Source of Darkness
Chapter 1: Unexpected Visitors
Riku's POV
Why did this happen? Why did that order come to us? Why did we agree in the first place?! The king's order had come that night. That damn order that sent me and my friends to this…this…this abnormally, unreasonably, boring world!
Flashback
Sora and I watched the sun rise that morning. It was absolutely beautiful: reds, oranges, yellows, and blues blending together to form the beginning of a new day and hopefully a new adventure. That's when Kairi ran up to the both of us with a scroll of paper in her hand. The king's sign was on it.
Sora unraveled the piece of tan parchment. Smiles lit up on all of our faces:
Dear Sora and friends,
We have recently discovered the existence of a new world. I would really appreciate it if you and your friends checked it out. We are unsure whether or not it is inhabited by heartless or not but there is a strange reading of light and darkness intertwining. If you find anything unusual there contact me immediately! Thank you for your help! I am extremely grateful.
Sincerely,
King Mickey
We were all going to be the first to visit a new world! Immediately we raced to the gummi ship already landing on our beach. Apparently, the king had anticipated our decision.
"I guess, our adventures outside of this world aren't quite over yet are they Sora?" My cerulean eyes looked back at Sora. All he could do was smile back and nod. He was too excited to speak!
"Let's go to the new world!" Those words left his mouth right before the ship blasted off.
End Flashback
We had only arrived at this world 10 minutes ago and we were already bored with it. All we found was a darkened place with some buildings. Kairi tapped my shoulder. I looked over at her to find an expression of confusion on her face. Sora and I followed her eyes to where they what she was pointing at. There, standing in the middle of the road was a large crowd of people. Our curiosity took over and we made our way over to the crowd and pushed our way through to the middle. The thing we found in the center of the cause of our curiosity changed the remainder of our lives.
??'s POV
All I wanted to do was go the store. All I needed to do was get some milk and eggs for tomorrow morning's breakfast: end of story! But instead my damn luck ended up drawing in trouble. So, here I stand: in the middle of a crowd of men and extremely annoyed. Out of the corner of my eye I noticed three people push there way through into the crowd. They looked a little older than me, maybe even the same age. One was shortish with spiky, brown hair. The girl was a little shorter than porcupine boy and had long, red hair that went down to her shoulders. They both had blue eyes. But the last boy was the one that mesmerized me. He had silvery hair that came to his shoulders with his bangs hovering above his eyes. But, even though his hair was kind of in the way, I could still see his beautiful cerulean colored eyes.
He was also the reason I didn't see a fist heading toward my cheek. It knocked me down onto the cold cement ground and it hurt like hell!
"C'mon little girl! Use those legendary skills we've heard so much about!" The man who'd punched me screamed at me. It made me annoyed. I stood and just gave him a blank stare that could make it seem like hell froze over.
"I'm tired, I still need to go to the store to get my food for breakfast, and you're yelling at me and telling me to fight?" The man's snobbish expression left his face and I just smirked. I loved it when I made grown men cry. "If you want a fight with me…then you'll be eating from a tube for the next few weeks."
All of a sudden the smirk on my face disappeared and I charged the man. He swung his fist at my head and I ducked. In my crouched position I rolled forward onto my hands with my feet still tucked close to my body and kicked up. The man flew up from the impact. I pushed up as hard as I could with my hands and arms into midair and braced them for the following technique. I flung my body forward so I was right side up in midair and hit the man hard in the stomach with my arms. He slammed into the ground and I just gracefully landed on the ground with a smile on my face.
"Well, I'll be on my way then." I smiled at the other men and just walked away through the crowd that separated for me. As I walked further away, the only thing I heard was some foot steps following behind me.
Riku's POV
The girl stopped after about 10 minutes after we started following her. She spun around to face us and I was graced with the most beautiful face I had ever seen. She had ruby red eyes with straight hair that was as black as complete darkness and framed her heart shaped face. She wore faded blue jeans and a black shirt underneath a black jacket. She stood there motionless for a moment just glaring at us with an evil look that could stop a dinosaur in its tracks, probably.
