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Character of the Season
Frail in body but dangerously quick of mind, Nikandr is the sort of character who proves that curiosity can be just as perilous as any weapon. A necromancer, inventor, and problem-solver with more ambition than self-preservation, Niki approaches the world like a puzzle box begging to be opened, even when what’s inside has teeth. Blunt, dry-witted, fiercely independent, and carrying a history best left partially buried, he has a knack for making even failure feel fascinating. Whether he’s raising the dead, moving across Caido to King's End, or experiencing a hangover for the first time, Nikandr brings a wonderfully strange spark to Caido, and we can’t wait to see what trouble his brilliant mind wanders into next.
Congratulations, Niki!
Credits
Court of the Fallen was created in October of 2018 by Odd, Honey, and Crooked.
OG Skinning provided by Kaons, with functionality and many custom plugins made by Neowulf!
Wren sat at the small wrought-iron table by the window, her fingers curled too tightly around a chipped ceramic mug gone lukewarm. Outside, the afternoon drifted past in slow, indifferent currents. She checked the clock again. The minute hand had barely moved.
She caught herself counting breaths, heartbeats, the steady tap of her foot against the floor, and stopped, swallowing hard. She leaned back in her chair and tugged her sleeves over her knuckles, fingers worrying the hem. Her gaze flicked to the door each time it opened, lifting too quickly, only to fall again just as fast. Each time she imagined meeting his eyes — her eyes — again.
When the bell chimed once more, she straightened, hazel eyes lifting again.
The cafe in New Haven was quaint. From the outside, it looked like any other local establishment, all brick and wood siding and a wrought iron sign out front. Liam had been standing on the corner looking at the place - looking for any sign of Wren - for the past five minutes, despite knowing that she was probably already inside. But as long as he stood out here, he didn't have to face her, didn't have to put on an act. He could play the meeting over in his mind and pretend he knew how it was going to play out.
He'd thought long and hard about the strategy here, about how to convince her to let him help her. And in the end, all he'd managed to settle on was getting to know the person she was now instead of focusing on the child she'd been all those years ago. He wouldn't be able to just walk in and say, hello, I'm your father. At best, she'd laugh; at worst, she'd think he was insane. No, he needed to build a rapport before he could approach the subject. Right?
Prim and Vale trotted along at his heels as he strode towards the door. A bell jingled merrily as he entered the cafe, doing his best not to look as nervous as he felt. He spotted her immediately, sitting at a little table by the window, hands tucked into her sleeves as she glanced up to lock eyes with him. Once more he was stricken by the sight of her, so like his late wife and yet, with that little piece of him, too.
He made himself smile, made himself walk across the cafe to slide into the chair across from her. "Hi Jesse," he made himself say, the name foreign on his tongue. "Thanks for meeting me."
To put my arms in fragile hands
Minor powerplay allowed without permission.
Feel free to use force/magic on Liam.
Wren’s fingers tightened where they hid in the sleeves of her sweater, the fabric twisting between them as if she could anchor herself to it. She didn’t answer right away. She tried to force a smile but couldn’t. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to, or didn’t think he deserved to be greeted with kindness, but there was a hold on her that she didn’t understand but it was at the depth of every one of her cells.
Her gaze held his, searching openly and intently, for something she couldn’t name. There was a flicker of it, just beneath the surface of him, something that tugged low in her chest, sharp and unsteady. It made her inhale a little too quickly, shoulders rising before she forced them down again.
She shifted in her chair. “Hi,” she said at last, her voice softer than she intended with a crackle to it that she didn’t expect. It made her clear her throat. Then she pulled one hand free, reaching for the mug more for something to do than any desire to drink. The ceramic clinked faintly against the table as she set it back down.
“You found it okay?” The question came out automatic, a placeholder to the kindness she held so intrinsically in her heart, and she looked down at the chair across from her, then her coffee, her eyes not ready to drift back to her own painted on his face.
He tried not to stare too openly, not to place each feature on her face as his or her mother's, building a blueprint in his mind's eye of where she'd come from and to what family she'd belonged. Instead, he glanced out the window, looked around the cafe, settled his dragons on the windowsill. She was quiet for longer than he'd anticipated, and he'd just started to grow anxious when she offered a soft, crackling hi. It may as well have been a dagger plunged into his heart for the effect it had on him, and he risked a glance in her direction to find her hazel eyes fixed on her drink.
Small talk was the last thing he'd anticipated, even having tried to prepare himself for an encounter in which he knew he'd have to engage in it. "Oh, uh - yeah, I did," he said. He looked around the cafe again. "It's nice," he offered, forcing another smile. "Do you have any drink recommendations?" Or maybe she didn't come here often enough for that. It wasn't like she knew him well enough to know what he'd like. Maybe she would have, once upon a time, but now...
