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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!
"Maybe," Jack agrees, something sly in the curl of his lips and something deeper still settling within him, as if she's proven exactly why he'd forced himself not to balk at the abilities she clearly possesses. But then the flare of the fire has her mind locking down like a siege engine, however briefly, and he has the good grace to wince about it. "You ain't gettin' any more scars from that if I got anythin' to do with it," he vows, clenching the fist that had produced the flame even as he offers the cigarette out for her.
The snapping of the sails is more an indicator of her discomfort even than the coughing and spluttering, and Jack raises his eyebrows - half amusement, half vague concern - as The Ark goes from choking around the smoke to breathless laughter. "Steady, love," he rumbles, smirking and settling back atop the crate again.
"...But watchin' and listenin' ain't the same as doin'?" he guesses, nodding his approval as she demonstrates as much with the cigarette. With eyes made near black by the blanket of darkness overhead, Jack's expression might be as neutral as ever, but there's something close to awe in his gaze as he glances over her. It's as if his mind is still trying to tie together the truth of it, that she and the ship beneath his feet are one and the same, that they have lived the same years and sailed the same seas, known the same victories and hardships.
fight so dirty but you love so sweet talk so pretty but your heart got teeth
She watches him through the thinning veil of smoke, ocean-blue eyes catching the lanternlight and turning it darker, deeper, until something like recognition settles there, but older and more intimate. Her smile comes slow and sinful, the kind that will ruin a good few members of his crew without ever raising its voice. "I know. You're not the sort to make the same mistake twice." Whether it was meant to refer to the fire or to Flora hardly seemed to matter; for all the accusations levelled at Jack, he was the sort of man who learned quickly from his mistakes.
Colour blooms along her cheekbones, heat carried there by the smoke as she lifts the cigarette again and draws more carefully this time. The drag stays in her chest longer, learned now, and when she exhales it curls around her face like fog sliding off water. She nods once. "Not the same," she agrees, glancing down at herself—skin, curve, breath—as if he could possibly miss the implication. "Doing it in a body."
She looks back up at him then, studying the set of him the way she always has, by weight and balance rather than expression. Eyes have never told her much, and she’s learned Jack by the way he stands, the way his boots settle, the way his centre shifts when he’s thinking too hard, and without circling it, without softening the question, she asks, "so what happens next?" Her gaze drifts across the deck—the crew still adrift in her wake, cards semi-forgotten, music uneven—then back to him, head canting slightly as if feeling the ship’s own slow arc beneath her feet.
"Do you flip the coin when you're done with the day and send me back? Or leave me with the crew? I could relieve Murph early, or maybe you'd tuck me into one of the empty cabins up by the masthead." Her eyes find his again and stay there, steady and unhurried. She is nearly naked, siren-bright, heat rolling off her in quiet waves, and when she adds, "or would I stay with you?" there’s no pull in it. Nothing needy or suggestive; just a ship asking her Captain what their course is meant to be, as she's done a thousand times over.
Her touch is like a tempest, her whisper is a breeze, but when she has a temper, she'll bring you to your knees
Code stolen from Queen Sky
Siren's Wake | After she leaves a space, traces of her presence linger briefly: a faint scent of salt, the sound of distant water, a restless feeling in the chest. People rarely notice it consciously.
"An' I'll drink to that," Jack agrees, the words curiously solemn given that it's to do with the bootprint burns that tiptoe along the back of her neck. And he does, in fact, knocking back the last of the liquor in his cup and setting the empty down on the deck at his feet beside the crate. He smiles, catlike and knowing at the flush to her cheeks, able to feel the true enjoyment of the smoke rippling through her with the learned pleasure of it; he isn't the only one who learns quickly from his mistakes, evidently.
"Better or worse?" he wonders, of having a body with which to do things, an eyebrow raising with honest interest. Because if this has been little more than an exercise in following orders, the coin in his pocket might start to feel a bit too heavy, and whether or not The Ark is still his ship, he'll not hold her hostage to her legs.
