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!
They’re fucking everywhere. They bounce, hissing, out from around the Barrows, little tiny fangs bared and Wessex hisses right back, with a well placed kick. But they there are the bigger ones, the real award-winning pumpkins (not those decorative gourds you can buy in stalls), but the kind farmers grow for contests. They’re harder to destroy. Much harder.
And once Wessex begins a strategic retreat, willing to conceded, but not willing to flee entirely, they seem to know. More appear. Then more. Until the General is yelling furiously at them, some loud and well-chosen insults bouncing off their hard shells as easily as they do on the ground. Pride keeps her there, inching back, the hem of her pants spattered in gourd guts, until her heels touch the edge of the steps. Then the Wraith is climbing it, slowly, trying to lure the vampire gourds the staircase and to their doom.
For once, Cameron had managed to escape the gourds while making their way to the Last Step -- well, mostly. Their walking stick already bore a light coating of pumpkin goo, drying in the evening air as they sat on a step about 15 feet up the staircase and tried to decide whether the undoubtedly gorgeous view -- plus the possibility of supernatural encounters -- was worth the steep price of climbing all the steps to the top.
Then came the commotion at the base of the stairway. The first thing Cam thought was Oh, great, now I'll have to deal with them on the way down. Then they recognized Wessex and realized that they should probably lend a hand. As ridiculous as it seemed for Cam to offer Wessex help in battle when she was the Wraith, famed General of the Hollowed Grounds, and they were just ... Cam, who lied about being on a swim team to get out of PE all through high school.
"Hey," Cam said, coming down the stairs to where Wessex was coming up. "Want to borrow my stick? It's pretty sturdy."
cameron ?
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She’d been so focused on the pumpkins that she hadn’t noticed someone else on the steps. Whirling around at the sound of someone else’s voice, Wessex is clearly surprised to see them there and has to catch herself for a moment as her foot slides along a loose rock. “Gods, Cameron, you got me,” she says as she rights herself.
Taking a look at the offered stick, Wessex shakes her head. “You keep it. I’ve got more than enough tricks, I just -” The little fuckers just keep bouncing and she looks back down, trying to gauge the distance between the two of them and the gourds. She hums to herself thoughtfully,. “I can probably explode the little ones with heat if you can get the medium sized ones?” Which didn’t quite sound right, the General taking the little ones. “Or I could take the bigger ones, with my claws.”
Wessex's surprise almost made Cam jump, and they stepped back, then chuckled -- then immediately felt bad about chuckling, but what could they do? Still, they couldn't help sounding more amused than sincerely contrite when they said, "Sorry."
Cam's eyes went wide as Wessex talked about her options, and a lopsided grin crossed their face. "I would love to see some pumpkins explode today. I can get the ones that are too big to burst."
And they suited actions to words: holding their stick like a golf club, they swung it at one of the larger gourds, thwacking it off the step and leaving it rolling on the ground with a large dent in one side bleeding stringy seeds.
cameron ?
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“Yeah?” This time far more pleasantly surprised, Wessex grins up at them, bright and slightly devious. “Then watch this.” With all the delight of a teenager displaying a new trick, she picks a smaller gourd that’s had some difficulty hopping up a stair and turns her Angry Eyes onto it.
Let’s not get into the semantics of the science of how a pumpkin can explode, let’s just say that she’s able to superheat it and the pressure builds up and it explodes, sending seeds and goo into a small radius. None of them, fortunately, but there is a larger one that’s managed to make a fair amount of progress up the steps. Wessex scoots to one side to allow Cam room to pass if they want to, before targeting another small, pale yellow squash.
“Did you come from a world that had the word cy-borg?” she asks, suddenly, remembering the last time she’d employed her lasers and who it had been with.
Cam let out a startled, awed laugh as the gourd exploded. "Oh man! That's awesome."
And maybe a little cruel? How much can living plants feel pain? If Cam saw Wessex do that to an animal, they'd be disgusted and horrified, but it was just pumpkin guts. Even if they were alive. Cam decided to push off any ethical concerns for now and just focus on how impressive Wessex's abilities were.
"Ohhh yeah," Cam said, grinning as they punted the larger gourd. "We have cyborgs. Well, only in fiction -- we don't have the technology yet to make real cyborgs. Though there is some amazing research into prosthetics ... Anyway, would you call yourself a cyborg? I'm guessing the Voice gave you that power too?"
Seeing Wessex explode a gourd just by glaring at it was a pretty good advertisement for the benefits of becoming Ascended.
cameron ?
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“These fuckers have been the bane of every Leafchange for a couple years now,” Wessex offers with a growl, her frustration at the yearly infestation suddenly filling her to bursting. So yes, maybe she is a little aggressive in her demolition of what might otherwise be considered cute, but who’s to say they don’t deserve it?
