[We open to the sad sight of Spark, Kalinda's kitten-sized dragon companion, all bandaged up with his diminutive frame covered in a full body cast. Tiny bandages have been wrapped around his head, and he's sporting a black eye.]
[The camera pulls back from the wee little bed to see none other than Dr. Alfredo Acula, Physician of the Supernatural, Attorney at Law looking worriedly over a clipboard. There's a rhythmic beeping as a heart monitor bleeps and bloops the state of normalcy.]
[Dr. Acula pulls a small case out of a pocket on his lab coat, removes a pair of spectacles, only to dramatically remove them and look sad.]
Dr. Alfredo Acula: The prognosis does not look good, I'm afraid. It looks like we're going to have to amputate. The damage is too severe. You'll loose all of your legs and one wing.
Spark: Nuuuuu!
[He wails, sobbing painfully.]
Dr. Alfredo Acula: Yes, amigo, I am afraid so.
Spark: But I always dreamed of being a quarterback in the NFL! Now I can never live out my dream! And with no legs whoever would love me now?
[And we pan back again and scoot the camera over a bit to find none other than the masked Mr. Hush and a veil-wearing Hellkat, playing the violin and keytar sorrowfully.]
[And then we pan back even further to find a cluster of weepy Loons, with the entirety of the Defective Bob Squad sharing one tremendous handkerchief between them that is actually an old "Poor Xavier" themed bedsheet. And then we zoom back in to Spark and the good doctor.]
Spark: You make it sound so hopeless and bleak, Doctor. My life has been drained of all its hope and beauty, and leaving me with nothing left to live for. Is there nothing you can do?
Dr. Alfredo Acula: I could perhaps get you a second opinion. You see, there is another doctor, not merely of the supernatural, but of everything! His doctorate is in being awesome. He is none other than star of song, stage and screen...
[The weepy music is interrupted by a record skip as the triumphant melody of Therion's "Three Ships, Part II" begins to play. The camera pulls back to reveal, not Mr. Hush in his usual dismally toned business dress attire, but Mr. Hush in a brilliant red velvet coat, a ruffled shirt, crazy Einstein hair wig, stethoscope around his neck (as all doctors must have), and the radiant be-chinned face of Bruce Campbell on a paper plate tied with string around his face. No, this isn't Mr. Hush, this is none other than...]
Dr. Alfredo Acula: THE ABOMINABLE DOCTOR MEMES!
[And in the radiant light that pours off of every masterful physician, the cast falls away, the bandages crumble to dust, and the patient is completely and utterly restored to full health.]
[With the patient fully recovered THE ABOMINABLE DOCTOR MEMES simply nods knowingly, places his hands upon his hips, striking a dashingly heroic pose, and is pulled out of the shot by someone pulling on the off-camera skateboard he is no doubt standing upon.]
[Spark hops out of the bed, spreads his tiny wings wide, and lets out a rather feeble little squeak that is the closest thing to a roar he can produce.]
Spark: Psyche! I'm totally not hurt at all! I was just fooling around with you and milking the the drama cow for that sweet, sweet milk that wrestling fans apparently just looooove to lap up.
I may be the size of a kitten, but you have to remember that not only am I a dragon, not only am I a famous war hero, but Lincoln Booth has like osteoporosis and spindly little old man legs!
That's right ladies and gentlemen, he had the opportunity to do so and is literally so weak he can't hurt a kitten!
[Spark rears up onto his back legs, doing a bit of shadow boxing.]
Spark: Yeah, can't keep a muse this strong down for the count, baby! Wooo! Oh yeah! Just you wait for the rematch, I'm going to kick your wrinkly old butt so hard you're going to poop sideways from now on!
[Spark throws a ridiculous haymaker with such force that it manages to spin him around entirely, causing him to trip and stumble over his own tail.]
Spark: Anyway! I had a nice long look as an introduction to the gods of Tathion, how they're categorized, and why the labels for the elements and the ones for the gods get a little bit weird.
But then I hear Kal muttering something about how certain people don't listen with regards to the whole being virtually immune to mundane weaponry thing. And yes, I'm sorry to break your bubbles, you sad sack of special snowflakes, but whatever lies your significant other tells you about your magic touch, not only are they lying through their teeth, but that's definitely not magic enough for your puny little man-fists to overcome the might of grand cosmic magic!
