Chapter 246: a Major box
Despite the pain Kat was experiencing, once she felt the bones in mostly acceptable condition, she stretched her wings out again, to try and slow her fall at least somewhat. Despite the holes in her wings this was reasonably effective… for a split second.
As she opened her wings to full, the air caught on them and snapped the new connection between the bones that hadn't quite finished setting yet. Kat cursed her impatience as she started falling once again.
Concentrating on fixing her wings, and fixing them properly, Kat pushed her energy towards her back and tried very hard not to focus on the splinters making their way through her skin and muscle as her power tried to put her wings back together.
It was slower going than Kat had wanted. Getting the splinters into place wasn't too bad, it was the strengthening and re-joining of bones that took the most time. Even though this time was in reality only a few seconds, with Kat's enhanced thought processing speed and the fact that she was falling down towards the ground it was a rather large concern and much too slow.
*Dammit, is this even going to be fixed in time.* Kat glanced and could see that she was actually knocked far to the side of the golem, and that she had already dropped to around where its waist should be… if a semi-amorphous cascading wall of Nightmare fluid could be said to have a waist.
*Ok, let's just try not to focus on the excruciating pain in your back. Sure, the pain can't compare to that time you had gravel forcibly imbedded into your throat and had to cough it back up, but that might just have been the human part of me that was still left at the time giving up*
*That or my sense of pain has become more acute… which I really don't want… or think can be the case now that I consider my other problems… is it just the wings maybe?* Kat's thoughts Kat off as a particularly large wave of pain hit her as her right wing snapped into place. It was still too weak, but the bones were all in place and the pain had lessened.
*Ok, that's good.* Kat looked at the rapidly approaching ground, she had maybe a few seconds more of falling before she'd impact the snow. *That isn't so good.* Kat looked at Minor who had grabbed onto her and was digging her nails into Kat's flesh… or trying, they didn't seem to be able to break her skin.
*Ok, so… do I do something for Minor? Keep her safe from the inevitable impact?* Kat moved her awareness to concentrate on her wings. They were so close to being ready, but they just weren't quite there…
"Minor! Can you slow us down at all!" yelled Kat over the wind. *Hopefully she can do something…*
Minor seemed to grab to Kat tighter, as the world twisted slightly. When Kat blinked, the ground looked to be further away but it was hard to tell. She was about to steal a glance at the golem for context but Minor flicked a tail in the way. *She must have a reason.* Kat continued to work on her wings as fast as her energy would let her.
A mere ten agonising seconds later Kat's second wing snapped back into place, and she could feel the bones had completely settled. Flaring her wings out Kat quickly stopped her fall, remembering to still be slightly careful with Minor and made sure not to just stop in place.
Kat turned herself back to face the monster and saw it engaging with Ki, or more accurately, it was engaging with her tree. The giant tree, while not even half the height of the golem was much wider, and had a number of branches.
Every time it swung towards the thing's monstrous form, the branches would extend for just a second to take a swipe at it. In the places where the branches managed to connect, small pink flowers bloomed, but they didn't last long.
They seemed to be fixed in place, and when the strange ink that the golem was made up of kept dripping downwards came into contact with the flowers, they just seemed to be overtaken. The only exception was around that strange distortion around its chest. In that area no flowers ever seemed to appear.
*Perhaps I need to rethink my plans… that damned club is much faster than something of that size really should be and I'm really not sure how I can dodge that. I'm just not fast enough I don't think… I could maybe try to get in close so that the angle is awkward but does the thing even have bones? Perhaps its arms are more like my tail than an arm and can be whipped around pretty much as much as it wants.*
As Kat's thoughts turned back to the club, she watched the Nightmare golem use it, to little effect. It had grabbed hold of the club with both hands and brought it crashing down onto the tree that was attacking it.
Instead of snapping branches and a shockwave of air, a perfect sphere surrounded the tree made up of sakura petals. The club slammed into the makeshift barrier and hardly budged it in the slightest. Kat braced herself, fearing the shockwave she knew had to come… but even that was missing.
*Ok… what the hell. How does that even remotely make sense! Sure, attacking with the branches, ok. Magic extending attacking branches, that's fine too. Leaving petals where you attack the monstrous Nightmare creature? Why not?*
*However, I feel like I really need to draw the line at stopping a shockwave that only would have occurred because you stopped the damned club dead in place. Why is this ok? I thought the dream world still had some rules!*
"Minor what's the plan" asked Kat to try and distract herself from what just happened
"I- I don't know Kat" said Minor
"Anything at all would be great" said Kat
Minor flinched but spoke with some determination "I'm… I'm really not sure what I can do here. The only thing I can think of is distributing your fire a bit… but you must have taken a lot of damage reducing your reserves and I just don't know where we need to hit the thing"
Kat nodded "Yeah that is a problem. I certainly don't have enough energy to freeze the entire Nightmare" said Kat
*Plus, at least for the moment it is more than happy to let us plan.* Kat smirked as another blow rained down on the sakura tree before it quickly retaliated. Neither really doing any noticeable damage to the other.
*It does seem like we need to be the tipping point. They might just be able to keep hitting each other till the end of time… I wonder if that is partly conceptual though. Major not being able to pick a side and we need to choose one? But if that is really the case then should we side with Ki or not?*
*The giant Nightmare does make it seem like it has to be the one we go after, but I still want to believe Ki is suspicious… but could I just be wrong? Maybe seeing someone made out of wood that just isn't expressive like Thyme is gives me a sense of wrongness?*
"Do you have any other good ideas Minor?" asked Kat
"Um… er well… what about your aura? Could you calm things down maybe? Maybe fighting isn't what we are meant to be doing" said Minor
"Hmm" mumbled Kat. *I'm not sure what we are or are not meant to be doing is really the point here. I just… ok maybe the fact that this is more a conceptual battle than anything else makes some sense. Neither side is making any major moves against each other only myself and Minor.*
*And even then, we are only attacked if we go after one or the other. It seems to be a stalemate. But to progress forward before we always had to break the scene. We never played along…*
*So is there a third solution other than side with Ki or side with the golem? I sure hope the alternative isn't to defeat both of them, because I'm pretty sure that would be impossible even with Minor's help and careful planning.*
"Hey Minor" said Kat
"Yeah?" asked Minor
"You think that maybe we need to break this scene as well? Maybe not quite in the same way, but… could we need to do something else to fix Major other than just beating up half of her consciousness" said Kat
Minor's face screwed up as if she'd just eaten a lemon. The words that came out of her mouth looked like they had to kick and punch their way out, but she looked better once they'd left. "Probably. Major has been fighting herself and that's why she's stuck. I guess we have to think of something else now don't we"
Visit freewe𝑏nov(e)l.𝗰𝐨𝐦 for the 𝑏est n𝘰vel reading experience