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!
Edmund paused and eyed the two paths in front of him. Did he continue down his current one or turn? Glancing between the two, the kid shrugged. With a playful smile, he spun around in a circle once more. Jumping to a stop, he found himself facing the left path. Giggling he skipped down the path.
On some level, he knew he should be worried. Or maybe a little scared even. But Edmund was determined to remain positive. It was a maze after all. There was a chance that whatever being was orchestrating this just wanted to play. And the kid was more than willing to indulge that whim. But he still kept his guard up slightly, carefully eying his surroundings as he went, and straining his ears for any strange noises.
~
Edmund goes left!
I never realized how beautiful Fires burn under the stars
Amanda squealed on her way down, then let out a rough grunt as she hit the ground. "Mother fucking gods be damned magic maze..."
She got up, retrieved her rope, and kicked one of the hedges, before continuing on her way.
"Stupid animated bush things, lucky I don't set y'all on fire." She stopped and gave serious consideration to that for a long moment, then decided against it. Magic plants would probably not take kindly to arson.
She trudged along, rubbing her sore bottom and her wounded pride. She looked side to side, then said to herself, "Assuming the stupid magic bushes don't rearrange things, sticking in the same direction will get me there eventually."
She kept herself to the right side, following the wall of hedges. Since the right-side wall was the one moving forward, she continued forward.
Nikolai stopped, biting his lip as he glanced at his new choices. Forward or left? He'd gone right last time to get on his current path. Maybe he should stay on it? Nothing dangerous had emerged yet and he couldn't see anything obviously dangerous through the mist. Tsking, he grumbled indecisively.
For some reason this decision felt important, more so than a simple choice of direction. Granted, he was in a magical maze, so he was probably right about the gravity of the decision. But that did the opposite of settling his nerves or making the choice easier. Letting out a deep breath that he didn't need, Nikolai marched forward to remain on his current path.
Eating fire is your ambition to swallow the flame down
Forging along as a trio, the youth could only blindly meander and scatter onward for a little while. There was half a temptation to send either companion to glance skyward or look ahead, but then that felt a bit like cheating, and she didn’t want to bombard them into potential danger.
So when the fork came in the road, the Honeybee stared. There was no sign of anything impending; not that she could feel or sense, anyway. Unfurling a breath and a sigh, the youth traced and lingered again, before deciding they could forge ahead, ignoring the potential turn to the left.
--
Melita keeps going forward!
to be lit up from within, vein by vein to be the sun
Even in her smaller fox form, the Caretaker wasn’t immune to its presence. It obscured and defied, pushing against her senses until all she could see and sense was the dark water ahead. There was no way of telling, at least in her current stature, just how deep the murky depths were. Or how far, how wide. Her nose twitched, striving to find anything beyond the discovery of fog and abyss.
Perhaps now was the time to take another risk.
Within a moment, she bunched up her limbs and all the muscles within, and released herself, attempting to jump over the water.
Eyes blinded
Hope seems gone
But we'll make it out alive
The most rolled and curled around the Sentinel and his companion. Eira growled again, low and unnerving like thunder rolling in over an open prairie. Noah sent calming waves to her as much as he could over their soul bond, but his own suspicion and hesitation kept him from giving her the confidence he could when they faced the dangers of the tundra together.
Before them the mist opened to eerily dark water. Noah paused. He looked around. There didn’t seem to be any way around it, only through it. The hunter backed up several paces before setting his jaw and running forward, attempting to jump the pool. Eira, blessed with her wings, took to flying.
—-
Noah attempts to jump the pool while his griffin flies over it.
Look at all these wise ones out here. Not one dives into the snaggly depths of the water, and well, it absolutely pays off! The mist thins out (a little bit, not much), and onwards you go through the maze.
It's sheer luck at the other fork in the road, though. And for those who go left, it's where their luck runs out. Nothing nasty happens, thankfully, but following this route spits you unceremoniously out of the maze and back into King's End. Boring!
As for everyone left... well. Up ahead, even without Talyson's special goggles, you can absolutely see something. It... why, you'd swear it was yourself! Every movement mimicked, every expession identical, and every step forward bringing it closer to you, and vice versa.
Unfortunately Maeve and Edmund are now out of the Drop!
The rest of you are faced with... yourselves? How will you tackle this? Tell me at the bottom of your post :3
Amanda paused in her step, looking at the image of herself. She waved a hand, watching as the double mirrored her movement. She stepped forward, watching as the double stepped forward.
"Huh," she said aloud. "Well that ain't something you see everyday."
She walked forward until she and her double were right in front of each other. She looked her double over from multiple angles, trying to see if there were any obvious differences. If they had the same clothes, the same haircut, the same little scar on her jaw from when she got caught by a stray nail while salvaging a sunken wreck.
She looked herself in the eye, hands on her hips, and considered this for a moment.
Then she shrugged.
"When am I ever going to get this chance again...?"
She leaned in and kissed herself deeply on the lips.
