Hello, chaps. As promised, the third chapter of my story. Those of you who took the time to review, you have my thanks; I always appreciate feedback on my work. I hope you continue to enjoy this tale, and that the chapter you are about to read meets your expectations. And you are correct in your assessment, Riku Uzumaki; Aqua won't like what's coming at all.
And without further ado, let's get on with the show! A word of warning, though; this chapter is longer than the previous two combined, so I hope you have some free time on your hands.
Kingdom Hearts Obscuritas
Chapter Two: Venator Crudelis
Despite her vigilance, the next attack caught Aqua completely by surprise.
Ten minutes had passed since her encounter with the dark imps, by the Keyblade Master's reckoning, when five more of the creatures pulled themselves into existence on the path ahead, barring her progress. Having experienced just how dangerous such shades could be, the young mage decided that it would be best to end this fight before it could begin.
She held Master Keeper aloft, channelling her own potent reserves of magic into the venerable Keyblade. The goblins had not even had time to get their bearings when she let out a cry of "Gather!", and before they could react a roiling sphere of energy sprang into existence in their midst. The sudden radiance startled the creatures, and as they turned to inspect this unexpected orb of light it began to churn and pulse, emitting a noise not unlike the revving of an engine. Two smaller spheres, one red and one blue, appeared on opposite ends of the sphere, and the air rippled with the force of powerful magic as they revolved around their larger counterpart in a single orbit, two planets to a single star.
The imps, unprepared for Aqua's spell, were suddenly whisked into the air as though caught in an invisible gravitational field. They converged on the primary sphere simultaneously, slamming into each other with a wet slap and no small amount of force; then the smaller orbs began to revolve around their sun faster and faster, striking all five of the monsters repeatedly and scathing them with potent cosmic energy.
When the Magnet spell wore off a moment later, only three of the imps had managed to survive being buffeted in that onslaught, and as the primary star collapsed in on itself it sucked a third shade along with it into oblivion. The remaining pair of shadows dropped to the stone path and lay there, insensate and half-dead.
Aqua nodded to herself and moved towards her prone victims, ready to deliver the coup-de-grace with her Keyblade. Time to finish you—
"Offff!"
The warrior mage cried out in pain as something large and fast blindsided her from the left. Fortunately, Aqua managed to roll with the blow, and instead of landing on her side in a heap she was able to get a free hand on the ground, transferring her momentum to this new pivot point and turning her fall into an elegant cartwheel that left her standing on her feet and facing this new foe.
It floated several feet off the ground, hovering and bobbing gently despite lacking any visible means of lift or propulsion. Its body was a large, oily sphere, at least three feet in diameter, and strange appendages that might have been a pair of arms and a tail—or possibly ears; it was hard to tell—sprouted from its center mass to flop uselessly at an angle. Like all the other monsters she had encountered in the Realm of Darkness thus far, the beast sported a pair of glowing yellow eyes that leered at her with a mindless cunning and an unholy hunger, though they seemed disproportionately small compared to the bulk of its rotund body, and to her shock Aqua noticed that it was the first creature she had seen to possess a mouth.
A broad, hungry maw, full of jagged triangular teeth, that seemed looked in a perpetual and decidedly malevolent grin. The beast yawned slightly, and Aqua could see that its mouth was an abyss, an indigo void that promised nothing but annihilation for anyone or anything unfortunate enough to be caught in its depths.
The blue-haired Keyblade Master cocked her head to one side. "Alright, I've seen some fairly strange things over the last few weeks," she said. "But that is just plain weird. I mean, what are you even supposed to be? You're a balloon, for—whoa!"
The tarlike sphere suddenly shot forward at a startling velocity, its jaws snapping hungrily as it flew straight at Aqua's face. Having no time to dodge the beast's sudden charge, she bent over backwards—thank heaven for all those gymnastic drills Master Eraqus had had her perform in order to improve her agility—and allowed her assailant to zip by overhead, leaving her completely unharmed save for a smack to the face from its flailing tail.
The warrior mage let out a muffled "Ow!" as she straightened up, bringing a hand up to her smarting nose; a sharp pain shot through her skull at the contact, and the wet warmth of blood met her fingertips and trickled down to her lips.
Great, a broken nose, she thought sourly, turning to fix a scowl on the dark sphere as it continued on its path for several metres before drawing to a slow, clumsy halt. Just what I needed…
Aqua levelled Master Keeper at the discombobulated beast, allowing her irritation to flow along the Keyblade's length and suffuse its shaft with a sudden and supernatural heat. "Pyre!" she yelled, her word muffled and distorted by the damage to her nasal cavities but still managing to get the point across. A trio of scorching fireballs erupted from the key's tip in rapid succession, slamming into the floating monster with incredible force three times and setting it ablaze. It had managed to survive the deadly fireballs themselves, but the flames lapping at its inky flesh proved to be the final straw. It burst like an overripe melon, showering the path in wet chunks of spongy dark matter that gave off an utterly putrid stench as they burned; fortunately for Aqua's sake, its remains quickly dissipated into clouds of dark vapour which were then blown away by a chance wind, sparing her nose any further abuse.
