Chapter CLII: Knowledge Smells Like Spearmint ~Kyanosa

Except for the speed and the falling and the fire and the screaming and the running and the pain and the crater, Kyanosa had a pretty smooth landing. He quickly exited Gundam Lip (you know, in case it was going to blow up and stuff) and deactivated the spoon, removing the Mecha from the area. With the spoon tucked into the waist of his pants (still no pockets, remember), he surveyed his surroundings. He was in the middle of a grassy field with scattered trees, generally recognized as a good place to land. In the relative distance he could see a forest, and in the far distance a few mountains stood, casting their shadows over the woodland closest to their bases.

Kyanosa nodded, squinting in the midday sun. [What powers cover distance best?]

Having relinquished control of the body to Brick following an unfortunate incident with the Mecha's fire extinguisher, Tuesday gave the astral version of a sigh. {Most anything with Wing and the helicopter. None really wins out in speed, but maneuverability varies.}

[Archangel it is then.]

{We have other powers.}

[Yes we do.] Kyanosa shifted to Archangel and flapped into the sky, catching a lucky breeze and sailing north towards the mountains.

A few minutes into the trip, Tuesday spoke up again. {Hey, lemme see the book for a bit.}

[Why?]

{Just a funny feeling.} Brick reluctantly gave the body over. Tuesday's first action was to change from Archangel to regular Wing, then he got out the book and started flipping through it.

[For what are we looking?]

{Transcripts.}

[Excuse me?]

{Somewhere in here are rough descriptions of everything that's happened so far. Every once in a while, it'll give a more detailed account. I'm hoping that it has for what I'm looking.}

[At least I'm sharing a head with somebody who knows grammar.]

{We have to. We're a writer. Here it is.} All was silent for a bit save the rippling of the air passing around Kyanosa. {Shoot.}

[What?]

{We've attracted a Twilighter.}

[Let it at least be a new one.]

{Nictem. If I remember right, he's red with gold eyes. Six foot six. Scribe for the Council. Very smart and a supposed ladies' man. Little physical, but lots of magic.}

[We seem to attract the magic-oriented ones. I'd rather break things.]

{It's better for us. I can think of three powers off the top of my head that reflect magic, but nothing that can defend against a hammer. Except for the Kaye one, but I have no idea how she gets that to work, so we'd probably end up getting hurt more.}

[Coward.]

{Pretty much, yes.}

[What are we doing here, anyway? You haven't told me yet.]

{I know. I like giving surprises. You'll probably figure it out once we get there, but until then I'm going to enjoy letting you guess.}

[Sometimes I loathe you.]

{Aw, thanks.}

Twenty minutes passed. Tired of letting Kyanosa hum the first verse of "Through the Night" repeatedly, Brick spoke up. [Are we the only people on this planet or what?]

{No, and I'm surprised we haven't met anybody yet. Usually people with wings are either shot at or hit on when they've been here this long. Maybe it's because we're so high up that we're just not encountering anything else.}

At that uncanny instant, Kyanosa looked towards the ground and noticed a very, very large shadow in the general spot where he had noticed his own just a minute before. He dove slightly to investigate, fortunately and involuntarily going under a set of grasping claws that grazed the top of his hair. He flipped upside down, catching a quick glimpse of feathers before he got an eyeful of sun. When he managed to orient himself again, he could very clearly make out the bird that was half of a second away from impaling him. It had a nice wingspan for an average forest creature, about 100 feet from tip to tip, was beige, and was coming back for another run.

[Except for that.]

{Yes, that.}

[Lemme take it on.]

{Oh, right, you and that miraculous Archangel. What's your brilliant battle strategy this round? Let me guess, lots of stabbing?}

[It's worked before.]

{No it hasn't! We just ran from stuff until somebody could give us backup.}

[Fine, you get us killed. Let's see what you come up with.]

{Cool.} Kyanosa dropped his wings immediately and instead activated his standard Copy power. The bird was understandably confused, but it sure as heck wasn't going to give up a fight this early, so it rose and started diving at Kyanosa. He swerved to the side, dodging the attack, but lost his momentum and needed some quick flapping to get back in check. By that time the real bird, who knew how its body worked, thank you very much, had come up behind him and raked his wing with its talons. Frustrated at his lack of opposable thumbs and firmly angry at a profusely bleeding wing, Kyanosa started to rethink his battle strategy, starting with coming up with one. He had a vague outline ready when the bird started its fourth run.

