(A/N: I find it kind of funny, I find it kind of sad... I keep writing these chapters during work and publishing them while tipsy. Enjoy!)

CHAPTER IV

BURIED

Soon I'll come around, lost and never found,
Waiting for my words, seen, but never heard.
Buried underground, but I'll keep coming.

Low Roar, "I'll Keep Coming"
O

The inside of the gummi ship was much more impressive than the outside.

What looked like the byproduct of a four year-old and his set of children's building blocks in all conflicting colors on the outside was actually fairly sophisticated inside; the dome-shaped stainless steel interior seated four up front, with two seats in front of the dashboard, like a car, which contained various buttons and levers Silas couldn't comprehend, and two just behind it.

Along the edges of the interior were closed cabinets, and a couple of small beds, smaller even than twin-sized mattresses, extended out of the wall, one right on top of the other. It was cozy, but Silas assumed their trip probably wouldn't be long, seeing as the two beds' white sheets were immaculately folded.

"So we're flying through space to another world?" Silas confirmed, trying to keep whatever hints of incredulity in his voice in check.

Araceli only nodded.

"It's the world where the wizard's tower is," said Dylan. "Actually, it's a pretty small world. But it's connected to a much bigger one called Twilight Town."

Silas nodded, though he was only half-listening. Araceli took the wheel, and Dylan sat next to her. He expected nothing different, and sat on the red-cushioned seat behind the other boy, feeling somehow so much more different from these two strangers than ever before.

Strangers. These were strangers, and he was getting in their vehicle. He couldn't imagine what his dad would think… if his dad was okay.

"Does the wizard have a name?" he asked, trying to keep the conversation flowing, because the longer the silence, the longer he would have to think of his dad, his sister, and Nico.

"His name is Yen Sid," Dylan said, and that's where the conversation ended. It was no use.

Araceli punched a series of buttons and turned an array of dials until the ship roared to life, the way his pickup rumbled after the third turn of his key, but smoother and at least three times louder. The seats and furniture jostled a bit, and Silas understood why nothing sat atop surfaces and everything seemed to be stored within the cabinets and drawers on the walls.

Suddenly, the shaking ended, but the noise persisted. Silas just knew this was the ship rising into the air.

Of everything he learned so far, this giant metal children's toy launching into the air, slowly, like the product of an alien abduction, was definitely in his top ten list of surreal and unbelievable things. He had never been in a plane before, and neither had anybody he knew; much like the city, it was an oft-discussed topic, but rarely seen.

The only available window to the outside world was the dashboard that Araceli and Dylan faced, so Silas tried to subtly peer over the other boy's shoulder to watch the rustic buildings, coiling wrought iron and neon signs of Traverse Town shrink and become minute dots of color, turning the expanse into an impressionist painting.

Silas felt the way he did when his house was broken into and his game system was stolen the moment they launched forward and the gleaming little city beneath them was ripped out of his vision. Suddenly, all in front of them was black. The lights in the cockpit dimmed to nothing, and Silas had to remind himself to breathe.

Tiny pinpricks of light rushed past them in streaks; it seemed, no matter how quickly they traveled and in how straight of a line, they never seemed to hit or reach any of them.

Nobody really knew what the stars were. Silas's teachers only told him they were tiny balls of light floating in space made of "indeterminate material," and Nico theorized that they were all individual suns, but both of those seemed unlikely.

"What are they?" he asked.

"What are what?" Araceli was only half-listening, her eyes flickering between the window and the various controls on the dash. What kind of life must this girl lead that traveling through the incredible expanse of space is as ordinary to her as driving down to the grocery store?

"The stars."

Silas thought he saw a flicker of a smile across her features for a moment, before she straightened her mouth, cleared her throat, and said, "Each individual star is another world. Much like your home world, or Traverse Town, the world we just left. The light you're seeing comes from the heart that world. Some are brighter, some shine more dimly."

Silas, again, found himself in awe of both her knowledge and the way she spoke; while his sentences were often clipped short and littered with "likes" and "ums" when he dared to speak for too long, hers were peppered with words he'd never used in casual conversation and spoken so eloquently, she might have been reading directly from a book.

"A world's light, its heart," she continued, "determines its strength and resilience. The stronger the world, the longer it takes to fall to the Heartless, should it become victim. Should a world's heart be locked away with the Keyblade, it's safe from succumbing to the darkness… until, at least, it's somehow unlocked again."

Silas chewed his lower lip as he took a minute to absorb her explanation, staring out at the stars flying past them, each an individual world, one by one. How different could they all be? How infinite were the possibilities? Was there a world out there where he and Nico were smoking on his porch, still in their graduation caps, reminiscing about high school and making up wild stories about their futures?

"Sounds tiring," he said.

"What do you mean?" Dylan asked.

"A person with a Keyblade has to lock a world's heart to keep it safe, but it can just be unlocked again? Doesn't that mean you could end up doubling back to the same world dozens of times just to, like, keep cleaning up after someone else's mess?" He shook his head. "I'm not going to like this job."

"It's not a job," Araceli corrected him. "You have no duty as a Keyblade wielder. But if you had the power to do good, wouldn't you?"

That was a good question that should have had an easy answer. He looked down at his hand, wondering when the Keyblade would decide to show up again. It was like that theoretical question that he heard all the time about what you would do if you found twenty dollars lying in the street. Would you take it to the police, or keep it for yourself?

