Chapter Two...
The next morning...
To know
That which before us lies in daily life
Is the prime wisdom. ...
Paradise Lost - John Milton
David got up the next morning and went downstairs. He was especially groggy this morning, so he went straight for his kitchen to make himself a pot of coffee. As he stirred the steaming drink, he heard something that he hadn't heard in a long time. A rumbling off in the distance. He smiled. A thunderstorm. He was going to get a little wet on his way to see Lucrecia.
That's when he remembered what had happened the night before. The man in black. The invitation. The strange feeling he had when he had first held the envelope...
He dropped his mug in the sink and ran back upstairs. The envelope was still there, on his nightstand. He shuddered. What was going on? He jumped when his cat, Rona, rubbed up against his legs and meowed. She looked up at him and purred. He just looked back and stood there for a moment. Then, his brain restarted and he shook his head.
"You want food, no doubt." She purred again and ran downstairs. He followed her and got her some fish out of the fridge. He cut it up and put it into a bowl, then put the bowl on the ground. She pretty much pounced on it and started eating. David smiled and went back upstairs.
When he got back to his room, he just stared at the envelope on his nightstand like it was about to start moving on its own. Or like it was a bomb. Regardless, he didn't like the general feeling that emanated from it. He slowly approached it and picked it up. The feeling that he had felt last night when he had picked it up was gone, but there was some residual magic left over from the initial delivery. He looked at the strange symbol on the front an saw that it was shimmering, like a mirage in the desert. He turned the envelope over and ran his finger underneath the flap, tearing it open. He pulled out what looked to be a small computer screen of some sort. He tapped it and it jumped out of his hands. It then began to glow and rotate in mid-air, getting faster and faster. Finally, it got spinning so fast that he couldn't actually see it anymore.
He backed away from it and stood against the wall...
Then, he heard it.
A million screaming souls, all trapped inside that small space. He could feel every last one. Their pain. Their anger. Their hate... He fell to his knees and felt an incredible pain shoot from the center of his left palm and into his shoulder, running all the way up into his brain.
Then, he knew no more.......
Three Days Later...
David slowly opened his eyes, groggily looking around him. He was lying down on the ground as if roughly tossed in some kind of holding cell with white, marble-looking walls, ceiling, and floors. There were three pod-like devices on the wall to his right. Across from them was a door that had a diamond-shaped, bar-filled opening in it. Beyond the opening, he couldn't see anything.
He got up, staggering. What had happened? How had he come to be here?
"Ah!" A voice resonated from nowhere. "You have awakened."
A black swirl of magic appeared from thin air in front of the door and the cloaked man stepped out of it. He was still wearing his hood, hiding his face from view.
"What do you want from me?" David stood ready for an attack. The man seemed to be sizing him up.
"I think that you should know that." The man raised his hands to his hood and flipped it back. His medium length, silver hair fell out of it, a single tuft of it staying spiked above the rest. David recognized him instantly.
And his guard faltered.
The man smirked and David knew that his guard was too late. An electrifying blast shot through his body as his foe charged him, swinging around behind him before he could move and slamming some kind of charged rod into his back. He fell to his hands and knees, gasping desperately for breath that wouldn't come. The man stepped around him, slowly, coming to a halt right in front of his bowed head. David's eyes tried to focus on the boots in front of him. He had to ground his mind before it spun out of control with the pain...
"Can you spare... A heart?" David's eyes widened as he felt his whole being jerk toward the man, though his physical body stayed still. The pressure behind this one man's will was incredible. It was beyond anything that he had ever felt, be it in Lifestream, Mist, what have you. He felt the electricity that lifted him off the ground shoot into his body long after he was in the air. His head lolled around, falling to his chest, over to his shoulders... He couldn't ground his thoughts to anything. He couldn't feel the constant pulsing and flowing of the Lifestream nor the shifting, shimmering Mist here. It was like this place didn't even exist...
Aerith...
That's when his eyes snapped open and he felt his heart jolt back into his chest. The man knew what was happening and tried to throw David against the wall with the electricity, but to no avail. David redirected the power behind the throw and thrust himself mentally downward to the ground. He went down as the man shot up into the air, hitting the white ceiling of the room. His hands went to his chest as David took control of the bolts of electricity that had just been ripping his heart from his body. He directed the attack at the man's own chest... Only to see that it was only paralyzing him. The man laughed as he was held in place by the lightning.
"You would find it difficult to steal the heart of one who lacks one!" The man's eyes flashed and David was thrown violently backward.
He thought the door would hold up and waited for his body to crash into it. However, his faith in the sturdiness of the door was a poorly placed one. In other words...
The door exploded.
He catapulted through the white, shimmering stone and out into a darkened corridor, slamming into the opposite wall. He slowly got up, blood running down his face, his left leg on fire with pain, and completely dazed by his sudden encounter with a less-than-solid surface. The door was behind him, in two pieces. His foe didn't emerge from the cell. In fact, he was nowhere to be seen. David was happy to keep it that way.
He looked around him after he had recovered a little bit to see other doors that were identical to the one that had not held up to having a young man thrown into it. There was a pair of large, white doors at one end of the corridor, while the other end was dark, too dark to see the end. He shivered. Usually, the Lifestream would illuminate the darkened hall, but not here. He turned away from the dark and faced the doors. He approached them, limping slightly on his injured leg to find the right-hand one partially open. There was a sliver of light coming through it. He put his back to the other one and peeked through the crack. All he could see was a red circle on the ground that was glowing with a mysterious light.
He stepped through the door, opening it without a sound.
He saw more now. The red light was on the bottom landing of a ramp that spiraled around and around for quite a ways before leading to another ramp that stretched from one side of the silo-like area to the other. He looked down from the edge of the landing to see a pit that seemed to fall forever. He shivered again. He wouldn't want to fall down that. That's for damn sure...
He started making his way painfully up the ramp. As he rose, the light got brighter and brighter, so that he could see more of what was around him. He saw that the walls and floor of the pit were lined with what looked like ribbons of the red lights. He kept going up the ramp, trying not to think of what he was going to find. Uncertainty is the worst kind of fear, in his eyes. He should know. He's never uncertain of anything. The Lifestream made sure of that...
But, he was also trying not to think about the pounding migraine that had come on from the door incident and the blasts of fiery pain that was shooting through his leg with every step he took. But he was just going to deal with those...
He got to the top and found that he was in what looked to be a giant factory of some sort. An elevator was open off to his left, up some stairs and down a catwalk. He made for that. When there's nowhere else to go, why not go up, right?
Right?
And he would learn more about that man. Why was he here? And why, seemingly, did he lack a heart? What was he planning?
Was that really who he thought it was?
Was that really...
Xehanort?