Jack is still turning that over in his mind when she speaks again, and what happens next is something he so often thinks about that he almost laughs. But she clarifies, at least, and he glances over her shoulder to the crew - laughing, drinking, playing cards and trying to steal glances at her without being noticed - before wrinkling his nose. "Most of 'em wouldn't dare come near you. Not all, though," he mutters, the words frank as they are dark. "Not that I don't doubt you'd hold your own."
But no. Not with the crew, and not taking over from Murph - at least not on this night.
"A captain goes down with his ship," he says eventually, a smile kicking up the side of his mouth. "Whatever form that takes is up to you." Whether she stays with him like this or returns to wood grain and canvas, the point still stands.
fight so dirty but you love so sweet talk so pretty but your heart got teeth
She doesn’t hesitate, not even a ripple before she answers. Her mouth tilts, pirate-slanted, nose wrinkling just a touch as if amused by the question itself. "Different," she says, and the word carries like a tide that refuses comparison. "I am what has carried you. All of you. The weight, the risk, the trouble." Her gaze drifts outward, over deck and rigging and men who have trusted her with their lives. "I crossed the oceans so you didn't have to be alone, kept you afloat. Gave you somewhere solid to stand when everything else wanted you under." She lifts one hand between them and wiggles her fingers, slow and deliberate, watching the lamplight slide along knuckle and nail. "Hard to stack that against having hands." A pause, eyes slipping to the cigarette, to Jack's empty glass, then back to him again, siren-bright. "Though," she adds softly, indulgently, "hands have already let me do a lot more."
Her smile sharpens as she follows his glance toward the crew, something dark and playful flickering there, predatory in its patience. "I might even let a few try," she says lightly, like a cat considering a mouse that’s wandered too close.
But then she turns fully toward him, and her grin shifts. She rests the cigarette over a crate, holds it there so the ash falls harmlessly away from her boards, careful even now. When she reaches for Jack, it’s unhurried, devastatingly intimate, her thumb brushing near the corner of his mouth where his rare, genuine smile still lingers. Her eyes take him in the way the horizon takes a ship—open, waiting, full of promise—and her mind will feel to him like open water, blue and endless and ready to be sailed.
She turns her body just enough that the crew get curve and thigh and the long sweep of her back instead of him, placing herself between them and the Captain. "The freedom I had before," she says, voice low, "was narrow." She had been a ship, after all. The corner of her mouth lifts, because gods if she hadn't pressed against every heading ever given to her, even so. Then the sea in her mind shifts, not breaking, just roughening, the way weather can call up white caps even with the sun still upon them. No one had ever asked her to choose anything before, and she breathes out a short laugh, surprised by it.
Her head shakes slightly, red hair slipping over her shoulders like loosened rigging. "Everything I am," she goes on, quieter now, "I owe to you. Even this." She glances down at herself once, then back to him. "Every mile I’ve ever sailed, I sailed with you. For you." She exhales again, softer this time, and her eyes lift to meet his, storm-blue and steady. "What I want is to see the world the way you do, to see the you that you are when you step off my gangplank."
But beneath the words, beneath the warmth and the offered horizon, something darker rolls through her thoughts like deep water, sudden and unmistakable. Jack will feel it like a pressure drop: the sea falling away into a trench so deep the light never learned how to reach it. Firelight guttering at the edges of the world. Smoke staining the sky black enough to blot out stars. Her hull burning, not from neglect or failure, but because everything else already is. Cities drowning. Gods silent. The sort of end that leaves nothing intact enough to mourn. Only then does she go under. Not before. Never before. The certainty of it is devastating in its calm. A ship that would break the world before it ever broke him. A vow held not in words, but in the unyielding knowledge that if she sinks, it will be because there is nothing left afloat worth saving. Until then, there's one constant that remains: Jack still aboard, still standing, still chosen, and her with him, in whatever capacity fate allows.
Her touch is like a tempest, her whisper is a breeze, but when she has a temper, she'll bring you to your knees
Code stolen from Queen Sky
Siren's Wake | After she leaves a space, traces of her presence linger briefly: a faint scent of salt, the sound of distant water, a restless feeling in the chest. People rarely notice it consciously.
