World Of Awakening Part 2.5
It was dinner time... or at least that was the perspective for the Order Of Heroes due crossing the gate that suffered a time gap regarding the movement of the sun.
Normally the Askarian prince would go by himself to the tent they were going to use to eat, but his condition after the lighting didn't allow him to walk alone very much, his burns were gone, that's true, but the insane pain was still there. That explained why Alfonse leaned on his sister and Kiran.
"Cute scars... those are one of the best Lichtenberg figures I've ever seen."
Alfonse's skin was filled with cicatrixes that, interestingly, actually looked like a lighting... branches of a tree would be another good example to compare them with. The worst part wasn't that though the Lichtenberg figures disappear after some time... the part that got affected forever was Alfonse's brain...
"The time when mom gave us that pony! when we went to Jedburgh and you discovered how much you wanted to become a swordsman! don't you remember any of those?!
"Sorry, Sharena, but the answer is a no..." Alfonse sighed in frustration.
The healer had tested pulse and asked Sharena to test Alfonse's memory capacity... while his heart was perfectly fine... no matter how much his sister tried, Alfonse couldn't remember anything about his first seven years of life.
Kiran shook his head and ordered Sharena to stop. "Our minds work with electricity, a perturbation in the natural flow can damage our neurons. Being those the basic component of the brain, this was pretty much the least worst thing that might have happened to him... you're actually very lucky, your sword and gloves were the ones that got the attack and not your head... otherwise, I would be surprised if you even remembered who in the hell you are."
Sharena gave one of the saddest expressions she ever had... Alfonse, on the other hand, was curious about something. "Is there already a lightning inside our heads?"
"No, a lightning is many times stronger, the enough to generate 1.21 gigawatts to send a time machine to the future..." Kiran laughed a little and then continued. "Forget the last part, I was kidding, anyway, our brain barely creates 100 watts. Considering a gigawatt is a billion of watts... yeah... that's at least 10 million times the energy you use to live... also, remember me to get one of those swords, Tesla would kill to get one!"
"Gods... you mentioned something... neu... neu..." Alfonse shook his head.
"Neurons..." said Sharena.
"As I said, they are the basic component of the brain, they transmit and process the information we got." he pointed with his index finger to his head. "Think about them as points where the threads of a cobweb are connected. The more neurons and connections the brain has the more effective it is."
"And they use electricity to send information." guessed Alfonse.
"That's right. Actually, if I could cause some weak electric pulses, I could help you to improve your intelligence and memory, even change how you feel, from happiness to sadness, things like those." Kiran rubbed his chin. "I mean it is cute to say you love your girlfriend with all your heart, but the feelings are here. " he palmed his head. "Righ here... however, in your case, that lightning is much much much powerful than 100 watts and that's obviously fucking dangerous."
Alfonse smiled in surprise, Sharena however... hearing this was making her doubt about something... "B-B-But where is the soul then? if our feelings are... electricity... where is..."
Kiran shook his head again. "Without wanting to be pessimistic, I don't think souls even exist in the first place, Sharenita." He shrugged. "My conscience is the product of the interactions and processes that take place in my brain... without energy, I'm dead, and without neurons, I'm dead, too. I don't see a way how our consciences could survive the deaths of our physical bodies. Although feelings are more than that, many chemical compounds are implied in the processes."
"B-B-But that's... that's..."
This time it was Alfonse who answered. "Sister, as Kiran told me time ago... the reality does not care about what we prefer... if we consider it horrible or beautiful it's irrelevant."
"Hey, well said!" Kiran palmed the prince as if he was saying: I'm so proud of you. "And knowing that makes me say: fuck it, I don't want to be buried, yeah yeah respect to the one we loved and all that stuff, but that prevents my rests to become an excellent fertilizer for plants. Long live the plants, after all, it's thanks to them, and some other stuff, that we can breathe the air without dying!" Kiran smiled.
"...okay?" Alfonse would have scratched his hair if he wasn't still waking with the help of Kiran and Sharena. Sharena herself was scared, but she preferred to do not to say anything else, even during dinner.
Alfonse was very serious and seemed to be reflecting. Kiran enjoyed his coffee and spicy food.
Both tried to cheer Sharena up, it barely worked after they hugged her.
To normal villagers (if they were still in the destroyed town) it would have been very strange to see an entire army sleeping when the sun had only reached the center of the sky.
Everybody in the army was sleeping... well, almost everybody.
Kiran had brought from the battlefield a blood sample of a dead soldier he himself had killed... and he wanted to compare it to other samples.
"Are you really sure you need my blood?" Needless to say that Nino wasn't exactly comfortable with the request... right, he had ordered her to face her own children, right, but this was... perturbing.
Kiran caressed the girl's hair "I need just a little, don't you have a scab or anything where to get it from?"
Nino rubbed her left arm. "Well... actually I don't... but well, lend me a knife."
The cut was tiny, enough to allow a single blood drop to fall on the glass sample holder. The girl got confused when Kiran also cut himself. He quickly clarified. "Since I'm an alien to all of you, I also want to compare my own blood."
During minutes Nino watched the scientist analyzing and writing down.
"You may leave now... I mean! not that I want you to leave, but aren't you sleepy?"
Nino smiled. "No, I would like to see through that... micro... micro..."
"Microscope."
"Microscope! yes!"
"If you say so... mmmmh..."
Kiran's face showed many expressions, confusion, surprise, intrigue... then he finally said something after a while.
"You know? when I had the time to pay attention to the blood of my enemies... I always wondered why it had some silver color... barely noticeable but it has it. To me, it's weird since mine is perfectly red."
Kiran stood up to let Nino sit and see.
