A/N (Aroihkin's Notes) 12.27.2005:

Review replies beneath the chapter, like usual. I was rather pleasantly surprised at the number... six on the first chapter of a new SoA fic doesn't seem to be a standard. :D

So, thanks guys!

Now, beneath the review replies, is something totally new to any fanfic by me. Yeah, song lyrics. I've posted one or two lines on some of the Bloodstained Steel revamps, but never a full meal deal. It's half amusing, half squicky, so it's down there out of the way. :) Whenever this fanfic picks up a "soundtrack song"... something that just fits it that well, I'll do this. Certainly not an every-chapter deal. Coincidentally, the song at the bottom fits chapters one and two perfectly, even though I didn't make the connection until after the fact. I never have based a fanfic or chapter after a song, but, sometimes they just pop up later and cling anyway.

05.02.2010: All scene-dividers have been eaten, again, on all of my stories. I give up. Please just go read this story on arowrites dot net where it hasn't been made incoherent; I am unable to keep up with this site's stupidity.

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Chapter Two
A Void (Me)

He . . . was . . . submerged . . .

The thought hit him slowly, lapping at his mind like the small ripples at the edge of a pond. It was almost visible, tangible, like he could reach out with his hands and tangle his fingers in just this one realization. He was , in fact, so caught up in this sensation that at first he didn't even comprehend what he was submerged -in-.

/ Blood. /

But was it? It was... white, shot through with red and edged with black. Warm, solid and yet not. Something... an invisible rope that felt like it was attached to his very spine was pulling him through head first. The white blood--for lack of a better word--was glowing, almost blinding. He had to squint against it for more reasons than it's solid-yet-not thickness, and yet still, he was being pulled through. Slowly and carefully as though the line would break if too much haste was used...

His thoughts. They were focusing strangely, taking on a strength that was impossible.

This was not to say that Vyse was stupid, but simply that his thoughts had never held such focus before. Such -presence- that they almost hurt, for they bordered on being considered physical.

The pulling continued, constant, an unrelenting. He found that the only way to tell he was moving at all was by the feeling of the blood. Or, come to think of it, maybe he was being held in place while the stuff itself moved? He wasn't certain. All he was sure of, and very strongly so, was that he most certainly -didn't- want the rope to break. If it did, he'd be stuck here in limbo, probably until the end of the world.

Limbo. That was a very good name for it, although he wasn't certain where the word had come from. It certainly suited it better than 'glowing white blood stuff'...

Even if it -did- feel alive...

A while passed.

How long, he could not tell. This void, silver-white, and red, and black... it seemed even more timeless than the Dark Rift itself could possibly hope to manage. And now, somewhere between -here- and -there-, wherever either was, another form grew visible.

It was a dark, murky shape barely perceptible through the blinding white, and it was growing larger. Whatever it was, it was growing quickly enough that it had to be moving towards him, even as he moved towards it. Just as slowly as ever, the rope drew him forward, and Vyse felt briefly annoyed at the blinding white. His eyes couldn't seem to get accustomed to it at all, and as a result, he couldn't figure out what it was in front of him...

Though he certainly tried.

Vyse was suddenly overcome with the hope that it was another -person-. Someone else in this giant ocean of blood... perhaps even someone who knew what was going on. He began to wave his arms frantically, completely forgetting his previous thoughts and caution.

What if the invisible rope snapped? Vyse found he didn't have the energy to spare in caring, all of it had grown focused on one goal. The desire to see another human face was overpowering and sudden. It seemed to take control of his mind, and yet... frustratingly... the rope was still barely moving. And now he was trying to speed the rope up, like swimming.

But it was having absolutely no effect.

The back of his hand grazed something solid where there was nothing, and Vyse paused, frozen. He considered it for a moment, glancing ahead at the frustratingly-far shape, before his resolve set itself. Screw it, if he was going to get stuck, he was going to know what that was first!

Driven to irrationality by the potency of the smallest of these thoughts, he now searched the area with both hands. Above and forward, ignoring that his eyes could only see white where the solid had been, and...

