Before he saw Kairi collapse onto the brick with the red stains on her shirt, Riku thought he knew what desperation felt like.
He was wrong. It was an erupting volcano; it was unstoppable, fiery power that shot renewed strength through his arms and legs. It burned so hot and so strong he didn't feel the icy touch of the claws that raked his skin or the teeth that snapped at his face as he cut swathes through the swathes of Heartless between him and Kairi. The courtyard clear, at least for now, he pulled her over on her back. Her breathing was shallow and unsteady, but still, it continued. His stock of potions was drained dry, so he dug frantically into her pockets for the little bottle she always kept there, for emergencies.
Its cap was bent from the impact of her body against the wall, and the contents were soaking uselessly into the fabric. He snarled through clenched teeth and threw it against the bricks. Above him, the air filled with a malevolent hissing, and the shadows of many heavy bodies flickered across the courtyard. The respite he had won with the rush of desperate power was spent. More Heartless folded their wings and dropped into the courtyard—three, six, nine…too many, all between him and the door. He would not be able to carry her to the relative safety of the house and cut himself a path.
"Sora!" he screamed. "Sora, I need your help!"
No one answered over the roar of propellers overhead and the screams and the collapsing timbers. Riku planted himself between Kairi and the Heartless and swung at any that summoned the courage to venture closer, calling Sora's name with whatever scraps of breath he had to spare. He could barely see past the press of black bodies thronging thick as flies—flies on dead meat.
After an eternity of waiting, he was answered. There was a small explosion from the door, and the Heartless scratching against it went flying, pudgy bodies ablaze with sorcerous fire. Sora easily cut himself a path through the Heartless, his strength fresh and undulled. He was not a graceful fighter. His strokes were flailing, and looked almost sloppy until you realized almost every one was connecting. He never stood his ground because he was hardly ever in contact with it. He leapt from one snarling beast to another with the effortless agility of a wildcat, silencing them with a quick stroke or two and moving on to the next before the first had time to finish screaming.
"Get her inside!" he yelled.
The sting in Riku's eyes was less from smoke than relief, and he dismissed his Keyblade to lift Kairi to his chest. She was still alive. Sora gestured them frantically inside as another wave of bombs hit and shattered the air, and slammed the door shut behind him.
-ooo-
A concerned Markl and Sophie were hovering by the door. She grabbed him by the wrist and jerked him back to bury his face in her dress when she saw the blood. He protested, wiggling like a feral kitten in her grasp, until she finally gave up and released him. With his eyes glued to the floorboards he sped up the stairs. A door slammed.
Riku laid Kairi down on the couch and ripped open her shirt from the collar, not even bothering with the buttons, which flew off with little pops and disappeared into the cushions. There was so much blood—but all in front, none in the back. He froze with two wads fabric in his shaking hands, unable to breathe. Sora thrust his reserved bottle of elixir at him from behind the couch. "What are you waiting for? Take it!"
Riku unclenched his knuckles with tremendous effort and folded the two sides of Kairi's ruined shirt back over her chest. "That won't help," he whispered. "Whatever made that is still inside of her. I don't see it."
"Can't you just…"
"Can't I what?" he snapped. "If you seal it inside the wound it'll still kill her, just more slowly and painfully. And even if I did know what I was doing we don't have any surgeon's tools. They're all still in the ship!"
"Yes you do," Sophie said suddenly. "All of my tools from the hat shop are in the boxes by the door—tweezers, scissors, needles, all shapes and sizes…probably whatever you'd need. If one of you would escort me through the courtyard I can get them for you."
From the couch, Kairi moaned, and Sora was instantly by her side. "Hurts," she mouthed, and gasped as sensation came stalking back and sprung on her with teeth bared. "It hurts." Her voice was only a hairsbreadth away from a scream. Sora dropped to his knees and took her hand in his, and draped the other over her chest to hold her still.
"I know…I know," he whispered against her cheek, "Don't look down. Look at me—I'm with you, and I'll always be with you." Kairi clenched her teeth and her eyes shut, trying not to cry out, but couldn't hold back the tears of pain prickling at the corners of her eyes. Riku looked down at her and felt paralyzed, and also, to his utter disgust, a pinch of anger that it was Sora she was clinging to and not him.
"Riku, go!" he ordered fiercely, under his breath.
