Chapter 110: Feeding the Beast

He stepped over Sora, taking care to "accidently" trod on his fingers. Sora groaned slightly, but his Shadow ignored him and went over to Riku. He kicked Riku lightly in the side with his toe, so that he rolled over onto his back. He grimaced. Riku's chest was completely soaked with blood. Riku also looked rather pale, or, at least, what little of Riku he could see did, as most of Riku covered by his dark suit. And... most of the dark suit was covered in blood.

Sora's Shadow squatted down next to Riku, watching in amazement as his dark suit slowly repaired itself. "Huh," he muttered, and then, curious, summoned a bit of darkness to him. He slashed with the darkness, severing a couple strands of Riku's dark suit that hadn't quite finished repairing themselves yet. The darkness then made contact with Riku's skin, and Riku's back arched in pain and a strangled shout escaped his lips. Sora's Shadow was pretty sure that this was merely a subconscious reaction, because Riku appeared to be out cold otherwise. He chuckled.

"You better hope someone finds you soon, Riku," he said, grinning. "You might not be lucky enough to live much longer." He laughed at the thought. "Oh Riku, how you'd squirm if you knew what a wonderful monster you make!"

A grimace crossed Riku's face.

Sora's Shadow laughed again.

"Look at you! Grimacing at the thought and you aren't even conscious! You know it's true, don't you?" Riku didn't respond, but he hadn't expected him to. He kept talking: "You lash out the moment you're angry, and you hate it."

He felt something stir behind him, but, figuring it was only Sora, he ignored it. He could deal with Sora when he got annoying.

He scooped up some of Riku's blood with his fingers, and smirked, watching as it dripped back onto the ground. Riku's blood was heavily infested with darkness.

"Can't be affected by darkness my ass!" he exclaimed. "You lose control just like everyone else!" He paused a second, then smiled. "What did you call it?" he asked. "Thrilling?" He grinned then. "'How can you be scared of something that can be so thrilling?'" he quoted; it was a line straight from Riku's past.

He placed a hand on Riku's chest—either Riku was dark enough that it negated the odd plane of existence, or he was getting stronger—and summoned some more darkness to him.

"The darkness is your weapon, Riku," he said, forcing the darkness into Riku. "Why don't you use it!"

Riku's back arched in pain again, and his whole body began to shake, as if he was trying to resist it. Sora's Shadow continued feeding the darkness into him, ignoring all resistance.

"The darkness doesn't hurt you!" he said, a bit annoyed now. "Why do you resist it? You were programmed to use it, so use it!"

Riku continued to resist.

Sora's Shadow nearly swore.

"What happened to embracing the darkness, huh?" he asked, definitely annoyed now. "Didn't you say that you embraced it? Didn't fear it? What happened to that? Huh?"

He continued pouring the darkness into Riku, determined. Riku was writhing in pain by this point, and his dark suit was rapidly repairing itself now that it had more darkness to feed off of. Dark energy was sparking around his body, too. Sora's Shadow slowly grinned.

Even if Riku wasn't quite accepting the darkness, the darkness was certainly getting to him.

He paused a second, feeling a slight disturbance on his skin. But as soon as he recognized it as the familiar prickle of darkness, he wrote it off as merely being Riku and let it go.

"Why are you scared?" he taunted, his grin widening. "Not a wimp like Real Thing, are ya?"

There was a split second pause. Riku stopped resisting for a moment.

Sora's Shadow summoned some more darkness to him, ready to feed it into Riku now that he had let his guard down. He was surprised when the darkness was pulled from him, like Riku was pulling it into himself—

Embracing it.

He laughed, and summoned some more darkness to him. Riku took that, too, almost a bit eagerly. Apparently, taunting his subconscious had really worked.

I wonder what he'll think when he wakes up, Sora's Shadow thought, slowly. He might have laughed at the thought, but there was power surging through him, darkness, and it was distracting.

Riku had been right; it was thrilling.

Riku flopped back onto the ground, and Sora's Shadow pulled his hand back, hissing slightly. The air was sparking with darkness now. It didn't hurt him, but boy there was a lot of it, and darkness was unruly, especially in large amounts.

Oh, Riku, he thought with a smile. You're in for a lot of trouble.

That done, he turned around to Sora, ready to deal with him now—

He frowned.

Sora was gone.

In his place was a large Heartless, who was sniffing the ground in a very wolf-like manner.

"Hey!" Sora's Shadow shouted at it, hopping to his feet. The Heartless looked up at him, snarling. Something about it tugged at him—something about it was familiar. Wasn't this that Heartless Sora fought in Beast's Castle?

Hadn't Sora killed it?

But more importantly.

"Where's Sora!?" he demanded, marching up to the Heartless despite the way it snarled down at him.

