{ === + === }
It's just the three of us. Largely because I did not invent parachutes.
I'm flying Formi, Jake is the copilot and will engage along with Aria. I wish we had the time to fully kit the ACE. They just have their gunblade and a whopping zero armor.
Incidentally, the ACE is more or less a skeleton frame–a boxy frame with servos and weight augmentations running down the arms and legs. Most of the weight is on the back, which carries a pair of large, magically powered jet engines and a pair of wings. The engines have air intakes that extend past the body with an additional cover, so nobody can stick their hand in. The wings have flaps and all that fun jazz, but the majority of steering comes from a pair of nozzles attached to the heels. It's very unstable. I wanted to add a tail to help with stability, but, again, no time.
The Gunblade is a railgun. One cylinder, two steel rails, with blades welded onto the rails. Plenty of magical bullshit hidden within the rails. It's hefty, so the hilt is a tube that goes over the arm, up to the elbow, and is heavy to counterbalance the sheer weight of the gun. The handle has a button on it that fires the railgun. It's both breech and muzzle load-capable, depending on circumstance, which is nice, but each user can only carry around five rounds before weight distribution becomes a problem. The gun is about two meters long if you measure from the arm to the tip, and each rail spike is…about the size of a persons' hand, from the wrist to the middle finger. They're not large. No frills, no fins, no canards, just a simple thin pyramid.
Each rail is a solid two-pounder and the gun itself is twenty, and that's about all the free weight I can squeeze out of it for now.
Anyways. I drive Formi the Catalina Flying Boat out into the lake, making everybody stop in their tracks and probably cause a hundred spies to quickly write letters back to their handlers. Our fishing culture is quite rich and the docks are plenty packed for their size, so I steer left to take us away from the crowd.
As the shock wears off, fishermen, in their excitement, come watch.
Because of course they do. I go deeper into the lake and find enough open space. It's not a long trip.
"That's a loooot of onlookers." Jake laughs as we turn parallel to the land. "Bye bye opsec." He pats me on the shoulder.
"It was going to happen someday." Turning up the dial. "Formidable, taking off."
The fishermen can hear a muted roar from the two jet engines mounted on the flat wing. Magically powered pseudo-jet engines, of which the ACE gears use a scaled down version.
The boat glides for some thirty seconds before I pull up and take into the air. We leave Lakeview behind in record time and then bank and turn towards Falkreath.
This is the first time that the Catalina has been taken out in broad daylight, and the first time it's actually flown.
I wasn't about to start my pilot career by flying at night with no instruments.
What instruments I do have include: a compass, the mana charge for each engine, and a mana stone repeater keyed to the radar tower nearest to Lakeview, so I know where home is. I wish I could have figured out the things that make night flying possible, like a display for nose attitude, or a thing that shows speed.
It's a little hard when the engine is a black box ok
Ahem.
Speaking of: Formi is a Catalina built from my memory of what a PBY Catalina looks like, so it has a big body hanging from a flat wing with two jet engines built into it. They're jet engines because I figured it would be easier to have a contained engine block when magic is involved, and the mechanism for superheating air is, at the moment, easier than figuring out a propeller. The back of the boat body opens up with a catapult, to help get the fighters in the air, because I fucked up and thought the Catalina had the H-frame tail of a B-25. It was fun getting that to work.
It got us the rear-pointing catapults, though, so I guess I can't complain.
Pilot and copilot aside, there are seats for a grand total of six more people, squeezed together in the narrow walkway between the cockpit and the main compartment. Both ACE Gears are strapped in in the main compartment to the ground, so Aria and Jake will have to pull them up via a rope and attach manually. Granted, it's just the engine blocks, because the rest they're just wearing on their bodies right now, but still.
I'm rambling because I am more than just a wee bit scared.
Either way, we're heading south-south-west, towards Falkreath.
"How long until we get there?" Aria asks.
I pull a number from my ass. "Fifteen minutes." I don't have a working speedometer. No Time.
Amazing how much disparate engineering has to go into making something as complex as a World War 2 vintage aircraft. Alternatively, amazing how much can be forgotten or taken for granted in the process of reverse engineering without real-world experience.
Sure enough, we see the edges of Falkreath in a few minutes of anxious waiting and yeeeep that's a Dargon alright. Big flappy wings, breathing fire all over Falkreath.
Why is it doing this? "Jake, Aria! Get out there!"
…
[3rd Person Camera]
…
At the cusp of dawn, the dragon came. With the sun at its back, it descended upon the Jarl's Longhouse and torched it with one breath.
Siddgeir wakes up to the sound of his Housecarl pounding at his door. "Jarl! Get underground!" There's a heavy scent of smoke in the air. "Dragon!"
Siddgeir hears the roof breaking even as he scrambled to the trap door in the corner of the room. "The eight have mercy, what in the hells is this!?"
Per Ash's recommendations, everyone who lived in the Longhouse had their bedrooms moved to the first floor, so they can evacuate in the case of a dragon attack. He did it more out of amusement than actual attentiveness, but whatever works.
He slides down the ladder, some ten feet long, into the slightly reinforced hole of dirt and wood. His housecarl jumps in after him and slams the hatch shut, before snapping his fingers for a Candlelight.
"So that's a dragon." Siddgeir breathes as the sounds of the Longhouse being torn apart reverberates through the cellar. "Impossible."
Above, the Dragon was enjoying itself, tearing through the flimsy human structure with wild abandon. Around him, the little humans were stirring, and beginning their counterattack.
The guards blow their specially designated horns meant for dragon attacks before readying their bows. "Don't let it get a direct hit!" A lieutenant yells as he starts to tear off his heavy chain armor (starting with the helmet). "Loose!"
Their salvo of twenty-some arrows plink against the dragon's hide. Some of the arrows, fired with incredible force, crumple against its scales.
The dragon chuckles, and breathes a gout of flame. Not a full breath: he likes to have some fun to loosen up first.
The wave of flame sweeps towards the guards like a tide, wilting all greenery in its path and setting several trees alight.
