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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!
i'd wipe the dirt off your name with the shirt off my back
Torchline's queen was wasted. Like, proper white-girl, lost her shoes on the dance floor, requested the same song 3 times from the DJ, had a breakdown in the bathroom, and solved someone's relationship problem in the next breath kind of wasted.
But let me explain how we got here.
After leaving the Northaven, Flora had planned on going home, taking a long and hot enough shower to have her skin scalding wherein she could figure out what she was going to tell Jack. Despite his recent declaration of love, Flora knew that one of the things the captain liked about her most was what a bright and remarkable place her mind was, followed by the fact that she was not only strong but driven. After so many failures in various KQs leading right up to her murder, having to fess up that ha ha both Sunjata and my mom are/were infected and I didn't notice and also I was just kidnapped, not to mention that rather than being queen she'd much rather be invisible, Flora had never felt so unlovable as she did stepping out of the shower and gazing at herself as she tugged on a black tank top and a pair of Jack's sweatpants. Topping the outfit off with a floral sweater that absolutely didn't match, she'd decided to stop by her bar just for a quick something to take the edge off, so that when she swanned aboard the Ark Jack would be happy to see her, rather than overwhelmed and annoyed by the state of her mind.
In an effort to hasten her return to the captain, the queen had drank too much too fast, such that the bar quickly began to spin around her, shaking out the thoughts she'd tried to jam beneath the rugs and various closets in her mind. So when some seedy nobody sauntered up to Flora offering a tablet of something that he assured her would have the room returning to a fixed position and would even help her sleep wouldn't you know, the queen agreed almost instantly, hardly noticing the way his fingers were curling around her hip given how numb and faraway her body felt.
That's the thing about seedy nobodies, isn't it? Nobody sees them coming, and nobody misses them when they're gone. Such will be the case with this one (not exactly, the man has a long-suffering wife and a handful of kids at home, but they can miss him on their own time) as Jack haunts the doorway of The Hanged Man and makes a beeline for the bar, where the stranger's hands are getting real grabby with the Queen of Torchline.
Speaking of Flora, her thoughts are a mad and dizzying thicket of snarling thought and riotous emotion, painting the walls of her mind black with a greasy luminescence that has Jack wanting to metaphorically wipe it off his hands. Knowing nothing of what has happened - and able to glean even less thanks to the state of the Doubletake - the captain is left with only crumbs of a picture forming in his mind. They scatter amid the frustration, the worry (and yes, the fear) that has mounted in the hours since Flora hadn't returned to The Ark, turning sharp with an emotion Jack can settle in much more comfortably: fury.
"Mind if I cut in?" he grates, his own fingers peeling the man's grip away from the Doubletake, his free hand a guiding presence against the stranger's other side that has him hitching in a sudden intake of breath. Only when Jack ushers him away - and tucks the bloody knife Flora had made such fun of away in his pocket - does the reason behind his response become clear, but the captain has long stopped caring as he staggers away.
i'd wipe the dirt off your name with the shirt off my back
"Babe!" The sound of Jack's voice has motes of light dancing through Flora's thoughts, briefly illuminating the dark gouges that cut cleanly through right down to the bedrock of her mind. "I was just on my way to see you." she purrs, blinking slowly as if trying to push the sluggish fog from her thoughts. Her hand reaches for him, fingers grazing his arm with the kind of clumsy affection that only comes with (way) too much liquor. "I just needed... y’know, to feel better first. And that guy—" Her gaze drifts back toward the door, though the stranger is long gone by now, leaving only a faint trail of blood that Flora entirely misses. Puckering out her lower lip, she turns her aqua stare back to the captain. "Oh but...he said he could make the room stop spinning." She protests weakly before the furious blue of Jack's eyes succeeds in fixing the room in place, if only temporarily.
Flora's body sways slightly as she tries to straighten up from where the stranger had been pinning her against the bar, though it’s less effective than she’d like. "Hey everybody, look! It's my boyfriend!" The Doubletake calls out to the bar at large, her voice bright with golden delight; while not a single godsdamn person at this hour cares, given who it is making the announcement (and who it's about), there are a few drinks raised in recognition of Jack's arrival.
Looping her arms sloppily around the captain's neck, even as she carelessly slouches against him, her fingers curl tightly against his collar as if he was the only thing tethering her to solid ground; the only thing keeping her from being whisked away again. "You look so hot when you do that thing with your eyebrows." She sings. That thing being the unimpressed scowl that has his dark brows nearly bordering the blue of his eyes and making them appear all the sharper for it.
Flora's babe! my boyfriend! and the apparent knowledge that she'd needed to get wasted to feel better before coming to see him absolutely have Jack doing that thing with his eyebrows. And while he gives a cursory glance over his shoulder that has many of those same patrons lowering their tankards (and their gazes), his focus soon swings back to Flora, reeking of liquor and with her arms snaking around his neck in a way that has him wanting to shrug her off the same way he would a jacket.
