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!
As soon as Morgan departs Hotaru is packing her bags in a rush. There’s no time to lose, and travel will be slower without Atlas, so she has to move fast if she intends to see Deimos before she departs. Luckily she doesn’t need much, dresses capable of being reworn with relative ease and food already dried and packaged for travel. Then she’s out the door, wind pulling at her long hair which she’d forgotten to tie up, venturing out into the cold towards Deimos’ house. It’s not far from her spa luckily, though she knows her absence will be noted all the more because of it.
Hotaru never wanted him to be the last to know. She wanted him to be the first, but nothing seems to be going right surrounding this entire pregnancy. Hotaru scarcely deigns to knock before she’s entering, snow clinging to her hair and cheeks pink with exertion and cold alike. “Deimos? Are you home? It’s urgent.” In so many, many ways, and already she is sorry for everything she has to share with the clock still ticking down her hours of freedom.
Hotaru has a passive magic that makes her glow with an internal golden light; it makes her appear youthful and her hair seems to look like moving sunlight. Can only subtly illuminate dark spaces.
The sound of iron shots is stuck in my head The thunder of the drums dictates
This wasn’t the apartment he’d furnished in the barracks; but it was something. Shelter, for a little while. Sanctuary, a roof over his head, while he contemplated sedition and rebellion. Nothingness, for when he craved a void.
Before the fire, legs stretched out, calm and pragmatic, churning away the seething into something more productive. A sharpening of knives and blades, sliding them along the whetstone, then setting them aside for the next one. Zuriel had already claimed her favored spot by the fireplace, and Belial sauntered along, poking at holes in the woodwork. A modest tranquility, with naught much else to savor.
The rise in the peryton’s head, and his swiveling ears, indicated something else was coming, and he only had a moment to lean forward, when Hotaru rushed in through the door. Eyes narrowed, pulse rising, he sighed at the urgency, at the zealousness, at something else heightening the war drums in his ears. A low rumble, and he followed suit, leaving his chair to shut the door behind her. “What is it?” What else had occurred now?
The rhythm of the falls, the number of dead The rising of the horns, ahead
Something in her settles immediately upon seeing his face. It’s like a chorus of voices whispering assurances in her head; he’s here, you’re safe, nobody can hurt you when you’re together. Archaic notions from days long past when they’d only had each other to trust at their back. Now that hers is against the wall, this is the only place she would consider going.
As he closes the door behind her, she drops her bag to the ground, frenetic energy buzzing in her veins and making her skin crawl. “I have so much to tell you, and not much time,” Hotaru breathes, voice underlined by steel. She must keep her head, because Deimos might not with everything she has to share. The only question is where to start?
Shucking her jacket, Hotaru divests her layers until only her soft cotton shirt remains, and it clings to the not inconsiderable bump already showing at the very bottom of her stomach. Her hand reaches for his, guiding it there in a gesture he won’t mistake even before the words come. “I’m pregnant.” And if he looks into her face he will see a vortex of emotions; terror, joy, frustration. This changes everything and she knows it. “When Frey Attuned me, they presented a challenge. A race. Remi was there and…with their magnetism…” Words fail her, because how else can she word what a giant fucking mess of a mistake this has become? “He knows. He wants to be involved but - I don’t know what that will mean.” Trying to answer any questions that might immediately arise, because the hourglass sand is ever-pouring, and this is only the tip of the iceberg.
Hotaru has a passive magic that makes her glow with an internal golden light; it makes her appear youthful and her hair seems to look like moving sunlight. Can only subtly illuminate dark spaces.
The sound of iron shots is stuck in my head The thunder of the drums dictates
Deimos had received a litany of bad news over a period of years and lifetimes. Deaths. Abandonments. Betrayals. Failures. Losses. They never quite equated to one another, but seethed or tormented in the realm of his chest, over the bones of his ribs, in the anchors of his soul. And there they often stayed, only to be replaced with new ones – and he’d try to find ways back to the surface, angling around so he didn’t drown. Or he’d let himself be consumed, eaten away by the dreadful wakes. The Sword didn’t quite know what to do with these fathoms.
Because the depths weren’t his, but they resounded and hollowed out just the same.
No sooner had the door shut, the wood echoing off of locks, did she begin – a rush of restlessness, his brows furrowing with the turn of frenetic disarray – his entire being striving to maintain a calm, composed reticence. Grounded and certain, when there was nothing to be assured about – an arch to his brow, taking her jacket as her words became forged along the walls. “What do you me-“ not much time? and then his inquiry was cut off anyway.
