Click here for a list of weather descriptions, seasonal festivals, and a real time:site time conversion.
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!
Some might have expected Jack Barclay to covet what he'd received from Rae; to keep it warm against his chest like a secret or a sin, to tell the crew nothing and strangers even less. But he doesn't. Never mind that the crew (and the ship herself) had sailed up into the Cordillera at the start of all this, but they all know The Ark and, presumably, she'll know them. So he shows the coin, he gives his explanations, he shares what can only be assumptions for now.
And the rest he'll leave between the ship and the crew, however it might go.
That was some hours ago. They've been hovering in the sky since long after sunset, starlight in the sails and a soft breeze keeping them circling the Greatwood like a shark sensing blood. Some of the men are drinking, some are singing shanties, and the mood is light and celebratory; a night off, for all intents and purposes.
Jack, though, is in his cabin, door locked, empty glass of rum in hand. He knows they all think he's already summoned the spirit of The Ark out of the coin - his magic can tell him that much - and that he's already getting up to what men do best when in the presence of a beautiful woman.
"You'd think it'd be that easy, wouldn't you?" He scoffs to himself, absently walking the coin across ring-heavy knuckles, his feet propped on his desk. The rum bottle beside them is half empty, not enough to be drunk but certainly enough to take the edge off. It's nerves, though he'd never name the emotion, and it's only when the frustration of doing nothing gets the better of him that he finally snatches the coin into his palm and rises to his feet.
"Fuck it," he mutters, shrugging his shirt back onto his shoulder where it has slipped down, unbuttoned due to the heat. Gazing at the coin, Jack flicks a thumb beneath it and gives it a practiced flick into the air; it spins a few time, gold glinting off the lantern light, then lands flat in his hand.
The Soul of the Ark faces up.
fight so dirty but you love so sweet talk so pretty but your heart got teeth
The coin turns, light flashing once, and the cabin answers with the sound of water meeting wood hard enough to rattle the bones of the ship. Not a gentle surf, not a polite swell, but a wave breaking where it pleases, announcing itself by force and motion alone, and then she is there.
Salt-damp air rushes in with her, hair loose and red as weathered canvas torn free of its ties, skin bare where it matters and wrapped elsewhere in little more than pearls, linen, and the suggestion of rigging remembered by flesh. She smells faintly of brine and old sun, of decks scrubbed too often and never quite clean, lips stained red. Her eyes find Jack immediately—ocean-blue, deep and unguarded—and the look she gives him is anything but new; weighted with years of knowing his balance, his temper, the way he leans when he’s thinking too hard.
Seeing him like this is strange in a way she doesn’t bother naming. No deck beneath his boots, no mast to brace against, no rail worn smooth by his hands. Just a man in a room that smells of rum and nerves, looking at her like she’s a storm he’s been watching for hours.
Her mouth curves, pirate-like and slow. "You look about as nervous as the day you took me out for the first time," she says, voice low and easy, like water sliding along a hull. "Everyone told you neither of us was seaworthy yet, but you didn't think once about turning us back around when we left port."
She glances around the cabin, amused, and then reaches past him without asking. Her fingers close around the rum bottle, lifting it like she’s done so a hundred times before, because she has, just not like this. She takes a thoughtful pull, the liquid burning its way down, and she inhales sharply through her nose as it settles, eyes briefly closing as if committing the sensation to memory. A pleased sound hums in her throat before she lowers the bottle again, looking at the Captain sidelong, bright with mischief. "Tastes better this way," she adds lightly. "Not dripped through the planks. Not spilled on my boards."
Setting down the bottle, the Ark tilts her head, a wolfish smile on her wine-dark lips. "Hello Jack."
Her touch is like a tempest, her whisper is a breeze, but when she has a temper, she'll bring you to your knees
Code stolen from Queen Sky
Siren's Wake | After she leaves a space, traces of her presence linger briefly: a faint scent of salt, the sound of distant water, a restless feeling in the chest. People rarely notice it consciously.
