Ansem's Second Report
Chapter X
Riku stared at the strange man in shock. "What…did you say?"
The hooded man laughed. "Tell me," he said, "are you really that surprised?"
Riku swore as he summoned the Oathkeeper. He wasn't going to let this man get away with what he did. His friends could have died in that battle. Riku felt his rage swell inside of him. It gave him power, made him strong. He would use this strength to do away with this being once and for all.
Riku ran toward him, raising the Keyblade up, preparing for an attack. He leaped high into the air, waiting for that perfect moment, when his weapon would connect with his adversary and banish him to the darkness for all eternity. Once he was done with this man, this thing, he would resume his search for his long lost friend, find him, and finally bring him home.
He came down with much force, arching the Oathkeeper downward toward the hooded man's head. The hooded man put his hand up. "Stop," he said, and stop Riku did. He hung there in mid-air, holding onto the Keyblade. The hooded man put his hand down, and, to Riku's astonishment, the Keyblade dropped to the ground as well.
"Back off," the man said, and Riku and the Keyblade were flung across the floor to the other side of the platform, as if being pulled by an invisible force.
"As I said. I do not wish to fight you," said the man. Riku rose to his feet, his eyes wide. The man turned toward him. "You want to know who I am…don't you."
"Why?" Riku whispered. "Why do you control the Keyblade?"
"Because," the man said, raising his hands, "I created it."
Riku's blood froze in his veins. He could barely bring himself to believe what he was hearing. "What?"
"There is much the King has not told you, young man."
"But why? How?"
"Be still. All will be explained. Time is already short, and I'm afraid the enemy moves ever closer to discovering our plans."
"What…plans?" Riku dismissed the Keyblade, now enamored with this man. No, not a man. He couldn't be sure what this was.
"All in good time," said the man. "First, I shall tell you a story. It would be in your best interest to listen closely to what I have to say, for this concerns you and Sora."
Riku snapped to attention. "You know where Sora is?"
The man put a hand up. "First, listen. There's not much time."
Riku waited there as the man told his story. "For eons before the first world, before the first living heart, and even before existence itself as you know it, there existed one realm. It was a realm that had no heart, yet existed completely within the light. Beings such as myself lived there, and basked in the comforting warmth the light had to offer. Happiness abounded. It was a place which you now refer to as 'Paradise', or recently, as 'Kingdom Hearts.'
"In the society of this realm of light, I was one of four elders, heralding unlimited power, existing above the others in the world, and looked to from everyone as a sage and as a teacher. As such a master of knowledge, my comrades came to me with many a question dealing with the light and where we had come from and other such inquiries. I and the others that stood behind me did our best to answer their questions and keep their inquisitive minds at peace. Still, there was much to know about our existence and why we existed in the first place.
"We spent many years studying the mysteries of our realm and its many mystical properties. After a short period of time, we found that we could harness the energy of our realm and transform it. The combinations we discovered were innumerable. We found combinations for everything including fire, ice, water, earth, wind, and even light and darkness. Essentially, we learned to use our abilities and knowledge to create matter."
Riku looked hard at the sage. "The worlds," he said, "That's how they were made!"
"Yes," said the sage, "that's just it. We sages built the worlds with our 'magic' and thus filled the worlds with our power. It was through this infusion that life began to appear in many different forms.
"It became apparent to me and my associates that we needed a way to establish order in this mess of worlds. It was then deemed that every small group of worlds will be watched by one chosen by us. Thus, the Keyblade Masters were born. The worlds were split into small groups and one was chosen to lead and defend them, wielding the one weapon that had the ability to unleash the true power of their hearts: the Keyblade.
"At this time, my colleagues and myself had become aware of the darkness lurking in the hearts of those that lived on the worlds and of the darkness that lived in the hearts of the worlds themselves. We deemed that the weapons such as the Keyblades, when weilded by the right people, would indeed be formidable weapons against this threat. It was imperative that we carefully choose the ones to wield the weapons. In order to achieve this quickly, we allowed the Keyblades themselves to be the judges and choose those that we deemed worthy of their might.
"There were four chosen to construct the Keyblades, I myself included. The number of Masters numbered in the tens of millions spread widely throughout the multiverse. Once the deliveries had been completed, we forged four 'Master Keys' for ourselves. These special Keyblades would hold nearly unlimited power and would only be used for government of the Masters."
"Are these Master Keys still around? I've never seen them before," said Riku.