So in short this week you're going to be learning about the World That Was, the Forgeblooded Lineage of Metsuki Tahari, and why exactly trying to chop of Kal's head, shooting her with a shotgun, running her over with a tank, lobbing a grenade at her, and throwing your feeble 100 pound back out attempting to drop her on her head and paralyze her isn't going to work.
At all.
Ever.
It's just going to make her mad and prone to being bitey, and considering she can chew, swallow, and digest rebar, that's probably not a good idea if you like having fingers. No noses. Or ears. Or arms for the Greater New England Area Anorexics Society.
Seriously, like half of you ladies have stick arms and stick legs that make Lincoln Booth look like he's got friggin' Popeye forearms. Eat a sandwich, Do some bicep curls. Subsist on something beside caffeine-water, air, and pumpkin spice.
[Spark flops down theatrically on the tiny little bed, folding up his forelimbs underneath his chin, and kicking his hind legs in the air like some sort of gossipy teenage girl on the phone to her BFF.]
Spark: So anyway, this whole thing starts with the World That Was. Cause the 22 of the 23 kingdoms comprising the Empire of Blood aren't native to Tatheon.
Short version of the cosmic jackdaw theory: there's a lot of bits of reality that are gotten rid of, by powerful magic, powerful technology, or the gods having some sort of huge retcon and going "Nuh uh, that so totally did not happen!"
So stuff gets tossed into the Void, the unreality between universes. Things work weird in there. No time passes, and yet it kind of does. Bombs fall, go kablooey, you have time to go "Blargh! I am dead!" and then you find you that your little bit of reality has been plucked up by some void-diving deities with their own little pocket universe that are looking for some nice scraps of fabric to make a world quilt out of, and they just so happen to pick yours.
That's what happened to the Empire. The Blood Emperor managed to find a loophole in the rules about the grand cosmic game of the gods that utilized the power of an imprisoned elder being by bleeding it off to warp reality, time, and space to grant the victor in a titanic clash of good and evil a single wish.
It's like Dragon Ball, but with less Easter egg collecting, more fighting, more weapons, less cheesy dialog, and not spending two weeks' worth of 20 minute episodes charging one stupid attack.
The winner before the Emperor, who broke the whole shebang and got the whole of our particular timeline tossed into the Void, was Metsuki Tahari. A dark elven smith turned warrior.
Now Dark Elves are kind of weird. Their gender dynamics are kind of weird. Their sexual dimorphism goes the other way around, for example. The ladies are bigger than the dudes. And they also seem to have in-between genders in some places.
Matriarchs are the most magically diverse and powerful, and they're able to carry and wield two bloodlines, since most mystic bloodlines are tied entirely to the X chromosome. They're girls, and the only ones you can definitely tell are girls.
At the other end there's the sorcerous caste, totally males. Itty bitty, kinda femmy looking dudes that are the glass cannons of the spellcasting world. Their magic is all raw elemental power. Mostly combat stuff. Blowing things up and making explosions.
Then there are two castes that are kind of in between and can be either guys, girls, or a mix of both. Enchantresses are smoking hot, and the more like a smoking hot babe they look like, the more likely they are to actually be a dude. But we're not going to talk about them, because certain members of End Effect seem to get really stroppy when you mention people possibly not adhering to binary genders.
So we'll just skip over them and go to Channeler caste. They're big. Like really big. Average height is around Kalinda's size. And they're the reason that elves in general are a bit weird in the looks department.
See, each elf has a bestial totem critter. Sorcerers power their spells with mana from their totem to give an extra kick. Enchantresses tend to make something like me but bigger, a spirit given an ectoplasmic form to serve as a defender. And Channelers take on traits of their patron critters. They get bigger, they get stronger, they get meaner.
They were so much better suited to surviving back during the Elven Wars, that a significant portion of the Dark Elven race was comprised entirely of them. And so some of the borrowed bestial features started to stick. And those are handed down through the generations, and they do so on family lines.
So House Darkbolt, Tahari's family lineage, has some feline features stapled on, usually snow leopard. Pointy ears, big floofy tails, digitigrade feet, sometimes fur, giving birth to litters and having six boobs. You know, normal cat stuff.
