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CHAPTER 7:
THE SORCERER'S ASPIRATION
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Author's Notes: The music for this Chapter is, in order of scene: 'Testament,' from the XENOSAGA Episode Three Original Sound Best Tracks, Disc Two. This piece can be found in KINGDOM HEARTS Insider's MP3 section.
Fingers intertwined with the ones of Sora's free hand, and a desperately terrified, yet warmly solidly sure and reassuring hand gripped his own in a securely protective and tightly close clasp.
The all consuming terror and self recrimination receded, leaving just muted aches in their wake, as the cuts and wounds and bruises and gashes covering Kairi, and her exhaustedly disheveled posture, registered.
Kairi.
Tidus.
Selphie.
Roxas.
"If we don't fight 'em, the Heartless'll keep on hurtin' folks."
"Don't stop moving, or the darkness will overtake you!"
That was right.
He could worry about anything else later.
Sora squeezed Kairi's hand back with what he hoped was tightly sure reassurance and close protectiveness of his own, and he kept his grip that way.
"I don't need to see you're the one standing, after whoever you just kept me safe from," he spoke, and it
"I had no doubts you'd pull through, for us."
Sentiments shifted over Kairi's face, but Sora could tell the wan smile she gave him held a small amount of sincere confident vitality.
That would need to be enough, for now.
Sora turned his head to identify the positions of the others.
Roxas was lying on top of someone in a Real Organization Thirteen coat, his face turned away from Sora, so Sora couldn't see his expression, and tell whether he was attempting to restrain, hug, or both, the person in the coat.
However, given that one of the members of the Real Organization Thirteen with the genuine Xehanort was Xemnas, and Roxas should be able to perceive this with his own practice with the Keyblade, the person in the coat was clearly someone who meant a lot to Roxas, one way, or another, or another bittersweet mixture.
Tidus was on his back to Kairi's right, and his breathing could have meant he was unconscious; or groggily, or wholly, awake.
Selphie was standing around midway between Roxas, and the three of them, her jump rope in a guard position even though she must have known it would make little to no difference.
The other members of the Real Organization Thirteen were the other purported Ansem, Xehanort's Heartless; Young Xehanort, and Terra-Xehanort.
Sora suppressed the urge to let anything show on his face at the reminder of this.
Or the knowledge of that, for the first time, every single one of the Xehanorts was confronting them at the precise same time.
Before Sora could even turn to move back and to the side, so he could see both lines of the Real Organization Thirteen, Kairi was turning and tugging him with her, Destiny's Embrace up in an unsteady neutral guard.
Sora moved with her, shifting Wheel of Fate to a neutral guard of his own, while making a fast jerk of his head from one side to the other to tell Selphie to follow him.
She knelt and hoisted Tidus up over her shoulders and back in a carry, and she did so, moving behind them both to place Tidus on the ground.
Sora felt himself sag with lightness at how no one, not even the true Xehanort, moved to stop them.
Roxas, however, didn't move.
Sora suppressed the urge to clench his teeth.
Before he could say anything, however, an amused grin came to Xigbar's face.
"As if it would matter if I was," he responded with ordinary easy unconcern.
"If I really was him, he'd have as much of a bone to pick with people like Hoder as you do. True, Baldr attempted to cut him down just as much as you.
"But as far as I've learned from my own digging, and by that I'm not confirming or denying what that constituted, he had your own good sense himself.
"Hoder fired the first shot, not Baldr.
"So what if I was him? You haven't cared about the ulterior motives anyone has for working with you, so why would it matter if I am, or I'm not, Bragi?
"True, that would mean I'd have ulterior motives of my own, and I'm not giving my all for the cause, but since when has that meant anything to you as long as we kept our leashes on, and continued to demonstrate a willingness and ability to adhere to your encore of the Keyblade War?
"I'll make you this one allowance.
"I refuse to testify on the grounds I might incriminate myself.
"Take that for what you will.
"Just as you have any other time."
The real Xehanort's lips twisted in derisive amusement.
Once more, that unmitigated rage coated hate was in his voice.
"As you say, I do have good sense.
"Including enough to recognize that sending a Lich to drench the separated hearts we were on the edge of claiming for the Kye-Blade so deep into the darkness they almost died was not a recreation of the first curtain call."
Sora gripped Kairi's hand as though he were drowning, and desperately clutching onto a life raft.
Her return clasp held a desperation and despair of its own, but it didn't tighten as much as his did, and it was thus more solidly sure.
Sora drew as much assurance and vital warmth from it as he could, blinking away tears causing his eyes to swim.
But you're in almost a better position than anyone else to know that, aren't you?" Xehanort was going on.
Sora pushed down the rush of interest about what Xehanort was talking about.
This wasn't the time to make new discoveries.
And if he interjected into this, that itself decreased his chances of learning what Xehanort was referring to.
"I'll also remind you this isn't a democratic court, and I haven't granted you what's known on many of the Earth variants as Miranda liberties.
"This is my demesne, and I now declare lese majeste in effect.
"You're under arrest, and you do not have the freedom to remain silent.
"This is the sole warning I will grant you."
"That still doesn't mean you have any ways, at all, to make me talk," Xigbar spoke back, his voice unruffled. "You can strike down my Nobody body, but that won't get a word out of me.
"Nevertheless, if you're referring to what I'm guessing you are, how do you even know it's me?" Xigbar queried back.
"You heard Odin's words yourself.
"Vanitas knows about them, through Ventus; that much you can confirm from him.
"'I finally see the truth of those words. Destiny can be so cruel.'
"Did you hear the other word he used, when Aqua and Mickey recovered Ven?
"A word Yen Sid, even when he was Odin, even before Baldr went rogue, never once used; a word he hasn't even used to Mickey, or any of Mickey's closest friends?
