DISCLAIMER: This disclaimer counts for all my chapters, because I am a lazy s.o.b. I do not own Disney or Square Enix, and none of the Disney, Square Enix, or Kingdom Hearts characters belong to me. I make no money off of this story, either.
A/N: Helloz. I'm proud to introduce my first fanfic. Yes, the main characters are OC's, but I like to think I made a plausible sub-plot in the KH world. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did writing it.
-x-
Radiant Garden
"Well then! I think that's quite enough practice for one day," Merlin huffed amicably, brushing leftover flurries of magic off of his plain, blue robes. He smiled behind his spectacles at his one and only apprentice; in only two years the young man had already come so far, and Merlin could say he was quite proud of him. "You're doing splendidly, Zephyr!"
Zephyr, his apprentice, crossed lightly tanned arms behind a platinum blonde head, the grin on his face almost as bright as the one sparkling in his emerald green eyes. He was a bit short for his age – five feet and six inches, though he still held on to the hope that he would one day grow taller. "Come on, old man," the young man drawled, and his voice somehow did and did not fit him at the same time; maybe one would think the voice a touch too deep, or a tad too smooth, for a boy who looked as he did. "One more go? I'll have it this time, I promise!"
"Now, remember, I told you this was very advanced magic. I wouldn't be surprised if this took you some ti-."
"Pleeeease, Merlin?"
"-me to accomplish. I remember when I was your age – my, that was quite a while ago – it took me se-."
"Ma-ster…"
"-veral days before I had it just right. Fire is a tricky element, you know. I set half the master's tower on fire be-."
A disgruntled sigh this time, though the corner of Zephyr's mouth twitched up in amusement. If Merlin truly believed they should stop for now, he would have just stopped them (maybe literally, though he hated the time spell).
"-fore I finally mastered it. Hehe. And half the master's beard!" Merlin reminisced fondly, stroking his own rather long mane of silver hair. After a moment or two lost in his own memories, he snapped back to the present with another amiable smile. "But if you think you're up to it, why, I don't see the fault in another try!"
"Yes!"
Merlin tried to squelch the sense of foreboding that suddenly roiled in the pit of his stomach.
About the same time this brief exchange was happening inside of Merlin's disheveled house, another young man – though slightly older and paler and, by far, taller than his talented magician friend – was strolling leisurely down one of Radiant Garden's many paved streets. Most other residents left him a wide birth as he passed, though no one really knew why they did it. It was almost instinctual, as basic as breathing and just as impossible to unlearn. But the young man didn't mind the solitude all that much; rather, he enjoyed it, reveled in it, because he really couldn't care one way or the other if all of these people suddenly…disappeared, or something similar. What was their purpose? What was his? Would it make a difference in the world if any one person were to just one day vanish? Would anyone notice, or care? Was everyone really so…useless? – and he grimaced, for he hated this term. Very few people truly mattered in this world.
'Zephyr matters,' came a whisper from somewhere deep inside himself, 'in my world, at least.' And he quickly locked that thought away.
That was where he was headed – to find Zephyr. He had something he wanted to tell his friend and, though he didn't care less (okay, maybe a little; he wasn't a total robot), he thought the news might interest Zephyr. He assumed he would find the blonde at Merlin's house, messing around with magic like he usually was. He wasn't very good at magic himself, he much preferred to get up close and personal with whatever or whoever he happened to be fighting, but he had to admit that Zephyr had talent; a gift. He could do amazing things, seemingly without even trying, and picked it all up so quickly.
"Good mornin' to ya, lad!" Scrooge McDuck was waddling toward him, his cane in one hand and three blue popsicles precariously clutched in the other.
"I guess so."
"You wouldn't happen ta like sea-salt ice cream, would ya? They were closin' up shop earlier today and I'm afraid I got a wee bit carried away!"
The young man ended up taking two, one for himself and one for his friend, and watched as the old, odd duck began to hobble off.
"Try not to go down town, if ya can help it," Scrooge threw over his back. "It's all closed up by now, anyway. Something fishy is going on down there, I'll wager."
'I wonder if it has anything to do with what Squall was saying…'
The door to Merlin's was closed when he arrived – not that that was out of the ordinary or anything; it just made it difficult to knock on the door. He settled for lightly kicking the door and waiting.
And waiting.
And kicking the door, just a little harder.
And waiting.
