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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!
The barracks were quiet, empty except for Damien. Dawn had just begun to spill pale light across the wooden beams, that fragile hour before the sun fully claimed the sky—the one Theea always favored. He moved among the racks, eyes scanning axes until one caught his attention: a large-bladed battle axe etched with rune-like markings, its smooth leather-wrapped handle promising a sure grip. Lightweight enough to throw, heavy enough to hurt—it was perfect.
He set up a target against the far wall and tested it with a throw. The axe spun through the air with a satisfying hum, embedding itself cleanly. Damien retrieved it, rolling it in his hands, feeling the balance, the weight, the potential. The barracks held the chill of night, and the silence pressed against him.
On a bench along one wall, Aria lay curled up with a blanket, ears twitching as she watched, nose nudging a stray feather or bit of dust, clearly amused but safely out of the swing’s path. He had made sure she was tucked well away before he started, though the cub’s bright eyes followed every movement.
Somewhere beyond the doors, the sound of Theea's footsteps would soon punctuate the silence, and he would be ready—practicing his throw, alert, eyes sharp with just a glimmer of mischief.
They never open, because I'm not in the palace. I'm on it. You can all thank Ashe for this.
Deepfrost lies over the tundra like a held breath, the world rinsed in dusky blue. Stars still cling to the thinning dark, and a faint hint of yellow smudges the horizon—my favorite hour, the fragile moment before the sun claims the sky. I tiptoe along the snowy roof in the moments just before dawn, when there are no shadows, no sound, no concept of time—only the quiet, the breath held before an easy sigh. Times I share alone, times where there is no one else to disturb the more shadowed parts of me. When I can exist without the exuberant smiles and can-do, nothing-ever-goes-wrong attitude. When I can be sad or afraid or hurting and no one sees it, the expectations I've set don't break.
I've invited Damien into it, though. And what'd he say? Stop apologizing.
Frost nips through the flexible, black layers I threw on—thinner than they should be for this cold—and I shiver, knowing I’m about to be warming up. I crouch on the awning of the cloister nearest to where Damien hefts his new ax. He’s good with it. Every throw sticks, but he won’t be throwing it today. The barracks below hold the last chill of night; my breath ghosts in front of me as I creep closer to the edge. I wait until he’s thrown it again, but I do not wait for him to go and fetch it.
I launch from the awning to land just behind him, sword drawn, and I aim to tap his back with it before he can spin. Helplessly, I laugh a little bit, a real smile—probably a stupid one—lighting up now that I’m in front of him.
"Morning!" I chirp, breath clouding. My eyes glimmer with a mischief that I don’t bother to hide.
Damien could feel it in his bones, the charge that came with the hour. Maybe it was just the silence stretched too thin, maybe it was because he knew Theea loved it too; the fragile sliver of time before the world woke up. It was like sharing a secret without saying a word. Or maybe it wasn’t mystical at all. Maybe it was just instinct, prickling at the back of his neck: you’re being watched.
Too late. A whisper of feet, the hiss of steel, and the cold press of a blade at his shoulder. By the time he half-turned she was already grinning, laughter slipping through the morning like it belonged there.
He grunted, mostly at himself, then shot a look toward Aria. The cub’s head popped up from her blanket, ears pricked, eyes gleaming. “Why didn’t you warn me?” Damien muttered, dry as frost-burned wood.
Aria only blinked, gave a kittenish sneeze, and buried her nose back in the folds. No help at all.
He shook his head, crooked smile tugging at his mouth as he turned halfway towards Theea. “Alright. You got the jump on me.” He stepped back a few paces, out of her blade's biting reach. Then his hand located a piece from one of the weapons racks, plucking a small but sturdy shield from the line. With a flick of his wrist he sent it sailing toward her—fast enough she’d have to catch it or let it clatter across the ground. “Now let’s see how you do when my back isn't turned.”
He took another shield for himself and strapped it onto his arm. The axe he held aside in his other hand for now. Why shields? Because he wasn’t about to carve her open like meat on the block—and he had no desire to find himself gutted either.
