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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!
"That's Flora 101," Jack says with an easy shrug, "ain't nothin' to do with me. Though you're right - it felt flimsy at best. Hysterical towards the end, almost." Like she'd been so desperate to prove him a villain that it didn't matter what she let slip in the process. The Captain shouldn't be surprised that such thoughts rear their heads here of all places, but as he catches himself thinking about it he can't help but to wrinkle his nose, like he's let the Doubletake start to worm her way back into his mind without permission.
Still, the catlike satisfaction rolling off The Ark is something he can enjoy, and if the cause of it is considering Flora's desperate unhappiness, who is he to rain on her parade? "If she was, she won't be when she sees you at anchor in Kaiholo," he says with a smirk, before their conversation fades under the ethereal glow of the shoreline.
It's like an eerie daylight, between the moon, the stars and the bioluminescence, and as they step down onto the sand Jack is already letting his arm slip from around The Ark's shoulders, as if to encourage her to do whatever the water conjures her to do. "Then you'd better go," he says, smirking. "I'll wait on the beach."
bottom line, we made it out the first time still in love and half alive
The Ark’s smile flashes sharp and jackal-bright at his words, her gaze cutting to him with something wicked and pleased in it. "Who says that’s the only place I’ll anchor?" she murmurs, one brow lifting as her grin deepens, dark and knowing, before she turns from him without waiting for an answer.
The slackening of his arm feels less like separation and more like being released into her natural element, and the Ark parts from Jack without hesitation. Her blouse is gone first, drawn over her head in one smooth motion and left to fall carelessly into the sand, followed by the slow, deliberate peel of leather from her hips, the slide of boots kicked free with an ease that feels practiced and unbothered. The night air lingers for only a breath against her skin—warm, fleeting, almost irrelevant—before the sea takes her back.
It doesn't take her gently, but instead slides over her like something that already knows her, cool water climbing her ankles and calves with an ease that feels intimate, the glow beneath the surface flaring in soft pulses with each step as though it’s reacting to her rather than disturbed by her. She doesn’t slow as she enters, just keeps moving as it draws higher, slick against her thighs, her hips, her stomach, the press of it close enough now that every shift of it registers, every curl of water against her skin deliberate in a way that feels less like immersion and more like being touched. It’s sharper in this body, closer than it ever was when she was wood and sail and weight, the temperature catching against her breath, pulling something low and quiet from her as she leans forward without thinking, letting it take more of her, letting it close around her ribs and shoulders until there’s nowhere left untouched.
She doesn’t break into it; she slips under, the surface sealing above her in one clean motion, and the difference is immediate, complete, the world narrowing and widening all at once as the water folds around her fully, pressing in and then moving through, the glow trailing after her in slow ribbons that cling for a moment before drifting loose again. It holds her differently here, not distant and surrounding but close, fitted, the subtle pull of current sliding along her body like something tracing her shape, mapping her, reminding her in a way that feels almost possessive, that she belongs to this as much as it belongs to her. The water doesn’t sit outside her; it moves with her, through her, every shift of her body answered by it, every motion echoed back in soft, luminous pulses that wrap and release in a rhythm that feels slow and steady and endless.
Her thoughts don’t stay contained; they loosen, spread, dissolve into sensation as the sea presses into every space, filling the quiet between breaths, between movement, until there’s no clean line left between where she ends and it begins. It isn’t overwhelming, not something that erases her, but something that takes her in and fits around her so completely that resistance never even forms, the earlier tension in her unwinding into something deeper, something slower, something that stretches outward as far as the water itself. It feels like slipping back into a shape she never quite left, like something that had been held too tightly finally allowed to expand again, the ocean moving through her in long, unbroken currents until there is nothing sharp or restless left, only that steady, consuming pull of being exactly where she was always meant to be.
we didn't die, but no guarantees this time, but fuck it lets do it again
Code 100% taken from the queeeeeeen herself, Sky <3
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.
