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!
For Marcus, the stacks were books. As many of them as he could fit on the great oak table before him and many, many more. Each chair pulled up to the table had books - each chair holding a different subject while different parts of the table held different regions.
He spent most of the morning gathering the books, and now he was spending the afternoon with his nose pressed firmly inside them, reading all of what he could. He was slow, still, in reading. Having jumped from infancy to adolescence would do that to a person. But Cordelia was attentive and intentional when it came to her children’s education, so he was learning quickly.
He was working through a detailed account of the creatures in the Draig.
Despite the constant influx of creatures lately, Deimos didn’t expect anyone else within the guild hall. It had become a routine lately of patrols, hunters trekking their way across the tundra, or assigned to different portions of Caido, striving to eliminate the ongoing threats. So when he returned from the Greatwood, new notes bundled in his hands, glancing upwards to find the familiar silhouette of Noah and Cordelia’s son surprised him.
Ensuring his footfalls were heavier than normal as he entered the library, he rumbled a distinct greeting so he didn’t scare the youth. “Marcus,” he obliged in turn, before pressing his wake over to a stack of journals not yet snagged by the Abandoned, rifling through another portion of pages before coming to blank parchment. His eyes slid over to the tomes resting across the table, amused, half a grin already appearing along his face. “What has your interest today?”
Feeling as comfortable in the Monster Hunter's Guild as he did in his own home, Marcus hardly looked up to notice who the footsteps brought in. It wasn't until Deimos spoke that the youth lifted his head, copper hair flooding his forehead. "Oh, hi, Deimos." Marcus said, squirming just slightly. He pressed a hand down on one of the page corners to keep the book open, but pressed his back against the oak chair.
As the warden drew closer and a smile lifted his features, Marcus smiled back. "Creatures of the Draig Cordillera." Cordillera required some effort from his lips, and he only knew the word to say correctly because he could read the word Draig. "It was the smallest one." He said, lifting up the book in turn. "But I don't know this word." He set the journal back down and pressed his finger into the neatly written "Gossipfly".
Beginning to fill in the pages of the book in front of him, his gaze still went to Marcus’s chosen tome. Smiling again the youth’s pronunciation, for it was a difficult word, he nodded, sliding in parchment about void encantandos. “Likely because not many of us have gone,” Noah, Deimos, Remi, Ronin, Maeve, and an assortment besides, wouldn’t have been hastening towards a journey to record information. Maybe in another moment in time, when he wasn’t overwhelmed with cataloging the latest void cretins, striving to ensure Halo and its people were safe, and any other leagues pressing down upon him – a note for the future, regardless.
At the statement though his brow arched, only leaning slightly over to see what the word was. Reading was a difficult skill, especially when one had skipped over pertinent, developmental ages through moments in time – Deimos could recall his mother’s lessons well. However, never one to simply hand out answers, for he encouraged his entourage to think no matter the situation, his voice rumbled throughout the library. “What is the first letter? And what sound does it make?”
Where some children may have wanted the man to tell him the word, Marcus was ready to work for it. The tomes and collections rolled out before him were a testament to that -- he was a sponge for knowledge, and he craved all of it.
Where his father was better at seeking out people who held the knowledge, his mother was more opposite of that, and had brought him and his twin to this library as well as the one in the Arcane Academy so that they knew where they could find information even if there were no people. So, when prompted, Marcus shifted again.
He leaned forward and folded his legs beneath himself, and narrowed his eyes in focus on the letters. "It's a g." He said, and made its sounds. "This is an o -- but I don't know if its "OH" or not in this word." He said, tilting his head slightly and looking up at Deimos through a veil of copper bangs.
One could always appreciate those willing to do the work – knowing from a young age what it meant to hold and pursue effort. For some it may not have mattered, but in the interim, when there were moments meant to shatter others, the latter proved often to prevail. Deimos slid the next page, void river stars, into the journal, before his eyes flicked back over to the lad.
Gossipflies hadn’t been in his periphery either, so perhaps they’d both gain some knowledge today. “Short O, in this case. So closer to an AH sound.” He pronounced it in practice thereafter, chiseled tones in reverberation. “Any other parts you know?” The ‘FL’ was usually easy to identify, even if the Y had uncharacteristic sounds on these portions, and the double SS shouldn’t trip the child in their sequencing.
"hmm. Okay." Marcus replied, face scrunching up with focus. He wriggled with some excitement as his tiny body tried to focus. He stared at the word for a long time, trying to decide if there was anything else he didn't know. But, tiny confidence ahead of him, he went for it. He sounded the first few sounds -- g, o, ss, -- then he said the strong and long "I", followed by the p, fl -- then an even stronger and longer "ee" where the y was.
