Court of the Fallen was created in October of 2018 by Odd, Honey, and Crooked.
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"I don't think it's possible to stick a cork in Nate," she remarks quietly, though her tone is warm - she and her fellow doctor had hosted some deep discussions in the privacy of her office and her operating theatre. And you kind of feel like you really get to know someone when you've seen their bones and their organs.
His grins are all crooked and playful and she feels herself getting whisked away by them, her eyes following his beep booping arm as they hover over the pearls - and herself. That earns Varus a skeptical raise of a brow, and she scoffs at him. "You're laying it on a little thick now aren't you, casanova?"
But then the conversation rocks back towards krakens, and Isla seems a little awkward for the first time. Sighing out a breath she doesn't need, she shrugs her shoulders. "Not an Attuned," she says. "He's my best friend. We come from the same place - both Outlanders. And now he's Ludo's demigod." And brace for impact.
// every mistake, a reason to run, but a good soldier marches on knowing the worst may be still yet to come //
“Mm, there’s always a way.” Granted, Varus doesn’t know Nate all that well. What he does know, is that the kid seemed like he might need some sort of advice, though the type he isn’t sure how to give just yet. But he imagines once he gets to learn more about the Ascended, the easier it’ll be. As for his charm? It keeps the grin on his face as he shakes his head with a laugh. “Oh, c’mon Isla. You lined yourself up for that one.” A wink is shot her direction as they continue to walk and Varus peers down the path ahead again.
Not an attuned? How interesting. But it isn’t as interesting as what comes next, something that has Varus visibly twitching, the metal arm flexing with a quiet groan as his brows twitch together and his head snaps to her. “A Ludo demi?” He asks, a hint of concern on his face. “Is that… I don’t know, safe? I know I haven’t been back very long but around this time last war, lines were being drawn.” He frowns as if it sparks a memory he’d rather forget, but watches her face with that soldieresque stillness she hasn’t quite seen just yet.
"When it comes to you? I believe it," Isla says about there always being a way, the medic flashing a smile at him that promptly fades as they delve into the awkward subject of friendships, of war, of lines being drawn. She feels him flinch a little, her eyes quite firmly on the sandy path ahead, even as their steps slow, even as she feels his gaze on her. "It is safe," she says, sounding quietly firm about that.
Then, brightening a bit, she glances back up at Varus. "Remi is my closest friend," she says softly. "We've been through a lot together." More than a casual walk on the beach needs to consider. "He'd never hurt me, I know that. Whatever war comes, whatever lines get drawn, I know I'd be safe around him. But I get it, being worried..." She pats his good arm gently. "Things are never simple, are they?"
// every mistake, a reason to run, but a good soldier marches on knowing the worst may be still yet to come //
”It is safe.” She tells him firmly, and he firmly doesn’t believe it. He doesn’t let his gaze stray far even when she doesn’t look at him, even when he tenses up, and he can already feel that shakiness in the pit of his stomach as he goes to draw an unnecessary breath. “It’s not… Remi, I’d be worried about.” Varus says as carefully as he can. “It’s Ludo.” Was he wrong to offer the concern out loud?
She was the closest thing to a friend he’s got now that he’d gotten back online. “No, it never is simple.” He agrees quietly, continuing their walk despite how the conversation has grown more somber, despite how it seems a bit slower than before. He can’t help but to let the anxiety start to creep in, a mental note to train more and get back into his old self if only to be able to protect her and the others when the war does come, when the ties she has might eventually break for the worst.
"Ludo would be just as worrisome whether or not I was friends with Remi," Isla points out, though the way her brow furrows suggests that she hasn't really considered that properly until just now. "I suppose you are right, though. Perhaps I can get something to protect myself against it." Against Ludo. Never against Remi - she's still very confident that she doesn't need that with the Lullaby.
They have both fallen quiet, though, and the walk on the beach seems colder, suddenly, more distant and sombre. Giving him a gentle nudge after a few moments, Isla tries on a smile for him. "I don't think I have ever gone this long without hearing you speak," she teases. "What's up?"
