Soul Searching

[SwifttailTheFox]

Swifttail’s pulse hammered in his ears, nearly in rhythm with Silvie’s song. The clash of light and shadow rippled through the dreamscape, every note bursting against the Wolf’s blade like shrapnel made of pure color. The ground beneath him still felt soft and unsteady, but his paws dug in, gaining trust in its support amidst the bright pink abyss beyond.

Something in the air then shifted. The forge-heat that had stirred within him since the ritual now roared to life. His paw tightened, and in a sudden flare of light, a blade bloomed into being.

A double-edged broadsword, glowing bright as hot steel just pulled from the fire. It shimmered white-hot and cherry red, shedding flakes of scale that vanished before they reached the ground. The hilt felt cool against his pads, but power thrummed through its grip like a heartbeat. His old tunic shimmered and reformed into light armor, olive green trimmed in black and burgundy. It fit like it had been fitted perfectly for him.

His paw trembled, disbelief at the sudden materialization of such a fantastical weapon. His friends had done the same moments ago, but seeing it and feeling it in paw were two entirely different things. He exhaled, slow and steady, just like Kaii had taught him before the duel that never came. Feet shoulder-width. Weight balanced. Conserve energy.

Then the Wolf lunged at Silvertongue, locking him into their deadly foray.

Swifttail met him from the side. The molten blade screamed through the air and struck the black sword with a burst of sparks that split the pink horizon. The force rattled up his arm, but he held fast, pivoting off his back paw and dodging with minimal effort the way Darragh had shown him. Each motion left an afterimage, a burning arc of molten air that flared and slashed outward, cutting trails of fire through the dream.

He felt the world begin to hold him more firmly now, the springy false ground hardening beneath each step, meeting his conviction. The fear was still there, whispering, but he shaped it into his resolve to fight.

He drove forward once again, sword sweeping in a wide crescent. The molten arc it cast flew free, colliding with the Wolf’s flank in a cascade of sparks and black smoke. Swifttail planted his paws, blade raised high as the glow from his strikes rung them both like a struck anvil. His breath came fast, but steady. The heat of the blade painted his fur in flickering amber, the blade still perfect despite the impacts that surely would have deformed the hot metal with ease.

He risked a glance over his shoulder and felt his confidence surge. Darragh was there, sailing closer in a pea-green boat, shouting across the pink expanse with fearless bravado. Kaii stood poised a few strides away, eyes glacial and focused, his control of the realm terrifyingly precise...But there was no sign of Finn.

The absence struck him harder than any blow. His gut tightened, but he forced himself to trust the kit’s wit and courage. Turning back to the fight, he steadied his blade, molten light reflecting in his eyes.

 

[Silvertongue Songfox]

Silvertongue gratefully jumped out of the way as Swifttail interceded, taking a chance to catch his breath and grab his lute once more. The Wolf had been expecting this. He deflected the first swing, but not the second. He grimaced as the molten blade dug into his flesh, cauterizing the wound as it simultaneously cut into his abdomen. There were no witty remarks from The Wolf, no taunting or goading. His eyes gleamed with malice as his fur burned and singed, the horrible stench permeating the air. Though, as The Wolf was struck, the whole world flickered, for merely a second, the painfully pink landscape disappearing and replaced with an infinite impossibly dark abyss, before returning back to the way it was.

The Wolf stepped back, raising his own broadsword, his muzzle curled back into a snarl. The blade pulsated with black energy. He lunged forward, trading blows with Swifttail now.

Silvertongue's eyes widened in alarm, and he started to strum his lute, these notes flying out not towards The Wolf, but Swifttail and Kaii. As they reached his companions, they bumped against their bodies and dissipated. Swifttail and Kaii felt a surge of strength, as if their abilities within the dream realm were being enhanced by Silvertongue's song.

 

[Kaii Nashirou]

While every other beast was working on their thing, Kaii was working on something... exceptional.

He could harness he lightning itself within this realm. It seemed as if the only limitation... was his understanding of things.

So natural conclusion came to his head. He understood the process of understanding. Could he conjure it and enter a loop? How far could he go into this endless spiral that was reason? Most importantly, how vastly he could utilise it? He started digging into the matter, making his own understanding a result of conjured understanding. Within seconds, Kaii processed deeper and deeper truths about the universe, existence and this realm itself. He could define each beast's life by an equation written at their birth, making a function of it over time a representation of beast's placement in reference to their birthplace.

That and much more was now poured into one mind that could process it harmlessly. Any beast would go insane... but Kaii long ago did, and then died. The Kaii that was then born knew no such thing as insanity. The world is after all a fantasy that only each beast can process independently.

While Darragh was coming over on the boat he had manifested, Kaii inherently grasped onto that idea. Both were beasts who sought understanding of the world, only in different ways. Darragh defined the universe by words. What was it that Kaii used to define things? Numbers? Terms? Definitions? The answer came as the final revelation he had needed.

Everything was made of information, it was the basis of any existence after all.

And when Kaii reopened his eyes, he could no longer see this realm. Instead, he saw a see of endless, vibrating strings. They went beyond and logical arrangement, overlapping, crossing and passing through one another, being infinite, yet defined in each tiniest speck of the universe, all vibrating, yet each differently.

The Marble fox couldn't see his friends anymore, nor the Wolf. Instead he perceived clumps of strings that he could identify through their vibrations. Their totals made for every single particle, thought, process, cell and anything else that made Kaii's friends. He finally could identify where Finnian was and what he was up to this whole time, simply looking at the information of it.

When the Information of Silvie, interacted with Information of a Lute, the following vibrations resonated with strings of Information of Kaii and Information of Swift, slightly adding and modifying the frequency of vibrations on strings that defined their physical attributes.

Kaii could of course fight physically. But he opted to do something else. He wasn't yet capable of modyfing the information of beasts with adequate precision to solve them, concepts and physical processes were closer to that.

But even then, he could simply try something. He mentally reached to string that vibrated strongly, recognising them as defining of the world around him, simply from the fact they were affected when the Wolf got hit, resulting in massive changes to other strings that have defined the events around the group.

Then he quelled their vibrations.

And the world around them collapsed.

What happened when The Wolf was hit was nothing compared to what was going on now. This world was no being ripped apart from their master, collapsing upon itself in caleidoscope of colours, shapes, multi-dimensional figures and horrors as well as... emotions.

The Plan was simple here. To slay the wolf wouldn't solve the issue. Not when this world existed.

Kaii was now searching for mental scissors to those strings.