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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!
"She's the sunrise and sunset, and the stars that come out at night. What I am doesn't even come close." It's said frankly, quietly, the words an honest admission in the face of his meeting with the goddess. And after that silence descends upon them, but of course it isn't true silence - it never is, with Jack. The captain closes his eyes and waits for the wounds scraping against the inside of his skull to feel less raw, less vibrant, though as Flora's thoughts - artfully dampened, it's true - drift through to him, he can't hold his tongue for good.
"Is it not enough, just to be important to me?" he asks, his voice still rough and his eyes in his lap. His fingers work slowly, attempting to get the feeling back, because that will go a long way towards being able to get to his feet, he thinks. "I told you what I can do - you're one of only two people in the world who know. I'm here with you - I could've asked you to leave while I spoke with Safrin, but I didn't. You've seen me in ways other people never have, never will." Is that not enough? Does it have to be love in capital letters in neon lights?
As for his tasks, he snorts and shrugs his agreement. "A little death, a little life. Not much," he mutters.
Is that what Safrin might have offered Flora, had the tables been turned? Not just someone willing not dote on her, not even Jack, but instead the ability to be satisfied with what she already had? Feeling her stomach tense again, Flora bites at the inside of her lip, silently commanding her tears to remain as thorns biting the back of her eyes rather than streaming down her cheeks. "Immortality makes it different." She says softly, her eyes not daring to look up at him, merely flinching toward the edge of the blanket and the back to her own hands.
"I'm one of two now..but there were others before, and..." Swallowing, she feels heat roar across her cheeks in an uncomfortable flush. "..there will be others again." What did it mean to be important to someone who was immortal? To be just a footnote in an eternal story? A sentence that would be her forever but which would eventually just blur away and be forgotten by him?
"I'm here with you." Flora corrects, her voice tightening even as it remained small and hurt. "Because you needed me to call her down, and to pick you back up again." Raising her gaze, her aqua eyes threatening tears like a stormcloud fit to burst on the horizon, the queen just shrugs. Never will? Not likely for someone who was immortal. Anything Flora had meant to Jack someone else would come along and replicate or improve upon. That's what happened on a long enough timeline.
"A little death, a little life." The queen repeats hollowly; no big deal.
"Does it?" Jack's brow furrows, and he slumps off his knees to sit hunched on the starlit hill, giving his legs and feet a chance to get some feeling back. "You'd dismiss a good thing 'cause it'll last forever for one person? Like it ain't worth it if it doesn't have an expiry date?" Weird flex but okay, he thinks, but wisely does not say. Reaching up to rub at his face with one dark sleeve, the blood that hasn't already tried is wiped away, and the captain takes what feels like his first deep, clear breath in hours.
"Nothin' is stoppin' you from doin' the same thing I did." Yes, yes, he knows she's made it clear that it isn't for her - Flora's expression screamed it long before her inner thoughts did - but then again, she's the one standing before a tidal wave of grief that, in Jack's mind, simply doesn't need to be there. "And I didn't need you here after." Not in the life-or-death sense. Jack would have perhaps keeled over here, passed out for a long while, awoken sick and exposed to the elements. But he'd have lived, most likely. "I wanted you here."
08-21-2024, 10:11 AM (This post was last modified: 08-21-2024, 10:12 AM by Flora.)
i could be the reason you can't sleep at night
"A good thing?" Flora wonders, not even bothering to try and articulate the intimacy that came with mortality, and instead biting hard at the inside of her cheek and trying not to scoff. It has several of those too-spread-out lanterns in her mind dousing as a cold breeze wafts through, spilling oil all over the floor of her thoughts.
Barking out a cold laugh, Flora swallows thickly as she draws one of her legs up against her chest and wraps her arm around her shin, her chin on her knee. "Except for the fact I'm not an idiot. Even without being properly beholden to a goddess, living forever?" Her expression crumples even further. "You're going to watch everyone you care about die, even if it isn't tragic. You'll see war after war after war, having to watch all of us mortals rush around trying to save ourselves, and you'll just shrug, having seen it all before. You'll sail the same coastlines in the same sea. You'll hear the same thoughts, see the same tired stories play out." She gives him a pointed look before having to turn away lest she reach out to strangle him for being so stupid.
