Secrets of Memories Chapter 57: The Eternal Calm
" I don't like this one bit," Merlin murmured to Oracle Kenaii. " If you put two and two together, it doesn't make sense at all!"
" But the dreams do not lie," the oracle reasoned. " The last son of the Keyblades is not among the dreams; he is not lost to us. And what Kairi said, about our young Guardian…"
" But he is not the Keyblade Master!" Merlin countered. " Sora and King Mickey are the current and only Keyblade Masters right now. There are no others."
" Remember the prophecy? ' Change the Third Key'?" Oracle Kenaii added. " We have two Keys; we are missing a third."
" That does not mean the Guardian's the last son!" Merlin shot back. " Recall this, Kenaii – refugees sometimes go unnoticed, unmarked, unrecorded. Therefore, we may have other survivors, survivors we have not counted on. It may be another person who's the last son of the Keyblades. And recall that official records give this child two names: his official name Kurozora and his secret name Aros. There is nobody out there who bears either of the two names."
" True, true." Oracle Kenaii, however, refused to accept defeat. " But the facts do not lie: I have not found the son of the Keyblades and Aozora recalls his life on Celt Circle. This world was destroyed in his time; he must have been living on this world to have recalled it. And if he survived it and I cannot find the last son's dream, then what would you conclude?"
" That there's still too many gaps," Merlin grumbled back. " Eye colors don't change! His eyes are bronze, like polished weaponry! Kurozora was recorded as blond and hazel-eyed."
" Well, you're right on that part…" Oracle Kenaii was forced to agree; biological factors are permanent, unchanging. " Have any of you guys seen a child with blond hair and hazel eyes?"
He turned to Kairi, Selphie, Tidus, and Iago, only to be met with blank stares and stunned silence. Every eye was on him. Oracle Kenaii sighed. " Why do I even try?"
" You two make yourselves less and less reasonable, with every step we take towards finding this Universe's door," Tidus observed.
" Exactly. They're always talking amongst themselves, leaving us here in the dark," Selphie added scathingly. " They never tell us where we're going and what's the whole story behind everything we're doing."
" We do tell you," Merlin protested, giving his wand a twirl in the process.
" Not enough," Kairi had to agree. " You two seem to know what we don't know. Explain that."
" Yeah, at my feathery a-"
Tidus reached up and clamped Iago's beak shut.
" Well, truth is, we don't know as much as you do," Oracle Kenaii said. " We sound like we do but we only do so in trying to calm you down. If we were to tell you we were bullshitting everything, you might as well go crazy and give up this mission."
" You were bullshitting everything?" Selphie gaped in astonishment. " Everything you told us wasn't true?"
" No, no, no!" Merlin held his hands up. " Oracle, way to go. We…are on the same journey you four are. We know a bit more, yes, considering our age, with Oracle Kenaii in particular. However, we are as much in the dark as you four are."
" So you don't know as much as we do?" Kairi questioned.
" I apologize for leading your mind elsewhere," Merlin said. " See, we concluded that if you were to learn that we knew nothing as well, then you would have no reason to go so far on this journey for the truth. Therefore we decided-"
" But I have a reason."
Merlin studied Kairi for a moment. " That is true. You do. But what of the others?"
" Well, I intend to stick with Kairi and see to it that she gets to Sora," Selphie declared, crossing her arms before her and glaring at the ghost and the old man.
" I want to get out of here and go back to Spira," Tidus informed.
" And I want to meet my pals again," Iago added. " So you see, we've got our own reasons."
Merlin looked at Oracle Kenaii. " We're so busted."
" I think you are," Selphie agreed menacingly.
''
" So besides this prophecy, what do we do know about Celt Circle?" Kairi asked as they meandered along the gray shorelines of the lonesome world. " You know, like what have we concluded about this world, what's gonna happen to this world, and where are we headed next?"
" To answer your first question, it seems that hope may still live, since we cannot find the last son of the Keyblades," Oracle Kenaii said glumly. " This world sacrificed all its goodness and glory for doom and death when they discovered the child by the seashore."