“Come on, Theea,” he said, rolling his shoulder and holding the shield higher, voice carrying that low growl of challenge. “See if you can land that blade twice.”
09-03-2025, 05:08 PM (This post was last modified: 09-03-2025, 05:09 PM by Theea.)
Theea
takes blood, sweat, and tears to look natural
My grin becomes smug when he admits that I got him, and I withdraw my blade, letting it sit loose in my grip at my side. The wood-and-iron smell of the barracks hangs cool in the air; my breath ghosts pale. "Gotta start looking up," I chide.
I track his movements as he approaches the weapons rack, but before I can see what he's choosing, he's already throwing something at me. Instinct is what catches with a "Shit!" I look down at… "A shield?"
My nose crinkles a little, and I look up at him with only half-mock offense, and then I see he has one too. My lips pout, and I look down at the lightweight thing like it's a foreign object. I was never trained with a shield. Not really. Used one maybe twice in my life? Fuck. I slip it onto my arm and test it out; the strap bites my glove, the rim cold and clunky. Annoying.
But then he outright challenges me, the sound of it rolling through me with a shiver down my spine that could be blamed on the cold. Could be.
I narrow my eyes at him. I glance at the shield again and heft it a little in defiance and I smirk a little at him. Fine. I can use a shield.
I dart forward, low and quick, boots whispering over the snow. The shortsword flicks up in a sharp feint at his shoulder—just enough to make him lift his own shield if he falls for it—then I slam the rim of mine into the haft of his axe, trying to pin it against his guard for a heartbeat. I step inside his reach, hip-to-hip, twist my wrist, and swing the flat of my blade kiss his ribs.
Damien only shrugged at her wrinkled nose, letting her think what she liked about shields. He wasn’t going to preach his reasons for wanting them—just let the challenge hang in the air and waited to see if she’d bite. And of course she did. He thought he caught the faintest shiver run through her when he laid it out, one she could blame on the cold if she wanted. But when her smirk sharpened and she hefted the shield anyway, he felt a grin of his own tugging up, teeth flashing wolf-quick.
She moved like she always did; fast, low, tricky. A lynx in the snow, quick to strike, quicker to vanish. Damien gave ground in deliberate steps, backing them out into the open yard where the snow was trampled thin. More space to move, more room to make it real. He wasn’t a soldier, never had been, but somewhere inside of him the boy who once dreamed of being one was practically howling with joy.
Her sword flicked high, but he knew her game. Maybe he didn’t know, not really, but he guessed—because she’d tried the same trick before, only empty-handed. So when her blade rose, he angled his shield up, but not all the way. Just enough to give her the impression he’d taken the bait.
Then came the slam of her shield against his axe, sharp and sure. Okay, clever. He felt the haft jar against his guard and her body pressing in, hip to hip. But instead of fighting her strength, Damien rolled with it. He let the axe dip low under the pressure, yanking it free of the bind, and shoved forward with his own shield, edge-first—not using so much strength as to throw or throttle her, but to push her off-line. The sudden twist of his weight carried him sideways, slipping just out of reach as the flat of her blade cut air instead of his ribs.
He laughed under his breath, rough and low, the kind of sound that wasn’t quite mocking but close enough. “Almost,” he said, steadying himself again, “but I've seen that one before.”
09-05-2025, 09:18 AM (This post was last modified: 09-05-2025, 10:23 AM by Theea.)
Theea
takes blood, sweat, and tears to look natural
His almost feral, half-second smile sends a bright, electric thrill through me—and I almost let it tug my focus. Almost.
The shove jolts me off-balance, my blade cutting air. The miss snaps heat through my chest; my face twists before I can stop it. He steadies, laughs—taunting—and I am too easy to bait. I don’t miss. I can hear my parents in my ear, picking apart the mistake. The damn shield throws me off; I’m used to freedom, to slipping hits instead of shouldering them.
I bite down on the frustration and let it sharpen me. "You’ve hardly seen anything."