"Why?" Tightening her grip against her shin as her stomach churned and clenched again, Flora forced her eyes to meet his. She could guess why; he knew he was going to be a mess, and who better to bundle him up before the walk home than someone who wouldn't shy away from a little blood, who'd understand why Safrin's presence had fucked him up the way it did, and who was around him often enough not to arouse suspicion.
It's like they're watching each other from two sides of a bridge, Jack thinks, shouting across it such that their meaning and their points are lost in the distance. Because for all that he can hear the things Flora says and the things she doesn't, can feel the intimate twisting of her heartstrings, the yawning terror of watching death and destruction marching on into the endless night... Jack doesn't understand it. Can't understand it, perhaps, having been forged from a different sort of metal than the warm, molten sunshine that makes up Flora's being.
"She said immortal. She didn't say invincible," he points out quietly, shrugging his shoulders. "You might get lucky - I might get stabbed in the back the week after I finish the quest, and it'll all have been for nothing. Besides," and it's a dangerous line to walk with Flora in particular, but Jack does it anyway, "if mortality is somethin' to be so coveted, no one would ever try an' cheat death." No messages from the beyond, no meetings with departed loved ones, no rolling the dice for more time, as had happened with so many people in Caido.
As for the same tired stories, he doesn't try to articulate that. It isn't something he believes she can understand, never having let another person's mind blur into her own like a watercolour. Besides, suddenly she's asking him why, and he gently frowns, like it should be obvious. "Yours is my favourite head to be in," he tells her, perhaps a little more honestly than he ought to. Flora is comfortable and unexpected, kind and steel-sharp and vibrant. Fireworks, he'd once said, and that hasn't changed.
Gritting his teeth and shifting to try to get his knees beneath him, it's a long way to get himself upright, but Jack no longer feels as though he's going to throw up about it. Small mercies.
08-21-2024, 10:45 AM (This post was last modified: 08-21-2024, 10:46 AM by Flora.)
i could be the reason you can't sleep at night
Flora only rolls her eyes at that, and while to anyone else it might have looked petulant, if anything the Doubletake thinks Jack is being too humble. Immortality was different than invincibility, sure, but if anyone could keep themselves from death's door, there's no one she'd bet on before Jack. Giving him a look, the idea of him being stabbed both devastating as it was amusing, Flora can only rub her thumb along the top of her knee. "I guess...I just never knew it was what you wanted." She says, a touch lamely, her shoulders rising and falling. Of all the things she'd have guessed, living forever probably wouldn't have even been in her top 5 if she was asked what secret prize was in Jack's heart of hearts.
Going quite still at his answer, Flora's eyes widen a fraction before she's desperately blinking tears away. Her ring remains cool on her finger and that only has her gnawing against the inside of her cheek all the more aggressively to try and pull her mind from the too-sharp pain behind her eyes. "Don't." She whispers in a voice already beginning to fray. Yes, she'd asked him why, but gods he didn't have to say it like that. Not in that voice, not don't make me fall in love with you, Jack when she was already upset.
Watching his legs as he fumbled to stand, Flora remained where she was for a moment longer. Feeling like she should reach for him, to tell him to stay or to suggest they go to the House of Midnight instead of the Ark, but she can't think what the point would be. It still all feels immensely hollow now, like a proposed summer romance with someone already planning on leaving. A good time he'd called it, but what was supposed to be good about it, when she'd inevitably die or out-age him? When everything they could ever do together he'd just do again with someone else, decades or millennia after her?
Shakily standing herself, rather than turning to Jack, Flora reaches for one of the candles and tilts it, using the melted wax to draw little stars and crescent moons across the shrine.