He knew Merlin and Zephyr were in there – he could have sworn he'd heard the old wizard's voice. Maybe they were busy, but that didn't matter now. What he'd heard early turned out to be much more important than he'd first thought. After several wasted moments of fumbling, and shifting, and mild cursing, the young man managed to move one of the popsicles to his other hand and open the door with his now-free hand.
"FIRE!"
"Oh no!"
'Fire? Where?
'Oh…'
"Coren!"
There was a great ball of flame hurtling toward him, the edges of it licking at and consuming spare parchment and books that unfortunately happened to be in its path. Coren might have seen his life flash before his eyes at that moment, seen those pearly white gates for an instant and worried for his life; he might have even shut his eyes. But it was all for naught.
"WIND!"
There was a brief wave of heat as the fireball closed in on him, and then, all of a sudden, there was nothing; and then, even more suddenly than before, there was a great burst of movement in the air around him, to the point of knocking him off his feet and into a pile of books, several of which tumbled down the ridiculous pile to land rather painfully on his head. When the wind finally stopped blustering, and his head finally stopped spinning, the cacophony of sounds in front of him began to make sense.
"I'm so sorry, Cor; I didn't know you were out there! You're okay, aren't you? Oh, God, you're bleeding! How many fingers am I holding up?"
Coren opened his eyes, very slowly, and was glad for once that Merlin's house was so dim.
"Which one of you are you referring to?"
"Oh, God!"
"Calm down, Zephyr," Merlin placed a hand on Zephyr's shoulder, who was so rattled he actually jumped. "Nothing a quick Cure won't fix!" He waved his aged hands, and a soft green light surrounded Coren's sprawled body. The rather large cut on his forehead, maybe from one of the tumbled books or a stray flying teapot, glowed green briefly and disappeared, as did the blood, and the young man found his vision clearing. Zephyr stood at the bottom of the book pile, hands clutching his staff so tightly his knuckles were turning white. His hair was even more of a mess than usual, sticking up at such an odd angle that Coren was actually tempted to laugh, and might have in a situation where he hadn't almost been fried alive by a giant fireball. And Merlin's house looked much like Zephyr's hair – more of a mess than usual. What little of the floor had been visible before was now covered with scattered books and parchment and broken teapots, and several bookcases had been overturned. "My, that was some Aero spell you used," Merlin remarked, surveying the damage. "Quick thinking!"
"I'm sorry," Zephyr said again, both to Coren and to Merlin. If he hadn't almost killed his friend, he wouldn't have had to unleash a small tornado in Merlin's house to save him.
"Don't worry, I'm fine," Coren said without inflection. He slid off the pile of books he'd landed on and held out the lone surviving ice cream. Its blue-hued brother was stuck to the ceiling and beginning to drip onto Merlin's bed. "Consider it a present from Scrooge."
"That's odd." But he accepted the ice cream with a smile, because it was from Coren, and Coren was a stiff, cold rock most of the time, and because it was always nice to get free ice cream, especially when it was sea-salt.
"So, Coren, what brings you here?" Merlin asked as he began to resort his house into perfect disorder with a few flicks of his wrists. Coren didn't usually drop by when Zephyr was training (not that he usually dropped by at all) because, however talented and gifted Zephyr was, he was extremely accident-prone. This hadn't been the first time Coren had almost been burnt or frozen or shocked or squashed to death, and he doubted it would be the last.
"I overheard Squall talking with someone. He tried to visit Ansem this morning, but something was preventing him from getting in." He hadn't meant to eavesdrop, really, he'd just been at the right place at the right time and been well-concealed. He wouldn't have stayed to listen if Ansem's name hadn't popped up. Ansem the Wise had been acting out of sorts lately, keeping inside the study within his castle. He hadn't been outside in months, and the people were beginning to worry something serious was wrong. "I didn't understand. He said it was some strange creature, made out of shadows…His weapon couldn't hurt it."
Merlin paused in his work, bushy brows furrowing in a half-remembered thought. "Creatures made out of shadow, you say? Why does that sound familiar?"
Coren's friend also paused, mid-ice cream (a sure sign that something was wrong), a cold feeling that had nothing to do with his popsicle settling heavily in the pit of his stomach. No, he told himself. It can't be.
"Are you alright, Zephyr?" The expression on the blonde's face was worrying Coren. He had frozen, and much of the color had drained from his face. His eyes were wide and slightly panicked. Though at the sound of the older boy's voice, Zephyr seemed to snap out of it. A brilliant (and fake, Coren's subconscious added) smile hid any ill feelings that had been there before.
