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!
02-21-2019, 05:56 PM (This post was last modified: 02-21-2019, 05:56 PM by Phoebe.)
Phoebe was exhausted. She should have been freezing, with her skirt being all that was keeping Emmett’s insides in as far as she could tell, but the labor of pulling him into town had sweat rolling down her face. He might look little but he was basically all muscle, and thereby much heavier than one would anticipate. Chris and Milly had stayed close to her legs, holding onto Emmett where they could in an effort to help but not doing much really. The fish from Safrin swam through the air around them and all was quiet as…well she didn’t know how long but long enough.
The sight of the Rathskellar was welcomed and gave her renewed energy to reach safety and help. She managed to slump Emmett against the door, the toddlers huddled next to him. Phoebe stood in front of him, furthest from the door with her glowy fish, hoping its light would keep things at bay. ”Let me in!! Let me in its Phoebe Steadman, please!!” she shouted at the door, banging on it with her fists. Chris and Milly followed suit, yelling and crying at the door as they hit it with their little hands. ”Please!! Emmett is hurt! Let us in!!”
"I don't know those names." Edy murmured, her grip on the bar increasing. Her voice was low, but wary. "Anyone know a Phoebe or an Emmett?"
Wait.
Steadman.
'If you're Phoebe ... where'd our wave come through?" She called out challengingly, offering very few details about what her question entailed. But that was sort of the point after all. The real Phoebe would know the answer. A monster hopefully wouldn't.
”If you're Phoebe ... where'd our wave come through?"
The question shouldn’t have made her mad. It made sense in reality. Monsters were outside and they couldn’t be too careful. But given the dire situation she was in, being questioned about who she was and where she was from made her very rare anger flare. There wasn’t time for password games! But she had no choice but to play along. She couldn’t recognize the voice, but the use of the word ‘wave’ indicated where she might know this person from.
”We came from the capital in Northwind and arrived through a portal created by Master Chief Bellamy Rowan directly into his office in the settlement of Northaven as part of the second wave! Now let me in Emmett is dying and there are toddlers with me!!” Phoebe shouted, starting out calmly and getting more desperate towards the end.
Ronin had been there for those who had arrived after him. He had watched them, one by one, haggard and injured and in some cases close to death, and while he had told Remi he probably wouldn't have opened the door if he had been the one in control... it was different when it was happening. He was sitting in a ragged armchair close to the fire, his daughter bundled up and nestled into his neck, fast asleep.
As Phoebe's name and explanation came rattling out, his blue eyes softened. "Edy," he murmured quietly. "...That's a lot of detail for a monster. I'm not sure they can steal memories. I don't think so, anyway."
But ultimately, it wasn't his call to make. Ronin was done making calls for LongNight.
Edy listened, her body shaking slightly. But the details checked out. Like Ronin said, there was no reason to think monsters could steal memories.
But no reason to think they couldn't, either.
"Fuck it." The teenager said through grit teeth, moving towards the door. "But if you're lying, lemme tell you I will set a blazing inferno on your ass and take you with me straight to the grave if you aren't who you say."
The bolts unlocked. Fire bloomed around the mage, haloing her in a grim and ominous red.
The door opened and there stood Phoebe, her messy bun damp with sweat, standing in nothing but the top of a dress, the skirt obviously torn off showing the shorts beneath. She looked exhausted and terrified, the two toddlers spilled into the safety of the building quickly as Phoebe held onto Emmett, who was still unconcious and held together by the ripped up skirt.
"Thank you." she said breathlessly, eyes teary as she struggled to pull Emmett in. Her limbs shook with exhaustion, at the very end of her strength. Sheer determination kept her moving forward. The little fishy stayed outside by the door of course as Phoebe collapsed with Emmett on the Rathskellar floor. "Medical supplies...please tell me there are medical supplies..."
Edy's fire was immediately doused as she closed and bolted the door, looking over her shoulder. 'Uhh..I mean. The infirmary is upstairs, but we've got Vai."
Looking through the sea of faces, Edy didn't see the healer. "Ayy, SOMEONE GO GET VAI." Edy hollared, teeth snapping together. She was so done with this. With allllllll of this.
