(A/N: Remember the days when I could crank out up to three or four chapters a week? Then I grew up, got a full-time job and stopped staying up until five in the morning to write about video game characters.

Good luck with this chapter, friends.)

CHAPTER II

GRIEF

I'm yours. I'm yours.
Why does the blood never stick to your teeth?
Mama, stop giving me grief.

Massive Attack, "Voodoo In My Blood"
Ritual Spirit

Silas's head pounded with a pain he'd never felt before. With his luck, he really wasn't surprised that he'd have to go to graduation with a migraine. He dreaded nothing more than sitting among hundreds of people for two hours, listening to people talk about how much they look forward to their futures, even without a headache. No part of him wanted to open his eyes.

Until he remembered the black creatures.

His eyes shot open, and he was immediately assaulted with neon lights. They seemed to be strung up atop a half-wall, in the corner of which rested a bright, golden fountain, with shallow water bubbling up beneath an archway. Multiple pointed dormer windows peppered the building behind the wall, which held a strange, patchwork design of various textures and colors, as if built up from a thousand different buildings.

When his eyes finally adjusted, he found he was lying on the tiled ground of what must have been an entirely empty precinct of a city. While lights peppered the buildings which surrounded him, pouring even into the alleyways between them, there was not a single soul wandering the concrete courtyard.

How late was it? The sun was down and stars twinkled in the sky, but everyone's lights were still on. Silas figured there must have been some people who wandered around at night… unless they knew better.

Maybe it's for the best, he thought, rubbing his temples with dirty fingers, blackened by who-knows-what. He was sure, as he licked his dry lips, they had cracked and bled, and if he wasn't absolutely covered with bruises with the pain he was in, he would be surprised.

But where was he?

Silas tried to gather his memories. He was driving with Nico. He swerved to avoid a cat in the road, but it wasn't really a cat… it was some black, deformed creature. Nico left the car to investigate, and was attacked by a bunch of those creatures. Silas sucked it up, and left the car to check on him… only for his friend to get attacked and disappear. Then, the world crumbled around him… and he had this weird, giant key that Nico had before he vanished.

That weird, giant key.

The mere thought of the thing must have summoned it. An intense light coming from his right hand, brighter even than the neon signs and building lights, blinded him, but as quickly as it appeared, it fizzled out, and left behind that weapon (what else could it be?)

Silas was confused, but relieved. Something told him he didn't see the last of those black bugs, and needed some way to protect himself… unless they attacked him because he had that key. They were certainly going after Nico with some intensity, and were relatively content to ignore Silas until he had it for himself.

Nico. Where did Nico go?

The throbbing started up again, after a blissful minute of numbness. Clearly, now wasn't the time for speculating. Wherever Silas was must have been where Nico disappeared to. With some wandering, he knew he would come upon either his best friend or someone who could make sense of whatever the hell just happened.

His left leg screamed in agony, but he bit back all the cusses that exploded from his lungs. It didn't look broken, but he felt excruciating pain in his calf. New plan: find a doctor, or even just a place—indoors—to sit, and fast. Nico would only make fun of him if he knew that he was hobbling along a strange city trying to find him on a busted leg.

I look homeless, he thought with bitterness as he lumbered forward, looking for the closest door on which to knock. At the very least, maybe a kind resident would call him an ambulance.

Because the world clearly hadn't betrayed his expectations enough in the last twenty-four hours, rather than allowing him to place the key in the keyhole, a small beam of light shot out from the tip of the key and into the keyhole. For a few brief moments the light sustained itself, before fading quickly with a small clicking sound.

Silas was done trying to understand. He didn't have high hopes, but grabbed the handles of the door once again. This time, with a great amount of effort, they swung open.

Any concern that he may have been trespassing was squashed as soon as he noticed that the doors didn't open up to a building, but rather an entirely different portion of the town. What city in the world was separated by tall, brick walls and locked doors? Silas just knew he had to be dreaming, so he had no reason to be afraid.

