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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!
your touch brought forth an incandescent glow, tarnished but so grand
"Yeah really thick ones." Flora agrees, her words vaguely contored with mischief as she imagined the sort of glasses that would magnify Jack's eyes until the blue of them was distorted.
"I mean, I can't exactly picture you finding the time to go and shop for sheets." Honestly, Flora couldn't imagine the captain doing mundane chores like washing his bedding, but clearly he found time amidst sailing all over Torchline, shaking hands with goddesses, and nearly dying on the beach. Or maybe someone on his crew did it for him.
Peering quietly up at him, her aqua eyes soft with sleep, Flora just shakes her head against her arm. "That thing was fast." She murmurs. "Not even Noah managed to hit it much." Noah being a demigod, and thus expected to simply swan in and be able to immediately take things down.
Stifling a yawn against her hands and rolling onto her side, Flora tucks the sheet beneath her arm before slowly slithering her feet out from beneath it to help balance the temperature. For some strange reason, she found herself wanting to repeat what she'd already said to him: I'm really glad you're okay, as if something about her first attempt had missed the mark. She wasn't just glad that he was okay because that's what you were supposed to say after a fight, not because she was impressed he'd stuck around at all when he could have just fucked off, not because Torchline wouldn't be the same if anything happened to him, not because she cared about him, but because...closing her eyes, Flora sighs softly. It all came a little too close to the conversation that they'd been having before they'd been interrupted by the panther.
"Picture it in the same way you'd picture me haulin' a shipment of contraband onto The Ark from somewhere," Jack suggests with a soft smirk of his own. No, the captain doesn't mosey through the Torchline stalls to fondle sheets for their threadcount, but he does like what he likes, and he has ways of making it happen. Regardless of the how of it, it's clearly adequate, and he turns his head ever so slightly to listen as Flora speaks of the fight.
"We don't even see 'em much out on the open water - sea panthers, I mean. Let alone shit like what happened to that thing." And being on land versus in the water hadn't made a damned bit of difference to its speed, Jack wrinkling his nose as the memory causes his bruises to sing anew.
His brows furrow as if to try and chase the sensation away, the captain caught instead in the soft shower of Flora's thoughts, of the things she hadn't said before they'd been rudely interrupted by fighting for their lives. "Night, Flora," he mutters, eyes slipping shut again. Jack is out like a light within moments, distantly grateful that the Doubletake has had the foresight to lock his door.
For the rest of the day and well into the night, Jack sleeps as though it's his job.
It's more like very early morning into the next day when he finally begins to stir, having shifted onto his side as well throughout his slumber, face buried in his pillow, breathing slow and deep and steady. Blue eyes blink open into the dark, the heat, and without thinking much about it, his air magic finally swirls around the room in a cool breeze; a relief in the sticky Torchline night.
you wanted perfect, you got your perfect but now I'm too perfect for someone like you
your touch brought forth an incandescent glow, tarnished but so grand
Despite her exhaustion, Flora can't help but laugh at that. In her mind'ss eye she sees a shady alleyway, Jack's crew standing guard as the captain trades tense looks with an appropriately tattooed ruffian who hands over a crate of bedding in exchange for a sack of rubies. "Hopefully it's the last one we'll have to see on our shores." Ignoring the weird timelines since the PQs were before this The queen comments with a scowl before the pull of sleep has her eyelids feeling painfully heavy and she too drifts almost immediately off to sleep.
Waking a few times over the next several hours, it takes Flora a moment or two to remind herself just where she was—recognizing the sway of the Ark beneath her, the dark wood of Jack's cabin lit by varying degrees of light, Jack beside her—but as her body groans in protest as she considers leaving, Flora hardly puts up a fight before laying her head back down.
"mmmmmmmmmmmm." The sound is hardly more than a hum as Jack's magic has goosebumps trickling pleasantly across Flora's skin. Shifting slightly, the queen stretches out onto her stomach, nuzzling her face against the bed. Her thoughts are blurry and far away, the last sparkles of dreams are still shining through before wakefulness has her mind sharpening somewhat, albeit it slowly. Blinking open one eye, Flora peers at Jack, quietly stunned to find him still next to her. It was his bed of course, but even so. Resting her cheek against her arms, the queen lazily rolls her ankles, her toes cracking as she peers around the room to try and gauge the time. "I feel like we slept for a year." She murmurs, the drool on her arm evidence of just how true that felt.
