Chapter -68: Pitch Black Sight
Darkness tends to be on the receiving end of the brunt of the blame when it comes to all troubles in the universe.
It can't help if it's misused, or attracts those with hearts weak and strong.
But Obscura is no different than any other Tribe. Darkness is what the user makes of it, and in this quiet village people are free to mold artistic displays out of the land and skies.
There is no evil to be found here among the villagers.
...But there is wickedness, in the heart of one woman.
While the calm and quiet waste their days away, a blight upon this woman's ears and eyes, she has honed her body and mind in the dark arts long since forgotten.
Magic...is something very few use and even fewer understand. It functions alongside the elements but abides by different rules, twisting and perverting their nature to create constructs that are without question, sublime.
A bolt of lightning can be made violet instead of blue, vines can become as black as ashwood, and water could twist and turn like it was squeezing the blood out of the air.
But all manner of magic the Vizier has learned can't do anything to solve their greatest conundrum...
Day in and day out they march to the palace to try and leverage their input towards arousing a bit of motivation out of the king at his throne.
A futile struggle, punctuated by their incapability to internalize this fact.
For her eyes saw only the rippling, world-shaking power that his body buried in a cage of black.
This was the gaze of one wrapped in delusion and love, though some would argue both are one in the same here.
She only saw the darkness and shadow inside this man's armor, and thirsted for the chance to see it unleashed once more.
Every night, he dreams would be blessed by the memory of that one moment, years ago, that secured his grip upon her weak, moist heart.
Standing against the demon who dared to encroach upon his lands, Lord Solomon crushed the beast under the heel of his power and then now lays the parasite at his side, confident in his ability to keep it tamed.
This dominion should be spread. The Tribes the world over should be bending to his will right this minute.
But alas, another day arrives, and another day he wastes away upon his throne.
The Vizier finds herself a spectator to his sloth. He never moves, rarely speaks, his thoughts the product of mere speculation that she would dare not soil nor approach.
He would be blasphemous to cast off his armor and YET, her body trembles and her lips are brought to tender at the thought of caressing her hands around that cloudy mass of darkness beneath.
Pulling it closer, closer, closer, until it puts itself around her entire being, and for a brief moment, she can taste what it's like to be beyond her pitiful mortal shell.
Lustful dreams, unanswered.
How could anyone bear to live with oneself when their body feels only half full?
Another day comes, and this time she observes the onyx of her eye, communing with that wretched spider.
The same subject as always, that feckless intruder who goes by the name of Sarajin.
"WHY HIM" does the envy in her mind shriek, when all she has ever given is her everything to be helpful.
The spider drip feeds empty words about the little folk and the littlest one of all, who for whatever reason makes Lord Solomon stir.
The spider's words were a snare that wound itself tight around Lord Solomon's throat and she felt like the only one sane enough to see that this was a waste of everyone's time.
Panic induces haste, and forces her to create a mere diversion in today's proceedings.
"L-Lord Solomon!" She stepped out from the side of the throne, unseen.
The spider did good to stay quiet, but it was undercut by this sense that he was chuckling at her beneath that cowardly, eyeless mask.
Biting a scowl his way first, she then positioned herself between him and Lord Solomon and fell on one knee, "Isn't there anything you want to do today? Perhaps...finally take vengeance upon that fool Borealis Aurora for the humiliation suffered upon thee?"
"Hrrmmm..." Solomon groaned.
"O-Or we can march upon one of the other Tribes, take new land for ourselves through a demonstration of your incredible power! I have been observing from the shadows, the shores of Aquamoria would provide little opposition. Or we can be bold, and bring the skies crash-"
"Have I commanded you to stand and speak before me?" Solomon uttered, his baritone echo bringing her body to quiver.
"N-No...? But I-"
"Then why does your mouth move?" Solomon spoke again, this time deeper, to really penetrate her with the sounds of obedience.
"A-Aaah..." The Vizier was so lucid from this feeling but through a brief flicker of sanity she stood tall and refused to be in this cycle of immobility for even a day longer.
"You let this slimy spinnerette babble on about nonsense for days! Who cares about some...poncho wearing brat?!"
"That is not your place to decide," Solomon said, leaning his fist against his helm and sounding as impatient as he was bored, "You've accepted where you stand. If you're dissatisfied though, I can gladly arrange your absence."
