Chapter 37

Many believe that the majority of the human race only use 10 percent of their brains. This in fact a myth. If it was even remotely true than a bullet to the head would have negligible effect on a person's mind.
Neural activity occurs across the entirety of cerebral architecture in a vast interconnected process. Even now no one can fully understand how the multiple sections of the brain all come together to produce sentient consciousness.

It would be more accurate to say that the majority of the human race only understand 10 percent of their brains. Thus their appreciation of its true potential is utterly misdirected.

Opening Paragraph 'theoretical applications of neural cybernetics'.
By Doctor Rakshata Chawla

The Smoker and the Surgeon

Sea of Japan CLASSIFIED, Surgical ward 2017 ATB E-Day T minus 87 Days

"The initial motor neuron bridges are implanted. No rejection. The rest of his organic autonomic nervous functions are nominal. Tissue repair can begin as soon as" A shrill beeping echoed in the air.

"Adrenal spike. Possible cardiac failure."

"Prepare him for a return to total stasis."

"Why?"

"New orders Zero has just activated something called the Yamatai protocol we're to move Luthur to another facility at our own descretion. Or not."

"Yamatai? We'll have to change all the com and access codes again. That also means we can't make contact until an authorised party deactivates it. "

"Yes the authorised party has been declared to be the Lady Kami."

"Not lord Zero?"

"Apparently Lord Zero also activated the protocol on himself."

The Reaper

The world of D

Luthur felt cold wind caress his skin as he stood at the end of a narrow gully. The broken remains of animated stone and steel monsters surrounded him. He looked up at a giant man with a white beard as long as Luther was tall. The giants beard was braided with what appeared to be electrical cord and his body was covered in gleaming golden armour.

"This world is dying, horseman and the makers with it. Is that not why you have come here reaper to witness our passing?"

Horseman? "I seek to leave this realm and I suspect that for that I need the tree."

"The tree of life is no simple plant it is a gateway to other worlds undreamed of. In a place of darkness it may appear dead. But it is all the same tree connecting them all."

Logically that would make it the way out of here. Assuming I can apply logic to this place at all.

"Tell me old one, how may I reach the tree." After which I imagine I will awaken from this, whatever it is.

"The path there is blocked. Corruption has overcome much of our world the route to the tree being one of them. If you seek that path go to the forge and speak to Allya. She will help you."

"Who are you?" Luthur's belief that this was a dream had been shaken due to the reality level sharpness of his sensory experiences including physical pain corresponding perfectly to actions in this vision.

The old ones face gave a sigh "I am a maker Horseman. These hands once laid the foundations of entire worlds. Now they barely remember the stone over the warm heat of spilt blood."

The giant began walking away and Luthur followed him through a fallen hollowed tree trunk and into an open vale. Magnificent structures of carven stone and shaped steel surrounded him. A great bridge extended over a misty valley to an enormous structure built into a cliff face. The frowning face of a carved stone giant looked across at him. Gleaming metal accented the lines of the face and the slight movement of metal gears came from behind its eyes of tinted blue glass.

Before he came to the bridge he passed a training ground where another giant stabbed and whirled with an enormous halberd. The weapon was wrought with a wooden haft and a gleaming silver blade. Electrical cables wrapped around it like a serpent and made the blade crackle with caged lightning. His face was bearded. Half of the face was metal with an augmetic eye and his right limb clicked like a giant piece of clockwork. But the side of his face that was flesh was familiar. The face of a dead friend.

"Anders? Is that you?"

"My name is Thane Horseman. What kind of silly name is Anders anyway?"

The name of a man whose voice you mimic "So tell me, Thane why does a warrior such as yourself stand behind such a door?" Luthur gestured to an enormous metal and stone vault door circular and bound by locks that lay to their right.
"Someone has to man the gate. Funny I always saw myself dying, blade in hand a mountain of corpses at my feet fire all around."
You did die that way or Anders did at least. It wasn't just the face, the giant spoke with the voice of a dead friend and dream or not, it caught at Luthur's heart. "A warriors death. So again why not seek it I didn't see you battling the stone abominations earlier."

The giants mechanical eye darkened.
"You cannot kill corruption you can only destroy what it has claimed. Every blow I strike against the corruption is a blow against my own people. So think on that horseman before you mock me."
The he turned away and went back to making practice jabs with his halberd.

