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!
A good setting for ghost stories: a very creepy tree, an ethereal world, howling winds, and a decently forged fire along embankments.
Well, it suited Melita anyway.
Content with the logs she’d found and rolled beside her newly dug pit, she listened to the crackle of the flames, and then grabbed hold of some sticks she’d found, hoisting them so the conflagration grew bigger. Fangorn grumbled something, and she handwaved the concerns. Then she passed some of the liquor she’d snagged from the Ark and passed it over to Milo, laughter already flickering and flowing from her wild spirit. “Okay, I think you should go first!” Then she chose a seat on the log across, hands folded under her chin. Contemplating snacks.
Milo’s more than content to drink and snack on things that likely might make him feel like shit in the morning, sitting around a fire that Melita and Fangorn have so wonderfully put together, while telling ghost stories. He settles easily, reaching over to grab the makeshift marshmallows also stolen off the Ark, grabbing one of the two sticks he’d sharpened into points and pierces the marshmallow with it before handing it to Melita.
He works on his own as he contemplates where to start. “Y’ever heard of th’ship called the Sanguine Rift?” He begins, peeking up at Melita through the firelight as he moves to set his marshmallow above the flame to get it all melted and gooey. “Was a pirate ship ‘n a good one at that.” He gives his marshmallow a spin before he’s giving Melita his full attention.
“They were gonna go ‘n get a buncha shit from some’ve the other ships. Not jus’ regular ol’ ships like the Ark, but they’d thieve fishin’ boats too.” Another pause, completely for dramatic affect. “One day they were gonna go after a while slew of ‘em, the fishin’ ships. Got up real close t’Torchline, cannons aimed… Can y’guess what happened?”
Taking a swig of the liquor, and a stick and marshmallow of her own, the youth readily applied to setting it ablaze. In no time at all, the marshmallow had burnt; far more than crispy edges, blackened and sooty. Frowning, she offered it to Fangorn – who had the wherewithal to look suitably offended, and she shrugged. Trying again, without reeling the poor thing straight into the flames, she began to rotate it slowly, gilded eyes finally glancing up through the flames to catch at Milo’s words.
She hadn’t heard of a ship called the Sanguine Rift, and she leaned in closer, retrieving the marshmallow, and working far easier, better, on this one. Attention rapt on food and story, she nodded along, quite indulgent.
Could she guess what happened? It was a ghost story after all. She paused, tapping on her chin, ignoring the mess she was making across her face. “No,” she giggled. “What happened?”
He picks the places where to tack in his story while his marshmallow goes golden and gooey and Milo has a sweet, cinnamon cracker to back it up with when her attention lands on him again. “The pirates got right up next t’the fishin’ boats. The fisher’s were freakin’ out, prayin’, screamin’, doin’ whatever they could t’try and make sure they didn’t get taken out by the Rift.” He pauses, once again for dramatic affect.
“Th’sun was goin’ down an’ the stars came up. ‘n with the stars, suddenly – right when they were ‘bout to fire their cannons, somethin’ else started risin’ from the sea. Some of ‘em thought it was a herd’a ghost whales. What it really was, though, were sailors lost at sea, risin’ from the depths again, surroundin’ the ship…” A grin is shot her way as he pauses to devour the marshmallow mess before he’s reaching for the sticky bottle of liquor to take a swig to drown it down with.
Spying the crackers, Melita makes a quick grab for about five of them – placing the marshmallow in between two, biting down, and savoring the miniature version of a s’mores. Another drink of liquor to wash it all down – the marshmallow fixtures from her hands now all over the bottle – and her attention could meander somewhat back to the story. Right. Rifts and ships. Pirates. People screaming. One of her least favorite animals. “Fucking ghost whales,” she muttered.
While Fangorn snagged at one of the remaining crackers, her hand went to her chin, gilded eyes focusing on the flames while Milo told the other proportions. “Wait. There were just a bunch of ghost sailors rising out of the ocean?” Could they fly? Levitating? Wraiths spiraling from the deep? His grin made it seem all the more implausible, but she snorted, awaiting for him to continue after her interruption.
“Aye, I’ll drink t’that.” Milo reiterates with a bright grin, cutting his story in half as he grabs for the sticky bottle, taking a deep swig from it before he continues the story, watching as Melita snags the cracker. Milo hands her another one before he’s roasting the next marshmallow, trying to figure out where he’d left off.
After a second of rotating the marshmallow in silence he bobs his head. “Yeah. Wasn’t ghosts, though. ‘Sposedly, they were solid. Guess one’ve the crew’s men shot a cannon right ‘n the middle’a one. Blew the sea sailor t’nothin’.” Red brows pinch for a second before he huffs a laugh and shakes his head. “’nyway, long story short, they didn’ get t’raid the fisher boats. The ship was overrun by those risen from the depths sailors ‘n they took their revenge. Rumor has it y’can still see the bow of the ship if ya swim far ‘nough out by the lighthouse cliffs.”
Making to grab the bottle back after his swig, and if they fought over it, so be it, the youth hummed under her breath, taking the proffered cracker. “Solid men. Huh.” And a shrug to her shoulders curled through; mind envisioning a bizarre hoard of humans rising out of the depths all on their own power, overrunning an entire ship. “Well, I hope we don’t run into any of those,” handwaving it off; though with her abilities in cannon fire and archery, maybe it wouldn’t matter.
