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Character of the Season
Once known as the Butcher of Whitebrim, he's now The Butcher of Dygra, stepping forward as the first created demigod of the Ancients. There is no question that Astaroth casts an intimidating silhouette. Tall, domineering and dangerous, if looks could kill you'd be dead already, but to get up close and personal with the Grounds' resident cannibal tells a much different story. Dripping with charm and clad in only the finest attire, Asta is a gentleman monster, as polite as they come and committed to his role as security for the Dusklight and those who have earned his loyalty. Be careful of that smile, though - those teeth are sharp.
Congratulations, Asta!
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!
Being any way with The Ark feels as natural as breathing, and Jack only realises it when sense starts to claw its way back to the surface of his mind. She might not have held him quite like this before, with warm arms and wildly possessive instinct, but he's peeled himself off her boards on more occasions than he can count. Whether it's sick or bloodied, exhausted or half-mad with the backlash of his own magic, these cabin walls have held him still and close, have kept him from drowning in worse than mere saltwater in the years he's hidden his secrets here.
"You're full of compliments today, love," he mumbles, the words shaped into a faint smile as he carefully sits himself back, inhaling a long breath he hopes will steady both his mind and his hands. "I'll shower." Kicking someone out of their quarters requires the sort of bravado and socialisation neither of them possesses at present, and depending on who they pick, Jack might find himself coddled by Bassian if he's particularly unlucky in it.
"Thanks," he mumbles before he can forget it, flexing the fingers on his left hand and wrinkling his nose at the still ghastly looking injury, but they both know how much worse it had been only seconds before. "I'll be back in just a sec." Code for I need a minute alone, Jack pushes himself off the edge of the desk and walks gingerly for the door, glancing over his shoulder to her before heading out.
Despite the weakness in Jack’s voice, the fact that he has regained enough of himself to be snarky has relief moving through The Ark’s mind like a warm seabreeze. It brightens the waters there such that the smirk she gives him is easier than anything she has worn since he appeared in the cabin half-carved open and caked in Feverlands filth. "And I mean every one of them," she purrs in response.
The Ark steps back when he rises, though every instinct in her resists the shape of it. Her gaze drops immediately to his left hand as he flexes his fingers, cataloguing what moves, what doesn’t, and what might yet need mending once the worst of the danger has passed. There will be time later to test the strength of his grip, to see whether tendons answer cleanly, to decide whether the damage has left anything lingering beneath the newly closed skin. For now, the fact that he feels steady enough to walk out on his own is enough for her.
Once he's gone, she turns to the mess left behind and begins to erase what she can. The grime on the desk goes first, then the bloodied streaks against the boards, then the ruined scraps of shirt that still smell of tar and swamp rot, before she sheds her own shirt and replaces it with a soft sweater made of cashmere from King's End. Heading up onto the deck to find Murphy, the first mate does not ask questions when she finds him, and she appreciates him all the more for it. She gives the helm back into his care, then tells him to adjust their course for a detour toward the Hollowed Grounds before they hook west, and by the time Jack returns, The Ark is back in his cabin where a fresh bottle of rum waits on the desk, along with a plate gathered from the kitchen: thick stew, bread to soak it up, and cheese (because blood loss and stubbornness both deserve more than liquor on an empty stomach).
everything I want you know i'm going to get it whether it's your fame or your cableknit sweater you might've done it first but I know i'll do it better
Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, 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.
The Ark takes care of everything Jack doesn't have the energy to name, and it gives him the mental relief to take care of himself as best he can in her absence. He still doesn't feel right, in a way that goes beyond blood loss and the exhausted haze of pain, but it will be some time yet before either he or the redhead in his cabin realise the cause of it. For now he shuts himself in a small shower cubicle lit only by what filters in through a porthole, and focuses on getting clean.
To the Captain's credit, he only throws up once.
It's the heat of the water that does it, he thinks, combined with too much rum and too little blood, and he clears the side of the ship as he hangs out of the porthole too, so what of it? It does make his shower a little longer than intended though, Jack spending a long couple of minutes with his forehead pressed to his good arm while the world rearranges itself into something resembling order, and when he does emerge at last, there's no sign of the swamp on him other than in the angry marks it's left on his skin.
"You're too good to me," he rumbles as he steps back into the cabin, his magic having picked up on everything she's gathered and done in his absence, Jack heading first to a small trunk to hitch a pair of loose slacks around his hips. He sweeps his hair - too long these days by far - into a careless knot and turns at last for the desk, slumping into the seat. "Anyone need me for anythin'?"
When Jack's footsteps return to the cabin, she listens to their rhythm before she looks at him. Steady enough, she decides, though not as steady as she would like. Better than when he left, at least, but still off. Her gaze follows him as he crosses to the trunk to get dressed; without the leather, weapons, grime, and blood between them, the cabin and the pair within feel nearly domestic in a way that would likely surprise anyone on the outside looking in.