A very long-suffering sigh filled in the space as the evidence of her latest ventures came to light. The fireplace’s amber highlighted the bump on her stomach, and the weight of her hand on his, indicating, placing it along her stomach, only reiterated the fact that pulsed through the air. He was silent while she explained, his features pressed into their nonchalance – wholly uncertain how to even react. Be proud of her – because motherhood had always been what she wanted even when they always faded from her? Irritated and annoyed – because the timing was so ridiculously bad? Confused – because nothing really made sense? “Remi?” He echoed, piercing gaze narrowing, head tilting on obvious bafflement and bewilderment.
He pulled his hand away, hiding all his discomfort in raising his arms across his chest, though one hand managed to drag its way down his face, over his mouth, as he stared at the wall, and then dropped it downward, not holding the second sigh. “So what does this mean now?” He’d likely be the lone wolf in their insurrection schemes. Perhaps it would be best, better, that way, and the only one who’d come back into the flames was him.
The rhythm of the falls, the number of dead The rising of the horns, ahead
His exasperation is met with her own bristled emotions, though they’re not aimed fully at him. “Trust me I know,” she snaps, and runs a hand roughly through her hair, immediately regretting it. It’s not as if he’d said anything, but he didn’t have to. She knows exactly what he’s thinking, has visited every pathway herself and trod them half to death with the extra time she’d been allowed. Though she can’t help the slightly hysterical laugh that escapes at his incredulous, singular reply. “Yeah, neither of us saw that one coming either.” The gay married man and the woman who still loved her exes? Yeah that was a combo nobody had expected.
Already she can see his mind ticking away, and her eyes narrow. “You’re not doing this alone,” she affirms, refusing to budge. “I don’t care what it takes. We’ll figure something out. Otherwise…well, I’m not quite midway but it won’t be long either.” Not that Deimos would be happy to wait, that was more Hotaru’s gig. Spinning she grabs her coat up and slips it back on, the chill harder to bear in her current state and desperately needing something to do with her hands.
“Secondly, Sunjata contacted Morgan. He’s demanding I go to Torchline to talk about the fire. I told Morgan I was there, but only to stop you, to account for my presence there - she believes me, and has allowed me to try and settle things on my own considering…extenuating ties.” The sharpness of her gaze is telling. That this was an intentional deception, finely crafted to suit their needs. “I have to go alone but I don’t intend to do so without you knowing. I have to be there by morning.” And though she’s scared to face them emotionally, it will not stop her either.
Hotaru has a passive magic that makes her glow with an internal golden light; it makes her appear youthful and her hair seems to look like moving sunlight. Can only subtly illuminate dark spaces.
The sound of iron shots is stuck in my head The thunder of the drums dictates
The snap in his direction was understandable, but so were his tattered and seething emotions. Instead of releasing a verbal warning, there was a rumble in his Attuned bearings, one she’d be quite capable of understanding. I do not deserve that clear and concise, hormonal implications or not – he’d always been there for her. Wreaking havoc on one of the few bonds he had left would be ridiculous and stupefying, even if the irritation was there on the surface of his skin, underneath the reticent and composed veneer.
Nonsensical and mystifying, his jaw clenched and his head shook, beginning to wander over the wooden floor, pacing behind the chair because every restless notion was thriving to take hold. There was naught to render into pieces or break apart here, and he had to settle for feathering his jaw and holding his chin at a seditious angle. “We had it figured out. And you are certainly not doing anything while pregnant.” She’d have to stomp over his dead body before any of that took place. How had this all unraveled so quickly? What had she been thinking? Another long, long sigh drifted out from his chest, and then she started on another course of chaos.
Sunjata and Morgan’s correspondences – the Flood and his discoveries with whatever evidence he’d managed to snag. But then after made his eyes widen in utter disbelief. “Why would you go?” Could she not see the snare? Could she not see the underlying footfalls? “That is a trap.” He thought her far smarter than that; to see the lines drawing, the tethers moving. He’d already been banned from Torchline and couldn’t follow – the intentions of separation were wide and obvious. Frustrations warred and wore; brooding and brimming along the outlines of his frame. “And if they jail you?” This was so stupid – and all the carefully laid out plans they’d concocted seemed to have gone up in the air well after he’d set them aflame.
