Maleficent's castle was like nothing Riku had ever seen before. Like nothing he could have imagined when he'd first heard the whispers coming from that wooden door at the back of the cave.
He knew of castles. He understood the word and concept of castles. His history books had mentions of them as places where treaties were signed and, just in general, Riku could comprehend castles; it wasn't that hard. He just had never really cared until he was trailing behind a sorceress, half-carrying his best friend, inside of a goddamn castle.
For all he knew about castles, he had never actually expected one to be so big.
Riku had spent most of his life outside on the shore, watching the ocean. The ocean, for its part, stretched as far as he could see. It surrounded everything, swallowed everything, and even where there wasn't water, the sound and smell of it dominated the land. Even then, he could not accurately explain the fathomless depths of the ocean. Humans had explored more of the sky above them than the ocean's depths—going to another world on a raft? Was genuinely more likely than exploring any significant amount of ocean.
With so much of their world made up of ocean, their livable world was hideously small. The Destiny Island chain was a smattering of sand with a pebble of a main island. Their two highschools had barely a thousand students each. Riku's home island was half the size of the main island. The play island was navigable in under fifteen minutes, on foot. He measured things on foot because he had never been in a car or used any vehicle for transportation but a boat, not even a cart or bike, because there was simply no need. He hardly even needed to use a boat, for now that he was fifteen, he was a good enough swimmer that if necessary he could have swum to school each day.
There wasn't an inch of the Destiny Islands Riku didn't know. He'd traveled through the northern markets, made faces at tourists on the main island, snuck over the government fencing on the western coast and been politely escorted back out of the facility by soft-faced guards when he was caught. The play island's cave, their secret spot, was covered almost entirely in etchings, not a free space of rock left after years and years of retreading the same old stones.
The castle was—so, so different, that for a while, Riku wasn't able to wrap his head around it. Everything felt like it was covered in a thin layer of fog as Maleficent wrapped them in green magic and teleported them (teleported them!) over the rising falls and into the inner chamber of the castle of Hollow Bastion.
Both doors to the room were tall and wooden. Easily ten times Riku's height, and more than five times as wide. They'd been teleported into a circular room made out of marble and garnet, with opals on the door knobs and a high domed ceiling with a shimmering chandelier at least the size of a large fishing boat.
They stood on top of a grand staircase, above a freely-flowing fountain and before one of the two sets of massive wooden doors within the chamber.
Sora leaned heavily against him, looking around the room in blatant awe—the sort of awe Riku was trying very hard to keep contained. He'd been told time and again that it wasn't good to look like you were unused to success, so—the same probably applied to stepping inside a sorceresses castle, right? If not, Sora looked shocked enough to count for both of them, surely. One of them would be right, so they would be fine.
Thought the open wound on Sora's side was fully healed, the younger boy was still unsteady on his feet. Whatever spell Maleficent had used on him—'whatever spell,' he had never thought the day would come when he had that sort of thought legitimately—it hadn't soothed the shock of suddenly being grievously injured, and it probably hadn't replenished the blood that was still staining the floating stone platform they'd landed on. Therefore, eager as he was to explore the castle and figure out exactly what was going on, Riku was going to find somewhere for Sora to lie down and he was going to do it as quickly as possible.
Fortunately, Maleficent seemed to have the same idea.
With a wave of her green and long-fingered hand, she opened the wooden doors behind them and gestured for them to enter the new chamber.
[The lifts,] she said. [will take you to your chambers. Lay your friend to rest. Then, return to me.]
Riku nodded, hoping he looked more confident than he felt while he adjusted his grip on Sora and they shuffled into the lift shop. Immediately as he did, the hairs on his arms and the back of his neck rose to attention.
The entire room was a giant, free circuit. Probably about the size of his homeroom classroom back on Destiny Islands, the lift shop was a circular… pit? A cylinder of a room that stretched towards the sky and ground for as far as he could look in either direction. Electricity ran freely between various suspended platforms. Or was it magic that looked like electricity?
He didn't dare ask, but the whole area glowed blue with power, and he wasted precious moments glancing around, trying to figure out where to go and what to touch without giving either himself or Sora a nasty shock.
"Uh," Sora said after a moment. He lifted the hand that wasn't slung around Riku's shoulders, pointing to a small circular platform suspended midair a few feet from the edge of the platform connected to the massive wooden doors. "Maybe there?"
Riku nodded and lead the way, still taking most of Sora's weight. He inspected the platform once they were a bit closer. A massive opal was inlaid in the center of the platform, and the electric blue magic raced in the gap separating them from it.
Swallowing whatever doubt that was clogging his throat, Riku was about to ask whether Sora was well enough to jump onto the platform (it wasmagic, surely their weight would hold) when Maleficent's voice stalled him.
[Touch the crystal by the wall. If you have any power within you, it will react.]
Riku glanced back to see the sorceress standing just outside in the marbled room, watching them through the doorframe. He looked away quickly, the silent challenge ringing clear in his mind as he found the crystal she meant. It was blue, hovering at waist height near the edge of the platform, nearly blending in with the lightshow around it. No wonder he hadn't noticed it at first.
Still. He'd have to be more observant in the future. Just because this was a new world didn't mean—
—it didn't mean shit. If he was going to explore, he was going to explore. He was certainly not powerless to do that.
He wrapped a hand around the small blue crystal, cautious to see if it would move or twist, or if he'd have to do something weird like chant or meditate to get it to reveal itself.
The crystal did not move. Did not spin or twist or give in when he tried to pull it from its spot. Nothing seemed to happen with his touch, and he was tempted to mutter something under his breath just in case, when he realized the crystal had somehow slipped from his grasp and left him standing on a different platform than the one they'd just been on.
