Chapter 7: State of the Worlds


When Kairi had been told Master Eraqus would be her primary Master and teacher for the time being, she had been elated.

When the first 'lesson' with him had been to just sit down for hours in meditation until dinner came, she hadn't been so sure anymore.

"The first step Kairi, in understanding how to properly use, and then master your abilities with the light, is to learn how to channel it, to draw it out in full at will," he had explained, "To do that, meditation is the starting key."

So, here she sat, after a quiet dinner with him and the Princesses, meditating again. Truth be told, she'd rather either be shown techniques, or be learning through combat. But... he was the Master of her true Master, so, she'd listen for now.

"The purpose of meditation, Kairi, is to clear your mind of thoughts, not fidget," called over Eraqus.

Kairi resisted the urge to roll her eyes. Instead, she simply closed them, breathed in, and breathed out. She calmed herself, and did her best to push aside the thoughts of her second home, her friends and family, trying to plague her.

She sat there for another few hours, until Eraqus had her call it for the night and she went to sleep. The night was not kind to her, nightmares of that final few hours of her second home warping her dreams. She was 'thankful' nightmares weren't exactly uncommon, she had stopped waking up screaming from them years ago. She woke up, had breakfast, and found herself meditating again.

She grumbled softly to herself and sighed as she knelt down to begin.

"Something the matter Kairi?" inquired Eraqus, a hint of amusement on his face.

"I ought to be learning something so I can go out and help," she muttered.

Eraqus raised an eyebrow. "Kairi, while the desire to help the worlds is a noble one, you are learning something. This may be 'boring' to you, but, there is less to teach you then there was my own apprentices, thus why we focus on it. Terra, Ventus, and Aqua all came to me as relatively blank slates in terms of powers and abilities. They of course naturally excelled in separate areas, but the point still stood that they barely knew how to summon their Keyblade when they arrived here. You at least know how to fight, and have some rudimentary knowledge of how to use your light."

It was... hard to imagine Master Aqua having once been weaker than Kairi was now. Kind of a humbling thought, to realize everyone, even heroes, had to have begun somewhere.

"How was Master Aqua at meditation?" asked Kairi.

A sad look overtook Eraqus. "She used to excel at it, before Xehanort came. She used to be my prized student, so gifted with magic and the light, before he harmed her, right under my nose. I hadn't a clue. After that, when she started struggling with the darkness Xehanort had unleashed by cracking her control over her heart, her performance began to decline. She couldn't meditate properly unless her friends were there with her, subtly soothing her inward pain."

He sighed. "Terra became the prized student, and even Ventus outshone her at times. Her fall into darkness was a quiet thing at first, before everything went wrong at the Mark of Mastery Exam. Afterwords, she descended full force into it's depths for the sake of her friends. Woe be it for her, and for the rest of us in the end, that she thought the darkness was the only answer."

Kairi frowned at that, but said nothing. She had never cared that Master Aqua used the darkness, but apparently, that wasn't true for the others. She felt her anger towards this Xehanort slowly beginning to bubble and rise. How that man had made her Master suffer...

She was going to return the favor one day.

"Still yourself, remain calm, and meditate until lunch nears, then, we will test to see how you have adapted," said Eraqus, kneeling down on the floor next to her, closing his eyes to meditate.

Kairi followed suit, emptying her mind, leaving herself blank...

...until Eraqus shook her shoulder. "Kairi?"

"Hmm...?" she murmured, opening her eyes.

"Draw out your light," he ordered softly, "Hold it in your hand."

Kairi blinked sleepily and held her hand out, coating it with light how she often did her blade.

"Spread it through your body," he ordered.

She followed the sensation of light coating her hand, pushing it down to slowly coat the rest of her body, just like she had done against Sora on instinct. It wasn't the immense power she had drawn out for her final stand at Traverse Town... but...

Kairi blinked a few times and shook her head, fully coming out of her meditation, and stared at herself. She clenched and unclenched her glowing hands, swinging her glowing arms out infront of her.