He emerged between two buildings, but after walking forward a bit, was able to get a nice view of a large, cobblestone courtyard, punctuated by whimsically crooked lanterns and surrounded by various shops and what looked like a little café. All of this rested at the end of a short flight of stone stairs, dividing the town into two levels. He stood at the top level, beside a couple of stores with signs reminiscent of the area he just came from reading "jewelry" and "ACCESSORY." Luminaries of various colors and styles hung from and perched atop wrought-iron wall hangings at every turn, bathing the starlit town in a comforting, incandescent glow.

There was nothing familiar about this place. It was so unlike the rolling cornfields, thick woods, and stocky farmhouses back home. In his hometown, Silas could take a deep breath and smell air—he could smell burning autumn leaves, the cool freshness of the creek cutting the town in two, and the stinging chill of winter's first frost.

Here, Silas smelled hot garbage.

Granted, he was fairly close to an alleyway.

He'd seen cities in films, and read about them in books for school, but had never actually visited one himself. As far as he was aware, there was a small city some fifty miles from his hometown, but that was it. People passed stories around of faraway cities with shops on every corner, apartments buildings that reached toward the sky, and small green parks cornered in by the concrete where people walk their dogs between patches of clean-cute grass, but they were just that: stories.

Maybe this one wasn't exactly like the stories, but it sure as hell wasn't anything like how his parents described the city. This couldn't be it, could it?

If only there was someone around to tell him where he was.

Like whatever higher power out there had heard his prayers and sent him exactly what he needed, a voice called out from behind him.

"Nowhere around here."

The voice was feminine—deep and husky, but unmistakably feminine. It wasn't coming from the courtyard, but somewhere on the higher level of the district. There was still nobody in sight, so he assumed she was exiting a building somewhere, or hanging out in the alleyway.

"Maybe third district?" came another voice, this one male and only slightly deeper than the first.

"If he's even here, at all." A pause. Could they have been talking about Silas? He entertained the possibility a moment before the female voice said, "This is outlandish, even by our standards."

There was shuffling of some kind. "Let's just check third district and get it over with. If he's not here, we can go home and get pizza or something."

"You are a black hole that exclusively consumes pizza," the woman muttered, and, with footsteps, the voices disappeared.

Silas didn't realize how relieved he was to hear human voices until they were gone. Suddenly frantic, he allowed himself to put pressure on his gimp leg (which sent another eruption of pain all up his body) and headed back in the direction of the doors. He remembered the small sign next to the door through which he arrived at this shopping center—he just came from the Third District. He couldn't let these people, possibly his only shot at fixing his leg, get away.

"Wait," he shouted, hoping to hear something back, but nobody answered. They were likely already through the door.

He found, the faster he moved, the less he could feel his leg (or perhaps adrenaline was numbing him to the excruciating pain). Reaching the door again, after what felt like years of limping, he pushed the doors open.

Any hope that watching his best friend disappear into nothingness before he blacked out was squashed with what he saw next. Two people—a man and a woman, just as he expected—were both slashing at a horde of crawling, black creatures.

These monsters (and clearly, they were monsters, not wild animals as he previously expected) were different than he remembered them. They were almost cartoon-like in appearance when they appeared out of thin air to Nico on the road, with giant feet, short limbs, and goofy heads, but these weren't the same. These were, somehow, menacing.

It's not that they looked much different than the others, either. They were still black, they still had antennae coming from their heads, they still had glowing yellow eyes, and they still arrived in a pack…. but their arms and legs were longer, their long antennae draped in a zig-zag fashion behind their human-like heads, and their spindly fingers were like daggers erupting from their palms.

Were these the same?

His would-be saviors were making fast work of the creatures. While Silas couldn't get a good look at either of them, the woman seemed to be tall and somewhat muscular with dark skin and brown hair, and wore a gray dress with a high waist and bell-shaped long sleeves, like something you would see on a vintage doll. She carried a staff of some kind, which he couldn't keep track of with how quickly she moved it.

The man was about just as tall as his companion, with pale skin, an average build, and short, reddish-brown hair. He carried what could only be described as a large, steel blue, three-barreled gun, and wore an outfit of a blue-gray shirt beneath a leather jacket, which matched his knee-high boots that bunched black jeans at the knees. Various wristbands, watches, and leather cuffs adorned his arms from his wrists to his biceps.

