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!
The sound of iron shots is stuck in my head The thunder of the drums dictates
Papers were missing.
Ordinarily, this might not have been an issue, but there were scores taken from journals, ripped clean from the guild books, without rhyme or reason. The Sword could think of several in between rifling through the assortment of diligent notations all of them had kept – but wasn’t finding any pattern.
Happenstance? Purely coincidental? Something far more nefarious?
His eyes narrowed as he landed upon another segment and stock along the library walls, and began to take the tomes down from there as well, lining them up to be glanced over several more times before any level of aggravation took over.
The rhythm of the falls, the number of dead The rising of the horns, ahead
Hotaru does not often visit the Guild's building, because she frankly rarely needs to. See something strange in the wilds? Make some mental notes and dispatch it. New plant? Give it to Evie (and earn some brownie points in the process). Monster terrorizing citizens? Either deal with it or get a team and head out. Easiest Guild ever.
As such she isn't exactly expecting company, though the fact that it's Deimos shouldn't be surprising. The stormy expression on his face, however, is.
Tilting her head as she approaches and unable to decipher from a distance what his deal is, Ru taps on the bond like a knock at the door, inquisitive. "Hey Dei. What's wrong?" Cutting straight to the heart of the matter. Whatever was pissing him off was usually something to be dealt with immediately.
Hotaru has a passive magic that makes her glow with an internal golden light; it makes her appear youthful and her hair seems to look like moving sunlight. Can only subtly illuminate dark spaces.
The sound of iron shots is stuck in my head The thunder of the drums dictates
Absorbed in his meticulous work, he’d barely heard Ru’s approach until the bond snagged at his mind – causing his head to bolt upright, dragging attention away from the books and tomes. “Ru,” he noted, the politeness instilled even amidst the frustration, eyes going from her and back to the matter at hand quickly; a fiend on the hunt.
A long sigh persisted, unfurled, continued, until he gestured towards the mass of journals before him. “Missing pages,” and though she probably wouldn’t find that an issue, something trivial and unimportant – based on the amount of diction before him, it would equate to a lot. “Cannot see if there is a pattern as to why,” and he shrugged his shoulders. “But I would like to find them.” There’d been a lot of work behind those details, inscriptions, and sketches.
The rhythm of the falls, the number of dead The rising of the horns, ahead
He has never taken his frustration out on her (even when perhaps rightfully deserved, like with the idiocy of going back to Torchline willingly for interrogations oop) but it doesn't extinguish her curiosity any. Not that it takes long for him to unfurl and begin explaining the source of his vexation. Wandering closer, she eyes the desecrated book and grimaces slightly.
Personally no, she doesn't care about the book itself, but Ru loves information - and she hates people who mess with her stuff. Her guild, therefore her stuff. Alright, she's on board now.
"Hmm, how about we try and follow a scent trail?" If it's recent or if the pages are still nearby it will be easy enough to track them down if a bit of a pain. Confident in the idea she doesn't necessarily wait around for a response, shifting into her Komodo form given it has the best nose of her shifts. Tongue flickering to pick up the scent near the book - and parsing it from Deimos', which always contains remnants of Zuriel, Belial, and Evie - she begins poking around near his feet to try and find the trail.
Hotaru has a passive magic that makes her glow with an internal golden light; it makes her appear youthful and her hair seems to look like moving sunlight. Can only subtly illuminate dark spaces.
The sound of iron shots is stuck in my head The thunder of the drums dictates
Another heavy breath unfurled, because he had enough things to do without these small, relatively minor inconveniences, made only broader by the grand scheme of matters. So after Ru’s suggestion, he’d take the possibility. “Sure.”
Her shift to a Komodo dragon, familiar due to its rapacious tendencies, gave him ample room to do the same, but in hellhound designations. Nose immediately to the ground, her parsed through his own scents and hers, unwinding, deigning to follow the set of other tracks.
A name didn’t come to mind promptly. That might not have meant anything – and he opted for the best measure in scenting and tracking, angling towards portions of the smell wafting and waning out of the library, and down the flight of stairs.
