This will both follow and not follow canon of the DA games. I'll be using the decisions of my past games in my Dragon Keep to influence this story. Understand that I own nothing except the OC and her race (which has featured in several other fics I've written). Leave critiques or praises, and requests for certain characters of scenes. I'm meandering through this, with a semblance of a goal, and will play around depending on requests. Cheers!
How It All Began
No one knows when they first appeared, or from whence they came. One day there were none and then they were there, asserting themselves as the masters of the skies, mountains, and seas. They did not seek to destroy others, not like them, but they did not hesitate to defend their established territories or themselves. They were both feared and revered with some among the other races of Earth seeking to make alliances while others continued to view the creatures known as the Taninoui as monsters to be feared or destroyed.
Just as there is great variety in the looks and cultures of Earth's other inhabitants, so too, there is variety in shapes, sizes, colors, and cultural traditions among the Taninoui. Blessed and cursed with a longevity so immense it could be considered immortality, the Taninoui eventually faded to the background of Earth's history, content to become legend more than fact. They would reappear, brandishing their might for the sake of allies, but mostly they remained passive. They even hibernated, some times for centuries, when the burden of passive observance of humanity grew too much to bear.
Though most preferred to mate amongst themselves, perhaps because of their longevity, and their shapeshifting abilities, some intermingled with the race of humanity. These couplings created a new variety of half-Taninoui. Equally gifted with shapeshifting abilities and longevity, they could not maintain Taninoui form for as long as their parents, nor could they live nearly as long as them either. Some of these halflings could also hibernate, a few chose to do so, but most used their longevity and abilities to create and maintain their own kingdoms.
Each of their offspring, and the generations after, further diluted the power of the Taninoui blood, but each generation held its own unique ability. Either they maintained the shapeshifting ability, or the longevity, or the impenetrable skin and strength, or the great mental prowess only a fraction of what full-blooded Taninoui held. Regardless, as the centuries passed and humanity became the dominant race on Earth, subverting all others—save for the Taninoui who remained in the shadows—the bloodlines further diluted until it was as if the ancient couplings had never happened.
Humanity lost their memory of the Taninoui and eventually called them by a different name. They confused this sentient, shapeshifting race with dragons, wyverns, lindworms, dragonets. Though they resembled these lower lifeforms, the Taninoui were different. They were warm-blooded and had a culture, not unlike humanities. Just as humans allowed greed and deception to motivate their conquests, so too the Taninoui. And same as humans can redeem themselves through self-sacrifice, so too the Taninoui. There were explorers, adventurers, warriors, artists, teachers, and priests among the Taninoui just as there were among humans. But despite these similarities, as humanity continued to develop and modernize, the Taninoui believed it best for both races that humanity believe that Taninoui were dragons, that these were myths, and there existed no such thing as offspring between the ancient humans and Taninoui.
But even in the modern age, a few would venture out among the humans, for the Taninoui never held humanity in low regard. Some would reveal their true nature to select few human allies they considered family, while others would maintain the secret of their true nature even from those with whom they sought intimate relations.
It could not be said that for near immortals, the Taninoui were without humor. In fact, perhaps because of their longevity, they had developed a most peculiar brand of humor. One avenue through which they expressed this humor was through the name choice of their halfling offspring. With names that spoke plainly of their Taninoui background, these individuals walked among humans ever amused that the truth spoke, literally, to their face.
Melusine Forez was one such offspring. Named for the legend of a half-serpent half-woman, she found nearly as much amusement from her name as did her mother and grandmother. Though only a quarter Taninoui, she kept her grandmother's shapeshifting abilities, and with that the increased strength and might that dragonet form afforded her.
When in human form, Melusine was of average height, semi-athletic build, with large green eyes framed with wavy brunette hair that she kept long and typically in a braid. She had no scars or markings to speak of on her skin, for even in human form, her skin was impenetrable just as her scales were the same in dragonet form. Rather unremarkable-looking as a human, she'd learned to use her wit and humor to distinguish herself in a crowd and was counted upon as a loyal, albeit eccentric, friend.
Only her family knew of her dragonet form. Even in the hundreds of years of life she'd already been granted, Melusine had never been forced to display her dragonet form to the unexpected. When she was thusly transformed, Melusine retained her green eyes, and the thick scales of her body kept the brunette hue of her hair. She had a long serpentine tail and an equally long neck with a horse-shaped head that sported black deer-like antlers. Her legs were long and shaped much like a lion's while what had once been her arms morphed into bat-like wings, each one of her fingertips now a dexterous talon at the end. She could not breathe fire as her grandmother, or spit poison like her mother, but Melusine had venom that she could inject into a victim from both her fangs and the spear-like tip of her tail. Not the most spectacular defense, but if she'd lived in the ancient times where such defenses were more necessary, Melusine supposed she would've made it out of a battle alive.
As it was, existing in the 21st century gave little opportunity for her to literally stretch her wings. Her grandmother had been in hibernation since near the time of her birth at the end of the 19th century, and only a decade before her mother also went into hibernation, leaving Melusine as the only Taninoui for millions of miles.