"Defense!" The lieutenant yells again and hunkers down, taking out a scroll from a pouch. The wave of flames passes over him and burns him badly, but not fatally. "Shit." He abandons his defensive position as the house he's hidden behind starts to catch.
"[Oh?]" The Dragon smiles. "[Reminds me of the old times.]" a mix of ice and lightning begins to swirl in its mouth. "[A gift, from your ancestors.] Yol Bah Kest!"
A tornado of flames, supercharged by lightning, carves into the city before him. Everything it touches burns, shatters, and vaporizes into nothingness.
The Dragon lets out a surprised yelp as it rather abruptly loses its footing. The sheer force of the shout caused the remains of the Longhouse to collapse entirely.
"[How embarrassing.]" The Dragon chuckles, observing his handiwork.
With the Jarl's Longhouse as the center, the entire southeastern quarter of Falkreath is gone, the triple mixed breath collapsing the sturdier buildings to their foundations and ripping away those less well-built into a wall of debris. As it watches, the debris starts to burn.
He feels something strike his abdomen. In the moment of letting down his guard, an arrow had pierced a fraction of an inch into his body before bouncing off.
"You're not leaving here alive, beast!" The Lieutenant shouts with a wild grin, his legs a mix of bloody ashes. "I'll drag you to Sovngarde!"
The Dragon, very much annoyed, smacks him with its claw. It ignores the resulting stickiness of its claw and pays attention to the six arrows now aiming for his head.
The one drawback of being death incarnate is that there is only so much fear that can be inflicted upon a being before it becomes fearless out of a simple lack of other options. Seeing the sheer damage done upon the city, all guards and the roused imperial army converge upon the dragon. No organization, no uniform, some not even dressed, just a complete and utter focus upon ending the threat before it ended them.
The Dragon, for its part, was curiously confused at the lack of civilians. In its memory, attacking a place of human habitation always resulted in two groups of humans: one that tried to fight, and one that didn't. The ones that do not fight are nowhere to be seen.
Mentally shrugging, the Dragon leaps at a squad of guards like a playful cat, the force of its landing blasting away the soldiers and breaking their bows. To its surprise, all of the humans roll and get back on their feet and fire back with bolts of flame while retreating.
Strange. The Dragon muses. Almost makes me feel like the olden days. It tenses, getting into a lower charging stance to pounce again.
It is then hit in the head by a flying boulder, which breaks its concentration. It tilts its head slowly towards the direction of said boulder.
"Oh shit, I didn't think we'd hit." The catapult operator, from the northern edge of the city, remarks. "Alright, boys, scatter!" He yells, and his team of five scrambles away from the catapult as the Dragon crawls, leisurely but annoyed-ly, towards the offending weapon before crushing it and the stone tower it's built upon into a flat circle.
Now I remember why I hated these things. The Dragon glares at the back of one running human. Every last a nuisance. It slams onto the human, enjoying the squishiness under its claw for a brief moment before tossing away the remains.
It sees a human mounted on a horse, charging at him, and eats them both. The horse was a nice treat, the human, less so.
"Well I did say our captain was an idiot." An Imperial soldier sighs. "I can't even be mad at it." He nocks an arrow and lets loose for no damage. "Keep hitting from the shadows!"
The Dragon only now pays attention to the arrows flying at it with near constant frequency, and notes, for the first time, how organized the defense still is, despite him walking through the street like he owned the place. It sweeps with his tail, clearing yet another flimsy human building and the two soldiers hidden behind it, and once again marvels at the utter lack of screaming running humans.
Discounting the ones who dares to approach. The Dragon corrects internally and squishes a soldier that could not retreat fast enough. He takes off into the sky again. But I suppose I should do as an elder should.
The dragon unleashes a blast of flames while hovering, melting everything in front of him but the humans themselves.
Before it could ponder more at the reason why these pesky little things were not dying in droves like the good ol' days, its instincts kick into overdrive and it hardens its back, just as something fast and hard strikes without warning. Despite the preparation, it stumbles and flattens against the ground.
"Hit." Aria comments. I don't think it did anything. She adds mentally. Talking against the wind, even with the mask, is incredibly difficult. She watches as the dragon slowly rises up to its feet and loads another round into her gunblade.
A flying human? The Dragon's attention is now solely focused on the sky, on the two trails of light coming at him. Impossible. The sheer focused attention, plus a newfound sense of curiosity, allowed the guards still shooting at him to score dozens upon dozens of insignificant hits.
The Dragon sights the two incoming and readies itself. "Wuld Na Kest!"
Aria could feel it coming. "Wuld!"
The Dragon rockets into the sky towards Aria, who suddenly bursts forward to evade. Jake, not having the same senses but figuring that shenanigans would be afoot, already had banked away and made some distance.
Dovahkiin. The Dragon homes in on Aria and her shout. I suppose this is why Alduin tasked me here. It follows after Aria, who's still in her climb.
Aria, for her part, had a pair of small rear-view mirrors installed over her engine blocks. They helpfully told her that a giant thing of scales and teeth was gaining fast. Right, Ash did say this thing was shit at climbing. She spins in midair to nose down, aims her gun at the incoming dragon, fires, and dives.
The Dragon could see the shot coming from her actions and rolls to evade. Dragonborn strikes are all uniformly dangerous and it wasn't about to take chances. Still keeping heading, it sees its target diving and turns over to do the same.
I'm a little faster. Aria notes as she gains precious distance. But the ground is so close. She pulls up.
The Dragon is no novice at hunting in the sky. "Wuld!"
Aria is no novice at any kind of fighting. "Wuld!"
Aria zips upwards, away from the dragon teeth that snapped at her position seconds ago.
Before the dragon could get a bead on her position, she flips and throws one of the gunblade spikes at the dragon, piercing its neck. The Dragon, surprised at the damage, stops in midair to zero in on the nearly stationary Aria.
The moment it stops, it takes a hard hit in its abdomen. The hit knocks it badly off center and it scrambles to maintain its flight, badly distracted.
