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!
And now I cling to what I knew
I saw exactly what was true
Weeks of planning and secret meeting came to fruition in this one day; Gideon had been waiting for it so long it hardly felt real when he woke up knowing what he would be doing. Finally, he could put action to words, push the Order into doing what he felt it ought to have been doing this whole time; really hurting the Ascended, forcing them back and away. Making clear that their heresy would not be accepted.
The choice of the Torchline shrine had been tactical; the Grounds were crawling with monsters and Ascended and Halo was frozen over. Perhaps there was also a part of Gideon that wanted to strike here after his experience in the bar on the beach, though. To show these easy going idiots just how serious the fight between Old and New was about to get.
Teleporting in as close to the shrine as he was able, he would walk there slowly, savouring the moment, the heavy hammer in his hands dragging a line in the dirt and sand beneath. Once they reached the shrine (oddly quiet, though he wasn't sure what else he had been expecting) he turned to look at his crew; the two Demi Gods and Sera. "Are we ready?"
// heart strung, young and dumb, yeah we had no fear way back when we said we'd both be millionaires //
She’d grabbed everything she thought they might need, stuffed it into a bag and brought with her as she uses her compass to get to Torchline. Meeting up with Gideon and the rest of them are easy, it’s dodging parties and people that proves a bit difficult. But she manages it, pulling her cloak tighter around her and heading after Gideon to where the shrine was located.
Her attention flickers to Gideon while she nibbles on her lower lip, pulling the bag up so she might grab a rope to tie around the shrine to take it down, holding the loose bundle of it in her hand. She waits for the go ahead, awaiting approval from everyone around. “Ready.” She says simply, easily, anxiety swirling with excitement in her chest.
Remi had left her for something involving Vai, and Amalia had spent the day (night? Evening?) worrying, her anxiety growing by leaps and bounds as the moments until the meeting ticked by. So now as they approach the shrine she finds herself as tightly wound as she has ever been, a bowstring pulled taut enough to thrum with music if it’s touched. Remi is back and in one piece, but she hasn’t had a chance to ask what happened- and from the looks of the man, nothing good. Is Vai okay? she questions through the Attuned bond as they follow Gideon to the secluded shrine. Are you?
It’s surprising, how few people are here. She would have expected guards, pushback - perhaps it’s a secret blessing, whatever happened with Vai. As soon as she thinks it Amalia regrets it, biting hard on her lip as shame rolls through her cheeks. She has nothing with her but her strength, her sword, and her shield, but as Gideon questions their readiness the Archangel gives a curt nod. “Ready.”
This scar I can't reverse, when the more it heals the worse it hurts
Remi is easy to miss, during LongNight. With the world as one big shadow, it's easy for him to quite literally fade into. Sometimes he'll tap his foot or fidget with a finger to keep himself in motion long enough so as now to be swallowed. That isn't the case tonight.
Arms folded tightly across his chest, the Lullaby merely shakes his head in Amalia's direction. No. He answers simply, though whether it's a reply to both questions she's asked or just the first, is unclear.
Glancing toward Sera, Remi's green eyes stern and distant, he simply nods. Roughly the same greeting is offered to Gideon. The Lullaby isn't here for conversation, to make an impression, or make friends. Then again, given everyone present had been intimate with his husband at one time or another, it's probably safe to say that for the time being he knows more than enough about Gideon, Sera, and Amalia to dispense with formalities.
"The faster we do this, the better I should think." Remi says in a voice that's as hollow as it is thickly accented.
REMI
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
And now I cling to what I knew
I saw exactly what was true
Confirmations from all of them behind him; Gideon agreed it was best to get on with it as soon as possible, before any agents of the Voice or passers-by saw what they were doing. Still, as he took the final step towards the Shrine, he hesitated for just a second, his hands tightening around the handle of the sledgehammer he held: the instrument of the change they were to bring with this act, hopefully.
"Then let's do it." He braced his legs, raised the hammer above his head, thought a quick prayer to the Old Gods - any of them, he imagined they all had to be proud seeing this; their mortal children taking a stand - then brought it down hard onto the shrine, hoping to at least put a crack in it if not break it already. If it took more than one swing he would give them, an almost frenzied speed taking over the Priest as he worked, determined to destroy the shrine.
That's why I hold with all I have
That's why I hold
// heart strung, young and dumb, yeah we had no fear way back when we said we'd both be millionaires //
Sera had known that Remi was arriving, but she isn’t blind to his appearance. Of course, she doesn’t know him well enough to ask, nor does his appearance seem to suggest anything even close to wanting to chat about it, so she doesn’t. She nods to him in response to the nod given toward her, before she’s unfurling the rope and approaching the shrine after Gideon. She loops it around the stone before the Priest begins to hammer away at it.
And she tries to help in the dismantling, throwing some of her weight and the tricks she’d picked up from training with the Dragoons to pull on the rope, to throw the stone perhaps off balance just enough that it can loosen its foundation with each of Gideon’s swings, hoping that perhaps it’ll start to fracture it up to break it apart. So far, however, she doesn’t spy any sort of trap, at least none that are obvious.
Remi's appearance and obvious distress are a beacon to the Angel; she presses a hand gently to his elbow, squeezing in silent reassurance, knowing he'll feel her outpouring of love and sorrow. Let's break shit, she suggests through the bond- anything, not just shrines. It can help.