Her immediate response - different - has a laugh rumbling up in Jack's throat, because never has an answer seemed so non-committal and yet so appropriate. But it doesn't end there, the Captain tilting his head a fraction as she continues, as all that she had been and now is unfurls across his magic like a second blueprint of his ship sparking to life behind his eyes. "I s'pose bein' on two feet instead of... all this," he gestures around them, "would make the world feel a lot smaller."
Jack wouldn't be surprised, in fact, if The Ark wanted him to flip the coin and return her spirit to the ship after a while, as if finding the constraint of flesh and bone to be stifling. He tries not to let himself feel any sort of way about it, despite the prang of disappointment that makes the air taste bitter.
Then she touches him, and the Captain is too buzzed and in his own head to see it coming. Glancing up sharply at the unexpected brush of fingers against the corner of his mouth, eyes made dark as the Maw lock onto her own, and for a moment it's like looking out at the sea for the first time all over again. There's the promise of freedom and fair weather in that gaze, the heart-skipping knowledge of knowing nothing at all and wanting more from it.
Angling himself automatically to match the curve of her body that blocks all else from view, Jack's lips part as if to say something - some dry quip about flattery, perhaps, or a change of subject aimed to retreat back onto safer ground - but he stops himself. There's no ground when it comes to The Ark, after all; there's the sky, empty enough to swallow you whole, and there's the sea in all its wild majesty, and that's where Jack has always preferred to be when it comes down to it. No safer harbour than the deck beneath his feet now.
He rises to stand quite without realising it, fire and devastation dancing in his mind's eye like a promise that goes far beyond silly vows like 'til death do us part. "I'll show you everything," he says softly. "We'll see it all, you and me." Like it always was. Jack's hand reaches up to capture The Ark's, the way it still brushes near the corner of his mouth, and he turns his head just enough to brush his lips across her fingertips. "You stay with me, until you decide you want to flip that coin and go back." he confirms.
fight so dirty but you love so sweet talk so pretty but your heart got teeth
As he shifts to meet her, the movement ripples through her the way it always has, a familiar give and answer, weight adjusting to weight, a lean taken without thought. It isn’t new, not really. He’s done this a thousand times before, matching her rise and fall, moving with her instead of against her. Seeing him do it now, body to body instead of rigging to wind, feels less like surprise and more like recognition. A dance set long ago, remembered without rehearsal even in this new form. The Ark lifts her chin to keep his eyes, red hair sliding back from her shoulders, and the beginnings of a smile stir there. His hand closes over hers, grounding, known, and as he tilts his head and his mouth brushes her fingers, she stills.
It’s nothing like the pressure of boots or the scrape of rope or the drag of waves along her sides. It’s soft. Brief. Warm in a way that spreads instead of strikes. The sensation pours through her like sunlight breaking across freshly scrubbed boards, like spray warming her hull when she cuts a perfect line through open water. It pools low, unfamiliar but unmistakable, a heat blooming in her chest and belly that she’s felt echoes of before but never from him, never like this. Without thinking, she presses her fingers back to his lips, greedy for more of it, wanting to hold the warmth where it’s landed, to steep herself in it the way she would a calm morning swell.
But then a different sort of sensation comes over her, and a sharp hitch of breath tears out of her as something tightens hard and sudden beneath her ribs. Her hand slips from his mouth to clutch at his shoulder, fingers biting into fabric, while her other drops to her stomach, palm flattening there as if she can hold whatever it is still. The deck seems to tilt under her feet, not from motion but from the shock of it, a new kind of pressure with no tide she recognizes.
Her eyes lift to his, wide and bright and suddenly unsure, ocean-blue gone storm-dark at the edges. "Jack," she breathes, the word rough and small in her throat. "It...hurts.' The sea of her mind stirs around him at the same time—not danger, not fear—just something raw and unanswered, a new signal flashing without a name—hunger—waiting for him to read it and adjust her away from it, the way he always has.
Her touch is like a tempest, her whisper is a breeze, but when she has a temper, she'll bring you to your knees
Code stolen from Queen Sky
Siren's Wake | After she leaves a space, traces of her presence linger briefly: a faint scent of salt, the sound of distant water, a restless feeling in the chest. People rarely notice it consciously.
