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!
'She did not say, and...I guess I did not really think it important to ask.' The Lullaby admits with a boyish laugh as the pair descend into the Glade. Fetch quests were something asked of the Taliesin's regularly enough that the Lullaby hadn't even though to question the Nightengale's reasons. "I assume it is for a quest and since they are not terribly hard to come by..." Remi shrugs as he lands, opting to keep his wings unfurled if only to cut the wind that tried to howl through the trees. Though the foliage did its best to keep out the chill, Deepfrost had stolen away the majority of the leaves allowing hollow places for the wind to whistle through. Still, dressed warmly and able to burst into flames should things get too cold, the Lullaby wasn't too worried about the weather.
"Gods, I remember when this felt like all there was to this world." Though the Hollowed Grounds had changed and changed again over the years, the memories still felt so near of a time when they'd all been bound together. When the world ended just before a deep scar in the earth that you could hardly even see anymore. "Now that it is run by the Ancients it feels..." Shooting Ronin a look accompanied by a slightly uneasy pulse through the attuned bond, Remi just shrugs.
Who are you? They ask. Death? Sometimes... I say. But not today
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
"I hope she doesn't expect them to still be glowing when you get them to her," Ronin says, his voice almost swallowed up by the snow and the spidery branches stretching overhead. "If I remember right, they stop once you take them out of the Glade." Plodding after his husband in winter boots, his own wings unsheathed around his shoulders like a leathery cloak, Ronin isn't remotely looking for glowstones, in truth.
He's busy trying to map out the details of Remi's pale wings, where faint, creamy gold melts into near-white, where flight feathers dissolve into the softest down he's ever touched. Out here in the cold air they seem all the more colourful for the stark, snowlit background, and blue eyes blink back into focus as he realises the silence at the end of Remi's sentence ought to be filled with his own words. "Mm?" Eloquently put, Ronin's wings tighten further around him.
"An Ancient," he corrects. "And it's still too early to tell what this place will become, I think. It isn't like there will be much happening in Deepfrost, from what I understand about Ancients." As for the world and the extent of its perimeters, Ronin's worldview hasn't strayed much farther than the other man's wingspan for years now, and it's how he likes it.
soft spoken with a broken jaw we step outside, but not to brawl
Between the tasks Vi had given, he still had to hold to the other responsibilities he had given him which were to be a husband and a father. With his bow strung across his back, he tried to see if there were any signs of Luxere. His eyes cast up, however, when two shadows caught his attention.
The two men were still too far off for Noah to hear what they were saying, but it was clear they were having a conversation as they walked through the glade. Noah lifted his hand, however, waving over to the two demigods. He waited until it was clear they had seen him before he ignited his magic and blinked from one end of the glade to the other.
He couldn’t help the way his face was chiseled with the icy concern, with the way the world was in this state and the information Ronin had just dished out a few days ago in King’s End. ”What brings you guys to the Hollowed Grounds?” He asked, trying to force a smile, though the corners of it didn’t reach his eyes like they would have seen on his face before in a time of mirth.
The wind seemed to whip up around them, and while another would have shivered Noah simply adjusted. He tugged at the corners of his Sentinel’s coat and drew it tighter around him, clasping the ursur claw closures.
"I also recall that, but..." Turning, the Lullaby shrugs. "..I am just here to do as I am asked." He says with a cheeky grin, before folding his arms over his chest and staring expectantly into the silence that stretches out between them. When Ronin does answer it has Remi raising an eyebrow, silently challenging the Nova's knowledge of the Grounds and its government, before deciding that he really didn't care at all.
Reaching out for the lapels of his husband's jacket, the Lullaby tugs him close, pressing a chaste kiss against lips which were cold but certainly up for a bit of exercise, only...Stilling with the sudden intensity of a predator, Remi shifts his head and his gaze by a fraction, picking out Noah amidst the snow-bare aspens. Relaxing and (reluctantly) releasing his husband, Remi raises his hand in greeting as well only to find Noah suddenly there, next to them.
