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!
Aumakua comes alight in the dead of Flowerbirth's first midnight. The blaze of a hundred torches and the beat of angry feet soil whatever peace is to be had. Bloodthirsty shouts fling across the grassy knolls. Torchliners from all walks of life are present. Thieves, smugglers, merchants, landowners; elite citizens among the poorest of men. They don't want answers anymore. They want justice. And they want to take it into their own hands. Their differences have been set aside for one common goal:
Kill the beast!
It starts with taunting, the people raising angry pitchforks along with their voices. Torchlight glares in through the windows of one governor's little cave-house. It condemns him for everything he's done - and everything he's about to pay for. Their angry song fills the air, drowning out all else with fury and vindication.
"Face us, coward!"
"Ya brought us nothun' but trouble, ya filthy Outlandar!"
"Ye'll never be one of us!"
And the first stone is cast, slung through a window that shatters with a sound that only seems to spur the crowd on. Only it's not a stone at all, but a molotov cocktail that hungrily catches fire to the house within.
"Come on out, boy!" An old man shouts through a gap in his teeth, spittle flying, "'ere's no escape now!"
anyway, you say you're too busy saving everybody else to save yourself
There’s a crowd on the horizon. A crowd that’s angry and pulsing like it’s own heartbeat. The words are muffled from here, but he can guess. Of course he can guess. Only… They’re shouting at the house, a house devoid of him as he comes around the path from Haulani, past the lighthouse, directly into view of… Well, this shit show.
So of course he becomes the favored dragon they call for, if only to stop the assault to his home. Flesh becomes armored plates, large wings take to the darkened sky, and he blends in. He blends in with the night as he crosses over the crowd, taking a mental number of how many have shown. Is this… All of Torchline? It feels pretty close to it.
He lands before the home, before the crowd — a midway point. Wings stretch before retracting and a toothy grimace is seen on the dragons face before he turns back into himself — staring at the mob. “ENOUGH!” He growls, taking a step forward, trying to leash his temper. Armor plates his arms and neck and he stares at the mob. “Leave the house, I’m the one you want.”
and you don't want no help, oh well that's the story to tell
No permission needed for power play!
Feel free to use magic/force on Sunjata, without killing him <3
Sunjata speaks with an Australian accent and has a passive magic that makes him produce a subtle scent that matches exactly to whatever those around him most desire him to smell like.
Eating fire is your ambition to swallow the flame down
Oh, for fuck’s sake. Couldn’t they have just one year with no housefires?
The honeybee stomped her way up the road, snarling at the fumes, at the plumes, starting along the domicile. This was so god damned ridiculous, she might’ve laughed had the implications not been so serious. At the stupid mob. At the dragon bombarding along. As if this was a normal occasion, and hardly a cause for concern, the youth wound her way along a window on the first floor, eyes darting towards the pitchforks, the stones, and encompassed a deep, heavy sigh. “I’m going to snag the animals!” was a yell towards Sunjata, whether or not he heard her over the roars, the rage, or any other blistering upheaval.
Maneuvering her way through an open slot, and not yet drawing her armaments (but my gods, was it tempting), she angled her way through, intending to snag and snatch at the collective number of pets, darting along through the rooms not already engulfed in flames, drawing veils and shrouds over her head to ward off smoke inhalation.
to be lit up from within, vein by vein to be the sun
Yes, he is the one they want, and he's just served himself to them on a silver platter. The dragon form that sweeps in before the house is perhaps enough to draw the crowds back, but only just. In spite of the wave of terror this inspires, it only seems to infuriate them beyond reproach. It's not so easily that they'll relent.
With outcries of hateful rage and "GET HIM!!!" the crowd precedes to hurl whatever they have in their arsenal. There are more molotovs, bursting in bright bombs around his feet.
Some whizz past him into the house, which decidedly burns and smolders behind him. Melita will not find it so easy to rescue these beloved creatures, and soon smoke will cloud around her. Caves aren't ventilated well. Get out while you can, honeybee, or suffer the consequences of your allegiance.
But the apple of their eye draws the crowd's attention. Despite their fear, they wage war - for now. Real stones are retrieved from the ground and used to pelt him. One slams against his face, a mark of the promise of something much worse. A frenzy of pitchforks and hands reach and jab for the governor, and whatever will he do as they press in like starved animals? Will he succumb to their desires of seeing his blood spilt along the ground?
At the edge of the crowd, the poltergeist hovered. Drawn to the fire like a moth, to the promise of anarchy and possible gain. He liked to snag opportunity when he could, and this angry mob would surely herald something wicked. He brought no pitchforks, but he brought fire in the form of the match he struck to light his cigarette and watch the show.