" Oh," Selphie said in a very small voice.
" To answer your second question," Merlin input," this world cannot be saved."
" What?" Kairi demanded.
" What does that mean?" Tidus wondered.
" This is a damned world," Merlin sighed. " For all good things must come to an end. So did this world come to its end. Forever it will be in our memories; it will no longer exist in the Real Universe. But do not be so sad. Don't you see? This world still lives? Unlike other places, life still breathes upon these gray shores. And the dreams? They have found peace. See for yourself."
In the hazy mist, they realized that they had walked right into a ghost town, a village by the sea. Everything was ominously translucent and faintly they heard the gulls cry and the children laugh, as they passed through buildings, through people, through this village. Women laughed, men joked, and children merrily went about, with a happiness and innocence that Kairi missed.
" They're…happy," she smiled.
Selphie shrunk away. " Can they see us? Like those two kids back there? They scare me."
" No, they no longer see us," Oracle Kenaii reassured her. " See, this is their Paradise. All they ever wanted was to live in peace on Celt Circle; that was what they wanted. Though all they knew and loved were lost to the Real Universe, they still live here…In Between, in Celt Circle, in dreams, in our hearts. Their eternal calm has been found; we have given it to them."
Iago looked up at the seagulls flying above them. " Now they can no longer see us…"
" It's better that they don't," Tidus spoke up. " Better to live in their own little world than to look to us wishing they were one of us again."
" True," Merlin acknowledged Tidus' understanding of this sad fate. " They are forever locked in this way; they can no longer go back to what they have been. That is the cruelty of all things. Eventually you can never go back to what you once were; you can only go forward, but at what cost?"
" A heavy price," Kairi whispered, her eyes distant. " You can never come home again."
The others were silent for a moment, pondering this strange statement.
"Are you referring to Sora, perchance?" Iago demanded.
Kairi refused to answer. " And where do we go now, Merlin, Kenaii? We are done here; where to now?"
" To the land of eternal calm," Merlin informed. " And everlasting mystery."
" This is the world we hope to resurrect," Oracle Kenaii elaborated as the seashore faded away into hazy gray. " Death shrouds it and mystery darkens it. Its name is most deceiving, for it has not been what its name implies."
" This was where the last of a dynasty died," Merlin continued. " A dynasty that began long ago with the first Keyblade Masters. See, like I said, Keyblades choose the right of heart but it prefers this family; every few generations, one is chosen to wield the Keyblade, to whatever end, be it happy or be it dark. The last descendents were living in this world…they vanished, along with the rest of the world when it detonated so many years ago. About twelve-thirteen years ago, Deep Tranquility was lost in what we call the Big Bang, which set off a chain reaction that brought about meteor storms and chaos of the worst kind."
" And we're going there to find out why?" Selphie asked.
" Right on target," Oracle Kenaii nodded. " We hope to find answers there…and find out the truth once and for all."
He glared at Merlin as he said this.
" What will we find there?" Tidus wondered.
" Something as gloomy as Celt Circle, I can tell you that," Iago muttered.
''
"…unrecorded but he did survive the Big Bang," Merlin told Kairi as the landscape around them became filled with gray-tinged flora. " I'm not sure if it's such a big deal but then again it had been said that nobody survived the Big Bang, nobody but one child. We came to two conclusions about this while back: either it's the last child of the Keyblades or Aozora. We couldn't trace back any further, since we lost all contact with that child, Kurozora, and Aozora not only went off with King Mickey and Eldest for several years, someone had tampered with his memory."
" Really?"
" Someone wiped out his memory clean," Merlin shook his head, his long beard swishing. " Inexperienced as this person was, he or she succeeded in turning his mind tabula rasa. He knows nothing of his past, so we cannot trace it back."
" Tabula rasa?" Tidus echoed.
" 'Clean slate', a philosophical thing," Oracle Kenaii added as they stumbled upon a road made of worn stones.