"Keep up that talk an' you'll not need a crew or a captain at all," Jack drawls, half playful as they move from textured cobblestones to the soft rise and fall of dry sand. He follows in her wake, catching the blouse before it can quite flutter to the ground, collecting boots and leather and any other accoutrements and setting them down where the sand turns flat and smooth. She's already halfway to the lapping shoreline by that time, leaving Jack as a lone, eerie silhouette against the glow of moon and wavelight.
The sea takes her as if it was always meant to have her, the only evidence of her having been beside him a few perfect prints in the sand that melt into the lap of waves and the quiet flare of bioluminescence where she passes by. It doesn't take long for The Ark to leave the range of his telepathy, swallowed up into The Arclight, and Jack is left to watch for her by the play of the glowing flora beneath the surface.
He spends his time while she reacquaints herself mostly idle, breathing deep into the salt-sweet night, his hands casually in his pockets and his shoulders releasing what lingering tension had been left in them. It isn't just The Ark who feels like this is where she's meant to be, though it's true that Jack could make his way in any ocean or on any shoreline. Torchline, though, is where it began for him, a story he'd still been in the middle of writing when he'd cut his losses and left, and it feels like the region has been waiting for them to come back all this time.
03-21-2026, 08:59 AM (This post was last modified: 03-21-2026, 09:02 AM by The Ark.)
bottom line, we made it out the first time still in love and half alive
The Ark doesn’t so much emerge from the sea as reform from it, with the glow gathering first, light stirring beneath the surface before her shape follows, rising in one smooth, unbroken motion as the water peels away from her body in slow sheets that cling and slide, reluctant to let her go. Every movement is fluid, unhurried, the sea still wrapped around her in the way it trails along her skin, caught in the hollow of her throat, the curve of her waist, the long lines of her legs as she steps forward.
She moves towards Jack, hips swaying with an easy, predatory rhythm that would have lesser men already on their hands and knees or worse, following her back into the sea. Water traces her as it falls, slipping from her hair in dark strands that cling like seaweed against pale skin, from her limbs in quiet rivulets that catch the bioluminescent glow before fading into nothing. Her body is all contrast;n arrow waist, long legs, the soft, unapologetic curve of her breasts rising and falling with a breath that still belongs more to the ocean than the air.
There’s something in it that doesn’t soften when she reaches him, something that lingers from the water, not wild but controlled, like a current that doesn’t need to pull to be felt, and it sits in the way her gaze settles on him, blue and deep and carrying that submerged vastness back with it. Whatever tabloid message had been written across the sky has already slipped from her attention entirely, the world narrowing without effort until it’s just the Captain. A jackal's smile spreads across her lips, as she stops before him, the water on her body beading in place rather than continuing to drip. "Did I miss anything?"
we didn't die, but no guarantees this time, but fuck it lets do it again
Code 100% taken from the queeeeeeen herself, Sky <3
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.
It will be altogether too obvious what The Ark has missed by the time she reaches Jack, though he doesn't respond right away. As she re-enters the range of his magic, the wild, almost feral freedom that cascades though her thoughts all but coils about him, setting the tiny hairs on the back of his neck to rising and causing his back to straighten ever so slightly. His eyes drip across her with the open approval of a man appraising something he finds infinitely valuable and rare enough to kill for, and that's even before he considers her effortless beauty and predatory grace.
Then he lifts the ice cream cone to his lips and licks it.
"There was a cart," he says mildly, though the likelihood of such a thing is vanishingly low. An ice cream cart at night on the beach near the shoreline isn't unheard of, it's true, but it's equally possible that the Captain had literally stolen the treats from someone passing by.
Either way, he raises a second cone - citrus flavoured and decorated with candied lemon peel - and offers it out to her. "Have fun?"
bottom line, we made it out the first time still in love and half alive
Her eyes land on the ice cream first, and the shape her mouth makes is small and knowing, amusement curling there. Whether he’d found it or taken it hardly matters; both feel equally likely, and she doesn’t bother pretending she isn't delighted to see it. "Oh, was there?" she murmurs as she sinks down onto the sand before him in one smooth motion, her body folding easily into place, belonging just as much at his side as she had in the sea.