The Vizier bit her lower lip. She had been beaten, tamed to curr in a humiliating fashion, and withdrawn as though she had a tail between her legs.
The spider's uncouth lack of restraint in his chuckling did not go unnoticed, and she spurred her hand towards him as though ready to lunge and throttle his throat.
But with her teeth bit hard and little more than a hiss, she held back, and left the palace to stew in her anger towards the spider.
She believed this was a sleight that she could overcome in time. After all, Lord Solomon only reprimanded her. There was a hint of care in his actions, like...he wanted to keep her around, and only wanted her to act befittingly of one in the shadow of his grandeur.
But what did it mean to be at his level? Could anyone even grasp that high, let alone continue to stand?
No...all she was was the shadow of his shadow, a mere speck in the world that is his existence.
If this had been any other time, any other place, this would be the moment where realizing this fact would drive the Vizier to a life of repetition and unrequited admiration.
But somehow, out of the millions of possibilities that stretched throughout an ungraspable unknown, fate conspired to enable her delusions further.
And what was just merely a wicked heart, would soon be thrust into darker, deeper desires...
It all started one day, a day not unlike the rest.
In the comfort of her witch's hut she tampered with the shadows, trying with some measure of desperation to find something that would entice Lord Solomon to action.
It was a dull day with no conflict to speak of.
Pathetic pissants mucked about living their ignorant eyes just because their true Lord had yet to put them in their place.
Ignorance must be painful to hold on to.
After a while of flicking through potential targets of interest like a real life person would change a channel, the Vizier started to observe the common beasts of the wastes, those Rot Walkers...
Observing them in the absence of elements to spur their appetite was...interesting.
They were disgusting, putrid and vile in appearance and shape. There was nothing normal about them.
Yet...alone, undisturbed, they just moved through the land like any other common creature.
Fools assume they need to be dealt with, but why?
They've been here for so long, longer than any other living creature save the Titans.
If they're wrong, then why hasn't their presence been corrected?
The ignorant should simply accept them as the natural order of things instead of whining and complaining. That is what she believed. She knew she was correct.
She kept her eyes beneath the beast's shadows until her wandering eyes caught an unless sight descending out of the sky.
It was daylight, but something twinkled like a falling star and fell upon the ground.
The Rot Walkers diverged from their usual path and brought themselves, and in turn her gaze, closer to the object.
Yet the girth of the beasts' heads blocked her sight of the object. It was small enough to force them to bend at the ground yet not intriguing enough to hold their interest for long.
"...Tsk!" The Vizier bit her teeth and tried to bend her head around to shift the focus out of the shadows to an angle, but the object was really, really low to the ground.
All she knew is that whatever it was had landed just outside of Obscura.
Had it been positioned anywhere else she wouldn't have cared.
This was just another nudge of fate, and she was not someone who showed maturity around temptation...
Coaxing herself out of the walls of Obscura for the first time as far as she could remember, she traced the steps away from the city using her memories and happened upon a close approximation of where the object fell.
She swerved her head and found the beasts were quiet.
"Only fools would invite their hunger." She believed, and as she locked her gaze upon the lone object out of place, her own hunger would soon be fed...
It was a book. One of mystical design, with an etching of the abstract heart on the front cover, and a five-pointed star on the back.
It let off a little smoke, putting pain to her boney fingers on the touch.
But she felt comfortable letting the pain persist, so long as she could get a closer look at her quarry.
Somehow, the book had been perfectly preserved. The pages were crisp, the spine sealed on tight with fresh glue, the ink having that odorous scent of coming fresh out of the vial.
The words were legible and easily understood. Yet...this book had fallen out of the sky, wreathed in a fire that matched the light of a nightborne star.
Books don't do that, at least none she's ever read.
There were tales of lights that fell from the sky known as "Comets". Whoever caught one, would have their greatest wish granted...So sayeth a legend, passed from ear to ear.
A book though...was this the true form of a Comet?
This had nothing to do with her, and sparked only a fleeting sense of curiosity yet...Before she knew it she had returned home, and sat down to read this book from the beginning.
It began with two familiar concepts: "Light" and "Darkness. Their duality, their balance...their conflict.