Picture Kalinda but with black skin, a snow leopard tail, kitty ears, retractable claws, and saberteeth. Okay, now pack on another two hundred pounds of muscle onto the frame, discounting the tail, and jack up the height another foot and a half.
That's Metsuki Tahari, who managed to make House Darkbolt the world's most desired bachelors and baby daddies with her single wish; totaly immunity to harm from weapons wielded by another's hand.
The closer the relation to her, the stronger the gift. Tahari herself could not be harmed, period. She did what few dark elves ever get to do: she died of old age. Her direct offspring could only be fatally wounded by a weapon crafted by the hand of a kinsman.
The rest of 'em? They've got what Kalinda's got. They will literally shrug off anything and everything you throw at them that isn't magical. It doesn't matter if you shoot them, stab them, punch them, whatever. It cannot break the skin, it will not tear muscle, crush cartilage, or burst blood vessels.
Forgeblooded don't bleed, they don't bruise, they don't break bones. Not unless you can bind something of the supernatural into your weapon.
Which is the other thing the bloodline tends to do, have a way with weapons and armor. Those given her direct gift are said to be able to talk to the spirit of a weapon, to empower it, to kindle it into sentience. They're even worse than Kal is.
Because how the heck can you hurt someone who has specifically asked your magical sword very politely, in what might be the first conversation it's ever had, if it would please be so kind as to not hurt them.
And I'm glad Kal doesn't have to deal with that. She's got enough voices in her head between me, the damned skull, and Miss Hissy the Cannibal Hydra Goddess. She'd be talking to steel chairs with skulls nailed to them to house spirit-beings and empower the weapon with deadly force. Like certain arachnid-named portrayers of zombie lawyers around here tend to do.
[Spark nods decisively.]
Spark: That doesn't mean anything silly like not feeling pain, though. That wasn't what Tahari asked for, and her kinsman are stuck with whatever their usual pain tolerance is.
So being shot isn't going to actually harm them. But hurt them? Heck yeah, it'll hurt them. Kal says it stings like the dickens. It kind of gets translated to soreness and muscle fatigue. At first it'll cramp like the worst charlie horse ever, and then it'll fade to that horrible ache you get when you work out way too heavily and tire muscles that you don't usually use.
Which brings us to the far, far easier thing to explain about Kalinda. Elemental absorption.
[Spark hops up and points to himself.]
Spark: It's something that happens when you've got someone really really strongly tied to one of the lower elements of magic. The ones that aren't Physical and Ethereal, the Empyreal Elements. Not those. The other twenty.
In my case, Lightning, or electricity. Getting hit by a lightning bolt won't hurt me, in fact it'll make me a heck of a lot stronger. Kal's a water dragon with ties to the element of Ice. So the colder things get, the stronger she gets, the smarter she gets, the faster she heals.
You don't fight fire dragons in volcanoes and you don't fight ice dragons in winter storms. Because they suck the ambient energy of their native element up out of the environment and channel it to empower themselves.
[Spark nods solemnly.]
Spark: That's the scary thing you want to keep in mind about Kalinda. You can beat her so sore that she can barely lift her arms, but a bathtub, cold water, and a five pound bag of ice means that she's going to be fighting fit again in fifteen minutes.
You guys really shouldn't keep egging her on to near apocalyptic, world-destroying, army of darkness raising levels. 'Cause once she gets it into her head to come after you, she's not going to stop.
She's going to heal quicker than you are.
She's going to keep coming at you until each and every one of you are bloody piles of mush.
Numbers don't matter.
Time doesn't matter.
She's a dragon. She's going to be living for a very, very long time.
Ten thousand years ago human beings on this planet hadn't even discovered writing yet. But the dragon born ten thousand years ago? Not only are they still alive, spry, and kicking, but they're the size of a house and have another couple hundred centuries ahead of them yet.
Dragons don't keel over dead of old age. They keep going and they keep growing up until they lose interest in the world. Then they're of such power that they still don't die, they just happen to go somewhere where mortal races can't reach.
So dragons can hold grudges. They can sit and wait patiently. They can let the decades tick by and take revenge for a slight you perpetrated against them upon your children's children's children.
But Kal's not that old, yet. She's still working on mortal time.
