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!
oh but that's the irony: broken people are not fragile
From too meek and mild to unfairly strong and reckless, Remi doubts if the pendulum of what he is will ever balance out. Smiling sadly there is little else for him to do other than nod. "I suppose this isn't the same as me being taller, is it." He asks, aiming for levity and falling quite short.
"Ah." While you were in the water, reckless and alone. Not as bothered by Ronin's error as he perhaps should have been, Remi just shrugs a touch. "I think I felt you heal, while I was under there." The healing presumably having been in response to the dropping. 'But he made it out alright?' Remi wonders, assuming the answer had to be yes; Ronin wasn't the type to bury the lead quite so deep.
Ronin's pain feels like a bolt of colour through the waterscape of his emotions, and though Remi is still far more on the side of I did what I had to, still he lowers his gaze guilty as he tries to tug their combined hands closer to his chest. "I'm not scared." He admits, his words forming small puffs of white between them. "I think maybe that is the problem." One of them, at least.
The Lullaby
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
Scoffing out a laugh that feels like it might turn into a sob at any moment, Ronin shakes his head. "No, it's not quite the same," he whispers, drawing in a shaky breath and shifting on the nimbus, as if having just realised that they've ground to a halt. Nodding at the remarks about his healing and about Noah, the realisation finally has him fumbling to reach into his coat. "He's part of the Order now, so he's got a compass," he says, drawing out his own.
"If you put me to sleep here, you can use it to get to the Greatwood, and come and get me through dreams?" he suggests, offering it out to Remi.
It shouldn't hurt more to hear that Remi isn't scared, and yet it does such that he tries to slip his hand out of the Lullaby's so he won't feel the sting of it. "Would you have wanted to be stopped?" he asks softly.
oh but that's the irony: broken people are not fragile
The edge to Ronin's laugh, the threat of yet more tears, has Remi's chest tightening and yet his eyes remain problematically dry. Maybe it's just the bloodless. 'Oh.' Remi remarks, of Noah's role in the Order, and the compass. 'No, you go. I will fall asleep and come to you.' Something about that seemed safer. As if should anything go wrong, that Remi ought to be the one left out in the cold.
Had Remi's magic not been what it was, he'd have tried harder to keep Ronin's fingers in his. Knowing what it was to be subjected to someone else's emotions though, the Lullaby spreads his fingers that Ronin might escape his touch. Pinpricks of tears grate at the back of his eyes as the alchemist looks down at his empty hand, nodding something silently to himself. "It was important to get the relic.." He reasons. "And..if the ascended were going to outright attack us..." Quite when Remi had become a man who was so convinced the ends justified the means such that he thought of his own life so carelessly, he didn't know.
"If Neron..or Wessex or whoever it was, had killed Noah, or you, there is nothing that could have stopped me. So why wait until they have actually done it, if they have already made the first attack?"
The Lullaby
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
"You won't be able to come to me unless I am sleeping as well. And I don't really want to drink myself to sleep tonight," Ronin admits, again holding the compass out insistently to his husband. "If I'm already asleep here, it will be easy for you to grab me from the Greatwood."
Remi answers the question but he doesn't, and Ronin furrows his brow and shakes his head. "I wasn't really thinking about the Ascended," he mumbles. "And I don't even know where the relic is." Remi would have mentioned it by now, if it had been in his possession, so Ronin's only assumption is that it's still deep beneath the Sea of Glass, or - more worryingly - Wessex has it.
"I just meant, if you ever got into that state again, where you'd just keep going and going until you were dead... would you have wanted to be stopped?"
oh but that's the irony: broken people are not fragile
Once again Ronin has outthought him with far more ease than the alchemist would have thought. "Oh, I see." He mumbles apologetically, reaching out with his wounded fingers without thinking, only for the compass to drop between them. Staring for a moment, surprised, then confused, Remi reaches delicately and pinches at the compass to hold it between his three fingers.
"I have it." And had he had the energy or the working fingers, he'd have reached for it in his pocket. Instead, he just rubs one of his eyes against his shoulder. "It depends why I am going, I think." Remi answers. He thinks Ronin wants him to say, No of course not. Please stop me, or better yet, I wont' ever be that way again. Instead, he continues. "Maybe that is the wrong answer, but...why else have we been given immortality if not precisely so that when we say we would die for something, we can actually mean it?"
The Lullaby
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
"Oh," Ronin says of the relic, that little sentence enough to completely silence him on the matter. He opens his mouth to speak again, but nothing comes out. He doesn't know if he wants to be angry about the lack of communication or if he's puzzled by it, or just... sad. Overwhelmingly, the Huntsman just feels very small and alone all of a sudden.
It is what Ronin wants to hear, selfishly, but he's not expecting much. Rubbing at his forehead and wanting more than anything to reach for Remi, he instead fidgets with the rings on his fingers. "There are only a couple of things in the world that I would die for, and you are one of them," he says quietly. "I have too much to live for, to throw it away. I've done that once already." And sure, the kind of death he'd experience now might be a lot like sleeping, but the passing of time would still stay the same.
"Shall we go?" It's an offer for Remi to put him to sleep.
oh but that's the irony: broken people are not fragile
"And you are one of mine. The very top of my list." Remi replies instantly. "I cannot say I would have died tonight, either. I am stronger than all of them." Even now, weak and exhausted, he was still stronger than Noah, Neron, and Kiada. But that wasn't the point, and disappointed and annoyed with himself, Remi sighs miserably. "I am not built like you, Ronin. You literally shine. Yours is a goddess of life. She has wanted you so long that I am quite sure that there is nothing she would not do to have you all to herself. You can heal and dazzle." Eyes shiny with love and the truth of the dichotomy between them, Remi smiles with painful affection at the Huntsman.
"Where you shine, I fade into shadow. I can create ghosts, can paralyze, and stop hearts. I am made for death, Ronin." And he certainly wasn't adored by his herald.
What all of that mattered Remi wasn't sure, but he felt it needed saying if only to impress that being stopped felt as far removed from what he'd been moulded into, as asking Ronin to stop shining.
Swallowing hard, his throat painfully tight and his stomach growing nauseous at the taste of his own blood, Remi nods reluctantly and holds out his good hand for Ronin to take. "Sleep, then."
The Lullaby
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
What Remi says and what has happened over the past few minutes are at odds with one another, but Ronin is too tired to question it further. And as the other man continues he feels the traitorous sting of tears against his eyes again, the Huntsman pinching at the bridge of his nose. "Just because you are made for death it doesn't mean I want you to die," he says, quiet and sad and unsure where to go from here.
Sleep, Remi says, and though Ronin doesn't want to either, it's important that they get out of this hellish snowscape sooner rather than later. "I love you," he murmurs to his husband, even as he reaches for his hand. "I'll see you soon." And then, courtesy of the man who stops hearts, he slips into unconsciousness.