"As a matter of fact, Riku, you have. In my realm we know them as 'The Four.' You know them as the Kingdom Key, the Oathkeeper, the Oblivion, and the Ultima Weapon.
"The intricate hierarchy had been completed. Over the many thousands of years the Masters kept order and peace, but soon came to disagreement on many things. It is difficult for people from different walks of life to see things the same way. Fights erupted, beliefs were changed, dangerous alliances were made in blind rage without thought or reason. The Keyblade Masters were sinking into the darkness they had sworn to destroy.
"Then, approximately two thousand years ago, a terrible war began that shook the very fabric that held the worlds together. The battle pitted those that fell to their inner darkness against those that were strong enough to resist it. Keyblade Master killed Keyblade Master, and soon entire armies were arisen to carry out the Masters' wills in battle. Never in the history of the multiverse had so much blood been spilled. One by one army after army fell, taking many Masters with them. The worlds that hosted the battles fell to darkness and blinked out of the night sky, too weak to continue their once-thriving life. We, even with our great power, could do nothing to stop the advance of their rage and the power of darkness.
"At the end of the war, the worlds lay in ruin. Worlds once covered with plains and lush forests now were nothing but lifeless deserts. Mountains were leveled and the air and water on the worlds were either too stale to be used or simply ceased to exist. Moreover, there remained only a handful of Keyblade Masters to govern still many thousands of worlds. We called the remaining Masters to our realm in order to convene with them about the best course of action.
"The conferences ended well with high hopes. The Keyblade Masters remained generally optimistic. As for The Four, the same cannot be said. One of us, the one who held the Oblivion had other ideas."
"Who was he?" asked Riku.
"I will not speak his true name," said the sage. "Just know that he is the cause for the creatures you so valiantly give your life to fight against. After the great Keyblade War, as it had come to be known, this one became enamored with the darkness, having seen the power it brought to its wielder, no matter how fleeting that power may be. He resigned as sage in order to study it more closely that he may harness its power. He didn't realize that he had already slipped into the darkness on his own.
"When we bade him to leave his Key behind, he became angry and lunged at us. We fought in our palace for a short while and were able to chase him off into the shadows beyond our realm. He screamed revenge as he fled into the infinite darkness. While there in the shadows, he was able to take hold of the power of darkness and give life to beings made completely from its evil. You have fought many of them before. You call them 'Heartless'"
"Those without hearts," Riku muttered, amazed.
"Precisely, Riku. Over time in the dark, he was able to amass a great and terrible army of these creatures. He returned to our realm one thousand strong and demanded that we subject to his will. When we refused, he began a full war against our realm and took the hearts of millions of innocents to add to his ranks.
"Once again, we called for the few Keyblade Masters left in the multiverse. The great Keyblade War, it seemed, had not ended with them. We met for one final struggle in the field where thousands of Keyblades, once belonging to great Masters, now lay in the dirt, rotting with rust. This is precisely why our realm has come to be called the Realm Of A Thousand Keyblades. There, while the other Masters dealt with the Heartless, we waited for him. He met us amidst the dying weapons and summoned the Oblivion. We summoned our weapons and it began. He showed immense skill with a blade, easily parrying and returning strikes from three opponents. No doubt darkness aided him in the battle. It was as if he could sense our moves moments before we executed them. The three of us fanned out and surrounded him, pressing him as we did with blow after blow, cut after cut, but his speed was incredible. We fell into a rhythm as the fight dragged on, neither side gaining or losing. It went on for some time. Finally, he tired, and I was successfully able to connect with a slash to his back. He fell to the ground and dropped his weapon. We were on him before he could summon the weapon back to him. Seeing that he had no way to go, he surrendered and the Oblivion was added to those in the graveyard. The other Keyblade Masters shortly reported that all Heartless had been destroyed. Peace had come once again to our realm and the threat of the great Keyblade War had finally passed.
"The traitor was imprisoned and eventually tried. The council of my realm deemed him too dangerous to be kept there. The only thing we could think of was to banish him to one of the worlds closest to our realm so that he could be monitored."
"Why didn't you just destroy him?" demanded Riku sharply.
"It is not our way," said the sage. "We do not kill our prisoners. That would only add to the darkness and make it stronger. We above all else did not desire that. Banishment was the only way. After successfully wiping his memory and constructing him a body, we sent him into the multiverse and placed him on a world we deemed would be best. It was a small world governed by a wise sage who taught strictly the ways of the light. The people there were a peaceful people and we didn't think there was any way the traitor could grow into a problem. We made sure he was placed in the direct care of the sage.
