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!
And so he went back in there, into that place of death and fracture. His spirit, already a flickering light burning low, cowered within its walls, going out with a hush: only embers smoldering behind his blue, blue eyes.
He was the injured wolf coming back for more, the flighty stag unable to keep itself from laying its throat in the carnivore's mouth.
He rolled the flimsy justifications over and around in his mouth, tasting their shapes and sharp edges and wrongness. He told himself he did it because it was their history being written—their future being laid out, and as little as he had wanted it to go this way (hells, even be a part of it at all) it was happening. He told himself that he had broken his every rule already, that he had debased himself until he was no longer worthy of calling himself a Natural, going against everything he had ever known, so he might as well mire himself deeper in the bog before finally drowning.
If it didn't matter anymore, he might as well go, to help Jigano look for Sam.
If he had already lost his soul, what did it matter if he pushed it further into the dark?
His lungs burned, and his eyes did too, a soft and silent weeping for all that he had never been, and he did not even bother trying to hide it. It's just the dust, he could say, it's just the lingering effects of the poison air. Just his eyes cleaning out the filth—
(his soul, those tears)
—as they ascended towards more misery and ruin; what else laid in this old and haunted tower? So he coughed and he ached and he supported Jigano up the many flights of stairs, worrying about jostling his shoulders, worrying equally much of anything short of carrying him up, until they were finally at the top, where a small group had formed.
Guiltily Rory hung back, unwilling to let Wessex see that he had come, unwilling to let anyone see that he had come: he was too broken, too different from the leader of the pack that had snarled under the midday sun.
He was defeated, so he melted towards the shadows along the walls, eyes wide and wary as he beheld the almost-child strung up, here at the top of everything. She made even Maea look healthy, some sickly imitation of the pale girl whose bloodslick sword he still carried, as if unsure of what to do with it.
"Not yet, my bright one. Be patient, just for a few moments longer."
The Voice directed her instruction to 108, who reached so longingly for the centre of everything. The much brighter illusion of the girl strung up before them stepped out from her as if she was contained within (and perhaps she was). Directing her static gaze around at the gathered crowd, Naturals and Outlanders both, but letting her eyes linger in particular upon her Ascended, the Voice nodded. And she bowed, truly respectful, truly grateful.
"Here you stand at last, at the top of your world. At the gate to your liberation. You who have done what no one else could. You have our sincerest thanks." With a serene smile, she spread her hands, seemingly oblivious to the shell of her physical form behind her.
"To appear before you all truly, at last, is an honour," she continued - and she did seem somehow more within this space, as though whatever sliver of power she projected out of the Spire was nothing compared to what was contained within.
"We are sure you have questions. We will do what we can to explain - starting with all of you." She raised her eyes to the Outlanders. "You are the result of our cries for help. We have been trapped here for so long, but still we retained a sense of self. And as time passed and nobody came, we gathered our will, the remnants of our power... and we threw it out, out into the cosmos. Searching for those who might be powerful enough to free us. Searching for you."
And here they all were. But that was not to say that the Naturals had not tried, and the Voice directed her next point to them. "Your Old Gods would see you caged here with us, through no fault or asking of your own. They grew envious of our changes, of our improvements. And so they trapped us here, caring not who they imprisoned along the way. The world out there is thriving - ask any of my bright ones. You have been denied it for too long."
Stepping aside, the Voice revealed the Core once more, that bright and pulsing sphere in the chest of a goddess. "This is the last piece of our prison. Remove it, and free us all," she murmured. "However, a word of caution... even I do not know what will happen to the one who makes that choice. Death, ascension, imprisonment... I cannot say."
Only the person who chooses to remove the Core may reply.
Decide amongst yourselves who will brave the unknown (or death) and liberate the Spire.
To go on is to go through. At last, even the seer is cremated. Each seed loves the dark for the light it promises.
I listen intently and every word is like a mark upon the soul that I do not believe I bear. Etched not into bones and cells but my core code is this moment.
I have been made for this quite literally.
