Author's Note: So I've decided to take a few days off of writing, just to let my creative juices refill themselves. Also to whoever keeps posting reviews that I can't read alternative solution: Log off and post as a guest? Either way Read, Review, Favorite and Enjoy!
Chapter 56: First Contact
The Lithilids took notice of the balls of electrified metal bouncing off of the side of their space squid and they were not amused by it, turning their creature around it lashed down at Corvo's group with one of it's feeding tentacles. Corvo took advantage, ran directly into the mouth of the tentacle as it started to vacuum up his men and sent them directly into the belly of the beast. Corvo was hit by an electrical charge as he slid down the throat, aimed directly at his head, the plus sized Lithilid cyborg attempting to extract information from him. Shame all of his physical cerebral grey matter rotted away over two centuries ago. Past the mental digestion Corvo landed in a body of stomach acid the size of a swimming pool. How unfortunate for the Lithilids that as a undead Corvo actually liked acid, it had a good reaction to the magics that keeps him going and cleans the grime off of his armor.
"Alright so this is a stomach which means two ways out of here." Corvo briefly considered and this dismissed going out through the bottom, idea of being turned into manure by a regular creature was not at all pleasant, he did not want to think about the implications of a fully fledged space faring one.
Similarly going back the way they just came seems counterproductive when you consider that they just infiltrated the thing too. Thus Corvo took a third option, brandishing his sword he swam to the nearest wall of the stomach and stabbed through giving the ship creature the mother of all ulcers in the process as he and his men flooded out to safety.
"RRREEEAAARRRGGGHHH!" Well that is a normal reaction to getting stabbed in the stomach, even if it was from the inside.
Corvo heard a buzzing noise reverberate off of his metal plated ears and looked up to see insect like creatures flying into the cavity. They were clearly Lithilids, the unmistakable squid shaped heads with several feeding tentacles were present front and center, but the rest of the body looked like a Muryan, a ant based Demi-human complete with bug wings. Corvo's response was to carve a line in the floor with his blade as he took aim to stab something.
"Come." The insects shrieked as they launched themselves at Corvo, electricity arcing from their bodies and forming a web, the tentacles loosed a projectile, a hardened crystaline glob, which received a massive boost from the lightning flying around not unlike the rail Guns Corvo and his people were employing earlier. "You guys do know that goes two ways right?" Corvo took the posture of a seasoned baseball batter and hit several of the globs that were aimed at his center mass right back where they came from, the same lightning field that boosted their speed when they were flying at Corvo did the same thing when the projectiles were flying at them, the end result was grisly to put it mildly. Having seemed to learn their lesson the electrified bugs switched over to firing off lightning directly at Corvo. And were terrified to see him tank their attack and keep going. "Wow. That actually tickles quite a bit, if I wasn't a goner already that would kill me!" Corvo laughed as he wound up his blade and started rolling the nearest heads.
From what limited information Corvo knew about these creatures the tentacles should connect around the brain somewhere, so he followed the tube he came in from until he found something that was vaguely brain like. It looked like a mass of organic wire like material and it was sparking with huge amounts of electricity that was connecting to Corvo's body.
"There we go." As Corvo was about to go merry lumber jack on the inside of this thing's neck he was suddenly grabbed from behind by something and thrown through a wall. Finding himself on the outside of the creature Corvo was surprised to see no hole that he could have come out of, and slightly less surprised to see a serpent like Lithilid float through the fleshy wall. "A Ghost thing Eh? Shame I don't know any ghosts."
Receiving Corvo's sarcastic prodding a woman in a torn up dress floated up and rammed her hand through the creature's head. The Lithilid twitched before it dropped to the ground, liquid leaking through it's eyes as it's skull collapsed on itself, it's flesh falling off from the effects of a rather nasty flesh eating plague dissolving it's corpse.
"Should I assume this means that the other members of your little hit squad are on standby?" Corvo asked looking suspiciously at Maribel.