"Many years passed, and not one disturbance was sensed from that world. Our watch over that world eventually lessened as we turned from it towards the needs of other worlds. There was much damage done since the War and many people cried for help in those dark times. So it was no surprise to us when we felt it. It was as though a beacon lit up. We heard it like wind in the trees, or like the distant rumble of thunder. A new force of darkness was growing. Compared to this new evil, the evil of the great War was as nothing.
"We turned back to the world to find it in chaos. It seemed that although we robbed the traitor of his identity, we could not quell his inquisitive nature. He dispatched the governor sage and turned once again to darkness, as if he was fated to always live in it. He had found a way to harness the darkness there on that world and se his knowledge of their technology to build a machine that would artificially create denizens of darkness from living hearts, the Heartless."
Riku's eyes widened.
"Yes, Riku," said the sage with a smile. "You know this traitor don't you? You've met him before, fought with him and against him, haven't you?
Riku backed away a step. "No," he said, "I don't believe it. It can't be."
"But it is," the sage replied. "He is the one that changed your life, and the one that threatens all life even now. We know him as the traitor, but you know him differently."
"Xehanort," uttered Riku. "Then…the world he was sent to was…"
"…Hallow Bastion. Precisely."
"But, we defeated Xehanort's Heartless and Xemnas as well. We defeated him. There's no way he could still be a danger to us."
The sage raised a finger at Riku. "You are forgetting something young Keyblade Master: the Chasers."
"What are they," asked Riku.
"The Chasers," said the sage, "are everything and nothing at all, a new nemesis. They are more powerful than Heartless and Nobody combined. When a heart is taken, the darkness in the heart grows into a Heartless that in turn seeks other hearts to consume. The body left behind is deemed an empty shell and, without a heart to guide it, also falls to darkness. This is called a Nobody: empty shells without hearts. What about the soul?"
"The soul?" asked Riku.
"Yes, the soul. All beings consist of three things: the heart, body, and soul. Without one, the other two cannot possibly exist. Whenever a Heartless takes a heart, the body and soul are left. Without a heart to guide them, the body and soul fall to darkness and transform into a Nobody and a Chaser, eaters of souls. They are exceptionally dangerous and masterfully powerful. They consume the light in the souls of complete beings and degrade them into lesser creatures, thus creating more Heartless, Nobodies, and Chasers."
"What do they have to do with Xehanort?"
"My boy, they have everything to do with Xehanort. You defeated Xehanort's Heartless, the one that called itself Ansem, and Xemnas, the Nobody of Xehanort."
Riku gasped as the realization hit him. "There's one more."
"Yes, Riku, there is. The Memories Of Xehanort still thrive in his Chaser. You see, when a being is changed into the trinity of lesser beings, its memories go with the soul. As long as the Memories Of Xehanort are at large, no world is safe."
"And what of Sora?"
"Sora is safe," said the sage. "He waits at the Realm Of A Thousand Keyblades for you and Kairi. After the defeat of Xemnas, I sent another letter to Sora on destiny islands. At first I did not believe the Keyblade Master would heed my call so I stamped the seal of the King onto it to get his attention."
Riku's head slumped. "He left without ever saying anything. Kairi too."
"They wanted you to find your own way. It was the only way I could meet you since we didn't have much time."
"It's just that I haven't seen him in so long."
"Oh no," said the sage, "you saw him quite recently.
Riku remembered Midgar, the building in the square. His eyes lit up. "That was him!"
"Yes, Riku, it was. He thought you might need motivation."
"So," said Riku, "what now?"
"There is not much time. Already things are moving too rapidly to keep track of. The enemy becomes ever more powerful in the darkness. We must go to the Realm Of A Thousand Keyblades and plan a course of action. It seems we were wrong once again. The Keyblade War has not yet ended. Rather it has just begun. Come Riku. It is time the Four were reunited. The Memories Of Xehanort must be put to rest once and for all."
The sage opened a rift into the void beyond the stained glass platform. Beyond the portal Riku saw a vast field filled with rows of rusted Keyblades. At the crossroads in the field, Riku caught a glimpse of the greatest sight his eyes had ever seen: his friends Sora and Kairi. Sora turned to the portal and reached out his hand for Riku to grasp. Riku stepped through the portal with the sage and it closed behind him one final time as his hand finally touched with Sora's. Finally, they were together again.