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!
// it's not enough that you're wrestling yourself but your friends talk shit while you're going through hell //
The air grows still and cold and goosebumps rise on Sunjata’s skin as he shakes his head. “You let this happen knowing that I would bring her home to him!” He retorts back. If she wants to claim how poor of a father he is, then he can play it back. “Why agree to it if not to prove something to me? My conditions were to protect her and if you knew that I couldn’t do that in a home with Nate if he turned, then what does that say?”
He might not be a good father, but he was better than his own. And for that he’d certainly argue back about. “Where were you when everyone berated me about using a life as a bargaining chip when it was your plan to start with? Or was that part of it too?” To make him seem like the bad guy at the end of the day.
She tenses, though, and Sunjata wonders which part stepped over the line. “I chose to be a demigod for someone that I felt like wouldn’t judge me every breath.” He says a smidge quieter now, his heartbeat thundering in his ears. In regards to Ronin, though, and his undying fealty, his lip twitches in a small attempt at a sneer he shuts down quickly.
He isn’t sure what to respond with initially, though, and he stews on it as he watches the starlight flash in her gaze. “It did occur to me, actually.” Because he knows that if the Voice doesn’t agree it’s back to square one, fighting again. But this time, maybe, it would be easier to swallow than to pretend to have the piety that Ronin had while Sunjata’s heart remained on the battlefield. Her cold smile cuts sharply against him and he swallows hard. “Not for nothing. Because it was my choice. I didn’t feel like I was being poked or prodded into it. I didn’t feel like if I said no that I would be punished for it.” it’s the whole reason he didn’t go to Safrin’s shrine after he asked to think about it.
Afraid of the consequences of denying her.
// you said it feels like you're swimming through mercury and every night you think you're gonna die in your sleep //
SUNJATA
No permission needed for power play!
Feel free to use magic/force on Sunjata, without killing him <3
Sunjata speaks with an Australian accent and has a passive magic that makes him produce a subtle scent that matches exactly to whatever those around him most desire him to smell like.
'What it says, is that you had a choice to make. Did it ever occur to you to ask for a way to protect her from Nate's influence? To ask the Voice? To do literally anything at all other than keep her in the dark?' She snaps right back.
Rolling her eyes, Safrin just sneers. "Am I meant to fight every battle for you? You made your choice, Sunjata, it was for you to deal with the consequences of it. Though your friends were certainly welcome to come and speak to me about it." Humming her agreement, Safrin laughs. "Well, you're right about that. Frey certainly won't judge you. They won't give a fuck at all about you. Live or die, they'll hardly notice."
Tilting her eyes up toward the sky, Safrin lingers on a knife's edge in her own thoughts. "Well congratulations." She says softly, before lowering her eyes, still able to push her way into his thoughts. "But no gray-eyes. It won't be back to fighting. You made a bargain with Frey. You will be pulled away from the war now, like it or not. And given that you're going to be alone, I can guess which it will be.
Even if Nate dies during this war, at least with me, you would have been there with him. Now, if he calls out to you with his dying breath, he'll hear absolutely nothing."
Starlight scatters from Safrin then, grinding into Sunjata's bones. All items from her are destroyed, and all but a whisper of life has been taken from his bones. With that, she disappears and the candles stutter out into darkness.
Sunjata has been taken down to 1HP. If he isn't healed in this thread (up to you, Ronin), or the immediate next thread, he'll die. Sure hope there's someone out in the Wilds.
right by the entrance you broke, finally reality's taking its hold
Perhaps he has made a mistake. Perhaps he hasn’t. It does little to sit here and argue back and forth anyway, and after everything they keep saying it falls back into a terrible circle of back and forth. But he was the offering and he doubts he can step away. And so it’s up to Safrin to end it when she’s ready.
And as it turns out? Much like he should be expecting? It ends with a bang. Another sensation of being torn apart and put back together again, knitted in warped ways that have everything in him dropping to the ground of the newly cleared shrine.
