— THEY SLEEP.

[ a sailor knows intimately the dangers of the sea, and yet the draw of the inky waters, the weight of his body that he knows only the depths will relieve, the treacherous quiet that lives beneath the lapping waves — none of it worries nikolai. it feels exceptionally normal to imagine drifting in the darkness below. his mind has shifted, imperceptibly, from the empty sarcophogi to a familiar black space, a cage within himself that he tries valiantly to keep locked, buried, and isolated, lest he find himself peering out from between those bars once more.

but he’s already there. perhaps he never left, and he’s just a remarkable actor.

the water is cold, blessedly so. it means numbness comes swiftly once he’s submerged, the boats fading from view. the missing dead have to be somewhere. he’s meant to find the bodies or at least find answers to the curious circumstances, but his mind is a haze, cloaked in the glimmering dark.

his hand brushes against something — fabric, or the weightless glide of hair beneath the water. as if by instinct, his fingers latch, his mind sharpening as he pulls a body against his own. a mass of bubbles stream from the last bit of air expelled from his lungs, his arm tightening around a torso as he kicks upwards and breaks the surface with a sputtering gasp, dragging the person with him. ]

— ILL MET BY MOONLIGHT.

[ the boat has room for two. three would be more crowded than he prefers. four would be asking to capsize. ]

I’m afraid we can’t take on any other passengers. [ he’s repeated it a dozen times already, because the corpses attempting to board his commandeered rowboat don’t take kindly to being called corpses. ] I already have one very attractive, very alive guest. Not as attractive as me, but few are.

[ it’s becoming increasingly hard to row while shouldering bodies off his ship, meaning they’re getting precisely nowhere. nikolai unholsters the revolvers at his hips and points one at the fresh corpse babbling about shelter. a crack splits the night, a bullet blowing through the corpse’s forehead and knocking them back into the water with an undignified splash.

he tosses both guns at his (alive) companion and flicks his wet hair from his eyes. ] Do you know how to shoot? It’s easy. Unless you’re shooting at bees. Then it’s hard. I’ll row if you kill anything that looks like it’s already dead.

— WILDCARD.

[ ooc: will default to brackets. also nikolai is host to a demon, it be like that sometimes. ]