Chapter 21- Darkness Reborn
Peering down through the window of the GUN Falcon, Algos sighed at the sight of the once pristine jungle. Rain forest teeming with life was interrupted periodically by deep, muddy ruts that tore through the landscape like scars on the Earth's surface, while massive soulless machines continued to clear away wide swaths of forest. Toxic chemicals poured out of drain pipes into the rivers, giving them a distinctive yellowish hue, threatening to kill any creature that would quench their thirst with it.
"You know, I'm beginning to remember why I never liked GUN very much," Algos growled to himself, his old distrust of the organization quick to resurface and slow to fade.
"Well, like it or not guys, we're with them now, and we have a job to do. We may not like their methods, but they protect people from criminals like Hisaki," Rouge advocated, trying to keep her eyes facing forward to avoid seeing the devastation below.
Algos however glanced down at Sonic, who was keeping pace with the helicopter on the ground below. Every so often, his form would be obscured by the twisting jungle, or he would vault over a stony obstruction, but despite these impediments, he never faltered in keeping up with the huge aircraft.
"We'll soon arrive at the top secret storage facility. It's been left relatively unguarded so as not to draw attention to it after the fiasco where three Chaos Emeralds were stolen from the main vault a few years ago," the pilot yelled back at them over the sound of the spinning rotors, conveniently leaving out that it was Rouge herself who had stolen them.
Looking down, they noticed a set of structures they were quickly approaching, what appeared to be ancient ruins partially concealed within the jungle. Stone spires with elaborate carvings worn down by the decay of time reached upwards out of the mist and foliage like fingers clawing at the sky, as a massive pyramid covered in moss and vines dominated everything around it.
"We can't land in the jungle or we'll get caught in the tree cover. I'm going to set you down in a clearing a short distance from the temple. The vault is hidden beneath it. Heh, nobody would dare destroy such a priceless architectural relic."
Just as the pilot said in his thick Maritime accent, the aircraft began to decelerate, until they were hovering over a wide grass clearing with the temple visible in the distance. Standing in the clearing and waiting for them were Tikal and Knuckles, by the looks on their faces already acquainted with the ancient site.
The wings on the jet slid upwards, the rotors build into its wings slowing gradually as the door in its side slid open. The three heroes disembarked from the side of the craft, joining their friends in the grassy field. A dozen or so GUN soldiers stood a little ways away from them in a semicircle, a few of them talking into radios mounted to their chests.
Birds squawked as a blue streak weaved through the thick forest surrounding the clearing. Vines and foliage were dispersed every which way when Sonic burst through into the clearing. A cloud of dust swept through the waiting soldiers, causing them to shield their eyes, expressions of annoyance finding it's way on all the men's faces.
"So, are we gonna get moving or what?" Sonic commented, his toe tapping on the ground like a quiet heart beat.
"Rouge is confirming the coordinates from the military Commander, then the Guardian and I will lead you all to the temple." The Griffon's incarnation turned towards the jungle, biting her lip gently. "Something here is... unnerving. I can't quite determine what, but we'd best be careful."
"What do you mean?" the crimson guardian to her left questioned. "Is it those robed freaks as usual?"
Tikal shook her head and sighed, trying to dismiss the topic from her mind. "I'm not sure... I just feel a very... familiar presence in the area. I don't quite have the same abilities to determine what it is like Lord Chaos, but it feels very...cold."
"Hey, no worries," Sonic assured while setting his hand on her shoulder. "It looks like Rouge is ready, so why don't we get those Emeralds?"
A mutual silence had found it's way among the group. The constant footsteps marching through the marsh seemed to fade in with the wildlife that surrounded them, creating a plain and dull mixture of sound. Sonic curiously watched the animals in the trees, paying no attention to the soldiers mumbling behind him. Remarks about the blue blur's inability to protect, and his constant whiny behaviour always managed to break through his trance, though. Each small comment seemed to irk Sonic, but, he didn't let it show.
He knew that now wasn't the time to be butting heads with the military. As much as he hated to be in allegiance with them, he also realized they were a major benefit to their cause right now.
Sonic groaned and tapped his shoes against the trunk of a crooked tree, trying to free his sneakers of any caked on mud he may have collected. Soldiers trudged past him as he did so, some glaring at him, while others looked at him in fear.
Ignoring their gazes, the blue hero took up the rear of the group, becoming lost in his thoughts once more. He wondered if Shadow had ever been feared when he was working with GUN. Sonic sighed to himself, regretting bringing the topic of his lost comrade up in his mind.
Flashback
"Have I gotten any stronger by staying with you? Was I able to kill my brother when he came to Angel Island?" the ultimate life form asked so suddenly and in such impassiveness, that it caught Sonic off guard.
"No. Instead I was humiliated. Attachments have held me back from my destiny for too long..." he continued slowly, his hand shooting out and grabbing Sonic by the fur just below his neck, drawing him closer to his face.