It took an act of will to shake that pang of jealousy free, but Riku did, and he went. He summoned his Keyblade again. They each had their roles to play. Being with Sora was what made pain bearable, whether it was inside or outside, because he was gentle and stubborn all at once and would never give up, or let you give up, and always knew the right thing to say.
Sophie was already standing beside the door, pale but steady, with a long kitchen knife clutched in one fist. Her curse was burning away visibly now in the furnace of her determination; the Witch of the Waste had clearly underestimated the strength of the heart she had bewitched. She stood straight and slender, with only the scanty imprint of crow's feet around her eyes and her striking gray hair remaining. Riku readied an Aero to blast back anything that tried to force its way inside and dashed out after her.
-ooo-
Kairi was gripping Sora's hand so tightly her fingernails left red crescents in the back of it, but Sora didn't try to pull away, and kept his face perfectly smooth and his voice as level as he could. He didn't even know if Kairi could understand him. She'd lost the battle for silence and was crying alternately for her mother and for someone to kill her.
There was a crash like breaking glass from upstairs, and for one horrifying moment Sora was afraid the Heartless had broken through Calcifer's defenses and the bedroom window. He only started breathing again when Markl came running down the stairs with an armful of glass containers. There was a large jar of rolled bandages in one arm and some small crystal bottles in his other hand.
Afraid to look at Kairi's ashen face or the blood on her shirt, he held them out to Sora. "Here. The red phial is Master Howl's, but…I don't think he'd mind. Three drops under the tongue to hold any pain at bay," he said, as if reciting lessons to a schoolmaster. The liquid was rusty and sloshed thick as blood against the sides of the bottle. "The bandages I enchanted myself. To stop bleeding. I had to use them on Howl once after he came back through the black door. They work."
Sora worked his hands free from Kairi's grip and tore the stopper from the crystal phial and held it to her lips. She stopped thrashing almost immediately and relaxed into the cushions once she swallowed. Sora laid Howl's potion aside on the floorboards and kissed Kairi on the forehead. Her skin felt cold against his lips, and her pulse was fluttering against her neck. "How'd you feel?"
"Like ice. Better though," she whispered, and added in a dreamy voice bordering on delirium: "My head feels weird. Like I'm floating away."
"Well don't," Sora said fiercely, as he snapped open the lid of the other container and withdrew a handful of cotton gauze to press against the wound. "Concentrate on being here. Riku's coming back soon. Tell me what we have to do. You're the expert healer around here."
She closed her eyes, concentrating on plucking the correct instructions out of the sticky miasma that flooded her mind. "Scrub your hands to the elbow, sterilize the tools. It went under my ribs. Don't taste blood yet, 'n I can still breathe okay. Didn't hit my lung. Careful you don't," she mumbled reproachfully, and lapsed into silence.
There was a rumble of thunder from outside the door. Sophie threw it open and launched herself up the stairs two at a time, with Riku on her heels. He'd nearly gotten it shut and locked when something threw itself hard against the door from the other side, growling and snapping. Riku braced himself against the stone steps and shoved. It wouldn't close. Sophie dropped the box and took a running leap back down the stairs, throwing the whole weight of her body against the thick boards. It wasn't much, but it was enough. The lock clicked home. She gasped in pain but bit it short, and flipped the dial around to the relative peace of the Waste. She shoved Riku up the stairs before he could ask if she was all right. "It'll only bruise. Look after Kairi."
The small box Sophie had dropped on the welcome mat was shut with twine and looked like she'd used it to bash one of the monster's heads in. Riku tossed it on the table, snapped the twine with a knife, and dumped out the jingling contents. True to her promise, there was an assortment of fine tools, including a long, thin pair of tweezers used for delicate finishing touches in her millinery.
"I can clean them, and make sure they're cooled afterward," Calcifer said wearily, and extended his arm to take it from Riku, who tossed it to him. He looked different, somehow. Perhaps it was Riku's imagination, but the hue of the flames blinked in and out of their normal range, snapping from briefly from orange to a deep and sickly violet. The colors mingled like old blood.
Sophie rummaged around in the drawers for a bar of the harsh laundry soap and set it down next to the sink. Sora rose to take it, but stopped next to Riku. "I'm sorry," he whispered, face white and shoulders hunch. "I'm not sure…I don't think I can do this."
