Author's Note: Okay so writing's suffering quite a bit right now, going to try and work on only one story for a while now. Read, Review, Favorite and Enjoy!
Chapter 57: The Secrets Out
Niflheim was not the most pleasant realm they could've picked to build a base in, but then again that was probably the idea. A primordial realm of mist and cold all but the hardiest of creatures exposed bare skin to the freezing cold air would instantly be met with frost bite, hypothermia and most likely a slow and painful death. Thus it was here, in a bunker unceremoniously dropped onto the realm, that all of the Lithilid specimens, living and dead, had been dropped off. The Neverland lake was still being drenched for signs of the parasites, but Tick Tock had already been brought in after consuming enough booze to get him drunk, Wonderland on the other hand happily handed over the Lithilid corpse chunks after they de-petrified them. The utterly hozed prisoners that Darling and Corvo took were locked in separate but adjacent cells, though until they figured out how to keep from communicating telepathically they didn't see much point in trying to separate them. On the contrary it would be more convenient to kill them if they try anything if they're in one place. Which led to the current situation.
"How many of your ship creatures are near our worlds?" Corvo's Draugr were assigned as guards, these things couldn't even talk to the dead let alone take control of them, it unfortunately necessitated the use of written communication to do anything though, and it took a while to teach them how to write in a language they actually understood. Unfortunately they were either first class trolls or were too plastered to be of use. "'Okie jeb all em.' What is this even...?" Corvo helmet palmed himself before getting up to leave. "Make sure they don't sober up." Saying that Corvo went over to the next room over, where autopsies were being conducted.
"I assume the prisoners aren't giving anything useful?" Morgan asked butcher's smock over her frame and surgical saw in hand.
"Why do you bother asking questions you already know the answers to?" Corvo asked waving Lithilid scribbles around before chucking them into the recycling.
"Because I'll look crazy if I only talk to myself." Morgan peeled back the flesh on the head of one of the Lithilids and exposed the brain underneath and magically scooped it out and held it up to the light.
"Hmm." The brain is a combination of parts similar to how the rest of the body is a combination of Organs. Morgan couldn't be sure how they work at first glance, to that end she employed a little mad science. Several needles had been prepared, hooked up to a computer to measure responses to electrical stimuli, and Morgan took the liberty of reanimating the tissue via necromancy. She fed stimulus into each part of the brain and measured response on the computer, and after a hour of prodding came to one conclusion. "This is... peculiar to put it mildly." Morgan stated holding her chin in her hand. The part of the brain that served as short term memory was grossly inflated, while the part of the brain that made up long term memory was rescinded to the point of being vestigial. In short, while the Lithilids have a spectacular ability to learn new things they're lousy at actually remembering how to do them. Which might explain this thing. "Hello there, How did I not notice you earlier." Morgan commented looking at a little square device. It looked suspiciously like a crystal based hard drive, one that was equipped with the same kind of brain to machine adapter that was being used to conduct this testing in the first place. "So it's a artificial memory drive eh. Still this might explain why these things like to eat brains." Morgan stated looking down at the device suspiciously.
"You're gonna have to explain this one sweet heart." Corvo stated confused by Morgan's statement.
"They can't remember anything on their own, so they have to rely on these to do it for them." Morgan stated tossing the hard drive onto the particulates plate. "It also makes them biologically inclined to suck information that they need out of a still living host. Though as a consequence for a while the only thing that they really know about themselves they get from the people that they feed off of."
"Explaining why the one that went stomping through Ever After was acting like a Saturday morning cartoon villain if the reports those kids gave us are any indication." Corvo stated now having a better understanding of the situation. "What's our next move?"
"I need to finish work on my Lithilid anti-biotic. Throwing random junk at these parasites and figuring out what will kill them without killing any of us is my only viable option to figuring it out." Well now that she had some pure specimens she could conduct some more thorough tests. "So in the meantime we just keep sending the undead out to fight these losers?" Corvo stated arms crossed and shrugging his shoulders. "What are we doing with the dragons?"
"Business as usual."
"I don't like it." Darling had sobered up after the clash with the Lithilid in the forest, though that didn't mean that she had forgotten about what she saw. "These things pop out of no where and everyone acting like it's business as usual?"
"I find myself wondering if they have any connection to squid head." Sparrow asked looking suspiciously towards the forest. Indeed Sparrow recalled the explanation about a mutant floating octopus, now normally he wouldn't associate two almost completely different looking creatures with one another, but then he remembered the explanation that it was mutant hybrid of two separate creatures. If the Beholders were creature B then maybe what they ran into the woods was creature A. Which in turn gave Sparrow a traitorous thought. "Maybe they're acting like every thing's going according to plan cause it is."