The blue-haired young woman sighed and relaxed her posture, confident that the fight was over—only for a pair of heavy weights to slam into her from behind, knocking her to the ground face first.
She winced as her nose made contact with the hard stone ground at what seemed like terminal velocity, waiting for the fog of pain to lift from her mind before she would even consider retaliation on her attackers. Right, I forgot about those two…
Aqua rolled onto her back and sprang onto her feet, eying the two remaining imps with no small degree of wariness. Though the creatures seemed to be on their last legs, as evidenced by their sluggish movements and the fact that their antennae had stopped twitching, it was clear that they still had some fight left in them. At that moment, a measure of pity wormed its way into the Keybearer's heart as she realized that these goblins had no sense of self-preservation; even beaten half to death and clearly outmatched, they would just keep throwing themselves at her until one party or the other was dead.
The mage tensed then, bringing Master Keeper up to a ready position. Despite her pity for the creatures and their deplorable, mindless state, they still intended to kill her, and she still had many promises to keep, oaths to fulfill; so that simply wasn't going to happen. She would just have to put them out of their misery.
The shadows lunged at her, and she swung her Keyblade up to the heavens. "Dunder!"
A ring of faintly-crackling electricity expanded from Aqua's waist over a wide radius, and when the goblins touched the ring two bolts of lightning plummeted from the heavens and smote them for their insolence, casting back the darkness for a brief instant and forcing the young warrior to shield her eyes from their intense luminance.
The imps, weakened as they were, stood no chance against Aqua's powerful Thundaga spell; millions of volts of an intense electrical current flooded through their small, childlike bodies for a moment, and they fairly disintegrated into twin plumes of a dark miasma, utterly destroyed.
Aqua remained vigilant, casting her gaze around the path to make certain that nothing else was about to pop out of nowhere and get the drop on her. Only when she was certain that there were no other monsters hiding in the darkness did the Keybearer relax, and two minutes and a Cure spell later, her nose was as good as new.
Satisfied that everything was in working order, she pressed on into the darkness. You're in hostile territory, Aqua; if you want to reach your goal in one piece, keep moving and stay alert!
Thirty minutes and four battles later, the cerulean-haired Keyblade Master noticed that the landscape was beginning to change yet again. The towering cliff faces which had surrounded her for the last little while began to even out and the path had started to widen drastically into an even plane, though the trail itself was still visible, bracketed and delineated by a pair of wide-spaced ruts. Bizarre cracks, like glowing fissures or veins, dotted the cold ground, their soft blue phosphorescence scant comfort in the dark. Strange rocks and twisted growths that might have been trees or shrubs had started to appear on either side of the road; they were few and far between at first, but as she continued on her way and the landscape continued to widen, the twisted facsimiles of florae began to crop up more and more frequently. They loomed over the path, their twisted boughs forking and intertwining like gnarled fingers, and a dense fog rolled in between their slate-grey trunks.
Aqua did not like this strange parody of a forest; the trees offered far too many opportunities for an ambush, and though she hated to admit it the sheer wrongness of the whole place unsettled her on some fundamental level. Where were the birds, nesting amidst the branches and filling the air with their songs? Where were the insects, their chirps and clicks lending a note of calm and tranquility to what should have been a pleasant stroll through the woods? Where was the wind, its cool breath rustling the leaves and the gentle touch of its zephyr fingers caressing her exposed skin? Where was the sun, its wan light casting shadows across the way?
This was not nature; it was a pitiful imitation wrought by cruel chance and fell hands. There were no birds, no insects, no wind, no babbling brooks and no sun to give her comfort and ease a growing sense of isolation and surreal madness; there was only darkness, decay and death.
Aqua put such grim thoughts from her mind as she noticed that the path widened into a broad clearing a short distance a head. She couldn't fathom its exact dimensions in the perpetual gloom, but if she had to hazard a guess the Keyblade Master would have said that the roughly circular break in the tree line must have been close to a hundred feet in diameter.
The blue-haired mage came to a halt just outside of the clearing and took a moment to consider her options. On the one hand, she could not have been far from the shadow geyser's point of origin; she reckoned that it would take her another half hour to reach the source, maybe an hour tops. On the other hand, her recent battles with those strange monsters had severely depleted her reserves of magical energy, and a deep fatigue was beginning to settle into her bones; to overcome both, she would need to rest soon, and this clearing was a tantalizing sight for sore eyes. The ground appeared reasonably smooth and flat, and its vast area ensured that she would be able to see anything approaching from within the forest long before it actually reached her. Besides, it was not like she had a supply of ethers on hand; if she ran out of mana before arriving at the geyser's source and trouble was awaiting her, Aqua would be up the creek with no canoe, so to speak. After all, she might not have been a slouch with the physical aspects of the Keyblade, but she wasn't a champion swordswoman either; unlike Ventus and Terra, her expertise lay in the realm of spell-weaving, and if she could not cast spells her odds of survival would drop dramatically.
"No sense taking an unnecessary risk," she said at length. "I'll rest here for now, and finish the journey when I'm at one-hundred percent."
Her mind made up, Aqua dismissed Master Keeper and strode into the clearing.
