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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!
It's true that Flora knows not what she seeks from Astaroth, and for all of her bravado and talk of calling down gods with the snap of her fingers, there's little that could prepare her for what it might like to see the butcher completely as he is. It doesn't stop her from wanting it, though.
While what she doesn't know certainly might hurt her, Flora only rolls her eyes affectionately as she smirks. "You said it yourself that you've never been with someone like me." The queen points out, and though her legs are oscillating between being jelly and shivering with tension against his shoulders, this time she's able to match the arrogance of his tone.
"I wil--" The word is cut off as Asta's teeth pierce her skin. Needle sharp as they are, there's little pain as they go in, and it's only as the skin is roughly kissed by his mouth that the queen's low moans are abruptly cut off by a surprised whimper. Flinching abruptly as she looks down at Asta, her fingers reach for him instinctively as one might reach for a wasp after a sting; only the dark delight in his eyes stays her hand just as his efforts seem to double. The bright sting mingles with the pleasure of his fingers and mouth, and while Flora has never necessarily liked pain, gods but if he isn't doing a fantastic job of swamping her senses to the point she doesn't know what was what anymore.
Her head flops back against his shirt as her back arches and her hand tangles into his dark hair. "No more until you've made me cum," Flora pants, and it's only because she too is used to being in control that she's able to give such an instruction amidst the way his fingers have the balls of her feet growing staticy and the flick of his tongue has her belly roaring with heat.
He did indeed say that, though he doesn’t truly know what he can get away with — likewise, Flora doesn’t entirely know what she can get away with when it comes to the butcher, too. But she matches the arrogance he provides, and it’s a very attractive sight to see, especially as he pushes his limits a bit in order to leave that mark on her thigh too. He hears the whimper and the sharpness of her flinch, only to bombard her with more attention where she needs it, from a mouth that’s tainted by her wetness and her blood.
Arrogance flares in his gaze as she reaches for him, only to fall away from the initial task as he drives pleasure from her, his efforts double. He doesn’t care if they’re basically in public, he wants to hear her voice echo from the walls. He wants to hear her cry out his name as he takes and takes. Perhaps that’s why he concedes to her demand, a husky laughed out “yes, darling,” like they were an old married couple and he’d heard her make the same request year after year.
They aren’t, though, and now that she’s gotten him wound up he’s somewhat docile with her hand in his hair, withdrawing from sucking on her clit to let his hot breath rake across her as he returns to flicking his tongue against it, pumping his fingers in and out of her, his free hand dragging along the outside of her thigh to cup her ass and pull her closer like he fully intends to continue feasting on her (which he does, of course), before the hand is traveling up her torso again. Fingers tease and toy with her full breast and nipple, trying a multitude of pleasurable means to get her even closer. All other pleasantries that might slip past his lips vanish for the mere fact that they’re already occupied. His fingers adjust ever so slightly too, the pace increasing as he aims to drive them deeper, craving the tight feel of her around his fingers.
While it won't be the first time Flora has walked away from a particularly good fuck (or even a bad one, let's be honest), with bruises, certainly the constellation of marks left by the butcher are wholly unique to anything she's experienced. His hands are large enough as to make the press of his fingertips against her skin seem unconnected, and though she hasn't seen it yet, the mark on the inside of her thigh is going to bloom with more colours than just crimson; a bouquet, from him to her. But, he was ever the gentleman, after all.
The possessive tug of her body towards him has Flora hiccuping a moan as her fingers continued to tangle in his hair. There's no need to tug him any closer against her, and indeed his tongue needed the space to do its clever work, but there was utterly nothing the queen could do against the shaky inclinations of her body and the way it was impossible not to shiver and writhe in his grasp.
"There--" She gasps sharply as the movement of his fingers and tongue sharply accelerate such that she finds her orgasm much closer than she expected. "Asta-" There's no need to tell him don't stop, and if ever the Doubletake thought the butcher's inclinations were strictly masculine-leaning, his expert ministrations thus far firmly quelled any concerns Flora had that he might not know what he was doing. "Gods, make me cum and you can have more--" She pleads, recklessly, knowing not what it was she was offering and thinking only of the gravity-bright tug against the bottoms of her feet and inside of her thighs.
Reaching for the hand clutching at her breasts, the queen takes full advantage of the butcher's lanky frame and instead directs his hand around her throat. It was a new kink for her (thanks Jack), but one she didn't think Asta would mind dabbling in (if he wasn't a connoisseur already). Pressing his fingers around her, the Doubletake let's her head tip back as yet another moan slips from her lips, one Asta will no doubt feel in the palm of his hand as well as hear in the echos of the cavern.