So unless you've decided that all your stablemates are your kids, Kal's going to be taking out her problems with you on you. And whomever you care about that's hanging around that just might happen to be collateral damage when she decides to take you on and take you out.
[Spark puts on a big goofy grin.]
Spark: Sucks to be you, I guess!
[The diminutive dragon sticks out his tongue and blows a raspberry at the camera as we fade to black.]
[And then we fade in to the sight of Kalinda in her apartment, or a hotel room, or whatever. She does not look particularly pleased, and she keeps rhythmically tapping her gauntleted fingers against the wooden table she's seated next to. Tap tap tap tap. Tap tap tap tap.]
Kalinda:Since Halloween there have been two thoughts running through my head. The first being that people have actually been paying attention, remembered that Spark evaporates and reforms into ectoplasm each time he's called out, or goes back into my head. In which case Lincoln Booth saw an opportunity to lash out at someone I care about and hurt them just because he could. Which pisses me off.
But people aren't getting the whole "I am a magical dragon beastie from a centuries old elven bloodline that cannot be harmed by mundane weaponry" thing. And thus with two death threats and a promise of paralysis from Rear-End Effect talking out their asses, Spark had to go and explain in depth how exactly that worked.
So as a result I think option B is the winner here. That being a grown-ass man just went and kicked a creature the size of a kitten as hard as he fucking could. And if a grown-ass man gets a run up and aims it correctly, that ends up with a dead or crippled kitten.
Which means that Lincoln Booth just attempted to murder my best friend and quasi-parental figure. Which REALLY, REALLY pisses me off.
And you know what? I've been handed a match on a silver platter that is going to allow me to easily rectify this situation between me and the Rising Tide, Lincoln's meal ticket.
You see, ladies and gentlemen, I'm not sitting in the corner, shaking, weeping, and going oh woe is me about being tossed into the ring against three men. Oh no. I'm thrilled. Three normal, ordinary, decidedly non-intellectual foes versus me. You pour in another half dozen more idiots with shit for brains, arm them with rusty hatchets and butcher knives, paint them green, and spray them with something to make the distinctive smell you get from abusing anabolic steroids, and you've got a camp full of orc bandits. Or as I like to call it, an afternoon's entertainment.
The Meat Head Twins aren't going to be an issue. I took out the more brutal half of the Rising Tide without having to dig down very deep at all. The chick who's spent more time working out her palms playing Mario Party and rotating that gods forsaken control stick put up more of a fight.
Sure, Bald-o, Son of Bjork, is supposedly the smarter of the two. But if he's taking orders from hacks like Adam Chase and Lincoln Booth, than how smart can he really be? And all the technical wizardry in the world isn't going to save you from getting my tree trunk-like tail smashed into your face repeatedly.
And Priest? For all he's supposed to be this big, scary horrible monstrosity of a man against whom being made to face is the ultimate punishment, he sure has a pretty piss poor record. He's lost to Cammy Mac and got a right royal thrashing at the hands of Jason King.
And let's be honest here, they're not the most imposing physical specimens. Compared to Priest they're tiny baby men. Tiny baby men that whipped his big black leather wearing, recovering-from-child-molestation-by-fucking-a-pillow, Eric Herrera felliating ass. I'm bigger than Priest is. I'm stronger than Priest is, and sure as hell I'm smarter than Priest is.
And I'm going to take advantage of my supposed "punishment" to lash out against people that have committed vast errors of judgment in severely pissing me off. Beat the piss out of the Rising Tide, and I take away Lincoln Booth's meal ticket. All nice and happy and legal-like.
Because I'm sure that if I went after the old fart directly and snapped the leg he kicked Spark with in half, our esteemed general manager Up Chuckmann would require me to wear a Pippy Longstocking wig and sing songs to orphans or disadvantaged youth or contributors to the Republican party or something. Joke'd be on him, I can't carry a tune in a bucket.
And with Priest I'd be lashing out at End Effect. Ah, End Effect, a group that I couldn't make up a more comedically inept band of boggins to oppose me if I tried. So the big bad virus that's threatening to consume and infect ULW and gods only know how many other feds besides, the folks who felt perfectly fine with threatening me with beheading, shotguns to the face, and paralysis (thus warranting a lecture from Spark on how that won't work) had something interesting happen today.
