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!
03-04-2021, 03:29 PM (This post was last modified: 03-04-2021, 05:12 PM by Amalia.)
AmaLiA
the archangel
A duo of unicorns races through the Boondocks, which is not unusual. What makes it an odd sight as well as a beautiful one are the qilin and starwhale in their midst.
Amalia has grown bold of late, wandering further into the Wilds, out of Stormbreak's borders. Today she has found her way to the Boondocks, a strange place of history and water whose beauty captures her imagination, setting her soul alight. She'd flown in on large barn owl wings but shifted when she found the pair, approaching carefully and respectfully, her bi-horned head lowered to the matriarch. Quiet conversation through body language and mental speech had allowed her entry for the day, and now as she runs across the water the Archangel is flush with delight and wonder, heart pounding furiously and eagerly in her chest.
They run and run, kicking up loam and water, leaving the ground furrowed in their wake. They run and Amalia forgets the darkness that has plagued her up until this point. They run, and the Archangel runs along with them, and she is not a shadow but a beacon, brilliant and alive in the Flowerbirth sun. They run until the night draws near, settling at last as the world is washed in tones of blush and vermillion.
They run until a shadow crosses the Boondocks- and then, as one, they stop, three sets of large eyes and a starwhale turning anxiously towards the stranger who dares to interrupt the freedom of their flight.
When he isn't digging his soot-stained fingers into charred beams and broken bodies, neatly packing away the evidence of the havoc they wreaked and replacing it with something new, something fresh. It could've felt like clearing away yesteryear's leaves to let this year's sprouts into the sunlight, but it feels more like digging an unmarked grave and trying to cover your tracks.
He has no wings this time, so he has gone tirelessly under the stars and sought refuge in the shadows of day, and he has wandered aimlessly around the Barrows, laid in Meadowreach and felt the weak dawn sun touch his skin until he itched and blistered, and paid his respects in the gentle quiet of Mourn.
He doesn't want to go back.
He knows he has to, at some point. He cares for little but Mabel and Isla, but duty bound him and duty buried him and duty raised him again. He cannot stay away.
He watches as the sun sinks beyond the horizon, as the sky turns blush and vermillion and everything seems steeped in its bloody glow; he slips from the shadows and stands in its dying light.
And in the way of some unicorns, and a starwhale.
It's one of those moments where Aamu would just have blurted out what? if he wasn't so morose. Instead he just blinks in confusion, peering at the equines and their strange not-quite-equine four-footed friend, and the floating whale. Wonders what brought them so close to him. Smiles sadly at their seeming nervous regret at having done so. "I did not mean to interrupt," he says (quiet, gentle) while slowly spreading his hands in a helpless and placating gesture.
Through the streets and the houses of gods you roam
and on their altars you lay your heart of stone
They watch as one, four minds knit together through a bond Aamu can never understand, synchronized and thoughtful without needing thoughts. There is a quiet, considerate pause where a silent conversation occurs, spoken by flickering ears and rippling skin and the subtle shift of weight--
--and then the largest, the qilin, steps forward, head raised imperiously as she looks upon Aamu, her mane alight with primrose, her eyes an endless lilac pool. Of course Amalia does not know who - or rather, what - he is, but she can smell the Grounds upon him, an aroma so familiar it makes her ache. And with the scent comes the need to know, to hear about her home.
She shifts gracefully and strangely, slender form fluid as it flows from four-legged creature to angular biped. Traces of scales linger on the edges of her face; her hair hangs loose around her shoulders, shades of lilac mixed in the gold. "We don't mind." The animal clings to her shoulders like a cloak, marking her actions as she tilts her head, blinking at the man. "What happened in the Grounds?" The Archangel asks without preamble, only laser focus. "Did you succeed?"
He wants to touch them: wants to offer his hand to their muzzles, wants to show them what it is like to have your forehead scratched, your ears stroked, to wish his fingers didn't feel frozen if he were to run them through their mane, their fur—
Well. The strangest (arguably, most beautiful) of the gathering steps forward, and Aamu doesn't know what he is feeling. Awe—reverence—like crying. There's something special about being judged by someone you irrationally feel like has every right to judge you.
But then she changes: fur and scales flow away, replaced by skin and cloth, but he can still see the qilin in her face (the flowers in her hair). He isn't surprised—perhaps slightly disappointed—and wonders.. about a lot of things.
