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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!
Jack slinks out of the shrine and back up towards the skyport under a blanket of stars that definitely feel as though they are staring holes in him. The captain rubs tiredly at his eyes, stepping up onto the gangplank of The Ark with his newly enchanted coat whispering against the backs of his legs, the garment feeling simultaneously heavier and lighter as he heads below decks to his cabin.
He'd left Flora with the full disclosure that he'd gone to see Safrin about his little quest, but after the goddess's recent thirsty advances on him, he knows better than to let things lie without bringing them up with one of Safrin's favourite girlypops. And so, slipping into the cabin and shrugging out of his coat, he moves to collapse into the chair behind his desk instead of in his bunk.
"I'm back," he announces, as if it's not obvious. And there's a conversation to be had, evidently.
fight so dirty but you love so sweet talk so pretty but your heart got teeth
Flora stirs, lashes fluttering open as she registers the soft creak of the cabin door, the shift in air that comes with Jack's presence—warm, familiar, reassuring. She’s half-buried in the tangle of blankets, curls sprawled across the pillow, their golden waves catching faint moonlight filtering in through the window. A sleepy confusion washes through her thoughts as she watches Jack settle behind his desk instead of coming to her, a faint crease appearing between her brows as she props herself onto one elbow.
"Hmmm," she hums softly, sleep roughening the edges of her voice as she rubs the back of her hand over her eyes. "Why’re you all the way over there?" The blankets shift, pooling loosely around her waist as she makes room for him—because gods, it felt like he'd been gone forever, and she had no intention of sleeping alone any longer than absolutely necessary. A yawn interrupts her next words, and she blinks drowsily at him, moonlight catching in messy golden curls spilling over her bare shoulder. "Come to bed, captain."
Flora's sleepy thoughts pool around the captain, beckoning him to bed and to sleep, and if he didn't know for certain that prolonging the conversation would cause further headaches down the line, he'd have already climbed beneath the warm sheets. "Not yet," Jack says, busy striking a match to light one of the lamps, filling the room in a gentle golden glow. "There's somethin' I gotta tell you, and I quite like havin' a few feet between us while you decide if you're gonna slap me."
Queen of Torchline Flora might be, but if the day prior is any indication, a queen of measured reactions she is not. "I actually saw Safrin before tonight, a few days back when I was still sailin' up here to the Greatwood. In some dream - I heard that's how she quite likes to conduct her business meetings with us mortals when we don't seek her out." He leaves it there for right now, already bracing for the prickle of unease that's sure to ripple through Flora's mind.
fight so dirty but you love so sweet talk so pretty but your heart got teeth
The sleepiness is slow to fade, but it ebbs sharply at Jack’s words—at the careful tone he uses, the way he positions himself as though he expects trouble. Flora stiffens slightly, concern pooling behind her gaze as she sits up a little straighter, pulling the blankets up to her chest as if they might somehow shield her from whatever’s coming next. She watches him intently, waiting, her heartbeat picking up speed in the quiet, soft-lit cabin.
Then he mentions Safrin, and dReAm MeETIngS, and something twists unpleasantly in the pit of her stomach. It isn't difficult to put two and two together—not when she'd seen firsthand how Safrin liked to "conduct business" with Jack; with the captain on his knees gasping and bloody, with I love yous spilling from his lips and handshake deals.
"Jack—" she begins slowly, brows knitting together, a frown pulling at the corners of her mouth. "Please tell me you're not about to say what I think you're about to say." There's no anger in her voice (yet), only quiet disbelief and a creeping dread that curls through her thoughts, cold and sharp. Flora has never thought seriously about having children herself—she's young—too young for that, and frankly too selfish—but the idea of Jack starting yet another branch of his family tree with Safrin without so much as a conversation with her...well, it sucks.
Jack busies his hands in rolling and lighting a cigarette as he feels Flora's mind wake up to the possibility of everything he's just told her - and everything he hasn't, including things he doesn't think he needs to say, but that she'll likely ask for anyway. "You and I both know I'd not have started this conversation if I could do that, love," he murmurs, drawing on the cigarette and tapping the ash into a tray at the corner of the desk.
"She asked the price for another kid - one to replace Seren, apparently, to right some cosmic imbalance." Which, he thinks, might be a crock of shit, but he'd also been in no fit state at the time to say anything but nice nebulas you got there, and very pert they are too. "I agreed, and she..." He gestures vaguely. "She did all the things you might expect a goddess to do to get my attention."
Sighing and rubbing at his forehead, he slouches back with the smoke back between his lips. "And she tried to offer the same thing just now in the shrine. I told her no."
fight so dirty but you love so sweet talk so pretty but your heart got teeth
Flora stares at him, eyes wide and unblinking, the world narrowing abruptly until all she can hear is the slow, steady drag of his cigarette and the hammering pulse roaring in her ears. Something sharp splinters in her chest—cracking open painfully, spreading cold and fast like ice spiderwebbing across glass. It's the kind of chill that aches, that stings, settling deep and unshakeable, like plunging into dark, freezing waters without taking a breath first. Because it isn’t just what he’s telling her, though gods, that's bad enough—it's how he says it, so casual, as if he’d merely made another deal, another trade, another meaningless handshake. Her thoughts are a tempest, a storm surge of hurt and confusion swirling furiously, pulling her under, choking her. The betrayal tastes bitter, sour on her tongue, even if she knows (because she knows Jack) that it isn't betrayal to him. Not really. Just another price, another business exchange.