A bright, Olson smile covered over his face as he tilted his head again to look at the Sword. "I got it. Goosipflea." He said. "That's kind of weird, though, because this drawing has wings and I don't think fleas have wings. Momma says they jump, though, which is why we shouldn't pet any of the sled dogs or strays or anything like that because if we brought fleas home and she got them or even Eira then we would be in for a world of hurt." His eyes widened and he shook his head some at the terrifying idea of such a disaster.
While Marcus persisted, Deimos filed, placing another portion of parchment into the journals – this one detailing the void encantandos, with blackened dolphins’ etchings along the surface. Withholding a sigh, for he wouldn’t want to concern the child with the constant and ongoing details, newfound each day, over the current circumstances of the world, his attention went back to the reading strategies.
He could see all the familiar features of Noah, in a contented mood, beaming back at him, and the Sword arched his brow as the child announced his findings. A close call, and he didn’t laugh as the tangent continued and spiraled (though it was difficult to muffle, as the story inspired a mental image of Cordelia being very disgruntled). Instead, he smiled, head tilting vaguely with the usual aura of patience and forbearance surrounding his entity. “Very close. The Y in this case makes an I sound. Like in my and by.” Hoping the nuances would segment a connection, he encouraged Marcus to try again with a jutting of his jaw back towards the page.
Well that was embarrassing. Or at least it would be, had it not been for the stalwart patience of the warden that encouraged the boy rather than mocked him.
"Oh. Hmm." He pursed his lips and looked back down at the page, his finger still pressed to the word. "Gossipfly," he enunciated, "That makes more sense. With the wings and all." Then, he trailed his fingers along the next few words and sounded through them, lips moving with his quiet reading. Even though there were some words he didn't know just by sight -- human, being one of them -- he could still piece together a description of the creatures based on the sounds and words surrounding what he didn't know.
Thus, he scrunched up his face in a clear display of disgust. "Have you seen these things before? They have people faces."
He waited again as the youth persevered through the changing and alteration of the word. He’d find no mocking from the Sword, not for someone willing and yearning to learn. Thereafter, he continued filing away another page before closing the journals, more information placed and shared for another day, before his attention returned to Marcus and his corrections.
Deimos gave another nod and a smile at the alteration and sudden sense of it all – head tilting vaguely again at the inquiry, and then a wrinkle of his nose at the mental imagery. “No. I would have remembered those,” even in the midst of battle, flies with human faces and features would’ve been enough to garner reactions. “Plenty of dragons, however.”
Disgust still contorting his face, Marcus squirmed on his legs. The idea of a creature with a human face that wasn’t a human made him totally queasy and he was glad that they were part of the Draig and not part of Halo. ”Oh.” The way he started most sentences. ”I don’t know who wrote this, then.” Marcus said, taking the journal and flipping through it. ”I thought you did.” The youngling said, reaching out and handing the collection of knowledge to the warden.
He brushed his hair back out of his eyes before grabbing another thin journal. It didn’t have anything on the front of it, but as he opened it up he found a familiar scrawl and smiled. ”Dad wrote this one.” He said. ”I read it with Mom. It’s from when you all lived in King’s End.” He pointed down at the page which detailed the bear they fought.
“Possibly someone else who journeyed there,” with the scores of risk-taskers and adventurers, and uncertain how old the journal entry was, it would be difficult to tell. They’d clearly made it home to describe the bizarre and strange encounter. He flipped through some other portions, investigating, glancing over some portions seen and others not – amused when he stopped on the picture and description of the alpinas.
He ceased though when Marcus pinpointed their adventure of the bear, another smile flickering on his features. “That was quite a time,” and amused, he turned to glance at the scrawl and ursine indication. “You can read it again to me if you would like.” Practice made perfect and precise – though he could always work on fluency too by repeating lines, words, and refrains he’d seen before.
Another very Olson smile spread across the young abandoned’s features. ”You don’t mind?” The youngling asked, but didn’t wait too long for a reply. His bright eyes shifted from the warden to the journal and he started off quickly. Cheating, really, because he knew a lot of the story from his mother’s reading and telling of it. He stumbled over a few long words, descriptions of how Deimos’ magic worked and his father’s newly given demigod abilities.
He hard an especially hard time with the word “hellhound”. Though he knew what the creature was, per his mother’s teaching of Deimos’ shift, reading it on paper was a totally different task for him.
“I do not,” he rendered – though not quickly enough, as the youth started almost immediately. He withheld another snort, only inwardly amused, before placing the other journals away and preparing to listen. Some seemed memorized, as if the notions were there, fresh in the lad’s mind, but the Sword wouldn’t call him out on it – permitting Marcus to have his moment while he maneuvered around, shifting a few of the other parchments and adjusting the bounty board nearby.
Hearing someone else describe his capabilities seemed odd, but he shrugged at it, until Noah’s son stumbled over his shift, and he paused to glance at the portions. “We can break this one, since it is a compound word.” Leaning over, he placed his thumb entirely over the latter portion, so it blocked out ‘hound’ and left only ‘hell’ to parse through initially. “Try the first part.”
