Secrets of Memories Chapter 27: Dreams Underground
" Heartless?" Hercules was nearly speechless with shock at this sudden bit of information. " Heartless here already? How can that be?"
" Spectral Mages!" Goofy yelped as they spotted candle-carrying creatures speeding about here and there, sending streams of fire at all the people that had gathered to greet Hercules.
" Oh no..." Sora groaned, then cast Aeroga on himself, before charging at the Spectral Mages.
" Phil, cover us," Hercules told the satyr, yanked out his sword, and ran after Sora.
" Cover? Cover?!" Phil barked after them. "Me covering you guys? And with what?!"
A young man, dressed as a merchant, then rushed to his side. He pulled out a rather large and deadly looking dagger from under his cape and handed it to Phil, saying, "Here, sir, take this."
" Thanks, kid," Phil answered, snatched the dagger, and, wielding it like a sword, ran after Hercules.
" I'll cover," Goofy said cheerfully, then charged at a Rabid, a dog-like Heartless, which was about to attack the young merchant. "You best be getting out of here, this place is dangerous for sure."
" Thank you," the man said. "How can I repay you-oh, I know!"
The young man ran off, following the stampeding crowd, while Goofy spun at two Rabids and threw them into the air. Donald aimed carefully, yelled out, "Firaga!" and destroyed the two Heartless.
" What are those bat creatures?" Hercules asked, pointing to bat-like creatures with huge red hooks on their tails.
" We've met them before, Donald, remember?" Goofy yelped as he smashed a Spectral Mage into the ground. "Back at that night, maybe thirteen years ago-"
" HookWings," Donald confirmed and interrupted at the same time. "Blizzaga!"
A shot of icy magic downed one HookWing but the others kept coming.
" Hercules!" Phil shrilled out from somewhere a bit far away. "Hercules, we've got a problem!"
His high, shrill voice managed to rise over the mayhem the Heartless and the people were creating.
" Phil, what's it?" Hercules yelled back as he fought his way through an emerging swarm of Shadows. Sora flanked him, eventually cutting his own path through the Shadows and right into Soldiers.
" They're comin' from Underworld!" Phil bellowed. "At the Temple of Zeus! Remember that secret doorway I told you never to even think about?"
" Yes," Hercules answered as he reached the satyr, with Sora, Donald, and Goofy not far behind.
" That leads to Underworld," Phil explained quickly as Heartless began to swarm in from the Temple of Zeus. "We have to go there and stop the Heartless."
" Hades is up to something, that's for sure," Sora stated. "Problem is, is there any other way to get there?"
" I know of another passageway, sir," the same young merchant offered as he approached them, carrying a sack of something and a strange mechanism. The mechanism seemed to be some sort of a hose and nozzle attached to a tank of some sort.
" What in heavens is that?" Phil barked.
" A fire hose, sir," the young man answered. "Traded for it from the Orient. It does wonders."
With that, he skillfully uncoiled the hose, twisted the nozzle into place, and turned on something on the tank.
To everyone's astonishment, fire roared out of the nozzle and onto the incoming Heartless. The wall of fire immediately stopped the Heartless' advance.
" Kid, you're good," Phil breathed. "What's your name?"
" What?" nobody could hear well over the roar of flames.
" Name!" Phil barked out.
" Eucletes, sir!" the merchant yelled back.
" Well, Eucletes," Hercules said, " can you take us to Hades' dreaded Underworld?"
Eucletes had a grin on his face, something out of place for a person who should know the devilry of the place. "Sir, you have no idea how many times I've visited the place."
He gestured to Phil's dagger. "The metal comes from what I discovered in Hades' Underworld. That dagger is the closest you can get to invincibility."
" You're good," Sora commented. " Real good. Hades isn't the easiest to get along with."
" Don't you worry, sir," Eucletes replied as he switched off the fire hose. He then quickly gestured to a couple of teenage boys who were watching his mechanism with awe.
They came rushing and he asked them urgently, "Can you use this and keep those monsters from attacking?"
It seemed they knew each other really well. The teenage boys nodded eagerly and he let them have it.
" The gateway is at the foot of Mount Olympus," he said as he shifted to towards the road that led out of Thebes. "But exactly where it is around Mount Olympus very few know. Nessus was one, until Hercules mashed him up."
Hercules said in a sheepish manner, "He was assaulting Meg; what else was I to do?"
" No comment," Sora replied immediately. "Eucletes, just take us there, will you?"
The merchant nodded, then handed over the sack he was carrying. "I brought some Elixirs, just in case you guys need some."
