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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!
They set off, in the end, at mid-morning; enough time to wash away the evening before, to dress and drink enough coffee to carry them past the day's zenith, by which time Jack hopes to have located the little floating prison where Hotaru had whisked her daughter away. It's not exactly a needle in a haystack, but it's close, the Ark flying through bitter winds and chill currents with the turn of the season, Jack's hair ruffling in the wind as he stands at the prow of his ship.
There's little point asking Flora if anything looks familiar; not only had she been asleep for almost her entire encounter aboard the houseboat, but the ocean does tend to look a bit samey to most. Still, with Seven perched on his shoulder (to watch for storms) and keen blue eyes scanning the white caps below, they make slow passes across the water beyond where Ronin had said he'd flown in from.
"We should get a homin' beacon for that compass of yours," the captain remarks gruffly to Flora, trying for something like amusement but with too much weariness to really cut it.
sometimes we put our hearts in the wrong places
(what the fuck is it doing between your teeth?)
"Mmmm." Flora wordlessly agrees as she stares out across the sea, the bleary blue-grey of the sky and water blurring together at the horizon line making it almost impossible to differentiate without blinking several times.
Wearing a shapeless sweater that had lost all colour thanks to age, the Doubletake had her arms wrapped tightly against her body as she peered out, only unfurling every now and then to push away wisps of golden hair that had fallen out of the knot she'd bound her curls in. Though she knew that if and when they found the little houseboat it would very likely be deserted, the queen couldn't shake the foreboding that had twisted her stomach into tight knots of apprehension which had her shoulders cowed forward and her eyes looking haunted.
Surely there was no blaming her mother for what had happened, and by all standards Flora had made it out absolutely fine, but if anything that somehow made it worse. What was she meant to do with all her melancholy? With all her fury and hurt and compounded feelings of rejection and betrayal when what Hotaru had done was out of her choosing?
Glancing over her shoulder at Jack and Seven—the pair looking adorably ruffled by the sea winds—Flora tried for a smile that was as plastic and obvious as a bouquet of fake flowers thrown into a dying garden.
How can a person know everything at 18 but nothing at 22? Will you still want me when I'm nothing new?
With blue eyes hard and kohl-lined - precisely because of how difficult it was to catch details between sea and sky, let alone anything bobbing along the surface of the water below - Jack sees Flora's smile in his mind more than in reality, the flimsy gesture coated in the oily feelings reserved for a meeting with her mother. (But even then, as the Doubletake has already surmised, what is she meant to do with those feelings when Hotaru hadn't been in her right mind?)
Shaking off the train of thought - Jack is not a kind or forgiving man, and being infected is not an excuse he'd accept, but it's not his family - he turns towards Flora, stepping forward and holding out an arm for her to huddle into his side as a particularly cutting blast of wind threatens to throw The Ark off course. A quick glance up at the sails and a powerful twist of his magic steadies them, and a few calls back and forth from the crew ensures they fly straight, but Jack puts his fingers to his lips in a sharp whistle that signals for them to fly lower.
It might take longer, but they'll be less likely to be blown halfway to Halo as they search.
"I'm startin' to think we should've had your old man go look for this. He's been there before at least," he mutters.
sometimes we put our hearts in the wrong places
(what the fuck is it doing between your teeth?)
01-01-2025, 10:58 AM (This post was last modified: 01-01-2025, 10:58 AM by Flora.)
flora
Perhaps one day it would be Jack's family, but as it stood Flora felt incredibly alone in things. Maybe if she begged Mort the god would let her see Enzo again this year, if only because, unlike Mateo, he had the same connection to Hotaru that she did. Then again, after how haggard he'd looked at the festival and given the colourful discussion he'd had with Remi, maybe he'd understand better than most.
Melting against Jack's side, while Flora's mind didn't brighten the way it normally did, the tumultuous nature of her thoughts did settle somewhat to feel him pressed against her. For how commonplace this sort of gesture from the captain had become, the Doubletake never once took it for granted; not when getting to this point with him had taken her literal years (and both of their deaths). Pressing her nose against his chest and squeezing her eyes closed against the wind, Flora sighs softly, straightening only when she felt the Ark level out above the waves.
"We both know how valuable that compass is." She points out, before blowing gently at Seven's tail as it came to bop her on the nose. "I'd rather spend half a day looking for it now than half a year trying to find whoever gets to it before we do."
How can a person know everything at 18 but nothing at 22? Will you still want me when I'm nothing new?
Scrunching his nose at that - because Flora is absolutely right - and offering a gentle nod, Jack's fingers slip around her a little more tightly as she noses against his chest, his free hand coming up to tuck away a few tendrils of her hair that the wind has ripped free. Seven, of course, flicks her tail in response to the warm breath that blows over it, trilling to Flora and using Jack's shoulders as a bridge to cross from the captain to the Doubletake.
Throwing the feline a glance that settles somewhere between traitor and good riddance, as Jack looks up again, he spots a speck of something brown far below in the water, gaze sharpening as he considers it. "I think our luck might've come in." Releasing Flora (and Seven now) if only so he can take out his spyglass and lean against the railing to steady himself, Jack peers through it even as the crew throw out a few more calls to one another, The Ark starting to dip lower towards the waves.