It's all about how I think of it. Jake reminds himself, steadies his flight path, and loads another shot. Also, how the fuck is she flying like that?
As the dragon's attention shifts towards Jake, Aria spins again, reloading her gun in one fluid motion, and fires at the dragon's sides. The half-meter bolt embeds completely into the dragon on impact.
The hit drops the dragon from the sky entirely, so shocked at the amount of damage it was taking.
Last one. Aria reloads and prepares to dive, but thinks better of it and starts climbing slowly again. The engines were making unpleasant noises.
Jake fires at the Dragon in her stead.
"[That…was something.]" The Dragon rumbles, rolling back to its feet. "[Clever runts.]" It calms down, eats yet another hit in its back, feels it dig deep, and increases its focus. The stakes of lead embedded in its body vaporize, as if they were never there. "[Let's continue.]" It says to the sky, spreading its wings wide.
"Well, shit." Aria grumbles and mentally prepares herself for horseback combat, the closest pattern approximate to the oversized weapon. "Old fashioned way it is. Wuld!" She zips upwards, away from the Dragon.
"Wuld Nah Kest!" The Dragon rockets upwards. Aria rolls and banks away, getting jostled by the Dragon's wind in the process and briefly losing her heading.
Jake takes a shot as the Dragon slows to change direction. The Dragon, prepared for the likelihood, deflects the hit on his leg. I figured I'd be useless, but this is a bit extreme. He grimaces. Plan B, then. He increases power, banks, and leaves the field of battle.
The Dragon, twisting its neck, snaps at Aria. Aria, in a rather poor flying form, bats at the Dragon ineffectually with her gunblade before drawing a dagger and throwing it at the Dragon's eye for scratch damage.
The Dragon continues to chase her down to the treetops, until she's forced to pull up or crash. It swipes at her with a claw.
Aria growls. Fuck me. "Fus Ro Dah!" She blasts the claw away. "Wuld!" She bursts forward and slashes its wing with her blade, losing so much altitude in the process that her feet practically touch the ground.
Aria entered the fight at 1000 feet and has not gotten anywhere near it since. The rapid 180 turn did not do her or her engines any favors.
The Dragon, scrambling to recenter itself after the cut in its wing, gets pincushioned by a torrent of arrows and shrugs them off. What an exceptionally stubborn Dovahkiin. "Wuld Nah Kest!"
It rockets towards Aria, who's barely pulling up and making up the lost altitude.
Aria figures that it's coming. "Wuld!" As Aria climbs with the force of the Shout, the Dragon plows into the still smoking ground, massively bruising its ego.
Aria, climbing slowly, looks around for Jake.
Jake re-enters the battlefield carrying his warship cleaver.
As the Dragon pulls its head from the hole it created, Aria fires a red-colored Magelight into the sky. Jake, seeing the light, noses down and, after getting close enough, unclips the cleaver for Aria to use.
Aria could see that Jake had lost his Gunblade and drops hers, on the basis that weight would've been an issue. With her new weapon in hand, she circles around to engage the Dragon again.
The Dragon throws a dirty glance at Aria. "Wuld Nah Kest!" And zooms away from her at full speed.
Aria watches the Dragon leave with an incredulous look on her face. "What the fu–hey! Get back here!" She waves the Warship Cleaver in total indignation.
…
While all this is happening, Ash is busy flying his Catalina in a slow, wide circle, and apart from the moment where Jake returned to equip the Cleaver, his time was spent watching the charge level for the left engine slowly drop after a soft, metallic pop.
"Riveting." He says to nobody in particular.
…
[1st Person Camera]
…
They survived! Woo!
I think we did literally zero damage to the damn thing, but I'll take this as a victory.
Pom pom pom.
Aria just shot three blue Magelights into the air. She's not coming back.
Jake shoots three green Magelights. He's going to stay behind.
Cool. I get to fly this thing home and then fly here via magic. Uuuuuugh.
…
So we do.
…
The continuous loss of power for the left engine will have to be looked at, but I manage to land the bird without crashing it into the water.
At this point, I think everybody in town has come to watch the lumbering aircraft touch down on the lake. I have no ability to drive it back into the boathouse (read: I am bad at driving it), so T'nerem comes out with a tugboat and lugs the thing back into the boathouse as I take off via my own flight to go to Falkreath.
…
So we do.
…
Jeez. Falkreath is completely gutted. All of the important structures in the center of town are either gutted or gone, with continuing fires here and there burning down individual houses. Falkreath's design saved it, though: all buildings are quite far from each other and there's an almost permanent dew in the air, so there's no chance of a Markarth or even Whiterun-esque runaway fire event.
Still, a lot of very important shit has burned down. Recovery efforts are going to be hard.
Aria and Jake have touched down at the edge of town and are talking to some nearby guards. Civilians are starting to emerge from hiding, and the remaining guards are scrambling to get firefighting efforts coordinated. Good on Falkreath for having a strong sense of self-dependence, really. No other city in Skyrim would be this ubiquitous in root cellars.
Maybe the one in the swamp?
Who stores shit underground in a swamp?
I land in short order. "Hey, all good?" They didn't really move from where the lights were first shot out.
Aria and Jake are sitting on some stumps, accompanied by four Falkreath Guards. The guards salute as we land.
"I've lost power." Aria says, her ACE gear unlatched. She put out the kickstands so it's not lying around randomly, but…hm. "So I couldn't climb near the tail end of the fight."
Yeah, going by mana vision the gear is completely tapped out. "Alright, good to know. Are you two hurt?"
Both shake their heads no. Aria does pull back her sleeves to reveal red blotches on her skin. "I don't think the gear fits very well, it chafed a lot."
Oh, ow. "I'm sorry." That looks like it stings. The offending component–steel clasps–lays broken on the ground. They're used to brace the gear against the body. I had to use steel clasps because anything that wasn't metal broke if Aria tried to do any kind of maneuvering whatsoever.
Fuck G-force management, man. There's so much to learn.
…
Anyways. There's so much more to do.
