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 pattern of the dragon's movement shifts, and Aamu freezes subtly again. Blue eyes narrow at it, and he turns his arm, the backward bend of his wrist a silent threat—but all she does is wander off his lap and contemplate the sky. Aamu holds very still until she's gone, rising into the oncoming dawn.
Decides to hold his breath indefinitely, since he doesn't need to exhale it anyway.
Wessex picks up her own story, giving him a name for that disturbing black tower. His mind turns, gets stuck and snagged on details, tries to piece it all together: the Voice, imprisoned, at the Grounds. So utterly and so completely she couldn't get out, and if she couldn't, no one could. Not even the heralds of the Gods.
So... It's a potential explanation: a reason for three hundred years spent on a mountainside. Powered down. Vulnerable.
What had happened to those who dropped in the cities, the fields, on the roads?
He shudders.
It must've been a massacre.
He doesn't exactly respond to her, just thoughtfully stares off into the distance as he tries to order his thoughts and not forget what he's just been told. Her story is elusive, drifting on the breeze, threatening to entirely abandon the mess making up his rattled memories. The Core?
He doesn't know if it's familiar or not. Could be. Might not be. He opens his mouth to answer, closes it again. Shakes his head as another small frown lines his face. "There must've been," he admits, thinking—there's some vague idea of generals, of sorts, those who bore the figurative torches against the dark, mapping their entire strategy in their heads as the battle raged among the stars. "But I can't tell you more than that. And I, well, I feel I must've had more upgrades, I find myself doing small motions, or thinking I'll just do something but nothing happens and I don't know what I'm expecting either. I think I was mostly geared towards battle and utility, and this is the only thing I've got to work."
And it's a subtle, barely perceptible tensing of his wrist, and a blade slides out. "Common as daylight, huh?" he says with a self-conscious smile, letting the blade retract.
You are the night-time fear
You are the morning when it's clear
empires fall when we move the unmovable, so tell me all of my secrets, tell me all of my lies,
“That’s alright,’ she seems to say automatically, soothing but not quite motherly. Not yet. “I’ve asked a lot. Thanks for for telling me what you can.” A small, but genuine smile floats across the lightening sky towards him, this stranger that Loki took, this relic and herald of an age that they can only fathom.
A time when they were powerful, when they were winning.
Even if it had been a massacre, it was only a stopgap. A hopeful stopgap, but one nonetheless. And still, they’d risen. Against odds that should have killed them - against disease and starvation and the Spire Demon and LongNight monsters and death being more welcome than living in a cage - still, they rose into something resembling enough of a threat.
There’s a savage twinkle in her eye, something feral and suppressed. It sparks when he shows her his arm-blades and a sly, knowing look inches his way as she flexes her own muscles in a similar fashion. But where he has a singular blade, she has three talons zipping out from between her knuckles. They sing their battle-song to Aamu, telling him of the blood she’s spilled and how it drips down their long, slender curves and onto her white, white knuckles.
“She has her habits, or so it seems,” Wessex replies, slyness bending towards amusement. Their creator is capable of many, many things, but there’s no reason to fix what isn’t broken. Was Aamu the first, she wonders, to carry this kind of upgrade? Is she the evolution?
“I’m a weapon.” A bold statement, but one everyone she knows would agree on. “A deterrent." Of sorts. "And a violent protector." Most definitely. There are others who protect, but not the way she does. "There aren’t many like us in the family.”
He finds it curious to suddenly be the one soothed: her manner as if she truly is the eldest sister of them all, and he turns aside to hide the answering slight smile twitching at the corner of his mouth. He thinks no one has done that for him in a long time, save the Voice. "Don't worry about it." He wishes he could tell her more. He wishes he could write down document upon document of details, about himself, the Ascended and their upgrades, the Voice and those like her, the Order, the war...
The best he can do are some strange memoirs about himself, and some very specific quirks of the world he's left behind. He hopes more memories will come back, and at the same time fears it will. Perhaps it'll be easier to settle into a new time and age if his past expectations won't hang quite so heavy around his neck.
