OOC: The Dream
There was nothing until he woke.
After it, there was still nothing - but it was still different, a sudden change from empty static to black, then from there to stark blinding white.
But it was enough to let him know that he had indeed woken.
Just as he'd hoped.
He wasn't alone in the white space - all around him were numbers, hard black, spinning through the air like swarms of black insects.
Watching them, he felt a thrill of impatient anticipation.
And as if they sensed that feeling
(why wouldn't they? All the world was made of numbers, and he was their master - all the information, the makeup and matter and power and very essence of the world, his to manipulate, as it would, as it should be, and as it purely would be when he got out of here)
their spinning further quickened, a blurred black tunnel spiraling all around him, and then started to close in on him, shrinking that tunnel, closer, closer, closer until they finally made contact with the being in their midst, burning where they touched.
He cringed as it began... but quickly relaxed.
It wasn't a painful burn at all. Well, actually, yes, there was some pain involved, but still... it felt good. As more numbers connected, he could feel that burn spreading - cleansing, invigorating, searing him and infusing him with a new viciously burning energy and vitality...
These numbers were his equivalent of phoenix flame.
And once they'd burned to an exhilarating intensity to the point that the body of the creature they swarmed over couldn't hold any more of this newfound and regenerating power, they continued the transfer, the excess building up in its purest form on his back into, in fact, a wing, then another, then another.
They weren't through until there were six.
Then they finally broke away.
He was ready to come back.
But where was the way out?
He was overwhelmed by another feeling now - restlessness, pent adrenaline and the impatience now from knowing this process he'd waited to get through was nearly over, multiplied by his regained power, coursing through him without an outlet.
His six wings folded around him.
Then they erupted into flight in a burst, enough of a burst to break himself through the whiteness like a brittle glass wall, shattering around him without him flinching for a moment, still flying forward like a bullet.
He shot into the sky, his head thrown up in a breathless roar, blinded by the pure rush of this moment, the feeling of victory from his six wings pounding until they finally had room to stretch, the brilliant cool of air in his lungs for the first time in days.
He was suspended in the air for a moment before he finally hit solid concrete ground on all fours.
He was a lion - a massive, lithe, powerful lion of shadow and bone, standing before the old, discarded feline skull he'd just emerged from and perched atop a towering throne of steel.
The lion scanned the sprawling metal city below him - shadows of other creatures passed, unaware, barely worth a notice, lit in neon. What his eyes lingered on were other assorted animal skulls all about, hanging in the air.
One by one, more shadow-and-bone creatures emerged. Frogs, kangaroos, wolves, even porcupines drifted up from the yawning skulls of their kind, their faces turned up to the top of the tower. And they began to cry out up to him in their various animal voices - like they were singing the praise of a king.
He was that king.
These were just the beginnings of his subjects.
Again, he held his head up in the sky, basking in their idolatry and the triumph of living again...
And he realized the moon was gone.
Almost desperately, he searched the sky for it, stopping instantly when he saw it sinking to the horizon.
He couldn't move yet. Instead, he continued to watch it set until he got what he wanted - the sight of where it retreated to, a tunnel below the city.
With a roar, the beast king bounded from his throne with his claws out, tearing into the very concrete he landed on and tearing forward, straight for the tunnel the moon had disappeared to.
He found that tunnel, all right, a shallow stream running into it and a snake skeleton across it like a gate. One blow from a heavy paw scattered it into individual vertebrae, unable to stop his entry, taking off blindly into the tunnel and along the stream.
Two humans then stood in his path. He had just begun to raise his claws again when a tigress appeared from the dark and leaped before the boys before turning her head over her shoulder and nodding to him. Go on.
His fangs flashed in a grin as he proceeded to his prey.
He crept ahead, leaving the tigress and hers behind, into a dark chamber, low to the ground, every muscle tensed to pounce.
With this final battle, all that he had prepared for up to this point... he truly would be king.
Nothing higher than him, nothing outshining him.
White light began to spread across the floor.
Time to make the moon drop.
With a roar, he hurled himself forward...
And the last thing he felt were his bones being crushed by the pieces of steel that had been his tower minutes ago, rebuilding it in an avalanche on top of him as the moon smiled down at him for the millionth and final time before there was, again, nothing.