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!
Ever's expression is patiently unreadable as he sits crossed-legged on the stony ground. An odd mixture of maturity and youthfulness, the boy is hunched over and writing feverishly back and forth across the unlined pages of his notebook. Every now and then he pauses, frowns, and glances up to where a group of two men and one woman are being held in place by three handmines. Ever has already heard the low trumpeting from the dragoon patrols which means help is on the way. Still, it makes his stomach feel strange to hear their calls for water and mercy.
Pretending that he can't hear or see them, Ever swallows uncomfortably as he continues to document all that he sees. "What the fuck is wrong with you!?" One of the held-abandoned screams at him, and for a moment an actual answer begins to form on Ever's tongue before something occurs to him. "Rhetorical." He mumbles reassuringly to himself, even as the prisoners continue to scream insults and pleas his way.
Quite which insult Mateo is referring to is unclear, given how many are being thrown Ever's way, but his steps are indignant nonetheless as he marches over to where the other boy sits. Theres a half-eaten gingerbread man in one of his hands, and a second in a paper wrap in the other. It had taken a little while to find Ever today, but slowly Mateo's learning that the other boy mostly hangs out in places where kids don't really belong.
Hence why they're here, on the Righteous Road. "What you doing?" he asks, before glancing up at the Abandoned a second time. "My nonna can do magic," he calls. "Can't you do some to get out of that?"
It's still strange to associate the word friend with himself such that Ever writes a full sentence before realizing that the golden voice rising across the sands was referencing him. Glancing up in time to see Mateo's confident march in his direction, Everest nevertheless takes a moment to appraise his friend from his meticulously tied shoelaces to the contents of his hands. "Hello Mateo." Ever says politely. "The guards are on their way." He adds by way of explanation, just in case his friend wondered why he was ignoring the complaints and screams of the trio. They were trespassing abandoned, sure, but Ever just wasn't the sort of boy who could be cruel. Not yet anyway and if he was lucky, not ever.
"No but I can do this—" The woman screams, leaning down to grab and rock and hurl it toward the boys. Her aim is poor, perhaps intentionally, but Ever still flinches hard enough that his notebook slips off of his lap. "Oh!" He cries, reaching down with fumbling fingers. "I was just trying to learn more about the hand-mines. All the books just say they grab hold of the abandoned and don't let go, but I wanted to know how. Are they alive? Is it magic from the gods? Did we make them?" With hopeful blue eyes, Ever looks up at Mateo as if he might know the answers to everything he could possibly wish to learn.
"Is that what that noise was?" Mateo raises his eyebrows somewhere behind them, where the trumpets and alarums were still ongoing, signalling the dragoons' approach. "What will they do, when they get here? Can they get those things to release?" Those things being the hand mines, of course, Mateo offering out the other gingerbread man while taking another bite of his own. He doesn't know if Ever likes them, but he'll hazard a guess.
Narrowing his eyes, Mateo also has to hop out of the way of the poorly thrown rock (unnecessarily, as it happens), and he lets out quite the choice curse word in the travelling tongue. "If they weren't so angry with us, I'd see if we could head out there and look for ourselves. But I don't really want to be hit by a rock."
Ever nods, though perhaps not as decisively as he might have. There was always the chance of being wrong, after all. 'I'm not sure. I've never been around before..' He waggles the book slightly with a helpful smile. The boy's smile falters only slightly as the gingerbread cookie is offered, Ever able to mostly brandish thoughts of but I've just eaten! and I don't have anything for you in return! Being friends was hard on his anxiety, but he was finding that more and more being around Mateo was worth it.
Tilting his head with a boyish smile of alarm to hear Mateo curse, Ever quickly sucks in on his cheeks to hide his smile as if that might somehow give them away. "No, neither do I. And...I think we might get in trouble. I don't know that we're allowed...?"
Looking down at his notebook with growing stormclouds in his chest, Ever bites at his lip before glancing up at his friend. "What...do you think about it? You said your nonna can do magic? Does it make you sad she can't come here?"
