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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 rain had followed him all the way down the coast, a thin veil that blurred the line between sea and sky until the world felt reduced to slate and ash. Marcus walked the near-endless stretch of hard black sand with his hood pulled low, boots striking a hollow sound against the shore. He had been flying, but found the lightning too risky to continue in such a way.
It was low tide, so the bay revealed its teeth. Boulder-sized carcasses of ice lay scattered across the sand, heaped and jagged, a glacial graveyard. Beyond them, the ocean churned and showed itself a brutal, iron-gray expanse. He knew what moved beneath that surface, which was why he would never fish those waters. He did not know why he had come, only that he had been flying because his heart and mind had demanded the sky at the time. The bay offered no comfort, no sanctuary. Only cold, only danger. And yet Marcus felt no fear, Halovian to his bones, as he walked the black sands.
Belial stretched his wings, unbothered by the rain and its potential screaming; the Bay a place for him to dive, dip, and flicker around as he burnt energy off. Deimos shook his head at the peryton’s antics, but preferred the unfurling of rampant fervency here and now, rather than all over the house with Erebos and his frost fox close behind, while trying to take care of multitudes of things before the baby’s arrival. Then they could return, focus on some painting of the nursery, and settle in.
But the fanged companion gave off another hoot and holler, gaze sweeping headlong towards a recognizable figure along the chiseled ice thriving out of the ocean’s depths. Deimos arched a brow, curious, while Belial continued on his own approach, sweeping low and then churning upwards to gain the younger hybrid’s attention. Deimos, from on top of the blackened dunes, waved on his approach, snorting inwardly. “Marcus – searching for something?”
Belial’s shadow cut across the rain-slicked sand before the peryton himself came into view, all sharp angles and restless motion against the muted world. Marcus lifted his head at the sweep of wings, instinctively tracking the creature’s ascent as it churned upward through the gray haze. Lightning flickered somewhere far out over the ocean, illuminating ice-boulders in stark, bone-white flashes. Marcus couldn’t help but smile as the peryton came near him, the surge something Marcus felt within himself.
He recognized Deimos’ solid figure atop the blackened dunes, as much a part of Halo as the stone and storm. ”Just couldn’t stay inside any longer.” Marcus angled his steps toward the Warden, boots grinding against coarse sand and scattered shards of ice. ”I was flying, but came to the ground because of all this lightning. A weird sort of storming here, don’t you think?” He had not come searching, at least not consciously. He had taken to the sky because the walls of home had pressed too close, because thoughts had circled like skyships with nowhere to land. The bay had simply been there beneath him, vast and merciless and honest.
His companion continued the hooting and hollering, drifting low then spiraling back upwards. Deimos fought off a roll of his eyes, knowing and understanding the need to simply unleash the restless wiles; seemed Marcus had the same conditions. Snorting and nodding his assent in understanding, his head tilted vaguely, glancing towards the sky once more and the distant flicks of lightning against the ocean. “Seems to have been the case since the new year.” Each season had brought forth alterations and changes – from constant mud, then wildfires, and now the deluge of scream-enhanced tempests.
While Belial rounded on another loop and twirl, the Sword persisted in watching the angles of the horizon; half-wondering if it would scream again, open up to some perils down the back of his spine he’d routinely left discarded and gone. “I will take this over the Family, but,” he shrugged, having no explanation over the schematics save for Caido and its ever-present need for some kind of chaos. “Wonder if it is seasonal god related again.”
Marcus followed Deimos’s glance toward the horizon, his gaze settling on the distant seam where the iron-gray ocean met the darker belly of the storm. Lightning stitched briefly through the clouds again, thin and jagged, illuminating the scatter of ice along the shore. The thunder that followed rolled low and distant, more like a warning than a threat, though no scream followed in its wake this time. He shifted his weight in the sand, one boot grinding idly against a shard of ice half-buried in the black grit. The storms this year certainly were different, they were less like weather and more like temperament. Halo was harsh, yes, but it was a predictable kind of harsh. Snow fell. Winds howled. The cold endured. Creatures had to eat. This was something else entirely.