Aamu's eyebrows rise as she reveals blades of her own. Clearly, more offensive. More damaging. Aamu's are a last resort, a quick way out of a sticky situation. "Impressive," he murmurs, reaching out to touch a pale fingertip to one of the sharp blades. He doesn't doubt they have seen much use.
Wessex is proud. Wessex is confident. Aamu can appreciate this. He thinks she is the one who makes the hard choices because they need to be made, and no one else will make them. "Maybe there will be more," he says softly. "When the need arises—as before." He's not sure, but he gets the feeling they were not made as weapons, but as .. art? No, not quite. Creation; science. Exploration. When times grew harsher, so did the Ascended.
He wonders what else he could do.
You are the night-time fear
You are the morning when it's clear
empires fall when we move the unmovable, so tell me all of my secrets, tell me all of my lies,
Wessex chuckles darkly to herself. If he thinks those are impressive, wait till he sees her other upgrades. They pepper her body in secrets - her hands, her eyes, her mind, her skin - and sometimes she feels more other than human.
“Maybe,” she agrees quietly, privately wondering when that could be and how they might manifest. Edy is a fighter, so is Neron. Aamu. Amun when necessary. The rest…? Not quite so much. “The others certainly score points in the we’re just normal people department. Strategy wise… returning loved ones was a good move. On multiple fronts. They’ll all certainly be better ambassadors than me.” She offers a wry, fanged smile to the air in front of her and then narrows her gaze. She should have been keeping track of the sun’s progress.
Loathe to draw the conversation to a close, it’s a necessary evil. It simply wouldn’t do to let Aamu burn up in front of her, would it? “It’s gotten a lot lighter. Are you staying somewhere? Can I take you… to some cover?” Faltering a bit, the Queen realizes it’s been awhile since she’s taken the necessity of daylight protection seriously. And how to set up new neighbors with a place to live.
She does not sound entirely convinced, and Aamu's mouth forms a little bit of a smirk. She knows them better than he does, anyway, but when war is on your doorstep... Once, all of them had just been normal people, before they became weapons and demons and saviors. "I wonder how she did that," he confesses quietly. Reconstructing a body? Yes. But putting a soul in it? The right soul? How'd she got those from Mort?
Questions, questions, and the ever lightening sky. He wonders if he was hoping to set himself on fire or something by lingering out here, but he's not sure. It would seem a horrible way to repay everything that kept him alive for three hundred years in stasis.
Besides, he thinks Wessex wouldn't let him. She does look a bit like she could break his old, brittle self over her knee if she wanted to. "I saw a place on the way here." And it is true. He thinks he didn't worry so much about the sun in the past, but now he's not sure, and old habits die hard.
Gracefully Aamu unfolds himself from the bench. The snow crunches slightly as it accepts his weight again. "You needn't worry about me, but if it'll ease your mind you could walk me there." And he watches, waits, for her to make up her mind.
You are the night-time fear
You are the morning when it's clear
empires fall when we move the unmovable, so tell me all of my secrets, tell me all of my lies,
How did she do it? It’s omething the Wraith has wondered for quite some time now - not necessarily the why of it, but the mechanics, definitely. The answer seems more straightforward for herself, Mabel, and Aamu - though come to think of it, she doesn’t even really know if being powered down is different than death. Taking a soul from her own little pocket of the afterlife seems infinitely easier than reaching into Mort’s realm.
“I don’t know - she might have practiced on me a couple of years ago. Fixed my body. Put my soul back. It wasn’t nearly as dramatic, but it was a surprise.” A shrug. “But Mort’s realm is… something else entirely.” Was it a power play, again? Was it to intimidate? Throw the other side off kilter?
“I bet the other side is livid,” Wessex says with a small inkling of delight. It lingers on her face for an appropriate moment (careful now, too long and she might be guilty of war-mongering) until the faintest hint of the sun begins to top the horizon. And now it’s time to go.
“Nonsense, I can get you at least part of the way much faster than you can walk.” Reaching over, she gestures for Aamu’s hand and then offers a quick warning about potential dizzying side effects, before taking him back to at least the cover of the trees.
