One may call this the climax of the story...but I'm not sure. This is becoming an obsessive-writing syndrome for me. An epic which may go on maybe only 3 more chapters... or 13. I'm not quite sure yet. But it will surely continue! I hope I'm keeping you guys hooked.
The Sentinel
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"This is it," Axel the pilot said. He swept a hand through his sweat-soaked hair after he removed his helmet, pointing down the long, broad empty streets. "This is as far as I can take you... any closer and this bird'll be Heartless chow."
Dion peered over Sephiroth's shoulder into the gloomy chill. The statue, as indescrepit and vague as a mountain in a distant valley. But in truth it was merely not even half a mile away. Kanzellon's capital, Eris, was known as the Sentinel City due to the monument.
Sephiroth jumped out of the cockpit, landing squarely on the pavement. He turned, catching Dion out of the air as he jumped down as well. They walked down the street, waving as Axel's voice sounded in their ears to wish them luck.
Sephiroth wore the gem around his throat. Only he had replaced the string with a sturdy chain of silver, attaching it partly to the string that Dion had used.
The chant of soft voices filled the air. It wasn't wind. Nothing stirred the snow on the ground. A brown-green eye fixated on the figure cloaked in black that stood facing the towering monument.
"There's a door there," Sephiroth murmured as he started walking, the Masamune sword bouncing against his hip. "Ansem says he can sense it. The door to this world."
"Does that mean...you're leaving?"
"Maybe... but it can also mean that that may be where the Heartless are getting through."
Dion brushed his sticky hair away from his face and fingered lightly the smooth handles of his right .45 with his free hand. Darkness was a strange, alien thing. A nameless essence to be feared... but at its center, always, was a man. A man to control it, to be controlled.
"There's someone at the center of all this bullshit," Dion said softly, clenching his hands. "And we're gonna get 'im, right?"
"Definately," Sephiroth said with all the certainty and will of a man whose path was set in stone, ingrained in the very atoms of the universe.
His excitement and rage burned down to the very nuclei of his cells. He could feel it stirring the old murder-lust that has stolen many a life in war and in madness. But it wasn't insanity now... it was determination, desperation, that ached in his soul for freedom. For a life without struggles... a life without the murder-lust pounding in his chest, fueling his strength.
But in order to do that... this was just another door to open on the path to redemption. Salvation. And a way to Ansem's heart.
The snow fell almost in mute reluctance as they trekked through the cold, dry powder. A snowflake here dropped against Sephiroth's cheek; another drifted and clung to Dion's hair. He brushed it aside, his senses straining, ever-alert for the characteristic silence and cold of the Heartless, the tell-tale quiet that signified their proximity, their awful presence.
No cold came. No silence unlike the calm, natural silence of a deserted city clouded in snow.
Yet something else was troubling - possibly more unsettling - than the Heartless themselves. For the closer Sephiroth came to the colossal monument, the more details became clear. His heart started to race. His step quickened as much as he wanted to turn away, refute the truth that was blossoming before him.
The pair approached the flank of the monument. The face of it could not be seen, but as they moved around the firm black marble base, the identity of the man became clear.
Sephiroth made out the face of the man, standing several feet from the base so he could see the majority of it. Above him, the face stared coldly from trailing spikes of hair that framed his face. The sweep of the cloak was finely crafted, as though made by magic or by monumental skill. The likeness was unmistakable, however.
The statue...
It was Sephiroth himself.
The world slowed down. He barely registered his strength suddenly failing him, that his knees sank into the snow that bunched up around the base of his monstrous likeness. His eyes fell away from the face of the thing, instead seeing spots before them as he gazed into the snow. His chest burned. Air seared when breathed.
After a moment, he looked up, blinking away tears of shock and maddening familiarity. Suddenly everything around him seemed terribly familiar... everything that he had done, he felt had done before. He had walked these streets. Had fallen time and time again into darkness.
The door before him was proof. It stood in the thin air, an ordinary iron door, firm and strong and terrible as though mimicing the industrial strength of the city.
Then the boy, Dion, moved into his field of vision. He seemed confused. A piece of white hair had fallen across his odd-colored eye and he spoke, but Sephiroth didn't hear.
He *did* hear a voice speak behind him. "I knew you would come here. It was unmistakable. Foretold long before even *my* birth. Welcome. What you are looking at is the door... the Door to other worlds. And soon, the Door to Kingdom Hearts."
Dion's gun flashed from his hands as he shot, almost instinctively, toward an unseen man that had not yet entered Sephiroth's line of sight. He stood up, turning, seeing the man's body doubled over slightly. But it was not groans of pain that came from him, but laughter.
"Who are you?" Sephiroth hissed hoarsely, not even remembering to have the sword in his possession in hand.
The stranger laughed raspily. He shuffled forward, his attire completely otherwordly. A long cloak, stitched alien language in the trimming. His body seemed bent from laughter rather than from pain...
"I am the guardian of the door to Kingdom Hearts... and you're travels have made my greatly interested. Your progress... with you and your... companion." He lifted his eyes, which were completely white... besides the pupils. The faint outline of color surrounded them, but hardly enough to appear human. His face was framed with long black tresses, straight, his eyes outlined almost shocking Sephiroth with its Egyptian likeness.