The mention of seasonal gods pulled Marcus’s attention back from the water. His brow creased slightly, thoughtful rather than doubtful. Being the son of a once-demigod meant learning early that the gods were rarely distant concepts. Their moods had weight. Their attention could reshape the land without warning. The young Olson looked up again and he watched Belial loop through the rain again, the creature’s energy cutting bright through the gray.
Part of him, the part raised on stories whispered around hearthfires, knew better than to ignore patterns when they began to gather like storm clouds. ”My dad says the Mathair is quite…something.”
His gaze maintained on the horizon too, eyes following and tracking Belial’s movements, before landing back along the laden clouds. His features remained nonchalant, as if he’d faced any number of storms and had the confidence to say they’d persevere regardless; an individual who dug his heels in, and it had served him well over the years.
Head tilting at the statement through brought forth a snort from the Sword. “That is a word for it.” He’d say the Mathair was an unpredictable, mercurial piece of the lands and Caido; mercenary, not unlike a vast majority of the individuals who lived amongst this earth. “Remi, Ronin, and I had once had to escort the Mathair back to the Greatwood. Not an event I would like to repeat.” A disaster marked in amongst many others; from the actions of Halo banning and arson and a whole multitude of other things and conjectures that they’d had to work through. Even if it had all gone well in the end, it wasn’t as though Deimos would like to renew the cycle.
Marcus listened as Deimos spoke, the faint snort and the casual way he dismissed the memory doing little to hide the weight behind it. Escorting the Mathair anywhere sounded like the sort of task that could unravel quickly if even one thing went wrong. Marcus had only heard his father’s perspective from when they were cleansing the Greatwood, but even the fragments painted something volatile.
Standing beside Deimos always carried a strange awareness with it. The man had the solid patience of someone who had seen far too much to be easily shaken. Marcus knew enough of Caido’s recent history to understand that Deimos had been at the center of more than a few of its disasters. The stories clung to him the way the storm clung to the coastline: persistent, unavoidable. Marcus wondered, not for the first time, what it must be like to carry that many memories. Not just the victories, but the close calls. The things that had nearly gone wrong.
His cerulean gaze drifted briefly to Belial again as the peryton wheeled through the rain, then back to the Sword. Curiosity edged into his expression, the kind that came from someone young enough to still be collecting the shape of the world around him. ”Is the Mathair the worst you’ve seen?” The Mathair sounded dangerous enough on its own, but Marcus suspected that if Deimos considered it merely something he’d rather not repeat, then there were far worse moments buried in those years. He knew there was the war, that Deimos had fought on the Draig, but Noah had always been careful to guard the details that were too dark for young ears.
Try as he might to have avoided and skulked and hid amidst shadows, it scarcely seemed to matter. Deimos was there when it was necessary for his home, his family, his region, his people, and then extended to Caido at large, and sometimes it was difficult to comprehend where he’d been at the beginning – from being pulled into the Grounds, behind barriers and ignorant of this world, to now, where he stood tall amongst other giants, carving their wake into the earth. It hadn’t been anything he’d wanted for himself – he would’ve been more inclined to disappear into the ether on more than one occasion – but there he was just the same, resculpted and renewed, every scar and every line a story of where he’d either triumphed or failed.
The question sat there though, as he glanced from the sky and back to Marcus with a subtle arch to his brow. Half of him wondered if the youth was merely prying, wanting those infamous stories spelled out. If Noah or Cordelia had kept those from him, and understandably so; the Sword had yet to ever outline those harsh days to Erebos either. Ignorance was bliss in that regard, bu Marcus was older now, and so Deimos snorted, nose wrinkling a bit as he witnessed Belial turn and spiral downwards, before scaling back to new heights. “No. Not even close.” Under threat of being consumed might have sounded barbaric, and probably had been at the time, but the ‘worst’ was often labeled for the events that caused un-ending grief and desolation. “That is probably reserved for the days of LongNight, when we were all behind the barrier.” War was war – devastating as it could be, but something easily quantified and known. LongNight had been a test, a push, a pull, a lure for all of them, and they’d been dragged into committing horrendous acts for the sake of, what they believed, was safety.