When the dragon emerged Rigby's eyes grew wide. No longer wanting to be on this side of the battlefield, he moved to the very edges, on the sidelines. From here he had a great view of the burning house and the girl who dared inside. He remembered her, or at least her silhouette, and briefly wondered how stupid she had to be to go into a burning building. You wouldn't catch him there. He'd be watching with his smoke, where it was safe.
03-02-2021, 12:18 AM (This post was last modified: 03-02-2021, 12:24 AM by Sunjata.)
And I can taste it, it's my sweet beginning
Unfortunately he doesn’t hear Melita. He doesn’t hear anything but his thundering heartbeat, doesn’t hear anything except the crowd that roars and continues to throw things and he wonders how he may go about stopping it without causing much more harm. At the end of the day, though, perhaps someone had been right in those war room lessons… Lessons Sunjata had never understood.
Haai, inside the burning home, seeks out Melita in the hopes of getting a guide out of the house. And with it, if she manages to snatch up a kitten between her teeth to try and carry outside, then she will.
It only takes the pulsing crowd toward him and the rock to his face, the drip of blood that he can feel warm and wet against his face he tries to smear away the blood from dripping into his mouth. “I said enough!” He can’t help the bellowing of his voice, the dipping into the accent as he steps toward the mob, hoping to capture their attention.
Armored plates continue to rove and appear along his body, the horns that spiral from his head. “Its me you want.” He snaps, shifting back into that dragon and using his weight and size to try to push the mob back from the home, onto more even footing, a clearing of dune grasses and sand. His throat glimmers with a blue glow of his rage but he doesn’t let the lightning go.
SUNJATA
No permission needed for power play!
Feel free to use magic/force on Sunjata, without killing him <3
Sunjata speaks with an Australian accent and has a passive magic that makes him produce a subtle scent that matches exactly to whatever those around him most desire him to smell like.
Eating fire is your ambition to swallow the flame down
Ignorant to the drama-fest going on outside, the increase in smoke made her pursuit all the more difficult. Coughing, hacking, despite the shroud over her features, the youth dove down along the floorboards, presuming the kittens, and likely Haai, would be scrambling for some semblance of a refuge. “Come on friends, I can get you out,” she called over the fumes, restlessly clambering along her hands and knees, grabbing for anything that felt remotely fur-like. “Haai,” was a segment too – and perhaps they’d all be nestled together.
So it’s a god damned miracle, really, when the griffin found her fingers, and there were kittens within the threshold, and she bundled them all tightly in the folds of her fabric and dress. At least one mission accomplished, amongst the horde of antics and flames.
Now, how to leave -
Fangorn, bless his vampire gourd heart, rumbled from the window, permitting her to figure out an escape path, his vines snaking, reaching, the grumbles echoing past the conflagration. “Coming,” she hollered back, in between the hacks and wheezes, reaching for the sill, a hand outstretched, the animals collected in her arms.
to be lit up from within, vein by vein to be the sun
Sunjata's house is on fire, but that's the least of it all. There's a fucking mob at his throat, feeding the flames, and Aurelia's here to help. She's not real sure what she's doing, but no way in FUCK she's letting this go on without a say in it.
She flies past Rigby, offering him a split-second bewildered glance of 'what the fuck are you doing?'
It's then that Sunjata bursts into his dragon form and Aurelia stutters in her steps, feeling a sense of fright from the sheer presence of a dragon. But she can see someone moving inside the house still, which is on fire and appears to be getting worse, so she makes a break for the building.
Fuck the mob, molotovs-be-damned, dragon-Jata can handle it. Hopefully... but if Melita or Nate's in the house, she has to do something to help them.
So with all of the magical strength that she can muster, Aurelia attempts to tame the flames. If she can't put out the fire entirely, she tries to create an exit point for whoever is trapped inside. It would appear this point is at a window, where Fangorn hunches in the sill, so she focuses all of her power on that. She calls out to them, begging that they're alright, "Melita!? I don't know how much longer I can hold it! Jump!"
03-02-2021, 12:32 AM (This post was last modified: 03-02-2021, 01:06 AM by Neos.)
NEOS
I have but one thing I wanna say to you
He had followed this crowd carefully, trying not to attract attention to himself as he did so. Though, the task seemed relatively simple compared to how entirely focused on the task they had in hand. A level of focus that always set the false human on edge. Tagging along in the back of the crowd, he saw the exchanges made between dragon and crowd, heard another going in to get the animals in the building, and grimaced about the whole exchange.
