Good day to you all, and welcome to chapter 23 of Before: Kingdom Hearts! It's the first of February 1st as I'm writing this, so it's been a while since I sat down to write for Before: KH, but I've not been idle. I completed the twenty sixth chapter for Limit Breaker and also completed the fifth chapter for Star Wars: Twilight Blade, which is currently on track to do similar to Before: KH in terms of people interested.
Creativity: You sound a bit bitter.
Author: I'm honestly not. I mean, it's a little bit of a downer, but I kinda figured that was gonna happen. Both are crowded real estate right now, with tons of variety, so you gotta be thankful for every person who stops in to take a look.
So, before we go any further, let's take a look at the reviews:
CeleneTheAngel: Yeah, I figured an 'interlude' as you put it would be a good way to make sure people aren't too overwhelmed with exposition. Plus, I just like writing for Archive. As for what Sora does and doesn't know, I've kind of backed away from Sora ruminating on what he learns from the Obelisks when he unlocks them since it's not super relevant right now and it's more interesting to write for him interacting with Archive. I actually was looking up translations for pain and its synonyms and Cruciatus (same spelling as Harry Potter) was one of the ones that came up. I think it was Latin, but I can't remember. The more you know and all that. As for the Darkside, I've got that fight all written out already, but I might go back and give it an edit or two to extend it and make it more interesting. Not that it wasn't good already, but that's not to say it wouldn't enjoy a few touch-ups. And yes, Archive is scared of it, though not necessarily for the reasons you think. As for the monsters, I haven't had anyone get hit by them so far since I'm playing up the non-Sora characters (sans Ryo) as much more squishy. Though I did mention during the Radiant Garden Boss that Garren's brief possession also made him feel REALLY angry throughout the experience. Also recall when Sora got hit during chapter 19 and Archive had to use his Purge spell to dispel the effects of the boss's strike. It was always my intention to have the three big bads have those powers
And that's all the reviews! Now then, last time we probably made people pretty angry by jumping from one cliff hanger to another, but please put down the pitch forks and torches, as we're going to be resolving those cliff hangers over the next two chapters! So (dodges pitchfork) PUT EM DOWN!
Creativity: Please remove this person from the audience, please!
Author: Well then, I hope everyone likes this chapter! Alright, so be… NO! PUT DOWN THAT TORCH
Sorry about that. So, here's the Discord password: 5RRcGwh
And with that out of the way, allow us to proudly present chapter 23 of Before: Kingdom Hearts!
"So, you guys feeling ready for the tournament next week?" Phoenix asked. Tempest was the first to respond.
"Oh yeah! Bring 'em on! I'll give 'em a taste of raw air power!" He announced as he pointed dramatically into the distance. Lieth rolled her eyes.
"Oh yes, you'll blow everyone out of their seats... Did I just pun?" Lieth asked in a surprised and annoyed tone. Shiori giggled a little.
"You seem a little thunderstruck by that." Shiori commented. Lieth groaned.
"Oh no, don't start, please. The moment someone starts than everyone just piles on." Lieth moaned in resigned misery. Ryo started smiling.
"Well it's so easy to. I mean seriously, it's a breeze!" Ryo stated with a wide smile. Lieth let her face fall into her hand.
"What have I done?" She mumbled. Phoenix started grinning.
"Oh, don't worry. I'm sure it'll blow over pretty quickly." Phoenix cracked with a shit-eating grin. Lieth's head shot up, a very angry expression on her face.
"One more wind pun and I swear on Quara's grave, I will bring a downpour down on everyone!" Lieth roared. Terrek just shook his head.
"No need to be so stormy over a few puns."
Leith's mouth dropped open as she looked at Terrek's face. It was stone. Not so much as a twitch in his lips.
"… No words... There exists no words to describe how enraged I am right now…" Lieth muttered as everyone broke out laughing.
There was silence throughout the ancient city. Heavy silence.
It had been only a few minutes since Ryo had revealed the truth about why his people had fled the World, but it felt like ages. Ryo had just been looking at the long abandoned stone walkway with a look of shame on his face. Garren and Veris were both in varying states of shellshock, while Barkos was torn between his drive to be angry with Ryo to his own shock and disbelief at the amount of information that Ryo was getting off his chest.
"So, let me get this straight." Barkos began, holding up his hands and bowing his head a little.
"If I've got everything right, humans attacked your people first and you don't know why. War broke out after that and it was a nightmare of blood and death on both sides, then your people hit on the idea to just make their own world to live in instead of continuing to wage war." Barkos started, pausing to allow anyone to get their own word in. When they didn't, he continued.