He wondered briefly if this Heartless was Sora… But—no. Sora's heart would never have given off a Heartless this big. And, if it was Sora, he'd know. He was Sora's Shadow. He'd recognize Sora no matter what form he was hiding in.

"Did you do something to him?" Sora's Shadow demanded of the Heartless. "The boy that was here—where is he? If you did something…"

It snarled much more furiously, like it was offended at the suggestion.

Sora's Shadow let out a small sigh of relief. (But then, he'd know if Sora was dead, too, so there was no reason to worry about that.)

"Well, then?" he asked. "Did you see anything?"

The Heartless stopped snarling, and just stared down at him. He got the sense that no, it hadn't, though. That was fantastic! Not.

"Well just great!" he shouted, throwing his hands up in the air. "Where'd he go!?"

Sora'd been passed out the same as Riku, even if he hadn't been injured quite as bad. He shouldn't have been in any state to go anywhere on his own. But if someone had dragged Sora off, then why hadn't the bothered him and Riku while they were at it?

He felt at the back of his mind for his connection to Sora, but… Well, the fact that it was fuzzy and didn't tell him much probably shouldn't be a surprise, if Sora was unconscious. It was unfortunate, though.

He could have just been patient, waited until Sora woke up, but something uneasy roiled in him. Something was wrong. He wasn't sure what, but something was wrong, and he had to find Sora. Now.

Getting an idea, he approached the Heartless. It watched him with uncertain eyes, as if trying to decide whether or not it was safe to trust him. He ran a finger along the thorns that encased its arms, half in admiration, half in curiosity. The Heartless was rather complex by design, and he couldn't recall seeing it any other time outside of Beast's Castle, which was strange, for a Heartless. They weren't often unique.

"My, aren't you big!" he said. "Where'd you come from?"

The Heartless gave him a rather smug look, probably only pleased about being called big. He had a feeling that if he hadn't complimented it, it would've snapped at him for using such a tone with it. He placed a hand on its side. The recognition that surged through him when they made contact was so strong that he almost had to pull away.

"Sora created you!"

The Heartless made a few noises that he took to mean something along the lines of 'accident'. He laughed.

"And I wasn't?" He grinned. "Hey, since we were both accidently spawned from Sora, why don't we stick together?"

The Heartless growled. Apparently it didn't think highly of that idea.

He clucked his tongue in disappointment. "Now, no need to give me that," he said. "It's a great idea! You just need to take a more… manageable form." He thought about it for a minute, then grinned as he got an idea. He forced the idea onto the Heartless, manipulating its darkness into a different form.

It started to shrink beneath his touch, its shape morphing, until what stood before him looked much more like a wolf than a Heartless with semi-wolf-like features. Its fur was as black as the typical Heartless, though, and its mane was still that red-fire. The thorns were gone, but the chain around its neck remained. It had gained a tail, too, made of that same red fire. Its eyes were a fierce gold, probably the closest it could get to glowing-Heartless-yellow while remaining wolf-like.

"There," he said, satisfied.

The wolf growled. Its eyes flashed yellow, and it reared up—

He grabbed the chains around its neck and yanked on them, choking it. It yelped in pain, and then bit his hand. He swore and pulled his hand away, though he did not let go of the wolf's chains. He grimaced down at the wound, only to find that there wasn't one. The only blood on his hand was Riku's.

Apparently, he wasn't human enough to bleed.

The wolf snarled something, and though he couldn't entirely understand it, he figured that it meant something like: 'You wouldn't taste good anyway.' The wolf then licked its lips thoughtfully, and turned to Riku. Sora's Shadow only barely caught it as it leapt, and had trouble pulling it away.

"Bad dog!" he said, smacking it on the nose. "We don't need to worry about him!" He forced the wolf's nose into the pool of Sora's blood (it was a rather small pool compared to Riku's). "He's who we're looking for."

The wolf fought against him a bit.

"Have you got the scent?" he asked, impatiently.

It gave a short bark which he assumed meant yes. He let go.

"Any idea what happened?"

The wolf made a sound between a growl and a bark.

"Darkness?" he said, a bit confused, partially because he wasn't sure if he had understood that properly, but partially because— "Sora wouldn't use darkness to get away! He has that stupid star shard thing!"

The wolf shook its head.

"Not Sora?" He raised his eyebrows. He didn't know anyone whose main mode of transportation was darkness. No one that would want to kidnap Sora, anyway. "Who?"

The wolf pawed at its nose.

He took that to mean that it didn't know. He grimaced, remembering the disturbance he had felt earlier. He wrote it off as being Riku, but… what if it was someone else?

And why would they want Sora?

He looked down at the wolf.

"Can we follow him?"

The wolf bit his hand again, though a tad more gently, and it held on firmly. It dragged him forward, and the Worlds shifted around them and they vanished.