" Oh. That makes sense."
" That's…so sad," Kairi murmured. " He knows nothing then, except for what he remembers of Celt Circle."
" Which really bothers me but so far we haven't enough information to fish out and piece together the pieces of the truth." Merlin took off his spectacles, cleaned them, and pushed them back on up his nose. " Therefore, we go to Deep Tranquility, and we find the truth."
" Behind all this?" Selphie demanded. " That's an awful lot of things to recall, remember, and try to answer."
" Which is why we're not answering all the questions," Oracle Kenaii informed. " We want to answer one thing and one thing only: what happened on the night Deep Tranquility was destroyed?"
" And that answers everything else?" Tidus asked.
" Of course," Merlin replied. " We'll know what became of King Mickey, what happened to the original wielder of two of the Keyblades, and what happened of the wielder's children."
" What do you mean by King Mickey?" Iago demanded suspiciously.
" And what two Keyblades?" Selphie added.
Oracle Kenaii could only sigh. Kairi answered for him, though. " He means by that prophecy: Change the Third Key. That means there are three Keyblades out there. We know of Sora's Keyblade and King Mickey's Keyblade; now we need to know what happened to the last one."
" Which will be answered here, in the land of eternal calm, Deep Tranquility," Oracle Kenaii boomed, coming to a sudden stop at the top of a hill in the middle of the road and stretching his arms out. He looked down upon something and his voice had a ring of sadness to it.
" Oh, of all the things I've seen," Merlin whispered as he joined the specter, closing his eyes and looking away.
The four others looked at each other with certain consternation. If these two had problems with Deep Tranquility, what could that mean? But they joined the two ahead of them, anyways, and all together, they looked down from the hill upon what was called Deep Tranquility.
Or what its former glory was.
Trees, blasted into bits, remained only as charred and jagged stumps upon scorched ground. Rubble was strewn everywhere, whatever remained of homes and shops and monuments of all sorts. Boats from the far seashore sat among the rubble, forced inland. Many had smashed themselves up against what was once trees; vases and jars and amphorae were strewn everywhere, shattered into pieces or intact in all its tragic, gray glory. And everywhere there were traces of life.
" This…this is horrible…" Selphie choked up and turned away. She had seen a little girl's doll on top of a fallen wooden boat bearing the name Katherine.
" By Spira…" Tidus wiped tears from his eyes. " This…this is so much worse than what I've come to know…"
Iago bowed his head. He had seen enough. First Celt Circle, now this land of destruction and death. This was getting out of hand. Iago's world of desert and friends had been interrupted by darkness and now he had just seen what this darkness could do.
" This is evil," he finally whispered.
Kairi stared, silent in the face of the epitome of darkness and death. There was something about this, this place, that told her that something was wrong. It was a world waiting for someone to release its darkest secrets, the secrets of memories that it held within. And briefly, just briefly, she saw the world as it once was, its buildings erect and glorious, the ships bobbing at sea, and life, bustling and busy as it was, before something took it all away.
Deep Tranquility was waiting for her to unlock its darkest mysteries. The key was here.
" If…" she said quietly, " if we unlock the secrets of this world, will it solve everything?"
" It depends on how much was lost with it," Merlin replied slowly. " Why?"
" It calls," she whispered. " It wants someone to release its darkest secrets. Something happened here long ago, that left a stain on this world. An evil mark."
Selphie shivered at this. " Stop it, Kairi, you're starting to scare me."
Kairi shook her head, brushing away her red bangs. " Don't you see, Selphie? That's what we've been doing. We've been purging each of the worlds here of its stain of evil. As we purge each world, we unlock one more piece to this strange puzzle. Ansem's reports are part of the key; they tell us of the evils we must face. Maybe he was good in heart after all, when he began his research."
" He was once good but humanity got to him and corrupted his vision," was all Oracle Kenaii would say.
