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!
At her heart, blackened and wretched as it was, Mabel was a survivor. Compelled in each and every direction to entangle her way through another day, another hour, another minute. Picking up a knife, drawing a bow, had just been pieces and proportions of what she was willing to do. She fought for her own sake, and maybe occasionally another’s; selfish and mercenary, grasping and acquisitive, covetous for yielding precipices that allowed, permitted her, to live.
If her voice was cold, then so be it. “I think I want to do this on my own, anyway.” Her vengeance. Her revenge. Her rebuttal. Hers to take and take and take, bloodied on the cobblestones, on the shrieks of war billowing behind their ears.
But then he was moving towards her, and they were embarking on those steps again – where he offered and she grasped, and had nothing to give him in return. Her eyes went to the scar she’d left behind, damned and due to leave another pressed across it; flicking her damned gaze back up to his. Their terms - she almost laughed. No monsters in the dark. No reeling catastrophe setting them into motion – merely impulse, merely desire.
How silly pooled across her mind, but she acted on them anyway. “Of course I meant it,” she sauntered forward with that same defiant angle of her chin, hands reaching for his. But no clutching, no grasping, no intertwining of fingers – merely lifting his wrist up to her mouth, and plunging her teeth across flesh once more.
Let's go to war to make peace Let's be cold to create heat
I was waiting for something extraordinary but as the years wasted on...
Henry can only understand Mabel's need for vengeance on a surface level, in a sympathetic kind of way - and that, he doubts is something she even wants. She doesn't want sympathy, or apologies; she wants revenge. He wishes he could help her, yes, but it's more angled at her pain - not at her mission. If he were of a better mind, he might discourage her from going down this path. Not that she'd be liable to listen to him.
All he can do is look at her with troubled blue eyes, fighting for words... and fighting against them, too. He feels like he's trapped underwater, treading far too much to breathe, clawing for a way out of this deepening darkness. He feels so, so powerless.
So he offers his shift to her, offers to fly with her, and challenges her to take it. It's all he can give. He almost smiles at her declaration, at her icy defiance, her strength sharp enough to pierce him. He wishes he had it in him to be like her.
She takes his wrist and the feeling rushes through him like blood rushing through the cut she's carved against his flesh. He lets her take as much as she needs, and for a split second he wishes she would take it all. But it's a stupid thought, brought on by light-headedness in a moment of vulnerability. The price she pays for this proximity is his hand instinctively grasping around her wrist and a sharp inhale of breath.
When he thinks she's had enough, he gives her wrist a squeeze. "Let's go, then," it's a whisper on the wind, among the song of the bees, and once she lets go he's already shifting, seeking the release of great heights.
Her family was dead, and the last the one inexplicably bonded to her soul. Where else should she have traversed but straight into revenge, into the particulars of menace and might, where she could scratch, rip, claw, and tear the murderer apart?
She wouldn’t, couldn’t, even worry about thereafter. That would come with success, with survival, with everything else linked into thresholds and war.
So she sunk her fangs into his flesh and tried desperately to ignore the wanton ache for release, the tension building behind her spine and within her eyes, the seeking, relishing, salacious way in which the world spiraled around her senses – until he gave an impromptu cease and desist.
Then she stepped away, nodding, some measure of thanks in that movement, before they were a pair on the wind: feathers and plumage and wings unfurled, taken to the sky without a next thought. Impulsive and winding, climbing, ascending into the early evening, with the brush and touch of shadows, with the last fibers of the water lingering behind. It always feels like freedom she murmured between them, accustomed to the shared bond after her experience with Aamu – dragons and eagles, coasting over King’s End. But she had nothing else to give him – nothing in return.
Let's go to war to make peace Let's be cold to create heat
05-07-2021, 01:57 AM (This post was last modified: 05-07-2021, 01:57 AM by Henry.)
HENRY
I was waiting for something extraordinary but as the years wasted on...
The eagle feels strong, stronger than he does in this moment, and he dives into that familiarity with longing. His wings lift to catch the sky and the stars, casting a long shadow across the ground. He glances towards Mabel as she joins him in an upward spiral, checking to see that she is alright. The eagle is powerful, much more than one might expect, but she seems to handle it with ease. It's no surprise to him that she does. So he fans his wings to glide steady on the wind, breathing in the freshness of the open air, letting it linger in his hollowed bones.