The rhythm of the falls, the number of dead The rising of the horns, ahead
She winces almost imperceptibly at the rebuke she can feel from his side of the bond. Her arms come to cradle her belly, self-soothing. Apology and regret ebbs and flows from her own side, sincere in a way that can’t be faked. He is not the target of her frustration and anxiety, only the unfortunate bystander.
While he paces, she stands rooted in the entryway, certain she’ll shift unintentionally if she takes so much as a step. “I can figure it out,” is her stalwart rebuttal, stubborn and unyielding as her chin hikes higher. The spirit may have denied her, but that won’t stop her. Whether it means waiting or adapting their plans doesn’t matter. Hotaru will not forsake their goals because of this.
She sighs, and her tense shoulders sink at his disbelief. It’s not that she doesn’t understand. “This is what I’m made for. Duplicity, the danger of walking the line. I had to quickly weigh the costs; keeping Morgan out of it was more important.” In fact it is her top priority, for her own sake as well as Deimos’. “They have a singular witness, and little else. It wasn’t even enough to convince Morgan - she agreed if they try, she will call me back as Warden, and defend my side of the story.” Hotaru had done so intentionally, using the political ties to keep her from being trapped in Torchline in any way, far from her brother’s side. And while he may hate that she has done this, her mind is already steps ahead. This is what she is built to do. It’s who she is. “Even if I thought it was what they wanted, I wouldn’t let myself be trapped.” It’s the best safeguard she can promise him - hung on Morgan, yes, but a guaranteed escape nonetheless.
Hotaru has a passive magic that makes her glow with an internal golden light; it makes her appear youthful and her hair seems to look like moving sunlight. Can only subtly illuminate dark spaces.
The sound of iron shots is stuck in my head The thunder of the drums dictates
The apology might have been there, but his irritation failed to abate, pressing in through the hollows of his mind; cataclysm after cataclysm, derailment after derailment. And he did feel like a bystander in all of it, standing and pacing amidst a flurry of movement and motion that superseded and overrode everything they’d already worked on. Machinations and calculations aside, there was flexibility to be had, but for the moment the Sword was an unyielding torrent, furrowed brows, clenched jaws, explanations that had no meaning because they’d already been tossed out into the melee. “You can?” His piercing eyes rounded back on her, stormy, glacial, vexed. Perhaps she’d forgotten how he’d willingly confessed his crimes, lost his position, and never incriminated her to ensure she had more time. Except the current dilemma wasn’t anything great or grand, and what she’d done with it left pieces and pockets of convoluted confusion and melodrama. “And what am I in the schemes now? The one who hears everything last?”
Maybe she didn’t think him capable. Maybe he was misconstrued in that sense too. Maybe he was just muscle and might and strength, and that was all. Maybe that’s what he’d been made for, in everyone’s god damned eyes. No input. No decrees. Bow his head and march down the lane.
The vexation rolled off his shoulders in waves; no use in ceasing them when she’d feel it – loud and clear. His pacing ceased only after he’d grabbed a piece of paper and pencil, and barely refrained from slamming it into the table. “Of course not. Always one step ahead,” he murmured and growled, low and facetious, sardonic and rancorous. “I was taught not to underestimate my enemies. Do not let your arrogance be your downfall.” After all; she’d already believed herself above their means and measures. But there were no guarantees, obvious and momentous based on just these singular moments; cast off in lies built upon lies. When would that tower topple? What did they have scheming in Torchline? How was he noticed, when he’d been cloaked a majority of the time? “And who was this witness? I saw no one from my portions.”
He began to sketch out an entirely new design, starting with rows upon rows of ice, dragged across the page boldly, pouring his indignation into the pencil lead. He didn’t look at her. “While you are there, you may see the new Arbiter – alive and well, apparently.” No meaning to that vengeance either.
The rhythm of the falls, the number of dead The rising of the horns, ahead
This isn’t the first time they’ve locked proverbial horns. For all the depth of their love, they are different people with entirely different ways of achieving things. She with her shadows and sibilant tones, he with his fire and steel. But they have a lifetime spent at each other’s sides to draw on, a loyalty she has never known outside of him, and even in her frustration she knows with a certainty that this will not break them. It lends her a surety that allows her to keep from pulling back and going along in a way others might when faced with confrontation.
“That’s not what I meant,” she corrects, though she says it slowly with an exhale through her nose to keep from snapping. “I’m not trying to seem as if I’m the only one controlling this - but I am the one pregnant, and when I say I can figure it out I mean that I will find a way to still be at your side regardless of the impact this has.” For all that words are her weapons, she is struggling to control them now, riled and pressed by time as she is. Deimos deserves clarity and fairness however and so she endeavors to slow down, to explain.