If there’s one thing Astaroth has realized he prefers, is that it’s entirely a possessive standpoint. Marks left behind that distinctly scream him, whether healed or not (Danta has a few to sport, after all). So he easily focuses on maneuvering the Doubletake however needed in order to reach both her goal and his, burying his face between her legs with her hand in his hair. While he hasn’t participated much recently, it doesn’t mean that he doesn’t know what to do, and judging by the way she curls and shivers around him, he’s doing a pretty good job.
Oh, but then she’s uttering such a reckless comment, one that only spurs the butcher more. Finding that perfect rhythm between his lingers and the way his tongue moves against her, it’s very clear that he isn’t intending on letting that option slide. Instead, he pairs it with a vibrating moan of his own, panted against her and vibrating through her.
She grabs his hand and guides it up to her throat, though, and there’s even more dark delight that swims in the butcher’s gaze — because he does partake on occasion — and given his distinct knowledge of human anatomy, he makes it easy to place his hand in the perfect spot to squeeze her throat yet perfectly aligned to keep her from passing out. Her moan echoes from the walls and through his palm, sparking a hum of encouragement from him while his mouth and other hand remain quite busy, trying to make her fall apart.
Feeling her heartbeat pulsing up from her neck and against the back of her teeth thanks to the expert pressure of the butcher's hand at her throat, Flora's body tenses one final time as her orgasm rises in a rapidly expanding shockwave of pleasure and release. A scream fills the back of her throat and whether or not Asta can make out the shape of his name in the sound isn't the sort of thing Flora is considering just now as she claws his fingers away from ner neck that her orgasm might be accompanied by the sweet return of oxygen.
For a moment she's entirely weightless as she rises above her body; the hard stone beneath her, the muted voices from far away, the rush of the water, the sounds of her own relief, and even the scruff on Asta's cheek against her thighs, all of it was so far away as to be indescenerable from the heights of her pleasure. Thick rivers of honeyed black and gold ran through her veins as her screams turned to moans, and then shivery sounds of pleasure.
Having arched her back hard enough that the muscles began to tremble with the effort, Flora let herself crumple back against the stone with a breathless laugh. Realizing how numb her fingers had become, tangled tightly in his hair as they were, the queen releases them with an apologetic grin as she peers down at him across the sweat-beaded length of her body.
He’s uniquely in tune with the tension that blossoms through her, and as she claws at his hand to remove it from her throat, it moves with surprising ease to plant beside her, giving himself a bit more stability as he continues to drive her over the edge of her orgasm. He does hear it, the tones of his name intermixed with her screams of pleasure, and truly its music to his ears. He doesn’t even mind the tight iron grip she has in his hair.
She arches and he helps her crest against it as it blooms, focusing on the aftershocks of pleasure that rack through her until she sinks back with an airy laugh. Only when her numb fingers release their hold on his hair does he start to move, lips placing a soft and apologetic kiss to the bite mark on her thigh, before he trails up and hovers over her. “Was that what you hoped it would be, Flora, darling?” He asks in that still husky voice of arrogance, the fingers that had been within her rise to his lips, licking them clean all while he peers down at her, curious to see what her next plan was.
The warmth of the candlelight has the blush on Flora's cheeks looking distinctly maroon as she lets her head loll wearily to the side, her breasts still rising and falling quite quickly as she catches her breath. Asta's arrogance inspires a girlish mischief in the Doubletake, such that despite the very obviously pleased way her body responds to his continued presence over her, she lets her eyes roll up somewhat as she shrugs. "I mean..it was..." One hand slinks slowly down the length of her own body where she allows her middle finger to press against her swollen lips before gliding across her clit. Still wildly overstimulated, Flora shivers with a static-y pleasure her mind can't quite parse before she circles her fingertip against the bite mark on her thigh. "..okay." She purrs teasingly as she repaints his lips with the newly made mixture of her wetness and the still softly bleeding mark on her thigh.
Having not forgotten the way that he'd resisted her hands as they'd pushed him down onto his back, instead of making any attempts to manipulate the butcher (physically, at least), Flora leaned herself up onto her elbows that her nipples might once again brush over his scarred body as she tilted her chin up and pressed her lips against his ear. "On your back." She whispers softly. "Please."
Mischief sparks in her darkened aqua eyes, even as she tries to play it off, her hand trailing down her body as her answer reaches him through the humid air between them. Okay is the teasing answer she chooses and the butcher snorts with his own playful exasperation, almost ready to comment just how her prior moans wouldn’t have been so loud if it had just been okay, but the second his lips part to offer an arrogant rebuttal, she’s painting his lips again. The sweet taste of her and the blood intermixed has a shiver running down his spine, his tail waving behind him in quiet delight, a soft hum of a sound escaping his throat with the way his eyes shutter close.