"Yeah? What'd you expect me to want? To be King of Caido, or learn how to teleport, or kill with a thought?" Grand things, sure, useful, dangerous, but none of them Jack, not really. "There's nothin' more precious than time. Havin' more time is always worth it." Worth the loss, because up until Flora had swanned closer to him a few seasons before, who had there been, and what did it matter? "Besides, I bet I ain't the first to ask for this. How'd you know there's not a whole immortal council out there, lookin' for someone to shake things up?"
A quaint thought, and one that occupies him nicely while he persuades his feet to keep him standing, by which time Flora's hurt seizes through his telepathy and captures him wholly. Forcing a breath in and out, he shakes his head. You asked he might have said, but they've both made their points enough times today for it to be clear that they aren't, either of them, going to land on understanding or compromise.
"Things end all the time," he nevertheless points out as she paints the deep pink of a summer fling across his thoughts. "People don't even have to outlive each other. They fall out of love, or find somethin' better - or worse. Immortality ain't anythin' to do with it."
Waiting for Flora to be finished with her decorations, only then does Jack risk a few wobbly steps, growing in strength and confidence as he picks his way down the hill. That's not to say that a strong breeze won't blow him over, still, but it's better than before.
Wrinkling her nose, Flora shakes her head. Power, definitely. Killing with a thought? Sure. Being king? lmao never. But control over the seas? Having a ship that could sail through the skies anytime he wanted, disappear at the snap of his fingers? Telepathy that was easier to control, more vast and stronger?
Snorting, Flora flicks her eyes up and though her lips don't actually move, for a moment there's at least a breath of levity in her expression. "There is. All the demigods that you love interacting with so much." She says with another little roll of her eyes. Those were the immortals he now got to go toe and toe with and while they'd age, they'd stay just as hard to kill.
"It just feels...different." Stubbornly said, perhaps later Flora would realize that having grown up with immortal parents and having heard often enough about how if one ever lost their immortality the other would foresake their own as well, the Doubletake just had it ingrained in her that a lifetime wasn't supposed to be all enough. It was all or nothing; forever in Caido, or reunited in Mort's realm.
Turning, she watches the captain's first wobbly steps, thinking he looked not unlike a fawn trying to stumble away from its mother. The thought should have made her smile, but instead it only widened the cavern of despair that tugged at her boots, encouraging her to throw herself into it. Grabbing her bag and trotting a few steps to catch up to him, Flora reluctantly wraps her arm around his waist to try and hold him slightly more steady.
08-21-2024, 11:17 AM (This post was last modified: 08-21-2024, 11:18 AM by Jack.)
i want to taste you again
Raising his eyebrows at the unspoken list, Flora isn't the only one able to allow herself a little levity at the situation. "Good ideas - some I hadn't even considered," he admits with a gentle bow of his head. "That's the thing, though - I can still have all that, now I've got time to play with it." Providing, of course, he can complete his tasks before he grows old and decrepit. Jack doesn't intend to age a year more than he has now, luckily, and so his aim is to stand in front of Safrin before Deepfrost and call it done.
Scoffing - demigods, indeed - Jack had been assuming, perhaps foolishly, that there were others out there who had committed themselves to the deities of the world to remain as a snapshot in time. Those who had already seen wars upon wars, who strolled through the world as ancient Attuned or ageless Accepted. Jack hasn't come across any yet, not as far as his telepathy can tell, but that doesn't mean they couldn't exist.
He doesn't ask why it feels different - he isn't sure Flora would even be able to say, right now - but the captain does glance around as her arm settles around his middle, fastening her to his side. Relaxing despite himself and letting his own arm land about her shoulders, Jack gives her a grateful nod. "Thanks. It's a long way to shore."
"So that'll just be you, then? Forever ageless on the Ark, with your split ends and a crew that never stays the same?" It's meant to be a joke, some pathetic attempt to shove them back towards normalcy, but instead it only has Flora's fingers wrapping around her stomach as a cold wave rocks through her. Alone. Jack would be alone. If she'd thought he was a grumpy cunt now for having lost a few friends in the war, how was he going to manage constantly having to reforge relationships with Torchline's leaders each and every time they turned over? The idea of him in his same old cabin, the boards of the Ark replaced and then replaced again, his maps all but memorized and reduced to decorations, Flora realized that perhaps a good deal of her sudden sadness wasn't for her, but for him.
