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!
After meeting Nikolai and discussing philosophy for what seemed like forever, Noah needed some time alone to think. He moved quickly through the docks and market to gather an acceptable offering before heading straight up to the lighthouse. It's light, having never faded, was a standing testament to Vi. Winding his way up the hill and to the point, the demigod lowered himself to his knees and lay his offering before the shrine. The embellished, ornate, beautiful artwork made from seashells found across the beaches that depicted the lighthouse itself lay surrounded in spices and herbs from across the regions, as well as dried flowers. Sending his prayer up to Vi, Noah then retreated from the shrine and settled at the base of the lighthouse, listening to the waves crash against the shore and watching the sun dip lower and lower down towards the horizon, all while silently spinning his spear in hand.
Amanda swung her hammer hard, hard enough that she might have smashed her own fingers, if she hadn't been holding the nail in place with her telekinesis. While the hammer drove the nail in, she gave it a little extra shove with her magic, combining the magical force with the force from the hammer. The extra oomph helped her drive the nail in with a single hit, even if the nail went in a little lopsided.
She continued through the cave deep below the lighthouse, working to nail together the planks and boards she'd brought here on her boat. She'd measured the cave and checked the water marks along the rocks to see where the rise and fall of the tide would reach. There were plenty of dry spots, but some of the areas might flood a bit when the season dragged onwards and the tide rose higher. Better to make sure the rising waters wouldn't ruin her goods.
She'd been coming here a few hours per day all week long. After her friend Hadama had shown her how to reach the cave, she'd begun trading in the city to get her hands on enough tools, supplies, and lumber for what she planned. She'd stacked as many planks into her small boat as she could safely fit each day, making multiple trips back and forth until the materials she needed were all in place. Now it was just a matter of doing the hard, sweaty work.
She stood back, looking over her work as she wiped the sweat from her brow. She had been at it for hours, but she was used to hard work. It wasn't complete yet, but over the past week she had built the beginnings of a small underground dock, stretching out from the cave floor into the shallow channel that led into the cave from the sea outside. It gave her a safe place to tie her boat, and the dock was high enough to keep her feet dry even at high tide.
Once the small dock was complete, she planned to build a boardwalk pathway into the main interior of the cave, along with some racks and shelves to hold the goods she planned to bring here. It would be a lot of work all by herself, but she had no problem pulling long days, and she had until the end of the season before she would need the cave anyway.
Done her work for the day, Amanda climbed down the ladder on the side of the dock and hopped into her small outrigger boat. She paddled her way out through the channel until she exited the cave, carefully navigating among the rocks that jutted up from along the shoreline. If a boat came this way during low tide, even a shallow craft like hers would smash against the rocks. During high tide, there was enough room for a small boat to pass through, but even then it required careful navigation. This meant the cave was about as isolated and hidden as it could ever be.
She paddled her way to shore, pulling her boat up to one of the slopes that stretched from the sea up towards the lighthouse. She'd stashed some supplies nearby, far enough from the lighthouse to be outside of view, in case any gods-fearing fools made their way up to "pay their respects" to the beings that didn't respect them back.
In the fading light, she spotted the shadow of a figure further upland from her, near the lighthouse. She veered away from where she'd hidden her supplies, opting not to check on them when there was someone in the area, in case he spotted her. Not wanting to seem out of place, she walked up towards the lighthouse, pretending she was just here to offer something to the gods.
While Noah sat and watched the sunset, the light glinting off the tip of the spear as he spun it, he found himself caught in more prayer and thought. Rather than the praise and honor he had given mentally to the god of life when he placed the offering, his thoughts turned more to contemplation and guidance. The further he got into the thoughts of his heart, he decided his next steps. He needed to call upon his patron, to ask and hopefully receive guidance.
The hunter couldn't help but be on high alert, even as lost in his own mind as he seemed. The senses of the bear within him could not be tamed or dulled, and the movement of another body climbing the hill to the lighthouse made Noah shift his weight and break his thought pattern. He lifted a brow as he turned his head to look at the approaching woman, bathed in fiery hues and stark shadows, and merely lifted his hand from his spear to wave at her.
"Hey there," Amanda said as she approached the stranger. Her eyes roamed around the area, looking more at the landscape than at him. She hadn't really studied the paths around the lighthouse, and it would be helpful for her to know the area, to make sure none of the paths would accidentally lead someone near her little hideaway.
"You here to, uhh..." How did people put it? "...pay respects, to..." She tried to remember which one was the lighthouse god. She had no idea whatsoever. "...to the gods? Nice night for it, right? I know the gods like nice weather."
She mentally chided herself for sounding like an idiot. She hadn't really thought this through, but then, she hadn't been expecting to run into a stranger in the first place.
It starts as one. Then another. And then another. And soon a whole herd, keeled over as if asleep, but of course you know that can't be the case. These ramphire do not move; their chests do not rise and fall, and all appear to have been killed recently, all at once. How? You don't know. But there's no blood. Not a single drop to be found.
"To Vi, yes." Noah said, a warm smile breaking over his features. The hunter seemed to go without noticing the way she fumbled over her question, or he was too polite in the moment to draw any attention to it. He twisted the spear again for a moment, turning then to look more fully at the stranger. Behind her he noticed the movement of grazing animals. He had been so lost in his thoughts before that, until he saw her approach, the deer-sized creatures of Torchline had gone without his attention. "Am I in your way? I can go if you--" The Sentinel stopped when a breeze blew through, and with it the grazing bodies went down. One by one. Noah's eyes widened.
"Do you see that?" Noah asked, standing and gripping his spear tightly with one hand and gesturing with the other. Beneath his hand, in the distance, several forms of something lay lifeless.