Only to blink open slowly when she arches up against him, her full breasts pressed against his scarred skin, hand moving easily to slip against the small of her back. Her whisperers request is met with far easier acquiescence this time, the please making it easier for Astaroth to set aside his stubbornness and his need for control.
“Mm, well, seeing as you said please,” shifting to place a kiss to her cheek and jaw with the husky purr, he refrains from diving deeper to her neck despite how he very much wants to, instead twisting to lay back against the hard and hot stone, the hand at the small of her back helping to keep the Doubletake just as close yet still allowing her the opportunity to decide and enact how she wanted to start this. Not that it would be difficult for him at the present moment, he’s still hard, cheeks darkened ever so slightly beneath the dark beard, his lips glistening between a mixture of her wetness and his and her own blood, waiting in a calculating kind of anticipation for what she’ll choose to do next.
The butcher doesn't rise to the bait of her words, but his silent exasperation has Flora grinning smugly. She's still under the impression that whatever is under Asta's carefully curated mask is something she can handle, perhaps something only she can (Danta aside). It's wildly arrogant and pompous, but then, so what? No one said daddy issues had to be rational.
Were manners and a few droplets of blood all it took to render the butcher docile? Gods but it certainly seemed that way, though luckily even Flora wasn't so naive as to believe it. As he resumed his earlier position on the stones, the queen took her time in pivoting on her knees before stretching out one of her long legs to kneel astride his shoulders as if intending for him to perform an encore of his earlier performance. Perhaps this time he'd earn more than an okay from the queen. While she does tilt her hips forward pressing her lips just above his own, Flora lets her weight sink to one side before leaning forward to tangle her fingers into his dark hair that she might fix his gaze on her. "Now, be a good boy and don't be greedy, mm?" She purrs; a promise was a promise, even if it was one her mind could hardly recall making.
Shifting even more, Flora presses her unmarked thigh against his lips, the tension of her fingertips suggesting that were he inclined to take more than what was on offer, he'd lose a chunk of his lovely hair as penance.
It is wildly arrogant, but it appears as though the two of them are enjoying dancing with fire. Her, more so than him, but it is a delicate balance of trying to ensure he remains restrained enough. She isn’t Danta, whom the butcher can place bites and marks all across with the mutual understanding that he absolutely could tear a chunk out of his body, yet knows precisely how to handle the butcher so that he doesn’t.
Flora’s learning, though admittedly has not received the entire story. He’s not exactly in the habit of explaining his proclivities, especially to those who aren’t ancient.
Regardless, the Doubletake continues to dance with fire as she straddles his face, his hands rising to run along her hips and lower back, dropping down to the curve of her ass and to her thighs as she teases and taunts him, which he does in return — lips pressing a touch roughly against her own, trying to spark some of that overwhelming sense, before she’s twisted to place her unmarked thigh against his sharp mouth. His dark gaze bores into her darkened blues, not knowing entirely how not to be too greedy. It’s a test for them both, with her hand in his hair coiled tightly and his lips parting against a salty, sweat shone thigh. His hand cups the opposite side, eyes remaining locked on hers as he sinks his teeth in — a mimicry of before where he doesn’t aim to take a chunk, but to puncture and slice, to leave a bruising and scabbed mark in the shape of his teeth.
“Fuck,” the second the blood coats his tongue, the vibrating and grittier accented groan leaves him, eyes shuttering shut as his fingers tighten against her thigh, a shiver races down his spine that has him gasping a hot breath against her skin. He withdraws before he can completely lose it and tear the bite out, instead pressing his lips and nose to the mark, his dexterous tongue running along each of the bleeding wounds.
Exhaling a sound of sharp surprise as the butcher's lips roughly tickled against her still-sensitive clit, Flora let the sound turn into shaky laughter as she shook her head scolding down at him. Wanting to feel his hands all over her, the Doubletake pushes herself into his grasp as if to encourage him to grasp more of her. Feeling her mouth grow slightly dry at the expectation of pain, the queen licked her lips as she gazed down at the butcher, her fingers tense but measured in his hair.
The pain was brighter than it had been before without the thrusting of his fingers to distract her, and though she'd wanted to seem strong in a way he'd find enticing, she was helpless to stop the mewl of pain that slipped past her lips and forced her eyes to clench shut as her shoulders rounded forward. Biting at the inside of her cheek hard enough to draw blood, Flora breathed through the moment of panic that told her legs to tense and run, and instead exhaled a soft sigh.
