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It turns out that cats are geniuses because naps are awesome! As much as my self-awareness and processing have increased, being able to feel with my various guts lying around. I’m still struggling to find my own personal limits, independent of my children and kingdom. So, I’ve taken to rest every few hours or so by spending time communing with my most voluminous child.

This has been helping me two-fold. Turning off my consciousness and just allowing my brain to fire all the chaos it pleases without being constrained by my human limitations have allowed for a steadier supply of reinforcing nourishment to everyone, mob and mundane alike. Also as significantly, it has allowed me to grow closer to the part of my family that thinks least like a person. My own anchors of self being a barrier rather than a window into truly connecting with Dreams.

My days pass much smoother now as I try and spend quality time with each of my scions. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the one having the most problems with their new place is Leo. Though it doesn’t take me long to more than empathize with his plight.

When he was a lynx, everything had the potential to harm him, and so he struggled and fought, scraped and hunted for every bit of power to grow. After his evolution, stepping onto the path of a liger, it became harder to capture strength, to challenge himself, as more and more things grew too weak to threaten him as his body continued adding pounds of muscle and thicker fur.

Now though, he has become an unchallengeable calamity, avoided by all others. His refined ability to absorb light, a shared metamorphosis with his now much altered treehouse, has ironically made his ability to be actually stealthy plummet, at least to sighted opponents. And even when he plunges the area into that same utter blackness, he’s come to find that act more nourishing than whatever paltry meal of flesh he’d targeted.

There are stronger creatures that have begun to pop up here and there in my lands. Ones that both attempt to make a den within the enriched environment and those that merely sortie from beyond the paling. Yet, of those he crosses over, none are close to the level that he’s been risen to, and none have the ferocity or intelligence to offer him a spar.

Life had offered to provide a sharpening stone, but after only a single session of being able to ignore many of his weaker birds. Alongside the absolute dominance Leo’s light eater aura gave him against the few that could pierce his defenses, he’s mostly just relegated to aid in climbing practice. Life being the greater beneficiary of these new challenges, as Leo’s massive girth steadily ascending higher up his trunk has led to better control of his branches to affect his balance, while also further strengthening his wood.

“^Bored.^” his tail swish and flopping back down as I walk out from behind a nearby tree. He doesn’t like it when I appear next to him, so I’ve taken to showing up a little bit aways and making a slower approach.

“I know. Have you talked to Smith about hunting further out?”

He sends a lazy glare my way, “^Have you?^”

I sigh, not because of his tone, but because he’s right. I’ve been avoiding reaching out to Smith for help sorting myself out. The last few days of visiting each of my kids more has been wonderful, but there’s still that empty, lost feeling in the back of my mind.

I sit down and lean back against his tree, feeling worse than a hypocrite. Working with and supporting my family should be enough but it just feels like there’s this heavy weight pressing down on me. Like I’m regularly having to bend and stretch and flex but there’s just a persistent not-quite ache that is just out of reach.

“^Can wait. Sun enough for now. Bird has been watching. Will spar soon.^”

I chuckle quietly, “So, this isn’t you needing my help, just some idle venting while you wait?”

He chuffs, “^Know Leo. Am cat. Sleep, soak up sun, eat when hungry, play when toys ready. Fight when threatened.^” He suddenly jumps down from his strange willow, landing in front of me and turns to look into my eyes, “^Leviathan made me more, not less. What is DNA?^”

I answer quickly, if perhaps too flippantly, “I’m just a guy-“

Leo barks a roar and swipes in between us, interrupting me, “^Wrong! Guys not burrowed with mice, flying with birds, stalking with cats, breathing with trees.^”

I push myself to my feet, so I’m not looking up into those wonderous eyes framed in all that darkness, “Then what am I, Leo? I’ve only ever been a guy, whether the life I can’t remember before, or this one. I don’t know how this whole magic stuff works, spawning mobs, building challenges. Everything I’ve done for that has been all automatic, less under my control than breathing. I don’t know how to be a Dungeon.”

He sneezes and shakes his head as he starts heading out through the woods. The further he gets from his tree the more he picks up his pace, but I find it effortless to stay by his side. If not for our connection, I would think he had dismissed me, but I can feel his response just waiting for wherever it is we’re going. When we arrive at Life, he chuffs a greeting before leaping high onto his trunk, steadily clawing his way higher.

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Soon we’re above the canopy of the rest of the forest and he settles himself on one of the lower branches. With the lack of space, I’m forced to walk along the breeze and taking his cue, I sit and relax next to him.

We’re like that for a few minutes, him just looking around, scenting the air before he’s finally ready to speak, “^DNA isn’t dungeon. Look, listen, feel.^”

I take a few moments to try and meditate on the vista before us, rather than just wait for him to say more. As I focus on my breath, I feel myself higher up, drawing in Mana and the wind that follows. When I drift along that wind, I feel the eddies and thermals, the vast open space.

