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!
Sah found himself briefly in Torchline once more, after making it way through the Feverlands. He was almost home, and although he probably could push on and make it home sooner if he didn't stop, it was unnecessary. Both he and Lilly deserved a quick rest before continuing on.
As such, Sah found his way to a clearing just outside of the city. A slightly isolated place away from the noise that was perfect to camp out for a night. And perfect for some magic training without collateral. Once Lilly was settled on a sleeping mat, her nose tucked under her tail, Sah turned to his training.
Carving a series of small circles on a tree, he then channeled his magic. The Abandoned's goal was to create multiple separate, small bolts of lightning to hit the circles. And to do so without simply charring the entire tree. Precision as well as accuracy.
Once he felt ready, he shot his lightning forward. He managed to create two separate bolts, hitting two of the circles. But the other three were left untouched. "Damn." It seemed this was harder than he expected.
Amanda perched carefully on the branch, holding her arms out to either side to maintain her balance. The branch was wobbly, and her balance wasn't perfect, but as long as nothing shook the tree, she should be fine.
Near the end of the branch sat a large nest. Sitting peacefully atop the nest was a plump Hels. The mystical creature was extremely valuable. They were hard to find, hard to catch, and tended to flit off without any warning. Just sneaking up this close to one had been an ordeal. Each step across the branch had to be taken with absolute care.
The bird's head turned to the side and Amanda froze. One of its eyes was staring right at her. She held as still as possible, bracing her feet against the branch and holding her breath. One wrong move and the prized bird would spook.
She channeled her telekinesis, ready to wrap the unseen force around the bird. Keeping a grip on it would be tough. The bird was too heavy for her to hold it down with her telekinesis alone, but she might be able to keep a grip on it long enough to get in close and grab it. She had a large cloth sack in one hand, ready to snatch up the bird. She knew any number of buyers that would pay quite handsomely for a Hels. She just needed a few more moments to catch it.
The bird's head turned back away from her. Amanda let out the breath she'd been holding. She inched one foot forward, then the other. She was almost within reach. She readied her telekinetic power, the energy already spreading around the bird, ready to close in and grab it in tendrils of pure magical force.
Just as she started to close the magical net, something jarred the tree with a loud rumbling crack. Amanda wobbled, her balance disrupted. The bird spooked and pulled away. She tried to grab for it, but it was gone in an instant. A second rumbling burst rocked the tree again, and Amanda lost her balance, falling off the branch.
Her telekinesis still ready after failing to catch the bird, she latched it onto the branch and around her hand. A web of invisible magical energy gripped her around the wrist, the other end of the web tying around the branch. She dangled there, her hand a few inches below the branch, nothing but invisible energy between her hand and the branch holding her up.
"Ahhh!" she screamed, flailing from the end of her telekinetic ties. She could already feel her magical grip slipping. Her power wasn't strong enough to hold up her own weight.
"Help!" she cried out. She didn't know if anyone else was nearby, but she was dangling too far above the ground to land safely, and she didn't have the strength to pull herself up. Gravity's lethal pull was upon her, and she was helpless against it.
Sah's eyes snapped up to the tree adjacent to his. It seemed his strike had jarred his tree enough that the branches had knocked into its neighbor. The very neighbor that it seemed Amanda had been in. Part of him was embarrassed that he hadn't noticed her in the nearby tree. But in his defense, he'd been preoccupied with his training.
Still, when the Outlander's eyes locked onto her dangling form he let out a string of curses, "Fuck. Hang on!" Sah ran over and stood beneath her hanging form, one foot stepping back as he braced himself. "Let go of the tree. I'll catch you." Between his strength and his own telekinesis, Sah was fully capable of doing so.
As he spoke, Sah prepared his own telekinesis. As he weaved his magic, he got ready to use it to slow down Amanda's fall and make his catch less jarring for her. Even if he could catch her with minimal trouble, he wasn't sure how much the impact would hurt her, and he wanted to minimize that.
Unable to see who was underneath her, Amanda yelled back, "Let go!? Are you crazy?" She was far enough up in the tree that she was scared of breaking a bone when she fell.