Kyanosa waited until the bird was nearly on top of him, then cancelled Copy. He was small enough that the bird passed right under him, so he turned on the Consecutive Yo-yo and tossed it around the bird's neck. Since the yo-yo wasn't going to lose its hold anytime soon, little skill or effort was required in retracting the string and pulling Kyanosa in. Once he landed on the bird's back (which, by the way, it hated almost as much as being strangled), he grabbed a handful of feathers to keep his balance and pulled out his Flamethrower. He succeeded in lighting the bird aflame, but the wind rippling past put anything out before it could do real damage. Frustrated, he resorted to Brick's strategy of "Stabby stabby stabby kill" and summoned his Glass Sword, not trusting the standard one to penetrate the bird's skin. The sword sang as it was swung through the air and, sure enough, cleanly removed the bird's head. Kyanosa let go of the feathers before he was stained by more than a few splashes of blood and jumped, flying backwards off of the bird's back. Once there, he just needed a quick Wing power to keep aloft as the bird's body and head each fell to the ground, though the incessantly writhing body took longer.

Kyanosa laughed as he flew. {Aw man, what a thrill! Told you I could do it.}

[Yes, but I could have done it without incurring injury.]

{Huh? What do you...ow!} In true Kyanosa style, he had found his wound by patting all over his body until something hurt more than normal. The slash he had received from the bird was still on his arm, though it was smaller than before. It was about four inches of hurt running down his left upper arm, and the blood was starting to run down his arm. He hadn't noticed it before, partially because it was under his shirt sleeve (which, since he didn't have it at the time he was cut, was not torn) and partially because adrenaline gives people tunnel vision.

[Before you pass out from blood loss at however many hundreds of feet, would you like to land and take care of this?]

{Probably should. Dang it, now I have to figure out how Kaye's spells work.}

[There's always the Gundam's first aid kit.]

{Better idea.} Kyanosa began his descent into the forest not far from the base of the mountains.

* * *

Nictem grumbled as he made his way through the forest. It had been a long trip so far, it was getting hot, his clothes were beginning to smell funny, stupid things kept attacking and running away on fire, and he still hadn't found the boy. He leaned against a tree and looked around, trying to find some hint as to where Kyanosa was. It's not like he could go any faster than Nictem in woods this thick, and Nictem knew that he was around here from the nearby crater and footprints facing the woods before they disappeared. He was getting frustrated. And, as we've seen from previous Kyanosa chapters involving Orson, Vole, Mel, and Necronimus, angry baddies either run away or break things. Since he had incurred no battle damage yet, Nictem uprooted a few dozen trees with a nice earthquake spell.

He had been looking forward to this meeting with Kyanosa as well. He remembered the message he had sent: "At the appointed time and place, we will meet; either you with myself, or you and one of my fellow Council members. You will come to the location alone, bring the Spoon with you. I won’t say where and when, but just know, you’ll know when the time comes. I’ll be waiting for you.” There was no way Kyanosa was expecting the appointed time and place to be here and now. Nictem was relishing his strategical advantage. Kyanosa also had not met Nictem in combat yet, so Nictem knew Kyanosa's powers but not vice versa. He knew the boy had the spoon, and that he was alone. Besides, actually getting a Creation's Weapon would up morale, not to mention his own power, so he saw no reason not to go out immediately and smack Kyanosa around until some body parts fell off. Nictem gave the Twilighter equivalent of a giggle.

He was so involved with his happy death that he barely had time to dodge once he noticed a large object falling from the sky. After he recovered, he analyzed the object. It seemed to be a very large, rather bloody bird missing a head. Nictem plucked off a feather and looked at it.

"A roc. Terrific. All I need now is rocs."

His magical energies picked up on something, and he started going over the corpse. A few burn-type marks were scattered here and there, but he didn't find anything of real interest until he got near the neck. There he found a faint but unmistakable aura - the kind given off by a Creation's Weapon.

Nictem huffed. "The boy must have been near this spot of the bird. Which means that he was at some point in the air. No wonder I couldn't find him."