Her voice through the bond is startling, unexpected, and his gaze sharpens towards her once more. It is freedom, he counters, more gently adding, it's the truest form of it there is. To be untethered by the limits of a human body, to give power to the nature of such a rogue and independent animal. There's nothing like flying. It... helps clear the mind.
Do you want to go faster? He asks curiously, a more lighthearted tone in his voice. In emphasis of this, he beats his wings to propel himself forward.
Hollowed and hollowed again – it was illustrious and breathtaking, far more than she’d likely ever admit. Swoops and ascension over and over and over, wings gliding, taking, taking, taking as she had always done, grasping at the way the wind carried and poured. Sensations were anew and refreshing, billowing and fanning along plumage, upon twists and turns, following after his more habitual, customary experience, extending her wings until feathers ruffled and rippled. And she breathed again.
Liberation, deliverance, freedom, true forms and the like – it really only mattered to her in these instances and circumstances. But she volleyed in that relishing of a cleared mind, wondering if this was what he did all the time. If he spanned across clouds and canopies, if he drifted in between columns of the unknown, simply to take a moment and wonder, ponder, over the rest of the world’s calamities. What that was like, to eternally have it bound into one’s body and form.
And then the curiosity faded at the stoking, at the edges of an inquiry. Yes, she readily supplied, youthful and eager, emboldened and wild, instead of her customary, quiet seditious self – scraping away at the fringes of what she knew, and beating her wings in time too.
Let's go to war to make peace Let's be cold to create heat
05-13-2021, 05:35 PM (This post was last modified: 05-13-2021, 05:36 PM by Henry.)
HENRY
I was waiting for something extraordinary but as the years wasted on...
Henry's unsure if Mabel is feeling confident enough to join him at this speed and velocity. But her resounding, eager Yes catches him. If she could see it, she would see him smile, but instead she may feel a brighter ping of amusement extend from him across their now-shared bond. It's not something he can totally control, but he at least has no complaints over it. As for Mabel? He can feel her ambitions like a lapping flame against his own senses.
Okay, try not to stick too close, he warns calmly as their wings beat to a faster cadence. If you really want to feel how fast this beast can go, take a dive. Watch- like this!
Once he feels he's reached enough momentum and height, he suddenly dips his beak back toward the ground. His feathered limbs pivot to let him dive at a rapid decline, cutting through the air effortlessly, habitually. Then, just before he might collide against the ground, he levels his wings to swoop across the oasis.
He circles around to try and spot her, to see how she handles it herself. Come on, think you're faster than me? He jests proudly.
Despite doing this once before with Aamu, Mabel didn’t know to mask or hide her emotions throughout the bond. They threaded through, underneath all those guarded, hidden layers like a beacon – triumphant and audacious over and over again, like waves, tempted and flamed by the warnings.
Her eyes watched, waited and the rest of her eagle frame concocted to follow on Henry’s instructions and tutelage, tilting her head to stare, encompass, ponder. As he ascended, higher and higher and higher, and then seemingly tipped – a swift, quick decline into the rest of the world, and then pulling away before he fell and splintered into the earth.
A brief consideration curled through her – if she’d be pieces of broken, whittled bones at the bottom of the void, if she made an error, if something happened – and then took a breath. Straightening out, she could hear his challenge, and didn’t incline into it, not just yet, rising, rising, rising on the beat of her wings –
And then –
Breaking over the curve, and plunging headlong. Images of sky and clouds and blurred factions whipped past her, and somewhere fear and boldness blended together in some bizarre harmony, and he might’ve heard her laugh through the careening vestiges.
She pulled up far sooner than him, but inexperience and prior deaths bore her caution. Probably not Mabel ushered thereafter. But it was fun anyway.
Let's go to war to make peace Let's be cold to create heat
I was waiting for something extraordinary but as the years wasted on...
He pauses, suspended in the air by little more than his own strength, and watches Mabel's dive with keen interest. His eyes never leave her wings, trying to still himself even when he gets a bit nervous. He even offers an excited honk of approval when she finishes her descent. No judgement is offered toward her cautious stop, it's not truly a competition.
It was, he agrees with a gentleness in his tone that, this time, reaches him too. It gets easier the more you practice. We should do this again, after I'm... better, he winces a fraction at the admittance of being in such a weak frame of mind. You know, there doesn't need to be a reason. Or you don't have to tell me. You can just ask anytime, and I'd be glad to help you, Mabel. Even if it's just... helping you to have fun. But he knows she won't say much to that, with all her hard edges and sharp teeth. So with a beat of his wings, he says, Let's go back, we can race the sun instead of each other.
