Blood roared in his ears as he dodged another set of mace and chains. Eyes snapping in rising fury, Youko lashed his whip around the chain swinging in the opposite way. With a great screech and long groan, it slammed into the wall, shaking small rocks loose from the top in a shower of dust and pebbles. Another burn mark adorned the wall. Kurama felt the anger from his former self fade as his smirk rose. Thus far, even the spirit user's trap was worthless when faced with his particular set of skills. Eyes narrowing, he prepared to finish it off completely.
A moment later, Kurama fell into Youko as the wall crumbled around them both. Rapid white face filled their eyes and buzzing echoed in their ears. Youko cursed. Kurama's eyes narrowed. Their attack had triggered a much more potent trap than the first, snaring them within their own minds -- or perhaps a separate dimension than that of the wall. Youko's ears flicked forward as Kurama picked up the click of booted footsteps. He braced himself.
And braced himself.
Kurama blinked, standing upright. The footsteps continued. Tap-tap, tap-tap, tap-tap, tap, tap-tap, tap-tap, tap-tap, tap, tap-tap.
All around him.
Kurama started. The mist dissipated as the scenery around them faded back into being, the forest and the foot of the massive wall, back at the beginning. Youko had gone.
Automatically, Kurama walked forward, placing his hand on the nearby tree and glancing upwards. A moment passed.
"Impressive," he chuckled, "yet I'm afraid that it's not enough." He reached a hand out and pulled down a single red leaf. He twirled it in his fingers. "I know this is another illusion, and considering the makeup," he murmured aloud, continuing, "I'm still in a separate dimension." He tossed the leaf at the towering wall.
The leaf fell, slowly, winding its way to the ground, settling at last silently, and the wall blurred. Morphing downwards, as if water flowed over it, the image shifted. Another wall emerged in its place.
"Really," Kurama said, voice amused, "do you think I'd fall for the same landscape again?" His voice deepened. "If that's the extent of your power, you won't be able to contain me much longer."
The fox thief leapt backwards into the lowest branches of said tree. Standing upright, he withdrew his rose whip, uncurling it to rest against his knee. "Now, where is the imperfection this time?" He glanced around.
A couple minutes passed.
The whip cracked outwards and a black branch tumbled to the ground. The scene melted once again. Kurama stayed in place, whip still raised, as the same wall formed in front of him a third time.
"This could get tedious," he commented aloud, snaking his weapon around a sapling below, a single white blossom on its branches. "Too early for such flowers." He yanked, and yet again, the landscape fell away.
"Too short." A branch by his ear.
"Wrong shape." A square brick in the wall.
"Only one," He knocked a walking stick off the tree beside the other. "Besides they prefer solitude."
He caught a trailing feather. "A falcon's."
He closed his eyes. "There should be two branches, not three." He snapped the false limb in half.
Time passed.
. . . . . . . . .
Kurama would his whip around his shoulder, taking in the latest alteration yet not moving to correct it. This isn't it, he mused to himself. The changes are reoccurring but not falling apart. He needed another way to break the enchantment's hold over him.
Calling back his youki and twirling the rose in his hand, Kurama closed his eyes once more, reaching out with his mind and his demon energy in a different sense, probing for differences in the fabric of power wrapped around him.
They were there, small cracks all around him, whispering, tempting him to rip through with sheer power; however, the fox saw them for what they really were. Triggers. Another clever net woven into the initial spell work should the first fail and the victim grow impatient.
Kurama chuckled, mildly impressed.
"I'm afraid I feel the need to repeat my earlier, interrupted statement," he murmured. The fox thief unfurled his whip once more. "I almost feel sorry that the creator for this dream had me to deal with their handiwork. It makes all their hard work feel," his voice lowered and deep pools of green narrowed, "utterly and completely ... weak." The last word echoed out, a firm steel note of superiority and a voice from another age overlapping it.
Green eyes changed to gold as Youko flung out his hands and returned to the dance of taking apart the illusions. One pass. Two, three. On the fourth pass, the limb dissolved on contact with the weapon. A slow smirk rose on his lips as the fox snapped the melting branch and leapt into midair, his crimson whip arching out like a rope-
.......
And wrapping around a thick vine with large violet blossoms.
Dreamvine.
With his subtle call, a song too weak to be perceived as a threat to the net around him, the swift creepers had sealed the charred chain links in a painful embrace and reached further for him. Its demanding, deceptively sweet perfume banished the spirit spell with an overwhelming cocoon of warmth. Kurama smiled to himself. Natural death traps would always be more powerful than the imitations of mortal beings, no matter how long-lived they were. With a flare of youki, he waved the fragrance away and looked upwards.
The tall wall had lost some height after being stripped of its protections. Before the top had been obscured by foliage, but now Kurama could see the truth of it, how the illusionist had altered the actual view of an old tree within and stretching above the wall to better guard his secret. A secret now unraveled and exposed to the thief. Youko's form appeared on the top near the pinnacle of a tower half-hidden by the reaching branches, turned to him, and faded from sight.
The next step was clear.