"Well, that is handy." He murmurs of the man's speedy trek, before scowling at the wind and raising his wings around his shoulders to try and cut the worst of it. "Phoebe asked for some glow stones. For a quest, we think but I actually did not bother to ask." Remi admits with a boyish smile.
Who are you? They ask. Death? Sometimes... I say. But not today
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
Very happy to be tugged forward by his coat lapels, Ronin is not as inclined towards predation these days, and so as Remi freezes and glances around, he's trying to sneak further kisses against the corners of his mouth. Noah's sudden appearance, however, is something even a lovesick Nova can't ignore, and he greets their fellow demigod with a sunny smile.
"At this point they could just be for decoration, or for her to put in her bathtub, and we'd be collecting them without really checking," he says with a soft laugh; honestly he's content to come along for the ride. "What brings you out here?" They ought to be careful; so many demigods in one place, people might assume the Hollowed Grounds is popular.
soft spoken with a broken jaw we step outside, but not to brawl
Remi’s comment of how handy his magic was only drew a smirk from the hunter. ”I can’t go too far yet.” He said, remembering how Wessex had used magic enough to blink across the world like the capitol compasses gave them ability to (at least to the central most parts of cities). Noah’s smirk didn’t falter as the Lullaby went on with their tasks, though his face did let his brows creep up with curiosity. ”It sounds like she’s got you two wrapped around her finger.” He jested, the humor a bright and warm wave over the attuned bond.
Though it was at Ronin’s asking of the same question that brought Noah’s eyebrows down. ”Vi.” It was a simple statement, but it tugged at the corners of the smirk Noah had set upon his face. ”I have…work to do here.” He said, the word work chewed on as if there had been a few in the contest and it struggled out for first place. ”But right now, in the glade, I was scouting for any game to keep us fed through Deepfrost.” Noah said, easily pushing aside the dark and cold wave that threatened to spill into the attuned bond.
Remi's smile remains tightly in place, though Ronin will feel a twang through his fingertips as if the Lullaby's emotions have been pulled at and released like a bit of rubber. 'Mmmnm.' He hums noncommitally, raising his eyebrows and giving his husband's hand a brief squeeze.
However as the conversation turns to things a good deal more important than what the pair are collecting and for whom, Remi straightens somewhat, turning his shoulders to more properly face Noah. "Oh? Right...the work you were mentioning last season?" He guesses, brows flinching inward. "Did Vi have anything to say about the whole...Safrin..warning..thing?"
Who are you? They ask. Death? Sometimes... I say. But not today
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
"If nothing else, it means we can always beggar a place to stay in the Greatwood," Ronin murmurs, pulsing his fingers against Remi's and sending a familiar fire-bright wave of good humour back across the Attuned bond. After squirrelling themselves away in the Cordillera for so long and with the threat of something New and Dangerous on the horizon, the Nova has to admit he's missed these small moments of warm camaraderie.
Precisely because they can end so quickly, as Noah demonstrates, and Ronin tilts his head at his fellow demigod. "Mm, I imagine if anyone would know a little more about what was going on it would be Vi," he agrees; the God of Life also tended to mince words less than his herald, so perhaps Noah could glean further information than he and Deimos had managed.
"If you don't mind collecting a few glowstones with us, I'm sure we could help hunt some game," he adds, giving Remi a fond nudge with his elbow.
soft spoken with a broken jaw we step outside, but not to brawl
Noah's eyes darkened, the glacial hues turning stormy. "He didn't have anything to say except that I have not been living up to what I've been called to." As the words came, Noah closed his part of the attuned bond in a steel trap. He had done much the same when Deimos pressed, and now it was as if he couldn't help it, despite the demigods before him not knowing the whole situation. Even as Noah's face hardened and his eyes darkened, he didn't want to give the two men his heart in this matter. The shame of it all still hurt and weighed heavily on him, and it was not something he wanted to parade.
