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 Peregrine scudded across the sky over King's End like a sleek little cloud, her sails carefully set to catch the blustery Flowerbirth winds without losing control to the mischievous cross gusts that occasionally cut across her bow.
They had launched by midmorning after the sun had risen on a new year, two men and a dragon packed into the small skyship as it began its several-day journey around the northern leg of the Draig and then south again to the mountain range's eastern slopes. From there they tacked a zigzag, cutting north and south but always moving east as they canvassed the region from the sky, looking across the barrows and meadows for signs of...
Well, Tal wasn't sure what to expect. Blasted furrows and a couple of craters, maybe? He'd never seen a fallen star (Ronin excepted) up close before, and there was no guarantee the lights had even been stars.
"See anythin'?" Tal called to Sah from his place at the tiller, hands firmly on the wheel as he fought to keep the boat steady against the unpredictable weather. It was only the third time he'd asked in the past three hours, which he felt was quite reasonable under the circumstances.
11-01-2023, 05:20 PM (This post was last modified: 11-06-2023, 03:40 AM by Sah.)
yet my blood renders me a King
After the bizarre luxere wake-up call, Sah had gotten ready and joined Tal aboard the Peregrine. The past few hours had been sent scanning the area and using magic to clear obstacles blocking their sight. It was as they were turning a bend that Tal called once more. "Nothing yet...wait. Stop!" Mid-sentence Sah moved a cloud and his eyes widened.
Leaning over the rail he spotted the massive crater. "Gods, that's big." Even from their height, he could tell that the impact had been massive. The area around the crater showed signs of burning, likely from the blazing landing. The lights had clearly done damage and the Wild Thunder suspected that they might have been falling stars or meteorites. But from where they were above the first line of clouds, he couldn't see anything in the center.
11-01-2023, 06:06 PM (This post was last modified: 11-06-2023, 03:50 AM by Talyson.)
Stop wasn't really a thing one did with skyships under sail, but at the word Tal killed the magic engines and turned the wheel hard to port to send the little vessel into a slow arcing circle. He threw a rope around the wheel, slipping the hitchknot to hold her locked in position. In a smooth motion that had become as ingrained as reflex he vaulted to the mast and flowed up it, pulling ropes in and furling the sails to mere peeks of fabric, wrapping swift knots around belaying pins before heading back to the tiller to begin bringing the Peregrine down in a slow spiral, giving them ample time to examine the site from above as they dipped below the clouds.
"Well... fuck," Tal agreed when he got his own sight of the crater.
And then the second.
"Least it's still fresh," he observed, glad that Deepfrost's lingering cold seemed to have preserved the area from any other meteorological upheavals so far. "How big d'y'think whatever-they-were, uh... were? Are?"
Surely nothing living could have survived such an impact... right? It had to be just rocks?
As Tal quickly began the ship's descent, Sah tried to get a better handle on the craters. Once the courier was at his side, the Abandoned let out a dissatisfied hum, "Big. But I don't see what actually landed." The craters were empty, and he couldn't see any shrapnel that suggested that a rock had exploded on impact. Well... besides the earth itself. The crater was just too clean to give that kind of indication.
Gripping the rail tighter, the Wild Thunder's brow furrowed, "Do you think people cleared it out already?" It sounded far-fetched, even to him, his own tone carrying his doubt. But rocks didn't just up and walk away. It was technically possible for quick opportunistic scavengers to have begun harvesting already. Yet there should have been more signs of such activities, and they certainly couldn't have completed their task already.
Your leg, ahh! It’s caught in a bear trap some quicksand moss! Quickly you sink in up to your knee as what you had thought to be just a patch of dry moss begins to slowly devour you. If you aren’t freed in about 30 minutes, you’ll lose the leg.
You’ve encountered Quicksand Moss! It should be fairly easy to escape from, though you might experience lingering pain or swelling in your leg.
Quicksand Moss - Quicksand moss has the appearance of dead moss, although in reality, this brown colour is due to it consuming animals instead of sunlight. It grows anywhere a regular moss or lichen would, but grabs any creature foolish enough to come near and quickly digests them.
Tal tugged his Goggles up into place, just in case there was more than met the eye going on. If there had been, however, it was long gone or out of range as they dropped closer and closer to the crash sites. The ground was torn up, sure, but in the hearts of the craters themselves...
Nothing.
"Could be they did," the courier granted slowly, his scowl in full force as they drifted to a halt roughly fifteen feet above the ground. "Took us a few days t'round th'Draig, after all. Any locals could've been here sooner if they had skyships or wings. Or lived close enough, I guess... though, not many folks outside th'Refuge here." He delivered enough packages to have a decent sense of where most people lived, and this wasn't exactly on the Refuge's doorstep.
His musing were interrupted by a low bellow in the distance and he looked out in alarm--
Only to see an elk caught in the grip of the nastiest fucking moss he'd seen in his life. It looked like it belonged in the Feverlands, not King's End, and Tal made a quick mental note to steer clear of anything remotely like it in the future.
"Wanna go down an' take a closer look?" At the craters, not the moss, obviously.
Sah hummed as he listened to Tal and opened his mouth to respond. But that was when the elk went by and the Abandoned stared momentarily, processing the poor animal's fate. Living quicksand. Who knew? Did it kill people the same way the sand did? Or did the moss consume the victim before they suffocated?
Shaking his head to clear away the morbid questions, Sah gave Tal a nod. "Let's go." Sending one last glance at the elk he added, "Careful on the landing. I can't tell from up here how far that moss spreads." There was moss all over the place outside of the crater. Surely it wasn't all quicksand moss?