"Vi. Right. That one." Amanda couldn't for the life of her remember which one Vi was. One of the old ones, maybe? She had really never paid attention. She hated all the gods equally.
She was almost grateful for the stranger distracting her away from the talk of gods. Until she saw why he was distracted. She walked over to the dead ramphire. She'd seen the same thing before, out in the wilds.
She crouched over the beasts to examine them. No blood, no clear indication of what had caused the death. Just like last time. "This is weird," she said, gesturing to the bodies. "I saw the exact same thing happen a couple of weeks ago. I didn't think much of it at the time, but twice? That's too strange."
Still, she wasn't one to let good materials go to waste. She took out her new belt knife--the replacement for the one that had been changed into a dildo--and got to work on slaughtering the remains for their body parts. The horns, hooves, and feathers would fetch a decent price for trade.
"You seen something like this before?" she asked the stranger. "Maybe Vi sent down their divine hand to smite the poor things?"
"No," The Sentinel shook his head, "Vi is the God of Life. He wouldn't have done this." At least, not for any reason Noah could think of. These creatures seemed innocent -- he couldn't identify, in the moment, any reason for their death. "Where did you see this happen before?" He asked the stranger as she moved towards the dead herd of ramphire. Noah sucked in a breath when she knelt down and pulled out her knife. His face tightened and concern clouded his eyes. "Don't you worry that whatever struck them down might also infect you?" He wondered aloud, though he walked over to a different ramphire and nudged it with the blunt end of his spear before rolling it over.
"Wouldn't the god of life be able to take life?" Amanda asked. Not that she knew one god from the other, but it made sense. No better person than a carpenter to ask how to tear down a house.
"I was out in the wilds," she said. "Scavenging. They showed up out of nowhere, dropped dead. Didn't think much of it at the time." She shrugged.
"And no, I ain't worried." She continued using her knife to saw off parts of the beasts, adding some force from her telekinesis to break apart the particularly tough bits. "Not like they died of a disease. Ain't no disease that can come along and make a whole herd drop dead like this. So, it's got to be magic." She gestured into the air with her knife. "If the magic wanted to kill us, it would have. We were close enough by. If it's random magical surges or whatever, then we're as likely to get struck by them standing over there as over here. And if someone did this intentionally, well, if they wanted us dead, we'd be dead already."
She started piling the severed horns and plucked feathers to one side. Once she was done, she'd clean them and pack them up to bring back to the city for sale. "Either way," she continued, "there's no sense letting all of this go to waste. Dead is dead, whatever caused it."
Noah shook his head in a dismissive way. ”Ability and desire are two quite different things, eh?” To say that Vi couldn’t expel the life from every breathing thing in Caido would be blasphemous. He could. Without effort, without exerting himself or breaking any kind of sweat. But he wouldn’t — he breathed the very life into the lungs of the creatures of Rae and cared for them each until they met Mort. How they met Mort was usually not VI’s doing — though it easily could be.
Now, she did have a point about the deaths of these animals. He did not like the way she was treating their deaths, however. ”You fixin to sell those parts?” He asked, the tone of his voice clearly laced with disgust about what she was doing. You know, hunters honor and all that.
"Damn straight I am," she said, showing no reaction to his disgusted tone of voice. "Hooves and horns can get ground down into powder for alchemists. Feathers can get boiled to extract their medicinal properties. Good trading. You in the market?" She held one of the horns up to him, in case he wanted to trade her for it. As far as she was concerned, first come first serve, so the parts belonged to her unless he offered something in exchange.
"If not," she said, "I've got just about anything else you might need. You looking for spices? Tools? Jewelry? Dyes? If you want something I don't have, I know someone who can get it."
She continued hacking apart the dead beasts, then pulled some sheets of leather from her backpack. She piled the parts onto the leather, then started wrapping them up into bundles and tying them closed with lengths of string.
Noah twisted his spear in his hand, still watching the woman take apart the ramphire and pile them up. His nose curled slightly at her response, but knowing he couldn’t do anything about it, he let it be. They were, after all, in Torchline, and e wasn’t sure that Maeve would like him bullying his on morals and honor into her citizens.
Noah shook his head at her offer, letting his spear tap on the ground as he shifted his weight. Weight he wasn’t ready to throw around, but he was confident his own connections in this world could get him a lot more than what she had to offer. ”What’s your name, anyway?”
"Amanda," she said, wrapping up her work and stuffing her spoils into her backpack. She'd have to preserve some of the parts when she got home, but it would last until then.
She stood up and extended her hand, still slimy from the butchering, to shake his. "Nice to meetcha. You always carry a spear around when you go worshiping the life god? Spears are for killing. Do you have the 'ability or desire' to do much of that? Not sure how Vi feels about that. I mean, I figure, god of life would have to be okay with hunting, right? Got to kill to eat, got to eat to live.Isn't that how that works?"
She glanced down over the dead herd. "Whoever or whatever killed these didn't want to eat them. Pretty weird. Seems like a waste of good meat."
"Noah." The hunter gave her his own name, unwilling to ask her of something he wouldn't give himself. He didn't hesitate to reach out and shake her hand when it was offered to him. The aftermath of her actions was not unfamiliar to the man, given his deep roots. When she went on, Noah chuckled some, though it sounded more like an amused scoff. "I do when Safrin asks me to." He rolled his shoulder back some, angling his spear and looking at it momentarily. "But as Vi's demigod, I can tell you there is a time and place for both life and death."
Wiping his hand on the back of his thigh to rid it of the blood and serum from the woman's butchering, Noah nodded. "Growing up in Halo, I would agree with you. Knowing what I know of the darkness creeping in from the corners of the world, though, makes me hesitate. Just be careful what you do with those, huh?"
