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!
Many days had passed since they split up, after the Festival ended. Long days where she had roamed the wilderness in search of answers and peace of mind. Too many days, perhaps - she could have made it back a long time ago. Had he begun to worry yet? She hoped not. Amun was at his best when he was smiling and full of wit, sashaying around and meddling in others business. She wouldn't want to add burdens to his already long list.
Yet Maea couldn't quite bring herself to push open the door to the pottery shop. Her hands remained caked in blood, fluid and black soil and they had no business touching this place of creation. Overhead the sky kept roiling, thick charcoal clouds pregnant with rain or snow; she ached for them to release themselves upon her. Not that any amount of rain could ever wash her clean again.
In the end, she never actually reached for the door. Maea teleported inside instead, and appeared just beyond the entrance. Blinking numbly at the familiar space she had shared with the potter for half a season now.
"Amun?"
She shouldn't be here. Not with dry blood flaking from her chin, withered flower petals tangled up in the hair - not with gaping wounds in her left arm leaking iridescence onto his floor.
It wasn't even raining; she shouldn't be here.
Light is easy to love Show me your darkness
BASE INSPIRED BY ODD <3
♦ Violence, magic, thievery is permitted with Maea at all times. DM me if you have any ideas ♦
Amun cheeks and clothes were splattered with clay. Wiping the back of his hand on his forehead (and leaving a smear there in the process), he kicked the wheel to keep it spinning even as he pressed his thumbs into the lump of wet clay he had on it. He was seated in the center of the room, tongue sticking out a bit as he worked.
As Maea suddenly appeared in the shop, he let out a yelp. "Gods, you scared me." When he focused on her, though, he shot to his feet. "Maea? Maea, what happened." Reaching for one of the cloths he used to wash up, he darted over to hr, work abandoned. Reaching out, he'd wrap it around her arm and try to staunch the flow of fluid.
In the light of the room her eyes took on a dull charcoal hue. Void of color and with a vacant look about them, even as they followed his approach across the room. The clay on his face backed by the gradually receding hum of the pottery wheel spoke of peace and productivity. Things so far removed from her new reality that it was laughable that they should both exist in the same space.
With dull disinterest she let him take her arm, and watched how the rag was pressed to it. The coat was singed around the jagged tear that ran diagonally along her underarm. Fortunately it hid the wound from sight; she hadn't looked at it yet. Didn't know how bad it was - didn't want to know, either. Remembered pain dilated her pupils, but she didn't look away.
What happened? It took her a minute to answer. So much had happened, and it was difficult to summarize. But if she were to say...
"I killed someone."
The tone of her voice was light, almost serene, and clashed horribly with the mess she had made of herself.
"Sorry I'm late."
Light is easy to love Show me your darkness
BASE INSPIRED BY ODD <3
♦ Violence, magic, thievery is permitted with Maea at all times. DM me if you have any ideas ♦
Hissing as he took in more of Maea's wound, Amun lifted the cloth for a moment. Hesitating, he went to roll up her sleeve. "Who did this to you?" It came out in a growl, even as he pressed the cloth back to the cut.
When she spoke, though, his head shot up. Grimacing, he reached out to place his free hand on her shoulder. "I'm so sorry." With his grips on her, he would try to steer her to a nearby chair. If successful, he'd kneel before her. "You have nothing to apologize for. I'm just so glad you're back."
Taking in a deep breath, he swept his gaze over her. There was no sign of other wounds, but he kept looking. "Did someone attack you?" His eyes flicked up to her face for a moment before he resumed his examination.
Like a puppet with her strings cut, the girl went where she was guided without resisting. Sitting down on the chair she slumped down, and wouldn't quite look at the arm even as Amun uncovered the wound. It was a grisly sight. The circular blade had sliced open the underarm from elbow almost to the wrist, burning and cutting in equal measure. On one hand the edges had cauterized and it did not bleed nearly as much as it could have... but it showed no tendency to want to close up either. And it was deep, exposing too much of the internal workings of the fabrication they called a body.
