Good day to you all my beautiful readers, and a happy Tuesday to you all!
Creativity: Alright, this is it! We're FINALLY getting out of that damn cave! We're all sick of it at this point!
Author: Yes, yes, all stuff we've said before. However, we really mean it this time. We can confidently say that we're getting out of the underground city. After this, we'll probably do a couple of Sora chapters as a palate cleanser, though they'll likely take longer to write. I'm wrapping up another college term and I've got exams to do, projects to finish, so on and so forth.
But that's enough about life outside of writing! Let's start off how we usually start off; answering reviews:
CeleneTheAngel: Yeah, I like doing the fight scenes. I can tune out for them a little bit and just focus on making something awesome. As for the magical hangover thing, I wanted to have there be consequences for pushing magic too far, as well as mine a bit of comedy out of it. Things were too serious for a stretch there. Also, the evil monsters aren't drawn to magic, but the Dread Kings forces are actively hunting for it. Important distinction.
And that's the reviews out of the way! Now then, as of this writing, we're one day out from publishing chapter 24 of Before: KH, which gives me a week and a bit if we wanna stay on schedule. Which we do. We really wanna get all the chapters related to getting Ryo and Co. out of that cave in one go. Again, I don't really have an estimate on when that'll be done since I got a lot of other shit to do, but I'm reasonably confident that I'll have this done in time. Well, we'll find out later, won't we?
But once again, enough about that! It's time… to provide the Discord password:
Creativity: And now… wait, am I allowed to do this?
Author: Knock yourself out!
Creativity: Thanks! Ahem… We now proudly present chapter 27 of Before: Kingdom Hearts!
"I thought you said the headache was supposed to be gone by now…"
"That was just a general guess. It varies from case to case. Besides, it's gotten better, hasn't it?"
"Easy for you to say. Your headache cleared up four hours ago."
Garren smirked as he smothered his snickers while he finished tearing down their temporary camp. He knew he shouldn't be getting enjoyment out a companion's discomfort, but he couldn't help it when it anymore. Veris was still dealing with the linger effects of putting too much magic into a single spell, while Ryo was only left with the inability to use his magic. The latter had spent every waking moment since with the former complaining about the pain in her skull and Ryo's lack thereof. Additionally, Ryo seemed to be getting some measure of amusement from this situation as well, based on the intermittent teasing he employed every now and again in response to Veris' ongoing complaining, which she usually responded to with a groan and tiredly asking if he knew any remedies for the headache, to which Ryo would respond with yet another variation on 'no'.
"I'm not the one who decided jumping straight to Megaflare when they could barely handle a couple Firaga casts was a good idea. Didn't any of the books that Queen Arryn gave you detail the consequences of pushing your magic too far?" Ryo asked, only to interrupt when Veris started to respond.
"I already know the answer to that. They are in there, you did read them, but you ignored them and went straight for something that was out of your depth." Ryo reprimanded.
"You're welcome for saving all of our lives." Veris grumbled in response, though it didn't matter since Ryo was now in lecture mode. Garren was intrigued by this new side of Ryo. Given how closed off he'd been regarding his past and the strain on the group's relationship after his magical abilities had been revealed, they hadn't seen Ryo really dig into the nitty gritty of magic, especially when it came to educating a fellow adept.
"And we're all thankful that you were able to hit the Golem with the giant magical explosion that could have brought the ceiling down on us. It's not like there's a mage out there that hasn't or won't push themselves to far and go through this suffering, but you did, and you do, so suck it up you big baby." Ryo replied firmly. At this point, Garren did break out in giggles at the look of shock and betrayal on Veris' face, which only became more shocked and betrayed when she heard Garren's laughter. However, it didn't stop there as now it was Ryo's turn to start laughing, the feedback loop of giggles only becoming worse by the moment.