"Huh, what do you know...," murmured Kairi.

Eraqus chuckled. "Have faith in my teachings child, I have done this three times before, and went through it myself. Though, you learned and adapted to it at an impressive speed."

Eraqus stood up and beckoned her to rise. "With your light channeled and engulfing you in it's aura, you will find everything about yourself increased. Your speed, your senses, your strength, your power with the light, and your magic. It drains you faster, to use your light like this, but it's grace will help guide you through even the most troubling of times and challenges."

"The more you practice channeling, the more your light will grow, and the quicker you will be able to draw it out and use it," explained Eraqus.

"How fast can you do this?" asked Kairi.

Eraqus took a few steps back away from her and then tensed. A powerful light radiated from him, blue lightning cackling down his body briefly. Her eyes went wide at that, her senses flaring, probing his light. Once again, she found her senses fooled by what she had detected before. When someone truly brought out the power of the heart, it was something hard to measure...

"Wow...," she whispered.

Eraqus relaxed his energy. "One day Kairi, you too will be able to so easily and readily reach this level. Perhaps, you'll even surpass me. Come, let us eat."

Kairi relaxed her energy and followed him to sit at the dinning hall with the rest of the Princesses. "So, how often do the others stay out for on their umm... missions?"

Eraqus sat down and motioned for her to do the same. "It's not missions, per say. We have one goal, and that is to safeguard and try to prevent the Realm of Light from collapsing for as long as we can."

"You... say it as if it's a given fact that it will collapse," said Kairi warily.

Eraqus sighed. "Kairi, so few worlds remain in our vicinity anymore. There are still plenty, off in the far distance, but, those take days to reach, taking longer and longer the farther out you have to travel. Yet, even those are slowly blinking out, day by day. There will come a point when there is not enough light, not enough worlds left in the Realm of Light to sustain it. If it weren't for the light of the Princesses, we figure the Realm would have ruptured by now with the utter devastation ripping through it."

Eraqus rubbed his nose tiredly as Cinderella began passing out plates of food. "In our immediate vicinity in the Realm of Light, there are only three worlds within an hour's drive by glider, where there used to be dozens, if not hundreds. Olympus Coliseum, the Land of Dragons, and Disney Castle, are all that is left. The Coliseum survives because of the unusual circumstances surrounding that world. Heroes, both living and dead, are brought out of it's underworld to combat the Heartless, and the gods of that world itself intervene in the ongoing catastrophe."

Kairi had her eyebrows raised, fork frozen half way to her mouth. "Living AND dead people?"

Eraqus nodded. "The lord of the dead, Hades, made a special rule for the dead to leave the underworld and combat the Heartless, considering the apocalypse all worlds are facing. He is a smooth talking devious god, but, even he was forced to adapt. For, before the Leader of the Heartless, the Olympus gods, even mighty Zeus, are nothing."

The weight of his words pressed down on her heavily... not even gods, the deities people worshiped could stop IT?

Eraqus saw her look and cleared his throat. "Though certain ones may be, most gods are not as all powerful as you may have been led to believe. Terra himself faced off against Hades once, during the original Xehanort conflict, and bested him in combat."

Kairi relaxed slightly. "Oh, okay, but... you said that the gods couldn't stand up to it. Did they actually fight it? Or is it just a comparison?

Eraqus chuckled softly. "An attention for detail like that will serve you well child. Yes, the Olympian Gods and the Leader of the Heartless did clash once. However, it was early on, back when it was called the Heartless Invasion rather than the Heartless Apocalypse. The Leader was barely a fraction of as strong as it is now. It is one of the few times that thing was ever actually beaten or driven off by the inhabitants of an individual world. They are fortunate the Heartless don't particularly care about the notion of revenge. It could crush them easily now if it cared to return."

That certainly was a sobering thought, still, she could admit, "The fact that IT was beaten once is... an inspiring thought."

