The nobodies were more dogged, their assault more ruthless. Only the most powerful spells and attacks were breaking any ground with this new, unfamiliar species. They are the same as Marluxia's attacks, Sora found himself thinking as a scythe sliced into his bare arm. Though he himself had no memory of fighting Marluxia, the nobodies spiked anger in him that he couldn't quench. He reflected the enemy's assault before it found him a second time, causing the creature to reel back while simultaneously lowering its defenses. Sora charged forward, throwing his keyblade down with his entire weight behind it, hacking and slashing frustratedly until, finally, the enemy imploded in a cloud of dark purple dust.
"This is taking too long!" He called to Donald and Goofy, each of them handling their own subsection of the woodlands. Moving only a half-mile by the hour, the sky had shifted from black to a moonless, pre-dawn, deep blue.
"I'm running out of Ether!" Donald shouted, calling down thundaga repeatedly onto his paralyzed targets.
"Here!" Sora shouted. He uncorked a mega-ether and shook the contents into the air. The concoction dispersed, seeking out himself and his friends. "You're out already? You had twenty-seven!"
"How are YOU doing on supplies, Sora?" The short piece of poultry had him there. Sora was down to all of his alpha tonics, relying safely on his shield as much as possible and holding back any extra special stuff. One more hit and he would have to cast another curing agent, he estimated, unless one of his companions had a bit of healing power to offer beforehand.
"I'm out too!" Goofy hollered instead, "And I really could use some help! Somebody! Quick!" Sora let down his barrier, a heartless managing to poison him just as he did, and threw one of his remaining three mega-potions into the air, smashing the glass bottle with a cyclone attack that sent the smaller, pestilent, poisonous enemies spinning away from him.
"We gotta keep moving! It's almost sunrise!" Sora hollered. He had fought for hours through the thick woodlands, through sore muscles and a fatigued mind, the thought of rest too enticing to be lingered on for more than a moment.
"Maximus is back at the castle! We have to find Rapunzel!" Goofy shouted. The horse had raced passed them back towards the bridge hours earlier, followed by a horde of grisly tavern dwellers, giving Sora not even a small sense of reassurance.
"What are we going to do if Marluxia is waiting for us?" Sora asked.
"I think we better call it quits and run straight for the tower," Goofy reasoned, "it looks like they're only after us."
"How does he keep summoning them?" Sora asked, missing the critical spike in his finishing move against another scythed being. Maelstroms of poisoned rose petals encapsulated him as the nobody unleashed its final, desperate attack. Sora shielded, giving himself just enough time to find the right blizzard spell to destroy the monster, a few blood-colored petals slivering into his arm along the way. He grimaced. "The darkness is too strong!"
"Sora!" Donald shouted, using the last bit of his magic power to heal the key bearer. The splinters disappeared, but Sora still felt the poison in his veins. Six more scythes appeared along with an army of neglected plant heartless. "We gotta get outta here!" Donald screamed, charging deeper into the forest. Sora cut his losses and made a dash for it, running alongside his companions until his legs became numb and his lungs turned to steel. Heartless and nobodies alike dogged them at every turn, and the sky had shifted from blue to periwinkle by the time they reached the shady alcove where Rapunzel's tower was veiled behind a curtain of foliage.
"About time," Marluxia's smug voice unnerved Sora as they approached him on the cliffside that overlooked the dell. Sora, Donald and Goofy armed themselves, putting up a facade of fortitude. They had endured worse, but not such relentless brutality over such an extended period. "Just like old times. Seems like you would do anything for a pretty little blonde."
Don't go there, Sora thought, a growl forming somewhere deep inside of him.
"Too bad for your other friend who is to be executed at sunrise. Seems like you've forgotten all about him." Executed. Roxas knew that word. It was written under Marluxia's name in some Organization record book. Reading practice. That much Sora remembered.
"What do you want with Rapunzel?" Sora demanded.
"Nothing, probably. The girl appears to be no one from nowhere. But then again…" Marluxia vanished before their eyes, materializing again behind Sora, "…such was the case of another noteworthy girl, one from a much smaller world." Sora slashed frantically at Marluxia, his keyblade finding nothing but a digitalization that disintegrated randomly into static, translucent cubes. "Not yet, soon," the air around him hissed. Sora was seething. "However, since you were expecting an engagement."
