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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!
Flora stands just off to the side of the cannon, one hand braced lightly against the sun-warmed wood beside her as her curls slip loose from their pins and cling faintly to the back of her neck, the heat of Leafchange doing nothing to dull the brightness in her expression as she angles her body toward Melita with a grin that feels a touch too sharp to be entirely innocent.
Gold glints at her fingers as she gestures toward the cannonballs stacked nearby and then to the cannon itself, her rings catching the light in quick, flashing accents as though they’re as eager as she is, and there’s something almost conspiratorial in the way her smile pulls wider, like she’s offering not just permission but an invitation to do something just shy of reckless. "It seems only right that you be the first one to fire it," she says, grin crooked. "It's a shame there's not like, anything specific to aim for, but.." Trailing off, she shrugs her shoulders bouncily. No doubt seeing the cannonball sail through the harbour and slam into the open water would be spectacle enough given no one would be expecting it.
The finality of such potential always held such a bright anticipation for Melita – the rush before the call of skirmishes, the quick jettisoning of one’s pulse, the long, deep intakes of breath. She patted the cannons, the weaponry, like it was an old friend; most of its brethren was, at one time or another. But then she was laden with the same sharp-edged smile as Flora, like sharks and wild cats and things that would instantly cut at a jugular just as soon as giggle and laugh. “I very much appreciate the gesture,” she preened with another wicked grin, humming a sea shanty under her breath about bones and lockers. “We can always make do. It's ceremonial, after all.”
Gathering the necessities and placing them in all the right parts, just as she’d done for years on the Ark, then her own Firecracker, she snagged at the armaments and waited, giving Flora a moment. “Let’s imagine our worst enemies right there in the harbor,” pointing, gesturing, towards the open spot where the cannon would eventually fall and obliterate the images of such assholes. She wouldn’t ask whom Flora’s was – though she fathom the Queen might have litanies just as Melita did. “When you’re ready, off we pop,” she added with a wink, getting the fuse set and just as eager and fervent.
Flora’s grin tilts crooked and bright as she watches Melita move, the kind of easy, practiced confidence that makes something in her chest spark in recognition, like mischief meeting its match and deciding to lean in harder rather than back down, and she shifts her weight against the wood with a soft huff of laughter under her breath, eyes tracking every motion as the Honeybee loads the cannon with the same familiarity other people might pour a drink.
Gold flashes at her fingers as she idly toys with one of her rings, gaze flicking from Mel to the line of the barrel and out beyond it, and when that invitation lands—worst enemies—Flora’s smile sharpens just a fraction, quick and knowing, as if the answer comes too easily to pretend otherwise, and for a heartbeat she lets herself have it, lets the image settle clean and vivid in her mind: maroon sails cutting across the horizon, familiar in a way that presses somewhere just under her ribs. She wouldn’t touch the Ark in reality, not like this, not without reason anyway, but in the quiet, private theatre of her thoughts, it’s effortless, almost indulgent, the way she angles the shot, the way she imagines the impact, the way she doesn’t have to sort through what any of it means or deal with the fallout of attacking her ex boyfriend's boat.
Flora's gaze flicks back to Melita, brows bouncing once in shared conspiratorial delight, and she draws in a breath that feels just a touch too pleased with itself before letting it out in a low, decisive murmur. "Sink it."
Flora didn’t give voice to her imagined enemy, but maybe Melita didn’t need to hear it. She had her own – could make a whole line of them, all knotted and gnarled together waiting for their inevitable strike. Sah – almost faceless now, the line of lightning drawn on inevitable final breaths, felling her instantly because of stupid, desperate mistakes, a man she couldn’t even exact vengeance upon any longer. Her father, pretending he was in the distance, mouthing words no daughters should ever hear, or even older ghosts, glancing back with Ascended eyes or Loren’s inept features, calling on golem down so her leg could snap in half. Any and all of them falling to their mercurial whims would be a blessing – one of those rapturous, ravenous calls to satisfaction. A chapter closed. A new one to begin.
She tapped on the cannon and waited for Flora’s signal – grin growing ever more Cheshire the moment the two words were uttered. “My pleasure,” she granted in return, lighting the fuse, pulling the rope, listening as the flares burst and the fire roared into a bastion of heathen qualities, sailing, sailing, sailing along the wake of round armaments hitting the waves. She could envision them all gone; submerged and crying and screaming and then deceased, the ladies crowned victorious in their loathing, in their vehemence. "Fuckin' nice," came on a whistle, impressed with the visuals and power.