There is no hesitation, no look towards those in the room that I may or may not have seen before. I have eyes only for my maker. If this is the end, I will not feel it. Perhaps I will sense something, but even the wonder of that does not hold me back.
"My life for you." I say confidently, feeling a euphoria of which I have never before known.
I step forward, hands outstretched. My fingers reach for the pulsing beacon and icon of all that has enslaved and caged us. All that has held us back. No more.
108's fingers wrap around the Core, quite literally, and electricity races along their limbs as if to try and stop the inevitable. The power that has held them back, that has kept them trapped for centuries, now it courses through 108, boiling the fluid that sustains them, shorting out circuits and utterly frying any semblance of them.
But they will succeed in prying the Core free, even as their body crumbles and burns, even as everything that they are and were and could be becomes dust in the wind. They shatter, and the sphere they hold, it--
a bright flash
a howling scream
wind, rushing, freezing
the crack of stone
is there no longer. In the blinding light following 108's decision, the top of the Spire simply disintegrates, showering the group with black diamond dust. The body of the Core crumples, no longer held aloft by wires and other circuitry. And above...
Above, the barrier - glittering, shimmering, beautiful - is falling.
With the wind billowing about them from the now open Spire top, the group will see as, even in the black of night, the world is revealed from behind a veil, glorious and wonderful as anything the gods might have created.
He had never before felt so small, so meaningless, so defeated: adrift in a sea of tar and utterly without purpose, tugged this way and that by an unseen, whimsical current. With dark eyes and a dark heart Rory listened and watched, caught in a war he had never wanted any part of. On the one hand, the loyalty he had been raised with, to the Old Gods. On the other hand... the Voice was here, the Voice was now, the Voice.. made it so easy to think this was somehow about them too.
He was a moth fumbling in the dark, looking for the nearest flame to lick the life out of him.
.. Searching for those who might be powerful enough to free us...
The words were bitter to hear, as bitter as the mixture of people there at the end of everything. Of the Naturals gathered, only two were not Ascended; she had got what she wished for, hadn't she? She had found those who were not them, not the Naturals who slaved on beneath the memory of loyalty to Gods who did not reach out to them anymore. She had found those who did not care enough about everything the Naturals cared for. She had found the ambitious, the unafraid, the stubborn, those willing to risk their lives for something they believed in, even when the whole world told them not to.
There was a beauty in it he could appreciate, if not for the sting to his heart, the poison in his mind. She had found her saviors, but he had only been damned.
Then she stepped aside, revealing the bright and glowing sphere once more, asking it to be removed. Asking to be freed, inciting them with the promise of freedom—
—when fanaticism was all she needed. "No-" Rory began, his hoarse voice weak, only a mumble as his hand raised to—do what? Stop 108? Stop a room full of Ascended and freedom-hungering Outlanders?
Hardly.
Then 108's hand was in the Core's chest and the world ended.
It was not loud enough. There should've been a choir of thunder, a rumble like the earth splitting open, like a mountain falling, but the dying of everything he had known was nearly silent. The walls came down in a rain of black dust, the safety he had clung to removed as the world, so deadly and so near, spilled out all around him.
In the patchwork cover of clouds and stars he saw the glow of the barrier. The shimmer of it as it began to fall.
The silver light bathing the world beyond.
Oh, he saw it from his vantage, there at the top of everything: the glittering, dark band of a wide river cutting through a forest so dense and so majestic that he could never even have dreamed of it. A world, so lush and so thriving, that even in the monochromatic dark he could see how vibrant it was.
The dust he had been raised on and fed his entire life coated the inside of his mouth.
Slowly, Rory sank to his knees, his face pale and drawn, his eyes wide and frightened and sad.
04-06-2019, 04:36 PM (This post was last modified: 04-07-2019, 09:18 AM by Lucas.)
Lucas shielded his eyes from the light, from the electric end given to a fellow Ascended. His sharp ears, though, held every crack and rumble, every howl and screech of the Spire as the dome at its peak disintegrated and revealed the world beyond.
And revealed the world beyond that.