/ There. /

Either he grabbed it, or it grabbed him... Vyse would never be certain. All he knew was that one moment his hands were finding nothing but the void, and the next he was pulling himself along a thick, invisible cord. Hand over hand... he could feel the slack gathering behind him, heavy, as he pulled himself along the only possible course.

If forward was the only way to travel, then, that's where he would go... but at a run, not a crawl.

The figure was only just now was taking on a humanoid form to his eyes. Vyse opened his mouth to shout at it, still climbing, but no sound emerged. He tried again, and again... nothing was heard.

Giving up on that plan, the pirate simply put more effort into his climbing. Hand over hand, the slack behind him was growing heavier as he went. But at the same time, the figure was getting gradually closer. The dark vagueness of distance was giving way, slowly, to a pale form in even paler clothing.

/ Is it... Fina? /

Vyse couldn't tell for certain, even as he continued to climb and the slack continued to gather. Now it was just visible enough to distinguish white cloth from white skin, and white hair from both, but that told him little. There was red, too, for some reason... just like the streaks of scarlet scattered with black throughout the white.

It seemed, now that he could see more of it, to be a part of the surroundings. Or perhaps the surrounds were a part of the stranger.

His morale rising, Vyse hoped that maybe he -could- find out what was going on from whoever it was. Maybe he could even find out how to wake up from this... dream. It had to be a dream, or a nightmare... or perhaps a bit of both. Regardless, he was tired of it, it was really creeping him out, and it was past time to leave...

Closer and closer, he climbed, his eyes fixed steadily on his goal, even while still trying to adjust to the impossible brightness. The form was splattered in that red that had been faint before, each sizeable red speck centered with barely-visible black. Even from this distance, it looked like (and Vyse felt sick at this thought) decay. Whoever or whatever it was, it was face down in comparison to himself, with no ground to base up and down off of.

And it's hair hid it's face, but it -looked- like it was a Silvite, whether it was Fina or not...

/ I hope it's not. /

Where had that thought come from? Fina was at least a familiar face, in this horrid place! But, the form... Vyse swallowed weakly. It's skin had a greyish tinge, even in this light, and the pirate suddenly felt in his gut that he was climbing towards a dead body.

Now he hesitated, not wanting to see who it was, deeply afraid that he was about to see one of his best friends in this place. Dead. It was a cold word, fueled by his thoughts and fears, and he shivered from his place grasping the invisible rope.

But what choice did he have? If he let go, the slack would eventually pick him up again. And even if it didn't, the... the person was being pulled towards him as well, on a collision course. There was no way to move around it, no way to steer aside, as this white void ignored any efforts to move one's self. The body was limp at the end of it's own invisible rope, growing more visible, rocking slightly from left to right like a boat near a rift. It seemed to be flowing straight backwards, just as Vyse had before he'd started climbing, for there was no real gravity here.

Vyse fought down his revulsion as he watched the white form. He was amazed to find that whatever force had driven him this far had apparently released him, and logic was trying to reassert itself. The pirate grimly considered his choices, and found they only boiled down to two things. He could face the body now, or he could face the body later. Perhaps he would just climb past it and continue onward without looking...

Even as he considered the idea, he resumed climbing. Hand over hand, closer, closer. But no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't wrench his eyes away from what he was convinced to be dead. Morbid fascination? Lack of anything else to look at? Both? Vyse chewed lightly on his tongue and tried not to think about it.

But it didn't work.

/ Oh, Moons... it has her tattoos... /

Perhaps twenty feet away now, Vyse stopped climbing again and let the two ropes' slow progress do the work as he hung on. It had Fina's tattoos, he could see one on the body's ashen left shoulder. The other was covered in red and black, but, it was very likely there. Could it be... was it... how could it possibly...