"What does that mean?" Darling asked suspiciously.
"What if the other squid face lured the one you caught here? And they knew it lured them here?" Darling opened her mouth, was about to say something, before she ultimately closed it again. "Thank you for confirming my point for me." Sparrow stated as he thought carefully about what to do.
"We started taking Dragon riding lessons right after the realms were put back together." Darling commented now putting two and two together.
"Then we should keep taking dragon riding lessons." One should never mistake Sparrow's preference for the bow with cowardice.
On that note the group of riders were put into position, Credit where it was due the trolls worked fast, the entire Dragon riding ring was in perfect working order, and Raven and Apple were both situated inside of the commentator's booth. The various riders had been paired off with one another, Hopper, Daring and Dexter were assigned the task of trying to get goals in on Sparrow, Ashlyn and Hunter were practicing deflecting volley's back at each other, while Darling and her Kirin were running the obstacle course down below.
"Thanks for dropping by to lend a hand." Apple stated drinking more Idunian Apple cider that Raven had brought with her.
"Thank you for giving me a excuse out of that ugly bureaucratic nightmare." Raven stated scratching Nevermore behind her ear who sported a adorable skin walker sweater for the occasion. "I swear if I have to make another errand for another one of my teachers who think this realm is all that and a bag of chips then I'm going to set the realm travel room to random and shove them through!"
"The realm travel room has a random setting?" Apple asked looking horrified with the concept.
"I'm sure I can find one." Raven replied darkly.
"Riiight. Ah... Anything you'd like to say about the practice?" Apple asked changing the topic from Raven's slightly unhinged fantasies.
"Sparrow's eyes are better suited to shooting instead of blocking but that dragon's reflexes are good enough to make up for it." Which is what he gets for only training to use a bow. Or apparently a gun as Apple is hearing now a days. "Hunter needs to be a bit more aggressive and a training partner that isn't worried about hurting him, or he hurting her." Which is why you never date a co-worker. "Daring needs to get out of his own way too. Seriously you're dating that guy?"
"Dating isn't the right word..." Apple admitted trailing off awkwardly.
"Then what are you two doing?" Raven asked suspiciously.
"Um... do you remember the advice I gave you about a month ago?" Apple asked thinking about the right way to word this.
"Marriage treaty? You guys were at war with Daring's family?" Raven's confusion was not lifted. "Not so much a war but it is complicated. And kind of a state secret now that I think about it." Raven glared at Apple suspicious for several moments while impatiently tapping her fingers. "Look he has his life I have mine. He wants even less to do with the fairy tale life style than your mom." Apple stated rubbing her temples with a headache.
"I had to wait until Mom had went off to a research lab in the one safe place in a realm wide cesspit before I could even use the realm travel room to get here." Raven countered making her disbelief known.
"Your Mom didn't watch Blue Beard rape Snow White's mother's corpse." Apple countered looking like she needed to bleach her brain all of a sudden. Also point of interest, yes she did.
"You win." Raven commented looking like she could share a bottle of bleach with Apple. "So just because I haven't racked up enough nightmare fuel today, have you heard about the alien Darling caught?"
"Aliens. I overheard Mom getting a message from The Fairy Queen and The Queen of Hearts about the ones that touched down in their realms too." Apple said touched down, drowned and smashed to a pulp would be the more accurate terms. "There's more than one kind too, dog like, snake like, the Watcher's, and one that looks like it had a human frame." Apple stated dreading the mass of unknown factors that had been unceremoniously dumped on their heads.
"Mom seems to think that they're only a advance force here to poke us and see how we react." Raven offered supportive.
"So in other words..." Apple stated realizing that the Lithilids for all intents and purposes succeeded.
"It's a arms race now. They now have a idea what we can do and we them, while we're figuring out a way to counter them they'll be trying to countering us." Raven stated as she rubbed her chin.
"Should we be holding the dragon's games during a time like this?" Apple asked her eyes returning to the playing field below. "Competition breeds innovation and drives purpose. We get the benefit of people preparing for war without the unpleasantness of a mass panic setting in." Raven explained as she cringed when she saw Hunter take a hit. "Speaking of maybe I should go help them train a little bit."
"I wouldn't be opposed, just saying." Apple stated the look on her face matching Raven.
Raven walked down to the playing area and like wise everyone seemed inclined to meet her.