Thunder rumbled the earth beneath their feet and a patch of the ice-blue sky darkened and swelled purple like a grotesque wound. From the dark portal soared a nobody in the form of an angel- a gargantuan, decaying, marble sculpture-like being with black pools for eyes and a mouth that was perpetually screaming. On black leather wings, the figure hovered over the tower, rose its arm slowly and lifted a finger at them, hailing thorns down onto their shields. Sora guarded Donald, who was weak on magic-power and had fewer physical defenses.
"I need more strength," Sora told Donald, a strange, livid calm falling over him. He summoned a form.
"Wait! Sora! The darkness!" Donald yelled.
"Sora!" Goofy warned. "You're too upset right now! Don't-"
A small girl with bright, familiar blue eyes and silver-gold hair was bound at the far end of a grand, white room lined with columns that held up nothing but the dead, black space above. Between them, swarms of long rose thorns twisted and tangled, shackling the girl's wrists above her head and piercing her delicate, faultless flesh. Sora slashed through the thicket desperately, the room stretching with each step. When he reached the end of the corridor, the innocent creature was gone, as were the thorns. Instead stood Axel before him, fire in his vacant eyes and flames licking his fingertips. He snapped once, apathetically, and Sora looked down to find his clothes aflame. Desperately, he searched for a pool... water flows freely on the island...
Fool! you're not on your island! You're... where am I?
Sora began to shout but produced no sound no matter the effort. The glossy floor shattered beneath him. Harsh winds and the speed of his fall extinguished the flames, but Sora faced a new dilemma. A powerful wave rose up to grab him out of the night sky and topple him beneath the sea. Sora opened his eyes. One by one, the stars blinked out, leaving the world ever darker...
and blacker...
and darker.
No! Sora tried to scream. No! No! No! He fought the water with the rest of his strength, his arms growing heavy as the sea grew angrier. He nearly reached the surface before another wave took him down and drowned him.
Blue, sky blue. The same blue that painted the skies at home. Was he home? He didn't remember. A dog and duck stood over him, besides themselves with worry, blocking his eyes from the sun. They exhaled the breath they were both holding as Sora sat up, alert.
"Sora!" Goofy exclaimed.
"You're awake!" Cheered Donald.
"Donald? Goofy?" Sora rubbed his eyes, "What's going on?" He asked. Flynn stood behind them, his arm around the shoulders of a worried looking brunette with round green eyes. "Rapunzel?" He asked. Dark brown hair lay piled at the base of the tower nearby. "What... happened?"
"You transformed into that dark... thing again, Sora," Goofy explained, his voice still shaky. "I tried to warn ya, but it was too late. You took care of most of that scary nobody, but then a smaller one knocked ya out and we couldn't bring you back again."
"Yea, then Flynn and Max showed up and we had to cover them so he could get to Rapunzel, and-"
"Eh, I'll fill him in on that later," Finn interjected.
"Then Goofy and I had to take care of the rest."
"The rest?" Sora rubbed his forehead in circles. "You're saying the two of you defeated that ginormous... thing?"
"Hey! Whaddya mean by that?" Donald fumed. "Goofy and I do plenty without you, thank you very much."
"There was also that beam of light that came outta the window up there and turned everything white for a second. That seemed to hurt it quite a bit," Goofy added.
"Yea... but, we did most of the work," asserted Donald.
"Thank you. Thank you so much," Rapunzel said, stepping forward and abruptly wrapping her arms around Sora's neck. Sora patted her back uneasily, hoping against hope that his face wasn't turning red. She's the same height.
"Yes, thank you. I don't know what would have happened if you guys weren't here," Flynn said, clasping Sora's hands within his own.
"It was no trouble at all," Sora lied. He grinned from ear to ear at the couple, with their flushed faces and their arms all over each other. It wasn't until then did Sora notice the horrible looking blood stain on Flynn's side. "So," he began, "what-" His inquiry was cut short by the sound of trumpets blaring and hooves rumbling in the distance.
"Halt in the name of your King!" A man bellowed from the small elite force of twelve horsed soldiers that descended alongside the ridge and rounded the corner of the cliff face.
"Time to go?" Sora asked Donald and Goofy.
"What do you mean? You're telling me you would leave us here with the guards to explain this mess?" Flynn exclaimed, full of disbelief.
"We have these rules..." Sora tried to reason, but the argument died on his tongue.