"Hate you… Hate you both…" Veris grumbled out as she went to finish packing her bedroll, though this only made their mirthful giggles worse, made even worse when she started grumbling about Ryo being just as dumb as her since he already knew of the effects of pushing magic way to far. However, they did eventually subside, and the group had finished packing up. They started on their way back up to the exit from this ancient city before Ryo took one last look back. Despite her discomfort, Veris did notice a look in his eye.
"Are you sure you want to leave this place so soon? It's a connection to your people, and who knows what sort of cultural relics or information you could find there. Maybe there's stuff there that even your home forgot." Veris asked him. Ryo was silent for a moment before he shook his head.
"There's nothing of value to us here at the moment. Also, Wrath undoubtedly knows we've been there and will send more of its horde after us, should we linger, and Anguish would surely follow close behind." Ryo replied before he turned and continued up the pathway.
"Besides, it's cold and dead in there. I'd rather come back here if it ever comes back to life; The way it's meant to be…" Ryo added as he ascended the staircase. The others quickly followed along behind him as they ascended the staircase and began the long trek through the corridor to the chamber that contained the Ledger. As they passed through, Barkos took one last look at the wall, examining the many runes that were carved into the wall.
"Is it just me, or are the runes different?" Barkos asked. Ryo didn't even glance back.
"Probably. The runes likely change every time someone enters or leaves the city, with the names of those entering being placed somewhere on the wall. I can't imagine how intricate the enchantment to create this chamber must be to do so." Ryo informed him. Barkos' eyes lit up at that little sliver of knowledge before he recalled when they first entered this city.
"That reminds me, actually. You never explained what the riddle meant by the 'state your name' portion of the riddle. Is that rune actually translate to 'Ryo'?" Barkos asked, only for Ryo to shake his head.
"It's tradition among my people that we all receive two names. The first one is our common address, given to strangers, acquaintances, so on and so forth. The other one is more personal, told to others very sparingly. We don't even learn what our names are until we can summon the rune, just like you saw me do when we arrived there." Ryo explained. Veris frowned.
"Wait, but if it's so secret and intimate like you said, why would they make the doorway rely on you divulging that special name to open?" She asked. Ryo shrugged.
"I can't say for sure, but I've got a few ideas. Again, based on what I've seen, there's a very distinct divide between my people's culture between the time they dwelled here and the present. Perhaps the names weren't considered as important or special back then. I remember talking to an aquamancer at the Sanctum who was studying history, culture and tradition, and she told me that there were a number of theories surrounding the hidden name. One claimed it was a descriptor of your eventual fate, in one form or another, while another hypothesized that it could predict what kind of person you would be. I'm not sure how much I buy into the any of that stuff though." Ryo shared as they were finally greeted with sunshine. There was much squinting as their eyes adjusted to the noonday light. As they all stepped out onto the flat rock where they had first entered the hidden citadel. Veris closed her eyes and took a deep breath before exhaling contentedly.
"I didn't even realize how stale the air was down there until now." Veris breathed as she took in the fresh air and whispering breeze that drifted through the mountains. Soon enough, everyone was taking a moment to appreciate the lovely day it was, made all the more lovely by the time they'd spent underground. However, they knew that the moment couldn't last, and so they began their descent from the city entrance and began their trek out of the mountains. Ryo had expected there to be more chatter, asking him more about his culture or the city they had just departed, or even just more about him since they knew who and what he was now, but he was surprised with silence. It wasn't an awkward, oppressive silence like they'd been travelling under after the whole Atlantis debacle, but it still made Ryo a bit uncomfortable. Still, that could just be chalked up to the aforementioned uncomfortable silence that they'd been in for so long.
Still, it wasn't all that bad. They could hear the wind rustling through the trees and over the rocks, they could hear the birds singing, the occasional splash of water from melted snow running off the mountain, even the occasional animal moving through the brush. It was amazing what you came to miss when you took an extended stay underground. There hadn't been any life down there, which had made the city seem even more cold and dead, like an empty and abandoned tomb.
Eventually they made it out of the mountains and found the main road again, leaving them at a branch.
"Should we go back to the archeologists? Maybe give them a hint as to where to look?" Barkos asked, only for Ryo to shake his head.