"I was sent to deal with it myself. This 'ship' is a creature of flesh and blood one that has never had contact with my diseases. It's death shall be swift, and painful." Maribel stated clutching a bony hand. Suddenly one of the feeding tentacles of the squid stabbed the ground beside them and pulled back to reveal one of the humanoid Lithilids standing up and looking at the two of them with big round black eyes.
"No it won't." Corvo was the first to act, slamming down his blade in a overhead chop on the Lithilid only for his blade to suddenly shift it's momentum backwards pushing Corvo back. "Well that's a new one." Corvo commented while the Lithilid curled two fingers together and flicked.
If Corvo did have a gut he would have been punched in it, if it wasn't for the fact that he couldn't see one he would've said it was freight train that had done it. Like that Corvo was sent flying backwards and slammed into several trees, shattering them in the process before he eventually slammed into a rock face with enough force to leave behind a Corvo shaped outline in the stone.
"Alright. Now that hurt." Corvo begrudgingly admitted his neck broken at an angle that was just plain unhealthy, even if you are already a goner. Maribel would not swayed so easily already she had produced a pungent smoke of her most devastating airborne plagues to eat away at the alien invader. However her attempt would end in failure, the light tug of gravity that she normal felt intensified, she attempted to compensate but to no avail as she found herself being forcibly drawn into the earth below. "Well now that's a interesting ability." Corvo commented as he made sure he was far, far out of range of the squid faced monstrosity which had incapacitated his equivalent to a medic, which he could use right now to correct his neck.
"RRRAAARRGGGHHH!" The Lithilid was starting to get frustrated with fighting half dead opponents, and it showed in it's body language.
The alien angrily stomped it's foot down sending out a shock wave that sent logs, stones and dirt up into the air and with a push of both of it's arms the squid faced alien chucked the detritus at Corvo with the force of a tank cannon. The debris sent Corvo flying backwards and buried him underneath the mass of earth and wood.
"Well that just happened." Morgan noted watching the commotion that had just unfolded when the ship touched down. "How are every one else handling there's?"
The Second Lithilid ship had touched down in Neverland, sadly for them they were not the only ones who used 'Eat Brains' as a viable tactic, that honor went to a variety of extremely nasty brain eating fungus native to the nightmare that is Neverland. The kind that uses the brain as nutrients and reduces the body into little more than a shambling corpse that didn't get the memo that it was already dead. It was because of this point that the Lithilids had chosen to stay air born, avoiding the issue of the brain eating fungus turning them into so many shambling corpses as they deployed the Watchers to fire off Eye beams on the ground below. Then, shambling off golden dust as it went, was a huge wooden pirate ship floating through the air. Perhaps taking a moment to make sure that what they were seeing was actually real the Lithilid's were caught on the back step as lightning and metal were loosed from the cannons on the ship. Perhaps understanding what they were dealing with the Lithilid ship loosed its feeling tentacles to smash the wooden ship. The magic barriers carved onto the sides of the ship activated and reduced the lashing of tentacles to merely pushing it off to the side. Harpoons retaliated, expert aim and guided by miniaturized fairies speared the inside of the flesh of the Lithilid ship.
"RRRAAARRRGGGHHH!"
With the mouths secure and forced open various pirates dumped the contents of several barrels into mouths. Having had several barrels of Neverland Vodka dumped down it's throats the Lithilid ship fell from the sky in a crooked drunken descent before it landed in the water. Tick Tock, the giant three hundred year old swamp dragon, had his fill that day.
Few of the worlds that the Lithilid's had visited were quite so bright and colorful as Wonderland, at least that is the impression that the Lithilids gave as they hovered over the rainbow like landscape of Wonderland trying to pick a spot to actually invade. The Wonderlanders themselves though were not the type to wait around for their enemies to attack them, they were proactive like that. Then again if you were neighbors with Jabberwocky's you wouldn't either. On the subject of which a Jabberwocky took notice of the 'ship' and was not amused, wreathing boulder he brought with in rainbow colored air before chucking it at the Lithilids. The Rainbow energy left the stone and entered the squid shaped creature causing it's flesh to turn to stone and the stone to turn into a giant hunk of meat, both fell from the sky one landing with a splat and the other with a smash.