First order of business, we carry our ACE gears to the Warwolf Annex…the smoldering remains of the Warwolf Annex. Fuck. We were using it as a place to get quests for our mercenaries, but ever since Lakeview has gone up as a real town the Annex building is basically just free lodging in the city.
Still, sucks.
Instead, we bring the ACEs to one of the brothels in our network, and get a few girls to oil Aria down so she can mentally rest from the fight.
Non Sequitur: Aria has three states of matter: sleepy log (utter physical exhaustion), puddle (utter mental exhaustion), and firecrackers (adrenalized but not exhausted). We're trying to avoid the third one because she gets prickly after an incomplete burn.
…I say that like it's somehow Aria specific. The T-sisters will also puddle.
Anyways, Jake joins the recovery effort focused around digging out Siddgeir, and I hop around town to do some surveying.
The…amount of burning and debris around the Longhouse means it takes a solid day and then some to dig Sid out of his trap. He's a little dazed coming out but otherwise is fine.
From a damage standpoint, it wouldn't be much of a stretch to say that Falkreath, as a city and a hold capital, is a writeoff. Most of the major structures are completely wiped, several key granaries and storage facilities burned to cinders. It will take significant time for the administrative work to get back on its feet and for the people to respect this place as a hold capital again. I mean, yes, materials can flow into the city at a much greater rate than any other hold because it's heavily decentralized, but if somebody's interested in grabbing power, there's no better time to get started.
Loss of life is fortunately minimal. Mysticism as a school is somewhat dead, but Detect Life is still a spell in common use, and made it easy for the people in question to know where they should start moving the debris to clear a path for survivors. That said, we don't know how many people died outright to the dragon's flames–there seemed to have been no corpses.
Rebuilding Falkreath is going to be rough. Not only because of the resource cost, but because this is going to be a litmus test for a lot of noble houses within the city.
I don't have particular allegiance to Sid or the Empire or anything but if I have to fight a civil war within a civil war I swear to god I will strangle somebody.
…
Now, post battle analysis.
So, Dragons Shout. Aria testified that they were Shouting, and she was Shouting, and it sounded like the same thing to the people watching on the ground. Going by what we saw, a lot of the Shouting was just a fight with Whirlwind Sprint to get position over each other.
However, before we got here, the dragon in question burned the town to the ground, using Shouts where one of which was apparently so incredibly destructive that there is a cone gouged into the ground from where the shout originated. The ground in the cone is smooth like glass.
We don't know what the shout was, and frankly it doesn't matter for the time being. What matters is that the Dragon, apparently, showed up, set buildings on fire, set people on fire, set arrows on fire, returned fire when shot at, and as soon as Aria showed up it stopped all of that in favor of a knife fight in the air.
Aria and Jake both attested to them scoring multiple hits, but none of the damage they did seemed to have stuck in any meaningful way. We've collected some of the battle debris, and the most striking of which are half-dissolved Gunblade Rails. I say they're dissolved, but it's almost like a section of the rails were deleted. The…area, of the cut, is…it's like a scene from any anime where there's something powerful gouging out the land and there's just a perfectly spherical hole remaining in the ground. The damage has that sense of other-ness to it that defies Skyrim's understanding of how physics and magicka works.
Also, unlike her fight with Mirmulnir (or so she says) she did not absorb any knowledge from it despite getting into close combat range and wounding it multiple times.
Worst case scenario? Dragons are aware of Aria as the Dragonborn and have taken precautionary measures against her. If Dragons are half as intelligent and long-living as their lore states, they'll do that. Hopefully the one we fought was an anomaly and the rest are all too proud for countermeasures or whatever, but…
This is the time where I wish we could turn to the Greybeards or Paarthurnax and get some more guidance, but one's dead and another's missing, so…yeah.
Oh, speaking of which: the Greybeards being destroyed is now common knowledge. It didn't generate headlines or significant amounts of panic and worry, because while everyone knew the Greybeards were significant, it wasn't clear what their significance was.
Or, rather, it's like if the mayor's house in the neighboring town burned down, and then you hear about it three months later. There's a fair bit of 'what do I do with this information emotionally' going on.
It did mean that we (myself and Jake) were officially ordered by the Empire and formally requested by the Stormcloaks to mount an investigation, since we're vehemently anti-dragon and I have the reputation of being capable of flight.
This request happened sometime during the last chapter's final timeskip.
There wasn't much reason for us to refuse. That said, nothing really happened since the last time we were up there, so the report we gave ended up being rather useless. Makes sense: our angle was "report what we saw", and we didn't see much. The clues that were visible the last time we were here have been snowed over rather heavily.
The fact that the task went to guys who can fly rather than a team to clear the path to High Hrothgar speaks plenty where the Greybeards were on the Empire and Stormcloaks' list of priorities.
Still, now that two major cities in Skyrim have been hit, both the Empire and the Stormcloaks (and the Thalmor) are scrambling for any scraps of information to fight against the dragons. According to the Brothel News Network, the Empire is going so far as to offer a blanket pardon for the Forsworn so long as they can get access into the temple ruins that we visited last time.
The Forsworn are not about to accept a pardon for the crime of fighting for their independence, so we'll see how that goes.
…
But, regardless, tasks at hand: rebuild Falkreath, redesign ACEs, get Aria some more flight hours. This goes double now that I've revealed my hand, so I don't have to build in total secrecy anymore.
The goal is to shore up the flight time and thrust-to-weight ratio, so that way we can add a bigger chassis, so we can mount more weapons. If nothing else, this fight taught us that mobility is key, and Aria slamming her bones against the clasps every time she wants to Whirlwind Sprint is incredibly detrimental to her well being.
Also, train someone else to be a co-pilot to keep the bird in the air so I can sortie as well. There's so much to do.
Also also, keeping an eye out for that dragon because there's not a chance in hell it just slinked off like that.
Uuuugh
I wish reality had less consistency so that Falkreath rebuilds when we leave its cell.
…
[Two Weeks Later]
…
GUESS.
WHO'S.
BACK.
