Sorry for the delay in getting this chapter up. My family is on a little mini-vacation before Christmas starts and I don't get much time by myself to write, so my updates from now until Saturday may be sporadic or slow. I'll resume my normal posting schedule after Christmas.
Songs for the chapter:
Duel of the Fates from Star Wars
I Want to Live by Skillet
Storytime by Nightwish
We are the Brave by Veridia
I Want To Live by Skillet
One-Winged Angel (Advent Children Complete version)
Lord of the Castle (Re: Chain of Memories OST)
Chapter 12: Dogs of War:
Island of Draco – Council Palace:
"Oh, that's totally believable coming from you," Rose sarcastically remarked at Skuld's pronouncement. "For the last eight thousand years, your devotion to the cause has been second only to Ephemer himself. You're the one who came up with this whole Endgame bullshit in the first place. Why should we believe you'd back out of it now?" The raven-haired leader of the Unchained Legion winced at the former Huntsgirl's words, but did not otherwise lose her calm demeanor. Sora and Kairi shared a look. They were beginning to think that maybe this woman was serious about surrendering.
"Because unlike Aurilam and your old protégé in the Huntsclan, I am not so blinded by fanaticism that I cannot recognize when we are on the losing side," the Novus Imperator replied. "The last six years have weakened my resolve and brought doubt into my heart. Ava's words reawakened the last shreds of my conscience. With the way the battle is going, the only other way this war can end besides our surrender is the extermination of every Unchained in the universe. I may not agree with your views on the balance between light and darkness, Valerie, but I am not so uncaring that I would knowingly lead our people to their deaths."
She went on to explain Aurilam's coup and the growing divide between the Unchained tired of the endless warfare and the mindless fanatics willing to fight to the bitter end for their cause. Rose and Black Widow treated their former superior's plan with a healthy degree of skepticism, not entirely convinced of her sincerity.
"Something's going on in the Legion's hierarchy," Vanitas exclaimed as he warped breathlessly into the corridor. "The Unchained are starting to tear into each other like jackals." As he finished, he noticed the presence of the lead Unchained herself in the Alliance's war meeting. With a snarl, he lunged forward, summoning his Keyblade mid-swing before Sora stopped him and explained the situation to his brother's darker half.
"Now do you believe me?" Skuld remarked rhetorically. Without waiting for an answer, she summoned her Keyblade and unlocked her manacles before marching back towards the gates of the citadel. "Whatever you believe," she added. "I'm going to stop Aurilam from driving the Unchained to extinction, with or without you." With that, she took a running leap over the wall and landed on the other side, marching back towards the Legion's encampment. After a quick consultation with the rest of the alliance, Sora and the others came up with a plan of attack before following the former Imperator out onto the battlefield.
True to Vanitas' words, the Legion's encampments were in chaos. Unchained fought Unchained as the ancient army splintered into two factions: those like Aurilam, blinded by their fanaticism and convinced that they were right, and those who shared Skuld's doubts about how far they were willing to go to achieve their goals. With Sora, Kairi, Donald, Goofy, and Skuld leading the charge, the next wave of the battle began anew. Skuld's splinter faction began falling back towards the advancing army of Earth and Coalition troops, drawing the fanatic Loyalists into the line of fire.
While Sora used the X – Blade to cut down enemy Unchained like trees, the remaining members of the Huntsclan division were moving away from the battle in the direction of Draco's volcano. Without needing any further instruction, Jake, Rose, and the magical creatures who had showed up to help liberate the island broke off from the main Alliance force to pursue the magic-hunting Legionnaires. Skuld and Aqua used Glacier and other high-level ice magic to immobilize large portions of the opposing armies, while Terra knocked out scores more with Meteor spells. Vanitas used his variety of warping abilities to launch brutal sneak attacks from their rear flank.
Trapped on Draco with nowhere to flee, the remaining Unchained loyal to the Legion's cause splintered into scattered groups. While the Huntsclan pushed for the volcano's summit, Aurilam and the last of the Imperator's Honor Guard fell back into the catacombs beneath the volcano, clearly intending to use the narrow tunnels to their advantage in a pathetically obvious attempt at an ambush. Bereft of leadership, the Legionnaires left behind who hadn't sided with Skuld were quickly either killed or captured as the Earth and Coalition troops swept over the Legion's camp like the tide. There was nowhere left on the island that the immortal Keyblade wielding army could run to.