"However, they didn't leave just because they were sick of fighting, but because there was something else going on that was an even bigger threat to both sides, and your people decided it was better to cut their losses and make a break for it. That about sum it up so far?" Barkos finished. Ryo just nodded, not meeting anyone's eyes.
"That's the timeline of events, yes. And here we are, with the consequences still nipping at our heels." Ryo muttered, frustration and bitterness laced throughout his voice.
"Okay, you're going to have to back up a little bit. Do you know what that threat was? What am I saying, of course you know. You were just looking it up." Barkos muttered. Ryo's head just dipped lower.
"When I first showed up here, I had no clue what was going on. I was dealing with my power loss and the disappearance of the Dark Shard. I was weirded out by the monsters the first time we ran into them, but I'd never heard of anything like them, so I didn't pay them more thought." Ryo began, rising to his feet and walking past them, back down the road they'd just come from.
"It wasn't until we got to Radiant Garden that I started getting suspicious. I was wandering the castle and I wound up in the king's collection of my people's relics. Out of sheer curiosity I decided to examine one of the tablets. Turns out that it was a Final Lament." Ryo continued. Veris cocked her head.
"A Final Lament? What's that?" She asked.
"I'm not clear on the exact science behind it, but essentially my people can bind the events preceding our death to an object, provided our emotions were running high enough prior to death. Near as we can tell, it's completely involuntary. However, this one was different from all the cases I'd heard of. This one was a Final Lament for dozens, possibly hundreds of my people. It…" Ryo began explaining before he paused as he recalled the event, shuddering.
"That bad?" Garren asked in a concerned voice.
"It was a massacre. Humans and tsubasa no aru both fighting against the most powerful of the red monsters. They were losing badly. I'm not sure how long the Lament lasted, but I managed to break free of it somehow. And shortly after that…" Ryo continued, but Barkos was ahead of him.
"The town was attacked again by the red monsters. So, what? Did your vision somehow get their attention?" Barkos asked. There were accusatory notes in his voice, but Ryo paid them no mind.
"No. I think the Lament was responding to them. Remember, the town had already been attacked before I encountered the Lament. We stopped one when we arrived." Ryo reminded Barkos before he continued.
"It was after that when I started to get worried, especially with the carvings the Lament was attached to providing a few clues. The 'Wrath' sigil that was written on that summoning gate didn't help either. Then we got to Atlantis…" Ryo continued, his voice taking on a hard edge when he brought up Atlantis.
"I'm not sure how, but the King of Atlantis knew what I was the moment he laid eyes on me. He gave me a key to an old tsubasa no aru fortress that apparently had been buried with Atlantis for quite some time and told me I'd find something inside." Ryo explained before his face fell once more with shame. The others' faces hardened, knowing where Ryo was going next. Ryo stopped at a stone hut that had long since fallen to ruin, taking a seat on the crumbled remains of the wall.
"I was in a bad way about this whole thing. I think I already knew the truth at that point, or at least the broad strokes of it, but I wanted to see answers with my own eyes. Maybe I wanted to see proof that I was wrong, maybe I just needed to see it with my own eyes, I don't know anymore. All that matters is that I went and… you know the rest." Ryo finished.
"And then you came here, used that library thing and now you got your answers." Veris concluded. Ryo nodded. Barkos frowned.
"Well, that's great and all, but what are those answers? You've walked us through your journey of enlightenment, but you haven't told us what answers you found." Barkos argued. Ryo sighed and nodded.
"I guess I'm still processing. So, the answers I found pertain to not just to the red monsters, but the blue ones that the Dread King's servants were using too, and a third faction. It's…" Ryo started before stopping again to take a moment to gather himself.
"While we were assembling for war, everyone was still reeling from the first attack. The rage, the pain and the sorrow were all anyone could think about and it was overwhelming us. One of our high council struck on the idea to use that well of emotion to our benefit." Ryo continued, spitting out the words like a foul taste on his tongue. The others felt their guts tying themselves in knots as they started to piece together what Ryo was saying.
"So, the council created two Shards, one of light and one of darkness. And then, they used them to give form to those thoughts and feelings that festered in my people. Three entities were created, designated as Wrath, Anguish and Agony: the distilled essence of those feelings that humanity had brought out in us through this war." Ryo spat out. Veris opened her mouth to speak, but Ryo wasn't done. He'd been building to a rant and now it was in full swing.
