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!
Thump. Thump. Arialla could feel every beat of her desperate, traitorous heart, pumping more blood out through the wound in her neck. She didn't have it in her anymore to be frightened; she just wanted to get it over with, to die already so that the pain and helplessness would end. If the gods were merciful, she would have fainted by now, but even her beloved Safrin held no mercy, and Arialla remained conscious, at least partially. She couldn't move, couldn't speak, couldn't cry for help, but she could still feel.
Someone had cried for help, though, a scream that might signal someone to investigate, to find the young woman on the ground, drenched in her own blood, clotting in her red hair instead of in her body where it belonged. If Arialla were capable of thought at the moment, she might have wondered who had screamed, why that person hadn't helped her -- but for all she knew right now, she had screamed herself, or imagined the sound.
The idea of help arriving didn't comfort her, anyway, or even occur to her. In that moment, there were no other people in the world: just Arialla, and her blood, and her fading life.
His body had rejected any ideas of movement for some time after the attack on the Temple, but Gideon was finally starting to regain control of his feet. He'd walked around Stormbreak a couple of times, but found that he missed the sun and gentle air of Torchline (his favourite place in Caido...if he avoided the Ascended-lovers that made up the pub-going population there).
Using a stick to somewhat awkwardly support himself on a trip across the sand, Gideon was peaceful enough; he had made a grave error that had resulted in a harsh punishment, but he'd learn from it. It would be highly hypocritical to complain about the God's lessons when he spent so much time instructing others to take them with grace; he wrapped his wounds, treated his bruises and thought on what he had been told.
In the midst of these thoughts, almost lost in his mind, he was suddenly cut off mid-thought by the sound of a scream. Quite where it came from he wouldn't be able to say, but if Gideon focused his eyes, he could see a shape on the horizon, like someone laying on the beach. As quickly as he could given the limp and loose sand, he made his way over: the jarring red on the beach made it clear something was deeply wrong as he got close.
"What happened?" He asked, wobbling as he knelt down and dropping the stick he held out his hands over her, unsure of what to do or how to help. "Were you attacked? I-I can try and get help..."
You're dragging it down with the weight of your sin
Arialla, tragically, was not in a place to answer questions. She opened her eyes and looked blearily at the man standing over her and tried to speak, but all that came out was a whimper.
Now that he'd appeared and offered some possibility of rescue, though, Arialla was suddenly desperately afraid of dying, her acceptance fleeing -- now that someone else recognized her as a person and not just a bag of blood to be drained, she might think of herself that way too. She reached out towards Gideon with a bloody hand and tried to rasp a request for help. Please, she tried to say, but no words came out.
Sorry, Gideon; conversation would probably have to wait until Arialla's blood wasn't actively draining out of her body.
It swiftly became very clear, the longer he knelt there, that Arialla was very badly injured indeed; he saw the blood and Gideon began to get his suspicions about what had happened - but there wasn't time to ask right now. Reaching into his bag, he tried to find something that could do to stop the bleeding until they could get Arialla somewhere more suitable for healing. Eventually he found, right at the bottom, a bandage he'd stashed in there some time ago for an emergency that had never surfaced.
A little dirty, not very long and ratty at the edges, but it was the best he had.
"Alright, alright. I will need to..." He gently lifted her head to feed the bandage underneath and over, wrapping it tight around her neck while trying to keep it light enough to not strangle. Her blood immediately stained through, but he hoped it might at least stop the flood. All Gideon could really do otherwise was call out to the Gods. Closing his eyes, he laid his hands on the side of her neck, where the bite was, and closed his eyes.
"Please, help me save this young woman. Don't let her be taken by one of those beasts." He whispered, hoping his prayer would be heard.
--
Gideon is calling for a God.
You're dragging it down with the weight of your sin
The waves on the beach, frothy and relentless, coalesce into a physical shape. Somewhat physical, anyway. A being of light with a body made of the sea, it rises and floats toward Gideon and the woman bleeding out in his arms.
"Let me...." Peering over top of Arialla, the being's head (is it a head?) tilts slightly, as flecks of seafoam that might be eyes pour over her wounds. And then, without warning, the spirit loses its form altogether. Seaweed rushes over the attuned, and where it touches, she is healed.
Thanks to a great roll on Gideon's part, Arialla is completely healed! (If she wants to keep scars or things, feel free!)