"I feel like I could sleep for another one," Jack mutters, his voice the same rough cadence Flora has heard the last time he'd awoken beside her. Scrubbing a hand across his face and rolling onto his back to risk a stretch, the leftover bruises on his body show as darker splotches in the moonlight streaming in from his windows, the captain's back arching as if to give more space for his magic to caress and cool him off. Relaxing at last, he blinks dozily up at the ceiling before his gaze slips back to Flora.
"It's the middle of the night," he says, answering her unspoken question. "Moon's still high." And gods it really would be nice to slip back into a slumber; his limbs are already starting to ache, feeling weighty with fatigue and over-exertion, but as ever, his mind is quicker to come around. "Drink?" he offers, slowly peeling himself up into a sitting position, raking a hand back through hair that has dried in unruly waves around his shoulders thanks to being damp.
Water, whiskey or whatever else he has in his liquor cabinet - it's up to Flora.
you wanted perfect, you got your perfect but now I'm too perfect for someone like you
your touch brought forth an incandescent glow, tarnished but so grand
Stretching as well, Flora lets her palms press against the wall as she slides her hips from side to side, feeling every articulation of her spine as her muscles groan in response to being used. Slumping back with a sigh, the queen slyly lets her gaze wash over Jack, the moonlight making the bruises on his body look like dark pools that she could drip her fingers into. Though this was only the second time the pair had ever spent the night together, while the first felt adorably domestic (the morning had, anyway), waking up with Jack the morning (night) after a fight felt both incredibly strange and far too comfortable. "Probably best not to. You'll get bed sores." She chuckles, before tilting her head and blinking properly up at the silvery bands of light streaming in through the window.
"Sure." Eyeing Jack as he sits up and thinking he was in desperate need of a haircut, the queen considers her options before settling on wanting something sweet. Good as whiskey might make her feel, she wasn't sure she could handle the burn of it going down her throat, and no doubt whatever Jack had on hand was too good to be watered down.
"Not if someone's on hand to throw healing water at me every now and then," Jack counters, and though the captain can and will absolutely sleep for another stack of hours given the chance, first things first. He gets to his feet slowly, testing his balance and rolling his shoulders as if to decide if anything is sore enough to warrant another drink of fountain water, before setting off for the cabinet. "I'll take a knife to it in the mornin'," he decides of his hair, snagging a tie from the edge of his desk to sweep it up into a loose top knot in the meantime.
"Anythin' else for her highness?" he drawls, the amusement plain in his tone as he gingerly leans down to open the trunk. Tossing a button-up shirt to Flora - it seems grey in the moonlight but the sun will reveal it to be a soft, sky blue, Jack drags on a pair of loose sweatpants while he's at it, before returning to his rifling through his liquor.
Something sweet comes in the form of a cherry liqueur, Jack frosting the glass with his magic before handing it back to Flora as he slouches back down onto the bed. He has opted for whiskey, as one might expect, wanting the burn in his throat in the hopes that it will warm him from the inside, filling all the spaces the void had been just a few hours ago.
you wanted perfect, you got your perfect but now I'm too perfect for someone like you
09-08-2024, 06:33 AM (This post was last modified: 09-08-2024, 06:48 AM by Flora.)
your touch brought forth an incandescent glow, tarnished but so grand
"Oh, and you think you'll have a line of people waiting to do that for you, do you?" Flora smirks, though the way she doesn't meet Jack's gaze suggests she is well aware that yeah, he probably could rile up precisely such a group.
"Don't you dare." Straightening and instantly wincing, the Doubletake clucks disapprovingly under her tongue. "I'll do it." She offers, though nothing in Flora's tone or her accompanying thoughts suggests that this is an offer Jack can decline. Not without one hell of an argument, anyway, and even then the queen is likely to get her way.
