1. spiders & dreams

"Help me kill it."

Sora turned to the speaker.

A blond boy with apathetic blue eyes. He was dressed in black and white and was gesturing, lazy, to a spider that was swaying from a thread in the wind.

He was familiar, somehow.

"What?" Sora wasn't sure why he was being recruited by the stranger.

"I'll feel bad if I kill it," the boy said.

"Huh? So I gotta?"

The boy nodded, solemn. "One of us has to."

"Why?"

"Because it's smack in the middle of our way. It's web, see?" The boy pointed. The checkered bracelet on his wrist caught light from the sun above.

They were in a waterway of some sort. Sora had a map but he was no good at navigating and he'd been walking this maze for at least an hour. His legs hurt and his head hurt and although there was water all around him, none of it seemed drinkable. It was enchanted somehow and there was no way he was going to consume enchanted water.

Sora approached the boy and stopped beside him. The web was right in the way of the path the boy wanted to take. "So—that way's the way to our destination?"

"Yeah. Can't you read a map?"

Sora's shoulders slumped and he looked offside. "I'm kinda lost."

The boy regarded him for a moment and then gave an, "oh well," type of sigh. "Follow me, then." He fixated on the spider as if trying to burn it with his eyes. "After you deal with this creepy thing."

Sora grimaced. "Are you afraid of spiders?"

"Yeah, so? You can't read a map."

They stood in silence.

"I'm Sora."

"Roxas."

They ended up picking the web up by each top "corner" and relocating it to a dry spot on the ground.

"It's probably so pissed," Sora said.

Roxas laughed. "Yeah, but at least it's alive."

Sora had dreams of saving the world. No—saving worlds. A bunch of them: breathtaking ones with horizons the colour of autumn, sweltering hot ones teeming with thieves and jewels, and some worlds that were just plain loopy.

He had dreams of fighting in a coliseum alongside a dog and a duck. He had dreams of fighting with a silver haired boy in a hauntingly beautiful citadel. He had dreams of running through a forest with a chipper girl with hair that went on forever, and he had dreams of being turned into a toy.

So many, shuffling through his mind like a deck of cards. Drugs without injections. He'd tried telling his mom about them once and she'd laughed and swatted him upside the head and told him he was way too imaginative.

But now, standing in front of a citadel that he'd seen before—only in his dreams—his stomach felt raw.

This was the place he'd clawed his way to, to find friends he'd only ever met in his sleep.

Hollow Bastion.

In his dreams, things in this world had moved on. Reverted to a more pleasant state—the city of Radiant Garden.

But before him now was definitely Hollow Bastion, a place in the past-dreams that made him feel a little nostalgic and a little resentful.

"It's massive!" Roxas' eyes were wide.

"Yeah. It's cool." Sora tried to steady the shaking in his hands.

Two nights ago, his home, Destiny Islands, had undergone tragedy. A storm of violent proportions had struck. Sora didn't know who had made it out alive and who hadn't, but he'd woken up in a hospital. The nurse, a friendly woman named Aerith, had told him his parents had been killed in the disaster and that he was going to be living in a remote place for the time being.

When he'd asked why, she'd only shaken her head and told him to rest.

It was strange.

All of this was strange.

"So, d'you know what's going on?" Roxas asked.

Sora shook his head. "No, not really."

"Apparently we've all been gathered here for our own protection." Roxas slipped his hands in his pockets. "What does that mean? Protection from what?"

Exactly. Sora gave a pitiful shrug. His parents had been killed by a storm, hadn't they?

Or had something else killed them?

"Well, let's head inside." Roxas started down the path.

"Yeah." Sora dragged his feet after him.

Roxas stopped in front of the giant double doors and half-turned to look back at him. "So? You, too?"

Sora scratched the back of his head. "Me, what?"

"Did you lose everything, too?"

Sora faltered.

"Yeah." His voice was far-away. "Yeah, I did."

AN: hi guys!

this isn't for the faint of heart. it's gonna get pretty messy ;)

i've been reading too much stephen king . . . lala.

some additional warnings: psychological horror, character deaths, mystery/suspense vibes (risk of your head wanting to explode), language, adult content, and if this is for some reason a trigger: both m/f and m/m relationships present.