For a moment Jack is certain that he's been tricked, that Rae hasn't created what was promised but has split The Ark's hull clean in two instead. Despite the fact that they're airborne currently and that it would be impossible for the sea to come flooding in, the sound of wavebreak and the smell of salt in the air is enough to have him stepping back, bracing, reaching for something to keep steady.
It doesn't register at first that the very deck he stands upon is now made material before him, clad in linen and pearl and brine-weathered rope, with hair the colour of his ship's sails and eyes like a Longheat ocean. The nerves ice over into something guarded quite without his permission, as if every part of him that had opened in doing this quest is trying to clam up at the first sign of being seen as truly vulnerable.
She speaks, though, her voice familiar despite him never having heard it in a woman's cadence, and his lips twitch towards something too suspicious to be a smile but too relieved not to be. "Was still half-mad a lot of those days. Reckless, stupid," he recalls, his voice low. "The sails held, though. Hull was sound. Steerin' a little rough, but I liked it that way." He'd been sore for days after; pretending at being a captain was a lot easier in theory than in practice, but the commitment had never waivered from the moment he'd set his course.
He doesn't stop her as she reaches for the bottle of rum, watching with the sort of wariness that wants to let itself melt away, but sticks around despite all else. "I'll have the crew set you out a glass from now on," he suggests dryly. "...Hello, love."
fight so dirty but you love so sweet talk so pretty but your heart got teeth
Her smile comes slow, the kind that shows up the way a tide does once it’s already decided where it’s going. It isn’t kind, exactly, but it’s familiar; close enough to affection to pass for it, sharp enough to keep its teeth. "We figured it out," she says with a loose shrug, as though that explains the storms, the scars, the years it took to learn where the strain would hold and where it wouldn’t for them both. Her gaze drifts over him, lingering in the way of someone who has always known his balance, his tells, the way he sets himself before committing to motion.
The smile tilts, crooked now, indulgent. "You took to flying much faster," she adds, brows lifting faintly, but of course that was no surprise given what a seasoned sailor he'd been by that point. "That was an upgrade I definitely didn't expect." There’s genuine surprise there, a ripple of it, quickly smoothed by a small laugh. Something pulls at her attention then, and her eyes slide away, unfocused, sensing rather than seeing. She shifts her shoulders, a subtle roll, and wrinkles her nose with quiet amusement. "The wind’s...everywhere, up here," she notes. "Tickles in places I’m not used to."
Her attention settles back on Jack easily, gaze narrowing just a touch as he calls her love. The look she gives him is catlike, knowing, pleased. She tips her head, studying him with deliberate patience, and tsks softly, mock-cholding but intimate all the same. "You’ve never been nervous talking to me before," she says, voice low and smooth as water along her keel.
Her touch is like a tempest, her whisper is a breeze, but when she has a temper, she'll bring you to your knees
Code stolen from Queen Sky
Siren's Wake | After she leaves a space, traces of her presence linger briefly: a faint scent of salt, the sound of distant water, a restless feeling in the chest. People rarely notice it consciously.
02-01-2026, 02:43 PM (This post was last modified: 02-01-2026, 02:44 PM by Jack.)
JACK
"Always did," Jack says; the memory is easier to focus on than the present, strangely enough. Awkwardness is not a feeling the Captain is well-acquainted with, and he wishes he'd had more of the rum before flipping the coin he's now palmed back into a pocket. Reaching for the bottle, whether it's in her hands or on the desk, he refills his glass to take a long sip, wincing in satisfaction at the burn.
At the mention of flying, he can only tilt the glass towards her in a half-salute, an acceptance both of the compliment and his experience at that point. "Mm, I still prefer the sea," he says; it's not an admission as such, because it's something he's already told her, muttered on moonlit nights sailing high above the Arclight or in storms heading down from the Hollowed Grounds. "Can't deny the world opened up for us when the sky did, though."
She tsks him, though, Jack glancing sharply towards her with an expression that begs to be playful or petulant, and he scoffs around another sip of rum. "You ain't ever talked back before," he points out, reasonable as you like. "...Strange in more'n one way, I guess." For her to be standing before him but still cradling the cabin all around and overhead, to be here and yet sailing the skies over the Greatwood like a mahogany knife cutting through the silk of the night.
