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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!
“All right, why don’t we have a hot spring?” Was her first inquiry as they hovered over the bounty of Stormbreak for a while, until Melita had landed (decently – in that there was no crashing sound and only a few minor bumps) on the rocky outcropping. “Halo has one. Stormbreak has one. The Climb...” She’d never seen something similar in the Greatwood, but she hadn’t explored it fully either. “And don’t tell me Rainbow Road counts.” Because it didn’t – she couldn’t recall seeing anyone ever sit and rest in the sulphur-laden place.
But at least it was evening, and they likely would be left alone to do their bidding. The stars flickered and reflected in the little pool, and as she and Flora disembarked, the Honeybee grabbed at the jars and bottles they’d packed away in her skyboat, humming as she began to move towards the glade.
'Oh my gods, thank you.' With a theatrical lifting of her hands only to have them flop back down at her sides, Flora nods. "I've been saying that forever but no one seems to agree." Probably it was because the idea of sitting in a hot spring in the hottest region wasn't everyone's cup of tea. "I bet we could have Safrin make it so that it isn't even too hot. Like, it could change with the temperature, you know?" Maybe the Miana Pool...?
"Oh, also, for the next little bit can you not invite Koa and I to the same things...?" Letting her expression comically crumple as she shoots the Honeybee a look over one shoulder. "We uh...broke up right before I started seeing Jack and that was the first time I'd seen him since." It didn't occur to Flora that Melita might have known and invited them both as an extra little bit of chaos dedicated to Ludo.
Granted, just because Melita thought about it didn’t make it good idea, but an idea, nonetheless. “Ooh, fluctuating temperatures could be fun. So like, warmer at night, cooler during the day, that sort of thing?” She tapped on her chin again, beginning to wade into the shallower bits of the hot springs, not yet noticing she sky and land underneath the pool. “We could put it right next to the rum fountain and just drink all day,” and she winked, meaning it entirely.
Grabbing at one of the jars and heading towards the ripples of starlight across the water, Flora’s request had her brows furrowing, not quite following the train of thought until the inevitable. Truthfully, she hadn’t known about any of it – Koa had never said anything about them being together, nor the Queen, so her own comical expression of going through the motions (surprise, confusion, bewilderment, to grimacing) wasn’t hidden or laden with pretenses. “Oh,” she started, because dots were beginning to connect with why the Dragoon had been such a Debby fuckin Downer. “That explains a lot.” She huffed, shaking her head. “I didn’t know, for the record. I wouldn’t have done that to either of you.” Chaotic Melita might be, but she was also loyal – considering both Koa (despite the many times he’d been her targeted victim) and Flora as friends.
On an additional accord, she tilted her head, making a face again. "You picked Jack over Koa?"
"Exactly. It could also fluctuate with the seasons." Admittedly that sounds far more like a Frey request than a Safrin one, either their patron goddess could figure out a way to make it work or she couldn't blame her region for for having to go to another god. (Except she could, and absolutely would). "Oh gods, that sounds incredible. We could have a stash of fountain water nearby too if folks need to quick sober up."
Following Melita in, Flora watches the Honeybee scoop at the surface of the water where points of starlight softly flicker. 'Yeah....." Wincing, the queen rubs at one of her arms, wrinkling her nose toward the starry sky overhead and thus missing the majority of Melita's expressions. "Oh, well...that's good, then." Things would probably have been a bit more awkward if the Honeybee had copped to intentionally trying to force the pair together again.
Letting her eyes fall back down, Flora raises her brows. For all the times she'd brought up Jack to the Honeybee, Mel had never really done much other than wrinkle her nose such that her friend's question caught her a touch off-guard. "I mean...yeah?" Feeling her cheeks heat, Flora tugs at an errant golden curl before shrugging. "..for one, Koa and I have...a history. We were working to get over it, but it was still a thing between us. He also was sort of seeing someone else too, so that made things weird for a while, and then he disappeared and came back, and.." Rambling, the queen bites back the flood of words with a soft sigh.
"He wasn't going to move to Torchline, and I certainly didn't want to move here and being apart all the time made things...hard." Not hard in the usual sense, but hard in the Jack was always there when Koa wasn't, sense. "And Jack and I have been through a lot together."
Oh and he's a telepath, Flora thought, but obviously couldn't say.
Scooping at the starlight, she simply listened. A rare thing for the Honeybee to do, perhaps, given the impulsivity always restlessly pulsing through her veins, but sometimes she sought to understand, rather than respond. From her standpoints, comprehension, and experiences, Jack was far older, and that came with a multitude of capabilities, knowledge, and potential manipulations that Flora simply wouldn’t have. Plus, he was occasionally just a bastard for little to no reason, and Melita, out of some goodness in her blackened little heart, didn’t want to see her friend and extended family hurt. Koa was her friend too, and far more amusing than Jack ever would be, in her opinion.