"Well if you're offering, I do have one hell of a knot in my back. Oh, and if you could rewind time about 36 hours, that'd be a big help." She trills right back before catching the shirt and slipping it over her head. If she stood up, the shirt would have even the Haulani workers frowning at much was revealed, but given Flora had no intention of leaving Jack's bed yet, it hardly crossed her mind. Once again the shadow of Flora's younger self lingered in the corner of her mind, watching the casual way the queen slipped into the captain's clothes, unable to make sense of the easy way the pair moved around one another while still being nothing.
"Thanks." Accepting the glass and sliding back to her side give Jack room, Flora pressed the icy glass against her temple and sighed at the bite of it.
"I knew you'd be okay, you know." Taking a sip of the liquor, huming at the sweet strength of it, Flora fixes her eyes mischievously on Jack as she leans back against the wall. "No way you'd get yourself killed right before becoming immortal." Not very demure, not very mindful, not very captain Jack.
Jack doesn't reply to that, precisely because yes, they both absolutely do know the answer to her question, so he leaves it be with little more than a raise of his eyebrows, before sinking comfortably back to roll his whisky glass between his hands. What he doesn't expect is to hear Flora tell him - not ask, tell - that he won't be touching a blade to his hair, and there's bald confusion all over his face that soon settles into uneasy acceptance. "Never realised you felt so strongly about it," he says, hiding his smirk behind a long and necessary sip of his drink.
Sighing at the burn of it that spreads down his throat and throughout his chest, Jack tips his head back to rest it against the wall and closes his eyes. "Is that so?" he drawls, feeling her mischief like fingers tip-tapping across his temples like a playful waterfal. He smirks and opens an eye to glance across at her, sitting among his sheets, wearing his shirt, saving his life. "Let's not talk about that," he mutters; becoming immortal feels like a deal he'd made a thousand years ago, when he'd been an altogether different man.
Instead, lifting an arm, he beckons her closer with a small jut of his chin, inviting her to sit with him rather than next to him.
you wanted perfect, you got your perfect but now I'm too perfect for someone like you
your touch brought forth an incandescent glow, tarnished but so grand
Raising her brows, clearly not about to back down, Flora rolls her eyes ever so slightly as if annoyed at having to explain herself. "It's one of your best features." She says breezily, not quite sure why saying because you're handsome and I don't want you to fuck it up or I want to do it, feels like crossing a line. "And, assuming I'm at least one of the people who touches it the most, why should I do it?"
Glancing right back at him—sitting among his sheets, wearing his shirt, drinking his liquor—Flora's smile grows crooked before it softens and then threatens to disappear altogether. Not because she isn't happy, but because she is. Quite how Jack manages to make the queen feel so much with the smallest of gestures, she doesn't know; nor does she know who that spoke worse of between the pair of them. Regardless, Flora crawled instantly to his side, mindful of the places where each of them were still tender, fitting herself far too comfortably against his side. Crossing her legs at the ankles and settling her glass on her thigh, the queen hazards a glance up at the captain. "Alright, then what do you want to talk about." The words are playfully said, knowing that nothing was likely going to be the answer, but in lieu of nudging him in the ribs, Flora had to find some way to bother him, surely.
Jack has been whispered a lot of sweet nothings in his time by all sorts of men and women, but he doesn't think anyone has ever described his best features, and the remark alone - however playfully it had been intended - is enough to have his brows furrowing in confusion. "Fine," he says slowly, with all the suspicion of a man who thinks he's been caught in a trap. But although there's plenty of mischief in Flora's thoughts, there's no malice there, and so he accepts her demand offer and lets his arm settle around her as she comes to sit against his side.
"If I were feelin' better, whatever I'd want to talk about, I'd be doin' it between your thighs," he informs her easily enough, and because he knows what kind of reaction that's likely to have, he even manages a crooked smile her way for the trouble. "Just sit and enjoy bein' alive for a bit, will you?" Alive, together, however it might look, and able to complain about their lives for another day.
you wanted perfect, you got your perfect but now I'm too perfect for someone like you
your touch brought forth an incandescent glow, tarnished but so grand
"Oh you would, would you?" Flora's eyes narrow defiantly even as plumes of heat rise through her thoughts, blotting out whatever topics of conversation she might have thrown out to try and hook Jack with. Instead his words have her thinking of the possessive grip of his hands around her, the way he'd occasionally growled that she was his into her ear before leaving her helpless to do anything more than moan is name and beg for release. Shivering slightly, the queen raises her glass to her lips and takes a healthy sip, eyeing Jack out of the corner of her eye as the thick syrup drips decadently over her tongue.