"Mm, it seems like something I'd get in trouble for..." Mateo says this as if it's a line he has toed quite spectacularly in the past (because it is), the boy shifting to stand properly next to Ever, still munching on his gingerbread man. There is a twang against his conscience to see those trapped out there struggling, but they had just thrown a rock at him, and self-preservation wins out in the end. "Do you want to stay to see what happens?" he wonders.
Talk about his nonna Vai has Mateo brightening somewhat, and he shakes his head a bit down at his friend. "Nah, she says she prefers it like this. She thinks Stormbreak is full of people who are mente piccola," he explains. "But I still don't know if we should do anything about this. It's not really for us to decide - it's not like they didn't walk up here not knowing what this place is right?"
In years to come, though Ever would blame many of his misadventures on Mateo's influence, the other boy did allow for the young attuned to be braver than he felt he could be, had he been alone. "Yeah...I mean, I don't know if I want-want to, but I do want to see what happens." Did that make sense? He hopes it made sense.
"Mint..ee...pee-cola?" Ever repeats, frowning. His friend both has a slight accent as well as vocabulary from this other language such that he's never quite sure when Mateo is saying something using words he doesn't understand, or if Ever has just misunderstood. Mint Pee Cola though, didn't sound like anything he understood.
"Yeah, that's true. Everyone knows what the road does. Maybe...we could ask them?" And by we, Ever of course means you
"Okay," Mateo says cheerfully, as if it's as simple as that. In years to come, it would also become apparent that he's almost always happy to indulge his friend's surges of bravery, and as the thunder of hooves and footsteps grow closer, he pops the rest of the gingerbread man into his mouth and watches as the Abandoned begin to panic further.
"Mm? No no, MENte PIccola," he repeats, putting emphasis on the right parts of the words, though he seems a little distracted. "It means little brain," he explains absently.
Ever is right though - maybe they could ask the Abandoned. And by they he also knows it means him, so he cups a hand around his mouth to be heard over the approaching noise. "Hey! Did you know this road would do this?"
Ever's mouth tries to mimic the way Mateo's moves, though quite unsuccessfully. It's clear even without making sounds that the Hart boy doesn't have the right mouth movements to replicate the melodic sounds, and so he frowns and decides to record the words in his notebook—and their meaning—instead.
The woman, still tugging at her leg as if the stone hand around her ankle might simply get bored and let her go, glances up at Mateo. Spitting onto the dusty road, she considers for a minute before calling back. "Y'can't believe everything you hear kid. There's a gods-damn war coming, so who knows. Maybe security got a little lazy." The woman calls back.
"That...that couldn't happen...could it?" Ever asks timidly, his pencil growing still as he turns wide and worried eyes toward his friend.
The woman responds but it doesn't actually sound like an answer to his question, and the tilt of Mateo's head says as much. "The war coming wouldn't stop someone from knowing what the road does would it?" he asks Everest, his brows furrowing. And the mention of security becoming lax has him snorting his disbelief - that is a lie, and he's very confident about it. "My Pa helps to train the Dragoons," he tells Ever. "There's no way he'd leave Stormbreak undefended."
Finally the sound of hoofbeats and footsteps becomes the shape of the dragoons on the road, and Mateo plops down to sit with his friend and watch what happens. He doesn't know what fate lies before the trapped Abandoned, only that they are definitely not going to be allowed entrance into the city. "You would think they might have tried to dig their way out, wouldn't you?"
Ever considers his friend's question for a long moment. "if it were me, I think I would pretend to be some sort of blacksmith and then I would ask the gods, if they answered, for an item to help me break through things, casually ask if it could be enchanted to break through anything." This is said in a low whisper of course. "And then...well, I'd try to use it on the hand mines." He concludes with a shrug.
Surely there was some way out of it, unless...
The dragoons brandished swords, slashing at the arms or legs caught by the hand mines. Recoiling in alarm, Ever's eyes grow wide with fear and understanding.