"You’ve done far too much for me for that to ever be true," The Ark says, shaking her head faintly. It is not sentiment dressed up to soothe him, just bare fact. He had made her more than hull and sail, had chosen her, rebuilt her, named her in ways that mattered long before she had this body to stand before him in. Whatever care she can give him now, whatever wounds she can clean or food she can put in front of him, it will never feel like too much, not to her.
She takes the seat opposite him and draws one long leg up onto the chair, leaning comfortably against it as he slumps near the desk. "Nothing that can’t wait until morning," she answers. In truth, most of it could wait longer than that, but Jack Barclay is far too much of a control freak for such honesty to be useful while he is conscious. Reaching for a glass of rum herself, The Ark turns it idly between her fingers before lifting her eyes back to him. "You know," she begins, quieter now, "you have a way to always come back to me..." Her voice trails off as her gaze shifts toward the compass rose on his forearm, the one that mirrors the mark branded into her own boards and skin. For all the comfort it offers, the imbalance of it sits heavier now than it had before, made sharp by the half hour she had spent waiting in an empty cabin.
"But I don’t have a way to come to you. Maybe once we dock in Torchline, I could change that." By giving myself a fake quest. It's carefully said, if only because for everything that they are to one another, the ability to always find Jack, regardless of whether he wanted to be, was not a freedom even she thought he'd give up willingly.
everything I want you know i'm going to get it whether it's your fame or your cableknit sweater you might've done it first but I know i'll do it better
Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, 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.
"And yet here I am, sayin' it anyway," Jack says with as much chipper defiance as he can muster, pouring himself a couple of fingers of rum and raising the glass in a toast towards her. He doesn't drink it yet at least, knowing better than to immediately unsettle himself again with alcohol, instead setting the glass back down and opting for a hunk of dry bread instead. "Music to my ears," he continues, as if morning is the equivalent of a month long vacation (which, to the Captain, it might as well be).
Propping a bare foot against the edge of the desk, he chews thoughtfully and focuses his mind purposely on nothing in particular, such that as The Ark speaks again it's almost a surprise to a mind starting to cloud over with the precursor to unconsciousness. "That I do," he agrees slowly. "Not from nearly as far as I'd like, but I'm gettin' there..."
His eyebrows raise, waiting for her point in all of this, and bless The Ark for never taking longer than necessary to make it. "...Maybe you could," he agrees again in the same tone, though the ghost of a frown on his face suggests that he's wondering why she'd ever want to. "An' you reckon it's a good idea?"
"Ahh, so you’ve also got a concussion, I see. " The Ark snorts softly, oceanic eyes narrowing with a satisfaction she doesn't bother to hide when he chooses bread before rum.
At his question, her fingers turn her own glass without lifting it, the rum dark and still inside it, while she bites at the inside of her cheek and lets her gaze drift toward the porthole near his bunk. Outside, her body carries them north, away from the Feverlands, but the shape of the question remains behind like tar clinging to the soles of her thoughts. "Jack," she says at last, her voice low, "do you want to be alone, when you die?" Only then does she look back at him.
There is no performance in her expression as her blue eyes hold his honestly, earnestly. There's no sense in telling him that the reason for it is so she might protect him, or save him, or arrive in time to change the shape of whatever death eventually came calling; that would be a lie dressed as comfort that would surely be ill-fitting. She would die trying, certainly, that much is not in question. But Jack is too clever, too stubborn, and too often alone in all the places danger knows how to find him for either of them to believe her presence would make him untouchable.
If death found him while he stood surrounded by crew, or with her deck beneath his boots, then it likely would not be death at all. It would be an inconvenience, one more bloody and miserable story to add to the collection. But if it found him elsewhere?
The thought has been growing in her since the swamp, quiet at first and then heavier, gathering strength and mass in the deep waters of her mind until she can no longer ignore the pull of it. She had waited half an hour for him in his empty cabin, feeling every inch of herself strained toward a man she could not reach, and now that she knows the taste of that helplessness, she is not sure she can patiently abide the knowledge of it.
everything I want you know i'm going to get it whether it's your fame or your cableknit sweater you might've done it first but I know i'll do it better
Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, 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.
"Maybe," Jack admits with a scoff of quiet laughter, finishing his bread and following it up with a small spoonful of stew, before reaching at last for the glass of rum. A lot of things had happened in that relatively short scuffle on the swamp floor; it's not impossible that he could have hit his head while being eaten and stabbed and trampled and so on. And now that he's warm and dry and away from the Feverlands he can let it be amusing for a beat or two - at least until The Ark goes and ruins it.
The question comes with all the sharp, clean weight of death's scythe itself, and it may as well have parted Jack's hand at the wrist for the way the glass goes slipping out of his fingers. It shatters beside his seat without his ever hearing the sound of it, the Captain's blue eyes still hazed with weariness and the start of a fever as he holds the siren's gaze, as he parses the words and reaches for the thoughts behind them.
