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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!
With a twist of her ring to render herself invisible—Flora was fine standing naked before Asta in the aftermath of what had happened but she wasn't keen on strolling through Torchline that way—Flora had pressed the button on her compass, returning her back home and conveniently quite near to the Fountain. Though she couldn't be seen the queen could still be heard, and so she stifled the mingled cries that wanted to sob from the back of her throat by biting down on her lip. It was hard enough to draw blood, a fact that temporarily replaced the radiating feelings of worthlessness with a bitter irony she couldn't help but scoff at.
Dropping her bag and shoes carelessly by the fountain, Flora shrugged gingerly out of Asta's shirt. though both items would immediately become visible, given the hour and the dark skies overhead, the fountain was all but deserted.
Stepping over the marble lip and into the cool water, the queen quickly slipped entirely beneath the surface as a sob forced its way passed her blood-smeared lips. Her tears stung as she finally let them fall, and though it was dark outside, all she could see behind her closed eyelids were various shades of indigo with circles torn through that bled maroon. Surfacing, the queen removed all the carefully placed pins from her hair, before taking a deep breath and submerging herself again.
Almost deserted is not the same as deserted, as Flora - and Jack, to his chagrin - are about to find out. At this hour he's able to slink through the streets of Torchline unseen and unhindered, which is perfect for the sort of business he's been conducting and the consequences he now has to wash from his hands. He doesn't notice the pile of clothing beside the fountain as he strolls through the square towards it, and he gives no thought to the person who has just filled a flask with healing water and slips away into a sidestreet.
It's impossible not to recognise the pattern of Flora's thoughts, though.
Jack has just reached the side of the fountain and dipped his torn and bloodied knuckles beneath the cool surface of the water when her pain and rejection and upset rake across him as if she's scratching them physically against his skin. Flinching back and glancing around for the spoiled, entitled thorn in his side Queen of Torchline, when he doesn't immediately spot her, he realises she must be keeping herself purposely from view, and lets his telepathy try to pinpoint her location beneath the surface of the water.
It would be easy to walk away were it not for the uncharacteristically jagged edges to her thoughts. And so, with a groan, he perches at the edge of the fountain, lest she call down a god to smite him for ignoring her. "Whenever you're ready," he drawls.
romancing yourself is possible, narcissistic and recommended
Why it vibrates with the same resonance as years spent walking silently through the woods the closer she and Enzo came to her father's home, she didn't know, but amidst the memories of her recent encounter with Asta were bright green leaves that shivered with a very similar sort of paternal rejection. It cast her thoughts in shadows of burnt gold that served only to make ugly the blues and bruised purples of her ego as well as her boy.
Her lungs ached from holding her breath, but so long as there was air in them capable of screaming, she'd wait. Long ago she'd learned that screaming underwater wasn't as satisfying as books made it seem, and so, opening in her eyes in the vain hopes that the healing waters would stop her tears, she saw him.
The ripples of the water made him hazy, but Jack's figure was one she knew quite well by now, and had she not known what he was capable of, she might have tried to swim silently away without her noticing. But if he was there, then he knew she was too.
Surfacing, the water around her a muted pink as the water went to work on her wounds, Flora looked away from the captain even knowing he still couldn't see her. "Go away, Jack." Go away or I'll give you a headache the likes of which not even Dahlia could match, she thinks hotly, before tendrils of doubt wormed their way up her spine; she'd failed at what she'd set out to do with Asta, and now the last thing she needed was to have Jack laughing at her inflated sense of confidence rather than just tolerating it.
"If that's what you really want," Jack says with a shrug of his shoulders, and he's already rising to his feet from the side of the fountain as if her clipped command is all the permission he needs to get the hell out of dodge. It's only the dark roots of doubt that have begun to grow in her thoughts that have him turning to glance over his shoulder at the place where she should be, and though that isn't enough in itself to bring him to a halt, the good amount of pink in the water certainly does.
In the torchlight it looks darker than it otherwise might, and the captain turns to linger at the edge of the fountain, one hand pressed to the stone as he tries to track the ripples in the water and marry them up to Flora's location. "Did someone put a hand on you, love?" he wonders, and though his expression remains one of patience and quiet, the stirring of the air around him and the sharp, dangerous glint to his eyes gives the impression that he's feeling anything but.
romancing yourself is possible, narcissistic and recommended
As Jack goes to leave, he'll be treated to a firework display of both crippling grief as well as relief; starbursts of deepest indigo mingling with soft greens that leave behind ugly afterimages that immediately fray and dissolve into thoughts drenched in sticky maroon. The very last thing the queen needed was to have another man pulling her close and then pushing her away because they couldn't handle their side of things. Koa had done it, Jack had done, and now Asta had.