At the forge was a giantess whose limbs were proportioned more like a human's. She was holding a welding torch over the metal case of a tri barrelled weapon with an ornamented dragoons head at the end. Her bare arms were taut with muscle and wrapped in tattoos that looked like circuit patterns. Her hair was crimson and tied behind her in a long ponytail. Her ears both carried large hoops of gold. The shape of her face was … very familiar.

Kallen? No this isn't her. This may not be an ordinary hallucination. If that term was even applicable but he was beginning to suspect it was heavily influenced by his own mind. "Greetings your nameless but impressively bearded leader sent me to you."

"So the rumours are true a horseman come to the forgelands. Never thought see such as you in this place. What do you want. I've got blades to craft." Her voice sounded like Kallen's if Kallen had been Irish.

"I seek to defeat corruption and find the way to the tree of life."

"Oh aye Horseman and perhaps I will have the moon come down and aid you?"

"Sarcasm does not serve our cause. Can you help me or not."

"For us to help you we shall need the power of the forge."

"You silent friend seems to be doing well enough." Death gestured towards the hulking brute pulling a blade from the forge. His arms wrapped in mental bands and his face hidden behind a smelters mask. What skin was exposed gleamed a dark almost black brown. A heavy hydraulic press activated and he could see component parts for some machine being slammed into a mould.

"This is a child's toy compared to our true masterwork. But the forge is cold and dead."

"And how will lighting your forge clear the path for me?"

"We are makers not warriors but we are not without power. Before the Forge was lost we made a mighty guardian. One who could fight against the corruption. Yet we need a makers key to activate it and for that we must have the forge's power."

"Then I will help restore life to that forge."

"Perhaps but first we must have the fire of the mountain the blood of the stonefather."
She pushed over a slab of stone revealing an engraved map upon it. Her hand traced a path from tri stone to an image of a volcano.
"Head east through the stone fathers vale and the charred pass. When you reach the crucible unleash the stonefathers fire. Young Kahn had been out that way so he may aid you. If you're successful we shall talk again."

Young Kahn is it? At the rate this is going it will probably be a representation of my inner child.

A memory burst in upon him.

Hard dials and switches were flipped while he tapped at a keyboard. He was a young man watching in anticipation as energy surged through his equipment.

On the other side of a glass window was a simple room with a metal chair inside and sensor equipment.

An assistant in a lab coat cried out in alarm as warning lights activated. "It can't take the charge."

"It will hold. Gravitic field increasing. Gravity 5 G.s 25 G.s" then the metal table at the end of the room collapsed.

"You did it. You actually did it. You manipulated a gravitic field." Then he gasped in shock as Luthur reversed the switches and the crushed chair began to gently float about the room.

" Give me a place to stand and I could move the world." Luthur's face shone with the burning triumph of a man who has brought his dreams to reality.

Luthur blinked and he was still standing in front of the giantess. He turned away and walked down to the central bridge. He stopped and looked out across the mist filled valley that tri stone straddled. Then a familiar caw echoed through the air.
"It can't be." A winged shape plummeted from the sky and Luthur held out his arm as A large crow with glowing yellow eyes perched on his wrist. "Dust." The crow was exactly as he remembered dust. Even the eyes that clicked slightly as the giant crow hopped from his arm to his shoulder. "Well regardless of whatever this is … it is good to see you old friend."

He shook his head and went to the far end of the canyon where the old bearded giant and the Anders like cyborg stood by an enormous circular stone door.

"Head east through the stonefathers vale and the great forests then to the charred pass that will bring you to the cauldron."

Thane spat on the ground as he eyed Luthur.
"I wouldn't let any friend of mine go that way but then who is friend to death?"

A memory came to Luthur again. Of the immediate days after he had rescued Lelouch and Nunnally. Of a grim safehouse where he had put together a stuffed toy for the little blind princess out of the remnants of an army uniform. And had heard her singing softly to herself in the dark.

"You'd be surprised old man."

The giant moved the stone door aside and Death walked out. The path was broken whole sections of whatever stairway had led out collapsed into a water filled pit. As he approached the walls Luther hauled himself along the broken support beams at the edge.