" Gee, Eucletes, thanks," Sora said as he took the sack. "You've just saved us a ton of munny."
" I help those who deserve it," Eucletes answered. "This way now. We must hurry."
He ran down the road that ran parallel to Mount Olympus, to its left. Sora, Donald, Goofy, Hercules, and Phil didn't waste any time and ran after him, while the teenage boys that Eucletes instructed to use the fire hose sprayed fire on the Heartless that tried to follow.
Aozora sighed as he slid down the wall he was leaning against and sat on the floor of the inside of the train station. If there was any way to define disaster with visual images, he knew of a situation that could do it.
The casualties were light, but they were still casualties. People had died fighting off the Heartless and Nobodies. Nobody was prepared to be hit by the Heartless and Nobodies and only Aozora could somehow connect the train explosion with this attack on the train station.
" Twilight Town is no longer safe," Aozora had told Cid, who had arrived with Yuna, Rikku, and Paine to fight off the enemies. "I knew this place would not be untouchable but how vulnerable this world is, I still need to find out. Cid, Twilight Town is a very important world; we cannot let it go."
Cid nodded, then turned to Yuna, Rikku, and Paine. "You know what to do."
With a confused Aozora looking on, the three women vanished.
" They're going to search out and destroy any Heartless and Nobodies," Cid explained. "We're going to clear out Twilight Town of them and build up defenses. It will be much harder for them to get in."
" You'd better hope the defenses will stop them," Aozora said. "We don't know much about Orion or that homeless guy who seems to be in league with the same evil Orion is working for."
It was hard for him to say that name. He seemed to be a good person but his strange loyalty had made him split. Why was he so faithful to Ansem, Aozora didn't know and he doubt he'd find out anytime soon.
" Don't you worry, Aozora," Cid told him reassuringly. "Now rest up; my cousin's sending over a gummi ship for you to pilot to Ancient Greece. I don't know why you guys ended up split but we can't afford that. You have to stick with Sora at all times, Aozora, do you understand?"
" We've got just one problem," Aozora countered bitterly. "The rift. It's not easy defending someone who hates being guarded and he's not easy to be around with anymore period."
" You just have to solve that, won't you?" Cid shot back. "You've no choice, Aozora. Sally- you know who she is- predicts something terrible will happen if you two stay split for too long. We have to keep you two together."
Aozora groaned inwardly, sighed outwardly, and nodded reluctantly at the same time. He knew. It was inevitable and he had to stop it. An impossible task for sure but many things were impossible. And what seemed impossible always turned out to be possible.
" You have to rest, Aozora," Cid practically ordered him. " After what you've gone through in the last few days, it's a wonder you didn't drop dead. Go to the apartment and take a break. You'll be thankful you heeded my advice."
Aozora nodded and yawned. Cid was right. He was tired, dead tired. His bones and muscles ached and his head was feeling fuzzy. He doubt that even if he tried, he's never be able to think straight enough to even run up stairs.
He sighed and got up from his position against the train station's wall and staggered out under the twilit sky that engulfed the world.
" Sora, what have I done for all this to happen?" he asked to the sky, then continued his way down towards the apartment.
" You do know about Cerberus, right?" Phil broke the unsettling silence that fell upon the people and their guide. "Three headed dog? Big sharp fangs, huge mutt who likes human flesh?"
" That's after you get past Charon," Eucletes said calmly. "You have to get him to take you across the River Styx and onward past Cerberus. But I bet you guys faced Cerberus before, am I correct?"
Sora, Donald, Goofy, and Hercules all groaned. "Don't remind me."
" He's not bad if you give him a biscuit," Eucletes let out the secret. "Fact is, if one head gets the treat, the other two heads can't bear to watch that one head eat up the treat and would fight it. The head, in turn, would attack the other two and they would end up fighting over the biscuit and they would never notice anyone passing by them until the biscuit falls into the River Styx, thanks largely to their bickering. Fact is, every biscuit I've ever given to them had always fallen into the waters and the three heads never learned their lesson. It's amusing yet sad at the same time to watch them fight over something so petty as a biscuit. Then again, I have no idea what Hades does to keep them fed."
" I bet he feeds them whatever humans try to get into Underworld," Sora said darkly.
" Few have been able to get through and back," Hercules countered. "I, for one, got past Cerberus. Orpheus did, too. Theseus and his friend got past Cerberus as well but they never got past Hades."
" Getting past Hades," Eucletes was very solemn, "is an entirely different story."
" I should imagine," Sora said sarcastically.