"Is that one of the reasons you were so bent on locating the Chamber of Sleep, and not just to keep your net as wide open as possible for potential vessels?
"If not, Vanitas can confirm this one, too.
"Just as long as you love him… then Ventus will be able to find you when he wakes."
Something passed over Xehanort's face, almost too fleeting to discern, but Sora had seen it enough times by now in the expressions and faces of all the people he'd met, and he'd learned to read Donald's contained and temperamental facial expressions, so well, there was no mistaking it.
Sora barely remembered to keep himself from sagging slightly with relief.
He knew how Xehanort might react, if Sora showed any of this at all.
The light imprisoned in Xehanort's darkness was so well hidden that, after three quests he could remember and one he couldn't, one of the things Sora had been the most terrified he'd never be able to accomplish had been to discern where that light was.
He'd known in his heart it was there, even though, even when he'd glimpsed the light within two artificial Kingdom Hearts, Sora honestly hadn't been able to perceive the smallest glimmer of light inside the hearts of any of the Xehanorts.
Sora still believed what he'd said to the first Xehanort he'd met when he'd assumed he really was Ansem.
But, after all these fatiguing, debilitating battles and toils, visit to world after world, travail after travail, when every single confrontation Sora had had with a Xehanort had brought about nothing more than to send that Xehanort deeper into the darkness, Sora had truly begun to fear, when all was said and done, there really would be no way to shine Xehanort's way back to the light he'd buried in his darkness.
At so very last long, however, even though all he'd been able to see in that fragmentary shift had been angry betrayal, Sora could trust what that light was.
"He can follow that love back to where he belongs – the realm of light."
Xehanort's brow furrowed.
This time, when he spoke, there was an emotionlessly distant, and sharply edged wariness to his speech.
"It matters not."
However, there was a slightly unsteady tremor in Xehanort's voice that told Sora this was one of the very few things remaining that did matter to Xehanort any more, outside of his unflaggingly tenacious faith in the darkness.
"Through nothing but the darkness can all hearts be gifted a better World, and that includes both of yours.
"Regardless of Yen Sid's true name, whether he knew Ventus even before I met him, or whence he came, you began in darkness along with him, and you will both end there.
"All hearts return to darkness, if you would keep that in mind.
"I know all that there is to know because I have learned to recognize there is nothing else there's any point in taking the time to know. Because all hearts wish for the darkness, I don't need to sift between you two.
"Not now that I've survived for this long.
"When I've at last cast us all into the night hearts strive over, I can merely let it devour both of you, and its onyx ark will still show me what lies beyond the Keyblade War.
"I don't need to uncover which of the two of you to specifically condemn when I'm this close to learning whether the darkness deems all our tainted hearts deserving of endless radiance, or whether we merit nothing other than to even have our real lives claimed by night."
Sora barely remembered to keep his mouth from dropping open.
Even all of Xehanort's selves Sora had talked to for a reasonable amount of time, while they'd all sought a Kingdom Hearts of one form or another, hadn't been so arrogant as to believe they could wield its darkness with that much lack of mercy.
The real Xehanort wasn't even now merely talking about just conquest, and coercion.
The real Xehanort was referring to choosing, all by himself, as one single heart under a sky innumerable people shared, whether all of those hearts even deserved to live, or die.
"Whichever heart has been slinking around all this time, Kingdom Hearts will still tell me the answer why the Lost Master who found me before my Mark of Mastery Exam was present in Eraqus' heart in Wonderland when Eraqus remembered the words of who I now assume to be Yen Sid as he first was; and why my first master was so determined to lure this Lost Master into the open and strike him down he became Hringhorn."
Xigbar started violently, and for the first time Sora had seen, sheer, acute shock appeared on his face.
Sora pushed away anything he was feeling at the accusation Yen Sid had been playing one, or more, of them, to the side of a wall.
Xehanort's eyes became slightly wide.
Then he smirked in satisfaction.
"Then again, perhaps I don't need Kingdom Hearts' assistance to unveil to me what sequence to execute you in."
Xigbar snarled, and this time, the vicious savageness in his voice sounded far more experienced, and contained, than that of the unaffected sharpshooter Sora had believed he'd known.
There was nothing remotely unconcerned in his tones when he talked now.
And there was even an uncertainly betrayed worry in it.
"So be it, then," Xigbar snarled.
"A contract is still a contract, and I made mine with Yen Sid; pardon me, Brain; far too long ago to not see it through now.
"Strelitzia's Lich didn't even get the chance to rehearse, at least in this original future, so the Demon Tide hasn't stuck around.
"But what the Demon Tide did get a chance to recite in the spotlight still snared the Dandelions' Heartless well enough Dark Riku was able to chew up the set with flying colors.
"Since Xehanort wants one last paddle in black shallows so badly, kid, take it away here!"
The next second, deep blue and silver curled around Xigbar's hand, and a Kingdom Key with a similar blue hilt was in his hand.
Before Sora could even react enough to truly process what he was seeing, Xigbar rushed at Xehanort and arced his Keyblade at him with such swiftly dexterous precision, even after all he'd learned, and how effortlessly Sora had seen Terra-Xehanort carve through them, Sora could barely believe someone could wield a Keyblade that adroitly.
With similar quick agility, No Name curled to meet it in a clangorous impact.
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"If that's how people dream, then we should make sure they keep killing until their hearts are content!"-Rau Le Creuset
"What gives you the right to make that determination!?"-Mu La Flaga
"I have earned that most noble right! And I am the only person in the universe who has it! I alone have the right to judge all of humanity!"-Rau Le Creuset
GUNDAM SEED:
Phase 45: THE OPENING DOOR