Arialla sat up convulsively as the seawater washed over her, healing the wound in her throat but not the (metaphorical) wounds in her heart. That heart pounded in her chest, suddenly alive again as she gasped for air. Her hand went to her throat, her fingers finding a scar where the Ascended's teeth had ripped her open; her other fist clenched. She turned quickly -- too quickly; her head spun -- to Gideon, almost mistaking him for her attacker, but no, he was far too tall.
"I ..." She fumbled for words, not knowing what to say. "They're gone?"
That was the most important thing: to make sure her attacker wouldn't return and finish her off, or just leave her helpless again. Everything else could wait. Still, she was starting to put together some puzzle pieces: she had bled; this man had come; she no longer bled. He had healed her, somehow; it seemed like that had involved throwing a bucket of seawater over her, but Arialla couldn't complain. That had gotten rid of some of the blood soaking her skin, clothes, and hair, at least, though far too much remained -- she flinched away from the sight.
Gideon's faith had never wavered and as he saw the woman rise from the ocean he was only surprised at the form she took, not that something had appeared at all; if the Gods wanted this girl to live, they would help him be a conduit for their powers. He watched with a smile and a calm eye as the sea rose and took away her wounds into it's surf.
Arialla sat up; despite Gideon's calm and the soothing touch of the ocean it seemed she still held panic from the attack. He shook his head and placed a hand on her arm, hoping to calm her. "Yes. It is you, I and the Gods on this beach. You are safe. What happened?" He could guess, from the marks he'd seen on her neck and the spilled blood, the sheer savagery of the attack, but he would let Arialla shape the events herself first.
You're dragging it down with the weight of your sin
Gideon managed to hit on the perfect combination of words to comfort Arialla, pious as she always had been. The gods were here with her; they must have sent this man to help her. She touched her neck. "You healed me?"
It didn't occur to Arialla, because that wasn't the way she thought, to ask why, if the gods were watching over her, they hadn't sent Gideon a little sooner -- sent someone to save her during her attack, and not just after. She knew that even the gods could not prevent all the evil in the world -- could not protect their followers from everything even if they wished to. Especially when it came to the machinations of rival gods.
And speaking of rival gods ... "I was attacked ... A cloaked figure; I didn't see a face. I'm not even sure if it was a man or a woman. They were shorter than me, though. They shocked me somehow -- I couldn't move -- and then ..." She raised a hand to her neck again, fingers trembling. "They bit me."
Arialla took a long, unsteady breath. Her panic was fading now, replaced by a sort of wounded confusion, that she could be struck down like this in what she'd come to consider her home. She hadn't put together yet that her attacker was Ascended; she didn't understand what had happened at all.
But she did look up at Gideon and add, "Thank you. If you hadn't come along ..."
"I called on the Gods to heal you. They answered." Gideon explained succinctly, not wanting to take credit for the actions of the spirit that had answered his prayers.
He listened to her account of her attacker, though Gideon already had a rather unshakable certainty in his mind that an Ascended had committed this crime; it seemed any ill in the world was traced back to the Voice's servants. "Shocked and bit...it's as I thought. You were attacked by one of the Voice's beasts - her Ascended." His voice dripped with a bitter sarcasm at the term. They were anything but, creatures made from the deepest and darkest desires of pompous man.
"You were bleeding heavily. I assume they were trying to drink your blood." He filled in for her, grimacing at the thought and raising a sympathetic hand to his own neck. "Just wish I could have been here sooner, before it happened." Not that Gideon was in his best fighting form, struggling to stay up on his knees by her and leaning to sit and rest on the staff.
You're dragging it down with the weight of your sin
"I see." Arialla took a deep breath and almost smiled, at this sign of the gods' favor. They wanted her to live, so she would. They might not be able to control the actions of evil humans, but they could heal and offer solace -- and, perhaps, vengeance. "The gods have been good to me, but thank you for calling on them. I think I owe some offerings as well."
Evil humans, or not so humans. Arialla's almost-smile turned into an expression of disgust and horror at the mention of the Ascended. "I know of the Ascended ... I had hoped that the blood-drinking was only a tale."
Her hand had never quite come down from the scar at her neck, and she brushed her fingers over it now. It didn't hurt, but she hated it anyway. Her attacker had marked her, left evidence for all to see of how helpless and hurt she'd been. Indelible. She could never be the same carefree girl again.