"I'm fine," and the smile lost its falseness and instead grew fiercely determined, and Coren began to worry for another reason entirely. When Zephyr became determined, Coren ended up almost burnt or frozen or shocked or squashed to death, and he could only imagine how things would pan out if Zephyr had decided he wanted to take on these 'shadow creatures.' "We should go check it out!"
"I wouldn't advise that," Merlin was completely serious, a look which, in Zephyr's opinion, didn't really belong on the man. "Nothing good can come from chasing after these creatures. If only I could remember…I best go see what all the fuss is about!" He disappeared in a puff of smoke.
Maybe it should have ended there. Maybe Zephyr should have just taken the advice of his master and gone home and gone to sleep. Then maybe, when the world began to end later that night, he would sleep through the nightmare. Maybe then his friend wouldn't have been awake either, fighting for his life and the equivalent of his very soul when Radiant Garden finally fell into the darkness. Maybe then Coren wouldn't have lost his heart. But Zephyr couldn't know any of this; none of it had happened yet and so, for the moment, he was spared the heart-numbing guilt. For the moment, Zephyr completely disregarded the worries of his master and shot a conspiratorial grin at Coren, who rolled his eyes in return.
The two boys left Merlin's house and walked into the evening sunlight. Radiant Garden was most beautiful at sunset, when the red-orange glow of the sun set the white paved streets and stone buildings ablaze. At sunset there was only the soft rushing sound of the far off rising falls and the distant chime of young children's laughter as they played that one final game before nightfall. Zephyr folded his arms behind his head and closed his eyes, smiling softly as he listened to the sound of home. The cold feeling still coiled in his gut, slowly growing worse as the sun sank behind the houses. For some terrible reason, this felt like it would be the last time he would hear the happiness of the children of Radiant Garden, or watch the sun light the stone streets on fire, or see that distant star dip below the horizon.
Coren loved sunsets for entirely different reasons, and could care less about how beautiful the sun made the roads on which he walked everyday or the musical ring of laughter or the whisper of the distant falls. Coren loved the way the evening light sparkled in his younger friend's eyes, the way the sun kissed his skin and left its mark in the color of his hair. He loved the smile this time of day usually brought to Zephyr's face, though right now his smile seemed bittersweet. All these thoughts sank back into Coren's subconscious almost as soon as he thought them, to the point where he could almost convince himself he hadn't thought them at all. He didn't know when Zephyr had become more than a friend to him, when he had become his most important person, the one person who reminded him every day that not everyone was useless.
They arrived at a ramshackle house that didn't fit in with any of the other surrounding ones. The wood of the door and its frame, and the frame of the one broken window, was warped and peeling and the stones were all chipped and cracked. Coren pulled a ring of keys off of one of the many belts that adorned his waist and started unlocking the door, one lock at a time, until all seven locks were opened. There probably wasn't a need for such security in a world like Radiant Garden, and, even if there was, who would think to break into a house as dilapidated as this? But Coren kept his most precious possession in this small shack, the only remnant of his parents – his mother's sword. He kept it in his room in a polished wooden chest by the foot of the moth-eaten bed, away from prying eyes. Another set of keys opened the seven locks on the chest.
Zephyr knelt next to Coren in the dust and watched as his friend reached into the chest and carefully pulled out the sheathed sword. That foreboding feeling inside him was still growing, and turning melancholy. Coren had many other swords, and used all of them, but he had never pulled out this sword with the intention of actually using it. Something horrible was going to happen tonight, whether Zephyr ran to face it head on or not. "You don't need to come with me, you know. It's probably nothing."
"And let you have all the fun without me?" Coren glared at the younger boy as he unsheathed the sword. It was a simple long sword – smooth, sharp and made of an unbreakable mithril ore. For some reason the sword reminded Zephyr of Coren – like a physical representation of his character. He wasn't surprised to see the blade was in excellent condition; Coren had been taking good care of it.
"You feel it, too, don't you?" the blonde asked.
"That something terrible is going to happen?"
"Yes."
Coren stood, attached the sword to another one of his belts, and held out his hand. A faint smile played on the corners of his mouth and, for the briefest moment, he embraced all the emotions he felt for Zephyr, because he felt like this might be the last chance he'd be able to experience the joy that they brought him ever again. "I won't let anything happen to you. I promise."
Later, Coren would believe the smile he was rewarded with was worth all the hardship he would go through.
"I know."
-x-
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