While Sora repeated what he'd done with Rose and Natasha to remove their immortality on the other Unchained, both the Loyalist prisoners and Skuld's followers, Jake and Rose's contingent confronted the Huntsclan on the slopes of the volcano. Jake lead the supernatural warriors in driving the Unchained foot soldiers back down towards Sora so that the X – Blade could be used to permanently eliminate the Huntsclan, while Rose chose to face the man who had once been her student, confidant, and friend on her own. But despite their shared history together, Stephen's actions and fanaticism had long ago crushed what little mercy she might have shown him. Now, she only faced him with cold, hard determination.
"Why would you cast this all aside for them?" the Huntsmaster demanded angrily as he dueled his former protégé on the slopes of the volcano. But after being dead for over a decade, the Praetor of the Unchained Legion's High Council was rusty. Rose easily deflected his strikes before retaliating with a series of swift, brutal swings that sent him rolling down the volcano summit.
"Because right now, life is giving me a chance to do more than just hide in the shadows," Rose retorted as she leaped down the slopes and swung at her former "uncle' with both Huntstaff and Keyblade. "A chance to truly live." She kicked him hard in the abdomen, knocking him towards the Alliance formation. Behind her, Jake and the rest of the assembled magical creatures were doing the same. Caught between two armies, the last remnants of the Huntsclan had only two options: surrender, and be consigned to prison for the remainder of their soon-to-be-mortal-again lives, or continue to fight until every last hunter was dead.
While Rose and Skuld both hoped that the Huntsclan could come to their senses, her former student unfortunately chose the second option, and were swiftly annihilated with a quick energy wave from the X – Blade, courtesy of Sora. Once the battle on the surface of Draco had been decisively won, all that remained was to send a team into the catacombs to hunt down Aurilam's forces and destroy them. As the respective wielders of the X – Blade and Infinity Gauntlet, Sora and Kairi were already on the team. Skuld was the next choice, since her knowledge of the High Praetor's psychology and tactical quirks would be beneficial to them. Donald and Goofy volunteered without hesitation.
"You're not going in there alone, Sora," Donald remarked when the young Keyblade Master tried to protest.
"All for one and one for all," Goofy reminded him with a chuckle. With Riku and Mickey coming along for good measure, the team lineup was decided. Once everyone had stocked up on healing items and spare weapons, the group of seven set off through the tunnels. After what felt like hours of navigating through the labyrinthine maze, they arrived in the chamber that had once served as the lair of the Dark Dragon. The irony that a self-proclaimed warrior of light would make his last stand in the den of one consumed by darkness and evil was not lost on Skuld, further cementing her realization of how far the Legion had fallen.
"You've no chance of winning," the man once known as Marluxia remarked smugly as the seven stormed into the chamber. Four warriors from the Honor Guard flanked the pink haired Foreteller Vulpeus as they stood waiting in the center of the room. With his forces routed and with nowhere to escape, Aurilam was clearly becoming unhinged. With nothing to say that could possibly talk him down, everyone simply prepared for battle. The plan had already been determined ahead of time. Riku, Mickey, Skuld, and Kairi would deal with the Honor Guard, leaving Sora, Donald, and Goofy the task of defeating the Graceful Assassin themselves.
"You all turn from the truth because your hearts are weak," he remarked as a small, pink flower petal drifted downwards into his hand, forming his familiar scythe from his days as a Legion spy within Organization XIII. In his other hand, he summoned his Keyblade, shining and spotless despite eight thousand years of disuse. "YOU WILL NEVER DEFEAT ME!"
The battle against Sephiroth was long and intense. Shadow Flares and Firaga Walls bounced surged across the tunnels as the silver-haired mercenary casually deflected nearly all incoming attacks. Cloud quickly brought his blade up to block as his inner demon swung his blade forward with blinding speed, attacking thirteen times in less than a second. The blonde quickly retaliated with a few short combos of his own before he managed to knock Sephiorth off his feet. Zack rushed forward to add in a few more attacks before Sephiroth teleported behind him and knocked the raven-haired warrior against the walls of the newest chamber they'd just entered.
