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!
Darkness falls, as does a single pillar of starlight that brings with it a sonic boom so loud that all the houses within the Sidhe Village will tremble, and a good number of trees will fall. The observatory will blaze to life with light as if there was a trapped star within its fragile walls. Oh, but Safrin is far from trapped.
In his houseboat, if he isn't rocked awake by the sudden waves on the Stonesong, Ronin will be shaken from sleep by fury itching within the marrow of his bones and in the roots of his teeth. He will feel a cold so vacuous in his fingertips, it will feel as though parts of him have been removed entirely, replaced by shadowy lies and empty promises. Meanwhile the cockles of his heart and the nerves of his eyes will blaze with righteousness, and he'll find the core of him on fire, eager to follow a path of kindling set out by his feet which will lead him right to Safrin.
I shouldn't laugh, but I know I'm a failure in your eyes
Ronin can barely manage a mumbled apology to Remi as he exits the houseboat - in the same way that the Lullaby is sometimes called to Ludo to do its bidding, Ronin is pulled on a starlit string towards the Observatory. The world is black as pitch, lit only by a pillar of starlight to give the Huntsman an idea about where to go, and he's blazing a trail as well with his dazzle. The woods don't even consider messing with him tonight, the trees parting to the Sidhe Village, and soon enough Ronin is ascending the steps to the shrine.
"Safrin," he says, the word sounding like an apology, a greeting and a question all in one. He knows it has been some time since he has last seen his lady, and he doesn't have her relic to show for it. That still sits with Remi, and he's still trying to find a way to broach the subject with his husband. He can only imagine that Safrin is exquisitely pissed off about it.
When he enters the shrine, he will find Safrin with her back turned to him. Rather than robed in exquisite lace or silk, today her dress is torn and singed; it's even still smouldering near the hemline. With her fingers clenched onto the railing so tightly that the wood has begun to whine and splinter, Safrin straightens for a moment as Ronin arrives, but it takes a moment or two before she turns. When she does, the Huntsman will notice that her face is void of any makeup or other embellishments. There is only the blazing galactic colour of her eyes, and circles of crimson on her cheeks. Today she is not the twinkling of the stars nor the liveliness of the cosmos, but the dark and burning pressure of a star on the verge of collapse.
"Sunjata has become a demigod." Her words are leaden and slowly said.
Silence stretches for a moment, and if Ronin is being particularly observant, he will see a brief sheen of tears in the goddess's eyes.
I shouldn't laugh, but I know I'm a failure in your eyes
It isn't what Ronin thinks - not by a long shot. Never has he seen Safrin like this, and it rips away all of the shame and nerves from his psyche; in its place grows and swells the sort of pride and indignance that she has already started to stoke within him. And so it's with a straight spine and squared shoulders that he beholds her hurt and her pain, with wide blue eyes that he begins to comprehend all that she says.
"For Frey?" he repeats, the words coming out in little more than a soft growl. "How could he?" Suddenly the darkness seems all the more absolute, even with starlight cracking out of his form. Stepping forward, he still hesitates a bit, as if he might be sucked into Safrin's orbit never to come back out. "He never deserved you anyway." The words come unbidden, friendships and loyalties be damned.
How could he indeed. "For years I have been with him." She says, her voice remarkably icy and scalding at the same time. "All that I have done for him." Her nose and upper lip twitch into a snarl that makes her eyes appear feral. "Not even a year ago he asked me to mark him. To make him mine."
Raising her gaze to Ronin as he steps forward, Safrin glares at him then, daring him to be anything other than confident about who and what he was to her. It wasn't the first time she had started over, and despite her love for Ronin if he wasn't sure now, by all that she was, he could go up in flames as well.
I shouldn't laugh, but I know I'm a failure in your eyes
"His loyalty is easily won and easily given away again, clearly," Ronin says softly, trying and failing to keep the disappointment out of his voice. He had thought more of Sunjata, honestly, especially when it came to Safrin, when it came to the things he promised and the things he stood for. And something twists in his gut to realise that he was wrong about a friend - not only that, but that said friend would make an enemy of his goddess.
The glare does all it ought to and then some. Ronin swallows hard, before gathering himself together and sweeping forward to Safrin, all hesitation left at the entrance to the Observatory. "You don't need him," he says softly. "There are a dozen Sunjatas on Torchlines shores alone - if you want another, I'll fetch you one." The offer spills freely from his lips - as does the threat in his next sentence. "Would you like me to show him what a huge mistake he has made?"
"Easily won?" Safrin repeats, vindictive and callous in her anger. "All those years with him then, the efforts and boons, were all easy?" Though her jaw clenches, it isn't the muscles of her face that feather, but the thickness of the darkness that swallows the world.
As Ronin approaches, Safrin tilts her chin upward to meet his eyes; today her stature is smaller than it might otherwise have been, but she is no less mighty for it. "If he is so easily won as you say, then a thousand of him isn't worth one of you." Her challenge met, Safrin extends a hand to Ronin's cheek, her thumb brushing softly against the stubble there.
'A huge mistake.' Safrin repeats with a bitter laugh. "I wonder what promises were made. What lies Frey told him. Though if it was Frey making the offer....it's no mystery which head Sunjata was using when making his choice." Her lip curls into a sneer as her free hand smoothes the shirt Ronin had hastily tugged on.