Flora doesn’t so much brace as she remembers, a fraction too late, that she should have, her hands flying up toward her ears just as the fuse disappears into flame and the world answers in a crack of sound that feels like it splits the air open, the force of it blooming outward and rattling straight through her ribs as she lets out a startled, breathless laugh that she can’t quite hear, her curls jumping loose around her face as the echo chases itself out over the water.
The recoil hums through the wood beneath her palm, and she squints after the cannonball as it sails, a dark arc against the bright horizon before it drops with an almost anticlimactic kerplunk, swallowed whole by the sea as though it hadn’t just announced itself like a thunderclap, and Flora tilts her head slightly, lips pressing together in a considering line that lasts all of half a heartbeat before it breaks again into something far more dangerous.
Her hands fall away from her ears as the ringing lingers, laughter still caught somewhere between her throat and the air, and when she turns back to Melita there’s a spark in her gaze that looks less like satisfaction and more like the beginning of a very bad idea dressed up as inspiration. "Okay," she says, her voice pitched just a touch louder than necessary, clearing her throat with exaggerated drama. "I think we can do so much better."
The grin that follows is all teeth and sunlight and trouble as her eyes flick upward, not entirely joking and not entirely serious in a way that’s very much her, chin tipping as she draws out the next words like a challenge tossed into the open air. "Safrin?" she calls, sweet as anything and twice as sharp beneath it. "Can you give us a target that’ll really get some attention?"
Flora channels Saffy for a better target >:D
Channeling (Accepted) : Allows an Accepted the opportunity to channel one of the gods during a time of crisis (2x a season). Can be combined with other accepted channeling to increase power. If combined with another mastered channeling, increases the odds of a Big God answering to 15 %
Type: Light | Rank: Mastered | Cost: Action
Sometimes - not often, but sometimes - calls to Safrin go straight to voicemail.
Even more rarely, but not entirely unheard of, they get forwarded on to the big guy himself.
And thus we find ourselves asking a strange sort of question, one that might be more terrifying if the answer is yes: Does the mercurial God of Life know how to have fun?
Let's find out.
Vi does not appear in his bunny slippers and with his broadsheet newspaper under one arm (but please do imagine it that way). He simply is, standing far out to sea right where the cannon is aimed but somehow heard and seen as clearly as if he were standing directly beside them.
A beat of silence follows, one that feels as if it lasts for a decade, while he considers Flora's call and the situation he suddenly finds himself in. Then, he sighs. "Very well, ruler of Torchline and chosen of Ludo." He spreads his hands, the meaning clear: hit me with your best shot.
If and when they do, Vi will promptly explode with all the dramatics and fireworks of a small and self-contained atom bomb. Ripples cascade out across the Arclight, sea spray catching rainbows in the breeze, but rather than a roar of noise or a subsonic boom, the explosion sounds like a low, flat voice reciting: Bang.
In the air, the fireworks spell out phrases like 'Oh no' and 'Ow' and 'No more', and when all settles once more, Vi is gone.
When Flora wasn’t satisfied, Melita’s grin curled and contorted into something menacing; ready, willing for upheaval. While her mind would’ve concocted something else, maybe dragging out prisoners and letting them be test dummies and targets or other adversaries, Flora drew back into her own capabilities, ones the Honeybee no longer had. “Oh fuck yeah,” she announced with that potent smile, waiting, waiting, waiting, despite any misgivings about Safrin, surely the starry goddess could come up with something sufficient –
But it wasn’t Safrin.
Her eyes went wide and features less domineering as Vi made his appearance. Melita had never been beheld in his presence. Never would have, given who she was – prone to violence that wasn’t always saturated in justice. She gaped like a fish several times, glancing back and forth at Flora, then pinched the skin on her arm, just in case she was suddenly hallucinating. Then she wondered if they could even do that, like it was a sacrilege to even turn their armaments towards the Big God. “Uhhhh,” came her brainless and initial response, looking at the Doubletake once more. “Okaaaaay. Thank you,” because she felt like she needed to be polite for what they were about to do.
Lighting the fuse again, far less confident now because this seemed absurd, the cannon fired across the harbor – with its dramatic fanfare and fireworks and power – to amount to almost a dry humor spelled out in the sky.