The rhythm of the falls, the number of dead The rising of the horns, ahead
They both certainly have enough on their plates, which is precisely why Hotaru suggests an immediate solution. Neither of them has time to waste, and though Ru would happily turn over any information to Deimos to ensure the culprit is properly punished, fantasizing about revenge would only whittle those precious minutes away.
In the bond, he will hear her humming senselessly as she tracks her own scent trail towards the far wall in the library as he pads down the stairs, finding it easier to sink into the animal mind and its tracking abilities if she forgoes all conscious, structured thought. Whether he finds that annoying means little to her (though she would be pleased in the mean, girlish way all sisters are if he was) especially when she's helping.
It takes a bit of crawling with her stout little legs to find a few pages hastily folded and shoved between a few books on the second-to-last shelf, but she carefully extricates them with her teeth (sans poison of course) and calls out towards Deimos. Found some of them, but doesn't look like it's all of it. Which leads to far more questions than answers.
Hotaru has a passive magic that makes her glow with an internal golden light; it makes her appear youthful and her hair seems to look like moving sunlight. Can only subtly illuminate dark spaces.
The sound of iron shots is stuck in my head The thunder of the drums dictates
He could hear the humming; and since he wasn’t one to even conjure the notions of such noises, all he did was roll canine eyes towards the ceiling. His nose tracked, his mind focused, curling and contorting along the bannister, winding his way down, down, down the stairs until coming to the foot of the worn wood, pausing as she found some. All right. Put them on the desk. They could take care of those remnants later.
Strange though – why wouldn’t they all be there? Why were they scattered?
Still uncertain, and mildly peeved, the Sword persisted in following after the same trail, but for some reason, it began unfurling along the walls of weaponry. Headed towards the armory.
The rhythm of the falls, the number of dead The rising of the horns, ahead
Put them on the desk? Ru looks up from her stout, Komodo form at the towering desk overhead and considers simply not. They've been retrieved and are visible in the open, and she doesn't exactly want to shift back and forth and back and forth. Withholding both a groan and any sentiment he might feel from her side of the bond, Hotaru does it anyway, shrinking back to her Komodo form when the papers are neatly stacked on the desk.
Only to whirl her head in Deimos' vague direction below. They took it that far? What the hell? Glancing around the room, she decides not to join him in favor of hunting around in the Guild hall a bit longer. It's a good thing she does, because as she slithers down the stairs she finds yet another crumpled ball in the trash. Must not have been the information they wanted? I found more in the trash. I believe that's all that remains in the hall. Do you want me to join you or wait here? How many more pages could have possibly been ripped out? And why?
Hotaru has a passive magic that makes her glow with an internal golden light; it makes her appear youthful and her hair seems to look like moving sunlight. Can only subtly illuminate dark spaces.
The sound of iron shots is stuck in my head The thunder of the drums dictates
Rolling his hound eyes at the dramatics achieved over the bond (couldn’t she have just stood on hind legs?), he persisted in his own notions of retrieval. Nose to the ground, absorbed in the task, the trail centered around stacks of weaponry and shields, before he found another piece crumpled up beneath shelving, along the hardwood floor. Found another one he mustered. Tracking further, he found nothing more. Headed your way, and perhaps they would be able to put the puzzle together.
Parchment lodged carefully between front teeth in hopes of not ripping or destroying it further, he met her along the main hall, shaking his head at the way the whole bizarre notions had been distributed. Why the garbage? Why tear them all out at all?
Shifting back into human form, he glanced at the ones Ru had already put on the desk, brows furrowing, beginning to unfurl the bits and pieces of found notations, hoping for a pattern. “What do you think?” Had someone been hunting something they didn’t want others to know about? A proficient bounty?
The rhythm of the falls, the number of dead The rising of the horns, ahead
Oops. To be fair, Ru had tried to close the bond before he could feel those particular dramatics, but it's not like she cares if he feels it anyway. Given he is returning her way, she transforms back (rather reluctantly, as the hearth is sounding very appealing to her cat-form) and leans back against the desk, idly smoothing out the papers in preparation, eyes flicking over the information held within.