As it turned out, however, she didn't have much choice in the matter. Her telekinetic grip was slipping. She stretched up her free hand, trying to reach the tree branch and grab hold, but she was too far down to reach with her actual hand. She felt the tendrils of telekinetic energy starting to snap.
She screamed as she lost her grip, falling straight down, limbs flailing. But instead of falling faster, she found herself actually slowing down. Even through her shock and fear, part of her mind froze and thought, What the...?.
She landed in the man's arms, grabbing for him and wrapping her arms around his neck. She clung to him, shaking, letting his arms support her full weight.
As her panicked breathing started to slow down and her eyes came into focus, she let out a relieved sigh. Then she realized just who it was who had caught her.
Sah was about to yell out for her to just trust him and let go, but the tree had other plans indeed. As Amanda begins to fall, Sah reaches further with his telekinesis, wrapping it around the woman and slowing her descent as much as he can. The Outlander hasn't ever used his magic to catch someone to this extent but it's a relief to see it working.
Amanda lands in his arms with only a slight bump, making Sah relax as he releases his tense magic. As she comes to her senses and the shock kicks in, the hunter's brow furrows with concern. "Shh you're ok. I've got you." He gently tightens his grip into a securing and hopefully soothing hold.
Soon enough the woman relaxes and when she calls out his name, Sah simply chuckles before responding, "Good to see you again Amanda." He can't help the slightly amused smirk that creeps across his face when it becomes clear that she's unharmed. "What exactly were you doing up there?"
But more importantly, Sah had noticed her attempts with her magic and where they had failed to help her. And it worries him enough to pose his next question as he helps her to her feet. "Kind of an off-topic question, but why didn't you use your telekinesis to grab something else? Like to pull one of the vines towards you? Or move that pile of leaves a few feet away closer so that'd you have something soft to land on?" Any of those actions could have helped the other Abandoned should he have not been present to help.
A thought occurs and Sah nearly kicks himself for not having thought of it sooner, "If you need help learning how opt quickly change your telekinetic target, I can help you with that. If that's the problem."
Amanda's face turned red as Sah held her with surprising gentleness. She fumbled with her words for a moment, before squirming to get out of his arms and back on her feet. She staggered a bit, getting her balance, and turning her back on him so he wouldn't see the embarrassment etched on her face.
She took a deep breath, straightening out her clothes. Her embarrassment refused to fade as Sah pointed out the flaws in her use of her magic. Her face continued to redden, a touch of anger mixing in with the embarrassment. "Well I didn't think about that, obviously."
She turned back to face him, brushing back a strand of auburn hair. She was about to snap at him for offering to train her--she had never been one to accept help from anyone, for fear of owning them a debt--but she bit back her words before they could slip from her lips. Truth be told, she was in need of some training. Her magic was gradually growing stronger, but she was nowhere near the level of mastery she needed if she was ever to achieve her goals.
She took another deep breath to calm herself and hold back her anger. Anger mostly at herself, but she knew she would lash out at the nearest target rather than accept responsibility for her own actions. She managed to keep quiet, though, until she had gotten herself steady.
"You showed me a few tricks last time we met," she said. "I guess it wouldn't hurt to learn a few more."
Sah has to bite his lip to hold back his laughter at her reaction. "Sorry. I didn't mean to make you feel bad. Learning to think on your feet with your magic is even harder than learning to do so without it." It was a whole other branch of reflexive actions that one had to master after all.
The Outlander let her take her time in deciding, knowing how hard it can be to admit when you wanted or needed help. But when Amanda makes her choice, Sah grins widely. "Excellent." He the gestures her to follow him and leads them to the other side of the clearing.
Gesturing to a log he begins, "Sit here." Looking around, Sah collects some pebbles and sticks and puts them in a pile a few feet away. Next to the pile, he sits on his own log. "Alright. So, I'm going to toss random small objects at you. Your job is to catch them with your telepathy and send them back to me." A simple game of catch more or less.
"Now, once you've got the hang of that, I'm going to steadily increase the number of items that I toss at once. We'll keep going until we reach a number where you can't catch and throw all of the items back together. And then we'll start over from the beginning. Got it?"