They paused to eat a bit before Eraqus continued, "Disney Castle is Mickey's home. It houses an artifact of great light, the Cornerstone, that repels the darkness. Heartless cannot manifest within the castle's walls. Though, Disney Town itself fell some time ago, as the pressure that the Leader of the Heartless exerts weakens the Cornerstone's influence over the world it resides in. We use Mickey's home as a place to rest and recover if we cannot make it back here, or as a place to further venture out deeper into the worlds."

He hesitated. "We... are not certain if the Cornerstone would honestly stop the Leader of the Heartless from entering that world however, considering it's raw power, it would hopefully weaken that Heartless at least."

Eraqus frowned. "The Land of the Dragons is a hollowed world of what it used to be. It used to be home to two separate factions, China, and the Huns. They hated each other, but even that hatred paled in comparison to the hunger of the Heartless. It was one of the last times we ever dove into a world being consumed by the Leader of the Heartless. We found the Keyhole, sealed it, and helped the world weather out the storm until the Heartless lost interest. The Leader of them craves the hearts of worlds far more than the hearts of individual people. If it's not an option, it moves on. What remains of China and the Huns banded together to try to survive in their ravaged world. We check in from time to time to try and lend a hand, but each time, the world has withered a little more. It's a sad thing to watch the fall of a world, even when the Heartless cannot reach their Keyhole, it will still most likely collapse on itself and fall to darkness. It was to badly damaged, and so much of it's people lost, in that night of consumption."

Kairi had stopped feeling hungry about half way through that detailing. Listening to this was depressive...

"Before I continue. If we were to detail the world as a whole in a map. The worlds in the immediate vicinity to the Land of Departure would be classified as the Core Worlds. The next stage, those within a several hour flight by glider, would be called the Inner Worlds. Anything else that takes a day or more to reach, would be called the Outer Worlds. Understand?" explained and asked Eraqus.

Kairi nodded.

"The Leader of the Heartless started in the Core Worlds and ate it's way outward," explained Eraqus, "The farther the worlds got from the Land of Departure, the harder it was to defend them. Through their Corridors of Darkness, the Heartless can travel near instantly to another world. So many worlds were lost simply because of the time it took to travel to them when their stars started blinking out."

He massaged his forehead. "As I said, there are only three worlds left in our immediate vicinity, the Core. It is also unfortunate to say that only three of the Inner Worlds are left as well."

Kairi's face fell. "How many did there used to be?"

"Where there were hundreds of core worlds at one point, there were thousands of Inner Worlds," he said heavily.

Kairi looked down at her plate silently, feeling like her stomach wanted to heave itself up. She had always thought Traverse Town was overcrowded... but... the truth was, so few people survived the fall of their worlds if what Eraqus said was true. Thousands of worlds fell, compared to the hundreds of districts.

"All that remains aside from those six between the Core and Inner worlds, not including what lives in the Realm Between, are the worlds that exist so far away from us. When we leave to go to the outer worlds, its usually a several day, if not week, expedition. We don't have any particular goal or world to defend with such en-devours, we simply try to banish the Heartless where we find them, and find and seal the Keyholes," explained Eraqus.

Keyhole... something about that term faintly tugged at her, as if someone had mentioned it to her before Eraqus had...

"How hard is it to find a Keyhole?" asked Kairi.

"A monumental task to be frank," said Eraqus, "Unless you are lucky enough to stumble across it, it's nigh impossible for us. The only sure way, is to follow the Heartless, for they can seemingly can smell the Heart of a World. That of course, is extremely dangerous, as that allows them to get far to close, and may be able consume the world before we can stop them, or overwhelm us and drive us from the Keyhole."

Kairi nodded. "I see."

She refocused. "You said there were three Inner Worlds?"

Eraqus nodded. "Alexandria, Lordaeran..."

He frowned intently. "...and Tristram."