Like why she cares so intensely about the Grounds. Aamu lets his gaze slide away to the bloodwashed horizon, something bitter curling on his lips. Did they succeed? Did they succeed? Oh, Amalia, if you saw those smoking ruins—
"That depends on your definition of success," he answers, unable to mask what he feels: the bitterness comes out as sharp edges. That strange oil-slick sheen darkens his eyes as he links his hands together behind his back. "I would say that we failed."
Through the streets and the houses of gods you roam
and on their altars you lay your heart of stone
His blue eyes slide off her black ones like ice, and in the light of the crimson sunset they take on a nearly violet sheen. Amalia watches with a strange sort of intensity, emboldened by the unicorns at her flank, the horns and scales that mark her as more. More than him and his bitterness, his failure, another one of the Voice's puppets made to serve dark deeds. Her lip twitches as she waits for his reply, and when it comes...
Well. It isn't what she hoped for, but it is what she feared. With Wessex in charge - with the Grounds so cut off - with Sam's indecision--- we could have helped, if you hadn't waited, her internal voice screams. It flickers over her face in a tightening of her lips, lines between her brows, narrowing of her eyes.
"Are the monsters still there?" Amalia asks, keeping her own troubled gaze on Aamu. "How many died?" Who died?, she doesn't ask directly, but a lump forms at her throat as she thinks of Kiada. A unicorn whuffs and shuffles closer, exhaling into the Angel's hair as Jyoti curls into her arms.
And then she softens, just a little, the facade cracking and giving way to the vulnerable girl beneath. "I grew up there," Amalia says softly, turning into the unicorn's touch. "This was my first LongNight away. I should... I should have been there."
Oh, the monsters are still there, if only they had the sense for a guilty conscience and the wisdom to see what they are. The streets are barely empty of bodies—empty shells and burnt-out circuits once housing souls, hopes, wishes, an endless yearning for the love of their creator.
(And plenty of envy, wrath, too. They made themselves a race apart, shaped themselves into weapons.)
"They weren't monsters," he says: the chill in his voice might've been a snarl, and his darkened, glistening eyes return to hers. (Aamu, you blind, naive fool—) One of his hands curl into a useless fist, nails pressing into his cold palm. But what can he do? He can't turn back the clock. He can't undo what centuries did. His anger is pointless, and he's too tired to sustain it; it goes out, as easy as blowing on a candle (—or taking a life).
Sighs. "Three," and his voice is like lead now, "and, we think, all the prototypes. The Spark Bird set the Grounds on fire. If anyone else stayed behind they probably didn't make it either." He doesn't know if anyone did. They tried to evacuate everyone but people are proud and stupid.
He thinks he preferred being judged by a unicorn rather than a girl, but he'll put up with it.
Only—
He blinks, reanimation fluids smearing on his fine lashes, watching as she leans into the unicorns, arms wrapping around her starwhale. It's too ethereal, too mythical, stamped with the Old Gods and Aamu thinks there's something familiar in the lines of her face—
It's old and feels like danger, a strange conflict to his sudden desire to hold her, hug her, tell her it's okay (but it's not, it's not). Aamu tilts his head to the side, staring across the centuries at the Chandrakant girl. "Why weren't you?" he wonders.
Through the streets and the houses of gods you roam
and on their altars you lay your heart of stone
Darkness shadows Aamu's features, making him suddenly sharp. The snarl is a strange thing in this uneasy peace they've established, and Amalia responds with her own gaze narrowing, slitted pupils briefly visible before she blinks again. Clearly he hasn't experienced the horrors they grew up with; she might have challenged him further, except his next statement takes the wind from her sails.
The Spark Bird.
Those left behind.
Hands clench along with jaws, and the flames in her hair flare lilac and gold. "Nobody helped it," she states through locked teeth, nearly as angry at herself as any of the others. She'd had a task, a role to play, but at least she had a reason. Wessex and the other Naturals, they knew better, and yet--
"I'm not welcome anymore." Bitterness coats the girl's voice, making the unicorns stir. The tattoo on her back ripples and changes, giving way to massive wings which spread out from her spine. It's an obvious enough display of power, and for once the girl hopes this means he will know who she is. She wants him to see her - a demigoddess, a vassal of Vi, gilded in her judgment of him and his ilk.
Amalia Chandrakant, an enemy lost through time.