Radar picked up a fast moving object headed towards Lakeview at 0600 this morning. That was five minutes ago.
"Raise the alarm! Everybody to your stations!" I shout.
The radar trill is a low-tech analog solution. Yesterday, T'nerem managed to wire it to a machine that ultimately ended in a massive fuck-off bell on the top of the mansion. Because it is a fuckoff bell and a crude simple machine, it only rings once. I'll have to fetch it because it broke off its hinges and rolled off the ceiling into the street.
We are running through the halls of the house, half dressed, banging on a pot with a ladle to get everyone's attention after they were jolted awake by the bell's impact on the ground.
It rang twice, then. It is barely, barely the cusp of dawn. Fucker's got a good sense of time.
Why is my room under the bell, anyway?
…
[3rd Person Camera]
…
The Ancient Dragon traced Aria's power back to her home, and after spending two weeks resting, decided to make its entrance yet again.
Per the norm of this part of Skyrim, the morning wakes in dew and a low blanket of clouds, and the Dragon glides high and above cloud cover towards its target.
Down on the ground, the town of Lakeview is wrestled harshly to life. The loud air raid alarm, blaring from every corner of the Warwolf Compound and sounding shocking foreign, confirmed to everyone still confused as to the situation. In the past two weeks Ash had been insistent on drills involving the siren system precisely at noon (or so), and therefore the villagers, though surprised, quickly went to shelters, either under their own homes or at communal gathering points, the Warwolf Compound being no exception.
The yard within the Warwolf Compound, however, started opening up. At some point in its construction, Ash had built ugly-looking square boxes at regular intervals behind the walls, and littered some in the yard. Each one was at least ten feet tall and clashed heavily with the look of the place, despite attempts to conceal them with shrubs and trees nearby.
The boxes now open, the lids sliding off to reveal quad-barreled anti-aircraft rail guns.
Ash, standing on the roof of the Warwolf mansion, aligns the guns' magicka to his and starts to focus. As he concentrates on the incoming glob of mana that was the Dragon, the turrets around his house groan and rotate to face the target as much as they can, given their lack of ability to go lower than their current 70 degree angling.
The Dragon feels the area beneath it hum with magical energy. Curious, it starts to dive towards the most concentrated location of the energy.
As it breaks through the clouds, it sees a sudden spike of magical energy before feeling something tear clean through its body.
"[I see]." The Dragon smirks. It feels another spike of energy and readies its defenses. The next barrage of something strikes and shatters off of its scales, creating a shower of sparks as if metal struck metal.
Ash blinks at seeing the heavy railguns fail. "Well, fuck." He pours more magic into his turrets. With a screech of tearing steel, the guns orient themselves at the Dragon in earnest. There will need to be repairs.
The Dragon, seeing this sudden shift in magicka, prepares itself, relishing in the challenge as it sees multiple flashes of magical discharge.
The sheer number of hits it suddenly receives drops it to the ground and allows a few hits to go through and shatter inside its body. Pain it has not felt in millenia, if not longer.
"[Quaint! How quaint!]" The Dragon laughs, the shards of lead embedded in its body evaporating. "[I commend your ingenuity, human.]" It stops hovering and starts flying again. "[Truly, one of a kind.]"
…
[1st Person Camera]
…
You're kidding me.
I plugged it with all of the railguns and they did nothing?
Those guns are mountain piercer certified! I shot them through ten meters of rock! What the hell?!
Uuuuuugh and it's coming closer too "Jake! Is Aria ready yet?!" I yell down to the courtyard.
"Five minutes!" Jake yells back. I, in my incredible foresight and defensive intelligence, stocked the ACEs out in the courtyard to work on them yesterday and never returned them to the boathouse. Why is this important? Because I only put it back together if I'm storing it in the boathouse.
I'm sure the dragon's not going to take five minutes. Fuck it, let's go.
We start flying.
I was hoping the Dragon would be weak to a 64-course dose of physics, but that's a no, so magic it is, then. Oh why did I only take my knife.
Not that it'd help.
The dragon is more or less loitering just above cloud cover, so we have to climb.
Alright, contact…my god that thing is huge up close.
…
[3rd Person Camera]
…
The Dragon was pleasantly surprised at the human flying at it.
"[Your talent is extraordinary.]" The Dragon growls. "[But I fear my time is better spent elsewhere.]" It blows right past the incoming flying human, the wind of its magnificent wings tossing the little bag of flesh wildly.
Ash regains his flying posture remarkably quickly. Ok, that's how it's gonna be. He glares at the Dragon's retreating form. Fine, be that way. He readies an array of lightning bolts and unleash them at the dragon.
The Dragon, sensing the spike in magicka, suddenly slows and sweeps with its tail, scattering the spells with no effort. It then zips towards the flying human, feeling a need to pay lip service to respect.
Shit. Ash was not expecting the Dragon to go after him so suddenly, and therefore can only shield. By nature, he starts to fly upwards as the Dragon takes a swipe at him. The Dragon's claws strike his wards and he follows the momentum and is launched high into the sky, spinning all the while at a vomit-inducing speed.
Yep, ok. Ash tries to both fix his flight path and get his bearings. This was a stupid idea.
Ultimately not succeeding at either, Ash smacks into the lake and drills a fair distance down before surfacing from the hole he made in the water.
The human survived? The Dragon muses, watching. The delay tactic is obvious, but that was all the more reason to play along.
Ash creates a lance of ice and Railguns it towards the Dragon.
The Dragon, seeing the magic of both creating and firing the lance, rolls slightly and shatters the lance with its tail.
It's reading something. Ash notes. Probably the magic. Fuck.
The Dragon rears back and unleashes one powerful flap of its wings at the skating human. The wind cleaves into the lake surface and cuts like blades.
Ash throws up wards and dives into the water. The energy of the Dragon's attack washes over the water surface and creates a slick cover of blood from the affected fish.
The Dragon then senses a trio of ice spears being created. Some seconds later, they lance at it from beneath the water surface. The Dragon simply pulls upwards and dodges with no effort.