"Mm... I'm here," Vervain called as she padded out from one of the back rooms. She had taken herself away to sleep after Amalia and Rory, needing time to recharge. Really, she hoped that by the time she had awoken they would have found Isla (when she had sent the injured up to the infirmary she was nowhere to be seen, but the Temple was large enough that she didn't worry too much).
By the state of panic in the Rathskeller and the umpteenth new face that had appeared in the time since she had shut her eyes, Vai guessed that wasn't the case. Still, as the toddlers came dashing in and it was apparent that the young man out of the group was in a very bad way indeed, she stepped up once again.
"What happened?" she asked, moving to clear a space on the same table where she'd treated Amalia. "Can we get him on here? And the kids... someone ought to keep an eye on them."
Upstairs? To the infirmary…that would make sense. Phoebe felt like she would have been peeved that this woman – who she recognized but wasn’t sure she could name - who first questioned her was now not helping in any way, but she was too tired. She still needed to get Emmett stable. She needed to treat his wounds and assess the poisoning and hope against all hope that Isla was somewhere around. Her training was only going to get her so far.
The woman called for someone named Vai, a name she definitely didn’t know or recognize. Phoebe didn’t really care, just hoping she knew something about healing or medicine. When this Vai came out, she was quick to notice the barest hint of a bump in her tummy – not much of one, it could easily just be some chub but based on the rest of her build Phoebe doubted it. But her calm attitude both put Phoebe at ease and threatened to cause her to break down.
”W-we were getting away from his family’s house. Somehow the monster got in to the main floor and…” her voice broke, trying to not remember the horrific sight. ”They’re all dead, just Emmett and his kid siblings.” she said, to explain where the little kids had come from. Chris and Milly were curled up by a chair though, snuffling and hugging each other. They wouldn’t be causing anyone a fuss. ”A bull like creature showed up and gored him…and his arm is broken and it was definitely venomous.” Phoebe said, trying to explain everything she knew. ”I wrapped him up the best I could with my skirt and dragged him here from the Outskirts…I-I’m just a midwife though, I’m not a medic…I can sew him up but…” There was the poison, there was the internal damage she couldn’t see or fix given he lacked all of the internal organs she knew how to deal with.
The woman asked for him to be put on the table and she was quick to act…but not doing so well. All her muscles trembled as she tried to carefully lift Emmett up to get him onto the table. A pained gasp escaped her lips, muddled with a small sob of emotion. She hurt. She was exhausted. She was terrified. She didn’t know enough, wasn’t strong enough, wasn’t fast enough. She had witnessed something so gruesome it had been beyond her imaginings before and she was fighting the trauma that wanted to settle in to her brain, knowing she couldn’t go to pieces yet.
Vervain heard Phoebe out, her panicked words like pebbles on a calm lake. Their ripples showed in the flickers in Vai's expression, but she managed to keep her nerve. She was notorious for just that, in fact, and she stepped forward to help get Emmett on the table. "A midwife? Perfect. Any medical experience is... ah. Well, we're short on it right now." Once he was prone, Vai motioned to Edrei. "I need some help with him, like with Amalia before," she murmured, then glanced to Phoebe once more.
"Sit down, okay? Someone will make you a drink - something strong. It'll settle the nerves. I'll see what I can do." So saying, Vai rubbed her hands together and reached out, her fingers gently slipping either side of the young man's head to press to his temples. Venom? That was a first. But she would do whatever she could.
Edy nodded dutifully. Some Launceleyns were good at being in charge, others, were good at following orders. For as loud and sassy as Edy was, she was in fact in that latter group. With her marching orders given, Edy moved above Emmett, her hands pressing against his shoulders to hold him down.
"Now you just stay down kid, y'got that? Shits gonna hurt, but then you'll be fine and you two can get back to playing house or rocky horror picture show or whatever the fuck else you two were doing, okay? But for now just keep doing what your doing and stay still." It was mostly nonsense, more just a babble of words that was meant to keep Emmett calm as much as herself.
