Author's Note: Not a lot to say right now, I'm in the middle of a quite excellent web novel at the moment so my writing might be delayed for a bit. In regards to last weeks note I've decided not to split the chapter up, but the one I'm talking about is still a couple of weeks out. Read, Review, Favorite and Enjoy!
Chapter 60: Provocation
Of the various realms in the alliance the Monster Realm was one of the more technologically advance of the realms in the alliance, Going so far as to have stations up in the upper atmosphere of the world just out of reach of where a Narrator can go. Luckily for said Narrator then that the corresponding telemetry station was still firmly rooted on the ground and thus was able to immediately inform Morgan of what was going on. Without so much as a thank you Morgan yanked out a telescope from underneath her bed and pointed it to the stars, redirecting it ninety degrees to the north in the direction of the satellite that had been destroyed already. Indeed Morgan could see where the first of the Lithilid space faring abominations entered the atmosphere and tore apart the station there, but there were others as well, black bodies blended in with the darkness of space exposing themselves when they block the line of sight of the stars, roughly ten to twelve of them in the sheer number of blackouts were any indication.
"Crud." Those that were able to fight were deployed, everyone else were directed underground, as many barriers between them and the brain eating aliens as possible.
Those that would be fighting, Giants, air borne monsters such as harpies, and ground troops armed with rail guns were mobilized all looking up to the sky. When the Lithilid's went to land in the forest Morgan's forces let them, deployed the use of a magic barrier over the entire forest trapping them inside. This mattered little to the aliens as their many mouthed tentacles barfed troops onto the ground with it's huge diversity of different body types. With repeated battery the barrier would eventually fall, as all walls are one to do. Unless of course someone kills them first. Trees were torn apart and sent flying as a huge blade came after them. Unless they were engaged against enemies the same size or larger then them, giants employed the war-scythe on the field of battle, the blade that was originally angled to cut down wheat at the base, scaled to the hands of a giant, was the perfect tool for slicing through the enemy that is like ants to the giants, when they didn't simply step on them with spiked iron boots that is.
Course the people who selected the giant's war gear never had to contend with intangible barriers that instead of blocking incoming attacks bounce them back in the direction that they came from. Blocking the mass blade five in half times bigger than he was single handily the lone humanoid Lithilid among the disgorged enemy forces looked up at the giant unimpressed.
"Begone!" Screeching directly into the giant's mind and stomping it's foot the humanoid chucked a rock into the air and punched it at the head of the giant with the force of a cannon. A projectile that was interrupted by a sword being chucked at it smashing it to pieces. Looking at the offending party in the question the leader of the Lithilid landing party locked eyes with a familiar black knight.
"Start taking apart the big one. This one is mine." Corvo stated glaring at the Lithilid that had repelled the giant's attack. Similarly the Lithilid glared back, it's memories of it's now slain comrade fresh in it's memory chip of Corvo pounding the living crap out of it. And was not amused by the notion.
"You will do no such thing!" The Lithilid waved it's arm and a watcher appeared from the confines of the ship, it's massive eye firing off a energy beam directly at the Giant. The Giant responded by snatching the thing out of the air and holding it up to his face.
"No Don't you!" Too late. The nightmare form of the Watcher caused the Giant to start stumbling around in a blind panic, it's foot stops triggering earth quake level rumbles in the area thanks to amplification from the humanoid Lithilid. The Earthquake was enough to throw Corvo off balance and gave the Lithilid the chance to tackle him and send the both of them flying away from from the Lithilid ship and through several trees. Not done yet the Lithilid followed that up by taking the wood that was sent flying by it's assault and launching it at Corvo. The warrior responded by smashing aside all of the wood with his sword before leveling it at the alien.
"For an immeasurably powerful unknowable alien abomination you aren't that bright." Corvo stated as he smacked a piece of wood on the ground with his sword and hit it towards the alien like he was golfing, which to his surprise the Lithilid dodged the attack. "What's the matter? No fancy reflector barrier this time?" Or it is trying to hide that he has it up, not that Corvo can hear me unlike Morgan.
Suddenly the alien held both of it's long gangly limbs in the air and a bright white ball started to form between them. The Alien was creating a ball of plasma in his hands, manipulating the flow of heat, light, his own bodies reserves of energy and the air molecules around him into a ball of white hot plasma.
"Oh I'm having none of that."