But, he still spoke of it, because he knew he stood before two imperfect people, who in their journeys of demigodhood had mistepped in the eyes of their gods.
Should the men ask more, Noah might give more. But he didn't want to give more on his own. It was too much -- because Noah hadn't even thought to ask about Safrin when all he could focus on was how Vi hadn't looked at him.
"I would appreciate that. I can definitely help." Noah nodded, though his face had lost the color of jest he had before. "I think I can melt some of the snow to be able to find them." He said, turning away from the men and opening himself to the rolling, snow-covered glade.
Despite the warmth fire-bright tug of his husband's emotions, Remi's eyes widen quite dramatically to hear that instead of receiving information about whatever new danger was threatening their lives, Noah had been reprimanded instead. Hissing in a breath, the Lullaby tilts his head softly to the side, as if able to feel the Foresaken's pain despite the closed-off attuned bond. "I have spoken with Vi a few times now, and rarely were they cheerful conversations." Remi admits with a slight shrug. He'd told the god no when the decision had come for he and Ronin to be separated, and then had called him down to discuss his relationship with Ronin of all things. "I thought when we spoke before..." Trailing off, the Lullaby raises his eyebrows in an attempt to judge just how much Noah felt like elaborating.
If the Forsaken had simply shirked his tasks, maybe there was nothing more to say.
Shooting Ronin an affectionate I love when you volunteer us for things look, he rolls his eyes and smiles before nodding to Noah to go ahead and melt away.
Who are you? They ask. Death? Sometimes... I say. But not today
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
Blowing a kiss to Remi - never in his life has he known the Lullaby to shrink away from the opportunity to hunt something, after all - Ronin nods his agreement for Noah to melt whatever he liked if it meant he didn't have to get his fingers numb (or remove them from his husband's grip). It's true that he could probably have turned his fingertips to phoenix down to accomplish the task, but that wouldn't have entered his mind until after he was already chilly and miserable.
Also wincing on behalf of their fellow demigod, Ronin has indeed been on the receiving end of Safrin's wrath, and honestly, he's just glad that the other man still has all his limbs and his powers to show for it. "I'm sorry to hear that," he murmurs. "Does what you've been called to involve the Grounds, then?" He doesn't put it past Vi to just select a random place, but it admittedly feels a bit more chaotic than the mercurial god of life to do so.
soft spoken with a broken jaw we step outside, but not to brawl
Noah's glacier eyes fell on Remi's emeralds when his sentence trailed off, and the look of dismay behind the stare and the way he slowly peeled his eyes away from the demigod of death said it all. Vi was not happy with the little Noah had done, nor with the hesitancy and struggle he had shared with Remi.
"Entirely." He nodded to Ronin. "Making his presence known, eliminating all shadowy remnants of the Voice..." He trailed off himself, then, having turned to look out at the field dotted with memory snow creations from years passed. Lifting his hand in a gesture that wasn't needed, the stag appeared.
Summoned, the great celestial creature made a silent bugle and then charged across the field, leaving a melted path in its wake, before disappeared clear across the landscape with nothing but flickering sunlight.
Glancing toward the celestial stag as it raced across the field, the Lullaby raises his eyebrows thoughtfully. "Well, that is one way to do it." He chuckles shooting Noah a wry look of approval before heaving out a rather reluctant sigh.
Luckily, even were the trio not all demigods, they'd still have been able to make quick work of an afternoon hunt; their divine abilities only made them that much more efficient. "Hopefully that lasts you through the bulk of the season." Remi says, wiping a hand across his brow and studying the deer and elk that they'd taken down.
With the glow stones for Phoebe tucked safely away, the Lullaby pressed a hand into Ronin's that the Nova might feel the colourful swirl of Remi's desire to return to their mountain, and to their bed. "If there is anything we can do...let us know."
~FIN
Who are you? They ask. Death? Sometimes... I say. But not today
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
