” Kiada; and something in his chest snapped up against his ribs. “She did nothing about it. We had to find a cure.” The Sword presumed the only reason she assisted at all was because her own had also been caught in the webs of the malady – or that there was a more manipulative measure behind it.
Morgan had heard that even those restored by the Voice experienced occasional symptoms of the illness now and then; it had to have quite a hold, to manage to show itself through the cures of both Old and New Gods. "If you are ever feeling too ill to work for the council, you must tell me. You will do poorer work if you are not well, and there is no shame in it." In her experience, men, especially those in physical professions, liked to act brave when they would have been better spending the time recovering.
"When you do hallucinate...what is it of?" She asked, knowing it was probably personal, but curious about what could plague the General's mind (both simply because she wanted to know, and because if they returned while she was present, she wanted to be able to help).
She looked over with raised eyebrows at his snort, a little surprised he was quite so obstinate about his choice to deny himself any help. "I have heard of this Blight, though I did not experience anything of it. Still, here her own people were infected, so she has more of a reason to provide a real cure." Morgan shrugged. "I suppose you must know more of her. Tell me, then: what are you going to do if these lilies do not work? Drink from the springs forever? Or do you think you'd eventually crumble to the Voice?"
The General suppressed an eyeroll at the first statement; because it cemented in his mulish mind he’d do the exact opposite. He’d taken too much time, been futile, weak, inept, and ineffectual for far too long, and he detested the very nature of it. He loathed the way the affliction crawled through his bones, surged within his pulse, drowned out rigor, strength, and mettle; turned him into a shell, a vessel, of hollowed adornments and not much else. That he was only worth the weight of his labor, of his might, of his prowess, didn’t surprise him – but nettled still, a reminder of other times, other worlds, where the expectation had been the same. You do not matter clawed, a harsh, unrelenting regard, uttered in his skull so many times. He’d driven his savagery, his nefariousness, his will into the countryside, established his reign, his efforts, his menace, his malice, until everyone knew the ire of the Reaper, and the bearing of his blade. He’d defended the mountains until his last breath; anything else would’ve been pathetic. A residual clench to his jaw manifested and feathered, muscles bound and bunched, half-inclined to say nothing at all. It would’ve been far easier to bow his head and nod, to take the notion and then disregard it. Then he sighed, brows furrowing, staring intensely at his drink. “I do not want to be useless.”
The shift of the conversation hadn’t been what he intended, and proffering truths just meant more seemed inclined to brim to the surface. Discomfort waged and warred its way heavily through his chest, and he didn’t glance up, avoiding the notions of those semblances possibly returning. “Those I lost.” An unfortunate litany of people; loved ones who’d been torn away, gone, or disappeared, because each lifetime had earned its ghosts and their choking, rattling chains, their tethers and lines, their anchors and harpoons. They were vivid, stark odes of his failures, of his inadequacies; Penumbras and Harpies, Flameswords and Stones, figments and fragments of moments that wouldn’t stay buried. He made no mention of the battle he’d waged in Chulane’s presence, the coldblooded way in which he’d tried to win an invasion long, long, long after; no hope of defying it even then. While he didn’t say it, the apprehension contorted over his spine into an unyielding, unbending display; fighting a hidden, silent onslaught in the back of his mind, fingers wrapping tightly around the glass.
And if the lilies didn’t work? A sardonic, dry inclination rumbled through him, and he wondered if he’d just fade away again, eventually becoming nothing, nothing, nothing, pieces of ash, dust, and bone once more. But the beast remained defiant, seditious, an inherent revolution blistering, coiling, staying. Crumbling to the Voice was out of the question. “Find another way,” a shrug, and finally a drink, a swallow, consuming the beverage, as if it were that easy.
Morgan sighed at Deimos' response. Men. Even the best and brightest had to be bull-headed and determined to show off no matter what. "Alright, let me put it this way instead. I have come to care about you and think you're a good man. I don't want to see you work yourself to death when your health is poor." New perspective presented she raised an eyebrow and drank a sip of her ale, a challenge in her eyes.
Deimos was a very brief man and while Morgan wasn't expecting him to expand greatly on his hallucinations, it was a little exhausting to be the only one saying more than one sentence in a conversation. With a quiet sigh she nodded. "I'm sorry to hear that. I know you've lost many...it's difficult. I hope that Halo can be a new start for you; have you been speaking to any of the other council members? They would like to get to know you." She didn't actually know that for a fact, but if any of them refused to get to know the General, they'd be hearing from her.
His insistence he'd just find another way to be cured made her smile at his tenacity, as stubborn as it was. "I see. Hopefully you won't have to."