Finally he left the passageway and emerged into an open field. The sky unobstructed was a blue. The grass was tall and yellow like the plains of the high veldt in Africa. He almost expected a lion would emerge at any moment. In fact far in the distance he thought he could see an elephant. The plain sloped gently down to where the ribbon of a river twisted its way across the valley floor. And far away kilometres distant on the other side of the enormous valley was the tree of life. A tree as huge as a mountain blocking half the sky. The path to it lay through a magnificent stone and silverl arch formed by the outstretched spears of two enormous warrior statues. Which could barely be seen now under the unspeakable mass of black corruption. An enormous black hand of ebon muck reached up from the ground tendrils of corruption bursting form it to wrap around the statues and fill the arch completely at the centre of the hand an enormous slitted yellow eye gazed lazily around. Luthur felt an agonising twitch in his left palm.

Then he heard a wailing screech. A cross between a horses whinney and a Harleys roar charging towards him across the plains came a horse. But not just a horse.

It was a union of pallid flesh and gleaming metal. Emerald flame burst from its neck its eyes and metal vents along its body. Its hooves were blackened steel beautifully carved. Its chest was covered by gothic armour and the saddle was wrought of black leather with detached skulls tools and other parephanelia attached to its loops. The fell steed stopped and lowered its head towards Luthurs outstretched hand. He could see a serial number tattoed above the horses left eye. The mark of his bike from the attack at the bridge. "Despair who else would it be?"

This mad place was not a dream for you could not feel pain in a dream.
It was possible perhaps that he was mad.
It was possible that his body was a ruined husk and this place was fevered dream given power by his own mind to avoid the terrible revelation of his gross mutilation.
From below his bone mask he gave out a rueful chuckle. It was even possible that he was dead and the afterlife was not as advertised.

The concept that he had fallen through a hole in reality to another dimension was so ludicrously improbable that he considered it for only half a second.

What is to be done? Luthur looked to the east a column of smoke thick as the tree rose and further away mountains spat red molten rock and rivers of silvery liquid metal. In a world seemingly born from madness what certainty could he cling to? The sheer surreality of this place combined with the earlier events of his arrival troubled him. His logical mind rebelled against the inconsistency and gave the counsel of despair. That he was mad, mad beyond retrieval. He closed his eyes his hands gripping the hafts of his scythes so hard the handles creaked.
"Though all is madness I will not despair."

His eyes opened, burning yellow orbs in a white bone mask. "I know who I am." Those words were a beginning. He was Luthur Harkin von Wulfenbach. Sworn blood brother to Lelouch vi Brittania. Pale rider, reaper. Scientist and soldier.

"I know where I have been." The memory of the battle at the docks and of those dying beside him. The battles that awaited. The two homelands both bound in chains. The brilliant young man who he had first thought a useful tool, then called master and then called family. A young woman brilliant and beautiful. One whom the thought of never seeing again caused more grief than it should have.

"I know what I must do." No one could deny family ties blood or no. He could not turn from duty. He could not turn from his brother. Nothing not madness, not illusion not enemies real or imagined would stop him while there was still one coherent thought that remained of who he was.

"For now that is enough."

With those words spoken Luthur leapt upon the fell steed. The crow flew eastwards. Calm in his utter certainty of purpose the pale rider charged forth. And heavy metal music blared from his eldritch steed's mouth.

Authors note

Derain: And next episode it's back to Mao and more mind screwing. With some additional complications. But Lelouch is already taking steps by activating a protocol of such secrecy he will be keeping things from himself! I don't care how awesome Mao's mind reading abilities are even he must have a limit on the sheer amount of information he can absorb at once. I don't believe he can just instantly know everything Lelouch has ever known.

War: What the heck there were no African plains or chrome volcano's in darksiders 2.

Derain: Well we can see the World of D is not exactly a copy of Darksiders. It's heavily influenced by Luthur's mind. He lived in South Africa remember? Yet he can feel pain in it. So is it a dream or something far more?

Kallen: Stop being so freaking mysterious!
Derain: Never. For those of you who've played darksiders don't worry I don't intend to laboriously recreate every part of the battles through the forgelands. But enough to establish the strange mental, metaphorical and other properties of the World of D. And allow for some utterly awesome battles. Trust me though there is a method to my madness.

Also More reviews! and longer than one sentence please. I like it when people say something is good. I like it when they decide to favorite or follow this story. I like it even more when they tell me why.

I need reviews to energise the reviewormetric shield for the castle.

War: Why does the castle need an energy shield?

Derain: You'll find out.