/ Please, no. /

But the shoulders themselves were all wrong, now that he looked at them properly. And while the angle wasn't right for him to tell, it didn't -seem- female. Even dead, it had the wrong atmosphere around it, the wrong aura, the wrong presence in general to be anything like Fina. The build was just as thin as Vyse had expected, but more... like a fighter.

In fact, and he was certain of this now, this... was a Silvite warrior. It had to be, though the only metal he could see on it (and barely, at that, with this angle) were those same sorts of silver armbands Fina always wore. No sword, no cupil-creature, no weapon of any sort. An unarmed warrior from the lost civilization.

Whatever it was about this place that had made his thoughts so intense before, it had taken hold again without warning. The pirate was suddenly overcome by curiosity. It overpowered both his nausea, and his hesitation, so strong as to be painful were he not to obey.

So before he knew what he was doing, he'd climbed to within a scant five feet of the body, and then...

And then Vyse straightened, and let go of his rope.

The realization of what he'd just done hit him like a small island. Why hadn't he just kept climbing? What was it about this Silvite that was drawing him in? He was sure of it now, the body slowly closing the distance was the focus of this place... it had to be. And the ropes? Well, even if he'd let go of his, it was still attached, the slack slowly catching up now that he'd stopped moving.

But unless he wanted to scramble around to find it again, he was stuck directly in the body's path. Of course, by the time Vyse would be able to find it again, anyway, the morbid form would have run into him...

He entertained the idea of finding the stranger's rope and climbing away from it, he somehow knew it wouldn't work that way. From where he was hovering now, the body's rope would be passing -through- him, so it obviously wasn't solid to his touch.

And so the pirate did the only thing he -could- do, now. He waited, and watched.

Vyse was going to get rammed by a slow-moving corpse in the middle of bright nothingness, he knew this. If he couldn't avoid that disgusting event, then he'd rather see it coming. Even if it -did- make his skin crawl, and his stomach churn, to watch it approach...

So he stared at the top of the head, the shoulders, the small bits of metal just visible around the biceps.

The red stains... they were blood, they had to be. They were too disturbing to concentrate on for long, but they drew his attention anyway, just like everything else in the godforsaken place that he'd tried to ignore. It -was- blood, there was no doubt of it now, and there was the black he'd noticed before...

Now it was almost on top of him, even as the slack from his own rope slowly caught up.

Vyse reached out without thinking of the consequences, and put his hands on the cold, pale shoulders. One was bloodied and rotten, and the pirate shuddered, feeling unbelievably sick as the blackened tissue gave way under his palm until his hand met bone. Moons, he was going to be -sick-...

But... he couldn't let go.

If he did, the body would surely brush him aside at it's slow pace, and that was far too much contact with dead flesh for him to handle. So Vyse stared blankly into the silver-blond hair, at the back of the ashen neck, and tried desperately to ignore it all. Ignore how clammy and loose the body's bare left shoulder felt under his hand, the muscle there relaxed without life. He tried futilely to disregard the way it felt like it was only half solid, held in place solely by the skin.

But he especially tried to ignore the -other- shoulder. The sharpness of bone and slime of decomposed flesh... the slickness of coagulated blood... jellied, cold...

The bile was rising swiftly in Vyse's throat, and he shut his eyes and turned his head momentarily aside. But that didn't help, it only made the sensations from his hands all the more clear as the body's rope pulled them along. The eerie brightness of this dark place pierced his eyelids, making it all the more impossible to forget where he was.

And the head, merely a half foot in front of his, slowly lifted. The timing was just -so-, so that when the pirate re-opened his eyes, he found himself staring directly into the face of...

Directly at...

Vyse choked.

The eyes were wide open, like a frightened animal, and the shields one would normally expect to find there were completely absent. Agony and despair of the mind and heart, deeply cut, gleamed dully from their jade green depths. These wrenching emotions were as clear as day, even if the reasons remained entirely unfathomable to the pirate.

But most disturbingly of all, overlaying this shock in the here and now, was that the body was -alive-. Alive but dead, dead but alive. It made his stomach churn all over again, and his head reel, even as shock wrapped firmly around his throat. No flames reflected here, this time, only Vyse's own surprised features surrounded by blinding light.

