Update Sept 2016: Some minor continuity edits made to this to account for changes made to the 111-119 section.
Chapter 120: Quarreling Darkness
Sora stumbled and fell onto his knees as soon as the star shard dropped him, hissing in pain as his bare skin came in contact with burning sand. The air around him was hot and dry. The sun overhead was unbearably bright.
But here was better than with Maleficent.
Anywhere was better than with Maleficent.
She and Pete had chased him even after Wonderland, and through the world he'd been through after that, and after that, and after that. They wouldn't leave him alone.
But he had to catch his breath.
He was so tired of running.
"Hey, you okay?" came a worried voice.
Sora glanced up, squinting through the harsh light, and saw a boy about his age, probably a little older. A native of this world, wearing ratty looking clothes.
Sora swallowed, speaking around not just a lump in his throat but around the burning protest of his lungs:
"Yeah, I'm- I'm fine," he gasped.
"If you say so. C'mon." The native boy offered his hand to Sora. "We need to get shelter before the sandstorm hits."
"Sandstorm…?" Sora asked, but the boy did not answer.
Sora let himself be led through the busy streets, which were bustling with people trying to finish up their shopping and get home before the sandstorm struck. The air around them was filled with many complaints from impatient customers, along with friendly (and not so friendly) shouts from shop owners who wanted to get rid of customers so that they could go home.
The wind (which had been steadily blowing around them) suddenly picked up speed for a second, blowing sand and something else through the air.
Sora shuddered, recognizing the all-too-familiar feel of darkness.
He continued walking, though, hoping that he was—
Someone screamed.
Sora turned to see what was causing the screaming, and, sure enough, found a batch of Heartless of the Bandit variety. There were only a few of them, and they didn't look terribly menacing, and Sora wondered for a second why there was screaming and panic around him. The already emptying streets were emptying even faster now, most people forgetting their shopping and hurrying off. One woman ran off without paying, judging by the way the storekeeper was yelling after her. Another storekeeper closed his shop right then and there, ignoring protests from customers.
"More of them!" the native boy that Sora was following groaned, rather exasperated. "I thought they had stopped coming here!"
Sora couldn't help but to laugh at that. Heartless never gave up unless ordered to. And very few people could order the Heartless around. He drew his Keyblade and started attacking, hardly even thinking about it, and shoving past one burly looking man as he did so. The man yelled at him, but he ignored him. That man wasn't worth his time.
It was hard, though, to ignore the anger that was burning in his heart.
The absolutely needless anger towards that man.
He knew it was the darkness, but—
He focused on killing Heartless to get his mind off of it.
It didn't take him long to realize why these Heartless were a pain in the butt. Though, no, they did not have a lot of health, they were very quick. They're main attack, which involved launching themselves at their target, was killer, since it could be accomplished from far away, and they all tended to do it at the same time.
Thankfully, though, the native boy was skilled with a sword, and their combined efforts eventually got rid of the Heartless.
Sora tossed up a Cure for himself, and turned to the native boy.
The native boy was squinting through the dust that was thick in the air, and had a hand up by his face, as if to stop the relentless wind.
"Not enough time to get to…" he muttered, but didn't finish. Sora wondered briefly how that sentence finished, but, given the way it had been said, he doubted that the native boy even meant to say it aloud.
"This way, then," the native boy said, taking off in a different direction.
Sora followed after.
It was hard to keep up now. Sora did not know the streets as well as the native boy did, and navigated them at a much slower pace. If it had been a normal day, he might have been fine, but he was fighting the elements in a World unfamiliar to him. The sand was all wrong beneath his feet, slipping more than he was used to. The heat was pounding down on him. The wind wasn't even a relief to the heat; it was hot, too. That, and the wind was blowing all the sand around, making it hard to see, not to mention a pain to breathe properly.
His vision was blurring.
He didn't know which way to go next.
He was just stumbling through the dark, and the heat, and-
Someone grabbed him by the arm and yanked him into shelter. He nearly screamed.
"Are you alright?" the native boy asked.
No, he was not alright.
The world was still spinning dizzily around him.
He felt like he was going to pass out.
But, somehow, Sora managed to nod and voice some sort of reply. He didn't think that it was enough to convince anyone he was alright, though. However, the native boy took it as an answer. Sora didn't understand how; he must've looked awful, as no one could possibly look good when they felt sick, and he staggered when he followed the native boy father into… wherever they were.
"It's not much," the native boy said. "But we'll be able to wait out the storm here."
They were in a room… of sorts… a house, maybe? If it was a house, it was an abandoned house. The oddest assortment of furniture littered the place; nothing matched at all. There was garbage along the walls, and scattered about the floor, too, though in small amounts. The floor was also covered in a fine layer of sand, probably blown in from outside when the door was opened.
"I'm sorry," Sora said. His voice sounded so slurred to his own ears that he was utterly baffled that the native boy did not notice. "Making you look… after me like this…. you must've had somewhere else you needed to be…."
The native boy shrugged and sat down in a chair that was so battered that Sora was surprised it held his weight. "It's alright," he said, like it was no big deal. "Jasmine'll be worried about me, but… she'll understand."
Sora stared.
"J-Jasmine…?" he stuttered, his throat so dry he was surprised that sound came out.
He swallowed, as if to help matters, though it really did him nothing.