Riku put his hand over Sora's shoulder. "It's okay," he answered, just as quietly, expecting this. Sora was too compassionate, sometimes. He inhaled deeply. "Because I can."
Sora smiled weakly and returned to his place by Kairi's side. Riku tied his hair back from his face, scrubbed down his hands to the elbow, and tried not to think about what would happen if he screwed up. But this time Riku's much-maligned luck held out. The wide shard of glass wasn't in deep, and within a few minutes he tossed it onto a rag Sophie had laid on the floor, sat back, and let himself breath again, while Sora gave Kairi a few sips of their last bottle elixir.
It mended the injury but could do nothing to restore the lost blood that was drying in a sticky mess on her and Riku's clothes. She was still too weak and dizzy to stand, much less to fight. Her limbs prickled with an unnatural chill from the strange potion Markl had given her, and it turned her thoughts to minnows flashing through the wide black pool of her mind. But with the scream of her nerves mercifully silenced, she could at least try to grab hold of one or two. The pain had drowned out her other senses, the ones that ranged wider and deeper than sight, hearing, touch, taste or smell. There was something pressing down on them, subtle and deadly, that told her, without explanation, that it had been a very, very bad idea to turn their backs to the door. "Sora?" she whispered. "It's breaking through."
"What is?" he asked, uncomprehending. "I don't hear anything."
At Kairi's side Riku drew in a sharp breath, like he'd suddenly noticed a nauseating smell, and glanced over his shoulder with an expression of dread. "Oh. Fuck," he said.
The doorframe was rippling like a flag in the breeze, sideslipped from reality. The wallpaper around it was buckled and loose, like the wall beneath it was slowly rotting, and a persistent scratching could be heard from the other side. Compelled by a mingling of horror and curiosity, Markl took a few steps toward it, and a whip of barbed wire, a tendril of Darkness itself, snaked out from beneath the gap and tried to strike him in the face. He shrieked and threw himself backward, avoiding it by scant inches.
Sophie shot up from her place beside the armrest of the sofa to pull him away before it tried again. "What is that?" she cried, hugging Markl close and well away from its reach.
"That looks like a portal into Darkness," Riku said to the fire. "Explain. Now."
Calcifer's eyes had disappeared into the embers, and the tongues of flame licking at the wood were weak and spindly. He didn't even try to rise to address them, and his voice with thin and muffled with ash. "It was Howl's idea. You step through a paper-thin sheet of it when you open the door. It's how they're all connected—the shop, the cottage, and the castle."
"Brilliant idea, up until now," Riku said. "Now turn it off before it kills us all."
"Can't," Calcifer said heavily. "Don't know how. It's tied to Howl's will, not mine."
Riku bit back another curse. The mechanics of the spell were foreign, but the principal was not. He stroked Kairi's cheek with a gentle finger to get her attention, which was wandering near the lip of unconsciousness. "I'm sorry to ask anything more of you, but can you seal that?"
Her eyes fluttered briefly open. "No. I was trying. I'm so tired, Riku. I'm sorry."
Sophie tightened her grip on Markl's shoulders. "It seems to me the safest place is now outside this castle," Sophie said, staring through narrowed eyed at the bubbling door.
Riku turned to disagree. "The hills are completely indefensible—we'd be swarmed. And I'm not moving Kairi into that unless we absolutely have to."
"At least outside there's somewhere to run!" Sophie countered. "The time to move her is going to come and go if we don't leave now. Markl, come on," she said, grabbed the poker from its holder beside the hearth, and wrapped a potholder from the wall rack onto her hand. Before Riku realized what she had in mind, she dashed up to the picture windows at the front of the house and swung the poker with all her strength. The glass shattered with a horrific crash. She punched through the few jagged edges left on the bottom of the frame with the side of her fist and tossed the square of heavy rag aside.
Sora ran up to grab the welcome mat and toss it over the shards that remained, eyeing the tendrils of black smoke as they writhed over the walls. "It's growing. Sophie's right. We can carry her. If we keep our backs to the castle we should be able to take whatever comes over the hills."
Sophie caught his eyes and nodded in approval. She thrust her breadknife through the waistband of her apron and knelt down in front of Calcifer. "Let me take you with us. I saw Howl do it. Didn't look too hard at all."