To put my arms in fragile hands
Minor powerplay allowed without permission.
Feel free to use force/magic on Liam.
Wren nodded quickly, almost too quickly, latching onto the question like it was something solid she could hold. She cleared her throat slightly, shifting in her chair from one seatbone to the other. “Um—yeah,” she said, her voice steadier this time, even if it still felt a little thin. “Their honey latte is really good. It’s not too sweet.” She gave a small, tentative shrug, eyes flicking up to him for just a second before dropping again. “Or the spiced one." She wasn't drinking either of them. She just had a double espresso with a little cream.
She shifted again in her seat, fingers brushing the side of her mug, tracing the rim without lifting it. There were questions, so, so many questions pressing at the back of her mind, crowding together until they blurred. Who are you to me? Why does this feel like this? They felt close, right there, but when she tried to reach for them, it was like moving through syrup, and she felt the dull, familiar throb at the base of her skull.
Her lips parted, like she might ask something, but the words stalled before they could form. Instead, she glanced back up at him, offering a small, careful smile that she tried not to make look forced, and settled her eyes on her's -- his -- her's. “Do you, uh… come to places like this often?” she asked.
Maybe he would answer, and then ask his own questions. She didn't know.
It was terribly awkward, this meeting, and that stung in a way that Liam hadn't anticipated. He'd been ready for her not to know him, ready to have to tiptoe around the topic that he wanted most of all to broach, but this distance between them hurt. Still, he did his best to keep an easy smile. "Honey latte, it is," he said, desperate for something that he could use to get to know even a small part of the young woman she'd grown into.
In the meantime, she voiced her own question, and Liam felt no small sense of pride that she would even try to be kind and polite in this situation. As far as he knew, he was just some strange man who had scared her at a festival one time. That she had agreed to meet at all was a blessing. "Not often, no," he admitted. "I live in the Greatwood at the moment. It's mostly Fae shops - nothing quite like this."
Pausing as his drink was delivered to their table, he wrapped his hands around the mug. "Have you ever been to the Greatwood?" he asked.
To put my arms in fragile hands
Minor powerplay allowed without permission.
Feel free to use force/magic on Liam.
She didn't want silence to sretch between them, and was grateful when Liam asked his own follow up question for the conversation to move forward. Wren shook her head, the motion small but immediate, like the answer had been waiting just beneath the surface.
“No.” She said, firm in a wa that surprised her and made her grip tighten slightly over the warm drink. Her fingers stilled against the rim of her mug, then resumed their slow tracing, as if the movement might smooth out the edges of the memory pressing in. Her gaze dipped, catching on the faint swirl of cream in her espresso before it disappeared entirely. She wanted to say at least I don't think so but bit back the words and sank them down with a swig of her coffee.
Exhaling after her drink, she started, “I—” then hesitated, the word catching as that dull pressure stirred again at the base of her skull, enough to make her careful. “I didn’t really go anywhere. Before, uh, you know,” She brushed her hand to the side, a motion as if sweeping away her own words and memories, “I stayed in Stormbreak. Never really had, uh, a reason to leave.” Her mouth curved faintly, but it didn’t quite reach her eyes. "Everything I needed was there.”
No. The word was harsh and clipped in its delivery, taking Liam by surprise. He wrapped his hands around his mug, trying to think what he might have said to make her react with such a firm dismissal. But then she seemed to soften, providing more context - none of which surprised him. Before the Tower had fallen, Liam and his late wife had only ever had the girls at home. If Wren had traveled outside of the city, it would have been after... everything.
"I understand." He'd felt that way, once. It was why he'd never traveled. Between his family and his work as a Dragoon, everything he'd wanted or needed had been within his own region. It was only now, in retrospect, that he wondered if he shouldn't have tried to see more of the world back then. "I grew up in Stormbreak," he continued. "Served as a Dragoon for years before I left." Whether that would do anything to soothe the girl across from him, who he wanted so desperately to know and to help, remained to be seen.
To put my arms in fragile hands
Minor powerplay allowed without permission.
Feel free to use force/magic on Liam.
When he spoke again, it was enough to make her eyes finally fall solidly on his. She kept her gaze steady, searching without knowing exactly what she was looking for, as though the way he said it, the way he held it, might make it solid again. It didn’t. Everything felt partial, like reaching into a space that should have been full and finding only fragments that slipped apart the moment she tried to hold them together. But, at least they had some common ground now.
At least, as far as she knew.