" The last time I was at Underworld, to find some raw metals, Charon got bit by the gossip bug-"
" A gossip bug?" Goofy asked curiously. "What's it look like?"
Donald elbowed him and hissed, "It's a way of saying the guy was gossiping."
" Oh," Goofy answered but he still didn't seem to understand.
" And?" Phil asked impatiently as he hopped over a rock that stood in his path.
" Chiron told me Hades was up to something really dangerous," Eucletes explained as they squirmed their way through dense underbrush. "Something about summoning a dream-"
" A what?" Hercules asked.
" A what?!" Phil blasted. "He was summoning a what?!"
" How do you summon a dream?" Sora wondered.
" That's plain crazy," Donald said. "The art of summoning a dream's been lost for centuries!"
" Huyuk, that's right!" Goofy agreed as he swiped away at low-hanging branches.
" Tell that to Hades," Eucletes answered staunchly. "I heard he knew he was able to, since a dream had already been summoned days ago. So he's been trying to summon a powerful dream, one from this world called Sp-"
" I don't get it," Sora interrupted again. "What do you mean by a dream?"
" A dream is something like a ghost," Phil snapped back an explanation. "But they're not really ghosts; they seem real in every way except that they're dead. You usually see them as they were when they died but I've heard of a case in which a dream lived in the universe for years, seeming to age as a normal human does, but he was an invincible fighter. Eventually he faded away, as many dreams do."
" But why would Hades want to summon a dream?" Hercules wondered.
Sora wondered as well. Why would Hades want to summon a dream? Unless..."...but he was an invincible fighter..."
" Phil?" Sora asked slowly. "Do dreams die?"
" Which sort of dreams?" Phil demanded.
" The ghost-like people dreams," Sora answered. "Do they ever die?"
" They're already dead, kid," Phil snapped back. "They die only once; after that, they don't' die again."
Sora's heart seemed to drop to his stomach. He knew enough of Hades to know the god would do anything to stop Sora from reaching the door of light. Hades hated Hercules as well, and the Keyblade Master had a bad feeling Hades would do anything to rid the universe of both of them.
" I think he's aware of our coming," Sora said aloud. "Isn't he?"
" He might have conversed with the Fates, yes," Hercules agreed. "They may have told him that we were coming."
" That's a bad thing then," Sora began to draw a conclusion. "He hates the both of us, he probably knows that we are coming, Eucletes says Hades might be trying to summon a dream, and Phil says they're invincible, since they died only once. Now, what does that tell us?"
An unsettling silence fell upon them. The landscape, slowly digressing from a forest with vicious underbrush into more open land, was silent, devoid of life.
" Oh no..." Phil groaned. "Don't tell me: what you're saying, kid, is that Hades is trying to summon a dream to fight us and kill us all, ain't that right?"
" Makes perfect sense to me," Goofy exclaimed.
" That's not a good thing, Goofy," Donald reprimanded. "That is actually a very bad thing."
"...and I'm telling you now, right now, that if you don't' fight for me, I will send you back to wherever in my hell you came from!" Hades ranted, the flames on his head roaring violently in shades of red. "Do you want to go back there or would you rather stay here?"
" I'm afraid I don't have an answer for you," the young man before the god of the Underworld answered calmly. This veteran of many battles stood in a long dark red coat, with one sleeve empty; his left arm was tucked in underneath the coat and hung out. He wielded a huge sword made of tempered steel and he carried that sword behind his head. His hair was dark brown-gray and his face was set and grim.
" What the hell does that mean?!" Hades roared.
" It means it was my fate to be summoned by you but it may not be my fate to fight for you," the man explained unhurriedly. He was not bothered by the god's volatile temper.
" You will fight for me," Hades snarled at him, his teeth gnashing in rage. "I summoned you for the purpose of fighting-and destroying- this certain idiot I know of, and this certain brat who's with him right now-"
" I know who they are," the young man answered. "They are destined for great things, yes. I will not fight for you."
" What?!" Hades, who had begun to calm down, roared again. "I had you summoned to kill the Keyblade Master! Do as I say!"
" Summoning a dream does not necessarily mean the summoner can control it," the man replied simply as he turned away. "Dreams have a will of their own, Hades; you should have realized it by now when that young man first appeared before you."
" Don't' remind me," Hades snarled. "If it weren't for the stupid Fates, he'd still be here!"
" And the fate of the universe would have taken a turn for the worse," raspy voices chimed in a strange unison. Hades froze, his face twisted in a look of anger and horror.