She had not taken ten steps when an odd sound came from somewhere to the left. The warrior mage gasped and came to a halt, fighting the urge to supress a sigh. Can I not go for five minutes without getting attacked? she grumbled to herself. Five minutes, that's all I ask.
Any irritation or levity she might have felt fled her, alas, as she caught sight of a pair of small, eerie red lights bobbing through the tree line. They moved rapidly across the edge of the clearing, the low point of their arcs accompanied by a muffled thump, like the footfalls of enormous feet, and even from this distance Aqua could tell that these crimson eyes—for what else could they be?—were set a good deal taller than her own.
She summoned her late mentor's Keyblade to hand and whirled in an effort to track the orbs, her breath coming in quick, ragged gasps as adrenaline flooded her system. No, she wasn't tired anymore; she couldn't afford to be, the lights were moving so damn fast! Good lord, they must have made a lap of the entire clearing—
Aqua's eyes widened in alarm as the red lights suddenly disappeared. An unsettling silence fell over the site of her potential camp, and her head darted back and forth, her gaze roaming the clearing's perimeter as she tried to find out where her mystery stalker was hiding.
The crunch of gravel beneath enormous, padded soles brought a shiver of apprehension to the young Keyblade Master's spine, and she spun around, bringing Master Keeper up in a horizontal guarding position while bracing the shaft with her other hand—just in time for something fast and dark and utterly enormous to slam into her with the force a speeding freight train.
Aqua let out a stunned cry as she flew across the clearing, landing in a tangled heap thirty feet away. The warrior mage struck her head against the stone floor, hard, and everything went blurry for a second; she blinked, trying to regain her focus as she looked in the direction of her assailant.
Something that seemed like a living cloud of darkness sat at the other end of the clearing, and it billowed towards her at an incredible speed, undulating like a sine wave as it came.
No, not a cloud, she realized. A shroud. The monster must be cloaking itself in darkness, to keep me from seeing it properly.
The beast was almost upon her; if she did not act now it would all be over. Stifling a groan, the Keyblade Master brought up her weapon and levelled it at the beast. Gone were any concerns about conserving her magic, replaced by the more immediate concern of keeping herself alive.
It was twenty feet away and closing rapidly when a searing fireball erupted from Master Keeper and shot towards it at an impressive speed. Aqua was confident that it would not be able to evade her attack; imagine her surprise when the beast proceeded to do just that, springing over her Fission Firaga in a bounding leap that carried it above her head.
Time slowed to a crawl as her assailant arced across the sky, and through the chaotically-billowing miasma she caught the first glimpse of its true form. The creature—or at least its foremost quarter—possessed two long legs, each ending in a pair of massive paws, and a head that seemed disturbingly feline in profile. Her earlier suspicion about its red orbs was proven correct, as they glittered balefully where the monster's eyes should have been.
Could this thing be an Unversed? she wondered, rising to her feet even as the monster alighted on the cold clearing floor and loped into the forest.
She dispelled that notion almost immediately, adopting a ready stance as those awful scarlet orbs flared to life and stared hungrily at her from within the tree line. This creature was unlike anything Aqua had faced before; she could almost feel the sheer, limitless depths of the darkness within its awful, shadow-shrouded form emanating from it in palpable waves, assailing her mentally as well as physically, and for the first time since her arrival in the Realm of Darkness, Aqua felt fear. Real, unrestrained, undiluted fear.
This monster is darkness incarnate, a living embodiment of evil.
The creature's dark shroud expanded suddenly to envelop the clearing in its entirety, and Aqua let out a startled gasp as everything went black. All that remained visible were those horrid red eyes, bobbing gently back and forth, almost hypnotic in their rhythm, as the creature swayed; an abrupt rush of air, the crash of enormous padded feet, and suddenly even those disappeared, leaving the Keyblade Master locked in darkness absolute.
Aqua whirled about rapidly, her eyes roaming the darkness in a frenzy as she tried to find the hunter's eyes. Where did it go? Her mental voice startled her with the stark panic it invested in every imagined word, every imagined syllable. Where did it go, where did it go?
A muffled scrape of claws against bare rock came from somewhere to her right, and Aqua brought up her Keyblade as she spun to face the sudden noise. A ball of crackling, searing flames erupted from Master Keeper's tip to streak into the darkness, briefly illuminating the small portion of the clearing. In the scant seconds she had before the fireball flew into the dead forest and out of sight, she caught a brief glimpse of an enormous silhouette, a momentary glimpse of reflected light glistening on links of metal as the beast charged towards her—
"Get back!" she shouted, and a sphere of glittering hexagonal panels sprang up to surround her in a protective cage of energy.
Even with the potent force field now between her and the dark hunter, Aqua still shuddered from the impact as one of the beast's enormous paws slammed down onto the sphere, causing it to flare as it strained to maintain its shape in face of the force being exerted against it. A low growl, so deep that it caused the young Keyblade Master's bones to vibrate in sympathy, emanated from somewhere in that vast, unfathomable darkness, and the beast's glittering red eyes flared to life less than a foot from Aqua's face.