It’s different this time. Not like with the fight with Remi in his dream death. This one feels worse somehow, not in how much pain there is, but how much disappointment there is. But perhaps there’s a hint of that rebelliousness back in him as she drops him down to essentially nothing but a whispered sensation of life, one that Sunjata latches onto because he’s not done yet, even if the cards say that he is.
He tries for one more thing, because even if Ronin is there? With this display? He doesn’t expect his once friend to do anything about this.
He puts everything he has left (admittedly not much) into asking for his new god, into asking for help from Frey.
All while trying to keep himself together just a little bit longer.
Sunjata calls for Frey’s help… hopefully.
you're not who you were, but you can't let it go you're not where you're from, but you're always alone
SUNJATA
No permission needed for power play!
Feel free to use magic/force on Sunjata, without killing him <3
Sunjata speaks with an Australian accent and has a passive magic that makes him produce a subtle scent that matches exactly to whatever those around him most desire him to smell like.
Ronin is terrible at holding his tongue, but he's never seen someone fail at it quite as spectacularly as Sunjata does now. He's almost tempted to interject with something like do you realise you're speaking to a goddess, but the other man is not done digging his grave by a long shot, and so Ronin does what he's promised himself he'll do. He witnesses and he watches.
And when Safrin disappears, roaring all but the smallest whisper of life out of Sunjata, Ronin is the one left standing in her wake. He and the candles are still aglow, and for a moment, there is nothing but... silence.
Just empty, ringing silence. Nothing godly, nothing that suggests Frey is going to whisk away their newest find and protect them from the harshness of Safrin's words. Ronin glances around. He kicks a pebble. He turns a bit to regard the stars.
"I don't think anyone's coming for you," he rumbles, strolling across now to crouch before the man who had held precisely nothing back, even when it came to Ronin. He narrows his eyes, and a harsh light begins to build within his chest. And when the supernova screams out of him, it's with enough force (and then some) to snatch the very last bit of Sunjata's life in its wake.
Only it doesn't.
The Flood will instead find himself invigorated, yanked back from the jaws of death by none other than Safrin's dog.
"Luckily," Ronin drawls, "it looks like my lady's got your back, even when no one else does. Think about that." He straightens up. "You owe me. And for the record, if you ever bring Remi into a conversation with Safrin again, I'll kill you myself."
With that, the Huntsman's light extinguishes, and he melts away into the darkness as well.
right by the entrance you broke, finally reality's taking its hold
There’s no answer. Nothing comes. Nothing.
N o t h i n g . . .
And the only question that comes to mind is why.
He’s come so close so many times to that last fateful breath. Maybe this time it’ll be better. Maybe this time he thinks he’ll have deserved it.
After all, he’s become a demigod for a god that hadn’t even answered his call in what he would consider the most important time he tried.
And instead? Is left behind with Ronin. To be patronized yet again when he’s down. To be patched back up by Safrin’s dog. Belittled. Berated. Again.
It would be so much easier, wouldn’t it? To just take the last breath and be done with it. But there’s Kamaria, there’s Nate, there’s Romeo and Amadeus back home and Saartjie… And he knows he can’t.
The illumination hits him and it breathes life back into his lungs.
He rises, gasping for air, pulled up onto his elbows while tears burn against his long lashes. Ronin’s threat is made and heard, and he’s gone before he manages to rise to his knees, hands running along his skin, along his chest as if he’s making sure he’s real.
And somewhere within Sunjata, something breaks and shatters more, each and every piece of himself he’d glued back together, shattering along the seams.
And somewhere even further within the Flood, he realizes that there’s no coming back from it. No taping himself back up.
He’s not even fractured anymore. Just jagged glass.
— FIN ;-;
you're not who you were, but you can't let it go you're not where you're from, but you're always alone
SUNJATA
No permission needed for power play!
Feel free to use magic/force on Sunjata, without killing him <3
Sunjata speaks with an Australian accent and has a passive magic that makes him produce a subtle scent that matches exactly to whatever those around him most desire him to smell like.