She didn't allow herself to ascribe to loneliness or self-pity. Melusine had a loyal circle of friends that she could maintain for at least another ten years before she needed to move on. Having such longevity required a remaking of identity every so often, which became increasingly difficult as the world continued to advance its technological ability to track and detect individuals precisely. That was one reason so many of the original Taninoui remained in hibernation, and many more of the halflings had followed suit. The only connection to the Taninoui that remained awake were those of quarter-blood or less, and even some of these were contemplating hibernation.
A paper airplane landed on her keyboard, dragging Melusine away from her could-be morose thought process. Looking around the lab, her eyes fell on Raymond, his mischievous grin alerting her his workmanship behind the plane. He mimicked an opening gesture and Melusine rolled her eyes. Opening the airplane she read his note, Meet me in the orb chamber in fifteen minutes. I found something that will knock your socks off…if you're wearing any. Melusine glanced back to Raymond and gave a nod. She had nothing better to do with her time anyway.
Her part on the project was already completed, and until they could run more controlled scans, the team wouldn't know for sure if this time they'd completed a stable energy field successfully. All her life, because of her unique background and its not so distant ties to ancient times, Melusine had been attracted to history and theoretical astrophysics. At times living as a teacher, at others as a researcher, Melusine had always chosen identities that allowed her to work directly within the cutting edge field of time travel. She was near desperate to travel to another time, perhaps even another place, where she could live as her genetics demanded she live: without fear of her abilities. If she could successfully do this, then maybe she could open up the same opportunity to others like her. Those of her kind who yearned for another time where they no longer had to hibernate or live in shadows merely to continue coexisting with humanity peaceably.
This current project was the closest to success she'd ever gotten, and Melusine owed it more to the team she worked with than on her own decades of study and experience. The machine they'd created theoretically worked more as a Star Trek transporter might, not exactly transporting a person back in time but making a copy of the person in another place. So long as the field remained stable, theoretically, after a time, they could bring that person back to the present, or at least "download" another copy into the present. So far, they'd experimented only with objects and a few probes, all with ranging levels of success. They were finishing up the scans before doing human testing this week.
Raymond's message piqued Melusine's curiosity. He was the head of the last scans, and she wondered, though she tried not to get too excited at the thought, if he had some intel of success to give her. She would know soon enough. Melusine finished the work she'd been procrastinating on before shutting down her station. She had just enough time to grab her gear from her locker before Raymond expected her in the lab.
She found her friend bent over the controls of the orb chamber barely five minutes after. Leaning against the edge of the small portal that led to the interior of the device, Melusine watched Raymond sing to himself as he worked. He was utterly unaware of her presence. Wasn't her fault she was so quiet on her feet, or that he had the situational awareness of a sensory-deprived rhino.
"You," she waited until after Raymond jerked upward, hitting his head on the ceiling of the orb and cursing before she continued her sentence, "wanted to show me something that would knock my socks off?" Melusine lifted her leg and propped her foot on the portal door's edge. She pulled back her trouser leg and showed her Snoopy themed socks. "They're ready and waited for said knock."
Raymond recovered from the surprise and heaved himself out of the orb, "You didn't have to scare me."
"You don't have to sing so loudly, or off-key, while you work." Melusine poked her head inside the orb. "Has your team finished the scans already? Is that what you wanted to talk to me about?"
Raymond grinned, "Yes, and no. Come with me." He fairly floated to the control room with Melusine rolling her eyes as she followed him. He threw himself into the rolling chair behind the control panel and Melusine's lips pulled back in a smile as his fingers danced across the controls, his mouth moving to form words as fast as his hands worked. "So you know I'm a gamer, right? You came over some time ago for one of our Halo parties. In any case, the other day after an especially discouraging set of scans, I decided on a whim to experiment. But that's what we're here for right, experiments?" He continued to speak and work without her prompting, and as he worked, Melusine noticed the orb come to life as monitors on Raymond's screen also came to life. "I did something completely unorthodox. Already we've thought this thing could work for alternate realities just as much, if not better, than alternate times, so I tested my theory. I plugged in one of my games into the mainframe, and I set the controls of the orb to transport into that reality. I-"
"You set the orb to transport something into a computer program?" Melusine interrupted him as she came up to stand beside him, staring at the images and scan results he'd pulled up. "This is all from that?"
Raymond grinned, "Yes, that time. And this," he clicked on a few more files, and this time instead of a probe being seen in the computer programmed world, she saw Raymond, "is from last night."
"How did you-" Melusine looked between the picture of Raymond standing on a Halo ring to her colleague who sat before her, "This is a practical joke. There's no way you could do that."
"It's not like you to dismiss something so quickly, Mel." Raymond pulled up a few more control panels on the screen and pointed at the various buttons as he explained, "I preprogrammed the timing of the transfer. We could always do that, but we didn't know if it would be possible without human testing. So, I figured, since I was the head of preliminary scans, I might as well be the first to do it."