Un-gloved hands, slick with fresh blood coated upon old, found Vyse's biceps and clenched forcefully. The fingers, whole and healthy beneath coats upon coats of gore, dug sharply into the pirate's muscle, strangely desperate. Sudden pain in the middle of all this nothing almost knocked Vyse out of his stunned state, but not quite. He simply shivered and stared.

Stared, horrified, into the eyes of the dead-but-not warrior, firmly transfixed. He was morbidly and thoroughly fascinated by the darkness of the situation, despite himself, like watching a shipwreck burst into flames.

"What are you doing here?" the Silvite warrior rasped, audible, after seemingly forever. His face was, at least, alive... if streaked with bloodied tears.

The pirate worked his jaw, trying again to speak, but nothing came out... not so much as a hiss. He rather felt like this was a good thing, because otherwise he would surely be jabbering. Speaking gibberish that would somehow demean this entire situation. Reduce it to being ridiculous.

"You shouldn't... be here..." Ramirez continued after a long moment of this, eyes growing unfocused, now seeming to stare -through- Vyse rather than at him. And here, it wasn't as though the Silvite had something else to stare at. No, it was more that he hadn't the energy to maintain his stare, as if Vyse's form was far too tiring to watch.

Meanwhile, the rope continued to catch up... and Vyse continued to not care. He was shocked, dismayed, surprised, and oddly glad all at once. Shock, that it was Ramirez, floating in this void. Dismay at the state the Admiral was in, even though he was technically his enemy. Surprised... surprised because the swordsman was -alive-, despite all signs otherwise. Despite how dead he looked and felt, there was no doubt that he was in fact still... alive.

Glad, because at least this was someone he knew... kind of.

But, Moons, what was this place? Why was Ramirez here? More to the point, why was Vyse here at all? He couldn't even remember, just now, even reaching the Dark Rift. It was as though a dark cloud obscured the very recent, giving him just enough glimpses to know something was on the other side.

He considered it, thoughts focusing and hands tightening unconsciously on the silent Admiral's shoulders.

And that was when the rope caught up.

Oh, but to say that it simply -caught up- was laughable. No, as the slack began to vanish entirely from his own, Vyse found himself staring at a thick, black, segmented -thing- over Ramirez's shoulder.

They were at such an angle from one another, almost ninety degrees, themselves, that he could see as it slowly grew materialized into visibility. It was raising, rearing up even as it continued to pull them along, so that it was becoming perpendicular to the warrior's back. The term -rope- did it a disfavor, now that he could see it... and it was living, seeming to simply exist -through- the Silvite's clothing.

It was split, however...

Split. For some reason, the term disturbed him. But there it was.

This whole thing played out as though time had slowed down, purposefully giving him the leisure to look. The chance to see how the threads of the rope--each thicker than his thumb, connected down into the Silvite. Or perhaps it was the intensity of this place again, playing tricks with his thoughts.

A glance to the Admiral's face showed that he was just as surprised at this new development as Vyse was, however. Green eyes stared across the Blue Rogue's shoulder, examining, curious. The pirate was unexplainably embarrassed, suddenly, on top of all his confusion and incomprehension. For some reason, having these lines visible was like walking around without clothing.

But that was driven firmly from his mind, because suddenly the lines began to... detach.

One . thread . at . a . time . . .

He could -feel- them snapping away. Even as both ropes--following that same, steady course and speed--began to pull the two apart from one another. They were most certainly letting go, and, that was frightening.

Vyse gripped the dead shoulders tighter by reflex, and felt Ramirez's hands tighten on his arms... but it was no good. They were peeled away even as the lines snapped, whipping through the bright nothingness like metal Valuan cables. It would have been pretty, or at least fascinating, if it wasn't so terrifying.

He was going to be stuck here... stuck in this horrible place without feeling or voice.

Stuck... but, no... not today.