Fear warred with disgust as a rank gust of humid air washed over her, and Aqua cartwheeled to one side as the giant brute's other paw came crashing towards her from the right; behind her, the shield collapsed, unable to take the strain.
Having no time to cast a spell, Aqua tucker herself into a roll and somersaulted towards those baleful red orbs, feeling cold flesh brush briefly against her exposed back as she passed between its legs and came to an upright position directly in front of its snout.
Acting almost on instinct, she twisted to the side, and the red glare of her assailant's hateful eyes shot past as its head snapped forward, its jaws crashing shut on thin air. The warrior mage took advantage of this distraction and struck at its head three times, each blow wringing a pained snarl from the leonine beast.
She did not have long to press her attack, unfortunately; a sudden blur of motion, a backwash of displaced air rushing in to fill a sudden void, and then the creature was gone. Aqua spun around once more, but its eyes were no longer visible.
Calm down, Aqua, she scolded herself, slowing bringing her breath rate under control. It's lunging at you from the shadows because it wants you to panic. If you panic, you get sloppy; if you get sloppy, you're dead.
The blue-haired young woman nodded to herself, but even though her breathing had slowed to the point where she seemed outwardly calm, the jackhammer beating of her heart was a clear indication that her fear was merely controlled, not dispelled.
Calm, child, calm. The voice was her own, but the words were those of Master Eraqus; perhaps she was merely imagining them, or perhaps her mentor's words had been plucked from the memory of one part of her training that now seemed appropriate. The power of darkness is dangerous, as are those who wield it, but by itself it holds nothing for you to fear. There are times when the servants of the dark will seek to use it on you, turn your senses against you; in such time, you must utilize the full extent of your abilities in order to prevail. If a foe blinds you or moves unseen through the world, open your mind and let your ears guide you. And remember, Aqua; no matter how your enemy might seek to cripple you by robbing you of your sight, he can only hurt you if he can hit you. That is why you must not strike blindly at the shadows in an attempt to come at the enemy; you must let the enemy come to you, and then instruct him why it was a grave mistake to assault a chosen wielder of the Keyblade…
Let him come to me, Aqua repeated. "Let him come to me…"
Then an idea came to her, and she smiled wearily. Very well, Master; I'll let him come to me…
The young Keyblade Master held her late mentor's weapon aloft and unleashed the power she had been gathering for the last few moments in a potent spell. Eight glowing disks, gently rotating a few inches above the ground in a circular formation spaced evenly around the mage, sprang into existence. Then, taking a deep breath to calm her fluttered nerves, Aqua closed her eyes and listened.
For a few moments, there was nothing. Then, as her hearing began to adjust in order to compensate for the lack of visual information from her eyes, the warrior mage heard a faint noise, a padding of massive feet circling her at a rapid speed. She remained stationary, giving no indication that she knew where the monster was, and waited.
The padded footfalls became louder as the beast broke into a run, coming from directly behind.
Aqua waited until she could feel the awful heat of the dark hunter's rancid breath, then spun around and dove towards her assailant. The beast, unprepared for this, arced just overhead as she hit the ground and tucked into a smooth roll.
Unable to kill its forward momentum, the beast landed right in the middle of the circle of disks, each of its paws landing directly on one of the disks. The result of this contact was as immediate as it was spectacular; the mine disks, triggered by the weight and pressure of the creature standing upon them, went off simultaneously in a chain reaction that engulfed the beast in a giant fireball. It howled in rage at being deceived so, the pained bass of its cries almost managing to drown out the deafening roar of the explosion.
The backwash sent Aqua into a tumble, but thanks to her agility the young Keyblade Master quickly brought herself under control and managed to regain her footing. She looked towards the flames as she rose to her feet, smiling in satisfaction as she saw her opponent's silhouette thrashing in agony within the blaze.
There; even if that doesn't kill the brute, he should be severely weakened. Either way, the fight isn't stacked in its favour anymore; it sought easy prey, but it didn't expect me to have teeth of my own.
Satisfaction turned to wary readiness, however, when the dark hunter spun around to fix its baleful gaze upon her. Its eyes bobbed gently up and down, back and forth, as the flames lapping at its flanks slowly guttered and went out; and then, with a sudden howl of absolute rage the darkness which had lain over the clearing lifted, allowing Aqua to see her assailant clearly for the first time.
Her initial impressions of the creature had been correct; it was utterly enormous, being nearly twice her size at the shoulders and as long as Gantu had been tall, if not longer. It hunkered down on four long, feline legs, coiled beneath its powerfully built and velvet-hued body in taut readiness for a springing leap, and thick chains, wrapped around its forelimbs in countless loops and terminating in the splayed black prongs of two enormous grappling hooks, would clink and rustle softly whenever the beast shifted its weight. The monster's incredibly long, barbed tail twitched in anticipation, as did the bizarre and unsettling mane of tendrils which wreathed its head, and it pawed at the ground with talons that were curled and serrated like blades, blades which would have no trouble opening Aqua from her gullet to her gizzard if they managed to make contact with the Keyblade Master.