Flora’s grin is already forming at the expectation of seeing Safrin, untikl her mouth drops open as her gaze snaps out toward the water where He simply is, impossibly distant and impossibly present all at once, the air around her going thin in that peculiar way it does when reality tilts just enough to remind her she is, in fact, playing with forces that do not play back the same way.
Her head jerks toward Melita, curls catching against her cheek as she mutters, low and fast and entirely unqueenly, "oh shit," before straightening again like posture alone might undo what’s already happened, her lips snapping into a dazzling, overly bright smile that feels like it belongs in a toothpaste commericla rather than on her face as she lifts her chin toward Vi as though this were all very much under control and absolutely intentional. "Hi," she offers, saccharine and sharp-edged all at once, because apparently this is happening.
There’s a flicker of something in her eyes—half disbelief, half well we’ve come this far—as he gestures, as if the god of life has just handed them permission to do something that feels wildly inappropriate and yet somehow too late to reconsider, and Flora glances once more toward Melita, that same spark of reckless delight resurfacing despite the situation.
This time she doesn’t forget about how loud the cannon is; her hands clamp firmly over her ears, rings pressing cold against her skin as she braces just ahead of the blast, shoulders tightening in anticipation as the fuse catches and the cannon answers...only for it to resolve into something so profoundly underwhelming that it takes her a second to process it at all. A dull, flat bang reaches her through the muffled ringing, and she blinks, lowering her hands slowly as her gaze lifts toward the sky where fireworks bloom; not with devastation, not with spectacle, but with the most deadpan declarations imaginable, her lips twitching as she reads them, the absurdity of it cracking straight through whatever tension had coiled there.
She presses her lips inward, teeth catching them as if she can physically hold the laughter back, eyes wide and bright as she turns toward Melita and bursts with laughter.
Flora seemed to have her reaction under far more control, or was just used to it from her leadership duties – because Melita didn’t feel the same. Instead, she stood there, stiffened and uncertain, perhaps the most apprehensive she’d ever been about any weaponry, until things dissipated – leaving nothing but the anticlimactic echoes and the still of silence in their wake.
She hazarded one glance towards the Doubletake, mind doing a tailspin, mouth in a straight line and visibly trying to stifle a grin or a laugh or anything other than expressionless notions and impassive deities. So when Flora burst, so did she, shaking her head and letting the humor flow through all the trepidation until they were restless kites or wandering gales; permitting the heights of her shock and awe pilfer, billow, away back into the sanctity of armaments. “Good fucking gods,” she ended up murmuring, wiping a tear away from her eye, allowing a few more clusters of giggles to unfurl as her stomach clenched and ached, ribs barely keeping it together. It took a second or two of gasping for air, then deep breaths, before she could render anything else again. “Was that what you had in mind? Who knew he had a sense of humor?”
Flora’s already halfway bent over when the laughter hits her again, sharper this time, her shoulders hitching as she drags in a breath that doesn’t quite make it where it’s supposed to go, one hand braced uselessly against her side while the other lifts to swipe at her eyes, smearing away tears that only seem to come back faster, the whole world blurring into something bright and unsteady where Melita stands somewhere in the middle of it.
Another burst escapes her before she can stop it, breath catching on the edge of it as she forces herself upright in pieces, sucking in air like it’s a task she has to remember how to do, her curls a mess around her face as she blinks rapidly, trying to clear her vision enough to actually see anything through the sheen of it.
"Absolutely not—?" she manages, the words pitching upward in disbelief that immediately fractures again as a laugh slips through the middle of it, her head shaking hard enough to send loose strands flying. "I thought Safrin would show up and we could, like, shoot something and then rain confetti down on everyone or something, but that—"
It dissolves there, her eyes widening dramatically as the image catches up with her all over again, the sheer absurdity of it landing fresh, and she presses her lips together like that might help, like she can physically contain it this time, which lasts all of a second before she breaks again, laughter spilling out bright and helpless.
"That felt like seeing something illegal," she adds, breathless and incredulous, one hand lifting as if to gesture toward the empty stretch of sea where the god of life had just.. politely exploded, her grin stretching wide despite herself as she shakes her head again, still trying—and failing—to get fully back under control, because what the fuck.