"It's a houseboat," he confirms. "So either it's what we're lookin' for, or I'm about to interrupt someone's breakfast."
sometimes we put our hearts in the wrong places
(what the fuck is it doing between your teeth?)
Feeling Jack begin to pull away almost before he even did—she'd flown enough with him now to be able to read the sounds of the crew as they managed the rigging—Flora reaches for Seven, bundling the cat into her arms as she'd done once when the Seer Cat was just a kitten. Nuzzling her lips and nose against the top of Seven's head, noting the way she smelled of fresh bread from the kitchen and sea salt, Flora glances up through the haze of fluff to peer overboard.
"Fuck 'em." The queen muttered with uncharacteristic coldness. Either they were still within Torchline's borders where her word was law, or they were in the ocean, where the Ark's cannons were. Either way, between the pair of them they had nothing to worry about. Which, you know, was precisely how it had felt walking through the Greatwood or strolling along Torchline's shores.
Times like these it was probably a blessing that Flora didn't possess the magic that Jack or her mother did, lest she begin to crackle and spark with lightning. Indeed the queen would absolutely be the type to let her magic speak volumes about her emotions; alas, only Jack would be treated to the tempest of her feelings as she waited anxiously for the Ark to steady and then lower down a ladder in order to board the little vessel.
How can a person know everything at 18 but nothing at 22? Will you still want me when I'm nothing new?
Seven, rumbling away like an engine as she purrs and obnoxiously rubbing her head beneath Flora's chin, is evidently nowhere near the mind-reader that Jack is; either she's oblivious to the Doubletake's cold mood or she's doing her best to clear it. Either way, both cat and queen are unmolested as The Ark hovers like a behemoth over the houseboat, and Bassian goes to attach and lower a rope ladder down onto it.
"You don't need to come, if you don't want to," Jack tells her, slipping away the spyglass and giving her shoulder a squeeze as he ambles past. "Either it's the right place and I'll grab your things, or it ain't and I'll be havin' a swift conversation and leavin' again." Already her thoughts are churning in a maelstrom, and he doesn't want an excuse to make that storm any worse.
sometimes we put our hearts in the wrong places
(what the fuck is it doing between your teeth?)
Not wanting to make an absolute ass out of herself, Flora chews at the inside of her lip as she follows Jack toward the lowered ladder. With a glance toward Bassian (who was doing his best to appear busy at all times so he wouldn't have to meet the queen's sunken gaze), Jack would feel the chaos of Flora's mind suddenly align in a horrifyingly focused singularity. "You go first. If it's the right place, let me know and I'll come down."
That she'd begun to grip Seven too tightly was evidenced by the fact that, despite her purring seconds before, the cat aimed a swift bite against one of Flora's wrists. Hardly noticing the pain but for the plan taking root in her mind (Jack would sense the sound of splintering wood and the finger pain that usually accompanied hitting something solid with a very large something else), Flora did loosen her grip before marching toward Jack's cabin to fetch something.
How can a person know everything at 18 but nothing at 22? Will you still want me when I'm nothing new?
Throwing Flora a sharp look over his shoulder - not just at the strange and foreboding alignment of her thoughts, but at the flare of discomfort that sings through the companion bond from Seven, before he's at the ladder and propping a foot on the railing. "...Right," he says, leaving her to go and swinging himself over the edge and onto the rope ladder. Whatever swaying it had been doing stills all around Jack as he descends, holding the wind at bay, and it's not long before he sets foot on the lonely little houseboat.
Which is just as empty as it had looked and sounded from his telepathy, though of course the captain makes a good show of checking it out before he gives his final verdict. "Looks like this is the place," he calls up; belowdecks he's found the little cabin, the bed with the rumpled sheets, and in a drawer tucked away, a familiar roll of parchment and a compass.
sometimes we put our hearts in the wrong places
(what the fuck is it doing between your teeth?)
Jack had any number of different weapons tucked away in his cabin, but there was one in particular Flora was after. To call it a mace would have been far too generous; it was a gnarled and thick piece of wood that Jack had hammered various rusty nails into (no doubt part of the rust had been there before, while the other half it had come by naturally thanks to all the blood left to dry on it). Depositing Seven onto her side of Jack's bed, Flora plucked up the weapon from where it was stored behind a chest of drawers with a smile that curled on her lips like cigarette smoke.
Making her way carefully down the ladder—she'd snubbed Bassian's help if only because she recalled there wasn't much room on the houseboat to begin with—Flora let herself fall the last few rungs.
This portion of the houseboat wasn't familiar to her as Hotaru had forced her back to sleep after only a few seconds of being awake, but she'd been on enough small vessels to be able to find her way toward the stairs which would presumably lead her into the small bedroom area. Gripping the handle of the branch which had been taped and re-taped in order to make it easier to grip, Flora glanced around. What she'd remembered as being such a chaotic and violent scene was now rendered absolutely harmless. The messy duvet and scattering of pale feathers on the ground were the only signs that anything at all had happened here.
And gods if that didn't make Flora burn with fury, as if the wounds left in her heart and mind were somehow minimized by the lack of their mirror here.