The crimson glow of the leonine beast's eyes had faded, and the young mage noted that they were actually yellow, just like those of all the other monsters she had encountered thus far. They stared hungrily at her, unblinking, and Aqua shuddered at the infinite malice and insatiable lust for flesh she saw in those horrid amber pools. Like the dark sphere, this monster had a mouth—a jagged thing, full of sharp triangular teeth, and the cant of its lips made the hunter's maw into a perpetual grin. A fat red tongue, dripping with caustic saliva, flapped and lolled silently within its jaws, and even from this distance she could feel the heat of its rank breath.
The enormous predator was wounded, to be sure; its feet were still blackened with scorch marks from their contact with the mines, and the bruises and cuts which peppered its muzzle had clearly come from the shaft of Master Keeper. That said, it was clear from the way it crouched and shifted its weight back and forth that the beast was by no means finished; like the shades, this monster would fight on and never give in until one or the other was slain.
Aqua's appraisal of her monstrous opponent came to an end as the beast surged into motion. It loped towards her, eating up the distance between them with every step, and hissing red flames leapt into existence in the wake of its feline footfalls.
The Keyblade Master's eyes widened at the monster's speed; it was moving much faster, now that it was angry. She cartwheeled to one side, narrowly managing to avoid being crushed beneath one of those enormous paws. The young mage felt blisters spring up on her back in response to the sweltering heat of its flames, a mild discomfort rapidly eclipsed by a sudden pain which blossomed across her spine as she straightened up; the dark hunter had come to a screeching halt and spun around, causing the chains which bound its legs to fly wild. As a result, one of the grappling hooks had skimmed across her exposed back and torn a nasty cut there.
That's it, Aqua thought as she turned around to face the beast, calling a glittering dome of hexagonal panels into existence to protect her against a follow-up swipe from the razor talons of the beast's forepaws. At the earliest possible convenience, I need to put some armour there.
Her Barrier spell burst as the dark hunter recoiled, hexagonal panels exploding outwards to batter the monster's face. One fortuitously-aimed panel struck it in the eye, and as it howled in pain and rage and thrashed blindly, Aqua decided not to let this rare opportunity go to waste.
She turned and ran to the edge of the clearing, putting some distance between herself and the monster while it was still distracted. She knew that her panels, being magical constructs, would not last much longer; in a few seconds they would fade from existence, and a few seconds after that the beast would have recovered sufficiently to continue the battle.
But a few seconds was all she needed.
Taking a moment to ascertain that she was facing the dark hunter correctly, Aqua closed her eyes and focused. Slowly, silently, power began to fill her Keyblade as she visualized the leonine beast with her mind's eye, trying to make the mental image as detailed as possible. She pictured its talons, its fangs, the awful yellow gleam of its eyes, the blood-slicked grappling hooks at the end of its chains, the ridge of spikes running along its spine, those weird twitching ear-things…as the image took shape and became more and more concrete, so too did the intense power gathering within Master Keeper gradually build to a crescendo, and the power became a raging torrent of energy begging to be unleashed.
Yet this was not magic, or at least, not entirely; while a weapon of potent mystical power, Keyblades were not fuelled exclusively by magic. Their strength was dependant, in large part, on the strength of their bearer's heart and the force of their emotions; a strong will and intense feelings of courage, hope, love, determination, and a whole host of other sensations all lent considerable power to a Keyblade, and properly focused such thoughts and feelings could allow a Keybearer to loose the full extent of their power upon an enemy. This technique was difficult to master, incredibly draining and required a few moments to set up, but the payoff of a successful execution was well worth the risk. It had been known by many names over the years, according to Master Eraqus, and each iteration of the Keyblade Knighthood had devised their own terms for the technique; some called them Desperation Attacks, to fit their nature as a weapon of last resort, while others—Master Xehanort among them—had dubbed them Limit Breaks, in that they forced a Keyblade wielder to their very limits in an effort to dispatch the opposition. But Ven, bless his little heart, had come up with his own name for the technique during his training alongside Terra and Aqua, and the term had been so incongruous, so endearing, so uniquely Ventus that even the normally stern Master Eraqus had cracked a smile, and the name had stuck.
He had dubbed them Shotlocks.
Aqua's eyes snapped open, and she fixed the dark hunter with a determined gaze. A warm, teal light surrounded her and lifted her six feet off the ground, where she hovered without concern for the breeze buffeting her as it blew through the clearing, and raised Master Keeper to level the venerable weapon at the beast.
That leonine head swung up to fix its horrid yellow gaze upon the cerulean-haired mage just in time to wince as a sudden, blindingly-multihued aura engulfed her Keyblade.
"Prism Rain!" she cried.
The words had not even finished leaving her mouth when an intense burst of iridescent light erupted from the tip of her Keyblade, separating into a dozen streamers of light, each possessed of a different hue, before coming together in a circular formation. The scintillating points of radiance then arced and spiralled across the clearing at a blinding speed, a rainbow-hued meteor shower that bombarded the dark hunter from multiple angles and wrung howls of agony from its grinning jaws with every strike. Every impact inflicted more pain upon the creature than any spell which had come before it, for this rainbow shower was not simply magical energy laced with elemental power and woven into packets of destructive force; this was the light of Aqua's heart, captured, distilled and intensified into a barrage of divine radiance and positive emotion, and to creatures of the dark, such weapons were the ultimate threat to their existence, for wherever light shone, the darkness could not stand.