"They unleashed those things on humanity, but they underestimated the power and brutality of their creations. With each human legion that was torn asunder by them, my people began to fear these monsters and began questioning whether it had been right to weaponize their emotions this way. What was worse was that they were growing stronger with each human they killed and my people began to get nervous. What if they grew beyond their control? Did we have any control to begin with? Should we try to stop them?" Ryo continued, his voice having raised not insignificantly. He was waving his arms about haphazardly as he ranted and Veris wasn't sure, but she could have sworn she saw small black wisps rising from Ryo's shoulders.
"Well, Wrath, Anguish and Agony didn't take kindly to the idea of their creators getting cold feet, or that they might be destroyed because of it. They began to indiscriminantly lay waste to humans and tsubasa no aru alike. If you thought the war was a blood bath, the massacre that followed was a bloody lake." Ryo snarled as he continued his march.
"Everyone tried fighting back, obviously. Hell, in some small way, it actually put an end to the war, if only temporarily. And then, my people decided to cut and run." Ryo spat. Now everyone else could definitely see the dark wisps rising from his body, like the smoke of embers just waiting to burst into flame once more.
"They ripped the Springs from the land and made their perfect world, shielded from the horrors they unleashed upon the world and evacuated as many as they could before Wrath took notice. Then they just shut the doors forever. Didn't even risk Wrath getting remotely close before they severed ties and left humanity and a sizable chunk of my people behind to fend for themselves against three monstrosities of our making!" Ryo continued to rant, his voice now practically a shout. Veris, Garren and Barkos would have probably been in various states of shock, horror and possibly rage if they weren't more concerned about Ryo and the purple energy that had joined the black wisps rising from his body.
"But, we're all still here, right? So they must have been stopped, right?" Veris pointed out, trying to get Ryo to calm down a little. Ryo just grumbled incoherently as he kept marching.
"The primary bodies might have been destroyed, but Wrath and Anguish certainly aren't gone. Only Agony was recorded as having been vanquished before my people chose the mark of a damn craven. I don't know what happened to Wrath and Anguish immediately following the retreat, but they obviously weren't taken care of permanently. Who do you think we've been running into on the road all this time?" Ryo growled as he slammed his hand against an old stone wall.
"Wait a minute, you said both Wrath and Anguish were still floating around out there. I get the connection to Wrath, since you pointed out that the sigil on the front of that summoning gate and those red monsters, but I don't get the connection to Anguish. Where has it been?" Garren asked. Barkos was quick to reply.
"Remember, in Atlantis? Ryo pointed out that the one sigil, Anguish, kept getting repeated on the walls." Barkos pointed out.
"Yeah, but that was carved before Anguish was defeated." Garren countered.
"Um, guys? I think Ryo's talking about the blue monsters." Veris pointed out, which had both Garren and Barkos feeling a little embarrassed for having let that detail slip. However, the implications quickly caught up with them
"Wait, does this mean that Anguish is actually the Dread King?" Barkos questioned. Ryo shook his head.
"I haven't got a clue, but it's beyond doubt that Anguish is connected to the Dread King somehow. What I'm more concerned about is why an entity that nearly brought both humanity and my people to extinction would suddenly be relying on one of them. What does Anguish get out of this?" Ryo answered as he stopped walking and just started glaring at the ground. The energy had dissipated briefly while they discussed Anguish, but it was coming back as Ryo just glared at the ground. His fists were clenched at his side, shaking in his building fury.
The dark energy his body was throwing off was building in intensity before he suddenly stormed off down a back alley. Veris, Garren and Barkos were hesitant to follow, but they eventually did, finding Ryo had stalked his way down towards what looked like some sort of district square. There was a broken, crumbling fountain in the middle, long since dried up and lined with dust. He kept walking, heading past one of the streets before he eventually slowed down, looking to pick a direction to go in.
"Ryo, are you… okay?" Veris hesitantly asked. Ryo stopped. His body went rigid as he glared into the distance.
"Well, as we just finished discussing, I've had it confirmed to me in cold hard records by my people that we decided weaponizing our negative emotions was a great idea, and when it backfired, we didn't even bother to stick around and try to solve the problem. We ran like cowards and left humanity and plenty of our own as sacrifices to keep the horrors we unleashed from following us, and the horrors have survived to this very day and are apparently after us, so no, I am definitely not okay." Ryo snarled back viciously. Everyone flinched as they saw Ryo's dark aura flare before went to walk away again. This time though, Garren stepped up.
"So, that wasn't you! You didn't know about any of this and you weren't responsible for any of it!" Garren argued back, but Ryo was not in a listening mood.