The walk through the hedges continued and Tal picked a rose to save it from Boreal's snacking, twirling the flower gently between his fingers as he went looking for another one to match it--
Man and dragon both stopped abruptly as the oncoming person came clear from the mist and Tal squinted suspiciously at himself (squinting suspiciously back at himself) and raised a hand to point at the approaching doppelganger. He jerked back as it mirrored him and then took another curious step forward.
Well. Getting around this was going to be awkward. Heartbeat racing with uncertainty and no little fear about the purpose of this spell-summoned twin, Tal stopped a step away from it. And then began to do a sideways shuffle. It mirrored him, blocking his path, until he figured out that if he started to turn in a half-circle, facing himself the whole time until he was facing back the way he came, he could slip by. "Alright, girl. Lead the way," he murmured. The dragon harrumphed uneasily, looking between her companion and the thing that looked like him, then swung her head around and began moving slowly forward. Meanwhile, Tal walked backwards, keeping a hand on her shoulders to steady himself as he continued onward. Albeit facing the wrong direction.
Tal meets his doppelganger and shuffles around it in a half-circle, facing his twin the whole time. Then he walks backward, facing the way he came while letting Boreal lead the way and keep a draconic eye out for the next turn of the maze.
Maneuvering onward and over the water, the youth was proud, determined, content. Even amongst this mist, she’d been galvanized forward, and the rush of her paws meeting the ground seemed to echo and reverberate.
Strange.
Until she glanced up and saw another ivory fox standing before her.
Lena’s nose twitched. So did the mirror image. Her ears turned this way and that. So did the mirror image. Her tail was ruffled by a passing breeze, and by no surprise, so did the mirror image’s bushy filaments.
Hello? she called to it, uncertain what she was staring at. Was there a trick to this bizarre notion?
Eating fire is your ambition to swallow the flame down
Melita and her companion’s journeys weren’t fraught terribly with peril – confusion, mostly, winding along and around until they seemed to come face to face with, well…themselves.
Her first thought was to stare blankly – and that perhaps she needed to brush her hair a bit more. The entire thing was uncanny, and more than once she used a set of movements to dictate how the other responded – arm rolls, shoulder shrugs, a single finger salute. Even her dragon and vampire gourd had duplicates of their own, to which Fangorn waved his vines and Sila tucked beneath the curl of her crimson locks again.
All right…now what.
The Honeybee snagged at her nearest weapon, her favored staff, and rushed forward, thinking maybe it was all a dupe – intending to lightly tap on the “twin”.
--
Melita uses her staff to try and tap on the twin.
to be lit up from within, vein by vein to be the sun
Well look at all you cuties, not choosing the path of violence (yes, even you Melita, with your tippy tapping). Regardless of the course of action - kissing, circling, speaking and so on - the double reacts with silent politeness, and perhaps a squeeze on the ass for Amanda - before stepping aside to let you go past.
And just like that, you're home free!
Almost.
Up ahead, you can practically see it flickering through the mist, the fabled Eye of Fire at the centre of the maze. But before you can reach it, a snarl of roses reach out to try and stop you! How do you get around/through them...?
Last part! You have 24 hours to decide how to get through the sneaky roses.
Amanda giggled as her double squeezed her ass. She savored the moment, knowing she'd never get this chance again. But when her double stepped aside for her, she continued on, curious what was at the center of this maze.
Upon seeing the flaming eye, she paused in her step, putting a hand to her new belt knife, which had replaced the one that, err, got changed. She proceeded cautiously, until she was attacked by the roses, jumping immediately back from the enchanted vines.
Instantly she called upon her magic, reaching out telekinetically to grab the vines. She knew she wasn't strong enough with her magic to fend them off in a struggle of pure might. But she thought quickly, remembering the lessons Sah had taught her last time they spoke. There was more than one way to prune a hedge.
She quickly grabbed a couple of the rose bush vines in telekinetic hands, then twisted them deftly around each other, tying the vines together in a tangled knot. Whenever another vine reached forward, she wove it through the other tangled vines, tying them all up tight.
She touched her knife for a moment, thinking about cutting off one of the roses as a souvenir. But she had the feeling the magical maze wouldn't be too pleased about that, so she simply kept the roses tied up without hurting them.
Eating fire is your ambition to swallow the flame down
Well. That’d been way easier than she’d thought.
Giving a residual shrug to both her companions, they carried and forged on, eyes catching onto the ring of fire, the dance of plumes wildly over hedges, the glow of embers carrying and lighting their way. It was no surprise, being the Honeybee, that she, and Sila, would be drawn towards the infernal eaves, save for this damned bunch of roses in the way.
She utilized the staff in her hand, and aimed towards beating multitudes of thorns and brush into submission, presuming, at some point, her heavy bludgeoning would permit a small path for the trio to pass through.
--
Melita tries to beat the roses with her staff and hopefully make a path through.
to be lit up from within, vein by vein to be the sun