Pinpointing the queen wouldn't be terribly difficult given he was already in the right area; the ripples of the fountain broke strangely where she was leaning against the marble, concentrated pink shimmered out from one distinct patch of water, and if the captain wanted to be really clever, shadow and light would reveal her easily enough.
Clenching her teeth together hard enough for her to hear them whining, the tears that track down her cheeks feel just as sharp as Asta's teeth had and it makes her gasp sharply as her breath hitches painfully in her throat. "It doesn't matter. It's fine, that's what the water is for."
Flora had said she'd give him a headache the likes of which would make Dahlia seem like sailing on cool, calm seas, and for the first time Jack is under the impression that she's very serious about it. Visibly wincing at the onslaught of thoughts and images that try to fight for dominance in his mind, he's too distracted, alas, to use the shadows playing across the marble to spot Flora's silhouette, focusing instead on the pink that continues to stain the water.
"Flora," Jack says in a low voice, "you know I ain't gonna play kiss-chase with you over bein' fine. I don't even need a name - you just think of his face an' I'll do the rest." Such is the joy of her knowing about his magic. In the meantime, the captain hops back up onto the side of the fountain and turns to face the Doubletake, even if it leaves his legs and feet submerged in the water. "How bad is it?"
romancing yourself is possible, narcissistic and recommended
"Don't you dare." And while Flora couldn't not think of the butcher's face at the mere mention of him, what she could do was swamp the image with every unfiltered ounce of pain and rejection and youthful resentment she could muster. She thought intimately about the tears that burned the back of her eyes, the way she wanted to wade out into the sea and swim until her limbs were too tired to bring her back, the way she'd seen enough blood today that what the fuck was a bit more.
Glancing over her shoulder as she draws her knees up to her chest, Flora can't really answer the captain's question given she can't see herself either. With a resigned sigh, she twists the ring on her finger and shivers into view only a foot or so away from him. Smears of blood still stubbornly clung to her cheeks, but most of the bruises were already fading the longer she sat in the water. A few still remained across her throat, though the darkest ones were around her hips and thighs. Sitting as she was the bites on the insides of her legs were still hidden, though the mess that was her shoulder was clear enough. One might have been tempted to think she'd been attacked by a small shark with hands based on her injuries.
Flicking her eyes up at him, her mascara smeared in dark streaks that had been broken by tears, sweat, and blood, she shrugs, pulling at her knees and moving to rest her chin on them before rethinking it with a wince. "It's nothing the fountain can't handle." She said in a small voice, her eyes falling guiltily away.
Now that's surprising. Enough that Jack's eyebrows raise a fraction before Flora tries to obliterate his mind via psychological warfare, and the captain is grimacing and resisting the urge to swat some of the healing water at where he thinks she's sitting, if for no other reason than to break her train of thought. "Fine. Fine." He growls. For now, anyway, until he can learn more and make whatever judgements he pleases from the information.
Rubbing at his forehead as Flora twists the ring on her finger and reappears, the captain is left gazing over the Doubletake with a flat gaze that sees much more than it lets on, even without telepathy. He's seen the sorts of bruises on the queen's throat in brothels all over Torchline, seen the blood and tears and the empty look in the eyes of prostitutes too poor to stop plying their trade but without much left to give until someone choked them a little too long, a little too hard.
To see them on Flora is something else, and Jack doesn't quite know what to do with the ball of something hot and prickly that awakens in the pit of his stomach. "I'm sure," he says of her injuries, nodding for her to sit more fully in the fountain even as he starts to unbutton his shirt. "We'll wait, then. An' you can tell me what happened."
romancing yourself is possible, narcissistic and recommended
07-31-2024, 02:40 PM (This post was last modified: 07-31-2024, 02:43 PM by Flora.)
marked me like a bloodstain
Nodding, the queen walks her feet forward slightly in order to shift her hips so that the water can cover her shoulders. Lifting her eyes to see the captain unbuttoning his shirt, Flora stills, her muscles tensing as spears of ice shoot through her thoughts. "I don't—" Want your shirt? Want you to touch me? Want you anywhere near me? Not knowing how to finish, instead, Flora just hugs her knees all the closer against her chest hoping the friction of her legs would help remove the blood from her belly and breasts before he could see.
"It was...just a miscommunication." She murmurs dully, clenching her teeth together against the tears that seem to want to flow from somewhere at the base of her spine. Her body cramps painfully as she holds it all back; tries to hold it together if only because mind reader mcgee would likely just make things worse for her by holding this all over her head if she let the cracks fracture anymore. Already they were far too large, letting Jack see too much.