Marcus stilled slightly at the answer, the quiet certainty in Deimos’s voice carrying more weight than the words themselves. The young hybrid knew what LongNight was. Everyone in Caido did. The sun failed to rise, the gods fell silent, and the world endured a time of unbroken dark at the end of Deepfrost. In Halo, it had always been something practical, something to prepare for the way one prepared for any brutal stretch of winter. Store enough food. Keep the hearth burning. Stay inside where the wind could not carve through the walls. It was a hardship, but a familiar one. Marcus knew of a time when the Voice's creations had somehow come through the portal and attacked the Citadel, but they had been slain without much casualty.
The way Deimos spoke of it made it sound like something else entirely.
Marcus let his gaze drift briefly toward the ocean again, watching lightning thread through the distant clouds while rain whispered steadily across the black sand. The storm felt small compared to the weight that had crept into the conversation. When he looked back at the Sword, his curiosity was plain, though tempered with careful respect. Marcus studied Deimos for a moment, not pressing but clearly hoping the older man might continue. "If you’re willing, I’d like to hear what it was like for you."
The storm rolled on around them, rain tapping steadily against ice and sand while Marcus waited, attentive and patient beside the warden.
While Halo hadn’t been in the throng of LongNight’s worst, save for a few escaped proportions, Deimos, and many others, still carried those scars of prior experiences. The endless evenings had always made him restless, eager to either claw at the walls or constantly patrol through the streets, trying to stop monsters that weren’t even there. That Marcus wanted to hear about it made his brow arch – tucking an inward snort through his lungs as the rain began to cascade. Arching a bout of his own incantations against it, it would appear as though there was a makeshift and invisible shield around them, as the elements drifted away, scattering feet away from them rather than directly upon their heads.
Were Noah’s son any younger, Deimos would not have agreed. He wasn’t like Erebos any longer, who wanted to know and hear and learn but lacked the maturity to deal with it properly. Exhaling a long, slow breath, he glanced away from the hybrid and across the great wake of ice. “We used to stockpile much like we do here, but all in several central areas. Had to lure the luxere in, because they were essentially a light shield against what lurked during LongNight.” Hence his loyalty to them, the lack of hunting prowess around something he considered sacred, necessary, despite their fear of everything contained innately within his soul. “You would hear voices from time to time. Scratches on the walls, the windows. They would sound familiar. Distinct. Like they were reading your mind, begging and pleading to be let in." A mournful echo in the psychological torture. "And you would always wonder if you should open that door. What if they were your friends? What if someone had escaped or hid, and now needed somewhere to stay?”
Marcus watched as the rain abruptly shifted, droplets bending away as though the storm itself had decided to give them space. His eyes flicked upward instinctively, noting the subtle distortion where Deimos’s magic held the weather at bay. The quiet control of it didn’t surprise him—Deimos wielded power the way other men carried knives. The bay seemed strangely quieter beneath the invisible shield, the roar of rain softened to a distant hiss along the sand and ice.
The mention of luxere made immediate sense to him. Hearing that their light had once been something closer to a barrier against the dark gave the creatures an even deeper weight. But it was the rest of the story that held him still, except his eyes. Marcus’s expression tightened slightly as Deimos spoke of voices. His gaze drifted toward the black stretch of shoreline, though he wasn’t really seeing the ocean anymore. The idea of hearing someone you knew, someone you cared about, just beyond a door you couldn’t open settled somewhere uncomfortable in his chest. "That would get into your head fast." Marcus said quietly, unable to bring his eyes to the warden's face. He drew a slow breath. "Did anyone ever…open the door? Or did people just have to sit there and listen to it all night? " The question wasn’t asked with morbid curiosity. If anything, Marcus’s tone carried the careful respect of someone trying to understand the weight of a choice like that.