It's only a child.
It's only Safrin.
Flora swallows thickly, pulling her knees up sharply to her chest, hugging them tight, suddenly small and brittle beneath the blankets, golden curls tangling around her shoulders like a noose. "What was your price this time?" she asks finally, and her voice is bitter, hollow, and quiet in the emptiness of the cabin. She thinks distantly, that at least this time there hadn't been sex involved (lol); at least he hadn't fucked Safrin to make this child—interpreting Safrin getting Jack's attention as merely making him an offer—as if that somehow made it better. But the thought is cold comfort—no comfort at all, really, just another layer of numbness over the hurt—and she squeezes her legs tighter, eyes glittering with tears that refuse to fall. She fixes Jack with a hollow, aching look, wondering what the fuck good it would do to slap him now, when everything was already said and done?
"Flora..." Jack nearly chokes on his inhalation at the crushing weight of her thoughts and feelings, dragging up a hasty barrier and succinctly putting out his cigarette as if to punish it for stealing his breath instead. "It is, though," he says in a low voice. It is only a child. Nothing he could make on his own and nothing he'd care to create even if he had the option in truth. But as the Doubletake understands and then misunderstands, he feels the weight of a noose around his own neck as he's forced to clarify.
"You're wrong," he says. "In a dream like that, she... well. I could show you but you'd not want to see it." Not splashed across the walls of the House of Midnight. "I didn't realise what I was doin' until it was already happenin'. Better men than I have tripped into that goddess's arms." Jack is not the gold standard, not by far.
As for the price, he reaches beneath his shirt to draw the necklace and its dark stone over his head. "Wear that to Starfall and the void creatures there'll treat you like a Friend of the Family. Not necessarily for me, but for whoever does the doing out there..."
fight so dirty but you love so sweet talk so pretty but your heart got teeth
Flora’s heart drops like a stone, plummeting straight through her ribs into the pit of her stomach. It sinks heavily, painfully, and for a moment everything else is drowned out by the dull roar of blood rushing in her ears. She stares at Jack blankly waiting for something to somehow make this all better, but nothing comes. He'd slept with her. Actually fucked her. Safrin.
It’s worse than anything she imagined. So, so much worse, because at least before there’d been the fragile comfort that whatever Jack might have said to her, at least it had only been a handshake like before. Flora's mind reels, spinning wildly as thoughts pile up faster than she can process them, panic and humiliation intertwining in a tangle of insecurities she’s worked so desperately to bury beneath a veneer of confidence and bravado.
Jack had been with a goddess. And she… gods, how could she possibly compete with that?
Her eyes sting, vision blurring as tears threaten to spill over, and she stubbornly blinks them back, focusing instead on the tightness in her chest, the ache in her throat, the tremble she can’t quite steady in her fingers. Flora isn’t angry, exactly, or at least not in the way Jack might have originally thought she'd be. It's not cheating, not in the simple, easy way it would be with anyone else—but somehow this is worse, because how could he ever look at her the same way again after being with Safrin? How could anything she offer possibly measure up? What could Flora—the emotional, needy queen who ran away from arguments and picked fights over stupid insecurities—possibly give him now?
Flora clutches her knees to her chest, instinctively making herself smaller as if she could somehow hide from the weight of inadequacy pressing down on her. "Right," she breathes finally, voice thin and brittle.
Having raised a mental block against the onslaught of Flora's initial shock, the captain can only blink at her through the low light for a few moments, having set the necklace down on his desk, working the fine chain through his fingers as if to give them something to do. And, bit by bit, as she does little and says less, he peeks through the barricade his raised. His wince is little more than a flinching at the corners of his eyes, Jack taking a long, slow breath and letting it out again.
"If I really believed that, I wouldn't have told you anythin' in the first place. I wouldn't have argued to keep you earlier, and I wouldn't have turned Safrin down just now," he says, slowly and almost tentatively. If he thought Flora couldn't compare, if he thought she didn't have anything to offer, if his I love you meant so little.
"I almost put it down as somethin' I'd imagined, if it weren't for this." He nudges the necklace's dark stone. "But when she got a little too friendly earlier, I just... thought of you."
fight so dirty but you love so sweet talk so pretty but your heart got teeth
03-17-2025, 09:08 AM (This post was last modified: 03-17-2025, 09:11 AM by Flora.)
you hate the crash, but you love the rush
Flora’s throat tightens painfully, a lump forming that she can’t quite swallow, no matter how many times she tries. Jack's words settle between them, and although her ring remains cool and steady on her finger—not so much as a hint of warmth to indicate a lie—it's still so, so hard to quiet the relentless storm in her mind. Because Safrin isn’t just another girl. Safrin is silk and starlight, desire made flesh; she's everything Flora could never hope to compete with. Even if Jack’s words are true—and they are, because the ring remains cool against her skin—the feeling of inadequacy burns hotter than any truth could soothe away.