"Did you find them?"
How can a person know everything at 18 but nothing at 22? Will you still want me when I'm nothing new?
The moment Flora comes back into range of his telepathy - with a particularly primitive weapon in tow, he might add - Jack has already begun to understand what she means to do, and the captain waits idly in the bedroom cabin for her to join him. "I did," he confirms as he hears her voice, holding up the parchment and the compass, before moving to tuck both of them back into her pockets so she doesn't have to give up the rusted, gnarled bit of wood in her hands.
"You can toss that overboard when you're finished," he invites of the mace. "Made it once when I wasn't in my right mind. I've gotten a little more finessed since then, I like to think." Leaning in, he brushes a kiss against the lines of fury on her face, drawing back and gesturing to the inside of the cabin. "Do you want me to wait on the deck? Or on The Ark? You can go home whenever you want again now." Given that she has the compass.
sometimes we put our hearts in the wrong places
(what the fuck is it doing between your teeth?)
That Jack isn't doing any of the right things isn't his fault. One might think that as a telepath there'd be no one more primed and ready to provide exactly what Flora needed (assuming Jack was at all inclined to, anyway), but of course that presupposed that Flora had any idea at all about what would make things better. The wellspring of nothingness that had erupted inside of her absorbed every single idea the queen had about what might make her feel better, yet yielded no results. Normally she'd have taken full advantage of how the pair had woken up that morning, especially after having tended to their wounds for so long, and yet she'd felt nothing even as Jack had held her close on her rooftop. (A place she'd normally have quite happily fucked him for all to see). Similarly replacing the sounds of her parent's screams and growls with moans of pleasure in order to change the soundtrack the houseboat had on a loop inside of her mind might have been her first port of call, and yet. None of it made her feeling anything. She didn't want Jack to stay or go; she wanted his affection yet felt nothing as his lips brushed against her cheek.
"I don't know," Flora admits, well aware he'd be able to feel the gnawing void of her indecision. "I want to do this first, and then we'll see." As for going home? "I want to stay with you." Even when it seems like I don't. Even when Jack's presence failed to make her thoughts shine and even when she grew thorny, preferring to blanket herself in deadfall rather than let anything new grow.
Pulling in a breath, Flora turned toward the room, lifting the mace and testing its weight. No doubt her shoulder would ache after what she was about to do, but fuck it. It couldn't hurt any more than the deep grooves inside of her heart and soul that seemed to constantly weep.
Lifting the stick the queen aimed first for anything glass, anything brittle, or anything that would make a sound when smashed.
How can a person know everything at 18 but nothing at 22? Will you still want me when I'm nothing new?
"Then we'll do this first, and we'll see," Jack echoes, inclining his head to her and stepping back to stand in the doorway of the room where he can be close enough to watch her (and be watched in return) without necessarily becoming collateral damage. He leans a shoulder against the doorframe, absently toying with the mageglass ring on his finger, his brow furrowed as he considers Flora and the barren landscape of her thoughts.
It's true enough that he's rendered useless whilst she doesn't know what she needs, even subconsciously; over-reliant as he is on his magic, the idea of taking an initiative he doesn't know for certain is the right course of action is foreign to the captain. Certainly something for him to work on, he realises, even standing here to watch as she shatters some delicate set of glasses on a shelf in the corner of the room.
The sound is a chaotic sort of music, and almost without thinking, a shield of air rises around Flora, barely perceptible unless a shard of glass or splinter of wood should richochet at her, where it is promptly redirected by a blast of wind.
sometimes we put our hearts in the wrong places
(what the fuck is it doing between your teeth?)
The ache in Flora's muscles isn't necessarily one of pain; at least that isn't the overwhelming sensation. Instead, it's a welcomed sort of stretching as she allows herself to move and react in ways their misadventure in the Greatwood had prevented her from doing for so long. Exhaling with each swing, her breath accompanied by a guttural sort of groan that Flora was quite sure made her hit harder. As all the obvious bits of glass were rendered into little more than shards on the ground, the queen set her sights on the cabinets and built-in closet.
Having never really been prone to needing to take out her feelings physically in a way that ended with destruction rather than a climax, Flora's efforts were reckless and indeed unsafe; slamming the nail-spiked head into the wood of the cabinet, as the queen wrenched it free, a massive shard of wood came flying loose and had Jack's shield not been around her, Flora might have lost an eye at worst or earned herself another ugly scar at best. Panting with adrenaline and surprise in equal measure to see the splinter fly off in the opposite direction, she turned her gaze sharply toward Jack.
Cheeks flushed and lips slightly parted, the queen swallowed thickly before reaching out a tentative hand to touch the arc of air flowing nearly silently before her. Letting the pads of her fingers press against the line of his magic, her breath hitched slightly as she realized that he'd been protecting her. He hadn't told her to be careful, hadn't said are you sure this is a good idea; he'd just stood back and kept her safe while she did what she thought she needed to.
For the first time since she'd awoken on the Northaven, Flora knew exactly what she wanted and needed.
Jack.
How can a person know everything at 18 but nothing at 22? Will you still want me when I'm nothing new?