Three hunched figures in dark cloaks, with stringy hair hanging from their hoods, filed into the room where Hades and the dream he summoned were arguing. They juggled a round, white object amongst themselves, fighting for it, but they still managed to talk normally.
" Hades, we took him away because he had to go somewhere else," one of them spoke.
" Two places, actually," another input. "To that one world and to In-Between-"
" I know, I know!" Hades interrupted impatiently. "But why? What makes the universe so important to you?"
" The universe is our lifeline," the more dominant of the three spoke. "If the universe dies, so will we-"
" And I would be able to breathe more easily," Hades muttered under his breath.
" – destroying the universe, Hades," the Fate continued to speak, "will destroy everything. In-Between cannot survive without its connections to the universe and neither will your Underworld. Try as you might but you can never dethrone your brother. Destroying the universe will not dethrone him; by the time he is dethroned, you will be as well, and so will everyone and everything vanish into that endless sea I'm sure you've been told about."
" I hate Eldest," Hades growled. "I hate that man! Him and Sally; I hate them both!"
" Yet you must listen to them if you want all you hold dear to stay alive," the Fates chimed.
" What do I hold dear, huh?" Hades demanded. "What do I love?"
" Underworld, for one," the plumpest of the Fates spoke up.
" And your desire for dominance," the second of the Fates added.
" And your very life," the most dominant of the Fates finished.
" I'm a god," Hades reminded them.
" God or no god, we all will eventually vanish, wither away into history," the Fates answered sharply. "That is why we took the boy away to Spira and In-Between; he will help save the universe."
" And him?" Hades jabbed a thumb back at the dream.
" We had fun with your destiny," the plumpest chuckled. "We teased with your golden lifeline so you can summon him. Did all of us some good."
" How the hell can he help us all?" Hades fumed. They messed with his future? To hell with them!
" That is for me and me alone to decide, am I right?" the dream asked of the Fates. They nodded with pride, like a mother hen does of her chicks.
" Yes, Auron, you and you alone will decide when the time comes," the Fates agreed. "But now, let us see as the son of Zeus and the Keyblade Master approaches Underworld. Shall we greet them?"
" Should we say anything to the Keyblade Master?" the plumpest asked as they drifted away.
" Nothing that will give him an idea about the future," the tallest and the leader of them answered. " He must be ignorant of his own future for his future, and ours, to happen."
" But what of his past?" the middle one demanded worriedly. "Shall we drop him hints or make him spend a lifetime searching out his parentage, his heritage?"
" All in a good time, sister," the tallest answered. "Of course we should drop him some hints; nothing can happen if we don't say something, aren't I right..."
The voices drifted away while a trembling Hades turned to the dream, the man the Fates called Auron. The god was trembling with white-hot rage.
" So," he said in a cold voice. " So, Tidus slips away from my fingers, you are summoned by me to help them, and I just sit around doing nothing."
" I think I shall take my leave," Auron said calmly and began to stride away.
" What can be worse than this?" Hades raged.
" Meg and Pegasus are coming," Auron said, with a faint trace of a smile on his face. "Does that help?"
" Curse the Hearts and Souls!" Hades raved. "Imagine the chaos I could put on the universe if Hercules didn't save her!"
" I can only imagine," Auron answered, a trace of sarcasm in his voice. "I believe Charon will be having trouble with them."
" He'd better not take them across the damn river," Hades said darkly, as the flames on his head began to grow red again.
" We'll see," Auron said with a rather dark grin and vanished before Hades could start raving at the dream again.
" I will kill Hercules and that blasted Sora before they can get out of there!" Hades swore to himself. "That is, if they can get in here."
" This way," Eucletes gestured to a rather dark enclosure in the stone side of Mount Olympus.
They were now deep in a dark forest and all signs of civilization had been blotched out by the dark branches that threatened to hit them on the face.
" What are those?" Sora whispered, pointing to strange, shimmering forms that were lining up to enter that dark enclosure that seemed more like a passageway into the mountain rather than a large dent in the wall.
" Spirits, ghosts, whatever you call them," Eucletes explained. "They're all dead and they're headed for the Underworld like we are."
" They're dead?" Sora paled ever so slightly. "But there's so many of them."
" Kid, you've ever been exposed to the real world before or did you live in a cage for fourteen years?" Phil snapped. "People die every day and there's nothing you can do about it."
" Oh," Sora felt extremely stupid at the moment; he had not been exposed to death until...well, he never really did see death, did he?
" Come on," Eucletes hissed. "Do you see that?"