"...And now I'm going to cut them all."
After a brief moment of heavy silence, Sonic voiced his thoughts, "You're really serious, aren't you?"
Shadow hesitated, his smirk disappearing, "Of course I am, you wouldn't stand down."
"How could I?" Sonic demanded furiously, swiping his hand through the heavy, tension-filled air, "You're trying to betray me and everyone else! Don't you know G.U.N. will list you as a rogue agent?"
Shadow's black eyes studied Sonic's rage-infected form, his gaze hardening, "How could I betray something I was never a part of?"
Those words, spoken in such a cold and emotionless tone, hit the blue hedgehog like a ton of bricks. He wasn't a part of them, a part of their circle of friends? How could Shadow actually say these things to his face?
"Bullshit," the cerulean hero spat at his ebony counterpart, taking a step forward, "You saved the world with me all the time, how could you not be a part of our friendship?"
"It was for my own convenience," Shadow replied without missing the beat of the heated conversation, "I merely helped you on a whim."
End Flashback
The day he had tried so hard to bring his friend home. The day so long ago that everything suddenly crumbled down around Sonic. The fact that a friend, who had been in their midst for so long, suddenly leaving for a goal so selfish truly caught them off guard. So much had changed since then. Nothing had been left the way it should be.
Sonic turned his attention to Rouge up ahead, a sudden feeling of guilt filling him. He wondered how she felt. Did she hold some form of grudge deep down because of his inability to bring their friend home? Did she hate him for not succeeding, and having allowed him to be killed? Her reaction after explaining the discovery in Eruthros had been heartbreaking. Every single hope she had held onto that Shadow was truly alive, suddenly blew up in her face, and Sonic felt at fault.
'Sorry, Rouge,' Sonic thought to himself with a sigh, then turned his attention to the gap in the jungle ahead. He could see the temple they were on their way to peaking above the trees, it's historic architecture beginning to feel out of the ordinary and alien to it's surroundings.
Something about this place seemed to get to him. He felt like a cloud of darkness lingered all around them. It was beginning to feel like a living, breathing monster watching and waiting to devour them all. At this point, though, he didn't expect much of a happy ending.
Glancing wordlessly at the two echidna's leading them, Sonic could see in both their eyes that they had approached the secret storage vault where the Chaos Emeralds were being kept. The squad of GUN soldiers who had come with them stood at posts firmly in the large outer room, watching the heroes carefully.
They had been sent here merely to observe the pickup, to ensure nothing went wrong, but none of them had the proper security clearance to just go waltzing into the vault, and even the access the heroes had been given was highly... irregular.
The commanding officer in charge of the platoon faced Sonic, as he approached a keypad mounted beside a metal door.
"We'll be waiting out here in case anything goes wrong, and be monitoring radio and energy frequencies the whole time. Just let us know if you require assistance," he said gruffly, before punching a passcode into the keypad with thick, knobby fingers that comically resembled undercooked sausages.
"You keep this door open for me, will ya?" Sonic replied, stretching his legs in a demonstrative way, "as soon as we have those Emeralds, I'm planning on getting them out of here as fast as I can!"
Receiving nothing more than a nod and an unenthusiastic eyebrow raise from the stocky soldier, he and the others ventured into the dark recesses of the vault tunnels. As they walked carefully away from the portal of illumination that was the vault door, Tikal raised a hand aloft, allowing a small orb of light to blossom in her palm.
Thin white rays shimmered out from its surface, casting dancing shadows on the stone walls, playing off of the ridges and valleys carved into them thousands of years before.
"The carvings in this temple are exquisite," Rouge gasped in awe, trailing her fingertips lightly over the intricately detailed geometric patterns, "What... was this a temple of your people?"
She glanced towards Knuckles and Tikal, and both of them had an expression the flickering light just barely managed to reveal. For a moment, there was expectation of that very question, almost as if they'd known someone might ask it, then a somewhat regretful expression.
"No. This temple belongs to a civilization far older than that of even the echidnas," Tikal began carefully, "an ancient, mysterious people who disappeared long before our time. The only thing we know for certain is that they revered the spirit of the Cerberus."
Inexplicably, uttering even the euphemistic name for their departed companion caused an oppressive silence to fall over the dimly lit hallway. Tikal fidgeted uncomfortably, somehow blaming herself for the awkward silence.
Ahead of them, the hallway opened slowly into a massive central chamber, the walls covered in sprawling mosaic artwork. The stories of untold battles of countless ages before stood etched into immortality on the vaulted stone walls as far up as the eye could see.
Tikal stopped abruptly, standing before a carving that depicted a fearsome battle, ancient letters inscribed into the border. Tracing her finger over the ferocious looking Cerberus set in stone, she read from the border slowly, her voice a mixture of reverence and fear.
"The dark one must walk the path of chaos, he must harness it and master it lest it ravage the world. He is the one that bends the darkness to his will, that controls the chaos."