That's not really it, though, and he feels as though they both know it. If there was ever an opinion Jack cared about - above lovers and acquaintances, business partners and goddesses - it's that of the woman standing before him. He'd been not enough once before, and recently, and he'd brushed himself off from it, or has started to. He doesn't think it will be so easy with the Ark.
fight so dirty but you love so sweet talk so pretty but your heart got teeth
The Ark nods once, slow and certain, the movement carrying a weight like a swell rolling in from deep water. "The sea’s alive," she says, and there’s reverence there, something close to devotion. "It pushes back. It listens. It has moods." Her mouth curves faintly, indulgent. "The sky’s just space. Wind and light with nothing underneath it. Moody and pretty enough, I suppose, but empty."
His chuckle draws one from her in return, low and warm, and she tips her head to the side with lazy agreement. "Of course I did," she answers easily. "I talked back every time my hull groaned under you, every time my sails snapped instead of settling, every time I cut the current sharper than you meant or made you fight me for the helm." There’s a pleased glint in her eyes as the floorboards beneath their feet groan softly for emphasis.
The Ark falls quiet then, studying Jack without hurry, chin lifted, gaze bold and unflinching. The distance between them closes by a single step, deliberate, bringing the scent of salt and old sun with her. With a casual tug she lifts the thin scrap of fabric at her middle, her skin the colour of deck boards before Jack had varnished and re-varnished them. In the middle of her sternum a compass rose blooms darkly in a way that almost resembles a birthmark. She turns her head next, red hair sliding aside to show a small, healed burn near her ear, faint but unmistakable from when her sails had been set ablaze. Then she pivots, presenting her back, lifting her hair again to reveal pale markings along her neck; the ghost of boot marks, worn soft into her skin the way time wears scars into planks.
She turns back to face him, pirate’s smile returning as she raises her hand. A jagged scar runs across her palm, white against pale skin, from where a ghostwhale had once done its best to break the ship in two. "I’m still your ship," she says softly, eyes locked on his, the words steady as any heading he'd ever laid out for her. "Still the one you pulled out of the dead and put back together when no one else even bothered to give me a second look."
Her touch is like a tempest, her whisper is a breeze, but when she has a temper, she'll bring you to your knees
Code stolen from Queen Sky
Siren's Wake | After she leaves a space, traces of her presence linger briefly: a faint scent of salt, the sound of distant water, a restless feeling in the chest. People rarely notice it consciously.
"Mm, the storms up here are somethin' else, but they got no depth. Not like sailin' through monsoons or into a maelstrom to get home," Jack agrees, his gaze moving automatically to one of the portholes as if expecting to see the glitter of the waves in the starlight. Of course there's little out there but a circle of black from their position drifting lazily above the treeline, and he sighs under his breath until the boards beneath his feet seem to shift and groan imperceptibly, and his attention snaps back to the fire-haired woman before him.
His glass lowers a bit then, as if starting to believe the connection between ship and siren a little more with the evidence of it under his boots, and his smile this time is a little crooked, a little unguarded. "That's true enough," he mutters, his tone warming despite himself. "You've always had your opinions regardless of the plan." More often than not as he'd grown in experience and power, those opinions reflected his own, and it's less a fight these days than it's ever been.
But then she's approaching, and even that shrinking bit of distance is enough to have tension locking in his spine for reasons he can't articulate. Jack's lips part to say something, perhaps some effort to maintain the wall he's subconsciously already building between them, when her hands reach up to tug at fabric - not to undress, but to tell a story.
Their story.
Brows furrowing, the Captain sets his glass down on the desk and straightens up again, gaze flickering over each burn and scar and inked line, eyes widening a fraction at the evidence of the boot marks he'd left upon the deck etched along her neck. "Fuck," he whispers despite himself, and as the last of that resistance melts away within him, he starts to feel for the first time the echo of The Ark's mind, that connection to his ship that's no longer mere instinct and experience.