She intended to take another marshmallow, but then realized it was her turn. “All right, hm.” She tapped on her chin, mostly because there were several she could account for, embellish here and there, and the liquor had already started a very pleasant buzz in her mind. Another drink, and she began. “There was once a beast called Kisamoa. He was very charming, even capable of lying to and swindling the gods. At first, his actions seemed innocent. Find some bones. Clean up a marsh. Fight a monster. Standard stuff.” Her eyes went to the fire, lips twitching somewhat, either in a smile or some attempt at a fanged outreach; it couldn’t be certain. “But then it became very clear that anyone and everyone who’d helped him had made a horrible mistake.”
“Yeah. Solid.” Milo says with a huff of a laugh, a bit of marshmallow sticking the edge of his lips together. But he nods his agreement, sitting back to down a bit more of the liquor while Melita launches into her own story. There’s a red brow that raises while he waits, as if she has to decide which ones to go off of. Milo’s story had been one that was told to him many a time, having come from a family of fishermen. It was a legend of sorts, one told mouth by mouth along Torchline’s shores.
This, though, Milo finds himself leaning forward a bit toward the fire, fiddling with the stick he’d used to roast his marshmallows while she speaks. “No shit?” He asks, cocking his head, his bronze gaze alighting with the firelight as he watches Melita curiously. “How’d they make’a horrible mistake?” He asks, his curiosity piqued.
Enamored with the marshmallow she’d plonked down on her stick, intending to roast and toast it once more, Melita forgot she’d been telling the tale (an origin story, really) when Milo asked his question, and brought her out of the particular reverie. “He began to destroy the world.” Ominous, even if her telltale smile was etched there, and it’d been a completely horrific experience.
She grabbed another stick and outlined the words ‘Kisamoa’ in the dirt, so the fire reflected its implementation. Thereafter, she rearranged the letters underneath, so the anagram pilfered and cycled into what it had been all along: I am Kaos. “He opened up a portal while he slayed gods and anyone attempting to defy him. Some escaped, but many were lost.” Terror and destruction, vile, vile upheavals where beloved deities became nothing but dust. Where beloved mothers pushed their daughters into Rifts and prayed for a better world. “Only after they’d tumbled into the Rift, did the ghosts come.”
He practically listens on the edge of his seat, eyes wide as he stares at Melita and waits for the next tidbit of information to reveal itself. Kisamoa, not who he seems, something that Milo imagines he can relate to given the turn of events in Torchline once the portals opened up. It had all been a lot to deal with, and even so at least they hadn’t brought total destruction to his rebellious town.
So he watches as she draws out the name in the sand, then watches as she remakes it – the anagram of the god’s name to reveal what it was he’d brought to them. He’s hanging onto her every word, imagining the story as it unfolds. He frowns as she mentions that Kaos had gone and slain those that dared him, but his gaze snaps back to her face with a raise of a red brow. “What kinda ghosts?” He prompts softly.
Her eyes flickered and fell; gilded embers reflecting off of fires, mind addled and whirling, fingers drumming against the bottle and not taking any more marshmallows. A frown lingered over her face, unaware and uncaring that it was occurring at all, head tilting, half-forgetting where she was in the story before Milo prompted her. “Oh, yeah,” a wayward sigh in her throat. “Ghosts of all their loved ones.”
People cherished and devoted; wrangled into means of nothing but chains and tethers, lines of anger that had never existed, intangible threads of death and dominion that shouldn’t have belonged. Kiada somewhere in the midst, going after Kisamoa, who should’ve just drowned and been done with it. “But they were like…monsters. Not the way they were meant to be remembered.” She didn’t have the heart to draw it all out – the stick still in her hand.
She drops quite the bomb shell when she says ghosts of all their loved ones, and the face Milo makes is definitely one that would be some sort of joke in an alternate universe (one hundred percent a meme) as the look of horror crosses his face, jaw dropping slightly as his red brows pinch forward and his eyes widen. “Fuck.” It isn’t eloquent, but it’s the answer he’s got.
He draws silent, letting her continue, explaining that they had come back but that they’d come back wrong and Milo can’t help the very visible shiver that racks through his body as he nearly burns a marshmallow before he’s grabbing another sweet cracker to drop it onto. “Then what happened?” He asks, unsure if he really wants to know the answer.
Any of the highlighted, amusing efforts seemed to dim now, and it was truly her own fault. There was a sullen sigh wrapped in amongst all her other breaths, brow furrowing at her actions, at her dominion, at ruining a perfectly fine evening of booze and marshmallows and stupid stories that should’ve just stayed that way. But she could hear his question over the inferno, and she frowned, picking at a piece of bark on the log she sat upon. “The dead attacked their loved ones.” Why she bore the scar down the trace of her spine; lightning askewed and puckered, why all the inward ones still reflected sometimes in the press of her heart and ribs.
“Kisamoa drowned or something afterwards. People tried to save him.” I don’t know why she wanted to offer, but maybe they were still immersed in pretending this wasn’t part of her life. Half a smile emerged, with a shrug embedded in there too. “I liked yours better.”
He half debates between asking yet another question – but his words are cut off with the realization. The dead attacking their loved ones, no longer good memories spared in the span of what was likely quite the intense battle. Instead, the ghostly, fucked up versions of their family coming back in vengeance. He frowns, taking a deep breath before he focuses on setting the stick down in the dirt so that the sticky end he’d used for his marshmallows stick up in the air.
She tells him that she liked his better and he nods, working his jaw before trying to get out of the down mood she’d brought onto the night. He takes another swig of the alcohol before handing the bottle back to her, flashing her a bright grin that he hopes might chase away the ghosts. “Y’know, I keep on hearin’ all this shit ‘bout th’awful things that happen even here in Caido. But ‘m too sheltered from leavin’ Torchline I’ve never experienced anythin’ like it. This… Is only th’third or fourth time ‘ve left Torchline.”