"Light" begets life, and "Darkness" spreads between the cracks.
This book seemed to account the beginnings of the world. But not...this world...
There were key words, contradictions, woven into the narrative.
"Hearts", "Sleeping World", "Keyblades", "X-Blade", "Heartless", "Realm of Darkness"...
A lack of any other element nubbed the Vizier's curiosity along.
There was one world. Then there were many, splintered by the "Darkness", and glued back together by the "Light".
This book was written like an epic, with complex words fashioned to cut into anyone's dull interest and make them want to delve deeper.
But it was slowly becoming clearer over time that this was more than some history book.
Pronouns emerged between the gently written ink indicating this was being written from the perspective of the writer, and the words in turn took on a more personal tone.
Characters were introduced into the narrative. Wherever a name appeared, the term "Keyblade" would soon follow.
All their stories, bound together by the terms of "Heartless", "Light" and "Darkness".
It sounded fantastical. A carefully written, grandiose, but ultimately fake story meant to teach children to dream.
Yet her eyes flit from each page to the next, losing track of the hours and soon the days.
If she drifted to sleep, she would return to her senses just to continue where she left off.
Out of all the names present there were two who stuck out to her as the main characters. A naive boy named "Sora", and a scholar of darkness named "Xehanort".
Time and circumstance brought the two to clash under many forms a couple times, with the dwindling pages in the book suggesting that the climax would reach its end upon the defeat of the scholar's shell, a being by the name of "Xemnas".
But like any good narrative can attest to, sometimes the best point to spring a surprise...is when the reader is least expecting it.
Victory seemed to be in the main character's grasp.
Then, suddenly, the words coming off the pages dripped with melancholy.
The hero lost his "Heart", and soon after, events transpired to accelerate the world towards cataclysm.
"Darkness" won out...or so it seemed.
The writer seemed...puzzled, unable to explain what was befalling his world.
A tragedy was described. The end of days punctuated in exact, excruciating detail.
"Darkness" was winning out, consuming everything in its path as the legion of its ``Heartless" took the "Hearts' ' of the world's inhabitants.
The writer seemed to have been chosen to live out to the very end of everything.
With no hope to cling on to they distracted themselves with idle speculation, trying to determine the root cause of this tragedy.
They were adamant that "Darkness" could not have been the cause of this.
The final few pages were spent mourning friends and comrades long past, waning with regret over his lack of action against this tragedy.
Then...it stopped.
Cut off mid-sentence, with no sign that a page had been torn out.
So the Vizier put her teeth together and clamped the book shut, grumbling with disdain over time wasted.
"What a farcical tale..." She threw the book to the ground as she walked away. It could collect every speck of dust for all she cared.
It had spared her from routine for a few days, or longer. What did it matter when time was circular, and the next time she woke up she'd be back to where she started.
All she could manage was to break the loop for a little while. This hadn't brought her any closer to what she truly wanted...
"'Heartless', 'Keyblades'...The stuff of fairy tales."
She smoothed out the pillows of her couch, and prepared to lay herself to rest.
Then came the chuckles. The cold, otherworldly, and sinister noise, rasping at a chance for attention.
And with this black-dripping hook, the laughter ensnared the Vizier's attention.
"Who...?!" She thrust her hand towards the door and there laid the innocuous little jar that caged the grinning black parasite known as "D."
She paused. This was an impossible sight, a mirage born from a lack of sleep perhaps?
But the parasite's voice penetrated her ears and the rough glass rolling along her floorboards made her skin crawl.
She armed her fingers with violet lightning and tried to hold her composure, "How did you get here?"
"Why stress the details? That's not what you care about." The parasite stopped a few feet from her toes and pointed it's fanged grin her way.
"That was a very...interesting book you were reading."
The Vizier nudged her gaze towards the book and scoffed, "The pages were wasted with all sorts of incoherent babble."
"And yet they were all drawn to your eyes." "D." grinned and chuckled some more.
The Vizier had no patience for the parasite's attempts to amuse itself and thus rose to sweep the jar from the ground and hold it before her face.
As she made her way towards the door she remarked, "You are too full of yourself, parasite. Learn your place."
"It's real," The parasite whispered, the faint hint of seduction in its voice freezing the Vizier under her door frame, "All of it."