Deimos had long since been a weapon himself; between magic, shifts, and the weaponry upon him (for yes, he also carried knives), but there’d only been so much they could do during LongNight. Staying put, which had been encompassed in every warning, still never had the desired effect when torture ensued or loved ones were on the line. “Of course we did,” he rumbled, a low snort volleying through, perhaps at the frustration of how many times they’d been cornered, or the way they were easily tricked and enticed. “Some opened the door because their friends were on the other side, and it was fine. They were saved.” It’d be hailed as a good or poor decision, depending on the outcome. “Others went out into the night because they heard something that promised them power. Or they wanted to rescue and liberate another.” Whispers of prestige and dominion, things that could give and grant anyone brawn and might. “And some did not – and had to live with either the consequences or be relieved they had not made a mistake.” Because those rumblings were monsters and it hadn’t been a failure…or it had indeed been kin, a citizen, someone out there, begging and pleading and never getting anything but a deranged death.
He'd made plenty of errors and mishaps on those LongNights too. Of trying so desperately to save everyone that he ended up killing his best friend. And while Rexanna had long since forgiven him, that he hadn’t been to blame, it still hovered as a telltale sign of striving and trying might not matter – that it could swing and collapse and consume just the same too.
Marcus listened in silence, the weight of Deimos’s answer settling slowly into his chest like cold water seeping through wool. There was no clean solution in anything the Sword had said, no clear right choice that guaranteed survival, no path that didn’t leave something behind. Every option sounded like a gamble with something irreplaceable. His gaze dropped again to the black sand at his feet, the toe of his boot nudging idly at a shard of ice half-buried in the grit as he tried to picture it. Sitting in the dark with no sun, the world outside swallowed by something unseen, and then a voice coming through the door. Not just any voice, but one you knew. One you trusted.
The thought made something twist sharply in his stomach. Marcus had faced dangerous things before, creatures in the wild, the brutal honesty of Halo’s wilderness where survival meant meeting a threat head-on or getting away fast enough to live. Those moments had clarity to them. He could see what you were fighting. He could measure the danger in teeth amd claws. And he had always almost had his father.
But what Deimos described was different in a way that felt far worse.
"I don’t think I’d know what to do." Marcus admitted quietly, his voice lacking the easy steadiness he usually carried, and a hsudder ran down the length of his spine. He lifted his gaze toward the dark water, though he wasn’t really seeing the bay anymore as he tried to imagine the choice. "If you heard someone you cared about out there… you either open the door and risk letting something in that could kill everyone inside, or you don’t, and you might be leaving them out there to die." He wasn't telling the Sword anything he didn't already know, but processing it all through his young mind. "That's...terrifying."
Deimos watched the trail of clouds or the telltale spread of his peryton’s wings, waiting for Marcus to process the notions, of what had taken them years, or those days spent within such confines, to know and understand. “Not until you experience it for yourself, I think, would anyone. We could all say we would keep the doors shut,” and then he shrugged, already knowing the outcome. “But we had difficulty to adhering to it. The first time I opened them was to help Remi retrieve a friend’s body.” Some way to honor those who had fallen, to snag them from the clutches of monsters. “Another time because other friends had tried to stop the creatures, and it had gone probably as you can imagine.” Poorly; wrung out souls with limbs missing and a world view newly tilted because vicious, vehement beasts outside those walls never cared about those within. How they’d spent hours tending to wounds that never should’ve happened. Years upon years of harsh, grinding clarity of instances and moments shattering lives and pieces; and why even some time after, the mere helm and name of LongNight kept his spine straightened and restlessness countered.
Taking another long, deep breath, he began to walk, the feeling, the need, to pace and maneuver riddling along his limbs, following the outline Belial made in the air below, boots going through ash. “I am glad it is no longer that way.”