"You're going down," Aqua said, a faint wheeze in her voice as she launched a second volley at the reeling behemoth. Plumes of black miasma billowed from its velvet flanks wherever her prismatic missiles struck.
A third barrage followed soon after, but while her blasts seemed to be wearing the dark hunter down, Aqua took no satisfaction in the act; she needed to remain focused in order to keep up her continuous fire, and that was hard enough already due to the fact that she was finding it hard to draw breath at the moment. "Do you hear me? You're going down and you're going to stay—"
A deafening BOOM! Drowned out the rest of Aqua's words, nearly breaking her concentration; the strength of her barrage waned as a result, with only seven prismatic light rays streaking out to smite the dark hunter instead of the previous dozen. The young Keyblade Master tried to regain her focus, but this quickly proved to be a futile effort as the source of that abrupt noise became clear. Aqua had scarcely enough time to widen her eyes in shock before a crackling orb of raw, unmitigated darkness erupted from the leonine beast's jaws and slammed into her with the speed and force of a cannonball.
The cerulean-haired mage threw her head back in a silent scream of pain as the sphere engulfed her, and a web of pure agony flooded across her body in the form of crackling arcs of coruscating black lightning. She tried desperately to maintain some degree of focus, but it was impossible; her every nerve screamed at her in pain, the darkness being just as much an anathema to beings of light as was the reverse.
Bereft of her will's support, the Keyblade Master dropped unceremoniously to the ground, a pained wheeze and a spurt of blood escaping her mouth as she landed hard on her injured back.
Aqua sat up, wincing as she brought a hand to her head, and tried to calm herself with a deep breath—only to descend into a coughing fit. She pulled her palm away from her mouth a moment later, once the attack had subsided, and her eyes widened in shock as she saw the flecks of blood staining the palm of her fingerless glove.
"What's…wrong with me?" she wheezed, her breath coming in short, ragged gasps.
She had no time to ponder this unsettling turn of events any further, unfortunately, for at that moment the dark hunter leapt into the air and spun perpendicular to the ground. Its talons wreathed themselves in a sinister red energy, an aura which stretched into the circumference of a deadly circle as it wheeled towards her through the air in defiance of the laws of physics, looking for all the worlds like the blade of some enormous buzz saw.
There was no time to get to her feet, and so Aqua rolled to one side, narrowly evading the scything claws of her assailant. Every contact her back made with the ground brought another wet cough to her mouth, and every time this happened the young Keyblade Master found that her shortness of breath was getting worse and worse.
How did this happen? She thought in a panic as she sprang to an upright position. The only time it actually hit me beyond that shadow ball attack was when—
Her eyes widened in horrified realization, and she brought a hand up to feel the gash on her back. A narrow, warm gust of air jetted out to greet her palm, tickling it with the unexpected heat, and Aqua felt as though she were about to wretch.
The grappling hook which had slashed her back must have put a tiny hole in one of her lungs—not big enough to be immediately fatal, but large enough that she would soon die if the young woman did not receive immediate medical attention.
She had the capability to perform a Cure spell potent enough to repair the damage, but it would take time—and judging from the way her leonine assailant was thrashing about, it was time she simply did not have.
Aqua set her mouth in a thin, determined line and brought Master Keeper up to an offensive guard. I'll just have to finish this now, then…
The beast whirled round to face Aqua, and the warrior mage could tell right away that it was on its last legs. Thick gouts of black vapour billowed from the dozens of craters which pockmarked its velvet body, grim testament to the incredible damage her Prism Rain Shotlock had wrought upon this emissary of the dark. Its flanks shuddered with every breath, and its tongue dangled limply from one side of that grinning maw, leaking noxious miasma as though it had been bitten while its owner was thrashing in pain and rage. It wouldn't take much more effort for her to finish the beast off.
Yet it was equally clear, to the Keybearer's grim displeasure, that her assailant was not going to roll over and die without putting up a fight. Strange clouds of a thick, iridescent smoke enveloped its purple flanks, filling the air with a strange musk that made Aqua feel distinctly light-headed…or maybe that was the lack of oxygen talking. Either way, the beast looked odd as it swayed in place; its movements seemed clipped and choppy, like a poorly-done moving picture, and multi-coloured afterimages copied the fell behemoth's motions a half-second into its wake.
It was bizarre, to say the least. As the creature was not attacking at the moment, Aqua held her Keyblade aloft and let out a dry, wheezing rasp of "Esuna." A soothing light enveloped her for a moment, but alas the curative spell did absolutely nothing to dispel the surreal state of otherness which had befallen her.
Oh, well, she thought idly, barely even noticing as she cartwheeled to one side in an effort to evade the giant screaming fireball which had just exploded out of the dark hunter's mouth. It was worth a shot…
Aqua let out a giggle at this little pun, but it quickly turned into another wet cough. Okay, note to self; don't talk, laugh, cry out or vocalize in any other conceivable way any more than you have to for the next few minutes.
