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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!
Heavy like a landslide That's the way my heart beats now
It was meant to be a simple errand—deliver the flower, make Isla smile, let her decide how best to use the thing. But when Remi arrived at the clinic with a carefully arranged bouquet—dozens of ordinary lilies hiding one mythical one—he was met not with Isla’s usual warm greeting, but the vaguely concerned face of a receptionist who told him she and Everest had taken a boat out to one of the floating isles. No return time given. No specifics. Just two people—one of whom Remi knew was infected—off alone, out of reach. The wrong sort of silence settled in his chest, too reminiscent of the kind that had followed Aoife’s death, Flora's, or more recently, Seren’s. He didn’t wait. With a crackle of magic, he vanished.
Remi reappears beside Isla with no warning, the bouquet held out like a shield before him as if to ward off whatever doom his mind had conjured in the meantime. His curls are wild with static, his eyes sharp and shadowed, with the lilies thrust right at the kissing couple. "Isla—!" Remembering only how Ronin had fought him when presented with a flower, Remi drops the bouquet (see, not interfering, just being clumsy) and reaches for Everest. Tentacles slide out from his sides in order to tighten the grapple around the aviator, pinning his arms to his sides.
Up until the last sunrise I'll be reaching for you
Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
Ever smiled when Isla’s arms wrapped around him, leaning into her kiss with a sigh. It was a strange, quiet thing to feel settled here, of all places, on a floating island with a picnic and a woman who might soon be void-touched herself. But if there was a part of him still capable of recognizing joy for what it was, it lit now—brief, violet, and borrowed as it was.
At her offer, he turned toward the boat again, squinting through the shimmer of heat and sea-glare. "You take the books," he said, starting to reach for the wrapped tin that held their food. "Just don’t read them before I’ve had a chance to—"
And then Remi appeared.
The shift in air pressure was the only warning. Ever barely had time to register the sudden crackle of presence before something sharp and terrible split the moment—the bouquet shoved forward, the tentacles coiling, sudden and relentless. He didn’t have time to reach for Isla. Didn’t have time to even gasp.
"Wh—!" he choked out as his arms were pinned, the bouquet falling in front of him with the telltale aura curling up from the center like heat off stone.
The lily.
His heart jackknifed.
"Isla—?" His voice broke on her name, blue eyes wide and full of betrayal as he turned his head toward her, body straining against the impossible strength restraining him. "Was this—did you know? Did you trick me?" He twisted again, uselessly, the tentacles holding him like steel. "Tell him to stop—Isla, tell him to stop—" The panic was rising now, tight and ragged. "I don’t want it—I don’t—you said you were done worrying!"
Peeling herself away from Ever with reluctance, not just out of love but also because of the uneasy feeling that something cold and violet and other might course through her at any moment, when she also feels the shift in the air around them, she assumes, naturally that Vox has arrived. So at the sound of a scuffle, at the sound of her name, she whips around in surprise, in time to see a bouquet of flowers whump to the ground and Remi to brutishly grapple her boyfriend with, let's be honest, at least two more tentacles than is necessary given the power difference.
"Remi-- what?" Isla blurts, rushing back across the sand and halting with the bouquet at her feet, a large and beautiful lily sitting as a centrepiece to the flowers. Something like hope jumps into the back of her throat, only for it to wither and recoil at the horror and panic in Ever's voice. "I would never," she tells him with a soft shake of her head. Never trick you, never plan this, never walk you into a trap.
Never cure you, though? They both know that isn't true.
"Ever... I'm a doctor," she whispers, wiping at the tears already streaming down her cheeks. "And you aren't well. And this will..." Well, it won't make him better. They already know that much, but she's already leaning down to lift the lily from the bouquet. "There are other ways to help you that aren't the void, I swear." Quite why she's trying to reason with him now when she'd known it was futile only minutes ago is quite beyond her, but gods, she's never seen him so suddenly desperate.
"I'm going to make this better without you needing to be infected," she whispers. "I really hope you believe me... and that you forgive me." Holding her breath and turning away, she thrusts out the lily towards the aviator, thoroughly dousing him in its pollen - and potentially ruining things between them forever.
Heavy like a landslide That's the way my heart beats now
Remi will use the number of tentacles he thinks is necessary, and given how little they know about the void infection, he isn't inclined to believe that the aviator doesn't have some surprise strength hidden beneath his 50 shades of gray body. (Do you get why that's funny). One might even be tempted to call out the irony that it's Isla who holds the Bastion's full attention and not the man writhing in his arms, but it really isn't the time for that.
Tilting his head back and holding his breath if only because he knows what's coming, Remi tries to hold Ever as still as he can if only to force the aviator to inhale as much of the pollen as possible.
Whether or not this counted as interfering, Remi supposed he'd quickly learn, but he thought he could make a fairly good case for himself simply by revealing his unhealthy obsession with the Remedy over their long years together as evidence of why he might be inclined to pin her boyfriend in place, infection or no.
Up until the last sunrise I'll be reaching for you
Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
Everest stilled the moment he saw the lily in her hands.
He didn’t fight Remi anymore—he couldn’t. The tension left his body not from surrender but from shock, as if his system had suddenly shut down all non-essential functions just to process what he was seeing.
Isla.
Isla, holding the flower.
Isla, saying it was for him.
His eyes locked with hers, wide and shattered, and he looked so young in that moment—not the calm, self-possessed aviator, not the man who could crack a dry joke mid-catastrophe, but the boy who'd spent his whole life drowning in a mind too loud for itself.
She’d promised. She said she understood.