Yeah, it's reading me like a book. Ash grumbles, still submerged. Still, that means it's paying attention to me. He surfaces and creates another lance of ice, this one massively oversized and surrounded with crackling electric energy.
The Dragon, sensing the massive amount of energy beneath it, breaks into a smile. "[The struggles of the weak is truly something to behold.]" It rears back its head. "Yul Tool Shul!"
Ash dives under the water again as the incoming breath of fire burns the lake surface and the above water half of the lance.
Ash surfaces amidst the cloud of steam. "Prick." He snarls, reforms the lance, and railguns it at the Dragon.
The Dragon opens its mouth and takes the hit into its throat, before burping a small puff of flame. "[Ah, the arrogance of intelligence.]" It turns over and aims at the little human. "Wuld Nah Kest!"
Ash is blown away by the impact of the Dragon upon the water surface and, righting himself just in time, is impaled by a branch through his lung. As he begins to feel the pain after the shock, he reflexively cuts his ability to feel pain.
Dick move. Ash cuts himself from the branch, rips it from his body, and heals the damage. He notes the Dragon, dripping water, flying back into the sky, its head oriented towards the direction of the mansion.
The Dragon begins to maneuver right as Aria puts a round into its back. The lead of the rail explodes in a shower of hot metal, dealing no damage.
Whatever a dragon is, we can't hurt it if it's prepared. Ash notes. Fine. He creates another massive lance of ice. After that injury I really don't have much. He takes out a small vial of blue liquid and downs it, and returns to the fight.
Aria sees the wake being left by Ash hugging the water surface and pours magical power into her engines. As Ash had designed said new engines in a hurry, they lack the soundproofing of the older variant, and are thus quite loud.
Still, Aria feels the Shout incoming and responds with her own, darting away from the incoming blast of flame.
The Dragon, for his part, kept an eye on the magical energy that was Ash hovering at its periphery, and thus did not notice the massive pine tree thrown at it through the obscuring blaze of its own breath. The singed tree spikes the dragon in the throat, and Jake flies into it at full power, ramming it in further and forcing the Dragon's head upwards before it could refocus.
But, refocus it does, and instantly Jake feels zero resistance behind his push. The pine tree is shoved forward, rapidly disintegrating against the sheer presence that is the Dragon.
The Dragon then feels a hard hit on its back, followed by a similarly hard, if colder, hit against its stomach.
Aria reloads. Ash rebuilds his lance.
"[Quite.]" The Dragon mutters. He focuses his attention on Jake and slams into the man with his claw. Jake blocks the hit, mostly, but his ACE gear takes all the force it could physically absorb and shatter behind him. A second hit from the Dragon smacks him deep into the lake. Then, sensing the two opposing forces, the Dragon simply Shouts. "Wuld!" and rockets into the sky at Aria.
"Saw this coming." Aria mutters and readies a second Gunblade. "Bring it."
"Alright, fine." Ash takes being ignored in stride and masses even more magic into the lance. "Be that way." It grows to a ludicrous size.
Aria slams one of her engines with the Gunblade and forcibly rotates it, dramatically changing her heading. The Dragon zips right on by as she fires both rails into its sides. The distance of the hit causes the Dragon to veer badly off course and reorient itself before turning back to aim at Aria again.
Aria knocks the engine back in place and throws a pair of rails into the air, reloading them into the Gunblades in one smooth motion.
"Wuld!" Both Dragon and Dragonborn Shout, and fly in rather silly tangential directions from each other. The Dragon had tried to predict Aria's flight path and was wrong. As a prize, Ash shoots his lance at it from the lake surface.
The distance of travel allows the Dragon to sense its approach and guard just as the lance hits, which breaks its attention enough for Aria to put two rounds into its wing.
The Dragon slams and lands on the lake surface, shaking its wing like a person dries their hand. "[Impressive.]" It snarls. "[I'm rather enjoying myself.]" Aria, the one person who can tell it's words, would say that it sounded almost friendly. The Dragon's damaged wing healed even before it had hit the water.
"That. That is some high grade bullshit." Ash sighs to himself. "Now what?" He sees Jake flying over to him.
Aria reloads her Gunblades with the last set of rails and regroups with the pair. "Any thoughts?"
Ash continues to stare at the Dragon and shrugs. "We're fucked? Nothing's working."
"I didn't think it could heal that fast." Jake says. "That changes a lot of things."
Aria frowns. "It doesn't feel like healing, though. It's something else."
Ash downs his last mana potion. "Add it to the pile, I guess."
"We can get some good hits on it if it's distracted." Jake says. "But keeping it distracted is the problem. Want me to in-fight?"
Ash laughs. "Fuck no. Don't think we have a choice though. Aria?"
"I can't fly like the two of you." She jettisons her ACE gear. "So bring it onto dry land." The new engines are incredibly energy hungry and Ash had no time to make changes to the existing fuel setup.
"Bring it, she says." Jake chuckles. "Aiight, I've done worse." He flies again.
"[Oh, you have finished planning?]" The Dragon says conversationally (for Aria). "[Let's begin.] Wuld Na Kest!"
Ash feels, somewhat detachedly, his head sailing high and far away from the rest of his body. Dick. He thinks as his vision spins in a blur. Hope I stick the landing.
"[Ugh, so bony.]" The Dragon grumbles as he chews on Ash's body. "[Far too little fat.]" He spits out the remains, then swats away Aria's pair of rails and tanks Jake's hit with his scales. "[You next.]" He focuses on Jake.
"Jake! Get out of there!" Aria shouts.
Jake, wielding the colossal sword, evades at full speed, but could not dodge the Dragon tail nicking his foot. The hit crushes his foot, armor and all, and sends it flying into the lake. Jake, unperturbed, unleashes the sword to its full length, and brings it crushing down onto the Dragon's back.
The Dragon full out laughs and blocks the sword with the claws on its wings. It then sees Aria approaching. "Wuld!"
"Wuld!" Aria keeps low, cutting her thigh on a small rock barely an inch off the ground. She keeps her Gunblades raised, and as she and the Dragon pass each other, the Dragon snaps at nothing, and her blade guts it from the neck down to its tail, splitting it open like a skewer.