He crawled up his pile of logs with obvious effort and shook his head. "No. You go on. I'm not any safer inside or outside." He let the castle drop with a jarring crash that sent Markl and Sora reeling and plates and bottles smashing to the floor. "Get out of here. I don't know how much longer I can hold this place together."
"Calcifer…" she began.
"The quicker you get out of here, the quicker you can help us," he whispered.
She swallowed hard and brushed the tears away with her sleeve, to help Sora and Kairi negotiate the window. It wasn't far off the ground now, and leaning heavily on Sora Kairi made it down without falling. The living scarecrow was waiting for them at the base of the castle, still wearing his incongruent grin. Markl grabbed a few last, precious items to stuff into his pockets and scrambled down under his own power. Sophie and Riku were last out, and she made a show of saying her goodbyes to Calcifer, so Riku was halfway down the treacherous pile of junk before Sophie swung her legs over the frame. She grabbed one of the network of exposed pipes and started pulling herself purposefully towards the top of the structure.
"Down, not up, Sophie!" Riku yelled, when he realized she wasn't descending alongside him.
"Howl's still down there, trying to protect the shop. I have to tell him we've gone. I'll be back soon!" she called in response, and kept climbing.
Riku stopped for a moment, shook his head, and started pulling himself back up the way he came, cresting the bulk of the castle just after Sophie did. "No. You won't," Riku said. It wasn't an order, but a statement of fact. The town was awash in flame. They could smell it, even this far up into the hills, not the comforting smell of pine logs on the hearth but something acrid and greasy that burned relentlessly and without mercy. The bombers still hung high over the rooftops, leisurely dispensing the death remaining in the holds above the reach of the fire and swarms of tiny black specks shrieking in mindless ecstasy.
Sophie ground her horror down between her teeth and didn't flinch from any of it. "I can bring him back. I've flown a hover before."
"Not through a war zone," Riku said.
"Don't you dare try to stop me!" Sophie said, her voice nearly cracking into a shout. "I know you don't like Howl, but he matters to me."
"I'm not going to stop you," Riku said. He pulled himself up the last few feet to the narrow platform where they'd lashed the glider, and knelt to offer Sophie his hand. "I'm coming with you. I may not like the guy, but I know what he's going through."
Sophie nodded quickly, her eyes brimming with gratitude. "Thank you," she whispered breathlessly.
"Take care of Kairi and Markl, Sora!" Riku yelled down.
"That's a promise. We'll be waiting for you," Sora answered, his blade raised high above his head in a sort of half-salute.
Sophie drew the bread knife she brought for the purpose and started sawing away at the ropes restraining the nose of the craft. Riku summoned his Keyblade and began hacking away at the other end. Within a few minutes he'd kicked the last of it off and sat down in the pilot's seat. Sophie gave him a rundown of the controls, which were mercifully simple. "You ready?" he asked over his shoulder. Sophie nodded. "Good. Now don't let go." Riku punched the ignition and they shot into the air.
No matter what else their flaws, Ingary had good taste in airships. Their hover was light, fast, and highly maneuverable, and that was going to mean the difference between life and death once they reached the perimeter of the bombing. Riku took them in high into the cold air, above the flying Heartless, and hoped the bombers would be too preoccupied to gun down a two-person civilian ship that didn't boast so much as a squirtgun in the way of armament. Sophie rose from her seat, ever-so-carefully, and grabbed hold of the back of Riku's. She laid her left hand over his upper arm, steady her herself as well as she could. The ring on her finger flared and speared red through the smoke below them. "Follow it. It'll lead us to Howl."
Riku tracked the thin line through the cover of smoke and dove—in and out as quickly as possible was the only way they would survive this. A cloud of Heartless rose from the carcass of the town like flies, drawn relentlessly to the strongest heart. Riku banked hard and they overshot their prey, chattering in fury. Sophie's foot slipped from the sudden change in direction and she let out a clipped shriek, but held on. The ring's light was level with their flight now, but deeper in. They shot through a plume of smoke, and found themselves over the river…and Howl.