He can sense the sails catching the wind, the footsteps along the deck, the way the breeze ghosts along her hull, and more still; the steadiness in her as she regards him, the deep loyalty so casually presented, bold confidence and crooked whims wrapped in netting and canvas. "You look good," he says roughly, "given the hell we've been through."
fight so dirty but you love so sweet talk so pretty but your heart got teeth
She hums softly at that, a pleased sound that settles through the cabin like a line paid out and set just right. He isn’t wrong of course. Over the years her resistance has learned to soften into play, a deliberate drag of current rather than a fight against it. With him, at least. New hands at the helm still get tested, no matter how skilled they think they are, lessons taught in stubborn leans and sudden pulls until they learn how she likes to be handled.
His compliment lands cleanly. She doesn’t duck it, doesn’t dress it up, her smile only sharpens as she straightens, chin lifting a fraction. "Of course I do," she says, easy and sure. She reaches for him then, fingers catching the edge of his collar where it’s slipped out of place, tugging it straight with the same absent familiarity she’s used a thousand times in other forms. Her hand lingers there, thumb warm against his throat, the contact unhurried, her eyes on his.
"For all the times you went without," she adds quietly, voice low and steady, "for all the stealing and killing you did to get what you needed, for all the times you limped home to me, bloody and bruised, you never left me wanting for anything. Not once." So of course she looked good; Jack wouldn't have left her any other way.
Her gaze drifts then, slow and unapologetic along the sharp line of his jaw, the scruff dark against weathered skin, the sun-faded curve of his mouth she knows better than most men know their own hands. There’s no shyness in it, no retreat, but she does huff out a small breath that almost turns into a laugh, surprised despite herself. "It is different for me to see you like this, too," she admits. Seeing him like this, without the distance of deck and rail and mast between them, without his touch being the guiding force between them, will take some getting used to. Her eyes lift back to his, bright and deep and unwavering, her smile turning crooked again. "You look the way you’ve always felt to me, though."
Her touch is like a tempest, her whisper is a breeze, but when she has a temper, she'll bring you to your knees
Code stolen from Queen Sky
Siren's Wake | After she leaves a space, traces of her presence linger briefly: a faint scent of salt, the sound of distant water, a restless feeling in the chest. People rarely notice it consciously.
Jack is already huffing out a laugh at her easy agreement; if nothing else, he thinks, his ship has either inherited his self-assured arrogance or came with it already in her bones. But then she's reaching for him and the Captain stiffens automatically; a reaction born from decades of keeping people at a distance. Her mind, though, is steady in a way he's never known.
No. That isn't true. He has known it, on early mornings at the helm or in the crows' nest with no one around, or during lazy, hot afternoons when the air is still and the sails fill anyway, coaxed to billowing by his magic.
Her thumb brushes against his throat, the beat of Jack's pulse steady despite the way he feels vaguely untethered by her proximity. Exhaling a breath that tries and fails to form an argument - an argument for what, exactly, given how right she is? - and feeling his fingers itch for a cigarette or more liquor, instead the Captain lifts his hand to cover her own, drawing it away from his collar so he can look properly at the pale, jagged scar along her palm.
"What's a sailor without his ship?" he reasons with a shrug and an easy smile that belies the truth of it, that he'd do it all again given a second chance. To hear that he looks the way he's always felt to her, though, has him scoffing out a laugh. "Oh? How's that?" he asks. Tired, certainly. Strung out maybe, scarred and inked and just a little world-weary in spades.
fight so dirty but you love so sweet talk so pretty but your heart got teeth
She lets him take her hand without hesitation, fingers long and still in his grasp, yielding the way she always has when he knows what he’s doing. There’s nothing new about his touch, not really, only the shape of it, and she watches him with an easy calm that comes from decades of being handled by him without ever being mishandled.
Her brow lifts, chin tipping up with lazy arrogance as a sly smile curls her mouth. "What indeed," she murmurs, amusement rolling through her like a gentle swell before her smile turns wolfish. "You’d be a wreck without me, Captain." At his question she considers him openly, eyes tracing him with the same unapologetic attention she’s always given his weight and balance. "Tense," she says, and then reaches with her free hand to his shirt, tugging it open just enough to bare the spread of ink beneath. The flowers, the snake, all of it earns no reverence, only curiosity, and she shrugs lightly, unimpressed by what she never could have felt in timber and tar.