While Sephiroth went after Zack, Leon fired off a few well-aimed shots from his gunblade to keep the infamous One-Winged Angel disoriented while Cloud and Tifa maneuvered into position. When the assassin changed targets to go after Leon, Zack took advantage of the opening to make a strike across Sephiroth's wing that – to everyone's surprise – managed to draw blood. Everyone in the room, even Sephiroth, stared at the sight in shock. After a few seconds, the inter-planetary killer for hire regained his composure and coated himself in an aura of soft pink light.
"Descend…" he began to chant as he floated slowly into the air. But before he could say "Heartless Angel" and complete the spell, a Firaga blast from Leon's gunblade knocked him out of the air and caught him off guard. Tifa rushed in to take advantage of the situation with some close-quarters combat, but he managed to dodge every punch and kick she threw at him. Sephiroth retaliated with lightning fast strikes with Masamune, but Tifa managed to avoid every single hit with the skill and grace of a dancer.
Tifa rolled out of the way as Sephiroth called down a ring of fiery projectiles out of thin air. Once the flaming barrage came to a halt, Cloud leaped up to take the offensive. After twenty minutes of back and forth parrying, Cloud tapped into his energy reserves for a move he had been working on perfecting for the last six years: Omnislash. His body glowed with blue fire as he tossed his multiple swords into the air before leaping up after them. Each time he reached a blade, he flew towards his opponent and struck with the swiftness of a snake. Until finally, he landed on the ground and grabbed the main component of his blade as the rest landed tip first in the cave floor around him.
Sephiroth hovered in the air above him, bright green blood leaking from a dozen wounds all over his body. It was clear by this point that the One-Winged Angel was losing the battle. But despite this, the silver-haired man didn't look angry. Instead, to everyone's confusion, he looked almost – dare they say it – sad. Without a word, Sephiroth wrapped the large, feathered wing on his back around his body like a cocoon. Everyone on the ground stepped back, anticipating one last retaliatory strike. But instead, his body began to fade.
As Sephiroth's body vanished in a cloud of feathers and shadows, his youngest son dropped to the ground in front of the party. Cloud and Leon prepared their swords in case the young man tried to keep fighting, but Tifa and Zack quickly stepped in front to stop more fighting when they realized that instead of trying to get up, Kadaj was quietly sobbing with the realization that he was alone. Taking pity on the silver-haired young man, Cloud walked over and gently placed a hand on his shoulder. Despite the fact that Kadaj was the son of the embodiment of his inner darkness, the blond soldier couldn't help but empathize with the pain of losing one's family. The loss of his family in The Fall, combined with Sephiroth's murder of Zack and Angeal, had been devastating for him emotionally.
After making sure that his weapon was secure, Cloud helped his… kind-of-sort-of-nephew… to his feet before Leon came over with handcuffs to make sure he was restrained. Regardless of any empathy Cloud might now be feeling towards the progeny of a being born from the darkness of his own Heart, Kadaj was still a wanted criminal, and now, a prisoner of war. Either way, Cloud and Tifa walked behind Kadaj as the group made their way back up towards the surface of Draco.
Before the scythe had even formed in Aurilam's hand, Sora sprang into action. With speeds that would put even Vanitas to shame, he warped around the cave and swung the X – Blade at the usurper's honor guard. He didn't bring to bear the blade's full power, but he cut just hard enough to break the skin and repeat the process he'd done on Rose and Natasha. While the Honor Guard doubled over, vomiting light, Sora, returned to the front of the group and charged towards the man who had been torturing him less than a day previously. With all but one Unchained stripped of their immortality, the final battle began.
Goofy threw his shield at Aurilam, only for the pink haired man to slam the shaft of his scythe into the earth, causing the shield to clatter harmlessly against the side of the blade before bouncing back to Goofy's hand. Donald fired off a Thundaga spell that the former Graceful Assassin expertly blocked. Meanwhile, Kairi used the power of the Time Stone and the Power Stone to quickly obliterate her opponent before moving on to help Skuld with hers. Riku and Mickey used their old Holy Burst attack to disorient their own foes before Kairi and Skuld took the former immortals out.
With the Honor Guard defeated, the Organization's former Number XI was now the last Unchained left in the entire Legion. Sora charged towards where Aurilam was standing even, but the pink haired man jumped out of the way, moving so fast he appeared to simply be gliding over the floor until his feet touched the ground at Sora's original position. With a swing of his scythe, the High Praetor launched a deadly wave of energy at his opponent, only for Riku to leap in front and raise a Dark Reflega shield just in time to block the incoming energy. Donald launched magically summoned fireworks at the Unchained, while Mickey did a flying leap over Aurilam's head and fired off a Pearl spell from the other side of the room.