"Gods fine." She huffs as if he'd just told her to go and fold some laundry rather than relaxing at his side. Pulling in a slow breath, Flora focuses on the gentle sway of the Ark beneath them rather than the way her ribs groan in response to the air in her lungs. She can't quite put her finger on what has her feeling so unmoored all of a sudden, can't find the place inside of her feeling so unsatisfied; the only reason she's going looking for it at all is to tell it to shut up. Blaming her brush with death and the purple haze of the void for her unsettled thoughts, Flora turns her head ever so slightly, pressing a too-sweet kiss against Jack's shoulder before covering it with her cheek and sighing softly.
"Would I lie about that?" Jack asks lazily - and more to the point, would she stop him? He smiles, catlike, at the way her thoughts haze with heat and lust, the captain rolling a shoulder as if he might be able to shrug them off and not end up winding them both up when they can do very little about it. (That's not entirely true, granted, but they are both sore after the Void Sea Panther, of that there's no denying it).
Scoffing as she finally agrees to settle and relax, Jack does the same, though he ends up having to listen to the Doubletake furiously telling her body to be cool, to the point where he's about to sass at her to relax properly when her lips brush against his skin. Blinking his eyes open and glancing down at her, the captain's calloused fingers reach out almost without his permission, gently gripping her chin and tilting her head up towards his waiting lips.
It's not a kiss of lust - there's no vibrant passion or urgency in it - but the press of his lips and tongue is no less insistent for its comparative sweetness. Maybe Jack is just glad to be alive - maybe he's picking back up what he'd started out on the beach - but either way, his hands are just a little greedy as he tries to draw Flora into his lap.
you wanted perfect, you got your perfect but now I'm too perfect for someone like you
your touch brought forth an incandescent glow, tarnished but so grand
"No, you just sound very confident for someone talking in hypotheticals." The queen retorts, and though there's a new strip of colour banding over her nose and across her cheeks, she's still able to look haughty as she smirks at him.
As he reaches for her, Flora inhales softly. It's the second time that day he's done that, though this time there's no little voice in Flora's head telling him don't. It's quite the opposite, in fact, tempered with a spark of surprise that not only had he not scoffed at her small display of affection, but he'd encouraged it. Matched it. Or so it felt to her.
It's probably for the best that Jack's movements aren't hastened by passion, as it affords Flora the mental space to move her body slowly, shifting to side astride him with all the due care and consideration that two people who'd just had the shit beaten out of them by a giant cat, deserved. Slow streams of heat begin to course through Flora's core, as unhurried and decadent as Jack's tongue was. Softly humming an unnecessary sound of approval, the queen arches her back, fitting herself against him before fumbling to set her glass down beside his bed.
As her fingertips comb softly up the back of his neck and into the sweep of his hair, the press of her nails is as gentle as it is intentional. Knowing that this was a bad idea—neither of them had moved without wincing since they'd gotten up—Flora did her best to keep the movements of her tongue and lips slow, not allowing herself to get pulled downstream by the warm current broiling in her belly.
Jack would argue that there are very few times where he doesn't sound confident, and so it's perhaps for the best that his lips are very much occupied and his clever tongue busy against Flora's. Even as his body screams its disapproval to have to twist and move and support the Doubletake in his lap, the captain clearly isn't interested in what it has to say - not when his hands can softly glide across the curves hidden beneath cool linen, not when he can guide her closer against him, kindling the heat in his blood to something more fiery and insistent.
Belatedly he also fumbles to set his drink down, only just managing it without knocking and shattering the glass, before his fingers are gently sneaking beneath the hem of her (his) shirt, ghosting across her bare hips and backside. Tilting his head back and into the touch of her hands, Jack breaks the kiss unintentionally, leaving him blinking up at her in the moonlight, eyes night dark and shadowed further by arousal.
Leaning in again after a breath or two to consider, his lips brush across her cheek and down the side of her neck, an arm snaking around her waist to anchor her more closely against him, so she can feel the already hard press of his cock against her.
you wanted perfect, you got your perfect but now I'm too perfect for someone like you