Morgan could only shake her head at what was going on, this wasn't a invasion this was a scout unit, clearly sent here to prod them for weaknesses and strengths and they just showed them half of those. Course it should be noted that all the factions had eliminated the enemy within mere moments of them entering the line of sight.
"Please tell me Weiss at least has the common sense to hold something back?"
The Lithilid touched down to the north of Ever After, the mouths of the Lithilid opened up and deposited several dog like Squid heads onto the ground. They didn't get very far.
"And here I thought I was just giving Darling a run for her money." Kitty stated one set of claws bloody from where she ripped the throat from the Lithilid and grasped within the other the severed head of the Dog alien by the tentacle.
"Grrr..." The dogs were not amused by this development, with a leap one disappeared from sight and reappeared behind Kitty, almost as quickly as a blade like horn appeared from it's mouth.
"You started without us?" Joules the Kirin flung the corpse of the alien from it's horn as it narrowed a glare at the other trespassers on it's territory. The Dog Lithilids seemed to recognize his power and slowly backed away from the angry dragon horse assessing how to take down this new prey. "Any idea where these fellows came from?" The bug like Lithilids came out next, floating above their opponents they prepared to loose lightning as the dogs looked for an out of this battle.
"I'll explain later, can you take down the bugs?" Kitty disappeared from sight and the dogs took their chance at the same time the bugs loosed electricity.
The Kirin's horn acted as lightning rod to draw the power in allowing it to start moving at near light speed to cut down the enemy. Kitty was no slouch in speed either, phasing into another dimension one fourth the size of our own her blows came four times as fast and with four times the weight, it was almost enough to pity the dog aliens when Kitty used a fallen log as a bat to cave their heads in.
"Great." Darling looked up at the ship feeling quite intimidated. "What we do now?"
"Die." Hearing that declaration ringing in their skulls the dragon riding duo narrowly avoided one of the tentacles from the ship stabbing into the ground and depositing a humanoid squid head. A punch floored Darling and her partner, Kitty attempted to hit the squid faced monster with her tree branch but was in for a rude surprise as her momentum was thrown into reverse and sent her flying.
"That cheap trick again, the one you guys got the Draug with." Kitty got on all fours as she phased into another dimension.
"A Dark Walker has no right to complain about another's power." The Lithilid's thoughts retorted, from inside of Kitty's head.
"Oh we got plenty to complain about!" Darling snapped, her partner at attention as they both glared at the squid faced loser in front of them.
The Kirin loosed another bolt of lightning, to their surprise it was reflected off of the squid's invisible barrier, about a three meter radius around it, the lightning increasing in power as it bounced back at Bolt who then absorbed it back into his body. The Lithilid realized his opponent was draining energy off of him and the the way his big round eyes narrowed was not happy with the results.
"Suffer!" Switching tactics the Lithilid increased the gravity affecting the duo until they were both pinned to the ground.
"Eh. Works out in our favor." A barrel was soon spotted flying over the forest and landed directly on top of where the Lithilid was standing. The increased gravity brought the barrel down with increased force, the barrier attempted to repel it but instead the two opposing forces just smashed it, it's contents sprayed all over the forest. "You guys don't seem to like alcohol too much do yah?" Indeed the giant squid they had arrived here in was already getting up to leave. "And that little bouncy shield you got going on? Can't keep the air out can it?" Darling understood that Mages had the same problem, a protective barrier, unless it's only blocking in one direction or designed specifically to be air tight, has to make allowances for oxygen to pass through in order for the mages inside to breath. Indeed the smell of extra strong liquor was making her tipsy, she couldn't imagine what it was doing to this guy, he was already stumbling and if the way that the alcohol rain, now being perpetuated by several more barrels, was landing on him it was safe to say that the barrier had dropped. "Night night, you miserable butt pain." Darling stretched out and curled up as if taking a nap, or sleeping off a hangover, while the alien fell over knocked clean out in his drunken stupor.