Kairi fired off Holy and managed to leave her target disoriented long enough for Riku to coat himself in Darkness and launch into his Dark Aura attack. Once he'd recovered enough to dodge out of the way, Aurilam warped over to Sora and a spell that caused a large number 99 to appear above Sora's head. When Sora was hit with the flat of the man's scythe, and the number decreased to 98, the group was able to put the dots together fairly quickly. While Sora continued to dodge, Kairi immediately came upon a way to remove the spell. With a few hand signals to Riku and Mickey, she put her plan into action.
In a whirlwind of light and darkness, Riku and Mickey charged at Aurilam, keeping him distracted long enough for Kairi to use the Time Stone to reverse Sora's movements until, sure enough, the curse disappeared from over his head. After taking a second to reorient himself once more, he and Kairi withdrew towards the back of the room as Skuld, Donald, and Goofy raced towards the Graceful Assassin to cover their friends. With how furiously Aurilam had been coming after them, Sora hadn't been able to focus long enough to activate the X – Blade's power.
Now that his friends had created an opening, he stood in the back of the cave and raised the X – Blade into the air, sword aiming skyward. As he held it in place, the blade began to glow with a brilliant white light. Aurilam took notice of this fact and broke away from the three Keyblade Masters assaulting his defenses and made a full-on sprint towards his foe. But before he could get within striking distance, Sora swung the X – Blade down and released an intense burst of light that obliterated the High Praetor of the Unchained Legion. As the light faded, a man-shaped cloud of ash collapsed to the cavern floor.
As the heroes (and Skuld) dropped to the ground in exhaustion, light burst forth from the X – Blade once more. When it faded for the second time, both the blade and the Gauntlet were gone. But despite the confusion, Sora knew where both had gone. He'd left the X – Blade inside the core of Kingdom Hearts to keep it from falling into the wrong hands all those years ago. And now that it was no longer needed, it had returned there, bringing the Infinity Gauntlet back with it. While their friends and ally recovered their breath and started making their way back up to the surface, Sora hung back so that he could give his wife one last kiss before they headed upstairs to face the parties.
While both he and Kairi would have wanted to have a larger ceremony for their wedding, neither one of them regretted saying their vows tonight. Because after three months of conflict with the Hellfire Club and the Unchained Legion, the war was finally over.
And with that final, stroke, the battle is over. But there is still more to the plot before I bring the Acolytes of Chaos saga to a close. It's not going to be much, really. Just a chapter where everyone recuperates from the battle and talks about what'll happen now that all the pieces of the original world have been put back together again, followed by the usual "what's everyone up to" end credits, and an epilogue set about a month after the final battle on Draco.
When I came up with the idea of incorporating Kadaj and the other Sephiroth remnants into the Kingdom Hearts universe, I debated whether or not to bring him back in this saga or the next one. I also toyed with the idea of Sephiroth's resurrection being against Kadaj's will. But when I came up with the idea of them as Sephiroth's offspring, I decided to humanize Sephiroth a little bit and show that despite being an evil jerk to Cloud and everyone he cares about, the infamous One-Winged Angel still has people that he cares about.
I originally planned on having Kadaj die at the end, but after deciding on Star Lord also being a child of Sephiroth, I decided to keep Kadaj alive for the possibility of hanging out with the Guardians of the Galaxy for some sibling bonding time with Quill. So there will be a scene with Kadaj and Star Lord in the next few chapters.
The battle choreography for both the Sephiroth and Aurilam fights was heavily influenced by their actual moves from the games. Mainly from Kingdom Hearts 2 in Sephiroth's case. I did throw in a reference to Tifa dodging all of his attacks back in KH2, and the Cloud vs. Sephiroth fight in KH2 heavily influenced those portions of the fight scene. The scenes with Kadaj after the fight were intended to be reminiscent of his death scene in Advent Children, even if he's still alive in this universe. And yes, I did quote some of Marluxia's pre-battle dialogue from Re:CoM before Aurilam's last stand.
I also threw in a few references to the Marluxia vs. Axel fight scene in Re: Chain of Memories, as well as Marluxia's Absent Silhouette and Data Replica battles in Kingdom Hearts 2 Final Mix. And yes, that was a Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword reference there at the end.