“I wanted to have a solution before I told you, so that you wouldn’t worry. But I didn’t have enough time.” Consternation twists her pretty face into a catty scowl. This situation is distasteful to say the least. Hotaru despises being rushed. “You were the first person I wanted to tell, but there’s no joy or celebration to be had when all I’ve done is made myself a wrench in our plans.” Viperous hiss aimed at herself this time, poisonous and hateful. Her averted gaze flinches at the corners as he snags and sketches, graphite dark and bold with his emotions. He’d never hurt her, but too many beloved men have before, and the tension in her shoulders is coiled and painful.
Bearing his facetiousness is like trying not to scream when being branded, but she must. He is angry, understandably so. “It’s not arrogance, it’s the surety of having back up plans. More than one. They won’t contain me.” Not for long at least. And they could certainly try. “They haven’t named the witness, which makes their claims even weaker in Morgan’s eyes.” And Hotaru would play them against each other if she had to, always protecting herself. A snake in the grass.
What she isn’t expecting is his last revelation.
Her stomach drops out, leaden and sick, and fire engulfs her veins. Her nails dig into her palm, biting and immediate, until blood bubbles through against her cuticles. ”What?” Fury unlike anything she’s felt since arriving in Caido burns in her breast. All stillness is forgotten as she prowls closer to the table, breath coming short and fast. “Then perhaps that is their witness.” Her voice shakes even as she tries to reign it in. Vengeance must come second to her deceit, to getting out of this interrogation. Her logical mind knows this, but the part of her that still burns with Atlas’ loss howls for blood. Eyeing the paper he is drawing on, she gives a grunt of interest, peering closer even as her teeth grind hard enough to ache through her jaw and into her temple.
Hotaru has a passive magic that makes her glow with an internal golden light; it makes her appear youthful and her hair seems to look like moving sunlight. Can only subtly illuminate dark spaces.
The sound of iron shots is stuck in my head The thunder of the drums dictates
The fury in his ribcage wasn’t a burning one; cold, cold, cold, like the glacial winds outside, within the expanse of the world they’d come to protect all over again. Borne out of frustration, hinderings, and forestallment; what should have been a momentous occasion, worth celebrating for her, had been notched and nestled into another foil. And while she spoke he tried not to seethe, tried to force it all down, down, down into the calming, composed jurisdictions of his soul that could interlock detachment and apathy so god damned readily. But not with Ru, and not with the score of others he’d always sworn to protect, shield, and guard – and while his loyalty was eternally available, it wasn’t without fault, flaw, or human composition. Neither of them were.
So he ceased the emboldened drawing for a moment, leaning back in his chair, spine unyielding and straight, trying to listen without the blood pounding in his ears. And while she might have craved a resolution, tried to absolve the crisis before it began, it was far too late now. His voice chiseled back into the room, the small kitchen with firelight flickering, with his companions staring, with the realms pressing inward on them again and again. Calm, rationale, without the facetious intonations. “I wish you would have told me sooner. So there could have been a joint solution.” They’d always worked better together, rather than tearing worlds apart on solo executions. “Instead of this haphazard mess.” Something they said they wouldn’t do – and his chilling calculations were going to have to press in all the more. “I do not believe I have ever asked you to bear anything on your own.” Why she’d chosen to do it now made little sense to him.
His eyes went downward and a sigh billowed through his lungs, before picking up the pencil again, rendering scales and earthen wares, craving absolution in the darkening wake they seemed to continually face. He had half a mind to put his face down to the wood and just repeatedly crash it against the enamel, but it wouldn’t do any good. Deimos made no comment about the child, not right now, not while he simmered quietly, trying to make an effort to fix and alter. When some portions were placed down, his finger went to the corner, pointing. “We will need someone there.” As if the nuances were simple and precise.
Then he permitted her to inspect, tempted to pace again. He remained still, save for his hand drumming against the table. No names to a witness. Capabilities of escaping a jail they knew nothing about. The sudden maelstrom from her soul, bleeding out into the room, and his simply remaining in its cataclysmic state – waiting to erupt. “Perhaps.”