She studied him then, more deliberately than before. The way he held himself, steady but not rigid. The way his hands curved around the mug, like he, too, needed something constant beneath them. There was something in that—something that pulled faintly at her, not sharp or overwhelming, but present enough that she couldn’t quite set it aside. It settled in her chest as a quiet pressure, unfamiliar but not unwelcome, and she found herself holding onto it without fully understanding why. She could feel the base of her neck start to tighten, and the familiar throb start in her temple.
“You were a Dragoon.” she said, her voice softer now, less of the bite than when she had answered him before. She could see the Nest in her mind's eye, foggy and blurry, but there. A place like that was unmistakable. It didn't appear as anything other than what it was, unlike some of the buildings and rooms she saw in her half-formed dreams.Her gaze dropped again, breath catching briefly before she steadied it, grounding herself in the simple rhythm of it.
“It’s strange -- uh,” she stuttered, less uncertain, "hearing it like that. Like it’s supposed to mean something.” Her fingers tightened slightly around the cup again. “It feels like it should.” Because why else would she know what the dragoon's raining grounds looked like?
Their eyes met over their cups of coffee, each trying to ground themselves in their own way. For a moment, Liam's breath caught in his chest; Wren looked so much like her mother that it made his heart ache. There wasn't enough atonement in the world to fix this, he knew that, but gods, did everything in him scream to reach for the young woman he was growing more and more certain was his daughter, to hold her, to cherish her, to reassure her that she would never be alone again.
This time, it was Liam whose gaze dropped to his coffee as he fought to control the myriad emotions swirling behind his hazel eyes. His grip on his mug tightened, a thumb brushing along the ceramic surface in a small motion that allowed him to focus on something - anything - other than Wren.
Only when he was certain that he'd schooled his features back into calm did he dare to glance back up. She'd been studying him, and he wasn't quite sure what all she'd have seen hidden in his expression, but he did his best to exude the quiet peace that normally came so easily to him. Wren's commentary, though, had his brows creasing in confusion. He wasn't sure what she meant, that him being a Dragoon felt like it should mean something - unless, maybe, deep down, her memories weren't gone after all. "I served for a long time," he said finally, cautiously, as though unsure what to say or how to go about saying it. "It meant a great deal to me and my family."
To put my arms in fragile hands
Minor powerplay allowed without permission.
Feel free to use force/magic on Liam.
05-27-2026, 05:47 PM (This post was last modified: 05-27-2026, 05:48 PM by Wren.)
Wren
I need the clouds to cover me
Wren nodded once, slow this time, her eyes lingering on him a second longer before dropping back to the table. She shifted in her seat slightly, the feeling in her chest twisting at the words about family. Wren had no recollection of anything of the sort, save for flashes of darkened faces and the murmured sound of voices from her dreams and nightmares. “That’s good,” he said quietly, though it sounded more uncertain out loud than it had in her head. Her thumb traced another slow line around the rim of her mug. “To, uh, have something that mattered that much.”
The silence that followed wasn’t entirely uncomfortable, but it stretched enough that she felt suddenly aware of herself again—of the way she kept fidgeting with her sleeves, of how long she looked at him before looking away, of the faint pulse building behind her temple. She searched for another question before the quiet could settle too deeply between them.
“What was it like?” she asked, then immediately shook her head a little to keep herself from adding having a family, and instead continued with: “Being a Dragoon, I mean.” Her mouth pressed briefly into a thin line. A small, nervous breath slipped from her as she tucked a strand of auburn hair behind her ear. She glanced up again, offering another quick, careful smile like she was trying to smooth over more awkwardness before it fully surfaced. The smile faded at the edges when she realized she didn’t actually know how conversations like this were supposed to work. Usually people filled the empty spaces for her.
With him, every question felt strangely important, and that only made it harder to ask the next one.
Every step Liam made felt like walking on cracking ice, waiting to plunge into the frigid depths below. If he miscalculated, if he overshared, if he didn't share enough - he feared that any move he made would cause Wren to shut down, shutting him out for good. It was terrifying enough to be given this chance to make amends, horrifying to consider the consequences if he should fail. Every word he spoke felt momentous, and it had him measuring his responses carefully.
She asked what it was like, being a dragoon, and Liam relaxed incrementally. This, at least, he could answer. "It was everything to me, for a time. It was all I wanted to do as a child, so when I finally joined up, I felt like I was really making a difference, protecting Stormbreak." Not that it had been enough, in the end, but that was neither here nor there. "It was hard at times - it takes a lot of discipline and hard work to do anything well, and I was determined to be the best soldier I could be." If only he'd applied the same principles to being a father - but then, he'd been blinded by grief at the time.
Shaking off that train of thought, Liam smiled softly. "What about you? What is it that you do?"
To put my arms in fragile hands
Minor powerplay allowed without permission.
Feel free to use force/magic on Liam.