"No. Without me they wouldn't be able to open the door to the city, and I don't intend to let them run around those ruins. Regardless of their intentions, I don't trust them with a place sacred to my people. Besides, I don't want anyone else to see it in that sorry state." Ryo replied firmly before he turned to continue down the road.
"It's probably best if that tomb is left forgotten for now…" He concluded. The others didn't say anything in response, instead exchanging a few looks and following along behind him as the silence once again crept in. Once again, it wasn't necessarily a bad silence, but it didn't feel like a particularly good one either.
Veris glanced around at her friends and slowly drew up alongside Ryo, who was staring down at the road a little bit, lost in thought. Veris frowned. After everything they'd been through these last few days, she couldn't imagine how emotionally drained he was. Sure, they'd had some time to recover (though she still had that irritating headache), but that was still a lot of baggage that Ryo had unloaded after literal years, and that wasn't even counting what wandering the decrepit old ruins of his people's lost civilization had done to him. Seeing it now when he probably had at least a few inklings of what it was supposed to be, well, she imagined it would be akin to if she (or Garren or Barkos) had returned to Woodfell, only to find every building reduced to a burnt, blackened scar on the ground. That is in all likelihood what had happened to Woodfell, but the fact that she hadn't seen it yet and possibly never would made it feel different, giving her some hope that perhaps Woodfell wasn't in such a sorry state or had somehow recovered after their escape.
Veris shook her head. She wasn't ready to think about Woodfell's fate. There would be nothing there for her, at least for now. Turning her attention back to Ryo, she noticed him staring at his hand. Veris watched as purple sparks of dark magic dancing across his palm, increasing in intensity before a dark aura surrounded his entire hand. After a few moments, he closed his hand into a fist, dispelling the aura before he let his arm drop back to his side.
"Are you doing okay?" Veris asked. Ryo looked up at her and gave a small smile.
"I'm doing a fair bit better, that's for sure. I'm not at 100%, and I've got to face the reality that I might not ever be, but I'm getting there." Ryo replied. Veris frowned a little bit.
"I meant regarding… well, everything. I mean, after everything you've been through; losing your home, your powers, everything that's built up to now, and then we find the abandoned shell of one of your people's cities? I just want to make sure you're handling all of it well." Veris clarified. Ryo glanced down at the ground.
"I mean… sigh… It is a lot. Even if I've only been here for two years, it feels like I've been here longer, and not in a good way. Not necessarily a bad way either, but you know what I mean. Still, I am getting better. The fact that my magic is coming back to me is proof of that." Ryo answered, though Veris still wasn't satisfied. Garren and Barkos had been listening quietly to the whole conversation and decided to chime in.
"So… what are you going to do?" Garren asked. Ryo glanced back at him, a look of confusion on his face.
"What do you mean by that?" He asked. Garren shrugged.
"Well, now that your secret is out, and you've learned what you wanted to learn from that library… thing?" He clarified. Ryo frowned a little as he glanced down at the road.
"Honestly… I don't know. I know what I want to do, but I don't see how I can do it, with or without help." Ryo answered. Barkos frowned.
"You want to go after the Anguish and the Dread King, don't you…" Barkos guessed. Ryo nodded grimly.
"And Wrath too, though I don't even know where to start with that one. The Dread King is at least a known entity with forces that I could track, or just get the information from someone else. No one knows where Wrath could be, or even that Wrath exists. And all that aside, I don't see how I could beat them. Wrath and Anguish took the combined forces of human and tsubasa no aru to defeat, and even then they couldn't finish the job. I'm just one tsubasa no aru that doesn't have access to well over half his powers. I can't even fly right now, which will make going up against those things even harder." Ryo muttered. It was clear that he still frustrated by his power loss, regardless of how much of his former strength had returned to him.
"Hey, you don't think that we're just going to let you hunt down those monsters by yourself, do you? We owe the Dread King some payback of our own!" Garren interjected, but Ryo shook his head.