" As we purge each world, we take one step closer to unlocking the key, the key to this evil, the key to why things are the way they are. One step closer…and we can solve the mystery. Maybe," Kairi thought, " maybe that's what our whole purpose was. There's a reason to why things happen the way they do and it's up to us to find out the truth."
If it's the truth you seek, why not find it? Dream Heart materialized before them, looking worse for wear.
" What happened to you?" Selphie demanded.
Cleaning up a mess, it replied enigmatically. I was checking on your progress. It seems Kairi's got a serious point in this. If we can find out this world's dark secrets, we may solve nearly every problem there is.
" Nearly?" Iago squawked.
Only Sora can find the Door of Light. And he is no closer to it now than he was last year. First Castle Oblivion, now all this on Heartless, Dusk, the Society…they're trying to keep him away from the Door of Light. And his own memories. They seem to know more than we do in this matter. Beat them to it, Kairi.
" Like we haven't been doing just that?" Selphie snorted. " I'd be glad to go back home once this is all over with."
" Home…" Tidus murmured.
There is no home that you can call your own until the Door of Light is found, the Dream Heart spoke, dashing Selphie and Tidus' hopes right there and then. For all that you know and love will either be destroyed or changed; nothing will be the way it was before. You cannot go back. You may look behind you but all you can do is understand it. You can only go forward. And that is where our fears lie.
" Fears?" Merlin looked sharply at the being in the armor of the Nobodies. " The threat magnified!"
The Guardian's run into a little problem, the Dream Heart explained. The Guardian of the Cave of Wonders botched up on his job to take Aozora to Twilight Town; he's not there right now but elsewhere.
" Oh great," Oracle Kenaii moaned, rubbing his face and stretching at his skin. " This is bad."
" Meaning we cannot waste any time," Kairi said firmly. " Is there a tower of dreams here, or a place where we can unlock dreams?"
Not dreams, no, Dream Heart informed. Deep Tranquility has none of that sort. However, this world has its own key, its own key to the greater key that hides from us all we must know. If you can find the key, you may solve half of all our problems.
" And the other half?" Iago demanded.
We…leave that up to Riku, and the Dream Heart vanished.
" So Riku's got his own little job, eh?" Selphie smirked. " He's a busy one."
" For a good reason," Kairi said. Selphie's smirk of a smile vanished when she realized that Kairi was very serious about it.
" Let us walk down this road to where the eternal calm ended," Oracle Kenaii called out as he began the long descent down the gently sloping hill. " For it was here that everything came undone…and your stories began."
''
It was a walk of silence, a moment of silence, to honor those silenced by this nightmare that had begun to take hold of the rest of the Universe. The further they went down, the closer they reached the rubble of the once-busy city.
" Due to its size, we must call it a city," Merlin explained when they reached the borders of a small farm on the outskirts of the ruins. " Oh it doesn't have big signs and modern buildings but it is, or was, very big and populated with many people. It was once one of the most important cities in the Universe, third only to Disney's Disney Castle and the palace-cities of Old Citadel. Disney's past glory is in the past and Old Citadel is only a memory now; here, it is all ruins. Ah but you should have seen this world in its glory days."
" You were there?" Tidus asked. " Oh right, you're not so young."
Merlin looked very put off by this. " Do you suspect my years? My age? My gray beard? I am your elder, young man, and don't you forget it!"
" My bad!" Tidus yelped. " I'm so sorry! I apologize!"
Merlin grumbled something about 'youngsters' and marched ahead of the group of a wicked pace, causing everyone save Oracle Kenaii to run after him.
" What!" Tidus demanded when he realized everyone was staring – glaring at him.
''
But there really wasn't much to look at once they reached the actual city. There was nothing to lead them here and there, no clues as to what had happened to cause such a disaster, besides the long stone road led to the harbor and the gray sea.
" You really think we can find anything in this mess?" Iago demanded as Tidus kicked at a still-standing stand and watched it topple to the ground.
Selphie shrugged. " We might as well try."