With a pllrlrrrrp, Bobi leaped onto the table and positioned herself on one of Emmett's legs.
Well at least her practice wasn’t entirely discounted. Phoebe still felt horribly unprepared and useless. Almost none of her skills applied to this short of knowing how to change bandages and put in stitches. She sat obediently when Vai told her to sit, her limbs still trembling from the strain they had been under, and suddenly the soreness she felt from earlier, more pleasant activities really made itself known. She didn’t sit far though, still as close to Emmett as she could be and not get in the way.
”Thank you…but not until after he is okay.” she said quietly, biting her lip. If her skills were needed for something, she didn’t want to be impaired any more than she already was with her emotions at their frayed ends. Her eyes glanced over to Edrei, who Vai had thankfully named, and her brow furrowed a bit at her babbling. She resisted the urge to tell her they weren’t kids, if only barely. ”Isla had been working on an anti-venom for the Spire demon…I-I don’t know if it would be applicable to this…and I can sew up some of the wounds…” she said, trying to think of ways to still be helpful, having long since forgotten that she was sitting there in her underwear.
Vai's eyes had drifted shut, the huntress focusing hard on the body and mind before her, ravaged as it was by venom, torn as it was by the things that creeped in the shadows. Edrei's murmuring faded into the background, and so (regrettably) did Phoebe's comments about anti-venom. Even if she had heard, though, she didn't think there was time to run up into the infirmary to find what Isla had made. By then the young man she held between her hands might be too far gone.
With a deep, clean breath, Vai's hands began to softly glow, and she went to work first on the poison darkening Emmett's veins. It was a difficult thing, to chase it out of him, and remarkably draining. Indeed, while she was eventually able to draw upon her magic to wash his body clean of venom, she had very little left to tend to his other injuries. "Mm... you said you could stitch him up?" she mumbled to Phoebe eventually, withdrawing her hands.
"He is cured of the poison, but the rest of him... your deft hands would be appreciated."
Phoebe watched Vai as she worked closely, brows knitted together in concern and worry. Emmett still hadn't woken and it worried her. Certainly it was just shock from the pain that kept him unconcious. His heart still beat. His lungs still rose and fell as he breathed. That was all she could take solace in for now.
Eventually her eyes began to widen, watching as his veins became less pronounced as Vai removed the poison from his body. When she announced it to be so, her lips pressed together in an effort to hold back the emotion she felt. "Thank you so much." she said earnestly. Then she nodded, standing up again on long shakey legs. "Yes of course." she said, looking around and spotting a small box of medical supplies. The midwife quickly sorted through it and pulled out what she would need. Scissors, stitch thread, needle, bandages and some clean cloths. "I'm sorry to ask...but do you have anything like vodka?" Phoebe asked Vervain. Not to drink but to clean his wounds when she finished, not finding any of the Isla's salves in there. Stupid question because this was a tavern, but she didn't want to assume she could just take and use it.
Whether she did or didn't Phoebe would set to her task, first cutting the skirt bandages loose, and removing what was left of his shirt. She had to work quickly but the moments she took to really examine his injuries to his torso put her heart at ease. They were horrible, awful wounds, but they were all topical. With the task set before her, Phoebe finally stilled. Work was to be done, muscle tremors caused by exhaustion be damned.
She worked quickly, now glad that Emmett was still asleep. Many of the edges of the wound were too irregular and required her to snip off bits of skin in order for them to fit back together. Her work was well practiced, her stitches small and perfectly tensioned. It took more time than she would have wanted, but when she was finished he was all sewn back together. If vodka had been procured, she would pour a little over his skin where the wounds were, wiping them with a clean rag to cleanse them before covering the newly sutured skin in bandages.
All that was left were the breaks. The broken ribs, couldn't be helped. Those had to heal on their own. His arm...his arm had seen better days. "I-I've never set a bone before...does anyone know how?" she asked pitifully, looking around the room at those gathered. She rather looked a complete mess herseld now, still in her underwear, now covered in Emmett's blood from her work, trembling head to toe as her muscles threatened to give out.