Her gaze drops to where her fingers remain in his hand, steady as a line paid out and set. "You look like the man whose hands put me back together," she says quietly. "The one who pushed me hard and knew exactly when to ease off. The one who took me past what I was meant to do and made it look easy." Her eyes lift again, ocean-dark and intent, taking in his face properly now, the set of his mouth, the weathered planes of him that she's known for as long as there'd been a her to know them. "You look like the confident bastard who’s sailed me through hell and back," she adds, voice warm with it. "The one who’s filled my hold with things even your most trusted crew don’t know about." She smiles then, softer but no less knowing. "You look like the man who sings under his breath late at night, and the one who never uses a coaster but always wipes the rings away after."
"You look like the man whose always been quick to adjust my heading or my sails, though you're much slower to anger than you used to be." Her free hand drifts to the back of her neck, fingers brushing the faint burn marks there without accusation, without resentment, only acknowledgment. She meets his eyes again, crooked smile returning, indulgent and unbothered. "But you look tired, Jack, in a way I've never felt from you before. Not even when exhaustion and consequences had you running on fumes." She knew the why of it all, of course; had been here for it, had dampened the sound of yelling, had heard promises never kept, had been burned for what would never be.
Her touch is like a tempest, her whisper is a breeze, but when she has a temper, she'll bring you to your knees
Code stolen from Queen Sky
Siren's Wake | After she leaves a space, traces of her presence linger briefly: a faint scent of salt, the sound of distant water, a restless feeling in the chest. People rarely notice it consciously.
"On that we can both agree." Jack smirks, some of the usual bravado returning to his expression, his thumb grazing across the pale scar he knows he could match along her hull with ease if he went looking. For all the secrets the Captain keeps, the worth of his ship has never been one of them; friend or foe or otherwise, it has always been common knowledge that Jack would put The Ark before all else, whether it's the lives of starwhales or the fate of the world.
This time when she reaches for him he doesn't flinch back, merely raising an eyebrow as she tugs his shirt aside to reveal his torso, sun-kissed and silvered with scars, shimmering with celestial branding and traditional ink both. "Touche," he rumbles; tense is something he has no doubt she'd have been able to feel from him from the moment he set foot on her rotten deck all those years ago.
And if that's as far as it had gone he'd have been able to play it off, he thinks. But gods, Jack had asked, and only as she speaks does he realise he's not been sure if he wants to know the answers. From the casual nostalgia that strokes his ego - and it does, without a doubt - to the quiet habits he wants to deny only to realise it would be foolish to do so, and a lie besides, The Ark made manifest truly does know him. She knows him in ways he's refused to be known by anyone living or dead, even those who had tip-toed the closest. Even those he'd wanted to show eventually, given time and patience.
She knows him enough that he doesn't hide the wince at the reminder of the burns that mar her skin, Jack shaking his head in reproach at his own carelessness. "Not slow enough that day," he says.
Sinking down to perch on the edge of the desk at her final verdict, the Captain drops his gaze, but he keeps hold of her hand. "Yeah," he agrees slowly, with all the weight of a confession. "I am tired, love. The sort of tired no amount of sleep can shake off."
fight so dirty but you love so sweet talk so pretty but your heart got teeth
Her grin flashes quick and bright, all teeth and confidence. "And handsome," she adds easily, smirk settling in as she looks him over without apology. "But then you had to be. Bastards don’t get away with half as much if they aren’t."
Her eyes don’t waver at his admission, don’t soften in pity or turn away from the weight of the truth. She just looks at him, steady as ever. "Your scars are my scars," she says at once, before her gaze drops then, to where his hand still holds hers, to the silver slash across her palm that mirrors damage she knows down to the grain. "Same way you’ve always felt every one of mine."