Apparently somebody pitched a fit and went in to Saul Stoolsoftener's office, sobbing and enraged about how the big nasty blue dragon was saying mean and terrible things about them on Twitter. And by golly it chafed their pwecious widdle feelings so gods damned badly that basically the whole faction was threatening to ride each other off into the sunset and leave ULW for good.
Because I said some things on Twitter they didn't like.
Because I made light of the fact that somebody's name is a few letters away from being Knickers-Knockers.
Because in my long, drawn out campaign to out and shame Eric Herrera for being a mask-wearing, bald-spot covering, homeschooled, inbred Mormon polygamist some of his so-called "Family" are getting tarred with the same big sloppy brush.
Oh noes! Jason King said Brandi Danielle is actually Brandon Daniel and is sporting a gentleman's sausage in her underthings!
The horror! That naughty blue dragon is not only taking that slanderous statement at face value, but is also insinuating that Brandon Danny is Rick Rogaine's common law second wife!
Shock! Outrage! Jensen McStupidname that'll she'll pee her pants and cry about and then go call 100 people on X-Box Live British slang for cigarettes for in retaliation went and announced that she's getting married. So of course I said that made wifey number three for Herrera.
And apparently the prospect of being wed to her supposedly beloved mentor was enough to induce such a fragile emotional state that she went off the deep-end after I accused her of, and I quote "being sexually aroused by blue women since Mass Effect came out," and that I would not contribute to her fantasies of me fucking myself so that she had something to ponder, because as an American she couldn't simply lie back and think of England.
And that was apparently enough to bunch panties and sand vaginas the world over. For someone who's supposedly a gamer, the realm of mom-fucking, bundle of stick naming, foul mouthed 9 year olds, she sure as hell can't take the shit talk, now can she?
So because the big and scary End Effect group is such a terrible and dire serious threat, so powerful and mighty, that one little blue dragoness with a keyboard damned near managed to tweet the whole lot of them out of the federation entirely.
Golf clap time, boys and girls. Golf clap time.
So threat. Such tough. Much intimidate. Very scare. Wow.
Yes, that's right ladies and gentlemen, End Effect just about up and left town because they couldn't handle trash talk of this magnitude.
I'm sure by now Priest is cuddling his altar boy love pillow, because like a significant number of priests he's a recovering addict of juvenile buttsecks, shaking in his bed absolutely horrified at the horrible, horrible mean words that are going to come out of my mouth directed towards him.
But he doesn't have to be afraid, oh no! Because I'm not going to drown him in a rampant tide of insults and abuse, like certain hunchback-disowning, love her like a daughter right in the pussy, mask-wearing cretins that shall remain nameless.
I'm just going to beat the complete and utter living fuck out of him.
No one seems to believe me when I say that I have terrifying arcane forces tripping over themselves to hand me power on a silver platter.
No one seems to want to think that you're intimidating when you spend most of your time being happy, pleasant, and silly. It's like the world can't fathom someone being dangerous unless they're a right unpleasant git, some sort of angst ridden rage-fucker growling through their teeth and quivering with pent-up wrath.
Someone just tried to kill my best friend.
Someone threatened to kill me. Twice.
Some skinny bitch with no attention span thought that the proper response to getting insulted on Twitter was causing paralysis in the offending party.
Death threats are illegal, little children. No matter if you deliver them with serious intention or not. But I'm not going to sick the US Justice System on them. I'm not going to inflict that slow grinding of oft-ineffectual, money-greased gears on anybody.
I'm going to use the mauled carcasses of Hugo, Bash, and Priest to send a message to the rest of the world; you want me, come and get me. I'm standing right here, and whatever horror and violence you think will keep me down, it's not going to be enough.
It's never going to be enough.
You can put me down with enough force, but there's damned near nothing you've got on your stupid little sphere that can keep me down.
But that's not going to matter this time.
This time I get to reach down into the deepest, darkest depths of my soul and reveal just how terrifying I can be.
That deep down I have as black a heart as any.
A heart as cold as ice.
[Kalinda chuckles and brings two fingers up to her lips, kissing them, and then blowing a kiss of frozen mist at the camera.]
[Fade to white.]
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