"Why are you people following me?" Her voice snapped me out of my trance. It was a sweet voice that, unfortunately, was laced with malice and confusion. "Who are you? Tourists? I've never seen you around this town before."
The three of us stood frozen to our spots, a bit afraid of what she would do if we said something wrong. I was the one who was brave enough to step forward first. "We're not from around here so we thought you might be able to help us. I'm Riku. These are my friends Sora and Kairi. Do you mind telling us where we are and help us out a bit?" I mentally slapped myself for sounding like such a dork.
Her expression softened to my surprise and she smiled at us. "Well, why didn't you say so in the first place? I was thinking my luck was dragging me farther into hell by attracting more thugs to try and attack me." She held out her hand to me and he smile grew into a friendly, welcoming expression. "My name's Eris. My mom was into the whole mythology thing so I ended up with the name of the Greek goddess of chaos. Hence my bad luck. She also gave me that name because of my appearance. She reached up and tugged at her dark hair and giggled. "I can't believe that you guys came here without realizing where you were headed. I guess that means I'm the first to say, 'Welcome to the small town of Cumming, Georgia'!"
I extended my hand to shake hers and smiled back.
"Out of curiosity…" I looked over to see Kairi being urged forward to ask something by Sora. The guy can fight heartless but he can't handle asking a girl a simple question. "Do you think we can stay with you for a while? We didn't really plan ahead so…." She laughed nervously and Eris just smiled and laughed.
"You people really need to be a little bit less…shy." She looked Kairi right in the face and gave her a reassuring grin. "Of course you can stay with me. I don't live too far from here so I'm just going to get my stuff and we can get a move on." She turned and headed for a small parking lot that had maybe one vehicle in it and the lights in the building were still on so we assumed that this was the store she was heading to.
Eris's POV
Those guys are nice. I smiled as I paid for my eggs and milk and left the store calling a "Thank you and have a good night!" as I left. The three of them were leaning against a wall looking out into the darkness of the night. "What are you staring at?" My voice seemed to startle them. They all jumped at least a foot in the air.
"Just making sure nothing tries to jump out and try and attack you again." Kairi answered my question with a grin. She kicked off the wall and walked over to me with Sora and Riku following. I just simply snickered.
At Eris's house
As we ascended my drive way I heard someone behind me huff out. "How do you deal with this? There're way too many hills in this world!" Sora's voice cut through the silence. But the thing that caught your attention was what he said about "this world".
"What did you say?" You tried getting him to say that again but Riku and Kairi had already corrected him on his little slip up. They had tripped him.
"Um...heheh…he…he meant that of all the places that he's been this is the most hilly…eh heh…" Kairi stumbled around words to try and cover up for what Sora had said.
Told you you'd get out of here sooner or later! An inner voice yelled at you from within and you just held back from smiling.
Oh shut up D! I'm not out of here yet. And I have to find out who I am so…I'll let them hand around the house for a while and just keep track of them with the cameras. I'll find out if it's true or not soon enough. So, be patient! I mentally punched the inner spirit that shared my body with me.
"Um…OK…" I turned back to walking up the drive way. We reached a two door garage and walked to the side of it towards the back of the house. I lead them past the side door on the garage and to a wooden porch. I stopped at a wooden door and produced some keys from my pocket. I unlocked the door and lead them inside. Currently, it was too dark for them to really make out anything but they assumed it was the dining area. I ran over to the white refrigerator and stuck the eggs and milk inside. I turned and motioned them to follow.
I lead them through the dark house. We walked through the kitchen and into a hallway. I could hear their feet hitting the wooden floors behind me. At the end of the hallway, we turned to face a staircase. It was lined with carpet so when we began to ascend the stairs their footsteps were muffled. At the top of the staircase we faced a bedroom right in front of us, to the left was a door that lead to another bedroom and then another two doors at the right.