In the moment the guttural sound that left Asta's lips made the pain seem worth it—she could heal, after all, and absolutely would after this—but that sound was something that she'd pulled out of him. "Yeah, that's what's coming next." The queen purrs breathlessly, and as she opens her eyes, the blood between her thighs is perhaps not so shocking to behold if only because at least once a month Flora awoke with nearly the same mess between her legs.
As she walks her knees back a few inches, intentionally pressing the curve of her ass and thighs into his hands as she goes, Flora leans forward, her eyes dark and catlike as she presses her tongue against the inside of her cheek before parting her lips against his and flicking out out her blood-soaked tongue as yet another offering.
The pain she’s in is admittedly, entirely lost on him in the haze of the vibrant scarlet that blankets his mind, zeroing in on everything she has to offer. His hands stutter where they run against her skin, even as she purrs her answer, and Astaroth is none the wiser to the more emotional feelings the Queen harbors over fight or flight.
His almost too hot tongue continues to lap at the blood, eyes opening to peer up at her once she’s recovered, watching as she begins to walk back on her knees. It’s truly a sight, and one that the butcher gladly eats up. His hands pressing in tight and caressing her ass, leaning up to meet her half way as she curls over him. The tinge of fresh iron on her tongue has another muffled sound leaving him, his lips finding hers in a greedy desire, somehow cautious enough to not nip at her lower lip.
Instead his hands grow more possessive, hands applying enough pressure to leave more of those fingerprint bruises, head angled into the kiss with enough desire and greed that his horns scrape against the stone beneath him when he tilts his head into the kiss even more, like he might be able to get each and every droplet she has to offer.
What blood did for Asta, desire did for Flora: the moans shivering out of his lips, the way his hands grasped at her, the twisting of his body against the stones instead of hers. Not nearly as long as he was, the queen was forced to pull her mouth away from his with a breathless gasp in order to continue her descent down his body. In some other foray, she might have allowed him to see the clever tricks her own tongue was capable of performing, but gods if she didn't want him inside of her. Perhaps some small part of her mind knew that the longer this little game went on, the more she'd be expected to wager to keep his interest. Certainly, she didn't know the full extent of what he'd take if given the chance or even how much he'd already restrained himself, Flora knew enough that even if she went all in to win, she'd still lose.
Letting her own perfectly straight teeth nip down the length of his body not avoiding any of his scars but instead alighting on particularly gnarled knots for the firework of pain it might cause him, Flora let her fingertips untie the white and red string binding his shorts before shifting to the side in order to tug them off. Sitting up, the queen folded the garment in half and then in half again before glancing rather casually at his cock and lifting a brow, her face a thinly veiled mask of approval. Leaning back to straddle him again, Flora let her chest press down against him as her ass remained in the air, far away from where his cock was pointed. Stretching out her hands, the muscles of her body taut and measured as if in some exaggerated child pose, the queen moved to fit the shorts beneath Asta's head just as he'd done for her, her lips twisted into a roguish smile.
"Something tells me this is not how things normally go for you." And not just because she was a woman, and not because she was an accepted. Everything in the butcher's actions so far spoke of control. Spoke, in short, of being a top. "But I'd be ever so appreciative if you let me do things the way I want." The queen purrs, arching her back and holding herself above him like some too-flexible contortionist. "Please?" She adds in a velvety purr as her hips lower ever so slightly that she might place the head of his cock against her wet heat.
Panting through his nose, Asta relishes in the gasp that escapes her as she breaks off the kiss, even as his head trails after her belatedly a second or two as if to chase the tinge of blood. But she starts to trail down, her perfect teeth nipping and leaving reddened marks against his scars, the pain a belated touch with how much scar tissue had deadened some of his nerve endings, but it does still spark a bit of writhing and hitches of his breath.
He shifts to help her slip the shorts off, his tail maneuvering to wind around her leg, watching with a hazy gaze as he starts to try and prop himself up on an elbow once she settles back over him, caring little in the moment for her approval on his assets. He makes it not far at all as her chest presses back against his and he finds his shorts utilized as a pillow, his lips quirking into a smirk. “How kind of you, darling.” A breathy purr leaves him, before his dark eyes scan her face as he listens.
“You would be correct.” He drawls in that same, grittier accented tone. He’s half tempted to tell her that none of this has entirely been what he’s used to as of late, trying to find that delicate balance. But she requests control and tacks on the please, and truly it might be a good idea if he’s trying to restrain himself enough to not tear her throat out (a true shame it would be, honestly). “I could be convinced.” He drawls, leaning back to let his gaze focus on her, hips rolling ever so slightly to try and roll the tip of his cock against her warm heat, hands trailing up the sides of her body with added pressure, waiting to see what she had planned and whether he could restrain himself enough to find out. Show me what you’ve got.
