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!
"Someone who worships the seasons an' nature, an' cares more for them than for other people," Tal said darkly, oblivious to if her question was rhetorical. In his mind's eye were Halo's cultists who worshiped Deepfrost and its personification, with their bloody rituals and robes and masks... and bloodier knives. "An' I'm not pretendin' about anything."
He scowled, no more socially adept than the person in the mask, alas, but equal parts curious and wary he followed a little further until the dry hill came into view. There was a certain appeal to drying out his socks, and he chewed his lip fiercely for a moment before giving a slow nod. "Alright..." A reluctant agreement, but one thing Halovians knew was the care and tending of flame.
Tal looked dubiously at the mud and the damp and then snagged a flat stone to scrape dry and use as a base. From his pack came a handful of wood shavings and ningo feathers for the kindling, and from an outer pocket he pulled a carefully-insulated thick-walled ceramic pot. He carefully selected the smallest ember from inside the firepot with a small pair of tongs and touched it to the kindling, patiently feeding it small scraps and twigs while Chaele prepared the fire ring.
Once, he grinned fiercely for a brief second before ducking his head back to his task, in an inexplicably more cheerful frame of mind.
His description of the accusation gives them pause, the final stone suspended in their hands as their head slants at a contemplative angle. But eventually they nod gently in agreement with it, a gesture that resembles a shrug. Chaele had never eaten anyone, but they had found a reverence for the land far more worthwhile than the worship of any shrine or god. The rock drops from their hands and they kick it conclusively into place.
“You say this as if there is something wrong with it,” Chaele mentions, gesturing toward the bundle of dry wood they had gathered like a suggestion to him. Their gaze meets Talyson’s for a lingering moment, catching sight of that fleeting moment of joy. Maybe he did belong here, however much anyone did; maybe they ought to look more into the properties of Feverlands mud. “I will hope I do not earn hostility in exchange for my hospitality.”
Their first task complete, the cultist crouches beside the swamp rat and retrieves a long knife from their belt. With a few practiced motions the carcass its gutted, Chaele’s bare hands plunging deep to carefully extract the liver and intestines. “Have you ever witnessed a haruspicy?”
Cultists and cannibals were two separate threats in snowy Halo, but Tal had bad experiences with both and liked neither. Which was true of most Halovians, really; the land was harsh enough without having to contend with other humans trying to kill you for various reasons that the courier couldn't wrap his head around.
"My dad was killed because some cultists decided to listen when the spirit of Deepfrost told them to attack the Citadel," Tal said with his usual scowl, glaring at Chaele. "So yeah. I do think there's something wrong with it."
At her question of hospitality he looked around at the mud surrounding the hill, and the dead rat, and the person in the creepy mask, and the expression on his face was incredulous. "Bit late for that," he grumbled. "But I'm not going to knife you, if that's what you mean."
His gaze had been inward and his smile for neither jungle nor fire but something nearby and fierce and proud. He glanced over to her as he nursed the flames like he would a child; better, because he was terrible with kids but an experienced master of building fires in hostile environments. "Sure, I mean, you can spice your rat however you want." He shrugged and then tilted his head to the side, feral grin making a flickering reappearance. "Me? I'm having fish for dinner."
Chaele meet his scowl with one of their own, though theirs only manifests as the vague squinting of eyes beneath the obscuring mask. Resentment burns quietly there, its ashes on their tongue as they reply darkly, “I am no more likely to knife you than you are me. I have never been served by cities, or the people who grow complacent within them... But I will not follow anyone, much less a god, blindly to violence.”
Bloody hands had paused within the cooling body of the swamp rat, but in the short quiet that follows Chaele looks down to the carcass. With the viscera of the lower abdomen suitably extricated, they begin on the skinning.
They do not notice the expression on Talyson’s face as they work, glancing up only to briefly glance at his progress with the fire. Still the long antlers of their mask swing emphatically as they shake their head. “Haruspicy is fortune-telling. Like tarot cards or palm reading, except with the intestines of a slain animal. I would read your fortune, but alas– you have claimed no kill.”
Only then do they look up, eyebrows lowering into a concealed furrow as they do not seem to understand his implication. “Unless you intend to fish?”
Tal looked from her to the bloody swamp rat in her hands as she extracted its innards and skinned it. "Maybe you don't call it by the same name, but whatever tune you're dancin' to, the results still look the same," he muttered, trying to ignore the shiver that went down his spine at her casual killing in the name of Fortune.