"Sora, you can use the bedroom in front of us. It used to be my big brother's before he moved out. Riku, you can use the bedroom around the corner over there. It was my other older brother's old room. Kairi you can use the room over there." I pointed over to the first door on the right. "It was my older sister's. She goes to school in Germany and doesn't really visit unless it's at my grandparent's house." I pointed to the first door on the left in the corner. "If any of you need anything then just let me know. I'll be sleeping in that room." They all nodded. "Do you guys want eggs and bacon for breakfast?" They all looked like they went into shock right then. "What?"
They all pointed to the ceiling. I turned and was faced with something flying in midair at me. "Oh crap…" And with that I was flattened by my trusted companion, Kain…the over sized demonic, dog. From above me all I could really hear was a low growling emitting from his throat at my unexpected visitors. All I could do was push up as hard as I could and yell, "Shut it!". The dog immediately quieted down and stepped off of me.
I turned and looked at the black furred red, eyed dog. "Be nice! These are our guests so be kind to them and get out of that form later on you got it?" The dog acted like it sighed and nodded. I turned to the others. "I apologize. He's got some issues with visitors when I don't tell him about them. Well, good night!" I waved to them and lead the dog downstairs to just put him back in the basement. After I came back upstairs and heard whispering from the other room. I got so interested that I didn't hear the basement door opening again and footsteps following.
Riku's POV
"We need to be careful while we're here." Sora spoke while he thought. "Eris is smarter than she let's on." I nodded. He was right. Eris acted normal but there didn't seem like there was anything normal about her. She lives alone in a dark house, she owns a HUGE evil looking dog, and she seems to attract unwanted attention.
I looked over at Kairi. She was hugging one of the pillows on my bed and leaning against the wall. "What are we going to tell the king? He wants to know what's going on in this world…and the weird reading…" Her mind drifted off into its own little world of thinking.
"The king has sent me to many worlds and all of them have had heartless or evil organizations trying to take over the universe. But this world doesn't have any of that. As far as I've seen the only real thing we need to worry about here is how to find our way around." Sora sighed and looked out the guest bedroom window in the corner of the room. "What do you think of Eris, Riku? Kairi?"
I looked over at Kairi for her input on his question. "She's kind! Sure she might draw in some weird things every now and then-" I reached over and covered up her mouth. Something sounded like it was struggling outside of the door. I edged toward the door and when I thought it was OK, I flung it open ready for battle with Sora right behind me. Instead we were graced with a very……odd scene before us.
Eris's POV
I listened intently to everything inside the room. The king? Other Worlds……I knew it! All of a sudden two arms encircled me with a hand coming up to meet my mouth and prevent any noise from escaping and the other restrained my arms to my body.
"That was mean you know!" A man whispered in my ear as I struggled against his hold. His voice was deep and cool….and very familiar. All of a sudden the door before me swung open to reveal, what looked like, a battle ready Riku and Sora. I opened my mouth as best as I could and bit down on the had over my mouth. "Ow!" The man let me go and I turned around just to hit him on top of his head.
"That wasn't nice Kain!" A man with short, black hair, was about 6 foot 1 inch, and only had a pair of jeans on was staring at me with bright yellow-green eyes. "Geez! I know you were assigned my guard and all but that doesn't give you the right to come up behind me and scare the crap out of me!" I crossed my arms over my chest and glared at him.
"Kain...isn't that your dog?" I turned around to face Riku who was staring at me suspiciously. I laughed nervously. "Well?"
"Eh-heh...well, yes he is...but he's a demon dog." They all just stared at me with bewildered looks that screamed they didn't believe me. "Yeah well! What about you and these worlds? Where do you guys come from? Why are you in my world and who is this king guy you were talking about?" They all looked at one another nervously. Finally, Riku sighed.
"Fine. We'll tell you everything if you tell us everything you know ok?" I smiled. They let me into the room and Kain followed me.
All through their explanations my grin just got bigger and bigger. Maybe, these unexpected visitors were just what I needed!