Her gaze came to rest on Amun's face instead. Absorbing the shift in his expression with a hazy lack of focus that spoke of shock. She supposed she ought to take some offense to the implication that she would ever kill anyone unprovoked... but the feeling just wasn't there.
"Her name was Nephele," Maea answered instead, with that same light tone as if it was of no consequence. "She was Fae. We caused the death of her twin... I don't really blame her for taking it out on me."
Light is easy to love Show me your darkness
BASE INSPIRED BY ODD <3
♦ Violence, magic, thievery is permitted with Maea at all times. DM me if you have any ideas ♦
Amun's grimace deepened as he saw the wound in full. Hissing between his teeth, he wrapped the cloth tightly around it and tied it into a knot. Glancing up at Maea, he pressed his lips together. "You should have Isla take a look at that when you feel up to it."
Still kneeling before her, his eyes narrowed when she explained what had happened and just who she'd killed. "I don't know if I can blame her, obviously, given what I did. But it's not like you were even an Ascended at the time." He shook his head. "Who was her twin, did you find out? And where did this happen?"
There was no pain. Not even as he tied a knot over the wound, to keep her arm together. No pain, no, but... a resistance in the limb, all the same. Maea moved her fingers experimentally, and found that they still flexed as they should, if slower and more weakly than normal. Something must have been severed in the limb... He was right. It would have to be seen to.
Looking off around the room, the girl nodded slowly. "You are right. I wasn't. But... I knew. I knew what The Voice had done. To my family. To the Greatwood. To many, many others. And I still chose this." A tremor passed through her lips. "I abandoned them. Replaced them, and now - now someone is dead because I just wouldn't stay where I belonged."
She couldn't bring herself to look at Amun. Not even as she shook her head in response to his questions. "I don't know. In - in Mourn."
Light is easy to love Show me your darkness
BASE INSPIRED BY ODD <3
♦ Violence, magic, thievery is permitted with Maea at all times. DM me if you have any ideas ♦
As Maea clenched and unclenched her fist, Amun frowned. Standing up from his kneeling position, he dashed over to his supply of clay. Slicing off a clump with the wire on the worktable nearby, he dunked his hand in a water bucket. Wetting the clay, he dashed back to her, setting the clay in her palm if she'd let him. "Squeeze that. The resistance should help until you can see Isla." He pressed his lips together.
Kneeling before her again, he rested on hand on her knee. Cocking his head to one side, he sighed. "She could've turned the other cheek. I wasn't strong enough to, but she could've. That's not on you."
The sound of his feet filled the room as Amun rose and went for the clay. Her empty hands twitched, then went still again as he immediately returned. Her palm filled up with a damp weight, the dripping water registering more for the gray-colored runnels it painted along her skin than for the wetness of it. Maea closed her fingers around it, and the sensation brought to mind the cold give of the Fae's body as she had lowered it into the ground. She shuddered, turning her gaze away. Soon enough, the droplets that tapped onto the floor grew red as blood re-liquefied on her skin.
The hand on her knee brought her attention back to the potter. She leaned forward a fraction, swayed by the impulse to curl up in his arms and weep. But she remained seated, eyes dry as the sands of Hak Etme. Couldn't bring herself to reach out; not with her hands so stained.
"It could have been me," she murmured, in a soft whisper. "All that hatred... and she wore Ludo's rags. Just like I used to. She is what I would have become, if I never met you."
Empty. Aching. Driven forward by nothing save a burning need for vengeance. That look in her eyes as she tore Maea's mental wounds open - it had been her, when she roamed the streets of Torchline, planting seeds of hatred.
"I tried - I couldn't... the blood wouldn't stop. I couldn't save her." Her mouth pressed tightly together, shoulders gone rigid as she fought to contain the surge of emotion.
Light is easy to love Show me your darkness
BASE INSPIRED BY ODD <3
♦ Violence, magic, thievery is permitted with Maea at all times. DM me if you have any ideas ♦
Grimacing, Amun gave Maea's knee a squeeze. Looking up at her, he tried to catch her gaze as best he could. "Maea. Listen to me." Taking a deep breath, he let it out as a sigh. "I don't agree that it was ever you, but even if it was, it's not you anymore. Okay? It's not you." He pressed his lips together.