He used his magical energies to float upward, looking over the canopy of the forest. In the distance, near some mountains, he spotted a splash of pink and purple rising above the trees.

He grinned maliciously. "Bingo."

* * *

Sitting on Gundam Acid Trip's shoulder, Kyanosa was just finishing bandaging his upper arm. It was a relatively painless affair considering that the Tuesday personality was no long in charge, and before too long a patched-up Archangel Kyanosa was walking through the forest. He finally made it to the mountains in the late afternoon, when the sun was getting ready to start setting.

Kyanosa looked over the base of the mountains, noticing a number of caves within the rock. [Okay, now what?]

{Take the third one from the bottom over near those bushes. It'll be a walk, but there shouldn't be any more nasty things trying to kill us.}

Kyanosa flew up to the cave and entered. [Kill you, you mean.]

{Oh, like you're any better.}

[Yes.]

Ten minutes of simultaneous walking and petty squabbling (two more words nobody ever uses any more) found them facing a large stone door. Kyanosa raised an eyebrow. [This is rather unusual.]

{Not around here. Just gently push it open. If you try to attack it or smash it down, it will never break, but casually opening it will put you right through.}

[If you say so.] Kyanosa pushed the door open and looked into the room. And what a room it was. The ground was covered in polished black tile, giving flashbacks of the mirrored floor in the Genesis, and the wall (wall, really) and ceiling all merged into a kind of solid oval, not unlike the shape you'd get if you cut an egg lengthwise at its widest part and looked into the upper half. A ten-foot-high curved mirror ran along the bottom part of the wall all around, except where the door stood, and upwards from there it was black marble until it reached its peak at the top of the egg, thirty feet in the air. In the middle of the room was a square of stone 20 feet long, on top of which rested one 18 feet long, then 16, then 14, forming three steps up to a raised platform. A column rose from each corner of the top square until they reached the ceiling, where they seemed to meld with the marble at the top. Finally, in the middle of the stone platform was a pool six feet in diameter, whose depth could not be determined by simply looking at it and that was filled with some bright green liquid that seemed to give off its own faint light.

{Neat, huh?}

[What is this place?]

{This is the entrance to the underworld.}

Kyanosa blinked. [We're going to insure our life by having a chat with Death?]

{Unless he's busy.}

Kyanosa sighed, then finally said something out loud instead of in his head. "Alright, then. Onwards to Death."

"Darn, that was my line."

Kyanosa turned around and instantly met Nictem's hand, which introduced itself by grabbing Kyanosa's face and lifting him off the ground. "Now, I would like your Creation's Weapon."

"Mm-mm-phmm-sm-muh."

Kyanosa summoned a parasol and poked Nictem with it. Nictem laughed. Then Kyanosa tapped it against Nictem's side. Nictem laughed louder. Kyanosa held the parasol back a bit as it inverted itself.

Nictem stopped laughing long enough to get out the standard villain condescending remark. "Look, he's going to use his Mary Poppins powers on me."

More laughing. He looked down at the parasol. It took a minute for his eyes to focus, but he did make out a faint yellow light glowing around the parasol's point. He thought back to the other's Twilighters' stories about Kyanosa, in addition to what he had seen and read. He wiped a tear from his eye. "Ah, dammit."

An instant later, a large yellow beam shot out of the inverted umbrella, blasting Nictem back out the stone door. Kyanosa dropped to the ground and shut the door, hoping that Nictem would take a while to pick up on the "push open slowly" thing. Sure enough, a second later a couple of furious bangs echoed through the chamber as Nictem tried to force his way inside.

[Okay, he's stalled. Now what?]

{Now we jump into that pool. I know a couple of things about the Underworld that'll help us out. It's like having a home field advantage.}

Kyanosa went Archangel. [I'll take what I can get.]

{No! No Archangel. They're holy-aligned. If you go in there like that, everything that can is going to attack.}

Kyanosa hesitated, then summoned the Mirror staff. [Fine, but I'm not going in without something that can slice other things to ribbons.]

{Fair enough.}

With that last comment and an angry Twilighter still pounding and shouting just behind him, Kyanosa ran up the steps and jumped into the pool, disappearing from sight.