I break right on a quick V-step, then cut back across his front—fast enough to blur, close enough to feel the warmth of him. My shield snaps low to bait his guard, then I hook its inside rim under the edge of his, levering up just enough to make a gap. I drop my shoulder and slip through that doorway, tight to him, breathing his winter-cold air.
My boot bumps his lead foot to stall his turn. I twist sideways into his space, hip brushing his, my shield now jammed against the back of his to keep it flared. The shortsword flips to a near-reverse grip and drives in short and mean toward his centerline—aimed right for the gut like I’d open him, the blade turning flat at the last instant as I try to plant it across his stomach.
09-05-2025, 11:00 AM (This post was last modified: 09-05-2025, 11:01 AM by Damien.)
Damien
the woods have remembered you
Her words bit as sharp as her blade. You’ve hardly seen anything. Damien’s grin thinned, teeth bared quick as if she’d landed the first strike already.
Then she was on him, fast as quicksilver, more blur than body. Shield low, then snapping up under his with a vicious hook. His guard flared open and she slid inside, close enough that her breath mixed with his, sharp and cold. Her boot clipped his lead foot, jamming him half-stuck. Damn assassin tricks.
The shortsword flipped, mean and sudden, driving toward his gut. Instinct screamed move. He didn’t think—just dropped his weight hard into her jam, twisting into her shoulder with raw force, shield braced. The edge still kissed across him, flat but close enough that in a real fight it would’ve opened him. A graze, not a kill. He’d take that.
Momentum wrenched them sideways, shields grinding, his size leaning against her speed. Not clean, not pretty—no soldier’s drill here, just two bodies locked in the snow. He laughed rough and low, adrenaline burning through. “That all you got?”
Then he snapped his shield back down, wrenching the bind into a brutal check of weight against weight. The axe whipped sideways from low guard, haft chopping toward her shield rim. Not to break it, not to maim, but enough to stagger if it landed—the kind of punishment that came for crowding too close for too long.
And through it all, his grin lingered, rough, roguish; a man testing his own strength, finding something new in it—and liking what he found.
09-07-2025, 01:41 PM (This post was last modified: 09-07-2025, 01:41 PM by Theea.)
Theea
takes blood, sweat, and tears to look natural
I feel only a brief flicker of victory when I land a blow, no matter how small—then I’m locked against his shield, and I’m no match for his strength in my small frame. I grit my teeth, baring them when he taunts me again. He hauls my shield down, trapping me where he can swing his axe straight for it. The strike slams into the face of my shield and I stagger, my whole arm singing with the impact.
"Keep laughing," I warn, eyes narrowed over what could be called a feral grin. I'm more in my element than he thinks.
Heat prickles under my too-thin layers now, sweat damp at the nape of my neck; I love the bite of the cold against it, the way Deepfrost air sears clean through my lungs and makes everything sharper.
Don’t meet strength with strength—change angles.
I ride the stagger into a turn, letting the momentum spin me off his centerline. My shield pops up high, loud and showy to clog his sight, while my feet cut quick: a drop-step outside his weapon side, then a cross-step that threads me toward his blind. I “swim” my shield arm over his forearm, sliding the rim along his guard just long enough to pin it a heartbeat instead of wrestling it. My free hand punches the shield boss toward the crook of his elbow to jam his turn.
Then I duck under and around.
Snow scuffs under my heel as I pivot behind his shoulder, hips tight to his flank for an instant. The shortsword stays forward-gripped; my elbow tucks, wrist straight, and I drive the point on a short, mean jab for the small of his back—kidney-height, quick and surgical—before I’m already peeling away to his rear quarter. I don’t hang to admire anything; shield snaps down, breath fumes white, and I reset two paces out, pulse bright, eyes locked on his for whatever comes next.
"Come on, Damien," I all but purr. "Is that all you've got?"
Her grin was feral, teeth flashing, and Damien read it as determination, not anger. She slipped in with all her assassin trickery: shield flashing high, rim swimming over his arm, footwork threading like water. He felt the jam at his elbow, the slip at his flank, and then the sting across his back, flat but mean, a jab meant for kidneys. Close enough that it would’ve hurt like hell if she hadn’t turned the edge. His hand flexed as he adjusted his grip while she was busy looking for her way out, twisting the way the axe faced so the blade was facing behind him.