Blinking as she explained how she tried to save the Fae, his free hand curled into a fist. Forcing it to relax, he placed it on her other knee. "It was self-defense. You did everything you could." Pausing, he added, "And you kept your promise to me."
Had she really done everything? She could teleport. Why hadn't she left earlier? If she had risked a strike landing, maybe she could have been out of there much sooner. Before anyone got hurt. If she hadn't stopped to exchange insults, if the sight of those rags around the woman's shoulders hadn't made her feel so lost, so lonely...
The shadowed eyes that flitted about the room met Amun's gaze, quite by accident. Then she couldn't look away again. Not when she perceived the well-restrained anger in him. Or perhaps it was concern. A bit of both, carefully tucked away behind the soothing reassurances. The weight of his hands on her knees was an anchor. She wished she knew if the touch was hot or cold or...
Maea swallowed. Blinked rapidly. Something syrupy and thick clogged the back of her throat, and if grief had a flavor, it must be like the ocean. Salty and bitter and unforgettable.
Unable to bring herself to smile, her eyes softened nonetheless. At least she had managed that. One promise, unbroken. And Maea supposed she knew now, exactly how far she was willing to go to keep it.
"I won't leave you," she mumbled. A confirmation. Her unbound hand moved, made to touch his - but hesitated, when the red on her skin registered again.
If only she knew who she was, now. It seemed so very far removed from the girl she once had been.
Light is easy to love Show me your darkness
BASE INSPIRED BY ODD <3
♦ Violence, magic, thievery is permitted with Maea at all times. DM me if you have any ideas ♦
Nodding at Maea's words, Amun smiled. Giving her knees one last squeeze, he stood up. "I know." Taking the bloodstained clay from her hand, he eyed the makeshift bandage he'd tied around her wound.
Shaking his head, he pressed his lips together. Setting the clay down on his workstation, he grabbed a washbasin from the bedroom and filled it from the water barrel in one corner. Putting it down in front of her, he gathered up a few cloths and held them out to her. "You should get cleaned up. Once you're done we can take you to the Infirmary." If she took the cloths, he'd turn his back to give her some privacy, but stay within earshot.
Moving was a sluggish, bone-weary thing that demanded the utmost concentration. The chair creaked as she rose and accepted the cloth, though a quick look down over herself made it clear that merely rinsing off her hands would not suffice. And there was another matter that needed attending to, as well.
Shuffling over to where Amun kept his tools, she selected a hook-like whatever-it-was and used it to fish into a pocket, wary of using her hands. From the dark depths she withdrew a pair of circular discs, sharpened into a vicious edge that gleamed strangely even without a light-source to reflect off it.
"What do you make of these?" she asked, and set the weapons down on the table for Amun to examine.
Only after that did she begin to shrug off the coat, and rolled up her shirt sleeves to start cleaning the blood off her hands. It was... not pleasant. But the thing that disturbed her the most, even as she peeled off her soiled clothes and replaced them with fresh ones, was how functional she still was. No sobbing wreck, no babbling idiocy... just a hazy numbness that wouldn't let go.
Light is easy to love Show me your darkness
BASE INSPIRED BY ODD <3
♦ Violence, magic, thievery is permitted with Maea at all times. DM me if you have any ideas ♦
Maea took the cloth and Amun sighed. Turning his back to her, he frowned when he heard her rustling around though he didn't say anything. Only when she spoke up did he glance over his shoulder. Eyes narrowing at the metal discs she held out, he faced her again.
Reaching out, he activated his metal manipulation upgrade. The bracelets he wore rattled as they formed into a matching set of hooks so he could take the strange objects without touching them. Bringing them closer without letting them slid down the length of iron he held, he pressed his lips together. "I have no idea what these are. Should I?" He shifted to face the far wall again as she cleaned up.