What happened next gave the young Keyblade Master cause to ponder whether the strange musk emanating from her opponent was causing a trip. The beast stopped moving, swaying gently in place as though waiting for her to attack, and then suddenly one of its afterimages was right in front of her, taking a swipe at her with its enormous claws.
"Hey!" she cried out, taking a step backward before her mind managed to exert a modicum of control. Calm down, Aqua; remember how it tried to psyche you out by hiding in the shadows? It's doing the same thing right now, trying to make you waste your energy by fighting…
One of the green afterimage's talons skimmed lightly across Aqua's abdomen, leaving a thin but noticeable cut in the fabric of her clothing as she came to a halt. The Keybearer stared down in shock as she heard the sound of cloth and leather being torn, and a cursory tactile examination revealed that yes, the cut was indeed real; thank heavens she's moved, or the beast would have disembowelled her right then and there.
…an illusion, her mind finished, a note of irritation evident in its tone.
Less talk, more action! Aqua thought, backpedalling furiously as more and more of the seemingly-illusory panthers came at her with deadly claw swipes. Even moving at full tilt and with adrenaline flooding her mind to clear it of its earlier lethargy, it was all she could do to stay out of reach and evade their raking talons.
Mercifully, each afterimage only made a single attack before fading from existence, and after the tenth mirage had narrowly missed taking her head off they stopped coming altogether. A good thing, too; with her breath now coming in tiny rasps and her body swaying as it fought to maintain equilibrium, Aqua doubted that she could have kept her evasive acrobatics up for any longer.
Naturally, it was at this point that the real dark hunter decided to make its presence known. The blue-haired girl barely had time to straighten up and resume her guarded position before the great beast lunged at her from within the fading final illusion, and Aqua cried out in alarm and pain as she fell backwards, narrowly evading a downward slash that would have easily split her in twain.
Unfortunately, there was no time to get out of the way, and the claw slammed down on the prone Keyblade Master to pin her against the cold earth, driving the breath from her lungs in a pained and completely involuntary gust of air and blood. She gasped desperately for breath, clawing at the enormous paw with her bare hands as panic began to creep over her, and the beast's hot and humid breath washed over her face in a rank jet as its head loomed above her, its jaws opening wide to administer the killing blow.
A weary resignation came over the warrior mage then, and she closed her eyes in defeat. So this is it, she thought bitterly. This is how I meet my end. I have to say, getting eaten by some sort of demon lion wasn't quite what I had in mind when I first agreed to become Master Eraqus' apprentice…
An image flashed through her mind then, or rather a series of images, lightning quick, so fast she wasn't even sure it had actually happened. The pictures had gone by too quickly for her to absorb all the details, but she recognized them from experience and knew their significance: Ven sitting in a throne, slumped over and comatose in the protective chamber she had wrought for her slumbering little brother; Terra, his hair turned molten silver and his eyes glowing a hateful amber, corrupted by the malign influence of the darkness and Xehanort's evil; and Master Eraqus, frowning at her with stern disapproval.
Aqua's eyes snapped open, and her face settled into a hard mask. She could not afford to die here and now; there were still too many people counting on her, too many promises left to fulfill, before she could make that ultimate journey.
"I won't lose," she gasped, lifting up Master Keeper with a truly immense effort. "Not here, not now…"
The dark hunter loosed a low growl, and its jaws surged forward to take her head off.
The beast came up short when it suddenly found the long, cold length of Aqua's Keyblade lodged in its throat. It gagged on the metal, trying to cough the blade up, but the young Master was having none of it; she leaned upright as far as the paw pinning her to the ground would allow, forcing the blade's length further and further down its throat. Power began to coruscate along its length.
"Did you hear me?" she said, her voice soft yet strong; the cold note of steel rang in her words, and even as the beast spat and hissed in anger they were clearly audible. "My name is Master Aqua. I am successor to Master Eraqus and custodian of the Land of Departure. I am the chosen wielder of the Keyblade, and I will not lose—"
A swift kick of an armoured foot struck a nerve, and the beast's paw came off Aqua as she stood up—
"—to the likes—"
She grasped the hilt of Master Keeper in both hands, thrusting it all the way in to the guard and bracing herself—
"—of a flea-bitten stray like you!"
Gritting her teeth with effort, the young Keyblade Master poured all of her strength into her vice-like grip on the Keyblade and wrenched the blade ninety degrees to the right in one smooth motion.
A sound like the chime of a celestial bell split the air, and the beast ceased struggling as intense rays of light began to shine out from within its body. Beams of radiance erupted all along the dark hunter's flanks, the very force of their luminance vaporizing the dark matter which made up its velvet flesh, and it vomited steam and blinding flares into the girl's face in a final effort to dissuade her; but Aqua was made of sterner stuff than that, and held on, taking all the punishment her dying assailant could dish out without so much as a single flinch.
Then, so suddenly that you would have missed the event entirely if you blinked, the creature exploded. Its remains quickly dissolved into a dank miasma, and at its core a glowing blue crystal in the shape of a heart revolved gently in mid-air, filling the clearing with its warm and gentle light. Aqua tracked the crystal as it slowly flew up to the heavens, where it disappeared in a shower of gold sparkles. She didn't fully understand the significance of this strange sight, but it brought a smile to her face nonetheless.