Morgan was just glad that one of her temper tantrums were good for something, if not for cracking open that bottle they would've never discovered these things weakness. But that did not mean that they were out of the woods yet, cause getting everyone plastered was not a viable tactic for fighting these things off nor did it make for a viable vaccine.
"Corvo. I need samples."
"That's easy for you to say." This thing was tough it's barrier bounced attacks away from it, it's blows were amplified to dramatically stronger levels through means that he didn't understand, and it seemed to be able to manipulate gravity at a whim. "Does this thing seem to have any weakness's I should know about?"
"They have a spectacularly low alcohol tolerance." Morgan replied making Corvo want to fall on his face.
"Do you have any?" The Lithilid picked up a tree that it used Corvo's face to knock down and smashed it into Corvo home run style.
"Working on it. In the mean time I think I figured out how to bypass that field that's kicking your rear." Morgan explained, silently acknowledging that the sight of this thing clobbering Corvo would be quite funny were it not for the seriousness of the situation at hand.
"I'm listening!" Corvo snapped impatiently.
"His field seems to work by changing the direction of things that come into contact with it and increasing the force behind them." Morgan explained before she made her point. "If you pull your punches the moment they come into contact with this 'reverse' field, about three meters around it, then that will instead change their direction so instead of pushing your blows away, they'll pull them forward." Corvo didn't have a face with witch he could make expressions, but you could see him smiling.
"Understood." Mind you Morgan only used punches as alliteration, it went well with pulling after all.
Corvo picked up his sword, swung it at the head of the Lithilid, pulled it back immediately when it hit the three meter mark, before swinging it around and cutting off a tentacle from the Lithilid's face. The Lithilid looked at it's wound and then back at Corvo, the sheer disbelief on it's face was absolutely priceless. But it didn't last long, the Lithilid stomped it's foot again and raised more debris up into the air and pushed them towards Corvo who received multiple blows from different angles as he smacked the debris away before he stepped forward and this time he went for the punch, pulling him within the field and delivered a solid gut punch bowling over and more importantly pulling Corvo into range to bypass the field.
"You can't hide from me now!" Corvo tackled his enemy, picked him up around the waist, slammed him through the nearest tree, then the three behind him, before smashing him head long into a rock face.
The Lithilid tried messing with the gravity again, showing Corvo what it was like to have a thousand pounds dropped on his shoulders. Corvo shared the feeling, looping the Lithilid around his neck and pinning him to ground. The Lithilid had no choice but to cancel the super gravity, allowing Corvo to flip them both over and begin punching the alien in his face, figuring that if it's power came from the mind then a concussion would impact that. Corvo got two punches in before he was sent flying, his arm wrenched from it's socket as the Lithilid stood up. Corvo decided to experiment a bit, ripping a tree stump out of the ground before he chucked it at the Lithilid with his full force. The Stump sailed by the three meter field but bounced off the Lithilid inches from his face and sailed passed Corvo, with a lot more increased force than before as it smashed against the rock behind him turning into splinters in the process.
"Sha hahahah!"
"I think he's laughing at me." Corvo sounded offended.
But it made sense, tighter reflection field, stronger reaction, less room for error, the alien had the right to feel confident. Course all that Corvo had to do now was use the same tactic that Morgan had taught him earlier, in fact now that the reflection field was stronger than it was before he would increase the strength behind the blows that he would be dealing out and hopefully reduce the butt pain's brains into jelly.
"Hahahahahaha!"
"What are you... oh." The Lithilid had his hands in the air, between them a ball of plasma was gathering.
"Oh hell no!" While Corvo was getting ready to strike with a righteous fury he heard a crack from above, the barrel of alcohol that Morgan had promised dumping it's flammable contents directly onto the ball of red hot plasma. The liquid was ignited off setting the plasma ball giving Corvo the opportunity to pull his punch directly into the Lithilid's face, sending him flying. The Lithilid was knocked out by that, dragged back to the nearest dungeon and put on a IV drip of vodka.
Review Section:
ChimaTigon: You have good taste in monster artwork.