When she reaches for the cone, there’s no hesitation in it, only the easy expectation of someone who has never had to question whether he’d think of her, and the appreciation that follows is just as natural, just as unforced. Whatever Jack is to the rest of the world—bastard, murderer, ruthless businessman—she’s never known him to forget her place in it.
The candied lemon peel goes first, her teeth catching it lightly as she pulls it free, and the sourness hits sharp and immediate, bright enough to draw a quiet breath from her as her mouth waters, the sensation almost aching in the best way. She smiles around it, slow and satisfied, before her tongue follows, circling the top of the ice cream in an unhurried sweep, tasting it properly this time.
"I did," she says, glancing up at him through lashes still damp from the sea, the answer still carrying the echo of everything she’d just stepped out of. Her nose wrinkles faintly a moment later, the expression small but distinct, her attention drifting briefly back toward the water before returning to him. "It’s clear Hadama’s gone back to the underwater city," she adds, the thought coloured with a note of mild disapproval. "Everything’s so..." she searches for the word, then finds it with a slight tilt of her head, "…orderly."
we didn't die, but no guarantees this time, but fuck it lets do it again
Code 100% taken from the queeeeeeen herself, Sky <3
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.
Humming his confirmation around his own ice cream, whatever lie Jack may or may not be telling regarding the sudden desserts, he's clearly doubling down on it either way. She sinks onto the sand before him and he surrenders her cone and opts to remain standing, enjoying the wash of the waves and the way they turn the wet sand silver in the moonlight. The tide creeps ever closer to them with the moonrise, and whilst the stars still garishly announce the Doubletake's proposal somewhere over their shoulders, the sea is wildly and luminously their own.
Glancing down at her with an arched eyebrow as she mentions Hadama of all people, Jack wonders what she's getting at until she proclaims the Arclight as orderly, and a laugh barks out of him. "Only when the ocean lets it be that way," he reminds her with a wink, raising his cone as if toasting the Arclight and her mercurial nature. "Ain't been down there in a long while," he confesses. "Might be a venture worth takin', since we're here."
bottom line, we made it out the first time still in love and half alive
The Ark lets her tongue drag slowly along the curve of the ice cream again, unhurried, indulgent in the sharp bite of citrus as it blooms across her mouth, the sourness bright enough to make her hum softly under her breath as she settles further into the sand. The taste lingers, something she rolls around on her tongue before swallowing, her attention drifting briefly toward the water as it glows and shifts, before sliding back to Jack.
"Mm," she says, as though agreeing with something he hasn’t quite finished saying, though her thoughts have already moved ahead of the moment. "The merfolk are always the first to find things." Her fingers turn the cone idly, watching the faint drip of it before catching it with her tongue again, the movement absent in a way that suggests she’s only half paying attention to it now. "Wrecks. Cargo. Anything tossed overboard and forgotten." Her shoulders lift in a small, careless shrug, but there’s nothing careless in her eyes when they return to him, blue gone darker, sharper, carrying something that glints just beneath the surface.
"Some of it’s probably worth more now than it ever was when it went down," she adds, her voice smoothing out, quieter but more deliberate, as if she’s already begun to turn the idea over properly. "Things people would pay well to see again. Things they’d swear were lost for good. Things they wanted to stay lost for good." Her gaze fixes on him fully then, her head tipping just slightly to the side, the angle making the look feel more like a question even though she doesn’t phrase it as one.
He’d taken her from the water and given her the sky, stretched her reach far beyond what she’d been built for. There’s something in her expression now that suggests she might want the same kind of expansion again, only in the opposite direction. "Such a shame," she murmurs, almost idly, though the intent beneath it is anything but, "to leave all of that sitting untouched."
we didn't die, but no guarantees this time, but fuck it lets do it again
Code 100% taken from the queeeeeeen herself, Sky <3
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's eyes are still on the sea as The Ark's attention swivels back to him, the Captain quietly, broodingly thoughtful as she speaks and her ideas blanket him, melting into his consciousness to take root there. The smirk that hooks one side of his mouth is almost hidden by the ice cream, his own sweet but not overly so, biting with rum and coffee every now and then as he samples it.