Gods, it's comfortable being next to him, unfairly so. What it said about Flora that she was so willing to heel at his side after each and every crisis he thrust upon her, she didn't know, having lost all objectivity when it came to Jack long ago. "Of course." She mumbles, shifting her bag ever so slightly. "You know, if...any part of your quest requires just getting things, I have a guy who does all of mine." Flora offers in an uncertain voice, her eyes on the blue-black grasses swaying before them.
"Don't." Now it's Jack's turn, but in fairness, the word that falls from his lips doesn't hold the same tragic sadness as it had when Flora had spoken. Jack says it more like a gentle warning - for her as much as for him, not to go swanning off down some fork in the road he has no interest in entertaining. Because for all of the woe is mes and how sad I'll bes that the Doubletake envisions, Jack and his ambition is thrilled in the true sense of the word to be present for all that Caido will unfold in the future. Providing, again, that he isn't knifed in the ribs.
"Oh?" He smirks at that, unable to help himself as he fully imagines the guy Flora has to do her dirty work. (Sometimes literal dirty work, he thinks). And he's never been more proud of her. "Some element of gettin' things, yeah. Water from Frey's Breath, as it happens. Memory mud. I've gotta kill a mirage crab and a boggart too, whatever that is." The rest, perhaps wisely, he keeps to himself.
Rather abruptly the Doubletake stiffens as she's warned, her gaze flitting over his side profile for a moment as she swallows and nods. Later, then. Flora always did her best and most tragic storytelling when she was alone in her bed, anyway.
Softly rolling her eyes, the queen nods. "It was easier to get him to do things when he was trying to bang my mom, but.." Shrugging, the queen can only smile ever so slightly. Doing the grunt work to help complete quests would actually be a fairly good business, especially if you already had a stockpile of the sorts of things normally required: wickerwoman sap, water from Frey's breath, mud from apopo, etc. "He's off getting me a few things right now, from here, actually." That said, Flora still wasn't inclined to stop and pick up any unicorn shit even if the pair happened to walk right by some.
"Oh? I need some too for my thing. I could bring you some back, if.." Yes, Flora wanted Jack to say he wanted to go with her, now shut up about it. "That doesn't sound hard at all. Is that it?" As far as immortality went, it sounded like Safrin was just getting the sorts of things you'd need to make a weird detox wrap.
Scoffing - because it just gets better - Jack nods as if to say he can appreciate her contact's reluctance to do things now that he's not got a chance of getting his dick wet. "Be that as it may, I feel like it'll come across better if I get these things with my own two hands." He's got a feeling that whilst Safrin might applaud ingenuity, she might just as easily take offence to laziness in response to the things she's asked.
But the if of it has him inclining his head in a nod, despite the reasons behind Flora's offer being all too clear to both of them. "Why not?" he says breezily, managing a smirk. "You've already dragged me most of the way around Caido - what's a few other places?"
It does sound easy, though - suspiciously so, and Jack knows it. Gazing out at the swaying grasses and the twinkling sea he knows lays beyond, he shakes his head. "No, it isn't. You're better off not knowin' what else I have to do. So don't ask again, because I'll tell you, and you'll be upset." And the gods know that Flora's emotions have done enough see-sawing for one night.
"You're probably right. No sense in fucking around and finding out when your deepest darkest desire is on the line." Flora says dryly, kicking out at a small clump of void daisies with a frown.
"I mean, it's the same place, but if you insist." Which, he hadn't, but she hoped he'd just let her have this.
Before he can say it Flora's lips are parting to ask him to elaborate before he cuts her off. Nearly tripping over her own feet as she peers at him over her shoulder, her hand tightens around him for balance as an icy current sloshes in her belly. Swallowing down her immediate reaction—I want to know—instead Flora tries to breathe through the panic that's rising like a tide in the back of her throat. "Am I going to find out?" If he had to start a cult or kill someone in her family inevitably it'd come back to her, and if that was to be the case, she'd much rather hear it from his own lips.