Melusine felt a surge of anger, "And what if something had gone wrong? You had no business risking your life, and this project, for something as reckless as this. Let's say you really transported a copy of yourself into the algorithms of that game, and let's say you got stuck, you have no background training to keep yourself alive if the computer program continued on its predictable course. If I remember that game correctly, that Halo ring was eventually destroyed."
"Mel, you know that science will always require risks. And the nice thing about transporting myself into a computer program is that IF I did get stuck, it would not be so difficult for a computer programmer to find the new algorithms that make up me, and then you would just have to figure out how to download me back into our reality." He pulled up the scan results and gave her another arrogant smile. "As a computer program, if I were "killed," since in that universe most characters playable characters can respawn, I could also respawn indefinitely until you were successful in extracting me." Raymond leaned back with his arms behind his head, a self-satisfied smirk on his face. "You see? It was a thought-out and calculated risk."
"Bullshit it was." Melusine pushed him away from the controls and studied the findings his scans and foolhardy trip, brought back. To her chagrin, his steps were repeatable and had been controlled; therefore, his conclusions could, theoretically, be replicated. Giving him the side eye, Melusine sighed, "So, what now?"
"Another experiment, of course." Raymond clapped his hands together and pulled out a disc from his lab coat. He plugged it into the computer, "It'll take a moment to download the schematics of this new game into the mainframe, but I figured we could try with a completely different sort of reality than the Halo-universe."
Melusine sighed, "And I suppose you expect me to let you do this again? Just because you were successful the first time doesn't mean you'll still be successful. And IF I do let you go, I get to sit here and wait for you to go and come back again? Only if you don't come back, I get to be the one to explain that no, I didn't murder you and dispose of your body, but that you are now a computer file in a video game?"
"Not exactly." Raymond finished his work and stood. "I thought you could be the one to go."
Melusine's mouth dropped open, "Excuse me?"
"Yes. I knew you'd be skeptical, and rightly so. We are both trained to be skeptical. So, to prove the reality of my scans, I propose that you be the one to go." Raymond opened the door that led back to the orb. "I'll be the one at the helm, and I would make sure you'd come back within only a few minutes of being there. Just long enough for you to get your head out of your ass and realize I was telling the truth."
Melusine didn't move, "What makes you think I will take the chance?"
"Well," Raymond's smile grew, "this game has dragons in it, and I know you well enough to know you like dragons. And," his hand came to rest on her shoulder, "you're far more desperate for this project to be successful than anyone else on the team. I've seen the manic frenzy in your eyes at our meetings. I've never met someone more dedicated to the theory of time travel than you, and while this isn't exactly TIME travel, it is a step in the right direction."
"Fuck you." Melusine shoved her bag into his arms as she marched past him and crawled inside the orb. "I swear, if you don't bring me back, I'll come back and haunt you."
Raymond jumped up and down like a child for a moment before he retreated to the control room, leaving Melusine to close the orb and buckle in. She was completely crazy to be doing this. Just because the experiment supposedly worked with Raymond didn't mean it would work for her. Not only for the sheer fact of probability being against them, but Melusine wasn't entirely human. Maybe the device worked better for full humans, and maybe it completely gunked up with anything but that.
"You'll feel a little tickle at first," Raymond's voice was far from reassuring as it came through the commlink of the orb, "but then it feels like a punch."
"Now, you tell me, you sick bastard." Melusine gritted her teeth.
"Yeah, well, sue me. When you get back." Melusine heard the whirls and clicks of the orb powering up. "Catch you on the flip side, Mel."
"Fu-" Melusine's curse was cut off as the transport knocked the air from her body.
A little tickle and punch were neither the words Melusine would use to describe the transport process. More like a nuclear explosion in her brain and a searing acidic burn through her veins. When she got back, she would destroy Raymond completely. That is, IF she got back.
Melusine stood up on shaky legs. No longer was she in the orb, and from the strange feeling in the air, along with its odd scent, Melusine knew she was no longer in the lab either. Whatever had happened, at least she knew the orb could physically transport a person. Melusine blinked the world into better focus. She felt her body, only stopping when she was satisfied that everything had reformed in its proper place. Maybe later she would try to transform into her dragonet form, to see if her Taninoui qualities had transported here too, or if the device was successful with human genetics alone.
The world around her rumbled and quaked, nearly shaking Melusine off her feet. Whatever game Raymond had transported her into was dark, smelly, and apparently unstable. Up ahead, atop a ridiculously steep set of stairs, stood a light. The only reason Melusine would describe the light as "standing" was because it somehow held the shape of a humanoid. With nowhere else to go, and seemingly nothing else to do, Melusine moved from the boulder she'd awakened on toward the light.
She was halfway up the stairs when a scuttling noise had her stopping.
"Oh, hell no!" Melusine yelped as she double-timed up the stairs, for coming up the stairs behind her were at least five giant-sized spiders.
Melusine could handle spiders. At one point in time, she'd even had a pet tarantula. But these were the size of an elephant at least and did not look like they wanted to become her new pet. The light figure didn't move but reached for Melusine as she drew close. Throwing caution to the wind, Melusine reached for the figure and she threw herself up the last few steps…