“^DNA is Lord, not guy. Lords rule. Choose life and death. Not just themselves, but all beneath. Lords barter time, words, magic, life to grow grander or stay safer. Kingdom made DNA more, not less. But now must choose, must act,^” his gaze has pulled mine into it like a magnet, “^Weak Lords fall. Slain by strong. Aurora Hephaestus is strong. Gnat is strong. Leo is strong. Be strong, DNA…^”

His parting words drift on the breeze before he unleashes a thunderous roar and leaps from Life’s branch, hurtling himself towards the treetops below. Before he manages to land on the ground, an answering screech echoes out from Smith’s cliff. The great phoenix soon exiting his home and perches at the cliff’s edge as his gaze tracks the racing cat as it lunges through the forest floor, making as close to straight line as he can with all the obstacles in his way.

I feel the moment when he crosses the edge of my territory and into Smi- and enters the domain of Lord Aurora Hephaestus.

The stone of the cliff seems to ripple and soon after I feel a massive surge of wind and heat slam against the membrane separating us. He opens his wings wide and even from this far away I can see how the rivers Mana and Mako dig into the rock. What starts as glints, soon swells to bright speckles of light that shine like stars in the night sky. As their brilliance continues to increase their position becomes less fixed and they begin swimming across the surface.

The heat wave intensifies, and Leo shouts out another challenging roar. The distance between them having been crossed at terrifying speed for such a large creature, though my echoed perspective from him still shows tall trees around. There is another deluge of magic before a well of darkness erupts in the forest, its jagged writhing edges eating the light and much of the excess heat in an area. The growls and caterwauls getting louder despite their origin getting farther away.

A pattern has emerged from the moving lights on the wall, instead of a chaotic smattering of speckles across the wide canvas, they have settled into orderly lines and shapes. A grid of hexagonal cells decorates his entrance now. The lines solid and thick surrounding the entrance with the cells further away less distinct and refined, not yet clear of impurities nor whole and strong.

There’s a flash of light and a throbbing almost buzzing hum from the array as Lord Aurora Hephaestus’s voice calls out, “[You would choose a contest of Gluttony? Not Wrath?]” As the blotch of inky black finally breaches the glade at the base of the cliff, he gives a flap of his wings and dives off. As those bladed sails beat at the air and he then folds them into formation and shoots like a bolt at the center of that encroaching night, he screeches out “[Where is your Pride!]”

A moment after the phoenix disappears into the shadow, the array on the cliff flashes again. At the same time, there is a spasm from the writhing darkness, as it retracts somewhat. Then a deafening thunder finally reaches me followed by seeing Smith soaring out the other side. Blood clearly dripping from his talons and one wing, though considering how he moves, it isn’t his own.

Another earth trembling roar drowns out the chiding laughter of the bird, “^FACE ME!^”

The taunt serves only to cause the phoenix to wheel around and laugh all the harder, “[You chose to challenge a bird of prey and even after I do you the courtesy of a telegraphed strike, still you complain?]”

He rears back in the air and swoops down again, talons flexing and extended forward before unfurling his wings near that border. The hex lines on his wings and tail feathers suddenly crackling with power. Though whispered, the message is nonetheless thick in the wind, “[Burn,]” and as he flaps his wings to hover, there are deadly ripples that pummel the darkness, causing it to distort, ungulate, and collapse.

The yowls of pain and the shifting epicenter being stalked by the harrying magic quickly reveals charred and smoking rubble where once there was greenery. Remnants of flash fires scorch the focused area and a trail of destruction following the path of the escaping feline. The blazing pain in my legs, a mere imitation of the agony flaying Leo’s mind as he runs and continues to burn.

I have a moment of detachment from the scene as a thought bubbles up in my mind. With a phoenix’s natural reflex and the insurance I grant to my scions, a battle to true death may be a long sordid affair. Death is not so quick nor obvious an end in a battle of such nigh immortals.

A burst of triumph breaks through the hellscape of pain that my connection with Leo has become, draws my attention back to the fight. Now the field of devoured light is only the size of an elephant, but as it reaches the cliffside, he leaps up to the wall. I can feel how he’s drenched his claws and muscles in power even as the guided wave of stone melting heat follows his progress.

His mighty limbs only need a few pick pumps to ascend a significant portion of the wall before the cloak of night suddenly drops and even from this far away, I see the mesmerizing dazzle of Leo’s haunting striped pearl moon eyes. Then there is a great splash of blood as the two legendary creatures crash into each other midair.

Soon after there’s a twirling motion that has Aurora Hephaestus slip out of bear sized cat’s grip. Leo rakes his back claws through the air, but without his front paws holding the phoenix in place, all their thrashing power is wasted.

It takes only a few seconds for Leo to land below, and poorly. The tremor from his impact resounding far stronger than even when he leapt from Life’s much higher branch spells out how injured that brief exchange in the air has left him. Quietly, compared to his previous vocalizations, he groons in pain, heard only from our connection and not crossing the distance between the battlefield and my domain.