"Almost all of it'll be untouched," he agrees. "Ain't like the merfolk are business minded in that way - not many of 'em in any case." He'd known a few Mer in his time that had been excellent criminals and even better scavengers, but the idea of an entire galleon beneath the surf, cruising like a shark towards an old wreck to scour it clean? Jack is smiling properly now.
"Some would call you a bad influence, y'know," he drawls, glancing down at her with laughter in his eyes. "Not me, of course. But some." A breeze cuts across the beach, chill with Leafchange and the deepening night, and Jack silently offers a hand to help The Ark up in case she wants to cover up against the cold. "Let's take a swim down there while we're here," he says. "Get the lay of the seabed a little. Then I know a goddess who might be able to help."
bottom line, we made it out the first time still in love and half alive
She nods easily, already having come to much the same conclusion herself, the thought of the merfolk settling into her mind as something quietly understood rather than judged. "They take what they need," she murmurs, turning the last of the citrus over her tongue before letting it melt away, "and leave the rest. They're certainly practical, but not very ambitious."
Her gaze lifts to him as he looks down, one brow arching in a mirror of his own expression, the amusement in his eyes catching and reflecting in hers. When he offers his hand, she takes it without hesitation, her fingers sliding into his as she lets him pull her easily to her feet. "Those people," she says, a smirk curving slowly into place as she steps closer, "tend to live very safe, very boring lives."
The breeze cuts across her then, and she shivers. With a small shift of focus, the water still clinging to her gathers and slips free, drawn cleanly from her skin in quiet streams that fall away into the sand, though she doesn’t reach for her clothes, doesn’t seem to consider it at all. At his suggestion, her smile deepens, something darker threading through it as her head tilts, attention sharpening. "Mm," she hums, the sound low and pleased. "With that new cannon being built in the port..might be a fair few ships start finding their way to the bottom."
Her grin widens, not bright but edged. "And farther out," she adds, glancing back to him, "all those pirate wrecks a certain kraken has left behind.." Her shoulders lift in a small, careless roll, though there’s nothing careless in the glint of her gaze.
we didn't die, but no guarantees this time, but fuck it lets do it again
Code 100% taken from the queeeeeeen herself, Sky <3
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.
"I didn't realise safe an' borin' were even in your vocabulary," Jack says with an easy smile, finishing the last of his ice cream and opting to stab the cone down into the sand to protrude up like a strange little turret from a sand castle. Straightening back up in time to see her discard the lingering water from her skin like she's shrugging off a cloak, the Captain reaches out to draw her against his side, silently offering the heat of his body in place of the leather and silk she'd clad herself in that morning.
He scoffs at the reminder of the cannon - the Blackfox had filled them in on all the details during their visit, and Jack can't help but feel a pulse of wry amusement that he might have been one of the targets in mind when the initiative was first conceived. "Sounds like a sustainable business prospect to me," he drawls, nodding away down the beach towards the dock as if to ask if she's ready to head back to even more familiar holdings.
At the mention of the pirate wrecks, though, he can't help but grin out at the open ocean, reaching up to tug gently at a wild lock of her red hair. "You're sayin' all the right things tonight, love," he purrs, a hint of playful warning in his tone.
bottom line, we made it out the first time still in love and half alive
The Ark snickers under her breath. "Shut up" she murmurs affectionately, the words lacking any real bite, her mouth curving easily even as she says it. Safe and boring might not belong to her, but neither did sinking, nor capsizing, despite her knowing their meanings, and as with those, she has no intention of ever letting them apply to her.
When he draws her in she melts against him, one arm sliding beneath his jacket, fitting against him with an ease that feels instinctive, like settling into something already shaped to hold her. The warmth of him replaces the sea without quite erasing it, and she leans into it, the shape of him just as right against her as was slipping back into timber.