"They were monsters," the girl proclaims, her voice as soft as smoke, hard as stone. "Lesser children of a false god. Abandoned, because they did not meet her design. Instead of saving them she left them to rot and go mad, allowing them to slaughter my people. My family."
Onyx eyes pierce into Aamu from a angular face sharpened by scales. "How long until she does the same to you, I wonder? Decides that you're not bright enough? Grows tired and discards you, without so much as the mercy of death?"
She wears a crown of flames, and the wings of Gods. They spread from her slender back, spanning from horizon to horizon, and her eyes—her eyes have looked at him before, with the same expression. To him, they are cold fire, hardened steel, pitch and tar. Righteous; haughty. "Rishima," he breathes, barely aware, full of winter and death and hard fear.
He knows why she is not welcome. Sees it in her eyes, in the touch of her God.
He feels .. many things, and among them: pity. She's just a girl, she should have life ahead of herself, not—not war, not the dirty business of a narrow-minded, fearful God. "Only because your Gods shoved them into the same cage," he points out, fighting to keep the hiss out of his voice. He wants to rise to the challenge, to the bait, to go back three hundred years and meet her again.
Only, this time, he thinks he is far outmatched.
"And how long until yours do?" Perhaps his voice is slightly too sweet, a poison blade. Let her answer that if she will: he'd like to hear it. He knows enough of what happened with the barrier, how the heralds were so readily sacrificed to keep the Ascended at bay. What's to say she's not just another lamb for the slaughter?
Through the streets and the houses of gods you roam
and on their altars you lay your heart of stone
The name he breathes on winter lips burns her ears like fire, a memory of a memory, a brand on her chest that blisters across her heart. "What?!" she hisses, cracking like coal - and for a moment she is Rishima, her mother, her ancestor, lifetimes of history she cannot remember glaring out from behind her black eyes.
"To save the world." She doesn't know why he hates her so much, nor why looking at him makes her blood run hot. Clawed fingers clench against her palms, and wings flare out behind her; she is judge and the unicorns are jury, all of them looking at him in this empty space that is simply too small for them to exist in peace. "My gods are merciful," she murmurs harshly, and there is no attempt to hide the coiling smoke of her hiss. She is aware of Nova, tucked away; her fingers itch to draw out the blade, to show him the strength of her gods.
Instead she takes another step forward, condensing the space between them into something electric and raw. "My gods are love. They are growth and decay, hunger and thirst and joy and pain. They are life. And when the time comes for me to die, my soul will be sheltered by their love. Even then, they will not forsake me.
"What would happen to your soul, if I saved you from the prison you dare to call a life?"
But he does not answer: he's a wolf hiding his teeth, a soul seeing the past and the present yet not quite either. He blinks, and she's here, and she's not here, or she's not she—his shoulders itch, and he wants to get away. He knows he's pulling on the tiger's tail, and he knows this will not end well for him.
But what else can he do?
He's afraid.
He's honest enough to admit that.
It is not the cold and clammy fear of the organic body he's left behind, but it's taut and tense and like a siren in his brain. It is every sense on high alert, every nerve and wire rigged to blow, to react—
"But was it saved? Do the Grounds look saved to you?" They were ruins: three centuries of grief and starvation and heartache and decay, and for what? Fear, vanity, pride?
He laughs: harsh and bitter, desperate. He holds his ground, eyes cold, listens. All which they forsook when they Ascended—is that truly all which separates them, which symbolize life? And to think, she forgot the most important of them all, anyway. He wants to pity her, only pity her, but he is afraid of her, and it curdles his pity into anger. "Your gods are frightened and vain, resistant to change, unwilling to open their eyes and admit that they were wrong," he whispers, too loud and too cold between them. "Your merciful gods sentenced their heralds and countless innocents to a life of imprisonment and starvation and never once looked back."
It sparks. There's teeth in his hissing. "Who are you to judge me? Who are you to say my life is not a life? You, who know nothing of me? Have you ever known the embrace of the Voice, felt her connection—our connection? Do you even know what it is that you condemn? What we actually lost, and what we gained?" (She's naive and lost) he wants to embrace her, sink his fangs into her neck and let her feel something so heady and euphoric it transcends all else (but she's only half a connection)—he throws his arms open, unthreatening, pleading, afraid. "Come with me. Ascend. Be the change."
Be the future.
Through the streets and the houses of gods you roam
and on their altars you lay your heart of stone