When he saw Sunjata readying what looked to him as a held electrical breath, he knew he had to act. Stepping back just enough so none of the crowd would see him without turning back to look at him, Neos shifted, falling forward as everything blended into the golden form of the muscular lion. Without missing a beat, he ran forward, bumrushing through the masses after lowering his head and bracing for a chain of impacts.
Need a helping paw, Neos tried to project towards Sunjata after the shift, curious about if there really was a telepathic connection between Attuned while shifted like this.
Everything is going to shit, it feels like, and he can feel the heat of the flame at his back through the thinnest bit of his wings that he keeps tucked in tight against his body. Calls ring out from the crowd he tries to push into, and were he capable of still speaking in this form, he’d tell them all just how wrong they all were. But he can’t, and he doesn’t, instead spying the glint of a golden lion shift and the familiar sound of Neos’ voice in his mind.
And poor Neos, being connected to that attuned bond, would feel the rage and anger and despair that leaks from the Flood like a faucet. Just trying to get them to back the fuck off. He responds bluntly to Neos, focusing his attention on the crowd that continues. Of course, his frustration gets the better of him, and he ends up baring his teeth at the crowd, trying to will them back away from the home – a long tail sweeping out to offer a barrier between them and his home, inching back and back until the crowd starts to move.
SUNJATA
No permission needed for power play!
Feel free to use magic/force on Sunjata, without killing him <3
Sunjata speaks with an Australian accent and has a passive magic that makes him produce a subtle scent that matches exactly to whatever those around him most desire him to smell like.
Eating fire is your ambition to swallow the flame down
More voices, more shouts, more roars, and most of them aren’t heard over the fumes; but the girl had always been a determined, tenacious, obstinate individual, unceasing, incapable of being denied. A survivor, through thick and thin, and she thought nothing of flames and mobs, of chaos and bedlam, enshrouded in it since nearly the beginning of her life – but she still gasped and wheezed. Still followed the low rumble of Fangorn’s growl, and the familiar voice from the windowsill now (when had Aurelia arrived?), and when everything else was a blur and burning against her eyes, she crawled across the floor, hand reaching –
Then launching out the other side. Into air not quite as fresh as before, but keen and sea-laden.
“Thank you,” she coughed and hacked, dropping immediately to the ground, on her hands and knees, one palm clutching the animals, and the other striving to hold her upright. The kittens meowed and growled, and Haai was somewhere in there too, but they were safe, for the moment. Fangorn bounded down along her side, and she only just lifted her head to the side, spying another form of bedlam across the way – dragon forms and…maybe lions (?) through her narrowed eyes, yearning to wipe away the saline leaking from them. “Gods what’s going on now?”
to be lit up from within, vein by vein to be the sun
03-02-2021, 01:17 PM (This post was last modified: 03-02-2021, 01:19 PM by Neos.)
Neos
Look out 'cause here I come And I'm marching on to the beat I drum
...and I thought you had a temp---
What part of "Shut Up?" do you not understand, Gemini? The "Shut" or the "Up"?
A snarl left the lion's throat after sweeping his large forepaws through the crowd, keeping the claws sheathed to at least prevent cutting people open in that way. He soon put himself in front of the crowd, reverted back to normal before shouting, "What the fuck are all of you thinking with, because it ain't your brains! Are you all begging for Sun to kill you or something?!"
He glanced towards the dragon for a moment before returning his attention to the crowd, remaining in a combat stance incase he had to defend himself. "I can't think of a single damned reason for killing him," he said with a shake to his head. "Kicking him from being Governor, maybe. Jailing him, sure. Killing him?" He lowered one hand to fan it out towards the massive crowd. "Who all paid you to try this suicidal stunt?!"
Gem, eyes and ears open for anyone that responds to that, we need to figure out who to tail later.
...this admittedly concerns me, too, even I have an end goal when doing things of this nature. I can also, for once, say that I had nothing to do with this...
"Face us like a man!" "Coward!" "Hidin' behind a dragon!"
The chorus of voices makes it nearly impossible to tell who among the dissenters is loudest. The display of power does succeed in getting the mob to take a collective step back, though as Neos rises up in front of them its attention seems to shift to this much smaller target.
Another molotov flies through the air, landing at Neos' feet and bursting into flame. Stand aside or burn together, little lion, it doesn't matter to the mob. It will be followed by a smattering of rocks.
"Outlander scum!" "Fuck are ya, his bodyguard?" "Or his new husband, where's Nate, eh?" "Prob'ly beat 'im, too!" "Coward, do yer own dirty work!" "Th' arm-biter's too scared." "BURN THE BITER!"
This last line seems to resonate with the crowd, who begin to chant it in fevered earnest. "Burn the Biter! Burn the biter! BURN THE BITER!"