I shouldn't laugh, but I know I'm a failure in your eyes
"Not at all," Ronin says, shaking his head to Safrin. He doesn't try to smooth it over further with his words, not now - it isn't worth it when his goddess is as likely to smite him for Sunjata's mistakes as she is to praise him for his merits. Still, he leans into her touch, reaching up to let his fingers ghost across the back of her hand, meeting her gaze even as it feels like her fury will swallow him whole.
"I will find out," he vows. "And I will show him why it's the worst decision he has ever made." The words come easily, and Ronin isn't even flattering the goddess (not much, anyway). Her righteous anger is his own, the insult to her pride as stinging as if Sunjata had turned his back on the Huntsman. "And I will give you countless followers in his place. Let Frey have him - let him live with that regret forever."
Beneath his fingers Safrin's skin will feel like bits of glass; smooth and sharp and cold. Like glass, she might be moulded into something new if given enough heat and pressure. Or, she might shatter.
"What is the point anymore, Ronin?" Safrin wonders sadly. "I did everything I could for Deimos, and he turned away from me. I gave Sunjata all he ever asked for of me, and he too turned away. Amalia has gone, and even you..." Here, her eyes refocus on his. "..even your light for me has flickered, from time to time." Oh, but he had stayed. And how she will remember that until the end of his days.
"I love you, Ronin. I have since the first time I found you, by the water. And because I love you, I will give you a way out." Her other hand leaves his chest and mirrors the one placed on his cheek. "Leave me now, if that is what you want, or what you think best. Go and be mortal and live a life unencumbered by the stars." Safrin whispers, her face made all the more beautiful for her soft honesty. "Because though I love you Ronin, I covet you as well. Should you ever betray me, it would not be met with anger." Like the difference between darkness, and something altogether different, something like vanta black, the world seems to shrink around them. "I will destroy everything you have ever cared about, leaving you for last. Your agony will stretch out long and will last for centuries." Safrin whispers. "I am what I have always been, and I will not allow a world where you have happiness should you ever stray from my side."
To say that Safrin's love was fickle, and dark, and scalding in its ferocity would be an understatement.
I shouldn't laugh, but I know I'm a failure in your eyes
"That is a reflection on their darkness rather than your light," Ronin says, his voice a vehement whisper in the face of Sunjata and Deimos turning their backs on the goddess's offers. "I am not immune to that darkness either, as we both know. A demigod is still half mortal." With a long sigh, he leans into her touch however likely it is to shatter and cut him.
His brow furrows, though, at her offer, and the words that try to spill from his lips remain caged there. Even the I love you too stays behind his teeth, for some things are more important even than declarations like that. "I could never," he tells her as soon as he is able, dropping to one knee before his goddess.
"I have followed you since I came to Caido, and I will follow you until I leave it," he says softly. "For all I've done here, you have been beside me. You spared me the pain of death, you let me say goodbye to those I loved. You put me in your skies as a star, Safrin - and you brought me back, so I could see my daughter, so I could build a life again. A betrayal to you would be a betrayal to myself, to so much of what I am."
Safrin's fingers fall from Ronin's cheeks to his shoulders as he drops before her. Gazing down at him she hangs on his every word in a way that makes her seem needful and impossibly real. "Then rise, Ronin." She whispers, her tone made delicate and light with emotion. "Rise as my only one in this world. As the one I love best."
Ronin will feel Safrin's hands tighten against his shoulders, and as he does so, pure starlight will radiate through his being. Burning away the places made dark by heroism and duty, the Huntsman will feel only the galactic lightness of Safrin's presence as she accepts his renewed fealty.
For not betraying Safrin and becoming mortal, Ronin has received +4 luck!
I shouldn't laugh, but I know I'm a failure in your eyes
Rise, she says, and Ronin does so without question. Smiling into Safrin's face, not for the first time he is reminded of how delicate she can be, how angelic her features, how soft her touch. For all the darkness of the cosmos, its light is still blinding, and Safrin is all of that and more. It flows through him in the shuddering breath he takes, in the squaring of his shoulders and the brightness of his eyes, and he nods to her in silent understanding.
"Shall I bring Sunjata to you so he might explain himself in person?" he asks, not trying to hide the sharp disappointment in his tone. "Or would you like me to show him the error of his ways using my own methods?" Those methods are not likely to be elegant, and neither will they use words. Not at first, anyway.
One like Vi might have tried to blunt the rough edges of Ronin's disappointment and anger. But not Safrin. With soft hands she finds her Star's cheeks once again, carving his hurt and fury into something dagger-sharp and deadly. "Perhaps you might just...show him what real loyalty looks like." She suggests, rising onto her toes to press a kiss softly against one of his cheeks, moving her thumb out of the way so that it brushes against one of his lips.
"Sunjata has traded all that he could have been for sex and cowardice." She continues, drawing away from Ronin and folding her arms comfortably over her chest. "Perhaps you might help him realize how short-sighted that is. War is not all there is in this world, and one day it will end, and he will be left alone." Oh, Frey might help Sunjata hide during the war.
I shouldn't laugh, but I know I'm a failure in your eyes
"Perhaps I might," Ronin agrees, closing his eyes against the kiss she presses to his cheek, as if it is made of starlight itself. "Sex and cowardice," he repeats, and though his tone is low, almost a growl, the personal upset in it is all too human. He had expected more from Sunjata as his friend and as a fellow follower of their goddess. "I will make sure he knows all of that and more," he vows.
Straightening up and rolling his shoulders, his brows furrow as he considers things perhaps a little further afield. "Torchline has pledged to you, has it not? Maybe I will pay a visit there as well, to remind the people why their loyalty ought to be well placed in you. Maybe there are some others worthy of your time, as well."