// every mistake, a reason to run, but a good soldier marches on knowing the worst may be still yet to come //
Ludo was dangerous to them regardless, true, however Isla being close friends with the demigod of it certainly gave Ludo a straight line toward her. “You should see if the Voice can help.” He pauses, considering it for a moment. “Regardless if Remi wouldn’t hurt you, he’s the closest thing to it.” The It absolutely being Ludo, of course. “And it has a streamlined path straight to you through Remi, if Ludo so chose to.” He shrugs lightly, drawing silent along the path, letting his mind try not to formulate the plan in his mind of the kinds of things he would do to get to his enemies.
She nudges him and his head lifts a fraction, squinting down the path before he does look over to her once more, trying to offer her a small smile back. “Just thinking back, before the last war, that’s all.” He tries to assure her he’s fine, but his mind still calculates out the paths and branches he’d have taken. “Oh, I found my old house before I left to come here.” He’d forgotten to tell her about that, but thoughts and subject of the war brings it to the forefront of his mind once again.
Isla nods gently, thinking she might do just that when she next got the chance. It couldn't hurt, and Varus makes a very good point regarding the line to her that Ludo might take. "Alright. I'll go and see the Voice when we get back to the Hollowed Grounds," she decides, even if confirming those kinds of plans sets a lead weight in the pit of her stomach. It's a heaviness they share, it seems, and her steps slow further as they make their way off the sandbar of the Hale Ka'aila and back onto the beach proper.
"Oh, I see," she says, her exuberance dying further. Because she forgets that, for all the jokes and the lol three hundred years ago stuff, he has been through this all before. Unconsciously she gives his arm another gentle squeeze, stepping a little closer as they stroll. "What was it like?" she asks, meaning the first war. And then to hear about his house as well? She smiles sadly. "Was there anything left for you to take out of there?" she wonders.
// every mistake, a reason to run, but a good soldier marches on knowing the worst may be still yet to come //
Her confirmation does relieve his fears a fraction but it still doesn’t quite add the pep back into his step. There’s a nod offered and a hum of agreement, before she’s asking about the war and Varus isn’t sure where to begin. His face scrunches up a fraction as he thinks, trying to bypass the worst of it, deciding that it might be easier to just tell her now what it was he did, what it had cost him, what had complicated everything so terribly.
We’ll see. First, though, the house. “There’s hardly anything left. It’s part of the Ruins now, pushed into the back with a half broken statue.” He hums, considering. “I haven’t tried to sift through the rubble of it yet to see if anything made it.” Hasn't found the courage to do it. But his arm in hers tightens a bit, draws her closer to him as she leans in and he casts his gaze down to her. “The first war was… Brutal and bloody. I was a soldier, yeah, but that’s not all I did.” He winces a fraction, wondering if it’s worth continuing. “Aamu helped train me up to be a soldier and then I went on and fortified my skills at spying and assassinating.” He hums. “It’s how I got my arm wrecked before I went offline. Got too close, in too deep, didn’t have a way out. Luckily for me, I was lost among the rest of everything in Queen’s Gambit, rather than having my body burned by the Old Gods side.” Because if that were the case, he certainly wouldn’t be here now.
05-09-2021, 09:52 PM (This post was last modified: 05-09-2021, 09:53 PM by Isla.)
ISLA
"I'm sorry to hear that," Isla says of the house. She doesn't really know what it's like, to have a place like that; it's been so long since Northwind and her parents, and her home is more the infirmary than it is the little space with the cheerful green door. She can't imagine the loss he feels, even if he puts on a brave show of it. "If you want to take a look one day, I'll see if I can get cover for the infirmary and come with you," she suggests.
But then they're talking about the war, and her pebble blues darken considerably. And honestly, the only thing that surprises her about his story is the fact that Aamu was the one to train him; she hadn't considered her fellow Ascended to be anything but peaceful since meeting him. "An assassin, huh?" She glances up at him fleetingly. "Hopefully you were a good one. I was field medic for the war in my land. Botched assassinations were rare, but I was called to a couple. Bloody and brutal in general sounds about right, though."
Huffing out an unnecessary sigh, Isla gives him a nudge towards a fallen tree along the edges of the foliage - it makes a decent place to sit, and they've probably walked enough for now. "For what it's worth, I'm glad you got stuck under a hedge," she says.
// every mistake, a reason to run, but a good soldier marches on knowing the worst may be still yet to come //
She apologizes despite having nothing to apologize for, but when she offers to help him it does spark a glimmer of light in the dark edges of his deep blue gaze. “I’d like that a lot.” He offers her, giving her arm a light squeeze in return. It would be easier to not have to go through it alone, even if it would dampen his mood immensely. The company would be nice.