"[Oh, that hurt.]" The Dragon sneers, the otherwise fatal injury closing. "[Very good.]" It blocks Jake's lunge with a wing. "[You have potential, Dragonborn.]" It grabs onto Jake's colossal sword and tosses him high into the sky. "Yol Toor Shul!"
"Fuck." Jake is engulfed by flames and burned to cinders.
The Dragon sneers. "[Paltry.]"
"Ok, I'm trying, alright?" Jake emerges from his cinders utterly naked. He gathers his strength, overlaps Ash's railgun magic, and throws the melting Colossal Sword at the Dragon.
As the railgunned sword hits the Dragon's blocking claws yet again, Aria dashes in one more time with Whirlwind Sprint. With a whirl at the end, she slams both Gunblades into the Dragon's throat. "Fus Ro Dah!"
The blade was built for a lot of things, but one reason why there's a blade attached to each rail is because they were meant as last ditch weapons, not meant for more than one use. The blades explode from the sudden energy, the shrapnel ripping into the Dragon's throat, causing the Dragon to cough and bleed.
The Gunblades now very much in shambles, Aria rips the rails from each gun and stabs them into the Dragon's neck. "Yol Toor Shul!"
The resulting blast decapitates the Dragon's head in its entirety, and for the first time since she's faced this Dragon, she feels wisps of its energy and knowledge flow into her. It lasts mere seconds before being cut off, and she feels herself falling to one knee at the incoming knowledge's sheer presence.
"[I see.]" The Dragon's body flies to its head and reconnects it with the rapidly recovering neck. "[Alduin's fears are not without merit.]" It takes off into the sky with a mighty flap of its wings. "[I should learn to act my age.]" It smiles. "[Lest I become human.]"
"Fucker." Aria growls. "Nothing wrong with being human."
The Dragon flies away.
"So all that for nothing." Aria spits. "Where's Ash?"
"We got his body." Jake holds up a very tattered and bloody corpse. "Or what's left of it." He shudders. "I know he said this was possible, but man it gives me the creeps."
…
[1st Person Camera]
…
I believe I have landed somewhere in the town. I have landed next to a stone wall of some kind and my vision is nothing but sky. It's very pretty, but not helpful.
So…
I mean, I've stitched people back together so long as their head was alive, so it only made sense to make sure I can do the same to myself. I can survive whatever as long as my head isn't squished like a tomato, and even then that's difficult.
A cat wanders up and starts licking our hair. As we have cut all sense of pain we feel nothing.
I see whiskers. It's a cat.
The cat starts pawing at our head.
No
Stop
Wait
My greatest regret is that I can't feel its kitty paw pads.
It bites our nose and puts a claw ominously close to our eye.
I'm ok with not feeling that one. EYE BEAM!
Our eyes flash with magic and a soft 'pop' sound, the cat jumps, yeowls, and scampers away.
I'm just glad it didn't pee on my face. So long as my brain works I can circulate and collect magic, so if I keep expenditure low I can maintain this energy state effectively forever.
But I have no locomotion as a head, so…yeah.
Well, I mean, I can move my jaw, but that's kinda not useful given how my jaw is not touching the ground.
…
It takes a hot minute for somebody to notice a head lying against a wall and scream their oh it's Mell.
She picks up my head, tears in her eyes, and rushes me back to the Warwolf mansion.
Jake's also there with my extremely torn up body. We (all of us) enter the Compound, and a moment later the all-clear alarm is sounded.
I'm brought to my workshop along with my…really at this point it's less of a body and more of a human-shaped meatloaf. From the pieces I can see, it's in no shape for reattachment. It looks uncharacteristically wet and under-blooded. Did they clean it in the lake?
Why did they feel the need to rinse off my decapitated body?
Also Mell has a tendency to hug my head which buries my nose in her chest. I have no issues with this arrangement as I cannot feel. Or see.
In other words, I have an issue with this arrangement. Two issues.
Two massive issues.
Mell puts me gingerly on the table as Jake sets the body below me, as if I was lying down. "Wow, you really got ahead of yourself, huh?" He says.
…
…
…I can feel his stupid ass grin. I have no vocal cord and no lungs so I cannot talk, and I can't look at him to throw a dirty look because he's off to my right.
But we try anyway.
"Always head and shoulders above the rest." Jake continues. Aria slaps him on the shoulder. Thank you. I hear her giggling but thank you all the same.
Mell has managed to stop crying. "T-this is a rather heady situation." She says a bit hiccup-y and Bro
BRO
Not bro, she's a lady.
I TRUSTED YOU
Jake goes for a high-five, which Mell rather weakly returns.
"Alright, alright." Aria says, very obviously tired. "Let's stop giving Ash the cold shoulder."
…I swear to god. Swear to god.
"Ok, ok." Jake takes a breath to calm down. "How do we do this? Ash can't talk right now and all."
He's not necessarily calming down from having fun.
"We just have to align his head with the rest of the body, he said." T'Nerem says and I see her. She picks up my head and aligns it to my body.
…Alrighty, establishing battle link, stand by…
…Yeah, my body is a mess, but it's workable. The dragon hit me hard enough to rip through my lung, the ribs, and a fairly sizable chunk of my organs. I'm missing a lot of bones and meat where meat should be, and if I were to try and restore my body to the state of a standard person I would die immediately.
But still, workable. Thankfully T'Nerem brought a bucket of soulstones and a live pig. She leads the pig to my hand so I can put my hand on it.
I haven't re-established nerve access so I'm assuming based on position. It seems like something she'd do.
Anyhoo.
HEALING~
…
[Five minutes later]
…
Alright, major damage repaired. Plenty of minor damage I'll have to repair later, but for now I can do basic human functions.
"Ah, ah…" My voice is…deader than before. Probably an octave lower, too. I sounded like shit before, so I still sound like shit but gruffier, probably.
"How are you feeling?" Jake asks, faux-concern written all over his face.