A Darkball floated lazily out of the passageway but its glowing yellow eyes continued to look everywhere.
" It's a sentry," Phil analyzed its behavior. "It's on the lookout for anyone who's not a ghost. Tell me, Sora, are Darkballs hard?"
" I love fighting Darkballs," Sora admitted, then took a careful aim at the Darkball.
" You have to be careful about it, Sora," Eucletes warned him. "If you don't' kill it at the first blast, it'll be able to alert others and then we'd have a serious problem."
" Don't worry," Sora answered. " I've got it all under control."
" I hope so," Donald muttered cynically.
Its yellow eyes surveyed the line of souls waiting to be transported across the River Styx by Charon the Boatman to Underworld. Many fingered the golden coins in their hands while some continued to try and pull the gold coins out of their eyes and others fished for the gold coin under their tongues.
All in all, everything was going well. The Darkball was bored.
It had been instructed to stay on the lookout for the infamous Keyblade Master, the murderer of thousands of the Darkball's kin. The enemy, it was instructed, will be coming and if the Darkball spots or even sense his very presence, it must raise the alarm.
The Darkball yawned, its eyes still watching the long line of souls waiting their turn to board Charon's boat.
When the Darkball looked up, it found itself staring at a huge ball of flame zeroing on him. The Heartless did not have even the time to raise the alarm before the fireball burned him into nothing.
" I told you I got it all under control," Sora said with pride as they snuck into the passageway. Goofy was nervous of the souls and stayed as far away from them as possible. Hercules didn't' mind them; after all, he had gone swimming in spirits in order to save Meg's soul.
Donald grumbled back an undistinguishable answer and stomped onward. Eucletes quickly got him to stop making so much noise.
" We don't' want to alert anyone of our coming," the young merchant explained as they entered a huge underground world.
A greenish river separated the land into two and ceiling of the place seemed to go on into infinity. Souls streamed into their side of the river, awaiting their turn to board a large ferry that would take them across the huge river and past a very familiar creature with three heads...
" Cerberus," Hercules and Sora acknowledged as the same instance.
" This place is amazing," Donald squawked.
" Huyuk," Goofy agreed enthusiastically. "And all that Heartless!"
Donald squalled while everyone stared at where Goofy was staring. Heartless seemed to be swarming the other side of the river, watching, existing there like guards.
" This is bad, very bad," Sora groaned as he slowly backed away into shadows, to hide from their sight.
He bumped into something. Something very alive.
A hand clasped over his mouth before he could shout and a serious, stern voice whispered into his ear, "Don't make a sound."
Sora kicked at a rock in retaliation and the sound of the impact alerted the others.
" Who are you?" Hercules demanded as he pulled out his sword.
" Put that sword away!" Eucletes snapped. "Its glare will attract the Heartless!"
" I'm not here to hurt any of you, in case you wanted to know or didn't realize it," the person was saying. "I've been following you for some time and let me tell you; its not going to be easy reaching the source of the Heartless."
" Who are you?" Donald asked, echoing Hercules' unanswered question.
" My name is Auron," the man said as he let Sora go. "I am a dream, summoned by Hades."
" Hades summoned you?" Sora demanded as he turned to look at the person.
The sword should be gleaming but it was dulled. The red coat the man was wearing was darkened. In fact, he was darkened in such a way to blend in with the dark background of what was Underworld.
" He summoned me to do as he bid but he's a fool," Auron answered calmly. "It'll take more than summoning to control a dream. But before we go into any further detailed discussion, first thing's first: you guys have to get across the River Styx to the heart of Underworld."
" There we run into a problem," Sora answered. "How do we get across the River Styx, how do we get past the Heartless and Cerberus, and how are we going to find the source of the Heartless without running into Hades?"
" You cannot avoid Hades," Auron responded. "Eucletes knows how to stop Cerberus but we'll have to resort to something else to avoid the Heartless. Either that or we meet the Heartless head on. As for crossing the River Styx..."
" Charon never lets anyone board the ferry if that person is still alive," Eucletes said uncertainly. " You have to do something in order to get him to get you across and you can never fool him twice with the same thing."
" I happen to be a dream," Auron said. "Quite solid, yes, but I'm still dead. He won't notice anything until he realizes that I don't have money to pay for my fare. You guys stay near while I board the ferry, just in case something might go wrong. And if he refuses to ferry all of us across, into the River Styx he goes."
With that, he strode purposely towards the ferry, with Sora, Donald, Goofy, Hercules, and Phil following a little distance away in the shadows of the world many know as hell.