Kairi tilted her head, it was hard not to notice that pause. "Something wrong with Tristram?"

"It's a place I don't intend for you to go to for some time. It is a world where good and evil were forced to ally in order to fight the Heartless," he said with disdain, "One day, the creature of pure evil, of terror, that they allied themselves with is going to consume them as readily as the Heartless would. Still, that was one of the worlds we found the Keyhole for, on accident to be honest."

Kairi felt a little uneasy at his words, but store it away for later. "What about the other two?"

"Alexandria is a world that used to be so grand, and bore another name for a time. It used to be home to three kingdoms, Alexandria, Burmecia, and Lindblum. The other two were consumed by darkness, and only the light of the castle of Alexandria and it's champions kept their world alive in it's darkest hour. Thus, the shrunken world was renamed after the only surviving kingdom," explained Eraqus.

Eraqus displayed a cunning smile, "Lordaeran, which by the way we will be visiting after were done lunch, is a world protected by the Order of the Silver Hand..."

Kairi's eyes bulged. "We're going to another world?!"

Eraqus chuckled. "Of course, you can't expect all of your training to occur within these walls."

He grew serious. "Even if you are but a fledgling apprentice, you are still a Keybearer, and have a duty to help defend the worlds. Gone are the days where we could sit here and train in solitude. Sora and Riku, as much as I never would have wished it on them, were trained out in the worlds from the moment they awakened their Keyblades, roughly when they were both eight."

Kairi nodded with equal seriousness, and hid a bit of jealousy. Those two boys had been out there making a difference at such a young age. She had only just started out learning how to fight at that age, always stuck with someone else on patrol... dammit... she hated being reminded of how long she had been stuck in that refugee world.

Eraqus finished off his plate before speaking, "Lordaeran is an old world, stuck in it's old ways. But, that is not a bad thing. It lacks in technology, but makes up for it by far with faith in the light. The Order of the Silver Hand is a group of paladins, light wielders, who safeguard their world. They are impressive. Their best can even match blades with myself, Mickey, or Ventus. Though, Terra is by far their, and our, superior."

Kairi thought briefly for a moment, recalling how her senses had been so easily fooled lately. "Just... how strong IS Master Terra?"

Eraqus pulled on his mustache in thought. "I don't think there has been a Keyblade Master of the Light with his pure raw power and strength in many generations. These last ten years of constant struggle have pushed him to a level of strength few could even dream of. To be frank, I'm not even sure of how strong he honestly is anymore. He hasn't had to cut loose in several years."

"Should... he try to fight the...," began Kairi.

Eraqus shook his head. "Even with how strong he may or may not be, he is not strong enough to beat that thing, not even close."

Kairi sighed. "It's... really hard to find any hope to use against IT..."

"You should always have faith," said Aurora.

Kairi blinked a few times, noticing the Princesses were all still gathered, and watching them silently. Jeez... were they really THAT interested?

Well...

Then again, they were trapped in a castle all day every day for protection. The training and instruction of a new apprentice was probably something exciting to break from their normal daily lives. Yeah... that was another reason to definitely train and not stay back to be a coddled 'Princess of Heart', because that had to be boring as hell.

"I agree with Aurora," said Eraqus.

He slowly stood up and walked over to Kairi, kneeling down in front of her. "Kairi, I want you to never forget. Even in the deepest darkness, exists..."

"A light to guide you. So long as you believe in the light, the darkness will never defeat you," finished Kairi faintly.

Eraqus looked at her with surprise. "How do you..."

"My grandma," said Kairi softly, "She used to tell me the exact same thing."

Eraqus smiled and chuckled at that. "A wise woman indeed then, but even beyond that Kairi..."

"Even in the greatest darkness, exists the greatest of lights," said Eraqus, "If you find the legions of darkness surrounding you, if you feel that there is no hope, turn to those words, and never forget them."

He stood. "Come, we have to get you a set of Keyblade Armor, and teach you how to summon your own glider."