He knew that name.
The world was spinning around him again.
He remembered, very clearly, that he had kidnapped her not too long ago.
Hopefully, the native boy who he now knew to be Aladdin wouldn't realize that.
Just in case, Sora started running over apologies in his head so that if he did figure it out—
"So… how did you get here?" Aladdin asked after a moment.
"I…" Sora clutched his head, and then slowly sunk into a large and surprisingly comfy chair that he was not even aware was behind him until he sat in it. Everything was so blurry… "I… I don't know…" he stuttered. That was a lie, but it was easier. "I can't- can't remember…"
"Are you sure you're alright?" Aladdin asked.
"Fine…"
The world was spinning around him, though.
Sora blacked out before he could hear Aladdin's response.
xxx
The wolf half barked, half growled at him, almost as if asking him in annoyed and irritated tone: 'He's here, so what the hell are you complaining about?'
Sora's Shadow turned on the wolf, fury burning in him. "What the hell am I complaining about!" he yelled back. "Well, let's see, you decided to be lazy as crud and not lead me to where I needed to be for a good three days, and now that we're finally here, there's a freaking sandstorm and I can't do a damn thing!"
Not that he existed properly enough for the sandstorm to affect him much, but it was annoying and he really didn't want to spend the next who knew how long with the uncooperative wolf leading him through it. Still, seeing as he couldn't just warp himself to Sora, for some stupid reason, there was really no avoiding it.
Grumbling, he started trudging through the sand.
Have to find Sora.
That thought was all that was keeping him going, one foot after the other, hand in front of his face to shield his eyes from the blowing sand.
Have to figure out why the hell I lost contact with him.
It didn't make any sense. He'd been able to feel Sora in the back of his mind for the entirety of his existence, but now it was just the barest of an echo.
It was infuriating.
It was…
"Grah!" he shouted, stopping and angrily chucking a bolt of darkness at the ground. It threw sand into the air, which the wind gladly picked up and threw in his face. He glared for a second, before turning on his heel and flashing to a place where he could think.
The lack of heat, sun, blowing sand, and other annoyances that the Dark Margin provided was certainly a relief.
"That damn wolf was a waste of my time!" he muttered, irritably. "I don't know what I was thinking. Three days! Three days, it lead me on some wild goose chase! If it had done what it was supposed to do and take me to where Sora was in the first place, maybe we would've gotten there before that damn sandstorm started, and I could've actually done something! But, no! It decides it's going to be a lazy pain in my—"
A rather impressive force came out of nowhere and knocked him to the ground, causing him to hit his head hard enough that his vision blurred. When it cleared he found the wolf on top of him, its face hardly inches away from his, growling menacingly.
"Oh, and now it's following me!"
'You bound me to you, idiot,' the wolf barked, its "voice" having never sounded as clear as it did right now. 'I don't entirely have a choice.'
He glared.
"Well great!" he laughed, voice dripping with sarcastic annoyance. "Not only are you a useless failure, but I'm stuck with you! Oh, my life couldn't get any better!"
The wolf snapped at him, and he threw up an arm to shield his face. The wolf bit into his arm, hard, refusing to let go. He started smacking it on the nose with his other hand, and after a few moments of pain for the both of them, the wolf finally let go.
"Get off of me!" Sora's Shadow growled, pushing the wolf off. It rolled to the side and got back to its feet, hardly fazed. He ignored it and took a second to examine his arm, only to find (yet again) absolutely nothing there. No blood. No tooth marks. The only proof that the wolf had even bitten him was the searing pain he felt.
The wolf launched itself at him again. He dodged and, hardly looking, grabbed the chains around its neck as it passed. Using its momentum against it, he yanked the chains and threw the wolf to the ground. He turned to the wolf, which was pushing itself to its feet again. He glared, then summoned his own chains to him and lashed at the wolf. The wolf flinched at the blow, but then launched itself at him, like nothing had happened.
He brought his arm to block, again, and again the wolf sunk its teeth into him. There was more to its bite now than just teeth, though. Fire akin to the fire that ran across the wolf's body surged from the wolf and into him. He almost laughed. The fire, though it felt extremely deadly and eager to destroy and drain life from everything, was darkness at its core, and therefore did not hurt him. He pulled the draining fire into himself, channeled it, and threw it back in the wolf's face. Of course, it did not harm the wolf either, but it did surprise and confuse the wolf enough to make it to let go of his arm.
The wolf shook its head, and then made to jump at him again, but before it could he struck with his chains, catching its ear. The wolf didn't bleed, but part of its ear was certainly missing now. It yelped in pain.
Before it decided to attack him again, Sora's Shadow grabbed the chains around its neck and forced it to the ground.
"Stop it!" he said, firmly.
The wolf growled.
He pulled harder on its chains, choking it slightly.
"I need to think," he hissed. "So could you just sit there and let me think?"
Annoyance flashed through the wolf's eyes, but when he let go of it, it only moved to make itself more comfortable, and nothing more.
Sora's Shadow sighed, half in relief, half in annoyance, and then found a nice place a good distance away from the wolf to sit down. There he sat, and there he thought.
Something's not right.
Sora shouldn't be able to block connection with me like the way he is right now. He doesn't know enough about it TO block it!
So… someone must be interfering.
But… How?
And more importantly…
Who?