Their new platform—the circular, opal-inlaid one he'd been considering jumping onto—began to rise into the air. Sora let out a gargled gasp of surprise, while Riku bit his lip to keep from doing the same, instinctively bending his knees and keeping his stance wide, as if he were on a rocking boat.
Good, Maleficent's voice came floating from somewhere hard to define. Riku's eyes darted around, looking for the source, but the wooden doors had closed and the sorceress was nowhere to be seen as the platform rose higher and higher into the air. [Very good. When you're ready, return on the lifts. There is much to be discussed, Bringer of Darkness.]
The platform rose higher and higher into the air, until Riku lost sight of the lift shop entirely.
000
The room the lift brought them to was still twice, even three times, the size of Riku's room back on the islands.
He was starting to get dizzy just trying to imagine how much more space was in the castle, let alone this whole world.
Sora first, though.
"How are you feeling?" Riku asked, leading him past a carved wooden wardrobe and gold-engraved table and chairs, towards a large canopy bed covered in pillows and white sheets, with sheer, pale curtains draped about it.
"Better," Sora said. "Still kinda dizzy, I guess."
"Do you think you can stand on your own?" With one hand, he pulled the curtains aside so Sora could actually sit on the bed, but regretted asking his question when he saw Sora's expression out of the corner of his eye and realized what he'd written off as a pained grimace was Sora trying to repress a grin. "You lazy bum! Have you been fine this whole time?"
"You don't let me lean all over you very often!" Sora said, a whine in his voice, finally letting the shit eating grin appear all over his face. He gave an oof when Riku shoved him onto the bed and quickly resumed scowling. "Jerk."
"You almost go and start bleeding out on the front step of the first world we go to, and I'm the jerk?" Riku said, throwing up a hand.
"Yes! I just told you I was still dizzy and what do you do? Knock me over." Sora straightened up as he spoke. True, he was moving a bit slower than normal and taking care as he adjusted his seat on the edge of the bed, but still moving much better than anyone who had just been torn open rightly should have been moving. "So it really worked? Whatever that was?"
Riku sighed and sat down a little ways away from the other boy on the edge of the bed. He ignored how Sora immediately began to shuffle closer, mussing the bed sheets. "Yeah. We really made it."
Sora looked up at him, then back around the room. Riku took another deep breath, and continued to do so, moderating his breathing and loosening his tense muscles. As much of a jerk move as it was, pretending to be more injured than he truly was, he was glad Sora was okay, and that knowledge let him relax for the first time since he'd set foot on the beach that night. He closed his eyes and leaned back.
"Riku?" Sora said. "Where's Kairi?"
The tension snapped back, all the worse for the moment of reprieve.
"Fuck," Riku said, turning sharply to look at his friend. "Did you see her anywhere?"
Sora's eyes narrowed. That was definitely not a good sign. "I was trying to ask you if you'd seen her, but you were too busy being all—weird."
"Maybe she was at her house," Riku said. "She'd be safe there. Right?"
Sora shook his head. "She was on the island. I definitely saw her! She was in the cave, but she was acting weird too, and then when she came towards me she vanished?"
He paused and looked down at his hands before pinching himself in the thigh until the skin lost some color.
"Uh," Riku said, "What are you doing?"
"You wake up from dreams by pinching yourself," Sora explained, face puffing up as he moved to pinch his cheek as well. "And this is all starting to sound a lot like a dream."
Riku couldn't really argue with that.
While Sora was busy trying to wake himself up from what Riku was pretty sure was reality, he thought back to… had it only been a few minutes before?
That thought felt faker than anything he'd seen in the castle. Had they really only been in another world for a few minutes?
They must've been gone for half an hour at most. He closed his eyes again, furrowing his brow and trying hard to think back on what had happened on the beach. Though it was so recent, he found it difficult to call up the memories. It was mostly a blur—waking in the night, going to the island to admire their raft once more before they set out in the morning. It had been nervous energy that drove him to the island at first, the desire to make sure that everything was as ready as they ever could be.
It had been nervous energy which drove him to the island, but it had been the nagging feeling of being watched that sent Riku to the secret spot.
After that, he wasn't entirely sure what had happened. He knew he'd tugged on the doorknob in the back of the cave, as everyone had at one point or another, but this time the door had budged, and…
He knew he'd seen Sora and called out to him, but the details of the conversation escaped him.
"I didn't see Kairi," Riku said, opening his eyes again and turning to find Sora had finally stopped pinching himself and was paying attention once again. "I went to check on the raft, but I was the only one on the island. That was around one in the morning, I think."
Sora nodded. "That sounds like about the time the storm woke me up, too."
"Storm?" Riku said.
Sora stared at him.
"Yeah," he said. "The massive storm that almost drowned us? We were almost killed?"
Riku stood abruptly. The bed didn't creak as he left it, his back to Sora and something cold like fear running down his back. "I'm gonna go talk to Maleficent. Maybe she knows what's going on. You stay and rest. You say you're fine, but just to be safe. Hang out here for a while."
He didn't look at Sora, but he could still hear the uncertainty in the, 'okay,' he was given. "And ask her if she knows anything about Kairi."
Riku nodded and left the room without a backwards glance.
000
a/n
I was like "nothing happens in this chapter I can't post it it's a buffer chapter"
and then I whacked myself upside the head because I've been stressing myself out about chocking in as much as I physically can into horribly long epics of chapters and this fanfic is just me cutting loose and destroying everything in my wake
thoughts appreciated; thank you for reading