When Flora finally moves, it’s to scrub angrily at the tears that threaten to spill over again, annoyed with herself for feeling this way, frustrated that she can't just brush it off, move on, or even be the sort of girl who'd tell Jack to take Safrin for all she was worth so long as he came home to her in the end. Her gaze lifts, tentative, vulnerable, aqua eyes gleaming with unshed tears as she searches the captain's face for something she doesn’t quite know how to ask for. "I'm glad you told me." Surprisingly she is, but at twenty-two, gods, she never thought loving someone could hurt so much or be so complicated.
With another shaky breath, Flora slowly shifts off the bed; the wood of the cabin floor is cool beneath her bare feet as she slips quietly toward Jack, closing the gap between them. She settles at the edge of the desk, not quite touching him yet, fingers restlessly fidgeting with one of the rings on her hands. "It’s just..." Her words trail off helplessly, eyes slipping shut as she shakes her head. "I know it’s not the same for you. I know it was just...whatever. But—" Well it was a bit like saying you still liked drinking coffee after you'd had the finest opium.
"—I just wish you hadn't." She finally admits, her expression painfully young and uncertain as she peeks back up at Jack, not really knowing where they were meant to go from here. This wasn't something that flowers or sweet gestures would fix; this was something already done that could never be undone. Something she doubted either of them would ever be able to forget or not think about during certain moments.
"I figured tellin' you was better'n any other alternative. Still expectin' the slap though, if I'm honest." He's been slapped for a lot less, and unlike the vast majority of Caido, he'll tolerate it from Flora. (Once or twice, anyway). There's a vast chasm that swims between them, of vulnerability and hurt and all kinds of other emotions Jack likes to shy away from for their complexity, for their tendency to muddy the cold, deep waters of business.
For Flora, though, gods help him but he's tried, on occasion, to be a better man than they both know he is, and it's times like this that just prove how hard he can drop that ball. "It was embarrassing," he tells her simply, as if it might help, though he doubts it. "She turned me into the mental equivalent of some fumbling teenager." And as blissful as it had been - and it had been, make no mistake about it - that loss of control is not something Jack can abide.
fight so dirty but you love so sweet talk so pretty but your heart got teeth
As Jack begins to describe it, Flora's entire body freezes, her thoughts turning brittle as frost creeps over glass—sharp, delicate, dangerously close to shattering. Her breath hisses sharply between her teeth, a sharp, trembling inhale as she presses a palm flat against the desk, fingers splayed as though she might steady herself against the sudden, nauseating wave of panic that surges through her.
"Jack—" she gasps, voice breaking, aqua eyes snapping open to fix on him, pleading and raw. "Gods, shut up." It's not anger, it's desperation—an instinctive recoil from hearing anything more, from learning any details that would etch the moment even deeper into her mind, that would make her nightmares so much more vivid. The image of Jack tangled with Safrin is already vivid enough, clawing behind her eyelids, whispering things she’d never be able to forget no matter how much she wanted to.
"So..you slept with her, are having another kid with her, got that—" Pausing, Flora's eyes flick toward the amulet, before returning slowly back to Jack's face. "And presumably tonight she allowed you to say no to her." Or else he wouldn't be here, telling her any of this.
"I-- ...Right." Sighing deeply, Jack glances up towards Flora before turning his gaze to the drawer where he keeps his good liquor, silently withdrawing the bottle and two glasses to pour a stiff measure for each of them. Flora might want it or she might not, but either way, it won't be wasted - the captain will make sure of that. Pinching at the bridge of his nose as he hears it summarised with such vicious simplicity, he nods.
"That's about it, yeah," he says. "I told her no, she says maybe I'd wear immortality better'n she thought - whatever that means - an' that the offer was still open. I left pretty quick after that." His hand skims over his forehead before running through his dark hair, as if to try and wipe the encounter out of his immediate memory. "So here I am."
fight so dirty but you love so sweet talk so pretty but your heart got teeth
Flora watches in silence as Jack retrieves the liquor. She's grateful for the glass he pours, but she doesn't reach for it immediately; instead, she stares down at it, at the amber swirl that reflects the lamp’s golden glow, wondering if it might actually numb the sharp edges of the hurt now blooming wildly within her, like thorns cutting deep beneath the skin.
"So.." Flora murmurs softly, voice strained and quiet, finally reaching out to wrap shaking fingers around the glass. She doesn't drink—not yet, anyway—just holds it, feeling the coolness seep into her fingertips, something real and grounding amidst the sudden spinning of her thoughts. "I mean—what now?" Her voice trembles slightly, against which she defiantly lifts her chin and clears her throat.
The worst part was having to accept the fact that by adamantly saying she knew exactly what kind of man Jack was and wanting him anyway, precisely meant having to be okay with this sort of thing. To expect it from him, and as much as it might hurt her feelings, gods but not a single soul in all of Caido would be surprised were she to tell them about it.
"Did...you want to say yes to her tonight?" It isn't meant to be baiting or leading, and maybe it was asking more than Flora actually wanted to know, but surely if this was going to be their norm she had a right to know just what it was she should expect.