But the shrine is a good start. Free of rope and hammers, Amalia eyes the thing from a small distance, waiting for her moment. And when it comes - the cracks growing in the thing's base, the stones coming unsettled - she raises her hands, visualizing warm light in those cracks. Slowly she pulls her hands apart, and as she does the hard light expands, filling the fragile spaces like levers might, trying to tilt the thing towards where Sera and Gideon pull.
This scar I can't reverse, when the more it heals the worse it hurts
Remi's empathy ability is both a blessing and a curse, as surely Ludo meant it to be. As Amalia's fingers find the skin of his elbow, her brightness, laced with optimism and unfettered love bleeds into him, like a red sock its first wash among a load of whites. He doesn't want it, her sorrowful optimism. But there's nowhere to go and nothing to do about it.
Nothing but, as she suggested, break shit.
Unlike Sera, Remi isn't looking for traps. He's all too eager for pain at this point—to feel something that isn't abject hatred—that he doesn't think at all about the consequences of their actions.
Perhaps that's why the Lullaby chooses the most brutish of his abilities to assist with this: his hands. With strength unmatched by anyone he's met yet, it's with strong hands and near god-like power that the alchemist fits his fingers between the stones which glow with Amalia's light, and heave them apart.
REMI
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
Lightning begins to snarl from the shrine. It envelopes the stone in a layer of blue, zapping anyone who continue to touch it. The damage isn't great, but clearly whatever defences the shrine has, have been tripped.
And now I cling to what I knew
I saw exactly what was true
They all took to it, destroying the shrine with their powers (and he did love to see the Demi Gods involved; it was the second best thing after working with the Gods themselves) and tools. The first signs of damage had Gideon laughing, at first under his breath, but then louder as he saw the lightning, the pathetic attempt to stop them flickering out from the rock. This was all the Voice had?
Willing to withstand any pain coming from the defences and not attacking the shrine with his own bare hands, Gideon kept at his work. Bringing the hammer down over and over, determinedly chipping chunks off of the slab of stone and all the time his laughter getting louder, an almost manic tone to it as he was getting out of breath from the power of his swings. "This-- is the beginning-- of their punishment--" He gasped out excitedly.
That's why I hold with all I have
That's why I hold
// heart strung, young and dumb, yeah we had no fear way back when we said we'd both be millionaires //
It begins to start going well, and for a moment Sera’s heart lurches in her throat in her surprise and happiness that the shrine begins to grow damaged. It doesn’t last long, the snaring of electric blue creating a shield of sorts, snapping and shocking all those that remain in contact. So of course, with a hiss of surprise and a jump, Sera drops the ropes and watches as Gideon continues to pummel at the shrine with his hammer.
“Wait—” She says for a moment. Haven’t they called her here to take care of the traps, should there be any? She moves toward the pack she has, shifting through it to find a long spool of wire. “Someone help me dig, we can try to ground the electricity so it stops lashing out.” She hopes, at least. Regardless, she only has a hand shovel with her at the moment, so she moves to start digging a bit of a hole, to place a small metal pole she’s brought in the bag with her, using the rope to hold it upright and give it a base. She then begins to take the wire and wrap it around the makeshift lightning rod, spooling it out until it’s long enough to reach the base of the shrine.
And when the hole has been dug enough and the lightning rod halfway into the ground, she’ll throw the end of the wire to the shrine in the hopes it might draw the lightning away.
Sera does a lot, but basically, she tries to place a makeshift lightning rod into the ground a fair distance away from them and wraps it with some wire and throws it toward the shrine to hopefully ground the lightning and distract it into dispelling into the lightning rod to get it to stop.
It wouldn't have been that easy. Of course not - not when the Voice is involved. Still, with Remi's strength, Sera's ingenuity, Gideon's fervor and Amalia's faith things seem to be going well- until the Angel spots the flickers of lighting that surround the shrine, glittering blue and dangerous. "Gideon, get back," the girl snaps at the Priest, reaching out to try and haul him away from the Shrine and the danger it now presents. Mustering all the authority she doesn't believe she possesses, she adds, "Help Sera. We can handle this."
Then she doubles down on her effort to push VI's light into the cracks, hoping to give Remi handholds, determination deepening the angles on her face as sweat beads on her brow.
Ama tries to pull Gideon off the shrine and continues trying to use her hard light to destabilize it
This scar I can't reverse, when the more it heals the worse it hurts
"If he wants to get himself killed, let him." Remi barks in response to Amalia. Prickly as he is in the aftermath of Vai's assault, the Lullaby has very little sympathy for stupidity. So if Gideon wanted to die here as some fanatic, it wasn't for him to stop it. It was perhaps for Amalia though, so the alchemist merely shrugs.
The lightning snarls and snaps at his fingers as he continued to tug against the openings made by Amalia's light. He doesn't particularly think that Sera's plan will work, clever as it is. Then again she's probably never experienced the Voice's abilities before. So he calls over his shoulder, "It might look like lightning, but that isn't what it is. It's her."
REMI
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
Amalia 's light prods the stonework apart, but truly it's Remi 's strength that makes the difference. The stones that Gideon has chipped off might make the priest feel better, but in the big scheme of things, it's only aesthetic damage. Seraphina 's idea is clever, but just as she sets up her make-shift lightning rod, the lightning all but disappears...
