After the End of the World
Darkside Prologue: Oblivion and Rebirth (Axion's Story)
The snow. That was my first memory upon my destructive return from the void. Before I wound up in this hell of a war, I was out there… some few yards away from the gates of Castle Oblivion, lying in a snowy crater, most likely caused by my return itself. The castle being the only inhabitable structure around, I had no choice but to enter. There was no one there when I arrived, and where all of you came from, I've no idea, but for some reason this place filled me with a sense of profound hatred… there was no indication as to who this hatred was directed at… only the image of a figure cloaked in total darkness whom I met in the castle's main hall… He told me who he was, but neglected to remind me who I was…
"Welcome to the beginning of the end.", the figure had said to me, refusing to leave the safety of the shadows of the room. "The end?", I asked him, my face still stinging from the cold. The figure gave no direct reply. He only laughed haughtily and slinked his way over to the next corner, like a serpent sizing up its prey. He waited for me to turn defensively before speaking again. "I am called Xehanort.", he stated, his voice sounding much closer than it actually was. A hand protruded from the shadow, all long spindly fingers but the index closed up, pointing directly at me. "And you", he continued, "are just in time for your very first act". He went on to remind me what had happened prior to my awakening in the snow. The world had experienced true chaos; a form of rolling death with no face… The end of the world… all worlds… came in the blink of an eye. I remembered it then. There was no time. Time ceased to exist. The imperialistic found no sanction, their kings were the first to go. The religious? No, they received no better. The only angel that visited them that day was the angel of death. Human or otherwise, nothing, not even the planets themselves survived… But I wondered… What caused such an event…? And just where the hell was I now if it was all destroyed?
I turned back to Xehanort (or what I could see of him) to get some answers, but there was no one there. Even the shadows of the room themselves seemed to be fleeting. There was a faint echo resounding on the other side of a massive wooden door. The echoes… the sounds weren't pleasant at all. Screams. Crashes. Approaching tumultuous footsteps. Finally, the door swings open, the force enough to send it flying off its hinges and straight toward me. Impulsively, I propelled myself toward it and somehow found the agility to land lightly on its surface and leap off of without it stopping. As I landed and turned to watch the door hit the rear wall and shatter into a splintering rain, one thought and one thought only occupied my mind… "what the hell am I…?"
Whatever had utterly destroyed the door remained to be seen. I cautiously approached it, wanting to take the opportunity to traverse the hallways. This entity, however, had other plans. I suddenly found myself rising into the air, unable to breathe. After much struggle, the force holding me up, I can only imagine, decided I was too much trouble, and flung me across the room. I hit the wall and slid down, in pain, but relieved to feel air in my lungs again. A harsh wind swept across my face, and suddenly I felt blood, warm between my eyes and dripping down to my neck. This invisible assailant wasn't taking prisoners. The next time it charged, something kicked in… something unfathomable. Something that couldn't have picked a better time to do so...
A light, shining from the palm of my right hand made the thing visible. A freakishly tall druid with a long, tattered, black hooded cloak with sleeves too long for the arms. The claws, however, far exceeded the sleeves in length. One red eye is the only thing visible inside the hood. I looked briefly at my hand to find it occupied. A keyblade, black at the guard with a silver blade and pommel, with a tiny metal wolf's head on the end of the keychain. Without very much thought at all, I stood quickly and impaled my now visible attacker and watched it writhe to the ground and vanish into smoke, unfazed, as if I'd done this a thousand times. Hell, why not…? The keyblade looked familiar enough, and I wielded it in an awkward way, backward with the blade facing behind me like a knife. Holding the weapon kicked up another memory. Before the world ended, I was… carrying out a mission. But for who?
This was my main focus as I clutched my weapon tightly and crossed the doorway into the hall.
Castle Oblivion; Present Day
Roxas closes a small black book with a tattered spine. This book, presumably a journal, is the clue as to what happened to the missing person who stumbled upon Castle Oblivion after the end of the world. He'd been walking the halls and reading for hours, and he'd finally come across the main hall with the door blown off its hinges. In the adjacent hallway, he finds a seemingly endless trail of carnage; Bodies of clawed druids littering the floors, blood staining the walls and ceiling and massive dents and craters in the floor, indicating quite a struggle. At the end of the hallway, he finds a keyblade, the one described in the journal, lying on the floor, a few feet away from its unconscious wielder; a tall male, who looks to be about nineteen years of age, with long and unkempt black hair, covering one eye. He wears a pair of black pants and the torn remains of a black-and-white striped shirt. Roxas kneels beside the figure after examining the keyblade, then shakes his head in pity. "You sure picked the wrong time to come back to life..."
-To be continued...