But then she was learning things about the Dragoon that she’d never heard before, and she had to wonder what on earth she’d been doing in all these times. Probably stupid, chaotic shit, but that was beyond the point at this juncture. Her head tilted again, surveying the water running into the jars and jugs, bits and pieces of starlight woven through as histories inveigled, twisted, and torn, and the reasonable nuances gave way to all the embittered ones. “Huh,” she offered first, filling one glass container and setting it aside on the bank. Maybe ignorance had been bliss after all. She wasn’t sure anymore.
Trying to find the fathoms from Flora’s situations, she instead placed another jar under the surface, breaking over the constellations. “Well, I didn’t know all that either,” and she wrinkled her nose vaguely again. “And I don’t really care, and it’s not my business, and I’ll probably never understand…” so maybe that was her way of apologizing about even asking, her free hand meandered around the air as she gestured to nothing. “But if Jack hurts you, you can always come to me too.” And she’d come up with a myriad of ways to destroy him.
Raising her eyebrows, Flora silently wondered if Melita would have anything more to say than that—though huh and then silence wouldn't have been surprising—the queen sighed gently as the Honeybee continued. Kneeling down to fit the lid onto the jar Melita had placed on the bank, Flora considered at what point all of this just became oversharing, before deciding that out of anyone she knew, Mel would be the type to tell her to shut up if it got to that point.
"I really did feel something for Koa though." She admits in a low voice, the tinge to her cheeks now turning a shade closer to maroon as her mind flit back to that afternoon in the Celestine when she'd ended things. "And...it would have been him, I think, but Jack..." Finding it hard to keep the smile from her lips, the queen rubs her cheek against one shoulder as if to wipe it away. "We almost died fighting a stupid void panther thing on the beach and that's when things really changed."
Taking what the Honeybee said next as a warning about precisely the sort of oversharing Flora had been worried about, the queen offers her friend a wry smile. "I really appreciate that." Especially because Melita had been a member of Jack's crew long before she'd come to know Flora in any meaningful capacity. "I hope it doesn't come to that though." Duh. "He really is...different, on his own." She adds as if to further justify why it was she'd picked Jack, before reaching out a hand to take the second jar from Melita.
The Honeybee sighed, quiet and muted instead of her usual huffing and puffing bravado; dipping the jar underneath the pockets of starlit water, suddenly very glad she’d avoided so many circumstances like this. Maybe a part of her strived to understand why anyone would be interested in Jack, because most of the time he was just an outright bastard, without parsing through Flora’s motivations. And maybe too, in the end, it didn’t really matter. “So like, trauma bonding and some shit?” Given that all of them probably needed heavy doses of therapy, and wouldn’t be receiving any at all, the smuggler seemed more inclined to believe in that route and call it good.
Different on his own made the demigod wrinkle her nose, mostly because she didn’t believe it, and granted simple movements instead of her rampant disapproval again. It wasn’t like Flora would’ve changed or cared. It was as if she was talking to Ru or Sunjata about all their nonsensical shit too. And she’d certainly hit her head on enough walls, trying to barrel through, to have received such lessons the hard way. Instead, she altered the subject, letting all of it flicker away. "How many of these do you think we need?" as she handed another filled jar over.
"Well—" Mel's tone made it sound like the sort of thing that Flora ought to disagree with, but after considering her words for a moment or so, the queen realizes that actually that's probably a pretty good way of describing it. At least, a way of describing the parts of it she was allowed to talk about; it'd be a lot easier in many ways to be able to explain that Jack being a telepath changed everything about being in a relationship with him, but then, Flora wasn't sure if things would even feel the same to her if it was common knowledge. "—actually yeah, I guess." Shrugging her shoulders, it seemed Mel's capacity for talk of Flora's love life had reached its limit, which honestly the Doubletake had expected to hit long before now.
Accepting the jar and screwing the lid on, the queen can only shrug. "I dunno, lets do one more and call it good?"[//say] Setting it down with the other, Flora pulls a face. "At least it isn't picking up rocks and then leaving them all around the island." She adds with a roll of her eyes.
Melita didn’t expect Flora to answer anyway, so her brow arched, but she said nothing more. A nod and a narrowing of her eyes at the water followed, trying to parse through sentiments rolling through her brain, and then opting to discard them entirely. Instead, she concentrated on the jars and containers, watching as the starlit expanse flowed into them, before handing the vessels over to Flora. “All right, that should be the last of it then.”
Hauling herself out of the water, and completely unbothered by the state of her soused dress, she made a massive eye roll at the ‘picking up rocks and leaving them all around the island’ comment. “Gods. We don’t have to do that again, right?” Someone had probably told her the next steps and directions, but she likely hadn’t been listening.
Regardless, they were done now, and that was more than enough for the Honeybee. “Let’s go bother the locals then,” and see if they could hear any stories about water balloon fights.
