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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!
Sometime after slumber had taken him, Jack would wake. Not with the dawn nor with the sore muscles that his exploits had left him with, but with the night.
In a world of her own making, one impossible and beautiful, Safrin lay sprawled on a chaise lounge made out of clouds, silk, and tangled tree roots. Around her rose Greecian columns of alabaster that disappeared into the vastness of the night's sky, holding up nothing at all and yet offering structure to a scene that was entirely without context or definition. An infinity pool of deepest turquoise sparkled with starlight, bordered by opalescent tiles marked with small stars of terra-cotta. Plants of midnight blue and bright green sat on the floor, hiding the places where the ground dropped off into the nothingness of space. They might as well have been on a comet for how quickly they moved through the stars, and yet there was nothing more than a light breeze.
Clothed in hardly more than a slip of lace, one that wrapped around her shoulders before plunging into a deep v that closed just below her belly button, Safrin lifted her eyes from the drink in her hand before beckoning the captain to her.
As in the last dream of hers he'd entered, the captain was free to dress, appear, and move himself through her world as he pleased.
As a rule, the captain does not dream. And so when he does, it usually has something to do with Safrin, though tonight he'd not have been so surprised if he'd been tormented by boggarts in various shapes and sizes, given the events preceding sleep. But no - his eyes open and he finds himself barefoot on the shining tiles of Safrin's personal demesne, his shirt - light, linen, and half unbuttoned - billowing with the light breeze.
It's silent, something he considers both a blessing and a curse, especially when his gaze lifts to find the goddess reclining, beautful, deadly and perfect on her chaise lounge. Inhaling a breath he doesn't need but desires nonetheless, Jack's footsteps are slow and almost cautious as he circles the turquoise pool towards the starlit lady, prepared at any moment to come in range of the cosmos of her thoughts and to feel sense utterly dragged from him.
"A few days more and you'd have had me back on my knees at your shrine," he murmurs. Not that he has any doubt that he could end up on his knees before her now.
we've gone way too fast for way too long
and we were never supposed to make it half this far
"Mmm, so you say." Safrin replies doubtfully before she sits in order to partially sit up. Beckoning to her side where a glass table ringed with gold has suddenly appeared, she gestures to the goblet meant just for him. While what's inside Jack might be tempted to describe as rum, it's a good deal more than that, though likely if he were ever to describe it, he'd find himself utterly incapable.
"Normally I do so like seeing men on their knees, and yet..." Safrin's lips twist slightly as her eyes lazily appraise the man before her. Catlike, she watches him, her mind inside of his own and yet her own thoughts are as quiet and still as the surface of the pool. "Where most would find themselves..excited to find themselves here, in this place specifically, you...don't. Not in the same way." Without access to her thoughts Jack would have to judge for himself whether or not Safrin judged this to be some slight against her, though he'd find no help in the feline way she coiled herself upon the lounge.
09-02-2024, 02:47 PM (This post was last modified: 09-02-2024, 02:48 PM by Jack.)
JACK
"You sound doubtful, though I imagine you can still read my mind just fine." Raising his eyebrows, the captain continues his slow approach to the chaise where the goddess has adjusted herself, and when he does sit at last, it's a touch stiffly, as if he's unsure what to make of anything on offer or display. Still, he knows better than to outright refuse Safrin anything, and so it's with a gentle inclining of his head that he reaches for the goblet to sip at a liquid that tastes of honeyed starlight and spices he couldn't name even given a thousand years to figure them out.
Almost grimacing to hear what he certainly imagines is a slight, Jack sets the goblet down and leans his elbows on his knees. "You have a terrifyingly wonderful habit of turnin' my thoughts into mush," he reminds her with a smile that's half-crooked with a mix of amusement and a deep respect for the goddess beside him. "Repeatin' that performance with you isn't exactly exciting, I'll admit."
we've gone way too fast for way too long
and we were never supposed to make it half this far
"Of course I can." Safrin confirms with a roguish smirk. Because I know not all your threads will be so speedy.
"And yet.." Twisting slightly to face him, the lace covering her so very nearly revealing the places where her breasts turned from moon-white to dusky pink, Safrin's eyes crinkle at the corners. "Quiet as your mind is just now, there's a decided...lack of interest." Amusement, perhaps, or maybe it's something else entirely, has the corner of Safrin's lip quirking up before it's hidden behind the rim of her glass. Tilting back her head she indulges in a long sip of her drink, before licking away the honey-dark sheen of the rum left on her lips.