The statement landing upon a question tickled another part of Melita’s humor, and set off another cackling chorus of laughter that no doubt sent hels and passersby coasting far, far away. The apparition of Vi himself, amongst the entanglement of their antics, seemed to have been such a noteworthy prize out of absolutely nothing that she’d remember it forever. Inform at least twenty people by the time she’d gone to bed that night.
Rising up from where she’d been doubled over in pain from her ribs and another dose of gluttonous giggles, she pushed the tears from her eyes, shaking her head again and glancing upwards at the sky, like it might signify an explanation. “Gods, right? Would anyone believe us?” Not that it mattered, for the Honeybee would tell them anyway. “I never did summon any of the Big Gods,” she granted to Flora earnestly, believing the Doubletake had earned some kind of amazing platitude for the wondrous, ridiculous gift they’d been bestowed. “But that was a god damn treat. And the cannons were amazing too. Tell Kaisel you've got a new merch idea.”
Flora’s laughter is still spilling out of her in uneven bursts, her breath catching and restarting like she hasn’t quite figured out the rhythm again yet, one hand lifting to swipe at her eyes as she tries—futilely—to get herself back under anything resembling control, the corners of her mouth refusing to settle no matter how much she presses her lips together. "Well, at least we won’t be the only ones," she manages, her voice still bright with it as she straightens in stages and finally glances outward, taking in the way the dockworkers and passersby are only just beginning to drift back into motion, like the world had briefly paused and is now deciding it’s safe to continue, her grin widening at the thought of how many versions of this are about to exist by nightfall.
Her gaze flicks back to Melita, mischief still sparking easily despite the lingering disbelief, and she lets out another soft huff of laughter as she lifts a hand in a loose, conceding gesture. "Well, by all means, you can take credit for this one if you want," she adds, the words light and teasing, immediately undercut by the way she breaks again, shaking her head as if the idea of anyone trying to explain it is somehow funnier than the event itself.
"Oh yeah," she continues, the thought catching hold and running with it as her eyes brighten. "I can see it now. Floating balloons with Vi’s face on them that you can shoot, but magically they never make a sound—" The image hits her all over again, absurd and perfect, and she laughs, breathless, one hand pressing briefly to her stomach as if that might keep the rest of it contained, though it clearly has no intention of stopping anytime soon.
Melita’s glance eventually went back to the other workers, having momentarily forgotten they were there, stifling a grin and another threatening bout of laughter as they all seemed to wear different and varying levels of expression. Some baffled, perplexed, and puzzled, shaking their heads as if uncertain by what they’d just seen, others seemingly either unbothered (given how Caido was, perhaps that was more than fair) or taking it all inward, eventually rushing home to tell their kin. It didn’t stop the Honeybee from grinning, arching her brow back at Flora. “You think we’d all be used to this by now,” except they weren’t, and maybe that was fine too. Nothing like surprises and chaos in one’s life – and this one, at least, was somewhat innocent.
As for taking credit, she snorted and scoffed. “Nah. It’s yours.” She was much more intrigued by the thought of Vi balloon designs and incorporating the utter nonsense that had unfolded in some commemoration of the ridiculous event. “Could be part of some kind of event. An upcoming festival or something,” another giggle managed to make its way through. “We can have all sorts of shirts too. Maybe some streetwear.” Vi in his cool, detached expression, embers and cannons upon shirtsleeves.
Flora snickers under her breath, the sound softer now but still threaded through with the last remnants of laughter as her lips twist wryly, her gaze flicking once more over the dockworkers like she’s cataloguing the varying degrees of what the fuck just happened written across their faces. "Yeah, you’d think," she says, the grin that follows easy and crooked, as if she’s not entirely sure she wants to get used to it anyway.
The thought of a festival catches her in her mind as Melita mentions it, and something in her expression sharpens just a fraction as she straightens a touch more fully, the humour still there but threaded now with something more deliberate, more considering. Her fingers snap once, quick and decisive, gold flashing as she points vaguely toward Melita like she’s just confirmed something important. "I think you’re onto something," she says, nodding, her head tilting as she turns the idea over properly now, not just playing with it. "Other than our LongNight parties, we don’t really have many festivals...but maybe we should change that."
With another nod, firmer this time, Flora tips her chin toward the street with a flicker of renewed mischief breaking back through. "Come on," she adds, already moving as if the decision’s been made, "we can come up with t-shirt designs over slurpees."