A muscle feathers ever so slightly in his jaw as he fights to bring any of her thoughts into focus, and with the fog clearing, even temporarily, and his presence sending motes of light scattering through Flora's mind, Jack sees it. Things are not how he left them. Flora is not how he left her.
One arm curls around her waist to draw her flush against him, even if the steel in his spine makes him much more of a rigid pillar than anything warm or malleable. The other hand, the one lightly speckled with blood, sneaks up to grasp her jaw, forcing her to hold his stare. "What happened to you?" he asks slowly, the words as soft and sinister as a shark appearing in the gloom of the deep ocean.
i'd wipe the dirt off your name with the shirt off my back
Indeed, Flora is not how he left her. Where previously the woods that sprawled through the landscape of her mind had roots that stretched far down into the earth, now they lay uprooted and broken, their pulp drenched in violet. The greenery that once bloomed at the merest glance from the captain was now tangled and frost-touched, shrinking away from him even as the queen sank warmly against him.
"I drank too fast." Flora admits with a laugh, and while she does her best to hold his gaze, the room begins to spin again. "But it's no problem." Emphatically said, if her words had begun to slur together it wasn't something she could help at this point. "mm." Blinking hard, her glazed stare revolving back to the blue of Jack's eyes, Flora leans forward jerkily. In her mind the kiss she placed against his mouth was flirtatious and inviting, the sort of thing he'd want to savour. In reality her lips were sticky with something that tasted of cinnamon and her tongue was far too belligerent to be anything but messy. Still, it had heat melting away a bit of the ice that lingered in the remaining thickets of her thoughts. By no means did it heal them, but with the coating of frost gone the damage was far more readily apparent than it had been moments before.
"I want you," she whispers, the alcohol of course making this seem like a perfectly obvious next step. "Its been way too long. Come into the back with me."
"No - it's not the booze," Jack says; it's very obvious to him (and likely to anyone who sticks around Flora for more than a few minutes), but he feels as though she absolutely needs to hear it as well. Before he can get a good look at the ruined wasteland of her mind - before he can look upon the wreckage properly, and let the fuse on his temper ignite - her sticky lips are upon his and he has to practically peel her away to escape it.
"Come back to my place," he fires back, the redirect as necessary as his need to get her out of The Hanged Man and the plethora of other, distracting minds. "And tell me where you were all evenin', while you're at it? I wrote you." About four times, not that he's counting, but either way Flora hadn't answered. And he knows it's due to more than just drinking too fast.
i'd wipe the dirt off your name with the shirt off my back
"But there's a couch right back there," Flora protests. "Not like you haven't fucked me up against far less than that before." The words are meant to be a whisper, but of course the queen has lost hold of far more than just her ability to manage the volume of her voice such that more than a few looks are tossed toward captain and queen before hastily returning back to their tables.
Mention of where she'd been has the queen's mind locking down, and while Jack's abilities make Flora's defences look laughable, it's probably the first time that he'll have ever felt her willingly try to deceive him (revivify feathers on an icy beach notwithstanding). "shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh." Trying to force one hand between them as if she might be able to grab Jack's cock and lead him into the Thieves Guild by it, Flora wrinkles her nose. "I was just out and my parchment..." Frowning, despite the shields she'd shakily erected, Flora all but wheels out part of the answer to where she'd been on a golden platter. "..I..." She didn't know, because she'd been asleep. All she could figure was that her parchment and her compass were gone. Before the face of whomever had stolen them could be revealed, the Doubletake groped awkwardly at Jack's crotch before trying to plant another sultry sticky kiss on his lips.
"Babe it's fine okay? Toooooooooootally fine. I'm fine and you're fine, and.."
Luckily for Flora, Jack has never had any shame when it comes to the nature and frequency of his sexcapades; the only reason he even remotely cares about her volume is because the guild HQ is meant to be, you know, not all that well advertised, and she's succeeding spectacularly in outing herself as a lady with a secret room in her bar right now. Before he can speak, he's silenced again, this time by an obnoxious hiss from the Doubletake and walls slamming down around her mind, which, yes, is a first since they've actively been together.
"Right," he says stiffly, his arm curling more tightly around her even as he turns them to simultaneously evade her kiss and the swatting at his crotch, and to position them more towards the door. "I'm takin' you home. We'll talk more when you're sober and you can explain things to me better."
i'd wipe the dirt off your name with the shirt off my back
"There's nothing to talk abouuuttttt." Flora mewls, undeterred by the way Jack evades her advances because she's already forgotten about them. How much of this her mind is actively recording is anyone's guess, but smart money would be to bet on none of it. "And until then, we can have sex." The queen agrees delightedly, and as the captain steers her toward the door, Flora throws a hand over one shoulder to wave a warm and adoring goodbye to those remaining in the Hanged Man. "Byeeeeee, love you allllll." She sings, before nearly tripping over her own feet and having to clutch at Jack to keep herself upright. "Oopsy."