A lot of real concern mixed in too.
I stare at him, then shrug. "Still a lot of damage to work through."
"Ok, good. God forbid you become a headache." Jake grins and I'm going to throw this pig at him. What's left of it. I can't pick it up so I will simply do so in spirit.
Sigh. "I will need time to rebuild my body so I'm probably not moving for a while." I say. "Somebody help me back to my room."
"Gotcha." Jake picks me up in a princess carry. Must you?
"What do you want the rest of us to do?" Aria asks.
No clue. "Run the show, I guess? When I get squared away we'll do a full debriefing."
…
I get carried up to my room in short order and squared away with pillows and comfort. Everything's going to ache for a few weeks as I put it all in order, huh?
…
"Alright, debrief."
I'm on my bed, there's really no room for everyone, so only the core crew is present inside the room and out in the hallway.
I sigh. "Dragon is a fuckhead, end of debrief." Pause. "I can report that none of our weapons worked against it. Jake? Aria?"
"I didn't do shit." Jake says bluntly. "Not enough charging power, not enough evasion."
"The weapons did work, as did your spells." Aria says. "But it healed through the damage every time."
Yeah, I saw that.
Ugh…
…
[Debrief]
…
…Well, nothing we didn't already either know or assume.
That said, Aria did get some information from the Dragon at the tail end of the fight. No new info about why this dude was different from Mirmulnir on the absorb soul front, sadly.
That said.
We did get some knowledge into how Dragons perceive themselves.
That is, Dragons consider themselves, rightfully and accurately so, as a force of nature.
I mean, this was kinda self-evident, but the key distinction here is that…how do I phrase it?
It's like they're hurricanes. Not 'a' hurricane, but the concept of a hurricane itself. Not a rainstorm, but the concept of rain, so on, so forth. A force of nature that is as innate as the existence of nature in its entirety.
In other words, you cannot kill nature. A tornado will eventually run its course, but just because a tornado goes away doesn't mean that the concept of tornadoes and the environmental aspects that create tornadoes becomes unable to create tornadoes ever again. This is where we're at. That is what Dragons are, an aspect of nature as a fundament of reality.
In a way it makes sense. If Physics can create incredible things as a result of a large cohesive ball of energy, then it follows that Magic, a parallel system, would also be able to create incredible things as a result of a large cohesive ball of energy.
In other words, the means of destroying a dragon involves getting them to go from being a fundamental force of nature to being 'a' fundamental force of nature. Instead of the Dragon representing hurricanes, we need to get it to represent 'a' hurricane.
Which was how the Grounding Shout worked, I believe. A fear of death implies a finality, a sense that forces of nature lack.
Now the question is, and was, how do we get there? How do we tell a dragon that, in our case, one of the three people it fought and won against is going to kill it? Like, in a more standard fantasy story, the big bad realizes that they're going to die at the end of the climax, not during the dialogue before.
Or, alternatively, that being killed is a process alien to life? Because, let's face it, all things die eventually. Hell, nature itself will die eventually after ten to the X amount of years. I mean, language is a means of conveying meaning and is created, so that right there means Dragons can learn and improve, so the idea that they're egotistical enough to be completely shocked by the concept of death seems shallow as an explanation.
…Or, alternatively…the conditions in the field are antithetical to how Dragons exist?
Right? I mean, a Tornado ends because the weather patterns in the region can no longer support it. If Dragons are forces of nature, then would they not be removable from the field because the field can no longer support them?
In that sense, the Dragonrend Shout (I think?) makes sense. Shouts are Words that carry meaning, but also the meaning is so convincing that the relevant aspects of existence are brought into existence simply through Shouting. In that sense, Dragonrend is less a Shout that 'causes' a Dragon to realize something and more a shout that redefines the world space around the Dragon.
Or, in another sense, Dragon language is uniquely different from human language, because the meaning of the word takes place upon it being spoken, rather than being heard…
…then again, that's no different from a spell. Words bring action to existence, and all that jazz.
Hrm.
Well, more food for thought.
Incidentally.
This is over a period of two days of debate and extrapolation.
Me and Jake have scoured our list of available perks, and we have nothing that can be used against dragons. No damage bonus, no defense bonus, nothing.
Secondary perks like improving our reaction time exist, beyond what we already have, but those are focused towards very specific elements and…well, considering that the Dragon is still out there, we don't really have the time to retrain and relearn how to fight. We need to focus on the Perk for it to be useful and it's taken us this long to be able to use half of our kit effectively at all times. Hell, one reason why both of us kept getting nullified during the fight was because we can't do shit and fly at the same time.
Ugh. Honestly, the big question is when the Dragon decides to revisit. We're out of usable gear, Aria's the only one that can fight, and that's assuming the Dragon decides to pull its punches again.
If it just decides to Breath at altitude we'd be completely fucked. Aria mentioned that the Dragon talked about having fun, but why did it want to have fun?
…That's a silly question. Everything likes to have fun, the fun just looks different for everybody.
Dragon healing?
We're chalking that up as a function of the Dragons being 'a force of nature', again, can't kill the concept of a hurricane, and all that.
…
Not gonna lie, I'm a little…a lot, I'm very disappointed that all of my preparations over the past however long were only worth a sliver of a dragon's knowledge. But, I have a new goal in mind.
We're not killing dragons. Not at the moment. Instead, the focus is to make weapons that can deal enough sustained damage for Aria to absorb knowledge from it.
I mean, realistically I don't think my developmental goal has changed, but the difference in knowing that the goal is achievable is a difference between heaven and earth. I'm actually motivated now, it's great.
So what's happening now?
I'm restricted to my bed and being taken care of by T'Nerem and T'Yanna. More or less. I'm healing and getting healed, but my body is still crumpling into a pile after five minutes of physical exercise, so that's not going great.
Like, I'd complain, but I'm being serviced by big tiddie anime catgirls, so…
.
.
.
{ === + === }
Author Notes:
Dragons are like a strong wind that blows back all your hair.
*Recorder noises*
.
.
.