"We're still facing the same problem; We lack the capability to finish them off. Even if we were to be backed by Radiant Garden and have their best soldiers and spellcasters by our side when facing down the Dread King, I don't see us being able to put down Anguish if it is indeed the true identity of the Dread King. We need to face facts; if the combined arms and powers of humanity and the tsubasa no aru couldn't bring down Wrath and Anguish, our chances might as well be comparable to trusting a snowflake to survive in a volcano." Ryo reminded them and quickly killed the mood.
"What about if you had access to all your power?" Veris asked. Ryo frowned as he crossed his arms and stared down at the ground yet again.
"Still likely wouldn't stand a chance. Based on what little I've seen, my people developed to become more powerful since we retreated to our new world, but again, given the sheer numbers that were being thrown at Wrath in that vision I had, I can't say that I could beat either of them." Ryo thought aloud as idly kicked at a loose pebble on the road.
"If the chances are so slim, then why do you want to even try? Just because you somehow feel responsible for those things existing? Listen, it wasn't you that made the call to make those things or make the decision to run away! You don't have to go on a suicide mission to assuage your conscience!" Veris exclaimed, but Ryo held up his hands and waved her down.
"Relax. I'm not going to just run off and take on something that would eviscerate me in minutes to ease my own sense of responsibility. If I'm going to go after Wrath and Anguish, I intend to do it right and make sure they're properly dead. I'm just not sure how to do that. If I could learn how they stopped Wrath and Anguish before, maybe I could figure out if they maybe perhaps did it incorrectly or study the methods used to create them for something I can exploit to destroy them." Ryo replied before pausing.
"I sense a 'but' coming…" Barkos muttered. Ryo shot a look at Barkos before he kept going.
"The problem is that I can only think of one place where that information might be, and we don't currently possess the means of getting there." Ryo concluded. Garren stroked his chin thoughtfully.
"I'm assuming that you need to be able to fly to get there." He guessed. Ryo nodded.
"If there's going to be any information on how to stop Wrath and Anguish, it would be housed in Arcem Magnam, my people's grand citadel that happens to be perched on the peak of the highest mountain in the lands. Setting aside how imbecilically dangerous it would be for us to even attempt climbing up there, you three would probably all pass out from how thin the air gets up there. Hell, I might pass out since I don't know how far the impact on my powers goes. Normally I can breathe perfectly fine at an elevation like that, but now? I have no idea and I don't want to find out the hard way." Ryo elaborated. The group frowned.
"Well, at least we won't be able to say it wasn't interesting." Barkos joked, though no one really laughed.
"So… what do we do then? Just give up and live our lives on the run from the Dread King and Wrath?" Veris asked. Ryo frowned.
"Right now, I don't see any other option until we can figure out how to take out the Dread King. To take out the enemy, we need to get into Arcem Magnam and to do that, we need to find a way to survive the journey there. And of course, that all assumes that the Dread King or Wrath haven't already been there to level the place and erase any chance that we could ever destroy them." Ryo muttered as the others' frowns deepened.
"Well, we can't just do nothing and wait for Wrath or the Dread King to kill us all. We know that the Dread King collecting magic for… something. Whatever, we don't need to know what he needs it for. All we know is that he wants it an that he takes it by force. There's two of us that have magic, and you have exceptionally rare magic to boot, so we're never going to see the end of him unless he's killed, and who knows what Wrath wants with us. It probably just wants us and everything dead." Veris argued. Ryo stroked his chin thoughtfully as he considered the predicament.
"Well, even if we don't know how to reach Arcem Magnam, perhaps someone else knows. Those archeologists said there's been a recent uptake in encouragement from the House to research my people, so it's possible we could find at least some hints about where to look if we were to ask the archeologists, but I'd say a better idea is to go straight to the source." Ryo thought aloud. The others thought about it for a few moments before Barkos started to grin like an idiot.
"Are you saying that we're going to Oxos?" He asked, his voice a bare whisper and shaking with excitement.