“I don’t… think so?” she replies, looking over at them for a moment as she sorts through her feelings again. “I don’t really like the word. It came from another Outlander and it felt like… like his cy-borgs were all bad. Had a singular goal? That didn’t… sound good.” Little does she know that they’re quite literally a mix of a vampire, typically something shunned and hated, and a cyborg, which was generally given to causes centered around overtaking the world.
“Ascended just sounds so much better.” Shrugging, Wessex takes the opportunity to kick a larger one - hard - and sends it flying. But the baby one behind it gets her lasers. “Yes, though this is a magic… not an upgrade. There’s a difference, I just don’t know why or how.”
"Aw, man, so we can look forward to this again next year, huh?" Cam contemplated the vampire gourds with a frown. If I'm still here next year, they thought, instinctively, but where else would they be? Actually, better not to think about that. That was just depressing.
"I mean, 'cyborg' technically just means a person with, uh, cybernetic enhancements? Like, technology grafted onto their body? In my world, they're not necessarily good or bad -- depends on the piece of fiction you're engaging with. There's Cyborg, a comic book hero; he's probably the most famous one. But there are bad ones too ... I mean, like I said, they're fictional where I come from." Cam shrugged, realizing that Wessex probably didn't care about the explanation. "Ascended does sound a lot cooler, though. I can totally understand preferring that term. I won't go around calling you a cyborg or anything if you don't like it."
Though, Cam realized, Ascended implied a certain superiority ... Based on their previous conversations with Wessex, though, they weren't sure she'd appreciate the semantic discussion. Especially when there were gourds to smash, as Cam got to work on now, smacking one gourd with their stick and stabbing it through another.
"That is so cool ... Magic and technology working together is such an interesting concept." And not just a concept anymore, but a reality. Cam grinned, glad they'd ended up in Caido, even if it had its disadvantages.
cameron ?
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“If the world hasn’t ended or they haven’t fucked off at our stupidity, yep.” Grim or morbidly optimistic, Wessex nonetheless is somewhat upbeat about it. As if the coming of the vampire gourds was just another thing to be dealt with and enduring. A part of life in Caido. Totally, absolutely normal.
Their acknowledgement and promise not to call her a cyborg has the demigod chuckling. “Thanks,” she says, as that small one explodes rather anti-climactially. And for a moment, almost as if the gourds are rational, sentient creatures, they pause. The Cameron-Wessex duo seems dangerous. She takes the oportunity to glance over at them and tilts her head, recalling a prior conversation. “I’d be lying if I said anything less than I love it. Have you - have you thought any more about Ascending?” Nevermind that it’s technically a question that’s too late.
"Maybe they'll be back even if the world does end," Cam joked, not considering how plausible the end of the world currently was. OK, sure, things weren't great for the Ascended, but the whole world ending? That sounded like a tall order. "Just a bunch of bitey little gourds, hopping around in the ruins of our civilization."
Cam brandished their stick at the vampire gourds, hoping that they could scare the stupid things off and not have to deal with them anymore. Maybe the gourds would be smart enough to realize they were outmatched. (Though if they were that smart, Cam would feel kind of bad about enjoying their destruction so much.) "Oh, yeah. Uh, I think I probably will, actually. Well, I had my mind made up, even went to a shrine, and then I got cursed, so that wasn't fun. But the curse is over now -- you'd know if it weren't -- so I guess there's nothing for it but to head back to the shrine."
cameron ?
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They have her chuckling at the thought of Caido’s ruins given to half-sentient gourds. There was a Mother - or Father? - Pumpkin somewhere, they’d seen it before. Been squished by it. Ridiculous, really, but the General can appreciate an unexpected laugh. “Oh I’m sure they’d evolve somehow and Gods, I hope they’d do better than we are.” She throws her hands up in mock defeat, ready to surrender herself to their tiny teeth for the good of the world. “Let ‘em have it. Or at least these steps.”
And then she lights up to hear that Cameron is still thinking of Ascending. It quickly falls at the mention of a curse, and is then followed by a blanche. “The spirits have gotten more aggressive lately, I think. I’m sorry you were cursed - was it bad? I’ve seen some bad ones. And some hilarious ones. But mostly only funny after the fact.” Which is not to imply that Cam’s curse was funny at all, just that there are varying degrees.
The gourds begin to advance again and the Wraith offers them her hand. “Want a lift back to - oh, anywhere?”
"Based on their current behavior? I think they'd be even worse." Cam sighed and grabbed their pack. Wessex was right: it was time to admit defeat. "We're outnumbered, if not outmatched -- let's get out of here."
Cam grimaced at the mention of their curse. "I could only say 'yes' or 'no' for weeks. It was pretty irritating ... I don't know if you've noticed, but I usually talk a lot." This last bit was joking, self-deprecating. Cam's tendency to ramble had caused them a fair bit of embarrassment over the years, even if most people were too polite to point it out.
"Sure," Cam said, and took Wessex's hand.
-FIN
cameron ?
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