"Don't need it read. I make my own," he boasted with a smirk as the little fire began to crackle with blossoming energy beneath his patient, steady hands. Larger twigs were fed into it as it strengthened, and then a few of the smaller branches.
His grin only broadened to wicked mischief at her question and he sat back as the fire steadied within its ring. The sound of large, leathery wing beats caught the air a heartbeat before the dragon - a ghost beneath the dappled moonlight - swooped beneath the tree's spreading branches and squelched to a landing. Her hide gleamed wetly as she trotted proudly over to Tal and dropped a freshly-killed pike as long as his arm at his feet and then sat back on her haunches with a smug rumble. "That's my girl," he murmured fondly, scrubbing her head between her horns with doting affection before he bent to hook the fish by its gills and heave it up on the hearthstones to gut it - feeding the entrails promptly to the dragon as he dug them out.
They grunt as they flip the carcass to its other side, sliding the blade beneath the hide and cutting through the tendons in the ankles to remove the feet. It is the head that will be the hardest part with only a hunting knife to cut through the spine; her attention falls briefly on the axe on Talyson’s belt, though she is loath to ask for more help than she needs.
Her cauldron is elsewhere, but she will soon use it to boil the hands and head for stew, bleach the skull and phalanges for effigies and auguries, and save teeth and claws for various other rites. The eyes, tongue, heart, lungs, and kidneys will be preserved for spellwork unless she decides to add them to the stew, while the excess muscle will be dried into jerky. These, however, are not the thoughts on her mind as she works.
“I also knew someone who was killed by Halovian wildmen,” she mentions quietly, tossing a limp rat hand toward her pack. Her voice is hard as she maintains, “We are not the same.”
It does not matter that he dismissed her magic or disrespected spirits. It does not matter that he claimed some idle arrogance in the name of a kill that was not his. But it does matter that such a reputation could be made about her, who would not have the strength of numbers to defend her. It does matter that Valeri is dead.
She sits back grimly, resting her arms a moment before finishing her task. Her gaze averts to the happily dining dragonling, measuring the possibilities of it as her predator. Then she gestures toward the successful fire with a slick blade. “Set up the spit, then, if we’re both to cook some meat.”
Tal only grunted skeptically at her claim, continuing to gut and debone the fish with efficiency. The big dragon caught the tidbits he tossed her like it was a game, lunging for the tasty treats and rumbling her approval as she swallowed most things without even stopping to chew them first.
He neither knew nor cared that strange woman thought he was disrespectful to the spirits. They came when he called - sometimes - but it didn't sit right that the strange woman sought them out for every little thing. In his mind, she was the disrespectful one, and Tal's scowl had already been deepening as she spoke up again. The branch in his hands cracked as his grip flexed on it, but at first that was the only sign. The courier didn't explode; didn't leap up or shout. But there was a seething frustration in him as he carefully fed the remnants of his branch to the flames and then stood, dusting off his knees and wiping his blade clean before sheathing it again.
"No." His voice was short, clipped, and as cold as the winds of his home. "You want to act like a cult leader and boss people around? Fine. But you can find someone else." The dragon looked askance at him, then narrowed her eyes at the skull-headed woman, catching the edge of her bonded's anger and echoing it with a low growl.
"C'mon, girl." Tal tugged gently at one of her horns to disengage her attention and began to stomp down the side of the hill. The dragon paused, looking between woman, man, and fish, before dipping her head to grab up the pike and trot after her bonded with a smoky snort of resignation.
She watches Talyson’s back disappear into the near darkness, the last glimpse of him moreso a flash of scales as the dragon wags her tail warily behind. She listens to the footsteps squelch in the mud beyond, a slowly fading rhythm between the crackle of flame and the faint calling of insects. Thoughts of resentment and insult seep through her mind, but she balls them up at the back of her throat and spits them into the dirt. Good riddance.
It is neither the first nor the last time that she will prepare her kill alone. It is better this way. The work requires doing; solitude is simple; the quiet invites spirits to witness. After she lifts the skinned and skewered rat onto the spit, she wipes her brow and glimpses the heavens. She glowers at the smoke that rises into the black sky, a sliver of darkness that obscures a stretch of stars and beckons any creature around by sight and scent.
Her attention is lured by a sudden noise in the distance, but there is no clue as to what or how far it is. Chaele sighs and kneels beside the fire, afraid.