Kairi nodded and made to rise before pausing.

Keyblade Armor...?

Like... the one she had been armored in on that mural in that dream?

She gave a soft smile as she followed him out of the dining hall, betting quietly to herself, "Five munny says it's red and white."


Author's Notes:

Yeah, I might have just spoiled the large majority of the World Roster for this story. :P.

I found that I actually backed myself into kind of a corner with how many worlds were destroyed, and by some of the characters I had put into Traverse Town.

Jack: Cut Port Royal off the list.

Rapunzel: Cut Tangled off the list.

Arthur: Cut England off the list. (While Merlin exists as a part of Radiant Garden, England wasn't cannon to KH, but Arthur was to golden of a character not to include)

Barret: Cut Midgar off the list. (Midgar wasn't cannon to KH either, but it was an idea I toyed with)

Hiro: Cut his world off the list.

Lilo/Stitch: Cut Hawaii off the list.

Just as the obvious examples, plus you have to consider the fact that there was supposed to have been many other worlds that had fallen in order to create a Traverse Town THAT huge.

So, I had to do a bit of thinking to decide where and what to include in this story.

Traverse Town was eaten in Chapter 3, and Radiant Garden was eaten back in Aqua: Heart of Darkness, so that struck off two original worlds from the KH series.

I also couldn't have it entirely be Disney, because let's face it, many of those worlds would have easily fallen to the rapid increase in the number of regular Heartless alone, not including Aqua/Xehanort's heartless themselves. Not to mention, as I said in an earlier chapter, all the worlds the Princesses of Heart originated from were consumed to explain them being in the Land of Departure, so that also cut down potential worlds drastically from the original list of KH worlds.

So, I did some picking from the original list of worlds from KH1-2, and had to contemplate if they would have actually survived, Keyhole sealing or not.

Olympus Coliseum was a rather obvious choice for me, considering just how much it had going for it. Hercules, Hades, the Pantheon of the Gods (not mentioned in KH1-2, but they exist in that world's none-KH lore so why not), and the entire Underworld, make it a very strong contender for survival.

The Land of the Dragons: Was an iffy choice to me. It had standing armies, between the Huns and China, so that gave it better than normal odds in it's favor. However, it had perhaps like... 4-5 strong warriors? Mushu, Mulan (who wouldn't have even been old enough to fight back then), Shan-Yu, and maybe Shang. So, their world ends in a bad state, slowly petering away.

Disney Castle: Cornerstone of Light. Enough said.

After that, I had to spread my options into other, none-cannon KH options (I.E. worlds not used in any of the games or teased in KH3). To be honest, my knowledge base isn't that impressive. I stopped watching TV/Movies years ago in favor of gaming, and some games, and the TV shows I remember, are either completely incompatible, or not comparable in terms of mechanics or power.

To give an example from my knowledge base: Dragon Ball Z...

Uh...

Anything Saiyan Saga forward wouldn't mesh, far to powerful and OP for a Kingdom Hearts setting.

So, I slowly narrowed down what I knew to three games/worlds:

Alexandria: From Final Fantasy 9.

Lordaeran: From Warcraft III.

Tristram: From Diablo I-II.

Warcraft and Diablo are kind of dark for Kingdom Hearts, but I went with it. After all, this story and the previous one are already kind of dark/bleak.

Tristram, I actually really liked as an idea after I chose it, to show how desperate things were. You should have a good idea of just what the people of Tristram allied themselves with to survive if you've played Diablo and caught what Eraqus hinted at, or you know it's lore. Will be an interesting meeting when Kairi eventually gets there, he he he he he he.

I also recalled that I couldn't do Spira from FF10, because of the Lore I put into Aqua: HOD about the Keyblade War.

Oh, and before you ask, Twilight Town is still kicking.

Whether or not Kairi visits it and finds a certain Nobody of a certain Master in this book, well...

That's a secret for now.

:tease: