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!
It wasn't the first time that Tal had been back to Halo since Starfall, but it hadn't gotten any easier, even as he brought another hold full of rebuilding supplies from Stormbreak. The Peregrine couldn't carry nearly the weight and load of the larger ships, but she was all that the courier had, and he offered what he could to his birthplace even as much of his time was spent helping out in his new home.
Not that his split loyalties made the guilt any easier to bear. He was doing his best...
But when had his best ever been enough?
"C'mon, girl," he called to his dragon, who had stopped to press her muzzle against a butcher shop window. She reluctantly pulled herself away, snorting her opinion of his priorities as he paused in turn beside the entrance of one of the training grounds. He and Sah had fought in there just a couple short months ago...
Giving in to the impulse, he slipped inside. Nothing had been damaged here, inside the Citadel walls, but no one had obviously used it in a few weeks, either. He bent to right one of the training dummies and he spotted an axe nearby. Hefting it with a thoughtful look, he suddenly turned and chopped fiercely at the target, letting out a frustrated yell at his own helplessness in the face of world-shaking catastrophe.
Boreal just ambled back to the entry and spread her wings to leap up onto the roof, making herself comfortable in the chilly air by stretching out on the sun-warmed tiles while her human worked out some of his issues on the defenseless dummy.
Soleil is already sweaty and frantic deeper in the training grounds. Her own frustration is something fierce and burning, and a lump sits in the bottom of her throat, choking her no matter how hard she hits the training dummy. It just keeps building.
Unfortunately, so do the tears. She can't continue telling herself it's sweat stinging her eyes, not when the dummy swims in front of her, and it only makes the helpless anger boil hotter and brighter inside. Why is she crying? This is ridiculous. She's just training. A strangled yell erupts from her as she launches her spear, and then a harrowing noise of frustration follows on its heels when it clatters to the ground, skimming off the side. She flexes her hand to call it back to her only to pause when Diana - previously watching silently from the sidelines - darts in and picks it up on her jaws, turning to look at Soleil with an inscrutable expression before taking off.
"Hey! Diana, come back!" Even her command is weak and befuddled, strained with lack of breath as she nevertheless gives chase. Her hair is a disaster of what used to be a bun, dark coils of hair falling out of the tie and into her face or plastered to her sweaty forehead. Running after her companion, Soleil slows with an expression of discomfort - something she is hardly ever seen wearing - when Diana drops the spear not far from Talyson's feet.
Swallowing back the hot ball of emotion in her throat, Soleil calls the spear back to her in a petulant show of rejection of Diana's plan. "Sorry," she mutters toward Tal on behalf of her companion. "Don't know what got into her."
kiss me like I'm a conviction, beg for divinity in my grasp
One good thwack with the axe didn't really solve anything, but it maybe kind of helped. A little. The courier stood uncertainly, weighing the weapon in his hands and scowling at the target, but before he could decide on whether or not to continue, a flicker of white drew his attention even as Boreal caroled a cheerful greeting to her fellow companion. Tal blinked down at the wolf and the spear she deposited nearby and automatically started to kneel down to pick it up when the weapon suddenly vanished from beneath his outstretched hand.
The voice wasn't exactly a surprise after Diana's appearance, and Tal reached out a hand to the wolf, offering his fingers for her to sniff and scratches under her chin if she'd accept them before he answered the voice's owner. His own tone was on the dismal side, but that wasn't unusual for the Messenger. "Hey, Soleil. It's f... uh." He finally glanced up to see Sah's daughter in a state of...if not distress, at least unhappiness. Which was a first in his experience with her.
He rocked back on his heels, almost dropping the axe as both brows rose in surprise. "Oh. Shit, uh... did somethin' happen?" He wasn't good with tears, or almost-tears, or... whatever was happening to Soleil's face right now, and he couldn't hide the discomfort in his voice, but to his credit he didn't try to run away. She'd earned that much from him, by being who and what she was.
Diana does not normally allow others to touch her, but perhaps she thinks it will encourage Tal to help her sister, for she allows it with a lifted chin and otherwise neutral expression until Soleil's arrival steals the courier's attention away. Only then does she retreat, abandoning her bonded to the socialization she has been avoiding.
Sol, to her credit, is not unaware of the discomfort that overtakes Tal when he looks up at her disheveled state of being. She just doesn't care right now. Her hand flexes around her spear, and her red-rimmed eyes narrow as her lips twist into an expression that is ugly and hateful - though he has no way of knowing that hatred is focused internally. "The ocean exploded, Talyson, and I wasn't here. Isn't that enough?" Soleil has never been good at keeping secrets, or keeping her feelings off her sleeve, so it rolls out with little prompting. She doesn't know if she's ever used his full name, but right now everything is shaded in hues of red, and she's just so angry.
Hefting her spear, she spins halfway on her heel and launches it at the dummy standing beside the one Tal had been attacking, snarling her anger. It scarcely has time to skewer the object before she's recalling it into her palm, knuckles bleeding ashen with the force of her grip as her nostrils flare. Diana makes a low, half-growl in her throat, and Soleil's gaze cuts over to her. "What? He has his own dummy, I'm not scaring him off!" Her own voice is just as guttural, as inhuman as an Accepted can get, even though she knows she's scaring him off. Just in a different way. And by the Gods if it isn't a vain, intentional attempt on her part.
kiss me like I'm a conviction, beg for divinity in my grasp
There was a difference between 'allowing' and 'enjoying,' and when Diana seemed to be, at best, tolerating his liberties, Tal pulled his hand back to give Soleil his full attention instead of pushing the issue with the wolf. As unhappy as he was, that wasn't too unusual for the dour courier. For the Wild Thunder's daughter, however, it was a rare and entirely unexpected turn of events, and the courier was flummoxed to see this side of her.
But, hail, as she explained her reasoning he felt the frustration and guilt in his own heart pang in answer, and he nodded slowly. "Yeah... yeah, it is," he agreed slowly, hearing his name but far too distracted by her unusual display of temper to think too deeply about it.
Especially when she gave that animal snarl and lashed out at the training dummy nearby - just like he had done when he'd stepped into the training ground.
The courier scowled, feeling his own anger and frustration simmering in a complicated stew of confusion over how to handle things, but in the end he shrugged and hefted his axe. "Nah, you're not scarin' me anywhere," he assured her. "An' I'm... hail, I get it. Better'n about anyone else," he admitted with a grimace. "Look... y'can beat th'stuffin' outta that dummy an' maybe it'll make y'feel better an' maybe it won't. Or we can try an' beat th'shit out o' each other, an' at least get in a good enough workout that maybe we can both sleep tonight. What d'you say?"
His reassurance soothes something tangled that lives far below the surface of her current anger, and later she will surely be grateful that he doesn't waver in the face of such uncommon vitriol from the wolf girl. She isn't sure he gets it, not really, not when the guilt is eating her alive for having been off adventuring instead of home where her people needed her. She feels selfish, and childlike, and like nothing she does here and now can atone for how long it took for her to get back with the skyboats down.
Still, the prospect of taking it out on each other is attractive. Soleil is better trained in weaponry than hand-to-hand, but only because tussling and wrestling was far more common in her not-quite-human household. Before she can overthink it, she throws her spear into the dummy one more time and leaves it there, flexing her hands out as she sizes up her newfound opponent. "I think it's a better idea than having to clean up a destroyed dummy." Deimos would hang her by her toes otherwise, and blood is easier to clean up than straw and sand.
She runs for him full-tilt, aiming to shove him down by ramming her left shoulder into his solar plexus, her outer arm shielding her face against any retaliation while hoping the suddenness of her attack would give her an edge.
kiss me like I'm a conviction, beg for divinity in my grasp
Tal and Alys had been in the middle of moving away from Halo when Starfall had happened. And when the dust had cleared, he had come back home to help as best he could... But King's End had needed help, too. And Torchline, even more. Halo had no ports of note, at least, and the Citadel remained unbreached and unbroken. The Tundra had taken the brunt of the damage, but fortunately it wasn't as densely inhabited as Kaiholo or the Castaway Exchange.
Though the losses had been bad enough. And the guilt Tal felt for making his choice in the middle of a catastrophe ate away at his heart even as he refused to let it rule him.
"Wouldn't be th'first-- Hey!" He'd assumed - wrongly, as it turned out - that they'd be using spear and axe to go at each other. Soleil's weaponless charge took him off guard and he barely dropped the axe in time before she barreled into range.
And he barreled right back out of it, backpedaling frantically and just barely fast enough to keep her from closing until he could take a couple of quick steps sideways to break her straight-line momentum. He flung out a jab to her right shoulder, unable to reach past her guard to her face, so trying to get her to drop it first.
Soleil doesn’t even know Talyson has moved, and considering her volatile state of mind, perhaps that’s for the best. Right now her body is filled to the brim with emotion and it demands release. And, always more wolf than girl, Soleil responds by letting it run. It’s Tal’s fault he wasn’t prepared.
He’s faster than her - understandably - and backpedals just out of reach, leaving her off-kilter from her dedication to her charge. She takes the hit to her shoulder whether she likes it or not, only to bully her way through the ache to plant her left foot and bring her knee up toward Talyson’s stomach. It would be more reliable if she grabbed him, but she doesn’t want to leave her face open, and if he scuttles away again maybe she can catch him with her shin or foot in a less powerful kick.
kiss me like I'm a conviction, beg for divinity in my grasp
Well, the good news was that he felt his fist connect with flesh - and the bad news was that only afterwards did he have the panicked thought that Sah was going to be pissed if he found out that Tal had been beating up on his daughter. It wasn't a concern that he was given much time to dwell on as Soleil pushed right through the pain and his attempt to slow her down and instead launched an immediate counter attack from an unexpected direction.