"You're all doing good, but I'm gonna try to give you some advice to do better." Firstly Raven addressed Sparrow and the two headed Ouroboros that he was riding on the back of. "Instead of trying to block incoming shots you should try to be a little more proactive, between the two of you you have three heads, try shooting the ball before it gets close." Sparrow's lip curled as he entered deep in thought for a moment.
"Right a point defense system can help take out attacks from multiple incoming targets." Sparrow stated clearly, without missing a beat, and staring down directly at Raven knowingly. It was a glare that left Raven disturbed for a moment as she noted that what he said had absolutely nothing to do with the Dragon Games.
"Right... Hunter can you teach Ashlyn how to do Full Counter?" Raven asked turning her attention to the two knights of the group.
"That requires that we have a magician to work with." As if making a point, Raven held out her had palm up, shot a tower of flame into the sky in a instant, and snapped it back down just as fast. "Point taken." Hunter replied a little spooked.
"Daring you and the chasers practice with Sparrow for a bit, Darling you and Nevermore can run circles through the obstacle course for a bit." Raven guessed that Darling was the type of person who performed better when she has someone to compete with, and she wasn't wrong if Darling's smile was any indication.
To summarize the subsequent fights that ensued: Sparrow's offensive defensive style knocked the three chasers off balance more than once, Raven's magic attacks sent Ashlyn flying at least three times, and Nevermore proved herself far more maneuverable than the lightning fast Kirin, shrinking between obstacles while the Kirin kept having it's momentum halted to avoid running into obstacles, and having it interrupted when it did run into obstacles, and had incurred many penalties when it outright destroyed the obstacles instead of going around them. The carnage of the day was ultimately interrupted by the banging of a pot off the field.
"Dinner Time!" Ginger was a master class in the culinary arts and it showed. Various meats and vegetables suitable to the dietary needs of the individual breeds of dragon had been prepared, she even brought along live electrical eels for the Kirin to suck dry for all it's worth.
"I'm just going to take a wild stab in the dark here but... Ashlyn." Apple's cousin was daintily eating a salad with her boyfriend when Raven addressed her. "You don't know how to manipulate Ki do you?" Raven asked cocking a brow at the noble woman.
"Do I look like I take the heroics glass?" Especially when compared to Darling Ashlyn looked pretty scrawny, as Raven understood it was a common trend to have a waist line as thin as possible to be considered as attractive, Raven however was in the 'fat in the right places' camp coupled with 'muscle mass to support it.'
"Well it explains why you haven't been able to grasp full counter yet." Raven stated letting out a sigh. "Nor will you like the solution. The fastest way to learn Ki manipulation is to continuously take Ki based attacks and attempt to expel them, after about a month of that kind of abuse you'll be able to manipulate it." Ashlyn had a horrified look on her face, both imagining the abuse that her Hunter had to face and the abuse that would be waiting for her.
"What about the dragons can they use Martial Arts too?" Hunter asked deciding to change the topic topic before Ashlyn starts screeching in outrage. "It should take them about a week."
"GUH!" Daring had to do a spit take with that. "Say what?"
"Is that so strange?" Raven didn't bat a eye as she tore off the meat from a turkey leg and processed in her mouth. "Ki manipulation relies on instinct, Dragons are more in tune with their's." Suddenly several of the heroes present felt like they had been cheated. "If it makes you feel better it's going to take them quite a bit longer to get a grasp of the more complicated techniques."
"Yeah, but we haven't gotten a grasp on the more complicated techniques." Dexter snapped thumbing himself in his chest. "Well it looks like yours hasn't learned anything at all yet." Raven commented looking at the dragons while scratching her chin. "Maybe I should have Nevermore give them some lessons." The Dragon's heads shot up at that, before they turned around to look at Nevermore worryingly. Nevermore for the most part was ignoring them preferring to tear into a side of beef bone, gristle and meat whole.
"Since you aren't talking about it I am." Sparrow stated glaring suspiciously at Raven. "We aren't training for the dragon Games are we?" Raven locked eyes with the heir of the Hood Family. "No we've been training to deal with that thing Darling found in the woods. And he isn't the only one is he?"
"If I said Yes?" Raven asked cocking a suspicious brow, the others were reading the tension of the area, some were wondering what Sparrow was talking about while the others were sharing Sparrow's suspicious look. "Two things would happen. Actually two things will happen since I don't have time or patience for 'If.' First I'm gonna punch you." And that is what Sparrow did hitting Raven hard enough to floor the witch and leave her with a bloody nose. Nevermore snarled with rage and blood lust and only Raven's quickly stretched out arm kept her and Sparrow from fighting. "The second is that I'm gonna ask how I can help?"
Author's Note:
ChimaTigon: I personally prefer Kaiju Samurai myself.