The last time that one of these things tried to dump one of these mini suns on his head his response was to let Morgan drop a barrel of booze on it's head so that it wouldn't be able to function properly. Ironically enough their own magic barrier would stop them from simply catapulting over another but that didn't mean that they didn't have a substitute prepared. The Harpies swooped in carrying with them, of all the weapons they could have brought to battle, balloons! Albeit balloons that were filled with the familiar noxious substance that leaves the aliens floor on fumes alone. The Harpies chucked the balloons at the Alien, and the alien responded holding up one had so that the masses of noxious fumes bounced off of him and fell harmlessly to the ground: sort of a fool us once type of situation. With this in Mind the Lithilid threw the mass of Plasma he had gathered directly at Corvo Blowing him away in the process. With a wave of his arm the gravity around the bird type Demi-humans massively increased dropping them to the ground and breaking bones with the fall. They could wait until later, for now there was a more personal matter that needed tending to as the Lithilid pulled a flask like object out of his pocket. No this was not a drink for the Lithilid, rather a container for several of the alien monster's young as he walked over to the pinned knight glowering with hatred in his eyes. Though he lacked the psychic abilities preferred by Lithilid's in their hosts he was formidably strong enough to make a useful minion. With Corvo's armor damaged by the battle it was a simple matter for the Lithilid to walk up to him and rip his helmet off, only to discover a skull with metal plating underneath leaving the squid face stunned at the sight of the skull face warrior.
"Been a while since I got a reaction like that." Corvo landed a solid kick in the abdomen of the alien and sent him crashing backwards into a tree. Corvo snatched the flask of infantile Lithilid's during the exchange and activated the magic in his gauntlet, setting them on fire in the process and crushing the container with it's contents inside before chucking it aside.
"SSSCCCRRREEE!"
"I hate to interrupt the doubtlessly huge number of curse words you're spitting at me but you have bigger things to worry about." Pointing upwards Corvo directly the Lithilid's attention to the giant stomping over to them. Now that he had removed his helmet the giant was revealed to be headless, a dullahan Giant, one who had already inflicted a will sapping curse on the Watcher that had blinded him which was now hanging limply from one hand. Similarly the other creatures from the ship were now having a hard time of their own fighting against the various draugr under Corvo's command. "That is what we call Check Mate around these parts!" Corvo taunted getting his sword ready again.
Looking back and forth between the undead warriors the one that Corvo had been fighting raised a single hand up ready to snap his fingers. The boom hit them with the sound, the sound of snapping fingers amplified by the utmost limit by the power of vector manipulation of the Lithilid, leveling the forest, knocking back all the fighters on both sides and shattering the barrier like so much broken glass.
"Okay I don't have any functional nerve endings and even I have to admit that hurt." Corvo stated as he slowly got back up, the Lithilid he was fighting was no where to be found, and for that matter neither was the ship type creature that it came here on, it seems that they had just disappeared. "Oh Lovely." Corvo stated letting out a sigh.
"So does this mean we're dropping the state of emergency?" Raven was on her mirror phone talking with her mother, having just received a message from her mother summarizing the situation. "Some of my classmates would really like to know." Surrounding Raven and hovering over her were several of her classmates and more than a couple of her teachers.
"Until we figure out where they went or how they got there, no." Morgan replied prompting groans of exasperation from her daughter's classmates. "I'm sending over Brogan to watch the school, when it is safe he'll let you know. Goodnight Raven, I hope to see you in the morning." On that note Morgan cut the transmission.
"Love you too Mom." Raven sighed as she turned to face her classmates. "Now what do we do?"
"As I understand it these fellows do not seem to be too effective against our lot." Cleo stated cracking her fingers. It was easy to forget some times but Cleo was a undead, albeit a undead that did not suffer from the usual gross disfiguration that came from rot and decay, Mummies though were practically bathed in preservatives, both mundane and magical in nature. "For whatever reason they can't seem to read our minds like they can you, and I know they're not eating my brain any time soon." Cleo tapped on the side of her head and produced a faint echo, her head a holo cavity from having her physical brains reduced to mush and drained through her nose.
"That... might work." Raven thought briefly of telling her mother about Cleo's idea but dismissed it, by now she would have either already thought of it herself or learned the idea from listening in on her conversation. "If you are going out there: Be careful."