"Well, it's known for being home to the largest known collection of knowledge, scholars, inventors and the like. It's certainly possible that we could find something or someone there that could help. Again though, this is just a guess. It's equally possible that we won't find anything there. Also, we have to keep in mind that the Dread King and Wrath will be watching for us, and I don't think it's impossible that the Dread King in particular might have spies situated in major cities to keep an eye out for us. They can sense magic, and with mine being unique to this world, well… You know the rest." Ryo stated, his tone turning dark at the end, and not in his 'new' way. There was a few moments of quiet while everyone considered what Ryo had said.
"Look, I don't want to drag you all on some potentially foolhardy quest that's doomed to fail, so if you all have reservations or other ideas for how to approach this insane thing we're considering doing, now's the time to speak up." Ryo stated firmly. Veris immediately stepped forward.
"After all the insanity that we've already been through, the last thing I'm going to do is let you run off on your own, powers or no. We're all in this now." Veris stated even more firmly. Ryo gave her an appreciative look, though he still looked doubtful of their chances.
"We've made it this far and been through plenty of insane stuff before, so why give up now?" Barkos decided as he put a hand on Ryo's shoulder.
"If you want something done right, you do it yourself. That so called 'King' is due for a few words with me and my axe for what he did to Woodfell." Garren promised as he stepped forward resolutely. Ryo looked at all of them and nodded, his face set in determination.
"Alright. Let's go study the art of regicide."
And that's where we're gonna end it for now! It's been a bit of a rough couple of days for me, since allergy season has stormed into the house and clubbed me in the kisser with an aluminum baseball bat, but I'll power through!
Creativity: This chapter's a little on the shorter side, huh boss?
Author: Eh, not really. I mean, kinda? Relatively speaking to the usual Ryo chapters we've done in recently, sure. However, I'd say that doing a shorter chapter here is probably better than trying to deliberately pad it out.
So, as you are probably aware, this particular fanfiction archive is currently suffering from what I call 'the adfestation' in reference to YouTube's own 'adpocalypse'. This wasn't mentioned in the opening notes since I'd already started this chapter before that problem had sprung up. However, when I started finding up to SEVEN ads crammed into the spaces between paragraphs of my stories, I got a little bit peeved, to say the least.
My initial response to this was to immediately suspend any and all uploads I had planned and monitor the situation to see how it developed. So far, the situation has developed in a… less than satisfactory manner. The fine people at FictionPress have not publicly responded to the people who have brought this situation before them (myself included) and apparently, it's gone on to spread to the FictionPress website (where people can put their original works) has also been subject to the adfestation. This has led me to believe that, contrary to what I thought and wanted to believe, this was not a bug or a glitch, but rather a deliberate choice on the part of the owners. What would have motivated this, I don't know. Greed, desperation, I don't know, and I don't care. There's been no communication, no disclosure, nothing.
If you're seeing this, then one of three things have happened. One, I gave up and just resigned myself to the fact that nothing will changed and I'm not leaving either way, since the ads can be blocked, they don't show up on android devices apparently, and they don't happen on the app. Two, The webmasters have stopped the adfestation, regardless of how it started, and I've started publishing normally again. Three, I've moved to a different archive and will be uploading the stories I intend to take with me to that other archive one chapter at a time for the foreseeable future, and this account can be considered to be on an indefinite hiatus. In the event that I choose option three, I will post a list of all the stories I intend to carry over to the next archive, upload a handful of chapters here that I finished in between the transition, and then… we'll see. If the webmasters here get their act together, then you'll see me return. If not, then… well, sorry. I can't say I'll have regretted the choice, but I do regret that I had to leave the people on this site with so many stories unfinished.
Creativity: Wow… That's a lot of heavy stuff.
Author: I thought it was probably a good idea to get it out there where my head was amidst all this, and how it might affect where I put my writing in future.
Well, there really isn't much to be said after all that, so I'll just end this chapter here. Thank you for reading, please review, hope to see you on Discord and we'll see you on Saturday (hopefully)!