With that small warning, Sah flicks a finger and one of the stones from his pile rises and sails towards Amanda at the speed of your average toss. "Catch."
Stubbornly, Amanda decided not to sit on the log. Instead, she stood next to it, arms crossed, not quite meeting Sah's eye. Her face had gone from deep red to a light shade of pink, but she still felt flustered.
She rolled her eyes at his little game. It didn't seem hard at all. The first pebble came at her and stopped in mid air, caught without a second thought.
"Please," she said. "I was past catching pebbles before I started bleeding for the first time.
She scooped up half a dozen pebbles and tossed them at him, waiting for him to return something more challenging at her. She was a bit surprised at how easily he caught them, and how quickly he was able to hurl even more back at her.
She managed to keep up for a few back-and-forths, but she quickly realized that Sah was much better at this than she was. Before she knew it, she was being overwhelmed, barely deflecting any of the pebbles as the speed and number of projectiles grew faster and faster. They started pelting into her chest, too small to hurt but hard enough to sting. Eventually, she threw up her hands and shouted, "Okay, stop!"
She let out a breath, feeling overwhelmed by the first lesson. "You're too fast," she mumbled, refusing to meet his eye.
Sah snickers at Amanda's small show of defiance as he set up their little game. Her disdainful remark simply has him shrugging, "Suit yourself." With that, the game is on. Sah pushes her as far and as fast as she thinks she can handle, and then some, wanting her to see the method to his madness. And soon enough she does as she calls for him to stop.
When she does, Sah pulls all of the pebbles back to his side with his telekinesis, replenishing his little ammo pile. "That wasn't bad for a first attempt. You know what you're doing, and you know how to focus on and latch onto multiple moving targets at once. We just need to work on the switching between multiple targets and your overall speed."
The Outlander raises a few pebbles and spins them idlily around his fingers as he speaks, "Let's go again. We'll start at about half as far as you got last time." There was no need to start at a single pebble again, Amanda had sown herself to be more than capable already. "Once you get the hang of this, we'll start on the actual switching of targets." Speed and dexterity were two crucial aspects of telekinesis. Training them both at once was good, but it was also smart to fine-tune each separately.
Instructions given, Sah telekinetically picks up a few more stones and sticks and tosses them at Amanda, at half the speed of when she'd called for them to stop. "Catch."
"Between targets." Amanda nodded thoughtfully. She hadn't really thought about it like that before. When she hurled or deflected multiple objects at once, it was usually a single burst, grabbing multiple items simultaneously. She wasn't sure if she had the reflexes to hit one target after another as fast as Sah was saying.
But she was too stubborn to admit defeat. She braced herself for the next onslaught. The first handful of rocks she was able to deflect without trouble, because they came at her simultaneously, allowing her to deflect the entire group at once. But when she'd demonstrated her speed a bit more, the incoming missiles started to become staggered. Instead of six pebbles at a time, it was two followed by two followed by two more. Each set was easy enough to deflect by itself, but keeping up with multiple targets in rapid succession was a bit overwhelming.
Once she started getting tired of being pelted with pebbles, Amanda let out a grunt of frustration. She threw both of her hands in front of her, pushing forward with a continuous stream of telekinetic force. The energy flowed in front of her like a stream of water, ongoing, able to deflect the pebbles continuously without the need to worry about one after another. What she lacked in precision she made up for in stamina; she'd practiced enough in her life to be able to channel her magic like this without end, barely working up a sweat. Once she had a steady stream of telekinetic energy deflecting every pebble in a row, she smirked, giving Sah a challenging look.
"Between targets." Amanda nodded thoughtfully. She hadn't really thought about it like that before. When she hurled or deflected multiple objects at once, it was usually a single burst, grabbing multiple items simultaneously. She wasn't sure if she had the reflexes to hit one target after another as fast as Sah was saying.