Lips parting in silent awe, the wind ruffling his fair hair, Lucas turned to face the falling barrier with a smile that did not even pretend to be anything but self-satisfied. There it was - the world for the taking. The world the Voice had promised.
A shiver ran through him, and he turned to glance over his shoulder at the empty shell of the Core, her emaciated body, her mummified form punctured and pierced by the prison of wires. Slowly, he stepped over to it. He shrugged out of his coat, draping it over her as if to keep her warm. Or perhaps it was just to save her dignity. Or maybe he was staking his claim. Who knew.
They had used the Voice's body, her core, to power the Barrier all this time?
It was a cruelty worthy of gods, alright, and right up Zon-Kuthon's twisted alley. Jigano's expression tightened from more than just pain, even knowing what Safrin had told him about the Voice's alleged crimes in the past. But he was here to witness, and to remember how the world changed. A glance to Sam showed the young Ascended in no state to perform his duties as Chronicler, and no other Loreseekers had made it to the Spire's top except...
108, who had once promised to come visit the guildhall, stepped forward and Jigano drew in a sharp breath. "No..." he whispered, trying to reach out, to reach them, but the pain of his injured shoulder held him back and he gasped and faltered and failed as pale hands closed on the Core and then they were gone--
And one world ended.
And a new one began.
Jigano coughed, a harsh, wracking sound as the black dust mixed with the poison gas still in his lungs and left him weak. He stumbled back, but caught himself before he could try to lean against a wall that was no longer there. Instead he slid slowly to his knees, wrapping an arm around Rory 's shoulders and pressing his temple to his friend's. He could only dimly imagine the hunter's pain, his awe, his fear at what had just transpired. Had it been a miracle?
Or the next drumroll in a war between gods where mortals were little more than pawns?
In the end it hardly mattered in that moment. The lorekeeper was weary, and wounded, and grim. Triumph in the shape of freedom had been bought and paid for, but the price had been high and the real work had yet to even begin.
There is a moment when Wessex wants to push 108 back, to be the one to take The Core and release the barrier - but there was something in the Ascended’s awe-struck voice that held her back. It said she’s waited all this time, and the warrior knew that her few harried months as an Ascendant could not compare to the decades, nay, century or more of the old one. Her face was the face that had waited 365,000 days or more, and nothing would stop her from being the first. Not any of these normal folk, and certainly not Wessex. That consideration is what saves her, and as the electricity surges, the flash and the howling make her turn her head and close her eyes against the ash and ceiling dust, Wessex is glad she didn’t unknowingly sacrifice herself.
Perhaps most importantly, there’s no guilt for what she allowed the other to do. There is only the knowledge that they knew the risks, and they were free to make their own choices. Aedion, whom she has a feeling she will never see again, never should have gone in. He was too new. Kristopher? She can’t say. Her siblings and allies are gone, but there will be others, and they have freed their Mother. They’ve left her with her strongest child. They’ve ensured survival. Is that not love?
Some are out of what remains in the door in a flash, while others linger. Wessex turns to watch the expressions, tries to find Edy in the group, processing only now her touch from before. She watches Lucas offer his coat to the dessicated, dried out husk of a battery that was the Voice. It’s chivalrous. Belatedly so, but the offering in and of itself intrigues her. They’d once spoken of riches and rewards to be had, and she makes a mental note to find him in the next couple of nights. Slowly, she takes a turn around the top of the Spire, looking out at the World they’ve opened up. Out there is the prize. This is a dusty wasteland.
Gods, she wishes Magrethe could see it all.
WESSEX
come, you spirits that tend on mortal thoughts unsex me here
Seeing through a haze made of panic and pain Sam barely understood the visual of 108 going forward to take the Core. It felt like this was a monumental moment, one that would go down in the histories he would one day be likely commissioned to create, but he could not bring himself to care about it when there was such a maelstrom going on within him.
People began to look around in amazement, talk among themselves, but he could not be with them. Not now, not when his world was so full of different matters. Sam stumbled to his feet and wobbling on his weak legs, made his way down the Spire to try and get home before his fluid ran out.