Deimos had never been someone intent on showing off; determined, confident, tenacious, and bullheaded, certainly all of those things, but it’d hadn’t been about showcasing his abilities or talents. Deeper insecurities perhaps, in striving, in attempting to achieve, in providing usefulness, in asserting protection, roles, and tasks, so he had a place. So he could become something. So he had chances, opportunities, to ensure no one else was hurt, maimed, and wounded, so he could take the brunt of it all, so that others more deserving continued to live, persisted, and gave no thought to his own safety. He never had. Not in his youth. Not in his training. Not in his days of roaring, howling, and desecrating across the battlefield – it’d always been for another. A land. A world. People. Not the Reaper, and not the Sword.
He took a drink, and nearly choked down the remnants at her response – not expecting the bluntness, the concern, in return. His eyes widened momentarily instead, a slower swallow beckoning the liquid to burn down his throat, while he measured out an adequate response. There was half an intention in mollifying the semblances – habitual too, to assume no one should’ve bothered with him, even though he’d had many before who had done just that. That he wasn’t worth the effort. That he wasn’t good.
The beast could feel something at the back of his mind bludgeoning, rampaging, tired of the same old mantra. He released a sigh instead, stare returning to his drink. “I will try.” A wrinkle to his nose followed, as if the notion was distasteful, unpleasant, a mumble thereafter on a snicker, low and rumbling. “I already did that once anyway.” Worked and worked and worked, persisted, carried on, until he perished, until his last breath was scattered amongst the rain. “And I have no intention of being a burden.” They’d already carried him across the tundra, when they could’ve easily left him out in the cold, frozen and gone again.
Thankfully Morgan didn’t pry further into the hallucinations, into the ghosts, into the agonies, and his head tilted briefly, gaze on the ceiling, an inquiry molding its way behind its teeth, until he could finally give it a voice. “How do you move past it?” The death, the despair, the constant, overwhelming anguish? As a soldier, he presumed she’d had her own share of fatalities. Before, he’d attempted to remain numb, nonchalant, and impassive, but those rituals no longer stuck. Too many loved, too many gone, too many he couldn’t save.
But then they were talking about council members amidst the new starts, which was a far safer topic, and he breathed a little easier, taking another swallow, eyes returning back to her. “I already knew Chulane and Loren. Are there others?” Uncertain of how large the government was – Rexanna had employed many, and Evie had only found him. At the notion of the Firebrand, he permitted the smallest of smirks to embed its way back along his mouth. “Loren told me of his recent errors.”
Deimos seemed surprised to find that she cared for him and his safety, which was bizarre to Morgan; did he not realise he was a likable, good person? Long enough talking to anyone you got along with and you'd form some attachment, and now that he was on her team, Morgan would help him to the moon and back, if he asked (unless he did something ridiculous like Loren had). "I doubt you have the capability to be a burden." She said wryly, struggling to imagine it.
She had not expected his question, vulnerable and sudden as it was. Morgan stared forward to the fire, wondering if she actually knew the answer. "...In a way, you don't. I think you'll always have the pain, in some way, with you." Her own father's death still weighed on her heart, the hurt of it palpable if she allowed herself to access it. "But eventually instead of overwhelming you, it becomes the past. And the past is something you can move forward from. You don't forget it, but you don't think of it all the time either; the present takes over." Glancing over to Deimos to see what he thought, she took a slow sip of her drink.
"There is Noah, who is a good councilman. He speaks to the citizens here very well, better than I can." She'd never been particularly gifted with a smooth tongue. "There used to be an advisor, but...I haven't seen her in quite some time. I believe something happened to her." Morgan cupped her hands around the cup a little tighter, not liking to think about that.
Her words sunk against him and he stilled; the uncertainty a palpable, tangible weight along bridges and nettles of his spine. Wasn’t he though? In the end, hadn’t he been a burden to Amalia – who couldn’t support his problems (his grief) alongside her own? That she hadn’t known who she was, in the face of his overbearing anguish? Or was he forgetting, the cloud and haze of the sickness burying and burrowing in, and all those notions, all those nuances, had become billowing knives, waiting to strike down against him? You will see, he nearly said, but caught it across his tongue before it could ease out into the room. Instead, the Sword forced the same smirk along the indents of his mouth, but the mischief didn’t reach his eyes.