Well, not entirely unexpected. Tal hadn't exactly grown up learning to fight fair, and his gut reaction was to protect something a little lower down when he sensed the knee rising. It didn't leave his stomach wide open, but his defensive reach wasn't in the right place for a proper block, and he oof!ed as Soleil hit with a glancing blow, folding down over the striking appendage with all thought of Sah's sensibilities knocked out of him along with a little air.
It made it both easier and harder to turn his downward trajectory into a foreheadbutt against the young woman who was working out just as much helpless frustration as he was in the down-and-dirty scuffle.
There is no finesse or planning to her attacks. At least not anymore. The ache of pain from his fist isn't enough to make her feel like she has atoned for her mistakes, and her anger has yet to find a suitable outlet. She rages and moves like an undulating wave, spurred on by her self-loathing and impotent measures against a stronger fighter.
Maybe it's exactly that wriggling that puts her in an unfortunate position for Tal's next attack, if a headbutt qualifies as one. The hard, sturdy part of the crown of his head smacks into her left eyebrow, and pain flares fast and hot as the skin splits and - notorious as head-wounds are - begins to bleed immediately. It's accompanied with a shrill yelp of pain, reeling backward at the same time as her hands blindly reach to snag and grab at any part of Talyson that she can.
Her hands pull at the same time as her left leg sweeps out, trying to bring the courier down to the floor with her as she shuts her eyelid against the blood attempting to seep into her eye.
kiss me like I'm a conviction, beg for divinity in my grasp
Tal had never been much good at atonement, but he knew what it was like to feel helpless in the face of a past he couldn't change. He met Soleil's rage with sullen, growling temper of his own, mad at himself but willing to accept his guildmate as a suitable proxy on which to vent his own spleen.
No one was more surprised than Tal when his attack connected, but part of that was due to the stars he saw as a consequence of his success. His grunt mirrored Soleil's yelp and he tried to shove her away to get some space for recovery, but grasping hands found his sleeve and shoulder. His stumbling recovery meant that her sweep only hit the the side of his calf instead of his knee, but he was already off-balance from the headbutt and he tumbled down regardless.
At least he tried to get his other elbow into Soleil's midriff as they went down together, attempting to land on top of the slender wolf in woman's clothing and knock the air out of her in the process.
It's a graceless fall, and a sloppy fall means a sloppy landing that jars her teeth and sets an ache in her head that will surely develop into a killer headache. Her elbow and hip takes the worst of it, which forces her to rely on the other side of her body for any sort of deflection or attacks but at least ensures she keeps most of her breath.
It isn't much use given that Tal has the upper hand by landing on top of her, the worst position to grapple in when your opponent is physically both heavier and stronger. Soleil - half blind and running on rage instead of logic - swings wide to try and land a punch against his chest to both wind him and shove him off her a little so she might regain some ground, but given she is using only one eye, the likelihood of accuracy is painfully low.
kiss me like I'm a conviction, beg for divinity in my grasp
It was, by far, the most disgraceful spar he'd had in awhile, and later he'd be glad that no one who'd had the teaching of him had seen it. In the moment he was far too concerned with protecting his head from further trauma and in stopping his opponent from landing a solid hit to worry about the future beyond the next three seconds, and even that was pushing it.
Soleil swung and in the sprawl they'd landed in Tal didn't have much room to dodge or block it, but he took a page from her book and dropped his shoulder to take the brunt of her blow. A grunt escaped the courier upon impact and he tried to grab for her wrist, attempting to maneuver it into a sloppy arm bar that he could apply gradual pressure to.
It was probably time to stop, but he wasn't sure she would without being pinned like a rambunctious pup until she gave up on trying to bite his metaphorical - and maybe physical - ears.
Whether it's her lack of stamina, the fizzling out of the embers of her anger, or the knowledge that she is beaten as she struggles uselessly against Tal's grip on her wrist, the fight is done. Soleil just refuses to accept it.
She writhes and bucks beneath him like a trapped animal realizing too late that the door to the cage has slammed shut behind them, wearing herself out more than getting anywhere. The blood on her face is already beginning to itch and stick, and she is horrified to find that hot tears come on the heels of it, watering down the blood on her left side until it's a disgusting smear of crimson as her head finally thunks back against the floor and the fight goes out of her.
"I y-yield," she chokes out, trying to scrap together whatever remains of dignity she has. Soleil has never been a prideful young woman - always content to wear her heart on her sleeve regardless of how people take it - so this, too, is a new feeling. She hates it. She hates feeling any of this for the first time. And the thing she hates the most is that Talyson, of all people, is the person present when the first hiccup breaks through and she starts to cry in earnest. The man she'd looked up to as a child for all his avoidance of her, the only person roughly her age in Halo who seems to have his shit together, the one who - at least she suspects - has been tailing her around despite the extra time it takes to ensure she's safe while adventuring. The shame burns up her throat, and her head throbs painfully in time with her heart.
Sol flings her free arm over her eyes, hiding behind her forearm as her face wrinkles in a painful rictus. "J-Just leave me alone," she begs, preferring to be left crying on her back in the training grounds than to face the awkward twist of his face.
kiss me like I'm a conviction, beg for divinity in my grasp