Tendrils of darkness seemed to trail and bend off of the body of the Cerberus. To the right of the depicted Incarnation stood an indescribable mass of evil, it's presence seemingly the cause of all the corpses in the depiction. Arms of shadow stretched away from the central mass, while two glaring rubies acted as eyes for the beast on the wall.
"The dark one fell, descending to find himself among the servants of the true darkness. And there was great weeping and sadness for it was thought that he was among the dead."
"Sounds creepy if you ask me." Sonic shuddered, glancing over the hieroglyphs all along the chamber.
The shadows seemed almost heavy and alive as they were in the picture. They darted and weaved around the timid light Tikal was releasing, creating imaginary creatures that seemed to lurk and crawl along the walls.
"According to my locator, the other Emeralds are down that tunnel-"
Rouge's voice was suddenly interrupted by a massive rumbling sound in the ground as the entire temple began to rock back and forth like nothing more than a leaf in the wind. A cloud of ancient dust was thrown up into the air, as bits of rubble and rock flew outwards in every direction.
Seeing that an explosion of some sort had disturbed the chamber, the heroes quickly threw themselves down against the cold stone floor to avoid the shards of rock that had nearly impaled them all. Bits and pieces of the picture adorned walls crumbled from the debris, their untouched glory vanishing in just an instant.
Coughing and trying to wipe the dust from their eyes, Sonic and the others cautiously stood, as if expecting the ground would give out from underneath them at any moment.
Standing triumphantly atop the pile of newly created rubble, a pair of ghostly figures stood surveying the destruction they had caused, their cloaks fluttering like the dancing shadows around them.
Each of them held in their outstretched hands the Chaos Emeralds the five heroes had come to retrieve, shimmering rays of multicolored light still managing not to penetrate the shadows of their deep cowls.
"Well, well. What have we here? It looks like some of those whimpering 'heroes' have come to claim the last two emeralds. Two bad we got here first," the robed figure on the left chuckled mockingly, his slow, deep voice imbued with malice.
They stood in a defensive stance, ready for a fight. Sonic cursed under his breath, his plan to snatch the emeralds before Hisaki had failed, they were just minutes too late.
"I'm getting pretty sick of you costumed cowards parading around in your little hoods acting all high and mighty. Why don't you show us who you really are if you're so tough?!" Knuckles bellowed angrily, slamming his fists together in anticipation.
Releasing a fake gasp, the figure raised his hand over what would have been his mouth, as if offended.
"You mean... you mean you don't recognize me? My voice even? After all of the times we met, that's just rude," despite the seeming civility of his words, his tone remained laced with death.
Sonic squinted slightly, a sense of familiarity dawning on him as the cold voice rung mockingly in his ears.
"Fine. I guess we have to do this the melodramatic way," he answered with a sigh.
Slowly reaching upwards, his fingers seeming to move an inch in a minute, the figure reached back into the deep recesses of his cowl, grasping at the edges of the expressionless, ivory mask.
Gasping as though pained to unmask himself, he peeled the mask away from his face with a gentle sigh. Finally lowering the mask, he allowed it to slip idly from his fingers, falling to the floor with a dull thunk.
In breathtaking contrast to his former sluggish pace the flapping black cloak had been ripped free from his body, waving madly from the sudden movement almost like an obsidian flag.
It took the heroes a moment to fully process what they were seeing.
Before them stood an ebony colored hedgehog, his bottom quills turned up rather than down. His limbs and spines were covered in boldly streaking highlights, and a pair of glistening metal air shoes hung from his feet.
The figure appeared exactly identical to Shadow, apart from two details: his highlights were a pale grey color instead of their companion's fiery crimson, and his snake-like eyes were a poisonous shade of sickly green.
"So... who is this guy?" Algos piped up, as the rest stared in shock at encountering their old nemesis once again.
"You're right, the two of us have never been formally introduced, although rest assured, I know all about you, Algos Dragon-bearer. As for me, I am Mephiles the Dark."
"More like Diva," Sonic murmured.
"In other words, this is the creep that caused Shadow to leave in the first place!" Knuckles barked with ever increasing fury, plumes of flame beginning to lap at his forearms.
"Hm, hm, hm... I believe you're thinking of Eclipse... in truth, I'm just the messenger," Mephiles chuckled darkly, before igniting a writhing orb of violet energy within his extended palm, pointing it towards the echidna guardian first, the ivory bat second, before finally stopping on Sonic. "Goodbye, troublesome heroes."
But at the moment it seemed he would unleash his flailing orb of energy, faster than the eye could see, the arm of the other Hisaki agent darted wordlessly out, grasping his wrist like a vice, knuckles cracking with the force as the phantom turned slowly to face his unveiled partner.
"What's wrong, still attached to your former comrades... Shadow?"
Author's Note: Dun dun dun. Next chapter will be out January 5th as I start Part 2! Let me know how much you hate me for this cliffhanger in your reviews. ;P