"You know why you're here, what part of our bargain this is, and yet...your first thought was that it could have waited." Raising a brow, the goddess chuckles. "Normally I think I'd be a touch offended by that, but with you..." Her head tilts, her galactic gaze piercing through him with the sort of far-seeing that had let her construct vast galaxies and star systems.
"Your abilities have hindered you, much as they've helped you."
"I hope you're not offended. You're as beautiful as the stories say an' then some. Loveliest thing I'll ever see in my lifetime," Jack says with another half smile, turning similarly to face the goddess given that this is perhaps the first time he's ever properly been able to sit with her and look her in the eye. This might actually be their first real conversation, now that he thinks about it.
And she sees right through him as she's always been able to do; just as Safrin might have been offended by Jack's waiting to visit her, he might have been horrified and paranoid by being unable to tell what she's thinking, but if anything, it's almost a relief. In some ways, anyway, and that same smile turns very self-deprecating as she continues. "Some might call it a kink," he agrees; and a particular one at that.
"The more I thought about it, the less I'd want to disappoint you and embarrass myself doin' this the traditional way. I imagine more than enough men have left you disappointed in this room for a hundred lifetimes."
we've gone way too fast for way too long
and we were never supposed to make it half this far
"You'll come to find this for yourself in time, but kinks apply to those who don't have the time to learn to make the most out of every sort of encounter. Then again, with your ability you're probably much closer to understanding that in the years you've already lived." Safrin chuckles.
"Lovers of all sorts have passed through this room. Some good, some bad...but it's never about the sex, in the end." It's an admission that might have been hard won with anyone else, and yet the words slip easily from Safrin's lips if only because of whose ears are hearing them. With nothing more than a single pulse of starlight in his mind, she could have Jack as hard as he'd ever been, begging to find himself between her thighs. He'd promise her anything, offer her anything, and he'd do it just as easily as he had out on the Mourn. Only it wouldn't mean anything, not to either of them. Jack's body, the words he said or didn't say, were not concepts to which he was loyal.
Where his magic had given him an advantage over others, it had left him raw in certain places where tenderness normally took root and real leverage could be found.
That didn't mean they couldn't still find some satisfactory arrangement, though.
"Three." The goddess says suddenly, leaning comfortably back against the chaise. "I want three children, not just one."
"The problem with my sort of ability is that I can also make any kink mine for a night, dependin' on the person," Jack agrees with a roll of his shoulder, feeling some of the tension start to unspool from his neck and down the length of his spine as they continue to speak, though it's a tentative peace if that. Because the captain still can't get a read on Safrin, and he doesn't know if he prefers it to the full force of the cosmos erupting into his mind all at once.
(He does prefer this, in fact, and the next time he visits Safrin at a real shrine, he'll remember as much).
Having been staring deeply into his own goblet, still sitting on the table the starlight lady had summoned, Jack almost misses her remark at first. But it doesn't take long for him to comprehend it, the captain sitting straight to glance at her over his shoulder with a raise of his eyebrows. "We agreed on one," he points out. "How am I meant to offer others for favours if you have three from me now?" It absolutely isn't a no - but that's precisely the point. What's in it for him?
You know, other than risking the wrath of a goddess.
we've gone way too fast for way too long
and we were never supposed to make it half this far
"And that's a problem?" The goddess wonders, her brow lifting. "You've never so much as properly entertained the idea of ever being able to block it all out more than you already can." He wouldn't feel naked without it, but he'd gone so long having the upper hand, the fomo of the silence is what would likely do him in. A few headaches and weird sex were a price he happily paid, in Safrin's estimation.
"Based on what you've told me, you can't even offer them at all." His infertility notwithstanding, were she in one of her moods, she'd have dared Jack to try and get it up in her presence of his own volition. Smirking coyly, Safrin lifts her goblet to her lips once more, the amount within never seeming to change regardless of how much she drank.
"Before you came to me, and I named my price." She says with a shrug that has the lace of her gown slipping from one shoulder. "Now that I've told you what I want, it's time for you to name yours."
"Not at all. As long as the other person gets off, so do I," Jack says - because who else can one be honest with if not a goddess you're afraid to fuck because it'll be the most embarrassing ten seconds of your life? (If that?) "That's the problem with this, though, I guess. I'm an egotistical man, but even I ain't prideful enough to claim I could please a goddess given how much of a mess I usually am when I see you."