The night air hits Flora like a punch, the salty weight of it creating an immediate tether to the way the room inside the houseboat had smelled when her mother had called her from sleep, threatening to teleport her back to that moment. Tensing all over without quite realizing why, the queen felt her mouth suddenly fill with saliva as her stomach began to heave. "I'm going to be sick—" She has time to hiss, before shoving Jack to the side and falling to her knees. The sounds of her mother's screams and her father's snarls blare in her ears such that the sound of her own vomit hardly registers as her drunken mind tries to reassure her that she isn't going to suffocate from lack of oxygen the way it feels like she is.
Feeling like every designated driver ever, Jack does not offer his farewells to the rest of the bar, following the light trail of blood out through the doorway and onto the sandy path. With Flora all but wrapped around him, the salty breeze does for the captain all the things it doesn't for the Doubletake, and it's only as her thoughts take on an overwhelmingly putrid hue that he's already releasing her as she pushes him away.
"Gods, love," he hisses, raking both hands back through his hair and tempering what feels like every instinctive part of him that wants to leave her right there to sleep it off. Instead - and he wants brownie points for this, Flora - he leans down until he's convinced she's breathing, not choking, and no longer introducing the sand to the contents of her stomach, and scoops her up into his arms.
"Count to a hundred," he mutters, as if the act of counting will provide a distraction enough to at least let him get her to her doorstep before she throws up again.
i'd wipe the dirt off your name with the shirt off my back
Flora's own mental voice adds to the echoing screams of her parents as she fights to breathe, though it's only once her stomach ceases its heaving that she's able to draw in a ragged breath. This time as the world begins to spin it has nothing to do with the alcohol—or rather, nothing to do with the alcohol in her system—but rather the captain's strong arms suddenly tight around her. Weightless Flora clings to him, wrapping her legs around his waist and burying her face into the crook of his neck as she heaves in breath after shaky breath.
"I can't do it," she whispers, and no, she doesn't mean the counting. The words feel like a confession and a plea all at once, heavy with exhaustion and the weight of everything she hasn’t yet said. Her legs tighten instinctively around his waist, as though holding him closer might somehow fix the fissures running through her, might help to fill the violet claw marks that have cut her to the quick.
She swallows hard, her teeth catching her lip as she wills herself to stop crying, stop shaking, stop spiralling. But the effort only seems to make her smaller, her breath uneven and her chest aching as she fights to try and strike a match that will light the fireworks in her mind that she knows Jack likes. Loves.
Jack is able to see Flora's front door by the time he feels her arms and legs tighten around him, the captain tensing at first, thinking she fully means to throw up down his back. Only as her ragged words tear through the air does he fall to a halt, his head turning ever so slightly to nose against messy curls that, somewhere beneath the stale booze and smoke clinging to her from the Hanged Man, still smell like her perfume.
"You don't have to," he rumbles, feeling himself relax, strangely, as she becomes something more real in his arms than she has been since he set foot into the tavern. "Gods, Flora. Where were you?" It's unfair for him to keep asking and yet he asks anyway, feelings the first dark spears of guilt start to lance into the pit of his stomach. Not there again. He'd not been there again, not in any way it would have counted.
"I'll take you inside," he decides. "We'll talk properly in the morning. Does anyone else know about... about whatever it is?"
i'd wipe the dirt off your name with the shirt off my back
Gods, for as gentle as Jack is being in the midst of yet another crisis, the real tragedy is how little of it Flora will remember in the morning For now, though, the way he holds her—loves her—at what must be one of her lowest moments feels like having her heart wrenched through a broken window. The shards bite deep, but she clings to him all the same.
"I don’t know." The words shiver off of her lips before tangling into the space just under Jack's jaw as Flora twists in his arms. It says as much about the bigger picture as it invites more questions, but just now it's all the queen can manage before Hotaru's screams and Remi's snarls have her stomach tensing against the sobs that crowd their way up the back of her throat.
As for knowing? Even with her stomach emptied of alcohol the world still swims as Flora tries to straighten in Jack's arms, though almost immediately it has her feeling light-headed even as her limbs grow leaden. "Remi and Ronin, but..." Silent tears stream down her cheeks. "..I don't know if I can trust them."
At least Flora not knowing is different to her not wanting to tell him, and Jack's brows flinch towards another frown even as he adjusts his grip on her and sets off again for her house. "We'll figure it out," he says, or he starts to, except this time her mind is quiet enough for him to register the snarls in her thoughts as belonging to Remi, and the screams to Hotaru. "...They were fighting?"
His hold on her grows a touch tighter as she attempts to straighten up, Jack not exactly preventing it but also cautioning very much against her moving too much, even as he pauses outside her front door. "Your key?" he asks; either she's got it on her person or he's going to have to put her down to fish around for it under one of the stones.
"Well, if you don't know, I will," he adds offhandedly. "Just tell me what you want to know from 'em and I'll find out."