Jack can't break into laughter with her fingers pressed back against his lips, but she manages to catch the slant of his smile in her touch. He kisses her again, his own grip relaxing around her hand as his magic traces the sensation back through her mind - the newness of it, the simple pleasure in it - and the Captain might have lost a battle with his own willpower if not for the sudden and new feeling that skewers through her (and him, as a result) like a knife between the ribs.
An expert in keeping his expression neutral, something nevertheless creases at the corners of his eyes as he tries to parse the truth from the raw emotion and physicality of it, and when Jack realises, he huffs out a sigh of unmistakeable relief. "Yeah, I don't reckon wood lacquer and caulk are gonna cut it for you in this body," he says, sounding unbothered and gesturing for her to walk with him towards where a few of the crew have set up some of the Greatwood's spoils atop a barrel.
"You're just hungry, love. Same as your sails are fed by the wind, you gotta feed yourself now." He gestures to the small spread available - an assortment of fruits and berries from the forest's bounty, a few sweet pastries courtesy of the Sidhe Village, and a mostly-demolished heap of pretzels. "An' if none of that is to your taste, say the word and we'll find you somethin' else."
Speaking of taste, Jack reaches out to grab for a handful of blueberries to snack on, having mostly forgotten to eat so far this evening given the woman who now stands beside him.
fight so dirty but you love so sweet talk so pretty but your heart got teeth
The fact that Jack doesn’t startle—that his touch stays light, his balance sure, his presence steady as ever—eases her almost at once. The pain doesn’t vanish, but it loosens its grip, ebbing back like a receding undertow. She follows where he leads without question, instinct as old as her keel guiding her steps, confusion trailing behind her like a wake but never doubting the Captain for a second.
"Hungry," she repeats, tasting the word with a short, disbelieving huff of laughter. She cuts him an amused look, the sort that pretends at irritation while never quite managing it. "You couldn’t have spared me this when you were questing?" The thought of food stirs half-memories: Lazarus’s galley thick with warmth and spice, the comfort of it drifting through her timbers, and, less fondly, the slosh of dishwater and scraps spilled thoughtlessly into her seams such that the overall idea she has of eating is a rather disgusting one.
She studies the spread as if a choice might suddenly announce itself, eyes moving over colour and shape with no map to guide her. At last she reaches out and drags a finger through a small bowl of honey meant for dibbing, the only thing there that looks even vaguely like water. It clings, slow and golden, slipping down to her knuckles, and she doesn’t bother to stop it. The Ark lifts her hand and brings the finger to her mouth where her lips close around it, soft and unhurried, and her tongue follows, drawing the sweetness away. The taste hits all at once—bright and thick and overwhelming—and her eyes widen, breath catching as the sensation blooms through her, richer than any spilled sugar she’s ever carried.
"...Never mind," she murmurs around the last trace of it, glancing back at Jack with something like awe. She doesn’t wait; grasping the bowl, she tips it to her lips and drinks, honey spilling freely, trailing down her chin and throat like liquid sunlight. She laughs under her breath as she swallows, utterly unbothered by the mess, newly delighted by the simple, astonishing richness of it.
Her touch is like a tempest, her whisper is a breeze, but when she has a temper, she'll bring you to your knees
Code stolen from Queen Sky
Siren's Wake | After she leaves a space, traces of her presence linger briefly: a faint scent of salt, the sound of distant water, a restless feeling in the chest. People rarely notice it consciously.
"Wasn't the sort of shit that came up as an option," Jack says, dryly apologetic as he smirks over at her and pops another blueberry into his mouth. "If it's a problem though, I'll see if I can swing it with the gods to lose your appetite." An unnecessary comment, as it happens, because in the next moment never mind, and The Ark's first taste of honey explodes through his magic like a lit fuse. An imperceptible shiver runs down his back, Jack turning to grin at her, lips parting to say something, only for the words to die on his tongue as he watches her tip the little dish of honey into her mouth.
"That's not--" Blinking a couple of times, the Captain considers reaching out to try and correct her decision, before deciding no. No, you only get one first at everything, so why the fuck not. He can offer advice though, at least. "You might wanna have somethin' a little more substantial to go with it," he suggests, nodding to one of the bread rolls nestled among the pasties. "Too much of that an' you'll get sick." And whilst he knows she's very likely aware of that unpleasantness as a ship, experiencing it as a person is a whole other ballgame.