Dipping his head to her - yes, touche - Jack nonetheless has been able to secure such a deal with Safrin, and it doesn't seem to be one she's adverse to either, given that the expectation has tripled in the space of just as many minutes. Shifting to face her properly at last, as if to cement this properly as more of a business meeting than anything else, the captain only has to think for a moment before his price leaves his lips.
"I'd like what I originally visited your shrine to get - the first time. My ship can fly, but only under a blanket of night. I'd like to have her whole - to fly and land at will."
we've gone way too fast for way too long
and we were never supposed to make it half this far
"I think you could do more than ten seconds." Laughing under her breath, Jack will feel the most subtle strains of thought trickling through. Approval. Agreement. Enjoyement. They're nothing more than motes of light flickering across his mental view, but then, they're having such a nice chat Safrin didn't see any point in ruining it by reducing Jack to a slobbering idiot.
"You mean when one of Torchline's former queens promised you a flying ship without speaking to me first?" Safrin raises a brow, and while her tone is a touch dismissive, amusement flickers in the starlight depths of her gaze. "Something you love, for something that I love...it's a deal." Shifting in order to set her cup down, the goddess extends her hand for the captain to shake.
Hissing out a sound that's as much laughter as shock at having someone else respond to his thoughts, Jack shakes his head to Safrin, but he doesn't disagree - especially not when she offers him some whispers of herself dampened down enough for him to understand without completely crumpling inside. "That is high praise, and I'll accept it willingly," he says, watching as she sets her cup down and unable to stop a real laugh from rumbling through his chest at the reminder of what Maeve had done once upon a time.
"The very same. At least I'm here this time to do the talkin'." And with all of his faculties and without any blood streaming from his nose or ears - everyone's winning today. "It's a deal," he agrees, hesitating for only a moment before the captain reaches across the dreamscape to shake his goddess's hand.
we've gone way too fast for way too long
and we were never supposed to make it half this far
09-02-2024, 04:36 PM (This post was last modified: 09-03-2024, 06:11 AM by Safrin.)
Safrin
For all the times Safrin has touched Jack, this is the first time that he's touched her. While it shouldn't make a difference, it does, and beneath his fingers it will feel as though he's holding a livewire. Electrified with pure potential and power, if the captain could figure out how to hold onto even an infinitesimal fraction of what now coursed through him, he could mould and shape the world as he wished. Starlight and star-bright, Safrin smiled as her fingers closed around his, drawing from him the things necessary for the lives she coveted and wished to create.
Though it lasted for no more than a few seconds, time would stretch out for the captain as if he'd been paused right at the arc of an orgasm when his muscles were alive with sensation and his body screamed with a harmony far louder than anything he might have created on his own. Every cell was set to right, every muscle soothed, every ounce of skin touched and rejuvenated. Every bone was set back into place, every pain erased.
Then, it was over.
Releasing his hand, Safrin plucks up her goblet and takes a sip.
Jack has received
Type: Light | Style: Other | Level: Mastered
Starlight Sails | Safrin has blessed The Ark to be capable of flight as well as sailing upon the ocean. She flies at twice the speed during night time and leaves a shimmer of starlight in her wake rather than ripples. She still requires wind for movement, the same as any other ship.
He feels it both within and outside of himself as their hands clasp; it's like trying to hold onto a galaxy, Jack able to sense each individual star slipping between his fingers, only for them to disappear if he tries to grasp them too tightly. All that Safrin is roars forth into the tiny fraction of all that he might ever be, freezing his breath in his lungs and arching his back despite any attempts he might make to remain still. Each second drips by as a lifetime, and gods Jack would spend all of his lifetimes here and now if only the goddess would let him. There's no pain, he's whole, he's complete--
And then it's over.
Panting softly into the quiet and airy space, the captain is left trying to flex the feeling back into his fingers, a shiver trickling its way down his spine in some leftover whisper of Safrin's touch. Existing in reality - even a dreamed reality - feels dull and hellish compared to the past few moments, and though he feels something akin to grief clench in his chest, Jack manages a roguish smile across to his goddess. "You let me know if you ever need more baby stars up in your sky," he murmurs, wiping at his cheeks (he has no idea when the tears had fallen) and knowing despite not seeing it, that another tiny star has come to join the first beside his eye.
we've gone way too fast for way too long
and we were never supposed to make it half this far