By the time she peeled off, two paces clear, his breath steamed hot, chest tight with the thrill of it. She was good—faster than him, sharper in the angles, clever in ways training had burned into her bones.
He surged forward then, not reckless but with more weight than before, shield snapping up high and centered in a broad check to busy her defense and provide him some protection of his own. Not enough to crush her, but it was enough that she’d feel the force of it shudder through her arm much harder than before.
At the same time, his axe swept low and tight, not the blade but the back end of the head—a hooked, dragging motion aimed to catch her boot and yank her off-balance the moment she tried to run, jump, or twist away. His strength was still restrained, still holding back from real harm, but he was certainly moving harder, with more bite than before. A taste of what he wasn’t showing her.
"No, that's not all," he answered to her taunting question, his tone neutral, simple. He held the axe under his shield-arm for a moment as he reached out an open palm, offering to help her back up. He nodded to her new armament. "How do you like having a shield?"
He surges and the check crashes through my guard, hitting my shield with a solid thunk—my whole arm aches again, a bright, buzzing pain from wrist to shoulder—but it isn’t the ache that gets me. It’s the next insult.
He trips me. Again. Why didn't I see that coming?
My boot skids; the hooked drag yanks my foot out from under me and the breath tears out of my chest when my back hits the packed snow. Cold bites through my too-thin layers; stars shiver at the edge of my vision; the horizon’s first yellow seam wavers as I gasp for air. I'm not hurt, but I'm out of breath.
I glare up at the sky, then cut that glare to him when his shadow falls over me and he offers a hand. I don’t take it. I look at his palm, then at him—flat, unamused—and swat his hand away with the rim of my shield, a sharp, ringing bat that says I’m not done.
My legs surge. I plant one heel, whip my hips, and scissor hard into his stance, tangling my calves with his. My shin hooks deep behind both knees, searching for the tendons; my other foot carves around his ankle to snare it. I yank and twist at once, using the ground as leverage and the shield as a shove at his center of gravity—trying to fold his legs and drag him down into the snow with me before he can step out or brace.
Damien knew the smack of her shield wasn’t just noise. Theea’s grin before had been all teeth and thrill, but the flat look she gave him now was different—frustration under the surface, maybe sharper than she meant to show. He’d only meant the hand as an honest offer, but he let it fall back when she knocked it aside.
Then her legs tangled his. Quick as wire, mean as a trap. Calves hooking, ankles snaring, a twist that sought to fold him like timber over a saw. For a split-second his balance rocked, snow crunching under one heel.
Instinct took over. Damien dropped his weight fast, knees bent, hips low, shield jammed down against her shove at his middle. Instead of fighting her tangle with finesse he drove his free hand to the ground, palm braced in the snow, using the earth itself to steady him. Her scissor hold bit at his tendons, sharp and clever, but she’d have to haul a mountain to topple him now.
He exhaled through his teeth, steadying, then levered himself upright with a grunt, dragging his leg clear of her snare. The axe came up only halfway, held more as a warning than a threat. “Good try,” he said, tone even—not smug. His breath steamed white between them. “But you’re not bringing me down that easy.”
Anger flares hot—clean and decisive—when he catches himself and lifts the axe again.
Fuck. This.
I surge up, rip the straps free, and let the shield clatter to the snow. It’s dead weight to me. I wasn’t made to soak blows; I was made to never be where they land. Breath steaming, sweat prickling my spine under too-thin layers, I slip under his axe arm with practiced ease, both shoulders loose now that my off-hand is free.
I cut outside his line, then pivot hard behind his back—heel-toe in the trampled snow, close enough to feel the heat coming off him through cloth. My left hand ghosts to his hip to post for a heartbeat; my right flips the shortsword to a tight, working grip. I drive in on a brutal, efficient pattern: knee brushes his thigh to stall the turn, hips rotate, and the blade snakes forward past his ribs from behind, a short, mean jab angling for the soft seam under the sternum—an opening stroke meant to gut a man if it found purchase.