But she was too stubborn to admit defeat. She braced herself for the next onslaught. The first handful of rocks she was able to deflect without trouble, because they came at her simultaneously, allowing her to deflect the entire group at once. But when she'd demonstrated her speed a bit more, the incoming missiles started to become staggered. Instead of six pebbles at a time, it was two followed by two followed by two more. Each set was easy enough to deflect by itself, but keeping up with multiple targets in rapid succession was a bit overwhelming.
Once she started getting tired of being pelted with pebbles, Amanda let out a grunt of frustration. She threw both of her hands in front of her, pushing forward with a continuous stream of telekinetic force. The energy flowed in front of her like a stream of water, ongoing, able to deflect the pebbles continuously without the need to worry about one after another. What she lacked in precision she made up for in stamina; she'd practiced enough in her life to be able to channel her magic like this without end, barely working up a sweat. Once she had a steady stream of telekinetic energy deflecting every pebble in a row, she smirked, giving Sah a challenging look.
Sah watches Amanda carefully as she practices, sensing the direction and flow of her magic to the best of his ability. Once she starts to roughly get the hang of it, he nods in satisfaction. Her challenging look is met with a feral grin, "Better." Sah's pleased to see how quickly his fellow Abandoned is picking up on what he's trying to teach her. Maybe he's a better teacher than he previously thought?
Glancing at their back-and-forth pebbles, Sah uses his magic to wrestle control of them all and swirls them upwards until they're floating above the two Abandoned's heads. "Alright, next bit. I'm going to drop a few of these at a time and make some fall at different rates. Your job is to keep them all in the air for as long as you can by pushing them upwards with your telekinesis. One rule, you can't grab more than one at a time. If one hits the ground, game over."
Sah tilts his head, "Have you ever seen kids play with a ball where they keep knocking it upwards between them and try to keep it in the air? Like that basically."This exercise would force Amanda to both practice switching between targets as well as the raw force strength of her telekinesis.
Once Amanda seems to get the gist of it Sah starts. He lets two pebbles go entirely so that they fall with gravity. A few others let uses his telekinesis to slowly drift down at different speeds. As Amanda practices, he keeps switching it up for as long as she can hold out.
"That's a dumb rule..." Amanda said with a frown. She understood what he was getting at, but she knew she could catch all of them at once without trouble. But she agreed to the terms, if only because Sah was right that it would help with her precision.
At first, she did as he'd said, using her telekinesis to push each pebble back up into the air as he let them fall. But before long it became apparent that he was too fast for her, especially since he was working with gravity while she was working against it.
Then a thought occurred to her. She put a bit more force into each upward thrust of telekinetic energy, shooting each pebble up higher into the air, like throwing a ball with the full weight of your body behind the throw. The pebbles were hurled up high enough that they took longer to reach the ground, giving her more time to react. She also started grabbing one or two at a time in separate telekinetic "hands" and holding them in place for a moment before tossing them up, so that the timing between each pebble falling was more spread out.
Between the longer fall times and the wider spacing between throws, she was soon able to juggle much more than she previously could. A proud grin crept across her lips, and she stuck her tongue out at Sah.
Sah nods as Amanda works to counter his magic. When she adapts and starts shooting the pebbles higher, he smirks. "There you go." Soon she's keeping pace and the other Abandoned finds himself chuckling before speeding up the falling rates a bit, sticking his tongue out in return. Sah then makes some pebbles fall with more force. Just because.
This goes on for a moment until Amanda can once more keep up. When it's clear that she's mastered this little game, Sah uses his magic and once more takes control of all the pebbles form Amanda and returns them to his small pile. "Great job. Adapting like that is one of the keys to truly mastering your magic."
Simply be able to lift and carry things with your telekinesis was amateur work. Being able to manipulate one's magic to counter another's was excellent for defense. But being able to quickly and effectively switch between targets? That was the key to using telekinesis in battle.
"I've got one last little exercise for you. You're going to climb that tree again and let go of the branch. I'll be down below to catch you just in case. But I want you to use what you just learned to find your own landing strategy." Sah raises a brow in challenge, "Think you can do it?" A test to see if she could get herself out of the same situation on her own. Both an application and a culmination of their lesson. Sah knew she could do it.