"Since when do care about that?" Asked Donald.
"What are you saying? Where are they going?" Rapunzel questioned, looking to each and every one of them for any sort of answer as the horsemen approached the small, significantly weakened party.
"You there! Young lady! Step away from that man immediately. He is a wanted criminal," the commander shouted from atop his high horse. Rapunzel refused to comply, instead, she stepped in front of the accused and stood firm. "Flynn Ryder, you are under arrest for crimes against his majesty and the state, among those being treason, theft, and attempted slaughter of a palace guard. How do you answer to these charges?"
"He's not guilty!" Rapunzel shouted, digging her heels in and making herself as tall as possible to shield the much taller outlaw.
"Treason? That seems a like a bit much," complained Flynn. Rapunzel hurriedly fidgeted with the buckle on the satchel she wore across her torso.
"Step aside, girl, if you know what's good for you," the Soldier barked.
"This is what you're looking for, is it not?" She asked, whipping out the stolen royal heirloom and holding it in a tight fist for the world to see, sunbeams gleaming off the myriad of precious gemstones.
"Thief! You will also answer for the crimes of your accomplice." Sora summoned his keyblade quietly and stood. "Arrest her!" The guardsmen shouted to his men. Calm and collected, Sora counted the men at arms and calculated the effort it would take to unhorse them all. Before he could take action, however, the guards halted before Rapunzel, who had placed the crown on top of her head.
"My name is Rapunzel. I am the lost princess of the Kingdom of Corona," she said with the voice of a queen.
"Wak!" Quacked Donald.
"Oh..." said Sora, "oh!" Of course, why hadn't he seen it before?
"Yea, I kinda figured that," Goofy said simply, scratching the side of his tilted head.
"Yesterday was my birthday. I am eighteen years old," she went on. "I was kidnapped as an infant by a woman who used my magical hair to keep herself young... she's gone now, she turned to dust. She's right there next to my dead hair, which used to be gold." When the princess turned to point at the ragged, pathetic looking cloak at the base of the tower, her eyes welled with tears. She wiped them away with the palm of her hand and turned back and faced the men determinedly. "I demand to be reunited with my father and mother, the King and Queen of Corona... please."
Rapunzel trembled, balled fists at her sides, but stood unyielding with her chin held high, never flinching under the commander's scrutinizing eye. The interchangeable soldiers exchanged unknowing glances with one another, even their horses seemed anxious and excited over the circumstance.
"It would explain Maximus," the right-hand man told his commanding officer.
"She's the spitting image of her majesty." Sora heard one soldier whisper to another. Others murmured there agreement. Sora knew then it was over.
"We'll escort you to the palace for further questioning." The captain said, his voice wavering slightly in its sternness. He snapped his fingers twice and signaled, pointing at Flynn, and the horsemen formed a circle behind the pair without question.
"Don't touch him! He's been badly injured and he needs care," the princess pleaded. "He saved me from never seeing the light of day again." She looked at Flynn with tender eyes and took an arm from his non-bloodied side and wrapped it around her shoulder, her arm snaking around his torso to prop him up.
"Blondie, it's not that bad anymore," Flynn whispered.
"I won't have you out of my sight until I see the king. You were a wanted criminal even before we met," Rapunzel whispered. "And you might need to think of a better nickname."
"How about your highness?" He said with a smirk. Rapunzel made a face. "Punzie…? We'll think of something."
Thus did Rapunzel and Flynn make their famous march to the high hill atop their most trusted steed. Maximus had arrived at the tower shortly before departure with nearly a hundred burly, beer belching men in brown, armed with axes and maces and ready for a siege. They, in turn, cheered the princess along after a proclamation from Flynn (now going by Eugene,) and followed the procession of guardsmen without quarrel. Maximus, who was worn from a night of running into and out of danger, was the unsung hero of the day, marching his liege slowly, yet regally home. The odd assortment of celebrators and horsed knights spread intrigue throughout the land. Forest dwellers and fishing folk, many confused as to what or whom they were championing, soon joined the commotion that led all the way to the palace gates.
Sora, Donald, and Goofy expressed their farewells while they saw Eugene and Rapunzel inside the walls of the keep, only choosing to leave once the bells began to blare.
As for himself, Sora had other matters to attend to, and new questions that demanded answers from a fellow keyblade wielder.