And through his allure, the demon grinned and chuckled, while the Vizier gazed upon him with a hint of cold sweat beside her face.
The Vizier gulped, her lips quivering, "Excuse me?"
"Oh...? Now you care?" The demon taunted, then pressed their lips shut.
The Vizier rattled the jar higher and muttered, "You're blowing smoke."
"Yet your feet lay at the door as solid as stone, because your heart...yearns," "D.'s" chuckles grew husky and more sinister, as he laid his voice bare for her to hear, "So does mine. We are both after the same thing. To see the king rise from his throne, and cast his shadow over all the Light touches..."
The Vizier quivered in her loins for a brief, immeasurable moment and staggered back, hastening to clasp the jar back in her hand.
"S-Silence, worm! What do you know?"
"More than you could ever fathom," The demon boasted, "You claim to know darkness but you've only ever lived in the splinter of a shadow. I have drenched deep in the abyss, soaked in it's black blood, consumed...of its kin."
"The world you know is merely an atomical construct of a greater lie, one that spans light years and beyond into the darkest depths of insanity. If you had but a mere taste of the truth, you would see reason like I have...Or it would break you, fracture your mind into unreclaimable dust."
The Vizier began to feel unnerved, like the parasite was worming it's way up her spine.
And as her shivering rattled his cage, the parasite grinned again, "Who am I...?"
"W-Who are you?" The Vizier muttered.
"Who can say what I can be? Ha ha ha...I don't even know myself anymore. Make of me what you will, mold me to fit your heart's desires. I can be the way to the Truth, you just have to liberate yourself from common sense to reach it..."
"..." The Vizier pulled their head back and tried to muster a moment of clarity to disperse the parasite's lure, "You're just mumbling words, parasite. Why should I believe anything you say?"
"You require proof. Of course. And I am more than happy to oblige," The demon spoke without hesitation, as though anticipating this desire to doubt, "My power may be a shadow of its former self but my knowledge remains immaculate. All you have to offer me...is but a touch of your mind, and I will show you how to open the way to my proof."
The Vizier stared into the demon's open grin and slowly drew her other hand up, only to mentally slap it aside...then draw it back up again.
"You can become closer to Darkness...closer to him." Every sugary laced word drew her hand closer to his hive of madness until her fingertips rested upon the warped glass.
The parasite bit back with a spark of sanguine energy and the Vizier recoiled, falling upon their rear and hands.
The jar rattled and rolled to the door frame, pointing it's smile towards a passage opening to envelop the space between wood.
It was shaped like a seed and was like darkness cascading inward to the center, making it resemble a sort of eye.
"All you have to do...is take the first step." The demon made its last whisper and the Vizier, lucid in her thoughts, rose towards the portal, pushing first her hand and then letting the rest of her body be sucked in.
She was pulled through a weightless darkness as cold as the darkest nights, offering no resistance until she was shoved through to the other side by an invisible force.
She rose only to fall back down upon her knees, on ground that felt as old as the dust that covered it.
Her dress stained with clouds of dust and her body cold, she stood once more and could barely hold onto her breath as she looked out towards the horizon.
The environment was blaring insanity into her eyes, defying all common conjecture and theory to present a landscape warped and skies bleeding with darker shades.
Light functioned as an inverse of the sun, showcasing fear instead of hope to proceed with the new day.
It wasn't comforting to know that it was possible to breathe here, because that left room to scream.
The Vizier nervously edged closer to the twisting horizon. Buildings of complex, foreign design were kept intact but contorted to fit in with the atmosphere without breaking apart.
Steel rods of black punctured out of the ground and provided a glimmer of light to line the brick covered roads.
This was a glimpse into the future, a message for what Obscura could one day look like.
Except not one of progress, but of the end of it.
No soul breathed life. Every creature and man were quieted.
Her only company was the growing sensation that everything was wrong.
Suddenly, she felt it. Darkness worms it's way behind her, similar in presence to the parasite.
She looked behind her, stumbling back into one of the steel rods. All she could see were an unorganized swarm of puddles coming her way.
They stopped, and began to take shape.
They were miniscule beings, barely able to reach her knees. They had gangly arms and legs and disarmingly precious round heads with big, pupil-less yellow eyes, and a pair of jagged antennae on top.