"If you think hungry hurts, feelin' sick is a helluva lot worse."
fight so dirty but you love so sweet talk so pretty but your heart got teeth
The Ark lifts a brow over the rim of the bowl, honey still clinging thickly to her mouth, and lowers it just enough to drag her tongue along her wine-dark lip, tasting the last of the sweetness there. Her eyes slide to where he nods—the bread sitting squat and unassuming among the other offerings—and at his mention of getting sick she wrinkles her nose at once, the way she does when bilge water sloshes somewhere it shouldn’t. The bowl dips from her hands, set aside without ceremony.
It doesn’t occur to her to wipe away the gold streaking her chin. It glints there, catching lanternlight, as she reaches for the bread instead, fingers closing around it with faint suspicion. Jack has never steered her wrong, and so she trusts him now the same way she always has, even when the course looks dull or uncomfortable.
She takes a bite, and her face pinches immediately. She chews, jaw working, and swallows with a little huff of displeasure. "That’s...so dry," she says, affronted, before sighing and taking another bite anyway, stubborn as any ship pushing through a dead wind. The ache in her belly doesn’t ease right away. It lingers, tight and unfamiliar, and she slows, lowering the bread as her gaze lifts back to him. There’s something almost young in the look she gives him then; not needy, not frightened, just openly unsure in a way she’s never had cause to be before. "How long," she asks quietly, one hand drifting back to her stomach, "until it starts feeling better?"
Her touch is like a tempest, her whisper is a breeze, but when she has a temper, she'll bring you to your knees
Code stolen from Queen Sky
Siren's Wake | After she leaves a space, traces of her presence linger briefly: a faint scent of salt, the sound of distant water, a restless feeling in the chest. People rarely notice it consciously.
"Mm, it can be," Jack agrees of the bread, smirking and finishing his blueberries. "Some people dip it in the honey, but you've already skipped that part," he adds, nodding to the discarded bowl and watching as she nevertheless commits to the bread with honey still glittering on her chin. "There's water, too." Jack nods at a pitcher of it, before reaching out preemptively to pour her a glass. "Don't reckon we've ever sailed through freshwater, but you won't want the other kind to drink."
When she gazes back towards him, her discomfort and confusion as plain on her face as in her mind, the Captain considers it and reaches this time for a plum. "Few minutes, it ain't instant," he says, before reaching out to carelessly swipe away the drizzle of honey on her chin with his thumb. "Finish your bread an' have a drink, then see how you feel." Licking the honey from his thumb, he follows it up with a bite of the sweet fruit, feeling the own edge of his hunger start to dull with it.
"Didn't realise it'd gotten so late," he mutters. He must have been sitting at his desk and drinking and mulling nervously over the coin for a lot longer than he'd thought.
fight so dirty but you love so sweet talk so pretty but your heart got teeth
She nods once, as if plotting a simple course and fixing it there for later. Honey, then bread, then water; she files it away with a thousand other small truths learned by doing, trusting there will be a next time, and another after that, to get it right.
At the mention of water her attention lifts at once, brightening like a sudden break in the clouds. Freshwater, he says, and she knows the difference instinctively, the way such seas pull heavy and greedy against a hull, how they lack the easy give of salt. Still, when he offers the glass she takes it without hesitation. The vessel is small, laughably so, but when she raises it to her lips and drinks, her mind smooths and glistens, a quiet sheen passing over it like moonlight on calm water. She lowers the glass with a soft, involuntary sound of pleasure, breath easing out of her, and nods at him in appreciation.
As his thumb brushes her chin, gathering the stray honey, she barely registers it given how familiar and practical it is, not unlike the way he’s always leaned to clear a spill from the cabin floor without breaking stride. She takes another bite of bread and washes it down with water this time, and that helps; the tightness eases, not gone but loosening, the ache shifting into something manageable.