The Keyblade Master then took a moment to get her bearings, now that that was taken care of, and quickly turned in the direction of the shadow geyser.
"Right, I've come this far."
After administering a quick healing spell to close that injury on her back before things could get any worse, Aqua took one step in the direction of her ultimate goal…and promptly collapsed, unconscious. The strain of her furious battle had been too much for the girl.
The blue-haired young woman awoke some time later, confused and disoriented but otherwise feeling refreshed from her impromptu nap. After taking a few moments to make sure that her Cure spell had worked properly and everything was in working order—no gash on her back, thankfully, and no jet of warm air gusting out in time with her breath, either—Aqua got to her feet, summoned Master Keeper to her hand and set off once more. This time, she vowed, she would reach the geyser's source and get to the bottom of this.
She followed the path as it wound through the facsimile forest, following every twist and bend in the trail. To either side of the road, she noticed, the twisted parodies vegetation began to seem more and more like real bushes and actual trees as time went on and as she ventured further into the lightless depths of these woods, and they became so thick and clustered so densely that it was impossible for her to see very far in either direction. Every now and then a faint breeze would whisper through the boughs, setting their leaves aflutter and putting Aqua on edge. It wasn't the noise that unnerved her, or this gradual transformation from the building blocks of a forest to a genuine one; no, this was something else entirely, something grim and insidious. With every step she took, the young Keyblade Master felt an increasingly strong sense of wrongness about this place, wrongness…and worse, familiarity.
She had no idea why this place seemed to resonate with her so, and to be perfectly honest she did not want to know the reason behind it; all she knew, with a deep and absolute certainty whose source she could not identify, was that these woods did not belong in the Realm of Darkness. They belonged under a sunlit sky, not beneath the grim black storm clouds which now gathered overhead.
The low rumble of approaching thunder filled the air, and Aqua grimaced; while the boughs of the trees still formed a thick canopy over the path itself, there were enough gaps in their coverage that she would still get soaked to the bone if a downpour started. Then she would have a problem; there were many things which an Esuna spell could cure or alleviate, but pneumonia was not among them.
Though if nothing else, she thought with a wry smile, hanging her head, I'll finally be able to quench my thirst…
Her thoughts trailed off then, as she noticed that the forest came to an abrupt halt and left her standing on a flat plane of rock beneath an unbroken field of clouds.
Perturbed by this sudden change in scenery, Aqua lifted her gaze upward to look ahead…and came to a complete stop, recoiling from the sight before her as if slapped.
"It can't be…" she whispered, staring in horror at the source of the shadow geyser.
Not twenty feet from where she stood, the ground sloped rapidly downward into a deep valley, its contents hidden from prying eyes by an impossibly thick bank of violet fog, for the most part. Here and there she caught the briefest glimpse of verdant trees poking through the mist, only for the thick vapour to roll in and swallow these fragmentary glimpses up into their impenetrable depths. She had no idea how broad this vale was, or how far it stretched in any direction; but somehow, she knew, deep in her heart, that what she saw before her—the sole object to break free of the obscuring fog bank and rear up majestically in defiance of the heavens—lay at its heart.
Though it had been some time since she had last lain eyes on those gleaming white towers and their elegant blue spires, there was no mistaking the horrifically familiar keep which jutted incongruously from the shadowed vale like something out of a nightmare.
This was impossible; they had saved the worlds from Master Xehanort's insane ambitions, stopped him from opening the door to Kingdom Hearts and covering all the worlds in darkness. The Unversed were gone, no threats to the Realm of Light remained. How, then, could this be happening? How could something as pure and innocent as the beautiful castle before her come to be in this place? Had the whole universe gone insane?
A deep rumble of imminent thunder split the air again, and before her eyes the cloud cover broke to reveal twin glimpses of the leering purple sky beyond. Aqua shuddered as the clouds arranged themselves into an ominous shape; from this distance, the two breaks in the storm bank seemed like the baleful violet eyes of an evil god, leering down at the Castle of Dreams with an utterly malevolent intent.
Perhaps it had gone mad, the blue-haired Keyblade Master thought grimly, staring down at the valley below and the castle at its heart. Or maybe I have; either case is preferable to the alternative, that this is actually happening and not the fevered imaginings of my fatigued mind. What happened here, and where are Cinderella, Prince Charming, Jaq and the others?
Her journey to the mysterious fountain of darkness and its source might have ended, but the long night was not yet over. No, she realized, she was not out of the Realm of Darkness just yet; her nightmare was only just beginning.
...Aaaand I do believe that's a wrap, folks!
So ends the first arc of Kingdom Hearts Obscuritas; be sure to tune in next week as the adventure continues, and until then feel free to leave any comments or criticism you may have. I sincerely hope you enjoyed reading the tale thus far, and I hope that you will continue to do so in the weeks to come.
Oh, and before anyone asks, I know that I deviated from the game mechanics at certain points; I'm not going to let adherence to how the game works interfere with a good story. If that happens to be one of your criticisms, you don't need to bring it up. :p