Jack's fingers pause with his shirt half unbuttoned, and he might have argued further were it not for the fact that he knows well that Flora can literally become invisible at the twist of a ring. And so instead, he heaves a deep sigh and glances around for a small bench what he estimates to be about thirty feet away. "A'right," he says gruffly, turning to clamber back out of the fountain and plodding away to the seating area in his wet boots.
Once the Doubletake's thoughts are suitably muted by distance, Jack slouches onto the bench and pats his pockets for his cigarettes. "If you want one," he tells her, "you're gonna have to come and get it yourself." Sparking up and drawing in a deep, steadying lungful of smoke, Jack stretches back on the bench. "What kind of miscommunication?"
romancing yourself is possible, narcissistic and recommended
Not having access to his thoughts, as Jack turns to leave Flora feels a bright arch of pain streak across one of her knees where her nails have sliced into the skin. Blinking in surprise, especially after the evening she'd had, she can't deny the logic her hands had likely been striving for: blood had kept Asta close, why shouldn't it also work on Jack? Wiping away at the skin as the fountain did its work, Flora glances up to see Jack taking a seat, and it only dawns on her belatedly that he hadn't left. He'd just given her exactly the amount of space she needed.
Knowing it couldn't be genuine kindness of the captain's part—was the bench 29 feet away then?—Flora eyes the captain a touch distrustfully before she rolls her eyes. "What, you couldn't have offered before you walked over there?" She wonders, her smile forced but painless.
Looking down at her knees, Flora hazards a glance toward the captain before surreptitiously letting one of her thighs fall open ever so slightly that she might assess the remaining damage. The wound had stopped healing and now the puncture marks were all but closed. In a few more minutes they'd be gone completely. "Just...uhm.." Go on, Flora, what was the miscommunication? Frowning, it not being the sort of thing she could say without unfairly smearing Asta's name in the process, the queen lifts her eyes up toward the stars and exhales. "Just one of those times where what you ordered on the menu wasn't exactly what you got." Had Jack still been in her mind, if the bench really wasn't 30ft away, he'd no doubt notice the way the landscape of Flora's mind shifted, tricking itself. When she defended Asta her edges softened, the justifications of what he'd done building up layer by layer until nothing was sharp anymore. It was only when she thought about the way it had all made her feel that the illusion fell away.
"And let you drop it into the fountain? I ain't wastin' a smoke on that," Jack drawls in return, smirking around his cigarette. If he'd still been privy to her thoughts - which he isn't, Flora, and isn't that something - he might have shouted that he was the right distance away for her truth ring to chew over. Ah, well.
Flicking some of the ash away from the smoke and following her gaze up towards the stars, Jack lets his eyes shut as if focusing on her words might somehow give them the extra context he's missing. "Looks like whatever you ordered took some pretty good bites outta you instead," he remarks, though of course he no longer knows where to dig deeper and what to sift through.
"So you're... what? Gonna heal up in here an' skip home, no harm done?" Because the state of her suggests very much otherwise.
romancing yourself is possible, narcissistic and recommended
"...yep." The queen agrees, her tone uncharacteristically flat and her answer uncharacteristically short.
Moving toward the edge of the fountain, Flora twists her ring so that her exit might be hidden from the captain's eyes. Only once she's wrapped herself in Asta's shirt—and gods lets not even thinking about the reasons for preferring that over Jack's—the queen reappears. The butcher was tall enough that even one of his casual shirts came down to the middle of her thigh, such that as she strolled over toward the captain she was likely more covered than she'd normally be, and as she'd noted before, the red and white flower pattern hid the bloodstains quite well.
Eyeing the cigarette between his lips rather than whatever fresh one he might have offered her, Flora sat on the bench, her posture unusually good. "Something like that." The queen agrees, glancing at the captain over her shoulder, her eyes assessing him briefly before looking away.
"Right." Taking another long drag from his cigarette and rolling his eyes to see Flora disappear out of the fountain as if he'd not been literally inside her any number of times, the captain huffs out a breath to watch her ghost towards his side, ramrod straight, like she's got something to prove. She only has to eye his cigarette once before he's taking it from between his lips and offering it out to her - my queen - though as she sits beside him and offers him precisely nothing, he can't help but raise his eyebrows.
Considering her for a long few moments, eventually Jack sits up, reaching out to tug at the collar of her (clearly borrowed) shirt as if to check that the wound on her shoulder has absolutely healed. Only once he's satisfied does he release the fabric, though his blue eyes never leave her face. "I don't like these thoughts on you," he mutters. Not these ones, because she's not really giving him much to work with, but the thorny mess of feeling he'd walked headlong into when he'd found her.
"They belong on other people, not on you."
romancing yourself is possible, narcissistic and recommended