The pollen hit him like a punch to the lungs. He inhaled because he couldn’t not—and it was instant. Not gradual. Not gentle. A rupture.
Like something slamming open inside his skull.
The silence that had lived in his mind—the only peace he'd ever known—was gone. Torn away like someone had thrown open every door in a storm. Thoughts returned in screams, in fractured loops of half-finished calculations and misplaced phrases. His heartbeat stuttered under a barrage of sensory input: the burn of sun on skin, the sound of the boat grinding against the shoreline, the pressure of the sand between his toes—it was all too much.
His hands twitched violently in Remi’s grasp. He let out a small, choked noise—then another, sharp and gasping, his chest rising too fast.
"Nononono—" It spilled out without rhythm, one word stretching to many. His mouth moved faster than his thoughts could keep up with. "I can’t—*I can't think—I can’t—" He tried to close his eyes, to shut something out, but even that felt wrong. The darkness pressed against his skull like it had teeth. He fought to breathe but couldn’t control the rhythm. Couldn’t focus long enough to pull a full lungful of air. His fingers curled uselessly in the air where Remi held him. "I can’t—"
Isla drops the already withering lily with a sob she forces herself to cage in the back of her throat, because whatever happens from here on out, it's her fault, but it's also absolutely not about her at all. Swiping the tears from her cheeks and forcing herself to take a few steady, deep breaths, the composure that the Remedy regains is one born from the battlefield, among wounds too deep and vicious for soldiers to survive and infections that could raze an entire camp.
"Remi, I'm going to need you to knock him out please," she says, glancing towards the Bastion with red rimmed eyes, the Remedy already in motion to get to the boat and collect all of their important belongings. "There isn't any way we can calm him down out here in the open, not like this." Not with so much happening, not with the way she can see his mind collapsing in upon itself in an attempt to comprehend so much so quickly.
"Then I need you to take this bag," she says, gesturing to the one she's packed up with all the necessities, "and fly Ever back to my apartment. I'll follow on the wing."
Heavy like a landslide That's the way my heart beats now
For a man who had been bracing for disaster since the moment he’d stepped foot on this damn island, Remi still wasn’t ready for what was unfolding.
The way the aviator unravelled was violent. It was like watching a dam collapse inward instead of bursting. Not a flood, but a crushing inrush of everything that shouldn’t be let back in. And he felt it, gods help him—through Ever’s shuddering body, through his breath, through the bond still faint and strange but there all the same. "Isla, this is—" Remi starts to say, already adjusting his grip, but then Isla's voice slices through like a scalpel. The tentacles tightened in a controlled, almost surgical motion, pinning the boy in place not to restrain him, but to keep him from breaking himself.
"Hold your breath," he said tightly, not giving Ever a chance to do anything before his hand came up. A practiced strike—not cruel, just precise—landed squarely against the side of Ever’s temple; he felt the shift the moment the boy went slack and gods he hated how easily it was done.
Exhaling harshly through his nose, Remi kept Ever held close, guiding his limp form down into his arms. Wordlessly, he stepped forward to take the bag from Isla, his movements quick but careful, before slinging the bag over one shoulder.
Wanting to say something but knowing there was no time, Remi bit back a half-formed reply and instead shrugged out his wings, before rising easily into the air and flying back toward Haulani.
Up until the last sunrise I'll be reaching for you
Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
The panic clawed up Everest’s throat faster than he could form words to stop it.
The sound of Isla’s voice cut through the rising noise in his mind, but it wasn’t what he needed to hear. It wasn’t comfort or explanation or I’ve got you, not like before. It was cold. Clinical. Directed at Remi. Directed at Remi who definitely wasn't some overzealous ex-lover come to steal her away.
"Knock him out, please."
His eyes snapped to her, wild and betrayed, but they didn’t focus—couldn’t focus. Everything was wrong. Her face. The island. The pressure on his arms. Every nerve in his body screamed for escape. He couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. The sun was too hot. The sky was too wide. His hands were stuck and his chest was going to cave in—
"Don’t—" he gasped, voice thready and sharp, shaking his head in short, spastic bursts. "Don’t touch me— what’s happening—why can’t—why can’t I—"
His thoughts spiraled so fast they tangled. He couldn’t understand her words anymore. Couldn’t remember what was real. The tension of Remi’s grip, the strange weight of his own body, the sound of Isla moving somewhere just out of reach—it was all fragments. Unconnected. Unbearable.
And then—
"No—" he choked, just before everything blinked out.
He felt it—the moment Remi’s hand connected. A sharp jolt of pressure behind his temple. The pain didn’t register so much as the sudden nothing that followed. His breath caught mid-sob, his head snapped to the side, and then—
Feeling monstrous and utterly unable to look at the man she loves as Remi steals his consciousness away in a sharp and precise movement, only as she sees him sag in the Bastion's arms out of the corner of her eye does Isla let out the shuddering breath she'd been holding. "Thank you," she mutters, her voice rough as if fighting through that same sob still caged in the back of her throat. Thank you for buying us some time. Not thank you for bringing that gods damned lily.
Whatever regret Isla feels - and it's bone deep for certain, the sound of Ever's pleas guaranteed to haunt her dream for seasons after this - it isn't something she lets herself feel right now. As Remi straightens and unfurls his wings, the Remedy offers him a quick nod, all business, and waits for him to shoot into the sky before she follows suit.
Exchanging skirts and curls for black wings and a sharp, curved beak, Isla is never going to be as fast as Remi in getting back to Haulani, but she flies as quickly as her small, feathered body will let her.
