With a little more effort Kat smashed the surrounding snow so that Minor and her could sit up again. It was still a bit cramped but they were both thankful for the space. Minor even had to spit out a mouthful of snow.
"Thanks" said Minor with a scratchy voice.
"Are you alright?" asked Kat
Minor coughed once more and placed her hand on her throat. As she rubbed it Kat could see slight crystalline cracks running along her neck and inching onto Minor's face. Kat's eyes went wide, but when Minor noticed this she waved a dismissive hand at Kat
"Don't worry I'm fine. I just had to prevent us from actually getting crushed. I made it so the space shrunk instead of collapse and it might have been a bit more taxing than I'd suspected" said Minor
"You're breaking into pieces again!" hissed Kat "I can handle myself if I really need to, and I'm tough enough to survive a fall"
"Yeah but what about getting hit by that club" rasped Minor "I can help"
Kat frowned "You need to recover" said Kat with a flat look
"Look, I'm fine Kat" said Minor and Kat felt her eye twitching as her glare intensified.
"Please look after yourself more Minor. We are so close to being done, just… just don't over do it please" said Kat
Minor sighed. It was a raspy sound but as it continued on it started to sound more human. Accompanying this the cracks in Minor's neck started to close up until they were just faint lines. Kat could still easily see them without any energy in her eyes but they looked more like faint scars rather than cracks.
"What do the cracks mean Minor. I haven't chewed you out for them yet, but I refuse to let you help unless you explain that to me" said Kat
Minor grimaced "Ok… look, um, ok so… I promise it's not as bad as its going to sound" started Minor
Kat raised an eyebrow at how nervous Minor was already seeming. "So, it's um… right. So, essentially I'm using the same ability to keep myself together as I am to influence the world… and um, it's easier to keep myself together than to do anything else because…
"Well I've been over it, but this is MY body in a very real way… and um… dam" said Minor ending in a sigh
Minor frowned, took a deep breath and changed into the older version of herself. Kat frowned *I thought we weren't doing this Minor, this isn't good for you.*
"I can see that look on your face" said Minor "It is necessary to explain this in a timely manner" Kat went to open her mouth but Minor held up a hand "Yes I could have asked for you to use your calming aura but I doubt you'd have been happy with the request.
"Anyway, as I was struggling to say, my hmm, soul? I guess, my sense of self keeps my form together. I can change and pull at it a bit, and the way I've been changing things around us is to extend that sense of self into the memories a just a bit."
"Now, this is easy because I myself am essentially just a collection of memories attached to a soul with no.. no body… and um actually" the mature grown up form of Minor started to waver. "Aura please" the figure squeaked out.
Kat grit her teeth. *I don't like this Minor. I will punish you for this once we've finished this and you've recovered properly.* Kat increased the power of her aura. She'd kept it up this whole time to deal with the influence of the tree. *Wait that means she was this shaken up with my aura on already!*
Kat frowned through her teeth but ramped the power up. Minor's older looking form stabilised and nodded. "Ok, thank you" said Minor a little breathless "It seems this is harder for me to say than I'd thought. Essentially, I extend myself into the dream to let my change 'myself'" said Minor with air quotes
"And that allows me to make the dream more malleable. The reason I crack and fall apart is because I only have so much strength to keep myself together. If I use it to influence the world too much my sense of self can start to fray and I crack. Not sure if it counts as literal or figurative, but that's what happens"
"Wait so you're killing yourself slowly every time you do that!" said Kat appalled
Minor winced "Look it isn't quite that bad. I can probably put myself back together by myself given time, but it's a risk. The thing I'm unsure of is the truth of how much of my memories are stored in this form
"See, if most of my memories are off in my section of Major's head, then I'll be fine, maybe just loose a few hours of time. But if that isn't the case, and it is as we guessed earlier that most of the memories that make me, me, are actually contained right here, then we have problems" said Minor.
Kat frowned and sunk into her thoughts. *So, what does this really mean? She's at about as much risk as I am? I don't know if I'm actually safe here or not. The system doesn't seem to be but it might pull me out anyway.*
*By the same token, Minor might be fine, but only if her memories aren't mostly stored in front of me. Dammit. I can't even say that she's taking an unnecessary risk because I don't really believe that. I also can't say I'll be fine because I might not be.*
Kat tsked, before speaking "Ok, but you need to keep yourself safe. If you start cracking than we can take a break. I don't want you shattering again"
Minor shrunk back down to her normal size "Don't w-worry. I should be fine. The reason I broke completely be-before was because I did so much at once. One large defensive impact to protect myself is actually really easy to recover from because conceptually, recovering from damage over time makes a lot of sense"
Kat gave Minor a flat look "Then why was it so hard the first time?"
Minor winced "Because it isn't quite the same… it's like… the difference between making yourself tired, and getting punched. You can recover from the pain of getting punched rather quickly, but if you are tired you need a full night's rest"
Kat narrowed her eyes. *Don't think I missed the fact you said recover from the pain of a punch Minor. I want to read more into this but we've already wasted enough time. My energy is nearly back to full for crying out loud.*
*I guess I should make another attack then. But where?* "Ok fine" said Kat with a distinct distaste in her voice she couldn't quite remove to stop Minor from realising she'd noticed Minor's little slip "Where do we attack? The knee? Or that weird section in the chest?"
Minor smiled "Well, I say we bring them down first. We can go for the chest later, but shattering the knee seems like a great start"
Kat nodded "Agreed. Am I going to be the same distance from the leg?"
Minor shrugged as she pushed herself into a kneeling position and started to draw on a fake door. "Maybe? I can't be quite exact enough to know" she responded.
Kat shrugged as well and got into a horrible botched version of a sprinters start. She couldn't make enough space to stand up, and so hunched over with feet pressed against the wall ready to shoot out was the best she was going to get.
When Minor through the wall open, Kat dashed out once again. This time she was firmly behind the Nightmare, and had a bit more time to take stock of things. Angling her body Kat flared her wings in such a way as to not reduce her speed from launch and started flapping.
Her aim was to hit the closest approximation of the knee the golem seemed to have. It didn't have any obvious bend in it anywhere, but she was hoping that by applying enough fire to the area a good hit from her or the tree could knock it off balance.
Locking her eyes onto the target Kat started to summon her fire onto her hands, and upper arms. She didn't want to get twisted from just touching the thing, so she made sure to extend the fire a bit past her skin hoping to freeze the thing on contact with her before it could start draining her reserves.
Kat took in a deep breath and pulled her arms back and to the side, ready to bring them down in a hammer strike.. Just before she would run into the back of the golem which seemed to have not noticed her presence, Kat bent her back backwards and to the side before whipping herself around and slamming into its leg.