She takes his admission of his work much better than he expects, remembering when she says it that she was a field medic. And it sparks a low hum of sound from him, a soft fleeting smile. “I was very good at it. But all it takes is one mistake and you end up rolled into a hedge.” He comments with a grimace, a soft sigh. But his gaze snaps to her when she mentions she’s glad he got stuck under a hedge and it brings something softer, lighter to his face.
“Ack, you’re just saying that to make me feel better.” He teases her with a soft snort, trying to shove the darker parts of his past back under the rug where he keeps them. The log is within reach now and he lets her go to set the book down on the end, before he sits down and leans back a fraction, peering at the sky. “For everything I gained with Ascending, sometimes I do miss the ability to go and get absolutely hammered.” He hums with a breathy laugh, tilting his head to look back at Isla.
"Then it's a plan." She almost says date, but they've already arranged one of those, and this doesn't sound like the sort of thing one would want associated with dates anyway. Digging through rubble in a three hundred year old ruin of a previous life? A bit heavy, all things considered. Still, they move to sit upon the log and Isla sets down her towel on the other side of it, leaving her sitting with Varus and gazing up at the stars, down at the sea.
"It could have been a worse mistake. You might have ended up on fire," she points out. "I suppose you just ought to be glad that whoever got to you wasn't as good an assassin, hm?" She smiles. "And I'm a doctor, remember. It's my job to make you feel better. I did mean it, though," she assures him.
As for getting hammered? A crooked sort of smile flashes across her face, then. "What if I told you that you could," she says slowly. "There's a room in the Hollowed Grounds, blessed by Frey. It allows Ascended to feel and do all the things they could before they were made that way. The only caveat is that it..." She laughs, a silver flush creeping over her cheeks. "Well, it's Frey. So it makes you really want to have sex, in particular."
// every mistake, a reason to run, but a good soldier marches on knowing the worst may be still yet to come //
A plan, not a date, something that Varus keeps the distinction different for reasons similar to Isla. So he settles on the log, peering between the sky and the sea, when her words reach him and he snorts. “It was a group of attuned I accidentally stumbled into. One of them shifted into a fucking tiger and that’s how that happened.” He shakes his head, lifts his metal arm to run through his hair, before resting it on the back of his neck.
He gives her a slight nod at the comment of making him feel better, though, but what comes next is far more interesting than everything before and is quite the thorough distraction he was after. “No fucking way.” He breathes with a vibrant laugh, something that’s equally shocked as it is amused. “And uh… Where, exactly, is this room?” He asks, his arm dropping from his neck to be leaned against as he peers at her. “And who bribed Frey into doing that for us?” He snorts, but the boyish grin on his face seems to suggest he’s already making plans.
"Tigers are sometimes considered the assassins of the animal kingdom, you know." Are they? Isla honestly isn't sure - her forte is medicine, after all. But it seemed like a fun thing to say to try and keep lightening the mood. "I also have it on good authority that they don't live anywhere close to three hundred years old. So with your new arm as well, I imagine you won in the long term."
And if that doesn't serve to make things more cheerful, the sex room manages it. (Doesn't it always?) Isla grins back at him and nods. "Yes way," she informs him. "I can show you where it is when we get back to the Grounds, if you'd like. But don't ask me how it happened - I was dead when it got blessed. I just know it's here now, and it's... very popular." She chuckles.
// every mistake, a reason to run, but a good soldier marches on knowing the worst may be still yet to come //
“Mmm, y’know, I think you’re right.” He absolutely has no idea whether or not she’s right about the tiger comment, but decides to go along with it anyway. And when she’s speaking of the lifespan of them, he snorts his agreement to that too. “That’s a fair point.” In it for the long haul, he supposes. He’s just glad he’d woken up at all, truthfully. Even if it came with all sorts of difficulties and complications.
For now, though, he focuses on the rest of the subject. A blessed room by Frey where he could indulge, and it’s something that has that fanged grin growing brighter on his face. “I absolutely would like that.” He comments quite swiftly, his playfulness returning tenfold. “I’m going to assume by how you talk of it, you’re a regular patron?” A waggle of his brows accompanies the suggestion, before he’s lingering in her space, his gaze dancing across her face as if he could find the answer there.