They looked at her. Acknowledged her. She felt a sense of hunger gnawing at her heart.
It wasn't hers.
They flew at her like a swarm of bees and a brief flash of ravenous mouths burned itself from her eyes upon their faces.
She lashed her hand out and summoned a hail of lightning to fry the beastly shadows from the air. They quivered, clearly stalled but able to keep flying.
This was only worth a second, all she needed to bite her teeth and rush past them.
Scurrying towards the portal, she found more of those shadows writhing from the ground, taking upon ghastly, inhuman shapes such as spheres and beings with more elongated bodies and limbs.
The whole realm had been awakened, falling from the skies, ground and walls like a tidal wave of black.
They made no sound, but her heart quaked like they were crashing down upon her like the end of the world.
She had no feeling in her knees, and soon her mind was empty. The Darkness was closing in, she would soon be one of them.
The shadows twisted into the shape of a storm, tearing through all in it's path. It would soon come to be that there'd be no ground to walk on, and she would have no choice but to be pulled in.
She clawed desperately for her way free as the last fragments of security fell at her feet.
She pulled towards the bottom of the rift, as the shadows plunged claw after claw into her legs, leaving scars upon her soul.
With one last gasp of air and all her strength, she managed to pull free, sending herself tumbling through the rift and back to a world that made sense.
Or did it...?
The rift closed behind her, slicing the claw off one clingy shadow.
The Vizier fell upon hands and knees and puked onto the floor. The putrid scent of vomit and sweat filled her room, and the parasite's jar rattled it's way over to her side, leaning against her hung ear.
She gasped for air, her adorned crown left ajar, threatening to slide off.
"You think you've seen the worst that darkness can get? Oh no my dear, what you saw were the striplings...The mere...stillborn, cast off to forewarn of greater shadows."
"But it was beautiful wasn't it? A world where darkness thrives and commands the world to twist and bend to it's will, subservient to no one..."
"That can be yours. All of it."
The Vizier twisted her vacant gaze to the demon's grin, knowing that she was accepting it worming it's way into her heart. But it was everything she ever wanted.
"T-Tell me...!" Spoke a sampling of craven desire.
"Heh heh heh..." "D." smiled his biggest smile, "You must become closer and closer to 'Darkness' than you've ever been before...cast OFF your mortal shell to become something greater."
"'Heartless' are creatures of instinct. They will devour cowards, subjugate the Light...but obey the strength of heart...So long as said heart has been fully submerged in darkness."
"I chose you, because your Darkness is reminiscent of the one whom those kin I feasted upon spoke of...The scholar named 'Xehanort'."
"Your ambition will carry you far. Farther than he ever got to reach...Because you stand in position to create the greatest 'Darkness' this world, nay, this universe, has ever seen! One that will fully consume every light from every star until all worlds are destroyed by the sheer weight of fear in their hearts!"
"That's right my dear...I am talking about your precious Lord Solomon."
"He denies his purpose, his birth. And it's time you became the prophet that opened his eyes to the truth."
"I will teach you. You will learn...everything. Until one day, you will be able to awaken the king from his throne, and bring about...the True Destruction!"
"T-True...Destruction?" The Vizier muttered.
"All in due time, my dear. I will make you worthy of my existence, craft you into something greater. You will learn about 'Heartless'...the 'Creator'...and 'Blanks'."
"And once you absorb everything...You will be more than worthy to stand at his side. For what would be a Dark King...without a Shadow Queen?"
"Shadow...Queen..." When it rolled off her tongue, it felt natural. Like this had been something she was long denied of...
She turned her face towards the ground and her crown fell off and rolled in place, giving her a clear look at her eyes.
It was as though someone was taking a pitcher, and filling her irises with a muddy yellow color. Already, her senses were growing more attuned to the Darkness.
Her heart quivered, stretching her smile with utter glee.
And rolling in closer, the demon whispered one more time, "Shall we begin...Cackletta?"
"Eh heh heh heh..." The Vizier spread their hands upon the ground and reared their head back, their jaw breaking as their cackling echoed throughout the pastiche night, "EH HEH HEH HEH HEH!"
Next Time: Breaking Moonlight