One of the Strangian bombers was listing badly, its bulbous body scraping the facades of the riverfront shops away into a shower of brick and plaster. A black shape was crouched on the rudder and slowly, purposely bending it with pure physical strength, the gashes of its claws plain on the deformed metal. A shudder ran through its body when it noticed the needle stream of light scan across its feathers. "Howl!" Sophie screamed as him as they shot by. "Come back with me! HOWL!" The face that looked up at her had ceased to be even remotely human some hours ago, and was now furred and muzzled like a starving wolf. Its wings unfurled and it thrust itself into the air.
The hover shot over a pedestrian bridge spanning the river, and Riku took them around again. The crippled bomber Howl left behind rammed into the supports of the bridge and wedged there. Its crew abandoned the collapsing wreck and streamed out into the boulevard. Scenting fresh meat, spatters of black slime surged up from the river and began clambering up the pylons. Their prey scattered, the soldiers panicking as their fellows were pulled down screaming and then rose again to join the ranks of the insatiable enemy. The Shadows were indiscriminate in their taste. They feasted on both sides, soldiers and civilians alike.
Riku looked up, sensing eyes on his back, and Sophie followed. A black shape with heavy feathered wings was pacing them from above. "Take us away from this, Riku, please!" she pleaded into his collar. He didn't need any convincing, and pulled up as sharply as he dared to bring them above the worst of the smoke.
But the downed airship was still gasping through the last of its death throes. There was a sudden shearing and cracking from below them, the sound of abused steel just giving up, and something inside ignited with explosive force. Even given the distance between their hover and the ground, the shockwave was harrowing. It tipped the aft end up and around in a dizzying corkscrew. Riku's stomach slammed into the steering column, and instinct just barely allowed him hook his right arm around the post and the fingers of his left on the guardrail as the ship spun down through the smoke. Sophie did not possess a warrior's reflexes and wasn't nearly so lucky. She almost caught the back of Riku's seat when she landed against it but couldn't hold on, and fell screaming as her fingers brushed the burnished brass and then passed it by.
A bare fifty feet above the highest of the town's weathervanes, the little craft's stabilizers miraculously righted it again, the damaged wings buzzing and shuddering in disharmony. Riku called his dark shield directly below Sophie, still hanging precariously by one bruised hand from the guardrail. He pushed himself back in front of the wheel and thrust the dragonfly down. Her silver hair had come loose from its braid and was splashed over the shimmering net like spilled mercury. Her eyes were closed and her limbs were motionless, and Riku could only hope that she hadn't landed wrong and broken her neck.
The shields were fragile things, and sucked at his concentration like leeches. He couldn't hold one for more than a few seconds, and when the edges began to crackle and fade he called another a foot below the first. Sophie stirred from the second impact and pushed herself up, groggy but not seriously hurt, and called something out to him. Whatever it was he couldn't make it out; the explosion had muffled his hearing in a dense ringing fog. Splitting his concentration between maintaining the shield, piloting the hover, and watching for attack was a risky thing to do—there wasn't enough of it to go around, but Riku had no choice. The Heartless below would get wind of his heart again; it was not a possibility but a certainty.
He had almost wrestled the damaged hover level with Sophie when that certainty became a reality. His ears didn't warn him in time to dive. Clammy fingers raked his back and tangled in his hair, and their icy touch momentarily broke his mental hold on the shield. Sophie screamed again as her hands tore through what had just been a solid surface and she went tumbling toward the street. He couldn't spare her enough of his attention to renew the shield with the Heartless trying to tear a hole through his ribcage, and realized with sudden, perfect clarity that there was nothing he could do to save her.
Nevertheless, something did. Howl had folded his wings and plummeted through the choking air like a hawk after a sparrow, but this dive saved a life instead of ending it. Her fall was arrested before he even reached her, and her dress folded gently under her after her feet planted themselves solidly on absolutely nothing. The dark shape scooped her up into the night and disappeared.
Riku renewed his efforts to peel the Heartless off before any more caught up to him. Its spindly arms were stronger than they had any right to be, and it had already bitten him more than once. Finally, he loosened its grip enough that he could make a ruthless grab for the delicate wings, which he tore off with his bare hands. It shrieked in pain and its grip slackened even further, giving Riku the opening he needed to dig his fingers into its soft, newly flightless body and toss its aside. The first two fingers of his left hand were slick with blood and wouldn't grasp the wheel like they should have. He shoved the pain away, a distraction to be dealt with later, and awkwardly turned the hover after Howl and Sophie.