" Haven't you heard of that adage?" Iago asked. " You know, the one that says: try, try again. And then stop. No use in keep on doing…keep on doing it….um…okay, well I can't remember most of it. But there's the general idea. Try twice, then stop. No use doing it again if we're not going anywhere."
" We've been trying," Selphie shot back, walking across what was apparently a creaking floor of a house. " We got somewhere. Here."
" All the same, there is no way anything can be found in this mess!"
" You are a pessimistic winged rat. I just wanna squash you and grrr…"
" Good dog. Now stop growling!"
" Says you, you freakin' monkey. Natter, natter, natter, day and night, every second, every minute."
" Now don't you start comparing me to Abu!"
" Who?"
Kairi sighed. Good ol' romantic Selphie, in an argument with a red parrot that won't shut up. Lovely.
She suddenly looked up. A breeze was blowing here, too, a soft lulling zephyr from the sea. Something stirred in her heart, a calling of the sea. The calling was not her own but it was there, a yearning to be one with the sea. A warm feeling spread from her heart to her fingers and her feet, a strange sensation that left her breathless with surprise.
" Are you alright?" Oracle Kenaii asked worriedly, noticing just how stunned Kairi suddenly looked.
" I – I think I'm fine," she managed to reply. " I think…I think I'll go explore by the seashore a big."
The specter nodded. " Be careful."
Kairi's feet began the slow walk down the stone road to the silent harbor, where the sea would be. All sounds of bickering between Selphie and Iago faded away, all sounds of talk between Merlin and Tidus became distant; it became her and her alone, with the strange feeling within her.
It's not me, it's someone else, she told herself. But who could it be? Who is it who wants to go to the sea? Why the sea? Who could it be?
Abruptly the tufts of gray grass ended at a cold beach of fine grains of sand. In the distance, she saw the gray sea and faint lights in the dim sky, like stars. The sea seemed to be dark gray, tinged with blue.
This world is not lost nor is it found, she found herself telling herself. It's gray but its colored; its been here for a long time after all, waiting for the truth, waiting for…release…
She sat in the sand, looking out to the sea. She felt oddly at home in this lonely realm, a tranquility she had never felt before.
So this is what it means by the Eternal Calm, she realized. This truly is a peaceful world. So beautiful, so quiet, so peaceful, so-
" Very dull."
Jerked out of her reverie, Kairi whirled around, peering through the haze of gray. " Who's there?"
" Is this why you're so unhappy? Aren't you happy living this life?"
" Love, I was born to do things. But there's nothing for me to do here. I feel like…I feel like I need to get out there somewhere, roam around, break all ties with everything that holds me down."
" How could you say that? You have a family; how can they bore you?"
" That's not what I'm trying to say-"
" I understand, Ronsend. This life bores you, doesn't it? You want to play 'hero' but since Mickey already is the 'hero', you have nothing to do…"
Kairi got up slowly and inched towards the conversation, wondering who was the couple bickering with each other in this…desolate…
Why are there voices of people here when nobody's supposed to be here?
Kairi carefully followed the voices, inching towards the dark sea carefully, keeping an eye out for anything suspicious. Something was strangely wrong here, she knew. Unless she was dreaming, there were people here.
"…you and glory! Aren't you happy with your children? Aren't you happy living by the sea, the sea that's in your blood and made you what you are now?"
" I am from the family of the Keyblade Masters, love! I may have the sea in my veins but the land and the skies call, too. The stars call me. They want me to go, go and explore the Universe we live in. I can't help it!"
" Well tell those voices to shut up. You can go and explore once our children are old enough."
" I'll be old then, old and too feeble to do as I please. If I am to go, it is now."
" I can't believe you!"
Kairi thought she saw two figures, faint against the hazy gray. They were both tall and lithe, with one of powerful, muscular built and the other slender and supple. They were standing by the seashore, in a serious argument, not noticing Kairi as she approached. This seemed strange for sure but as she got closer, she realized why.
