Castlevania Birds
"Say Corvo, how'd you like to play a game?" The black-eyed Outsider seemed oddly playful. What had put him in a good mood?
"Aren't you always playing games?" Corvo asked. That would account for the various chosen he'd encountered.
"You could see it that way," the Outsider said. "But this is a true game, a mere diversion while you are incapacitated."
"I don't think I drank that much." It had been just one glass, hadn't it? He could hold his drink better than that.
"Something has occurred, but I'll leave you to discover what," he said. "We're in your dreams again. Will you play?"
If he was dreaming, he might as well. Boring the Outsider seemed like a dumb thing to do. "What kind of game?"
He smiled a bit at that. "You may think of it as an extra mission. You need to eliminate a lord of an unusual castle. However, this lord is not human. Dracula is known as a vampire, one who rose from the dead and steals the lifeblood of the living. As you might expect, he boorishly styles himself as a dark tyrant. Still, he could be a different challenge for you. He cannot be killed with normal weapons. But since we don't have long to dream, I'll make sure that your sword will work. You'll find him in the tallest tower of his castle. Have fun getting there." He then vanished and everything became gray mist.
When it cleared, Corvo found himself in the courtyard of an ominous looking castle. The full moon was large and bright, sending cool shadows over everything. Detailed statues of winged devils stood in a row; they and everything else were on a grand scale. On the statues and walls, dark birds watched over their territory. And far overhead, there was a clock tower connected to a staircase up to the highest tower of them all.
This was going to be fastest if he blinked up to the rooftops, scaled the clock tower on the outside, then entered the highest tower from the unguarded staircase. The staircase being so obviously left open to the elements was a strange design choice; Corvo felt like he should keep cautious while up there. Activating his mark, he jumped swiftly up to the top of one of the devil statues. The architecture of this place had plenty of points he could move to. He aimed for a windowsill next.
As he moved swiftly through the air, something crashed right into his chest. It knocked the wind out of his lungs. The shock of that left him to crash onto his back on the lifeless dirt. What had been up there? A tripwire? The birds cawed overhead; there was a black feather left on his coat. A bird... he hadn't seen one take off when he used Blink to move. Could the birds here use Blink too?
Maybe he'd been sent to foreign lands. That would account for simple birds being awake at night and able to use dark powers. To test out their ability, Corvo next blinked towards a statue one was perched on. It happen so fast that he barely caught sight of the bird taking off. He couldn't change directions mid-blink and got knocked to the ground again. If he was going to continue up the outside, he'd need to take care of the birds first.
There was a smug laugh behind him. Corvo glanced back and found that a strange dog had joined him. While this place was ornate and satanic, the dog was bright and colorful. He'd fit more into a child's storybook than anywhere Corvo knew of. The dog wagged his tail and barked eagerly.
If the dog wasn't going to attack him, there was no reason to attack the dog. Corvo got back to his feet and pulled out his crossbow. He aimed at the bird that had last attacked him. In response, it blinked back to its original perch. Anticipating that, Corvo switched his aim and quickly fired to catch the bird landing. The bolt struck true and the dog bounded off to retrieve the body. That wasn't necessary, but it didn't matter.
He next tried to shoot the group of the birds that would get in the way of his ascent. Some flew off normally while others blinked away. After dropping the bird he had, the dog snickered again. That dog wasn't well-trained but it still wasn't doing any harm. Corvo waited for the birds to return to their perch, then blinked up to a statue's head. While they didn't attack, the birds were clearly watching him.
What they couldn't expect was for him to stop time and throw a grenade at them. It blew up right as he let time run again, destroying them in an explosion of feathers. The dog whined in disappointment as he couldn't go retrieve them. Now that his way was clear, Corvo blinked his way up the face of the massive building. There was an outstretched stand for a gargoyle at the tip of the roof, allowing him a way past the overhang.
Dozens of the dark birds were waiting up there. The bright brown dog was there too, barking and wagging his tail. To the dog, this was an exciting long hunt. Corvo didn't like wasting time when he had a mission. But looking up at the gravity defiant tower his target was in, he got an idea.
The tower room was a decadent throne room where gold and skulls made up the decor. On a black throne of thorns, a white-haired man who could fit in with any of Dunwall's nobility sat with a glass of red wine in hand. He was doing nothing but enjoying his drink when a massive flock of dark birds burst into the room. The glass of wine crashed to the floor as the lord got repeatedly pecked.
Growling in rage, Dracula cast a ring of fire into the room, not caring that it caught the rug and drapes on fire. "What is the meaning of this?!" he demanded.
A dark-haired man then emerged from the maddened flock, a bloodied sword in hand. "Nothing," Corvo said, then sliced off Dracula's head. It was a dream influenced by the Outsider, there didn't need to be a meaning.
While his flesh turned to black ashes and his bones collapsed on the burning floor, Dracula's head sprouted wings and turned into a bat. "You... whoever you are, you will pay for this!"
The threat meant nothing to Corvo; he fired a bolt at the bat as Dracula tried to escape. The vampire fell a few feet before he beat his wings furiously towards a window the flock had broken in through. As Corvo was readying a Blink to catch him before his escape, the dog leaped in and snatched the wounded bat out of the air between his teeth. The dog wagged his tail proudly as the bat struggled to escape.
However, gray mist blurred Corvo's sight. "You've run out of time for this game, but we'll call that good," the Outsider said. "I didn't expect you to make it up there with the brief time we had. Yet as always, you've proven entertainingly resourceful. You're such fun to watch; I wish we could keep going with these games forever."
"Why was that dog there?" Corvo asked, trying to ignore the unsettling advances. "He seemed out of place."
Unusually, that stumped the Outsider. "Well... does it really matter? It was a dream, strange things happen when we dream. And he helped you in the end, so think of him as a little bonus. Now, you have another challenge to face when you wake up. But guess what? The man who killed the Empress will be in the area. I wonder what you will do."
The hired assassin Daud... what would he do?