"From the very moment of my birth, all of my history has been a damn. Lie. A lie to me and to everyone else! We ran away from this problem and it was erased from our history, and those idiots believe that they have anything approaching the right to come back at all, to start a war all over again…" Ryo hissed as his aura began to froth and rage. Veris, Garren and Barkos' eyes widened before they braced themselves as Ryo let out a shout of rage, a pulse of black and purple energy erupting from his body as he did so! The trio was knocked back by Ryo's outburst and they were sent tumbling backwards. Ryo was still seething when he realized what had happened. His eyes widened as he looked down at his hands. They were shaking again, but not with rage. He went to take a step forward, but cringed away before he slowly took a few steps back, once again staring at his hands in shock and fear before he turned and ran off.
"Ryo, wait…!" Garren started to call, but Ryo was already out of sight.
"Come on, we gotta go after him!" Veris grunted as she got to her feet, hand clutching her side from being thrown.
"Guys, I'm worried about him too, but do you really think that's a good idea right now?" Barkos asked as he slowly got to his feet and began checking himself over for injuries.
"How can you say that?! He's freaking out! He needs…" Veris started before Barkos cut her off.
"I'm not saying we don't track him down, but seriously. Look at what just happened. I don't think he's exactly safe to be around right now. He clearly seems to think that. He ran off for a reason." Barkos pointed out. Veris shot Barkos a glare and marched past him, only for Garren to lightly grab her shoulder.
"He might have a point. He isn't saying to abandon Ryo. Just to give him some distance to work this out and calm down a bit. We find where he is, let him work things out, then we approach him. Alright?" Garren suggested. Veris batted his arm off and turned to glare at them properly.
"Have you guys forgotten the last time we decided to just let him work things out on his own? Because I remember the end result was us falling into a pit of undead warriors, being attacked by waves of Anguish's monsters, Ryo fighting a giant monster one on one to the death and us nearly drowning after that, all within the span of a few hours! So no, I don't think I'll just be leaving well enough alone this time!" Veris half-shouted before she marched off in the direction that Ryo had ran off in. Barkos and Garren glanced between each other, unsure of what to do before they trailed after Veris.
"I guess this is a shining example of how much can go wrong in a single day." Garren muttered as they followed their furious companion.
"Well, it's technically been slowly building up over two years and several weeks at this point, if we were keeping a timeline, but yeah, it certainly does feel like things have properly fallen apart here." Barkos replied sullenly, staring after Veris with equal parts concern, sadness and fear.
"Honestly, I was thinking you were gonna be way more angry about all this, what with how ready you were to shoot him earlier." Garren commented, leading to Barkos glancing at the ground shamefully and rubbing the back of his neck.
"To be honest, I would have thought the same thing. I think the reason I'm not is because Ryo seems more enraged by all this than I could dream to be. Veris getting to the end of her rope didn't help or hurt either." Barkos guessed as they saw Veris had come to a stop and was looking around. It was obvious that Ryo had given her the slip and now she had no idea where to go next.
"Veris, I don't mean to sound pessimistic, but I don't think any of us are going to find Ryo, especially considering he probably has a way better ability to navigate these ruins, and that ignores the fact that he obviously doesn't want to be found right now." Garren stated gently, but firmly. Veris whirled around, clearly intending to let Garren have it, but couldn't find it in herself to stay angry. She deflated and stared at the ground.
"The truth was supposed to start putting things back together, not tear us further apart…" She murmured, a faint quiver in her voice. Garren frowned.
"Look, I can't begin to guess if things can be patched up after all this. Maybe all of this is too much and we really do need to part ways with Ryo after this. I don't think it'll come to that though. We just need to wait this out a little while longer and then we can start patching things up." Garren told his friend, who looked up at him as he put on his best confident face.
"Alright… Alright, we'll set up camp for now. Let's find somewhere more secluded. You're right. We have to believe that Ryo will find us when he's ready." Veris agreed. The three humans left, searching their way through the crumbling city until they reached a location that was suitable enough for camping and got themselves set up as best they could. It had been a really long day and despite how high-strung everyone had been for a good long stretch (actually, probably because of it) they were exhausted. Hopefully, things would improve the next day, if only marginally. After they'd all lost Woodfell, all of them had been all they had left.
And that's where we're ending it for today! Well, I say that. Likely, I'll be back to touch this one up.
Creativity: We have been doing that an awful lot lately.
Author: Well, it's probably good practice. Within reason, of course.
So, I'm unsure of what kind of chapter we're gonna have next. I was initially thinking Sora, but I'm kinda thinking I want to do another Ryo chapter. That being said, I'm also excited to get back to Sora so that we can write that Darkside Boss fight. Well, we'll have time to consider which we want to do.
Well, that's it from us for now! Thank you for reading, please review, hope to see you on Discord and we'll see you next time!