They were translucent. Like the dreams back at Celt Circle and Oracle Kenaii, they were like ghosts, but these ghosts were full of color and life and the air around them was tinged with life and color, too. Faintly she could hear the sea ripple across the sand and gulls cry in the far distance. It seemed strange, like someone placed a color photograph in a black-and-white world and bid it to come to life but only up to the boundaries of the photograph.
Kairi studied the two people. The man was strongly tanned, perhaps in his mid-thirties. He was a brunette, with long, layered hair that fell to the right side of his face. His eyes were hazel with a strong bluish haze and were very stormy and serious. Once in a while, the eyes flashed pale brown, nearly gold, as he moved and spoke. As Kairi drew nearer, she could smell fish around him; he was a fisherman.
The woman was the most beautiful person she had ever seen. She had a fair, delicate face, with strong bold blue eyes that shone like the sky in the hazy air around them. She had long, tousled blond hair with a sheen of brilliant gold. She wore a blue dress; she wore a soft pink apron on top and appeared to have been busy doing something at home when the two got into this strange conversation.
But there was something about them that seemed strangely familiar…
"…Shirozora and Aros may be the last Keyblade Masters after you and Mickey!" the woman said fiercely. " If you're not there, who's going to teach them to be who they may be?"
" Firstly, there's Mickey," the man, Ronsend, shot back. " Secondly, they might not be Keyblade Wielders. And thirdly, if you named him Kurozora, why don't you call him that?"
" Because we agreed to officially name him Kurozora and because I know you wanted to name him Aros," the woman replied. " Therefore, we call him Aros."
" That never made sense to me, anyways."
Ronsend began to walk away quickly from the woman. " I'm going out for a few hours."
" Where are you going?" the woman demanded harshly. " This is the fourth time this week you're doing this! Why not come home and have dinner with us, like you used to?"
Her voiced ended in a longing whisper. Ronsend froze, fought with himself for a few moments, then continued to walk away.
" It's business."
" For four days? You never had business meetings this often!"
" Well, things change, Alara. I'm going to a business meeting; make sure Shirozora and Aros don't wreck anything, and get them to bed."
" Don't tell a mother how to run her household!" Alara stated. " Fine, go to this meeting of yours. But I expect you to come home to your wife and your sons tomorrow! If you don't, you'll break their hearts for sure!"
Ronsend paused again. He seemed to wilt under this accusation. Kairi realized that he really did care about his children; she just couldn't understand why he seemed so bored with his life here in Deep Tranquility.
" I know…alright, I'll come home tomorrow for sure."
As he faded into gray mist, Kairi heard Alara whisper, " I hope so."
She watched Alara turn to the opposite direction and walk down the seashore, before fading into gray mist as well.
" She must be heading home," Kairi decided. " I wonder where that is…and who their sons are…"
Something about this intrigued her; something told her to pursue this strange story, this strange drama between Ronsend and Alara. Why was Ronsend so restless?
She decided to find out more, following where Alara had disappeared to. As she made her way down the sea shore, she discovered footprints, tiny footprints meandering around the sand. There were two sets; they apparently belonged to two youngsters playing in the waves of the sea.
Could they belong to Shirozora and Aros? " And why would they name Aros Kurozora but call him Aros?" she wondered aloud as she followed the footprints inland.
Presently, she came upon a sandstone walkway that rambled into a lush gray-green world of great trees, shrubbery, and flowers of every kind, blooming in this gloom. In the distance she spotted a small house, again with color and life. Another image of another time, locked in this gray present.
As she drew near, gazing in wonder at this ethereal garden, she discovered two toddlers sparring at each other with twigs and short sticks. They, too, were locked in time. The darker of the two had Ronsend's dark hair and Alara's blue eyes; the paler child had Alara's golden hair and Ronsend's flashing gaze. They were twins, in a world of laughter and joy.
Then something clicked in her mind as she watched them. There was something about the blond child, something strange, something familiar…
" Aozora."
Chapter 58
"What if we can't breath underwater?"
" One quick question! Please?"
" They took your son?"