"Shields are a waste of my time and strength," I bite out from behind him, breath sharp in the Deepfrost air.
I step away and shove the sword into its sheath with more force than I mean to, jaw tight. The thrill’s gone, replaced by a hot, frustrated burn under my skin that the cold can’t touch. It feels like being set up to lose—and I hate losing to a tool I’d never choose.
He let it happen. The slip under his arm, the ghost-touch at his hip, the knife sliding mean toward the seam of his ribs—it all played out like she meant it to, and Damien didn’t stop her. He trusted she wouldn’t gut him, even if her voice came sharp as a knife’s edge.
The move was overkill, and he knew it. But so was the heat in her words, the crack of leather as she shoved the sword home. Anger burned off her in waves, and for a second it surprised him—how hard she’d driven it, how much she’d hated the shield.
Damien didn’t rise to it. He just stood there, breath steaming, chest heaving once, twice, until the fire in him dulled into something steadier. Slowly, he straightened, unhurried, the axe dropping low until the point bit into the packed snow. He didn’t bare teeth back at her, didn’t throw words like stones. He faced her square-on, enough that she’d know he wasn’t ignoring her, but his eyes weren’t sharp anymore. Just tired, thoughtful, weighing things.
Silence held the barracks, thick as the cold. He let it. Words rushed in too easy, and most of them would just make it worse. He thought about saying why he’d chosen the shields; that it was the safest way to keep from cutting each other open, that practice meant pushing past comfort, that sometimes you didn’t get to fight your way and had to learn to adapt. And, frankly, he felt that she could benefit from becoming a little stronger.
He let the moment pass, letting her words hang between them, but inside, a harsher voice had already taken hold. Idiot. Should’ve seen it coming. Should’ve shut your mouth. Should’ve read her better. The sting wasn’t in being wrong about the technique, or even in the scolding—it was in the look she’d given him, the one that said he’d misjudged more than the spar. He turned it over in his head like a stone in his palm, heavy and stubborn. Not fear, exactly. Just the weight of knowing he could drive people away if he wasn’t careful—and he wasn’t about to let that happen with her.
Finally, he stepped toward her, closing some of the distance she'd put between them. His dark brown gaze hovered across her face to try and hold the wintry blue of hers as he murmured, “I didn't know you'd hate it. I'm sorry.” His voice was still low and steady, but not as rough as usual. He studied her expression. It wasn't enough. There was more he'd done wrong. “I wasn’t trying to rile you up. Just… I was only teasing, I thought it was making things lighter. Guess I misread...”
Silence stretches until it feels brittle. I keep my back to him, catching my breath, eyes skating over the scuffs carved into the snow—every misstep mapped in ugly little crescents. The dusky blue of predawn is fading at the edges; there’s a thin seam of yellow on the horizon, and my heat is bleeding off fast. I brush snow from my sleeves, refusing to shiver.
His boots crunch behind me. I don’t turn. Then he apologizes—and it sparks a fresh, different kind of frustration, because I want to stay mad and he’s making that very hard.
I face him anyway. "I don’t care about the teasing. I was raised on it," I say, voice low, steady as I can make it. "I don’t use shields. It set me up to lose and I hate losing. I don’t—didn’t—lose." The words start tumbling and I can’t stop them. "I was better than this as a kid. I was trained by people who were trained be assassins since they were children. I took on adults and won. I was faster, stronger, steadier. And now—" I gesture at myself, frustration bleeding from me, breath smoking in the Deepfrost air. "Now I’ve got this body that went soft while I grew up. Like I lost years of training and practice I should’ve had. It betrays me at every turn. I mess up, and I smile through it like an idiot, and—" the next words scrape out before I can swallow them—"and this body is just useless, I am useless. I keep trying and I keep falling short it and I hate it. I really, really hate losing."
I snap my mouth shut, the cold stinging my eyes as I realize how much I’ve spilled. I rake a hand through my hair and half-turn away, eyes to the ground. "Sorry. Never know when to shut up and all that."