"They're all about Lials. Those aren't native to Halo - but their blood can be used to make Snapdragon." Turning, she rests her lower back against the desk and crosses her arms, frowning down at the crumpled papers. "So either someone is trying to hide evidence that they're about to start distributing in Halo soon, or they're trying to cover up a lead on a high-bounty hunt they want for themselves." Foolish really. Hotaru's aunt had given her plentiful knowledge on poisons and drugs, she would have known regardless if it was the former, and now they can keep their eyes out for any reports of changed behavior in citizens. But the latter would be far harder to track down. "Do you have any other ideas?" Hotaru is aware she is inclined to think along these two particular pathways of greed and devastation, that doesn't mean it isn't a blind spot.
Hotaru has a passive magic that makes her glow with an internal golden light; it makes her appear youthful and her hair seems to look like moving sunlight. Can only subtly illuminate dark spaces.
The sound of iron shots is stuck in my head The thunder of the drums dictates
The spread out information about Lials, including sketches, methods utilized, and properties upheld, caused his eyes to narrow. Never one into drugs, his eyes flicked back to Hotaru, brow arching. “I would prefer the latter,” because he’d take no issue in wiping out anyone intending to spread their vile, nasty concoctions through his land. If it was the other notion though, someone wanting a bounty for themselves, and met their end due to foolish notions, then the problem would already be solved.
“Not for now,” as far as any other ideas. Taking the papers, and then the books they’d been ripped from, he sighed. “I can send a few soldiers to find out any other information or leads,” to follow up on the particulars and possibilities. “And you, of course, if you want to do a little thieving.” Ru had always known how to inveigle and wheedle details out of individuals far better than himself; the Sword’s preferences were aimed more to brute force and intimidation.
The rhythm of the falls, the number of dead The rising of the horns, ahead
Hotaru would equally prefer the former, if only because she would take great joy in weeding out the perpetrator and distributors alike, stretching her old skills as an informant and spy. Regardless, it will require some looking into.
It really does show how perfectly Deimos knows her, because he practically pulls that thought straight from her mind to hand it over on a silver platter. Ru brightens immediately, mischief coming to hang on the curled corners of her lips like bloodthirsty embellishments.
"It would be my pleasure," she assures, practically purring with the sentiment. "As Warden - in an official capacity - would you prefer them alive and in the cells, or otherwise dispatched?" She is confident she can achieve both, though she'd certainly prefer the latter.
Hotaru has a passive magic that makes her glow with an internal golden light; it makes her appear youthful and her hair seems to look like moving sunlight. Can only subtly illuminate dark spaces.
The sound of iron shots is stuck in my head The thunder of the drums dictates
He probably should’ve been sighing or unimpressed with the response, but primordial facets lived and reigned throughout his mind, and he gave her a Cheshire grin in tandem. “Depends on which crime.” Death wasn’t a practicality for someone just craving a bounty for themselves, nor ripping pages from a guild’s journal. There’d be repercussions, regardless, of course, but the punishment needed to fit the offense.
Unfurling another long breath to steady the insights, and not long for the days where they could simply fling a fool off a mountainside, he arched a brow. “Probably best to put any of them alive and in the cells. I can detect lies during an interrogation.” Disappointing, perhaps, that they couldn’t immediately assault and siege and lay waste, but in political capacities, Caido was different from Helovia. However, not to leave her without some semblance of hope, he snorted. “Then we can see about retribution.”
The rhythm of the falls, the number of dead The rising of the horns, ahead
It's a boring answer, in her eyes, but then again Caido is not like Helovia. Wishing for those primordial days will not simply hasten them into being - though she sighs dramatically all the same. As close to pouting as she'll allow herself when it comes to such serious affairs. If she finds a drug dealer, why can't she simply cut them down?
Still, she has her marching orders so to speak. "Very well," she says in the adult way of saying 'fineeee'. She can tell he is wishing for similar easy ends to such idiocy and destructive insidiousness, but commiserating is all they're afforded. "If I find anyone, I'll bring them to the cells and fetch you." Against her desires, because she can't say it's against her better judgment.
Rising from where she'd been leaning against the desk, she plants an errant kiss on his bicep as she walks past. "Let me know if you find any other clues, okay?" She'll need it for her new hunt.
- Fin!
Hotaru has a passive magic that makes her glow with an internal golden light; it makes her appear youthful and her hair seems to look like moving sunlight. Can only subtly illuminate dark spaces.