"And what a benefit to Torchline," she says, her tone bright with playful sarcasm as her eyes flick up to his, "to have someone cleaning up her seabeds, mm?" There’s no doubt in her mind he’ll sell it that way if he needs to, dress it up neatly enough such that no one flora could even begin to question how he might benefit from it.
Her attention shifts briefly as a hel flutters too close, pecking at the cone Jack abandoned in the sand, and with a flick of her wrist she sends her own after it, the motion quick and careless, more interested in driving the bird off than anything else. As Jack's fingers tug lightly through her hair, something in her gaze shifts for it, the blue of her eyes catching the moonlight like sunlight moving across open water. She doesn’t shy from his cautionary tone, but instead lets her shoulder press a little more firmly against him in a small, shameless answer. "There must be something in the water," she says casually, though there’s something quieter beneath the words, something that settles rather than sparks. The something in the water, of course, being the waters themselves; this portion of the Arclight has always suited her best, and if the ideas come easier here—if staying becomes simpler to justify—then she sees no reason to question it, or even hide her intentions.
we didn't die, but no guarantees this time, but fuck it lets do it again
Code 100% taken from the queeeeeeen herself, Sky <3
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.
It isn't often that the Captain is unceremoniously told to shut up, and his laughter rings honest and amused across the glowing waves as he angles to start leading them back across the beach, turning only to watch the hel get brained by The Ark's leftover ice cream cone with an indignant bwawk! That, of course, only redoubles his amusement, and his spirits might have grown dangerously, uncharacteristically high were it not for her schpiel about the benefits to Torchline, about there being something in the water.
Scrunching his nose and pausing so she can grab her clothes if she wishes, or else leave them to decorate the beach, he shakes his head to her. "We ain't stayin', love," he tells her before those ideas can get out of control. "At least not now, not yet. Comin' back has been good for us, I ain't stubborn enough not to know it. But I ain't lettin' these islands romance me into makin' decisions that can be used against us later. We'll come an' go, 'til we know what's changed an' what it means for us. Savvy?"
bottom line, we made it out the first time still in love and half alive
The Ark gathers her clothes from where he’s left them, the motion automatic, but when she straightens there’s a flicker of surprise that crosses her face before it settles into something far less yielding, something darker that sits in the line of her mouth and the set of her shoulders. "What it means for us," she repeats, low and deliberate, the words drawn out as though she’s testing their edges, and her gaze fixes on him in a way that isn’t casual, isn’t drifting, but searching; blue gone turbulent, restless, like water pulled by something deeper than the surface would suggest. She studies him as if she might find the answer in the shape of him alone, trying to decide whether this is the same sharp instinct that has always kept him alive and ahead of everyone else, or whether it’s something else entirely, something pulled from a place she cannot reach but knows exists all the same, a place where Flora still lingers in his mind in ways that settle poorly in her chest.
"Funny," she says after a moment, her voice cooling into something controlled, though there’s nothing calm about what sits beneath it, "that didn’t seem to matter when you picked us up and moved us to King’s End," and her chin lifts slightly, stubborn and certain, the damp ends of her hair clinging against her skin as the breeze moves through them. "We didn’t wait then. Didn’t stop to figure out what it meant before we did it." There is no hesitation in her about this, no uncertainty; she sees no reason not to come back, not even to begin planning it now that they’ve returned and everything in her has settled into something that feels right again, something that fits in a way King’s End never did, and the fact that he is pulling back from it now sits wrong in a way she cannot ignore.
Her eyes narrow slightly and she can't help but wonder if Flora's little message in the stars struck deeper than he is willing to admit, if this sudden caution is less about business and more about something far more personal. The urge to reach for it is there, immediate and familiar, to tease his defenses with her magic and pull the truth from him the way she would from anything else that resisted her, but she doesn’t. Not with him. The restraint is deliberate, held in place by something that resembles respect even if it feels like it costs her something in the moment.
"Tell me that this isn’t about her."
we didn't die, but no guarantees this time, but fuck it lets do it again
Code 100% taken from the queeeeeeen herself, Sky <3
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.