Dion backed away. Sephiroth could only guess the thoughts streaming through his mind. He was absolutely sure he had hit him. Positive! So why wasn't the man bleeding to death in the snow?
"What do you want with...me?"
The man's lips quirked into a little insane smile. He straightened, opening his arms out wide, his cloak opening with him... it appeared to be as vast and as all-encompassing as a black hole. The words on the trimming shifted... like living things, they moved, snaking along the fabric with ease.
"You will show me the way through the Door. Long I have guarded the secrets of Kingdom Hearts. But no longer... it will be mine. The power that has been kept secret from me will belong to me and me alone! I will be the master of darkess and of light!!"
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Darkness...and... light? Darkness and light?
These words sound familiar to me... but not as much as I'd like them to... they mean something... but what? Darkness...
Light?
Darkness....
Darkness in my heart. I remember its cold embrace, enfolding me, seducing me into the shadows of my soul. Jealousy, rage, ambitions all tumbled within me. I remember tasting desire the first time I ever laid eyes on the boy, Riku... how bold, how ambitious and angry. How futile his attempts were to veto my influence over his soul.
This man seems so familiar...but I don't remember him from any of my past. My days in Hollow Bastion were long, at best. Because of the oddity of the Rising Falls, and our unique technology, people refrained from staying too long.
But my Sephiroth, he is more disturbed by this man's presence than I am. Yet he doesn't even know him!!
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The terrible scream that broke the uncomfortable silence was the thing that brought Dion to his senses. He raised the guns, both of them now, and shot multiple times. But the bullets, magic or no, did nothing.
The boy fell sideways, landing in the snow. Behind him, the door creaked and rattled unnaturally as though some great force from beyond were striving to escape through it. He realized the awful screaming was
Sephiroth.
His eyes widened as he viewed the man, grasping his head, nigh tearing his hair out from the roots from some unseen torment that Dion could not see.
And the man continued to laugh, lifting his head to the sky. His glittering black eyes held a terrible light in them that was not a kind thing, nor was it a welcome sight. For there was light everywhere, coming from the around the edges of the door. The essence and the idea of light was bursting towards its inevitable freedom.
Sephiroth was in agony.
And was there nothing he could do?
Dion snarled, and lunged across the snow to put himself between Sephiroth and the Guardian. The Guardian towered above him like a black, ancient tree... its secrets dangerous and unknown, unfathomable darkness pouring from his being. Yet Dion's face, twisted in rage and anger, met the cruel mask of the Guardian with little bravado.
"Get away from him," Dion said coldly, squeezing the barrels of the handguns and readying them to fire again. As long as it would keep the man safe. "You're not touching him, you're not going to this Kingdom Hearts!! Whatever it is, it sounds important and it doesn't belong to anyone!"
"It will belong to someone soon..." The Guardian sneered, and he raised his hands, which were lost in the darkness that pulsated suddenly from his being. His breath came loose in a ragged long exhale.
Dion raised the guns and fired again.
Three things happened.
The enchanted weapons sent their deadly projectiles once more into the man's body. He jerked backwards, a look of pain suddenly sprouting from his face. At this same moment, the darkness flew free from his hands like hungry, flesh-eating birds of prey, slamming themselves against Dion's body and tearing, gouging at his face as they shrieked.
Sephiroth's screams abrubtly ended, and a light unlike anything the Guardian had seen suddenly sprang from the silver-haired man's chest, a concentrated beam that stole the color from the world and washed everything in muted shades of gray and amethyst.
The beam felt warm. The pain in his face faded, and Dion only felt the warmth. It was a soft pulsing... the familiar throb of another heart pressed against his. However, it was even closer than that now. It was inside of him. It breathed life into him, breathed courage and love and compassion, all the things that made up Light and all things.
He saw it bursting through his ribcage, leaving his flesh untouched, and penetrating the infinite blackness of the Guardian's cloak.
The Guardian howled.
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The cave loomed around him - an endless universe of blackness and cold. He felt the absence of his light-god like a rusted rod of steel had been thrust into his chest. There it festered, like an open wound, bacterial hatred and viral pain spawning in the cesspool of oozing liquid that came from this wound.
His light-god had betrayed him. His soul longed to bask in the compassion of his god again, languish under the soft caress of love that came again and again so often that he was always certain it was there and so he did not need to think about it.
The transformation that resulted was a hideous one. The soft play-dough of his being was ravaged, savagely by unkind hands and molded again to a shape for the worse.
He felt around his chest for the warmth of his god one last time. He wept and cursed. But his god was not there.
Ansem... why have you betrayed me?
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In the next few moments, the Guardian quivered, his screams ending. His cloak was no longer the black of night, but the vague twilight gray. He fell forward, and breathed his last mortal breath.
Dion's arms found their way fondly around the still form of the fallen silver-haired man. The light still pounded all around the boy... he realized how brightly he was glowing, that he was a point of light in a dark, merciless wilderness of steel and concrete.