He shot out at one of the creatures, and a rapid succession of what looked like little blue balls of light, like bullets, fired from the two smaller barrels on the gun. It put the creature at quite a distance away, after which the man seemed to literally float up in a gust of air, stray debris swirling around him. The woman had her staff pointed at the man.

Did she do that?

There was no way, but then, there was no way this man could be floating ten feet in the air. He reached the creature he'd just knocked away, hiked his gun over his shoulder and, from a distance of no more than three feet, shot at him again. This time, a giant, gray bullet flew out of the biggest barrel, and the creature seemed to fade out of existence in a colorful miasma more quickly than Silas could register what had happened.

The recoil shot the man backward into the air, but as he regained his composure, the woman was already making quick work of the remaining monsters, as pale silver crescent-shaped objects flew from the top of her staff at them, and disappeared shortly after. Fire, maybe? Energy?

"We have to keep moving," said the man. "They keep coming."

Did they? Now that Silas was paying attention, he realized that, despite the two consistently destroying these creatures, their numbers didn't seem to dwindle at all. Could he help? He looked down at the giant key in his hand. Not with his shitty leg, he couldn't.

"Alright, let's go back to the Second District once more," said the woman. They turned toward the opposite end of the courtyard.

"Wait!" Silas begged in his loudest voice.

This time, they seemed to hear him. Both, in synchronization, turned. Silas could barely see their faces through the swarm of monsters.

"There he is!" said the man, his voice heightening considerably.

Even behind the madness, he could see the woman's eyes widen until white surrounded her irises. "Watch out!" she cried.

Silas felt a sharp pain in his left shoulderblade before he could even register the woman's command. Twisting his ankle in the process, he turned to face his aggressor, which was, as he expected, another black monster. By this time, his leg, with it broken bone and twisted ankle, could not support him anymore, and he fell, with a clumsy thump, right on his tailbone.

It loomed over him like a surgeon in the OR. Silas's breathing quickened, and every cell in his body refused to move.

"Dude, use the keyblade!" the man shouted, but his words and voice were just muffled nonsense.

With the creature not an inch from his face, and smelling like cat shit mixed with decaying skin, Silas was sure this was the end of him. He tried to remember a prayer his mom taught him as a child, but could remember only the last word.

Death was a crack of lightning.

Yet, even in the bright flood of light, his chest moved with each breath, his beneath him ached, and spots danced in his eyes. Death really wasn't much different from life, save for limited visibility.

Except he wasn't dead. After what felt like an eternity of sitting in pain, waiting for vision to return to him, the light disappeared and his eyes adjusted to the dimly-lit city. The creature in front of him had disappeared.

Stunned, he turned his head around. He survived?

So did the man and the woman, it seemed. What didn't make it was the collection of monsters; each one vanished into nothingness, leaving only their prey behind.

xxx

"Well? What was it like?"

Nico sighed, shoving his hands into his pockets, like he had a tendency to do whenever he felt put on-the-spot. Silas couldn't help but feel a little guilty for making him uncomfortable, even accidentally. "I don't know," he answered. "It was crowded, and there was a coffee shop on every corner. It was really loud, and smelled like hot dogs."

"That doesn't sound too bad," Silas responded, glancing back down at his math homework. "Fuck, man. I don't know what I'm doing."

"Keep it down," Nico hissed. "The last time my mom heard me saying that, she washed my mouth out with soap."

Silas noticed he kindly neglected to mention from whom he got the habit of cussing. "You were nine years old," he said, trying not to laugh.

"Still."

Silas sighed. "Will you just help me with this?"

Nico gave him a hesitant nod, and bent his head to the left, where Silas was sitting. Silas thought, if he breathed in deeply enough, he might be able to smell the hot dogs and coffee of the city that Nico described, but he hesitated to do that. Part of him was still bitter that he couldn't go with them, but a funeral isn't exactly something you invite your friend to.

"You're just supposed to sketch a graph of sine. It's not even an equation." He reached over Silas's paper and grabbed a pencil. His arm came within centimeters of Silas's jaw, which he became hyper aware of. "You just make a plot point on each multiple of pi, with zero being the center."

He sketched out the shape of an undulating ocean across the axes. "It's that easy. And with this next one, you just have to do the same thing for cosine. Do you remember what points of the graph to do for cosine?"