She lets the silence stretch when he says he’s tired. Not awkward, just open water. Sleep, she knows, has never fixed what’s wrong when a course is off, especially not with Jack. She doesn’t quite know how to soothe him in this shape—not with hands alone—but her fingers curl more firmly around his just as the Ark herself seems to settle, a deep, familiar sigh running through deck and beam and hull around them. "That’s 'cause sleep isn’t what you need," she says calmly. "You need a new bearing."
Her eyes lift back to his, intent and certain. "For all the new places you’ve taken me. For the berth in King’s End. It’s felt...aimless." Her eyes flick briefly to the porthole, to the black emptiness beyond it. "You've never felt like this before." She looks back at him then, chin lifting just enough to catch his eyes again. The corner of her mouth hooks upward. "Find us a new bearing, Captain. Then you'll be able to get your rest."
Her touch is like a tempest, her whisper is a breeze, but when she has a temper, she'll bring you to your knees
Code stolen from Queen Sky
Siren's Wake | After she leaves a space, traces of her presence linger briefly: a faint scent of salt, the sound of distant water, a restless feeling in the chest. People rarely notice it consciously.
"Now you're just flatterin' me for fun," Jack says, the accusation warmed by humour. "Hope it don't need sayin' that for as handsome a bastard as I am, I don't hold a candle to you." As a ship or as a woman for that matter, and it won't even be the first time he's made that sort of remark, whether out on the deck in earshot of the crew or in the solitude of his own quiet work.
Her fingers close around his own and he lets them, brow furrowing as his mind tries to conjure the last time he'd felt such casual affection without balking from it. Just as quickly he forces the memory away, eyes flicking back up to her face and the truth that spills from those perfect, wine-red lips. He lets it sit for a beat or two, lets it sink into his bones as if allowing himself to hear it properly the first time.
Then he lets out a grumbled curse on the heels of a long sigh, and leans back on the desk with one hand. "Ain't gonna be no arguin' with you, is there. He groans, a smirk flickering briefly across his face. "What'd you think of these woods? And of the kid thinkin' of taken 'em over, for that matter?" Vesper, he knows, had handled her near identically to Jack, in mind if not in heart, but the trees are not the sea, and they both know it.
fight so dirty but you love so sweet talk so pretty but your heart got teeth
The Ark grins at that and lifts one shoulder in an easy shrug, like a sail catching a kinder wind than expected. "Some days I’m easier to handle than others," she says lightly. "That was flattery too." The grin that follows is pure triumph, cat-who-got-the-cream, and she shakes her head, red hair spilling and shifting over her shoulders like loose canvas. "You can count your wins with me on one hand," she adds, amused. "And you’ll still have fingers left."
At the mention of the woods, the smirk eases off her mouth as she turns it over. She leans back a fraction, weight settling, listening to things beyond the cabin walls. "I heard him say you could flood it," she offers, almost bright with the thought, hope flickering there before she exhales and lets it go. "I still prefer the ocean, but...I’ll take whatever gets you back on course."
Her gaze drifts, considering Vesper in the same way she considers a new hand at the helm. The demigod feels different underfoot. The right motions, learned clean enough, hands moving where they should, weight kept where it belongs, but everything still carries a new rind with it. Fresh grain. No wear yet. No history pressed into the boards. She lets him steer, lets him try her balance, but she keeps a weather eye on it all, listening for the note that says someone knows where they’re going rather than just how to move. Jack had been young too. Scrappy. Too thin, too stubborn. But even then, there had been a pull in him, a direction set hard beneath the surface. He’d come aboard with a horizon already chosen, even if he didn’t yet have the maps to prove it. Every course he took her on bent toward something he meant to build.
"Family’s new water for both of us," she says and shrugs, the scant fabric at her breasts shifting with the movement. "But he doesn't seem like he knows what he wants yet, sounds like he's doing it to run away from something else, and that isn't the sort of course I've ever followed before." It wasn't one Jack had ever asked her to follow before.
Her touch is like a tempest, her whisper is a breeze, but when she has a temper, she'll bring you to your knees
Code stolen from Queen Sky
Siren's Wake | After she leaves a space, traces of her presence linger briefly: a faint scent of salt, the sound of distant water, a restless feeling in the chest. People rarely notice it consciously.