"There's a reason she doesn't touch ground 'cept for repairs," Tal assured the hunter. Sure enough, he kept a little extra space between her keel and the ground - perhaps fifteen feet up - as he angled for a patch of grass next to one of the craters that looked green and lush from Flowerbirth's arrival. The Peregrine slowed to a hover with only a gentle drift from the breeze, but even that was soon halted as Tal dropped the ground anchor and Boreal flew down to make sure it was caught firmly in the sod.
The rope ladder went over the railing next, and then two athletic young men shimmied down next to the scarred and broken landscape. Any heat had long since dissipated, leaving only the craters and their landing scars, like desolate tails stretching back along their angle of arrival.
Cautious as ever, Tal used a stick to poke into the area of the scar rather than risk his own skin, then began using it to turn over rocks and clods of dirt. "I'm tryin' t'see if there're any worms or bugs in th'fucked up parts," he offered by way of explanation as Boreal came to rest her big, heavy head on his shoulder to look over at what new game he was playing now. "Anythin' proper an' alive."
The Peregrine was secured and soon they were on the ground. Sah trod carefully, magic at the ready to mitigate any damage from the moss. Tal began his search and the Wild Thunder nodded, "Good idea." Keeping close to his fellow Halovian, Sah began to turn over stones using his magic.
Chuckling at Boreal, Sah turned over a larger rock and paused. "I found footprints." Tracking the trajectory, he added, "They're heading away from the impact. We're definitely not the first ones to investigate." If only he knew that they might have been from the meteorites themselves. There were likely other tracks around. No doubt people from all over Caido had already been here or were on their way to investigate.
To Tal's surprise, there were a few worms and beetles trundling through the overturned earth, though they seemed to be closest to the edges of the scar and might have only moved back into the freshly-kicked up real-estate after the dust had settled. At least they were there, though, and he turned his head in interest as Sah found his own clues.
"Hmm. Can y'tell how old they are?" This morning? Yesterday? A few days ago during LongNight?
Boreal, bored with watching her human playing in the dirt and mud, had trotted over to oversee Sah's investigation with the knowledgeable air of a born manager. She dipped her nose to sniff at the tracks and the sneezed, backing up and shaking her head. Casting about for something to clear her sinuses, she let out an excited rumble as she stumbled across something far more interesting: the torn-up sod and claw marks from where a much larger beast - perhaps a fellow dragon? - had landed.
Sah hummed and took a knee by the prints. Running a hand over the tracks, his eyes darted to their surroundings for more clues. A few exposed roots from a kicked shrub and a broken branch along the earth gave him further information. "A bit of all. The messier trails seem to be the most recent, likely from curious and careless travelers."
It was then that Boreal approached and the Abandoned rocked back to let the dragon investigate. Her rumble made his eyes snap to her discovery, "Tal, come here. Boreal found something." Reaching over Sah gave the dragon a pat on the head, "Such a clever dragon."
Tal stood and dusted his knees off, nodding at Sah's determination of the age of the tracks he'd found. "Sure, makes sense. Th'locals must've wanted t'know what came down next door to 'em," he agreed thoughtfully. If the lights had landed in Halo, he and Sah would have been the first ones out to investigate, too. If it was a threat, they'd want to know about it. Otherwise...
He scowled. "If there was anythin' interestin' in whatever landed, it's long gone by now. Any one o' those tracks's owners could've carried it off."
But maybe there was one other clue that might help. Boreal rumbled and leaned into Sah's hand, pleased that her companion's friend was also clever enough to recognize a kindred soul, however scaly. Tal just stuck his tongue out at her from behind Sah's back as he trudged over to join them at the big claw marks.
"...Huh. Not somethin' I'd expect t'see outside o' Halo," he admitted slowly, scowl deepening in thought. "Or th'Draig. So... how many folks d'you know who can shift into somethin' like that?"
"Most likely", Sah agreed. There had been far too many people here already. It was possible that whatever they managed to find might not even have been from the impact. A frustrating fact, but an unavoidable is.
The Wild Thunder chuckled at Boreal's antics, giving her a few more pats as he continued to analyze the claw marks. Tal joined them and Sah found himself nodding, "Or the Greatwood." The forest had plenty of secrets and such a find wouldn't have been too surprising.
A shift was certainly a possibility given how many people had already been here. Sah hummed and tried to recall a list, "A few but not more than I can count on one hand. Most of them would certainly have come to investigate too." Remi's manticore and Deimos' hellhound were the first to come to mind. He knew of others with dragon shifts such as whoever's shift had been part of the Ascended raid on Halo. But apart from those, he couldn't think of any.
Letting out a heavy sigh, Sah shrugged, "I'm not sure what else we'll be able to determine. It's been too long since the initial impact." Despite the speed at which they had made their way here, Halo was simply too far away for a quick trip.
"Sure. Could be," the courier agreed slowly at the mention of the Greatwood and its secrets. But something that big? That apparently flew? Because the tracks appeared and then disappeared without a clear trail. Surely the Fae would have run into something like that in the ancient forest long since.
And turned it against the Ascended, if they'd had any say in it.
So... Huh. Ronin, Remi, or some unknown power they hadn't met yet, it sounded like. Or a proper dragon out from the Draig, come to investigate strange doings on Caido. Though Tal would've laid odds that they didn't usually leave their territories.
"Well, leastways we know more'n we did." He gave an almost philosophical shrug, feeling better now that they weren't getting infected or eaten or cursed or whatever the fuck could have gone wrong. "Somethin' did come down here. But things're still alive around where it happened. No bodies, or anythin' lookin' fucky, or some new monster. C'mon. Let's go check in at the Refuge an' then get back." He was already running behind schedule for his post-LongNight deliveries, and the sooner he could drop Sah off the sooner he could get back on his circuit of Caido.
It'd be interesting to ask around and see who else had seen the lights, or if there was anything else weird happening in other regions.