Silas opened his mouth, fully ready to guess, but knew that Nico would see right through that, and instead shrugged. "Dunno."

Nico frowned, putting the pencil down.

"We literally learned this today."

"You learned this today." Silas tried to laugh it off as he leaned backwards in the kitchen chair Nico pulled into his room for him. He could practically hear the sweat rolling down the side of his best friend's head at the mere thought of those chair legs scratching the hardwood floor. "I was finishing the dream I started last night."

"Come on, man," Nico grumbled, returning to his own homework. He was a good four problems ahead of Silas. "I can't do your homework for you forever."

Silas sighed, sensing his friend's frustration. "Stop giving me grief," he grumbled. "It'll get done."

"I'm not doing it for you."

"Okay... but if you did to it for me," said Silas, adding, "hippothetically—"

"Hypothetically," Nico quickly corrected.

"Hypothetically, I could finish your clock for you."

Were Nico a dog, his ears would have perked up. His eyes widened. Silas knew he'd be interested; the only class he couldn't pass if his life depended on it was woodshop, because his hand-eye coordination was only marginally better than his three year-old cousin's.

He deflated almost as quickly as he showed interest. "Mr. Anderson would know it wasn't me."

"I'll make it crappy enough that it looks like you just pulled through."

Nico chewed on his lower lip for a minute. "Okay," he said, grabbing the paper in front of Silas. "Cosine looks like this...

xxx

"Thundaga," said the man, as both he and the woman headed in Silas's direction. "Nice."

As they approached, Silas got a better look at them. They couldn't have been much older than himself, but they certainly gave off the impression of adults. The boy had impossible sea-green eyes, but aside from that, was average in every way. There was nothing particularly striking about him, from his rounded nose to his angular jaw, which made Silas think he could never pick him out of a crowd.

The girl was just the opposite. She was the kind of girl that everyone stared at, gender aside, and not because she was overwhelmingly pretty, but because she was pretty in such a striking way. Her brown hair was wavy, hit just below the highest point of her shoulders, and was parted on the left side. Against her dark skin, her eyes, hazel at the edges and gray-blue near the center, were absolutely piercing.

"You don't look in great shape," she said, pointing her long staff at his leg.

Because he hadn't seen enough he couldn't explain today, a bright pink light blossomed from the crescent end of the girl's staff and hovered above Silas's twisted leg. Petals, he noticed: the pink light seemed to shape to a cluster of petals, appearing almost like those flowers that floated in ponds among lily pads. What were those called?

His leg was surrounded by a dozen small, green lights—these were, no doubt, leaves. All at once, the flower and leaves disappeared, and, in tranquil numbness, his leg twisted itself back into shape. Silas had almost given up entirely on his leg, but even in his highest hopes, he didn't expect it to be cured so thoroughly and immediately.

For a few glorious moments, he felt nothing as he stared at his healed limb. When sensation finally began to return to him, the skin felt tender—likely from the twisting of bone underneath—but he could put pressure on his leg and not feel like howling out in pain.

"Thanks," he said, after what felt like an inappropriately long time to sit, staring, stunned, in silence.

"Sure," she said, and glanced over at her friend. "Can you believe this?" she asked him.

He shook his head.

"Um…" Silas stood, a bit shaky on his feet, but glad to be healthy. In fact, not only his leg was better, but all of the cuts and scrapes on his skin seemed to have stitched together, leaving only dried blood as any evidence of their existence. "Who are you?"

After another glance at her companion, the girl said, "My name is Araceli."

"Dylan," said the guy.

He gave them a nod. "I'm Silas."

"Silas," said Araceli, slowly. "Your name is Silas?"

He nodded.

"That's strange."

Silas's eyebrows knitted together. "No stranger than Araceli." He was only half-sure he was saying it correctly. "Where am I?"

"Hey, we're asking the questions, here," said Dylan, but there was a distinct lack of bite behind his words. Silas didn't worry for a second about this plain-looking guy in his weird getup. He added, "But we'll get to all that."

"Whatever it is," Silas half-mumbled, "I don't know anything." If they had any idea how honestly terrified and confused he'd been for the past half an hour, they wouldn't be asking him anything except whether or not he needed a place to rest.

"Silas," Araceli began, "where is Nico?"