When but -one- of his threads remained connected, and likewise with Ramirez, their ropes suddenly attacked.

The Silvite's threads raced for the pirate, nearly screaming with speed and Vyse threw his arms up in a futile defense, reflexively trying to yell. He heard the other shout hoarsely, the Blue Rogue's own lines lunging as well...

And then they connected with his back, with solid, almost-audible thumps. It felt not unlike being hit by arrows would, only without actual pain. Vyse opened his eyes, unaware that he'd even closed them, and lowered his arms from his face.

What had that -been-?

It felt like... like the ropes had switched people, except... they'd left a thread...

And that was when he noticed that he was looking at -himself-, staring numbly back.

The ropes, now invisible again, jerked backwards. The two confused men were drug out of sight of one another in an eyeblink, a sharp contrast to the slowness of movement before.

But before Vyse could really process what this meant...


He woke up in a single lurching moment, gasping, his face half pressed into the floor. A sense of urgency permeated his senses, shoving his puzzlement of waking up this way firmly out of his mind.

With a pained groan, Vyse rolled onto his back and opened his eyes, fully expecting to see the Dark Rift, or the ceiling of his cabin. Depending how long he'd been out and what had happened...

Sucking in a breath, the pirate raised his right arm to shield his eyes, something glowing far too brightly above him. In fact, now that he could see it through his squinting eyes and from the shadow of his arm, it was far too -big- as well.

And close.

And... the hair on the back of his neck stood up.

"Z-Zelos?!" Vyse gasped, voice sounding strange as he dropped his arm to scramble backwards, shaking violently. The Silver Gigas lifted slightly, still a mere ten or so feet up from the floor, and seemed to regard him curiously.

You're not what you're supposed to be, it seemed to be thinking, but... no matter...

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Skies of Arcadia Legends © someone else.
All here that is not found in the game... is mine.
Except the lyrics at the very bottom. They're not mine.
Never steal if you value your spleen.

Reviews are lovely, reviews make the Aro happy, and a happy Aro is more inspired to write.

However, they are not absolutely required, and flames will result in a very annoyed Aro. I'm not forcing you to read my stuff, you must realize. So I've no sympathy for you if you read it, hate it, and yet can't keep your pointer off the review button.

Constructive criticism is awesome, mind, but I can tell thinly-veiled sarcasm when I see it.

Myaku: Thanks! I touched up chapter one, thanks to you and Ianthe poking at me. :D
I really appreciated it, though, your concrit just rocked! Thanks for the review!

motosada: Ew, Freaky Friday. We shan't talk of this again. (Having flashbacks from working in Disney while that thing's previews played every ten minutes. Shudder.)
Yeah, leave it to you to bring up something I'm trying to forget. ;)

I-chan: Yeah, I like to mock the things people do in games that make little sense ICly. This would be one of those times. XD
As you already know from talking to me off-fic, I revamped 01 and am happy for the concrit. :)

ShadowWolf97: Yeah, body-swapping's been done in every fandom across the known universe.
But I'd hate for SoA to feel left out! XD

George the Unlucky Stickman: :D Glad you like it so far, thanks for the review!

Leland Lancaster: Is it overly sad that this is a light fic? ;)

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Jewel - Amen

You're mothers' child, but night lays you down.
Hair aflame, wild look in your eyes, naked belly to the ground.
A forest fire nibbles at your veins, crawls up your arm, runs away with your mind.
And burns dry thoughts like leaves.
Amen
Eyes stare up, but something's in the way...
In the Bible only angels have wings, and the rest must wait to be saved.
A dry tongue screams at the sky,
But the wind just breathes words in, as a strange bird tries to fly.
Amen
Pieces of us die everyday, as though our flesh were hell...
Such injustice, as children we are told that from God we fell.
Where are my angels? Where's my golden one? Where is my hope now that my heroes have gone?
Some are being beaten, some are being born. And some- can't- tell- the- difference anymore...
Amen
Hallelujah... Hallelujah... Hallelujah... Hallelujah...