"Yes ... they drank from me. It was ..." Arialla shuddered and felt no need to go on: this man seemed to understand the horror of what had happened to her, and she didn't want to think about it too closely. "I thought I was going to die. I wanted to die, just so it'd be over."
She offered Gideon a weak smile when he said he wished he'd been there sooner. "You arrived as soon as you could ... The gods sent you to me when I needed you. I can ask no more."
Arialla climbed slowly, carefully, to her feet. Moving didn't hurt, but she winced at the amount of fresh blood on her clothes and skin, in her hair. The stew-soaked basket she'd dropped lay a few feet away.
"Not just a tale. Disgusting truth." Gideon shuddered, shaking his shoulders as if he was trying to get the idea off; the Ascended's thirst for blood had seemed cartoonish to him when he'd first learnt of it, too evil for even the Voice's servants, but he'd seen the evidence time and time again. "They take powers, energy, through the blood - some sick people seek out their bites on purpose." He shook his head.
As she stood up, even with her healed body, Gideon tried to offer a hand to steady her rising, though he rested most of his own weight on the cane, unevenly leaning on one side. He smiled at her words, though it quickly faded as his eyes cast over her blood-soaked outfit and hair, a grim reminder of just how close to death she'd come.
Looking over his shoulder to the Skyport, he sucked his teeth and considered what to do. "I could take you to the Temple to help you clean up, but that would take hours - Do you know anywhere here I could take you?"
You're dragging it down with the weight of your sin
"How monstrous," Arialla said. The Ascended truly were beasts ... Was there a reason she'd thought otherwise, flickering at the back of her mind? No, no such belief could possibly survive the evening she'd had. "Why would anyone ... "
Her mind fell back to the whirl of sensation she'd experienced with the Ascended's teeth on her, and an answer occurred to her, one she abhorred, a fact she refused to acknowledge. She shuddered. "Never mind."
She took Gideon's hand as she rose, though she used his support only lightly, noting the cane he used. Perhaps it was for the best that he hadn't arrived in time to intervene in the attack -- not that Arialla wished to doubt his capabilities, but her attacker had been formidable. Even with her shifts, her ability to turn her hands into eagle's claws, she hadn't had the slightest chance to fight back.
Finding her feet, she went and picked up her basket, not for the broken container of stew but for the doll Mildew had given her. She didn't want to leave it, even if it hadn't helped her this time. Her mistake, probably; she should have held it closer.
To Gideon's question, she said, "There's a family I stay with, here in Torchline. I ... don't want them to see me like this, but I don't have a lot of other options."
The sea, whispered Arialla's mind, offering the ocean as a place of solace, a place that could wash away all of her troubles, all the filth of what had just happened. But, in practice, she knew that the ocean would not get the blood out of her clothes.
Gideon noticed her come to some sort of realisation but did not push her to say it, knowing it was probably her last trust for the Ascended leaving her; it took those with connections a while to come to terms with the truth. The servants of the Voice were good at appearing human, could infiltrate lives with ease, but their true nature would always eventually show.
He watched her pick up her things, letting go of her hand when she seemed steady. "They will understand if they are good people. Let me take you there." It would at least be something he could do; while Gideon had saved her, he felt odd leaving her here alone on the beach. Getting himself steady on his cane he looked up to the town that perched on the top of the cliffs, sunny and bright, unawares of the monsters on it's beaches. "Though, once you've washed and gotten ready...Stormbreak might be safer place for you."
If the Ascended were specifically after her and not just her blood (it was hard to know; they were hungry animals, yet could also be endlessly cunning), there really wasn't anywhere else better. "No Ascended has ever entered it's walls."
You're dragging it down with the weight of your sin
"They are. They'll understand." It wasn't the judgment of the family she stayed with that Arialla feared, not really -- she knew they'd be kind. No, the prickling shame she felt was all her own, independent of outside judgment. In that moment, unable to move, with the Ascended's teeth in her neck, she had seen herself differently: as an animal, and object, nothing but meat. Lesser. How could anyone have done this to her otherwise? And something in her insisted that everyone else must see it too. It made little sense, but "sense" had nothing to do with Arialla's feelings at the moment.
Still, she had nowhere else to go. "Thank you. I'd rather not walk the streets alone. Stormbreak?"
She'd heard of the place, but only rumors coming with the opening of the skyport: a strange, distant land; a stronghold of the Old Gods. With no Ascended. (No Abandoned, either, but she paid little attention to that part of the rumor now.) "That does sound safer ... And they would take me in?"