The answer to his inquiry was sensical, even if it wasn’t what he really wanted to hear. No magic trick. No glorified mannerism. No way in which he could shift the viewpoint of the world. They were gone. It would hurt. He would instinctively reach and tug and pull and earn nothing in return. He’d remember the good times and long for more, more, more, for moments he couldn’t have any longer, not until he too had gone to Mort – and he’d carry their ashes, embers, and memories across realms with him. He’d simply always forgotten the moving forward part. “Time, then,” he mustered and mumbled, from behind the rim of his glass, taking another sip, swallowing, trying to stall for his opinions, and how to voice them correctly. He placed the resin back down and stared at it, gaze narrowing briefly. “I want to try and finish what they started.” Another pause, another breath. “Kiada had a quest during LongNight, but never got to complete it.” A hint, that he intended to do just that, given the right circumstances. “And there are two friends still frozen in a cave,” he jutted his chin towards where the mountains, the caverns, would be, outside these walls, “that should not remain there any longer.”
The Reaper hadn’t proclaimed many as companions, or family. He’d stayed amidst the roots and routes of his shadows, devastating and demolishing, defending a world he cherished because he had naught else but the summits and peaks, but the ferocity in his nefarious, blackened heart. The Sword had been given so much more, and always sought to return the favor. Even to those long since lost. Perhaps it was foolish. Perhaps it was stupid. Perhaps it wouldn’t matter except in ways of sentimentality, and connections severed. Maybe it was to clear his head, his guilt, and his heart. Maybe it just Deimos being him; incapable of expressing himself until it was too late.
Was that moving forward?
The conversation took a different turn in terms of council members; no death, no desecration, no ruin, no abominations, and his frame eased back into the chair, instead of remaining an unyielding, unattainable presence. “I met Noah,” he speculated; remembering a man in the infirmary, about as silent and quiet as he was. It hadn’t been frustrating, but familiar, comfortable. “I think he tried to get me drunk while I was sick.” A light laugh followed, a hint that he hadn’t minded the notion at all. But then he tilted his head, and stared over at her, towards her mention of a disappeared advisor. “What was her name?” Maybe he’d seen her recently in his travels – people had a bizarre habit of dissipating into the void, and returning at other times (Zariah came to mind, even if she’d been proclaimed dead).
Deimos seemed to finally smile and accept her points on his wellbeing, though Morgan felt she noticed some hesitation there, that he was not entirely convinced. For the time being she would let it go, though if he ever suffered from ill health again she would be insisting with vigour that he rested and looked after himself; not a burden, for she felt that anyone with good intentions couldn't be.
"Time." She repeated, nodding her head, with no other advice to give. At least it seemed like he had things to do; catharsis from such actions would be valuable, Morgan thought. "What was the quest?" If it wasn't foolish, she could offer her help.
As for the bodies in the mountains...Morgan paused and frowned, put a finger to her lips in thought. "I think I heard about that. Neron's Spymaster and his partner?" She had barely met them herself, but she knew they had been killed in the Fangs and their bodies not retrieved, like many that met their fate in the snowy mountains.
Discussion of the other council members, even those that had disappeared, was at least lighter than talk of those that had died and left business behind. "Noah is a good man..sounds like he was trying to give you some fun. Our advisor was called Elena...she knew my father." Morgan was quiet, staring into the fire, for a few seconds after that; with Elena's disappearance it really had felt like the final nail in her father's coffin, an era over.
"...You said Loren told you of his errors." She mentioned, not quite having noticed the words when they were spoken. "What did you make of them?"
Time, and promises to keep. Oaths to follow. Vows to stitch and seam back together. Assurances to prosper, a bridge of laden commitments and pledges he could abide and apply as best he could. To go to the ends of the earth, or to bend and break before – the latter an acute possibility, given every other circumstance. Except his feet felt slightly stable now, and there were too many multitudes of angles and directions to pursue – the monolith had no applicable instances where he could be lost in those biding, tying perils, in the anchors, in the harpoons, of his own miserable making. A head raised, and not bowed; not to his grief, not to his despair, not to his misgivings. But how and when was the uncertainty, and it would scrape and gnash against his sides, his bones, until finality eventually struck, until catalysts were snagged, until some contortions to the world were righted. To rest seemed unfair, and then strange, because those he chased weren’t going anywhere – he just didn’t want them to have to wait any longer.
The Sword nodded again at her insinuation, piercing eyes gliding back over to the fire, over memories, over harsh plains, over haunting decrees, over the way LongNight scorched and seared. “She was trying to free a soul of someone she loved.” Ru’in; as if saying his name brought back too many other times; of lives lived in worlds far beyond, where Deimos was caught and trapped between two realms, two distinct individuals, bound and quantified into the solid form of his figure now. “I thought I might attempt it, and then she would not be alone.” Perhaps Kiada wasn’t on her own in the midst of whatever lain before them in the clutches of death – Adam was there, amongst an assortment of others. But not her mother (a quest for a different day). And not Ru’in. And not any of her other family. Not yet.