The rhythm of the falls, the number of dead The rising of the horns, ahead
Quietly she allows him to wrestle with his emotions, her own face guileless and revealing the sincerity of her regret even if she will not speak any farther on it. Neither are the types to linger, to snarl and gnash against past mistakes when there are current affairs to be handled. When he finally concedes, a reluctant disarming made evident in posture before prose, Hotaru moves closer and reaches to place her hand upon his forearm. A creature of touch, expressing her remorse with physical contact, a silent coming together after the brief spat.
“You’ve never asked it of me,” she agrees softly. “But I’ve been…wrong, ever since Atlas. My head isn’t straight.” The spirit had shown her that. A little too late, but she needed to see all the same that she was spiraling. Perhaps not as visibly as others, but still slipping downward in the wake of her companion’s death.
Inspecting the paper, she hums and plucks the writing instrument when he has discarded it. “I know just the person. Someone equally invested, and with the power we need.” Her hand writes the name in elegant scrawl. Staring down at the dark strokes, she grits her teeth, jaw feathering at the mere mention of the unnamed Arbiter’s continued existence. “I can’t afford to kill her while I’m there under investigation.” It grinds reluctantly from between her teeth. “Three days tops. If I’m not home in three days -” she taps her finger to the name. “This will be my third backup then.”
Hotaru has a passive magic that makes her glow with an internal golden light; it makes her appear youthful and her hair seems to look like moving sunlight. Can only subtly illuminate dark spaces.
The sound of iron shots is stuck in my head The thunder of the drums dictates
These were times where he would’ve sunk right into exhaustion, a mental wearing and breaking down of walls and feats, of structures built to tower rather than topple. It would’ve been an easy climb down, when they were already so perilously low after the last round of discussions with others, from the eyes that swept over him day after day, from the way consequences pummeled here. But even with his head down, stare scraping over the paper, there was no feral need to break and fall apart.
Driven by resolution, by resolve, by the need to see these things reshaped, renewed, his mind was a stinging nettle, awakening to everything parading by; the trials, the tribulations, the faults, the flaw lines, all the potential ways in which this can go heinously wrong. Deimos had nothing to say to Ru’s statement, naught more than a clench of his jaw and another sigh unwinding from his feral frame. Moments that could’ve be prevented – that’s where they seemed immersed within now.
But hopefully not for much longer.
The Sword watched as she took up the charcoal, made more lines and segments across the paper. He leaned forward, arms and elbows upon the table, to inspect the newest addition. A soft snort coiled through his nares, but if he was surprised, he didn’t show it. “If they are willing,” he murmured, aware that their plight didn’t stretch to everyone, and that there would be a stark few willing to lend aid to this proportion of the cause. Not when it promised sedition and insurrection.
He took the instrument back, much like a child with a quick swipe of his fingers, grasping it firmly while he amended a few other things, adding chunks of earth and greenery to the outer limits, listening all the while. A shame he uttered mostly to himself, as if not wanting to admit it out loud. No need to set the Valkyrie on that particular course now, when they had so many others flailing around in the wings. “Three days,” he repeated, as if it were a very stupid vow, a low rumble from his chest. Three days; and then he could sound the alarms.
The rhythm of the falls, the number of dead The rising of the horns, ahead
Letting him pluck the instrument from her fingers, she flattens her hand to the table and takes a quiet moment to simply sink into his presence. They might not be at their best right now, but she has a sinking feeling that she will need this moment to sustain her in the coming days. None of this is going to be easy, and part of her wants to agree with him and take the easy way out. Refuse to go. But that’s not the path that would best help them in her eyes.
“I think they will be,” she notes, but there’s clear agreement that if the answer is no, they will not pursue that avenue. His vow lends strength to her spine, and she gives a tired smile. She too would love to take her revenge, but Hotaru plays long games. Short-sighted vindication will not serve her well - it already hadn’t, with the start of all this.
Part of her - emotional, pregnant, intimidated against all reason - wants to say ‘don’t leave me behind’. But there is nobody she trusts more in this world, and she knows in her heart that he wouldn’t. That Halo would sooner burn than keep him here with such fragile bonds such as laws and politics. If she needs him, he will be there. It doesn’t mean she isn’t scared for her heart. The rest of her is already suited for this method of war. Instead she reaches to place her hand over his, more for her own benefit than anything. Silent and burdened as she enjoys her last few moments before facing her self-directed jailing.
- FIN
Hotaru has a passive magic that makes her glow with an internal golden light; it makes her appear youthful and her hair seems to look like moving sunlight. Can only subtly illuminate dark spaces.