Thus Cleo gathered up a select group of the undead students and began looking around the school. Raven already prepared motion detection type magic and glasses that could see in multiple spectrum to help them find their foes. If they were still here it seems that they hadn't made it into the school yet, which is strange when you consider that as a massive obviously man made structure it should be rather obvious first stop. Perhaps they left already, seeking greener pastures or food that wasn't so good at fighting back. Slowly but surely the group of Undead split up and spread out looking for their target. Then once Cleo was alone and outside of the school she was snatched up and brought... somewhere overly fleshy, she assumed the inside of the aliens space faring abomination. One of the Aliens had her pinned to the wall one tentacle waving threateningly in her face.
"Before you stick that in me you should probably know that..." The Lithilid found out for itself, stabbing one of it's tentacles into Cleo's forehead only to choke on dust.
"GUH! GUH!" The Lithilid's tentacle pulled out of Cleo's skull and coughed out sand and dust onto the floor.
"Well I warned you." The Alien was not amused in the slightest, grabbing hold of Cleo by her hair and throwing her down a fleshy chute. What they did not anticipate though was the knife hidden inside of Cleo's body that was tied to her bandages as a makeshift staple allowing her to narrowly avoid an acidic bath. "Now that is unpleasant." Cleo watched as more items were dumped down the chute and narrowly caught hold of a humanoid body. Not a Lithilid this time though it looked a little like the one that Corvo was fighting minus all the tentacles, and a familiar hole in the side of it's head. "Well this might come in handy. But how to escape from this place?" While thinking about that Cleo used her bandages to tie the body around her back and began the arduous process of climbing up the way that she came. Peaking her head out of the hole Cleo spotted the same alien abomination that chucked her down their ship's digestive track a moment ago. "This is for putting this hole in my head!" Snapping like that Cleo held out her hand and produced a ball of condensed air that she then blasted at the back of the Lithilid's head. Said blast bounced off of the back of it's reflector field, amplified many times over, before finally punching a hole into the squid ship. "Not what I was going for but..." Cleo jumped out of the side of the hole in the ship.
"RRREEEAAAHHH!" The Lithilid snarled like a animal as he chased after the two corpses. The world looked very different right now, everything was darker and smaller, Cleo might lord her status as a giant over the plebians right now if it wasn't for the fact that suped up alien abomination was on her tail.
"Speaking of tails." Cue the sudden appearance of a purple and turquiose cat girl. "I believe that this is my area of expertise: literally!" Thus Kitty snatched the confused Cleo and her new friend up and dropped them back into the properly sized monster realm.
"What just happened?" Cleo asked concerned.
"I rescued you, now you can take that back to Morgan so that we can get some answers." Saying that the ground shook, another tremor courtesy of the force amplifying and manipulation power of the alien that they lodged in the dark matter dimension, made even stronger by the effects of that dimension on this one.
"Wait he can still attack us?" Cleo shouted as chunks of rock and the ground were raised into the air.
"...Yeah we should run now." Kitty grabbed hold of Cleo and they ran into the school, but was stopped by Cleo.
"Go up not down!" Cleo snapped making a point of not leading this thing back to the other students.
"...Oh!" On that not Cleo broke out into a full blown run, if the way the school was rumbling was any indication that thing was following them too and didn't let small matters like walls or ceilings slow it down either. Movement was becoming difficult as the gravity massively increased and metal groaned and stone cracked and leaked dust from the Lithilid trying to slow them down. Locker doors were busted open, sent flying off of their hinges before being flung at the pair as they scrambled to get away while glass shattered. Fortunately the higher up they got the less intense the gravity became, but not enough that it ever dropped below the unsafe levels even as they ran onto the roof. There they encountered a figure covered in a dark black cloak, and a set of bright red eyes glowing from beneath it.
"Leave." Dark magic floated off of the Hooded person and surrounded the two protecting them from the effects of the super gravity, but far from gratitude, they both know who this person is, and they wanted no part of it. Luckily she was kind enough to rip out chunks of the concrete and provide platforms on the way down for them. The alien moved to pursue them but found himself blocked, by what it couldn't comprehend only that it seemed that space itself had moved against them. And it had gotten an idea of who was responsible as it moved to face the lone figure on the roof.
Author's Note:
ChimaTigon: Long and confusing lore. In my defense I watched a couple of episodes of what I think was it's anime but it didn't really appeal to me that much and required the use of illicit sites at the time.