It was bizarre to think of Peter as a Spymaster for the former sovereign of the mountains; Deimos had only ever known him as the quiet and unassuming partner of Adam; but not a being to be underestimated in the slightest. Neither of them had been. “Yes. Adam and Peter. There was an incident with a dragon…” and a consecration of foolishness, stupidity, and trial after trial, haunting measures that sometimes loomed in the back of his mind. Of what more he could’ve done, if he’d been stronger. If he’d been better.
Lighter still were other figments, and he prospered back into those aspects as best he could – fingers beginning to drum against the sides of his glass again, perhaps intentionally obnoxious in the way they played upon the resin. “Or maybe sleep.” Slumber had come in bits and pieces, and not all of it restful – not with delirium patching pieces of machinations together and gaining ferocity, velocity, in lunacy. He could only offer a shrug in the contortions applied to Elena; the name unfamiliar. “I have not heard of her.” Maybe she hadn’t suffered any particular fate but a quiet disappearance, as some had before (Jigano and Rory, drifting off into the ethers for their own brand of adventure).
As for Loren, Deimos uttered a rumble in his chest, a short bark of a laugh, a snort to follow through. “Not surprising. Foolish. Had I been in your place, I would not have given him another chance.” A pause, considering, features rendered into a carefully neutral stance, no brows furrowed, no snicker or smirk embedded. “I think he often means well, but cannot get out of his own way.” Incapable of thinking things completely through, of conforming to a broader scope and picture. Sometimes more of a hindrance than a help.
"Free a soul...what is involved in that?" Morgan asked, unable to assess whether she could help without more details; just where was this soul trapped and how did one free them? She had never been adept at the matters of Gods and souls, the afterlife and everything surrounding it. Still, if she could help, and Deimos wanted it, she would.
Adam and Peter. The names slipped from her mind every time she heard them, Morgan barely having met the Spymaster and never having met his partner (though she had heard tales of his destruction on the palace from the second he'd entered). "Always deadly. Are the bodies still within the dragon's lair? If that is the case, I'm not sure recovering them is feasible." As much as she understood the need to bury friends, to pay respects, was it worth more dying to recover corpses?
Morgan nodded hearing Deimos did not know of her old advisor; it was not a surprise. Elena had been quiet and when she was gone, not many had known, especially not those non-native to Halo.
"I had to take into consideration his work so far as healer. ..He is on his last warning, though." Morgan drank, watching Deimos speak; the second person to say he would not have shown mercy in her position. Perhaps she was softer than she thought. "I agree. It's difficult to know what to do, when someone has not maliciously acted against you, but has still made things difficult all the same."
He couldn’t be quite certain; the memories flickering back over the multitudes of mayhem from previous LongNights, where Kiada had arrived back into a shelter he’d eventually burn down (not a sanctuary at all, but a blistering crescendo of monsters lurking in the midst), where she’d sobbed and broken apart and there’d been nothing. Nothing he could’ve done. She hadn’t asked. She hadn’t wanted him out there. She’d longed to do it herself, without his overwhelming, overbearing presence. And here he was, likely to commit that very sin – because she was no longer here, and couldn’t complete it herself. “I believe she had to destroy whatever held him.” A pause; calculating again, returning to grounds he understood, brows furrowing in concentration, eyes riveting to the table surface. “Once I am no longer sick, I intend to ask Ludo for the details and permission.” Jigano had been involved previously, and the man was no longer around.
Change after change; enduring it all with his own alterations, striving, struggling to survive.
Dragons seemed to hold the respectable lineage here – and from what he’d learned and experienced, justifiably so. Their mission had been poorly, foolishly executed, and four had suffered from it – and the three survivors meant to hold those burdens for lifetimes thereafter. Or, he had anyway; in his rage, in his frustration, and now, in the haunting eaves of living in this midst, the difficulty in remaining in this land, with their bodies still left behind, contorted and coiled in his notions and contemplations. “They are.” Not a denial in the stupidity of his ideas, but willing to put them forth. “I found a way to retrieve the dragon companion, but there had not been enough time for the others.” Before they’d been under threat and duress, before they’d nearly been bombarded by death, before they crumbled and fell to pieces. “We disturbed the beast initially. If I could find a method in not doing so -,” he shrugged, cutting himself off; thoughts circulating back to the invisibility cloak in his possession. On a whim, he produced a piece of paper, conjuring some charcoal for writing, and flattened the parchment along the table.
Loren, ever the topic of some debate due to his bizarre actions, caused him to lean back in his chair once more, abandoning the writing and sketching for a moment. His drink forgotten, distracted, an arch to his brow molding back on otherwise stoic features, his head tilted, contemplative in different venues. Not planning, not planning, but considering the Firebrand as a whole. “Perhaps your warning will be enough.”