Those thoughts have depth, the sort he ought to have expected by now but that still catch him off guard. He'd been anticipating a guilt-trip, having learned from experience that concern goes hand in hand with shame, and when there isn't any, it takes a moment for the Captain to find his footing in The Ark's mind. Because she's right in a way he's been too close to the source to realise.
The answer is I don't plan to die at all - and it always will be - but that doesn't account for reality. Should something go wrong, should he find himself alone and unfound, not even a fistful of revivify feathers would make a difference.
"Once we dock at Torchline, I'll help you change that," he mutters at last, glancing belatedly down at the shards of glass around his chair.
When glass falls from Jack’s hand and shatters beside his chair, The Ark does not flinch. Her eyes remain on his, the clear blue of deep water holding fast to the sharper, weather-bent blue of his stare in the quiet after the break. If anything, she stills all the more, letting him move through the waters of her thoughts at his own pace. Not only because he is injured, not only because fever is starting to cloud the edges of him, but because she knows the magnitude of what she has asked.
For a man like Jack, this is weightier than marriage in some ways. He has little use for pretty chains, for vows made public, for the bright and obvious shape of promises other people can point to and name. This is different. This is his freedom and his privacy, his last hidden door. A tether not to bind him while he lives, but to find him if the world ever manages to drag him somewhere even he cannot return from. Before her, she is certain he would have intended to die as he had lived in all the worst and most guarded places of himself: unseen, unreachable, and without giving anyone the satisfaction of knowing where the final wound had landed.
When he agrees, what moves through her is not relief exactly. It does not soften the fact that he might one day die, nor does it quiet the ugly knowledge that they may still be separated in life by distance, danger, or his own stubborn certainty that he can outrun every consequence with a tattoo and spite. It only soothes the restless thing in her that has been pacing since the swamp, the part of her that has now looked directly at the possibility of waiting forever in his cabin for an arrival that would never come.
The Ark nods once without triumph, with no gratitude spoken aloud and no pretty shape made of what he has just offered her. Only the steady dip of her chin, and the oceanic blue of her eyes holding his for a moment longer before her gaze finally drops to the glass shattered around his chair. Rather than pluck at the pieces one by one, she lets water spill from her hand and spread thickly across the floorboards, covering the broken glass in a clear, heavy layer for Jack to freeze into something easier to gather. Then, with a faint tut under her tongue and a look around the cabin she’d only just restored to order, The Ark murmurs with a sly line to her lips, "I just cleaned up in here."
everything I want you know i'm going to get it whether it's your fame or your cableknit sweater you might've done it first but I know i'll do it better
Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, 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.
Unsure what he's waiting for on the heels of his agreement, Jack finds his hand suddenly empty and so reaches for a little more bread and cheese instead, propping his other leg up on the edge of his desk to allow the thick seep of saltwater to wash beneath it. It freezes and cracks under the influence of his magic almost immediately, and though the continued use leaves him a bit dizzy, it doesn't stop the Captain from rising to his feet to get rid of the shards.
"You should stop sayin' things that make glasses break, then," he snarks back, smirking and gathering the pieces together so he can empty them out of one of the windows. Only when he's satisfied that he won't end the day with cuts on his feet alongside everything else does he approach the desk enough to scoot the chair back beneath it, neat as you like.
"That's my cue to pass out, I think," he says, though he stops beside her chair before crossing the cabin to his bunk. The kiss he presses to her fiery crown is a quick thing, though its brevity doesn't take away from its sweetness, and with a caress of cool fingers to the back of her neck, Jack goes on his way.
The Ark smirks back at him, amusement holding fast in the depths of her gaze now that the world feels a little more even beneath them. Not safe, not solved, and certainly not clean, but steadier than it had been with the Feverlands clinging to Jack's skin. She lifts one shoulder in a careless shrug, though the look she pins him with is teasing. "I’ve never known your hands to be anything other than steady," she counters.
As he tucks the chair back beneath the desk, neat as though the shattered glass and blood and swamp filth had been nothing more than a minor inconvenience, her chin lifts to keep him in her field of view. Only when he stops beside her does she lower it, allowing the brief press of his lips to her hair. Sunlight scatters across the waters of her thoughts at the touch, warm and golden, while a breeze moves through her in time with the cool brush of his fingers against the back of her neck.
"I’ll be here," she says softly. And so she will. While he makes his way to the bunk, while the cabin settles around them, while the ship cuts north with the Feverlands falling farther behind, The Ark remains where she is. The sound of the sea keeps close, threaded through the boards and the air and the quiet space between them, and she stays until Jack’s breathing finally deepens into something slow and rhythmic.
~FIN
everything I want you know i'm going to get it whether it's your fame or your cableknit sweater you might've done it first but I know i'll do it better
Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, 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.