She glances around the deck then, noting the extra bodies still lingering, the way the night refuses to settle. "Usually they've quieted down by now," she observes, before turning her ocean-deep eyes back to him. "And you..you’re usually in your cabin," she goes on, or "already ashore." Nights when rest wouldn’t take, when he’d leave her riding steady and return with dawn clinging to him but not just that, with sex and smoke and oil braided into his scent, the particular mix she’d soon learn belonged to the House of Midnight. She studies him now, head tilting slightly, as if feeling his weight through the deck the way she always has.
"Do you want to go?" She says before lifting the glass again, water catching the light as she drinks. "I'd go with you." Not that she knew what it would entail, of course, but if sleep was once again going to elude Jack in a way which would leave him frustrated rather than just merely manic, she'd not stop him from seeking out this new remedy.
Her touch is like a tempest, her whisper is a breeze, but when she has a temper, she'll bring you to your knees
Code stolen from Queen Sky
Siren's Wake | After she leaves a space, traces of her presence linger briefly: a faint scent of salt, the sound of distant water, a restless feeling in the chest. People rarely notice it consciously.
The Captain says nothing, but there's a quiet relief as he senses the sharp ache of her hunger dull to something less urgent, similar to when he's patched a tear in a sail and is able to see his stitching hold against the breeze. Pouring himself a glass of water as well, he doesn't hide his smirk at her enjoyment of it - it's no rum, but it's no less important, and he raises his own glass in a cheers before taking a sip.
"Mm, they're all riled up tonight. Don't ask me why," he drawls, though by the glances some of the men are still stealing at her and the way Bassian is being very careful every time he puts his drink down, it doesn't take much to guess. "I am," he agrees of his whereabouts at this time of night, Jack drifting the few steps to the railing to lean against it as he's done a hundred, hundred times.
Beneath them the Greatwood sprawls like a dark splotch dotted with winks of light, and he considers it for a second, going, before he shakes his head. "Not tonight. The woods are no King's End when it comes to that sort of entertainment. Might head down, though." Back to his cabin, where he can settle into the rhythm of the crew and the sway of the ship, and work or wait for sleep to take.
"As star of the show though, you're welcome to stay." He makes himself say it, because the tension in his jaw belies the truth of it. "Nothin'll go awry while Murph is up at the wheel, an' he's of a mind to stay there all night."
fight so dirty but you love so sweet talk so pretty but your heart got teeth
She grins at him, slow and wolfish, the kind that bares teeth without ever quite showing how sharp they are. "And that's barely a breeze of what I could have made them feel."
The Ark drifts closer as Jack moves to the rail, not crowding him, but just aligning herself. Even as a woman, she feels the press of him there—the familiar brace of his arms against the edge, the weight of him leaning out over open space—a sensation that echoes somewhere deep in her, a pressure along her side, a phantom contact that makes her spine hum. He’s always been like this with her, present in more ways than one, even when he thinks he’s stepped away.
She listens to him, not yet capable of reading into body language that's entirely based on what she sees, and so takes his words at their face, turning them over like stones in her palm. After a moment she shakes her head, red hair slipping loose over her shoulder. "I'd still be able to feel you, even if I stayed here." Then she looks at him again, the smile that finds her mouth smaller, closer, something new and private. "But I like this," she adds, nodding between them. "Talking. Not just weight and motion and the feel of your steps." Her eyes trace him, unhurried, curious. "I like seeing you, too." Her following shrug is almost sheepish in its honesty. "I never knew how much of all of you there was that wasn’t just voices carried through wood, or pressure, or hands on my rigging."
Her attention flicks toward the helm, where Murphy stands steady and intent, and the look she gives him is fond, settled, unmistakably adoring. Then she turns back to Jack, one brow lifting, mischief sliding easily back into place. "If I get bored, maybe I could make things go awry. No reason his night shouldn't be as interesting as everyone else's." Her smile sharpens, dangerous and playful all at once.
Her touch is like a tempest, her whisper is a breeze, but when she has a temper, she'll bring you to your knees
Code stolen from Queen Sky
Siren's Wake | After she leaves a space, traces of her presence linger briefly: a faint scent of salt, the sound of distant water, a restless feeling in the chest. People rarely notice it consciously.
