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6. Aerith
The Heartless exploded in a shower of black dust. Aerith stared at the spot where it had been.
"Are you okay?"
Still shaking, she shifted her gaze to the figure standing behind the drifting dust. If anything, he looked even more shocked than she did. He stared at the sword in his hand like he had never seen it before.
It quickly became apparent that he wasn't the one who had spoken. Another boy jogged up, looking concerned. "Are you hurt?" he asked breathlessly. He, too, carried a sword, but his had a curved blade with a spiked edge. It looked a lot like one of the ceremonial blades she had seen during the welcoming ceremony Lord Ansem threw for the visiting Wutaian royals.
She shook herself out of her stupor and stood up. "I'm fine. Thank you."
"Don't thank me; I was still halfway across the courtyard." He poked the staring boy in the shoulder. "Thank him. I didn't know he could move so fast, but the moment he heard you scream, he was like a greyhound out of a trap." He looked around. "Which we need a repeat of if we're going to get out of here without being barbequed."
"Are there just the two of you?"
The boy's expression, already serious, hardened into stone. His hair was bright blue, but lined with rust-coloured streaks. A cut on his forehead discoloured his skin the same way. "There's nobody else – not that we've seen, anyhow, and we had to come though the servants' quarters to get here. Those corridors are like a maze. Everyone who was anyone was in the Great Hall or on their way to it."
"You don't look like party guests." It was a stupid, vapid thing to say. Aerith immediately regretted it, but he didn't seem to care.
"We'd snuck inside. We," he spoke in a way that told her he hadn't actually had much opinion on the matter, "wanted to see what a royal ball looked like, and dance with some of the girls there. The Heartless struck before the party really got going, but after pretty much everyone had arrived. They were all in one place."
"It was like shooting fish in a barrel." The boy who had saved her shook himself finally and met her eyes. Aerith recognised the jittery blankness there: shock and the effects of trauma. "They didn't stand a chance."
She shivered. Apart from White Mages, healers weren't expected to attend royal events unless it was their turn on paramedic duty. Faces of people she knew flashed through her mind. "You mean they were all-?"
"We gotta move." The boy who had saved her grabbed her arm and started dragging her behind him. "Or we'll end up like them."
"Wait!" she protested. "The storage barns! I saw other people going that way."
"Huh?"
"We're not from the castle," the blue-haired boy explained. "We don't know our way around here."
She nodded and took the lead, turning the grip on her arm into a leading-rein. "This way."
"But –"
"Dude, we don't know the way out, remember?" the blue-haired boy prompted. "Would you rather stay in this place? I know you're a budding pyromaniac, but I'd rather not get burnt to a crisp."
"Oh. Yeah. Sure."
"I'm Aerith," she said, for want of something significant to say. Shocky people needed to keep talking, she knew. She needed to make him focus or he may go into shutdown, and standing motionless in the courtyard right now was a self-imposed death sentence. "What's your name?"
"My name? Uh, it's Lea."
"And I'm Isa," said the blue-haired boy. "Pleased to meet you. Now can we please go faster?"