The first sample was her own. She had to admit this was very very interesting, those red dots gave the color to the blood? there were also a few silver dots... that wasn't weird to her, the red and kinda silver blood was normal.
The second one belonged to that dead man... the color was... darker and those silver dots weren't there...
The last one was Kiran's blood... very similar to hers... but it lacked silver dots.
"You told me every life form has a thing called quintessence, right?"
Nino already an idea of what he meant. "You're saying... those silver dots are..."
"Yeah, that's the conclusion, otherwise I have no idea of what it is. As you also said, it disappears once the death has taken you away."
This brought back a doubt that made Nino suffer a little. "Kiran... if... if you don't have quintessence... how are you... living?"
"Who says I cannot live without that? I comprehend that as far as you know, all living creatures have quintessence. The problem is ¿why do you think quintessence is what gives life when perhaps it's the opposite? life generates quintessence. For example, the blood itself cannot exist without a living creature producing it, can it?"
Nino rubbed her chin. "True."
"Why does it vanish after you die? what exactly is it? where did it come from? I don't know yet. However, the silver color and the fact it is "life energy" or anything like that makes me think it is based on carbon and silicon."
"What are... those?"
"Elements. I don't know if somebody told you that the elements are water, air, fire, and earth, but that's not exactly true. They are compounds, the water is two atoms of oxygen and one of hydrogen. Carbon is a very special element, it is the base of any kind of organic life... however many people theorized that silicon could be an alternative element to generate life as they share characteristics. They managed to create life based on both things... I guess the same happened here without human help a long time ago."
"A-Amazing..."
"Actually, we don't breathe air itself, we breathe oxygen. The same thing does the fishes, however, instead of a nose they use something called gills. As stupid as it may sound, if they don't use their gills appropriately, they may drown."
"T-That's the reason why they die when you take them out from the water, right? their gills aren't designed to breathe air!"
"They aren't adapted" he corrected. "Life is not designed, it adapts itself to its environment. It's called evolution. When an animal is born with a weird feature, if it gives to the being an advantage over the rest to survive, it is more possible that being is gonna have offspring than the others. Once many weird beneficial features are obtained after many generations, it comes a moment when the new beings are unable to breed with the others, then you can say a new species has been created."
Nino's smile was big... very big... then she noticed something. "To breed?"
"... Nobody told you how babies are created, right?" Well, that about uncomfortable.
"Em, no..."
"Okay, I'm gonna reveal you the secret. In case anybody asks, it wasn't me the one who told you. I learned it when I was seven years old by reading a book and I'm perfectly fine so there is no real reason to hold that information from you."
"D-Deal."
Nino wasn't exactly happy once she finally left... however, Kiran didn't care too much about it, he was more focused on thinking that the girl also had told him a mage managed to create human-like life using that compound... the heroes would be mad if they discovered he wanted to experiment and to discover by himself if that actually was possible... he needed it to determine if that was true... if that wasn't just a plot his mind created for this... world that he still didn't know if it was real... or an illusion...
Something the game ignores with the magic resistance (that is only a game mechanic rather than something they would actually have considering a normal weapon can still hurt them) is the effects a fucking lightning causes when it hits a person, it is a serious thing... I mean, remember how powerful those shits are? Why do you think Tesla wanted to create his famous but non-existent death ray? You can search using google images of Lichtenberg figures, they are amazing and scary. However I'm not very sure if they appear immediately or after a while, the websites I visited didn't make that clear to me so that's why they weren't mentioned in the previous chapter.
As I said, in this universe, quintessence is what allows these characters to have souls... but it only creates a copy of their minds after they die and the copy must find another being to merge with it. This means our main character does not have one. Robin gets very affected by this, since he/she died by disintegration after killing Grima, the copy didn't get generated. I pretty much do this because the final was an insult to me... he/she came back to life because of friendship and love power? no mames (don't be kidding)! I mean even the fanfics that show us what happens to Robin after that does not really show anything that would tell us those things have a physical power or anything. DualBloodLines gave us a scenario where Robin and Grima are alone in a dark place and Robin must resist until Grima dies so he can leave... and even that to me is like he had to have a final fight alone against the monster rather than having a test to determine how powerful his bonds with his friends and girlfriend are... like the end of Final Fantasy 7. Cloud and Sephiroth have a metaphysical final battle. Only them, Cloud has no way to be helped by his friends there. Due to all this, every Robin in this version that decided to kill Grima is gone forever... FOREVER! Why would Naga tell him/her she could come back then? she was lying, she obviously prefers that Grima remained dead than having to deal with him in the future again, especially because the future children are there!
Since I read a long time ago that scientists managed to create a life form using Carbon and Silicon I thought it would be a good combination to be the famous compound that allows you to create organic artificial life. I'm not gonna accept the concept that kind of humans have more quintessence though, I mean, seriously, that's just bullshit, everybody has almost the same amount... The compound can be found in blood but it is more common in other parts of the body, and unlike Negal, who didn't know the composition of the compound, Kiran may actually create quintessence by himself if he got enough material of each element (I mean, not already, he has only guessed and he's not sure, but I know he's right).
Anyway, time to answer reviews:
Guest:
The only person in Embla that deserves mercy is Zacharias.
Yeah, I was aware that comparing Kefka to Gangrel is an insult to Kefka... but I really wanted to make the reference!
EthanDragonRider:
Without mentioning that I already have to write three stories at the same time, I'm not sure if I really want to write a whole new story about Kiranito. I mean, I have a more simple idea to show him in this one. Also, I would be more eager to write something like: The Atheist and "The Goddess"
Any grammar errors or something you'd like to mention?