Of course, Silas always said he would take it to the police, because that was the answer other people were looking for. How could he know how he would react in that instant if he'd never heard that hypothetical situation before? He'd probably take it. Realistically, he would take it.

His stomach turned a little bit. Did that make him a bad person?

Well, he wouldn't shirk this responsibility. He didn't know how he would go about doing it, but if Silas ever found a world that needed to be locked, he would help. Besides, if he could save anyone else the pain of what he was going through, why wouldn't he?

They sat in silence for a good fifteen minutes, flying through space. Dylan's eyes, which were blinking slowly, finally closed, and his breathing slowed. The boy slumped forward in his seat, neck craning downward, and began snoring faintly. He must have been exhausted.

"He always falls asleep in the ship," Araceli explained, as if anticipating the question. "Long day. It's about to get even longer."

"It's not tomorrow yet?" Silas asked with a wry smile.

Araceli punched a button on the dashboard, and the screen lit up "14:32."

"In universal time, it's just past 2:30 in the afternoon."

Silas blinked a couple of times. Was universal time somehow different than his own? It made sense; he was wide awake, despite how late out he thought it was. "Why was it so dark back in the city?"

Araceli replied, "Each world is on its own timetable. We follow universal time to help keep us on a regular schedule. Regardless, Traverse Town is in a state of perpetual nighttime. It's just how the world is."

Silas wasn't sure the moment would come when he asked Araceli a question to which the answer was just "it is what it is." He supposed one girl couldn't know everything, and in a universe so huge, so much more ridiculously vast than he had ever expected, some things still had to be a mystery even to the most intelligent people.

He took a deep breath and rested his arms and chin against the now-free back of Dylan's chair. They sat in silence for another minute. Silas normally disliked silence; that's why he hung around a lot of girls during class. Girls were generally chatty. Girls always had something to say, and he loved to listen, but hated to speak back. Nico was the same way; he was a good talker.

Araceli, not so much. Somehow, the silence wasn't as uncomfortable as he expected. It was as though Araceli had her own expectations of Silas, and they were spot-on, but she wasn't about to change her own habits to make him comfortable. He found himself with another level of respect for her, and then thought he might be overthinking things.

When he spoke again, it was organic—it was because a question had sprung to his mind, and not because he felt the ship was too quiet. "How far away is the wizard's tower?" he asked.

"Are you asking in distance, or time?"

Seeing as Silas had no idea how quickly they were going and how far apart things were typically spread out here in space, he answered, "Time, I guess."

"Twenty minutes more, at the most," she replied, "if we get attacked."

His eyebrows shot up. "Attacked?"

"There are Heartless ships out here," Araceli said in a mutter. "Normally, they're quite active. There haven't been many in the last week or so." She paused. "Dylan thinks it's because we've done a good job of eradicating them. With how those Heartless multiply, I think something else is happening. I think they've all gathered somewhere."

"Optimistic, are we?" Silas asked, grinning.

She smiled. Silas realized, as he saw the skin crinkle around her bluish-brown eyes, already quite small, which only appeared smaller, he hadn't seen her give a real smile yet. Her pale lips pushed the brown skin of her cheeks up, and her ears, poking out from her short, wavy hair, pushed backwards.

"Optimism is for the hopeless," Araceli said, her words betraying her grin. "I'm not hopeless."

She took something out from her pocket; Silas couldn't see exactly what it was, but looked white and small. Araceli put it in her mouth, and swallowed it. Food? A pill? Vitamins? He didn't think it polite to ask, though he was sure she would tell him if he did.

"No, you're not" Silas murmured, watching her until her smile faded back to her resting face before turning the other direction and resting his head on his forearm.

xxx

Eighth grade graduation was a joke.

Silas's mom told him that eighth grade graduation didn't really mean anything, and she had other things to do, so she wouldn't make it. She promised to come to his high school and college graduation. He didn't care that much.

The auditorium wasn't very packed; it was your standard, full-sized auditorium, but the graduating class was less than fifty students. Of course, a lot of people in the area had big families and brought even their second cousins and great aunts, but even with the extra heads in the crowd, each guest could claim two or three empty seats for their belongings, or as leg rests.

Nico was, unsurprisingly, the valedictorian. The principal, a bald-headed man only in his thirties, wearing a robe of his own (though in a bright blue rather than the standard forest green), finally ended his soliloquy and introduced Nico, but as "Nicodemus." He could practically feel his friend wincing from the second row; there was a good reason he went by his nickname.

He stood, shook the principal's hand, and took his place at the podium. This would be the only speech Silas would listen to.

"The truth is," his friend began, "I'm a fraud."

There was a light giggling spreading through the quiet auditorium, and some of the other graduates turned to each other and whispered. Silas's eyes flashed up to where Nico's mom was sitting with her new boyfriend. Her chin rested on her hands, fingers laced together as in a prayer, wide eyes glued to her son with her lips pursed together.

"He okay?" asked the boy next to him, a guy named Elliot with whom he had most of his Spanish classes. He was a pretty cool guy, so he didn't think he meant it with animosity.

"He's fine," Silas said.

"I'm up here because I spent most of my nights with my face buried in a science textbook or doing practice questions for algebra. I'm up here because I dedicated most of my free time to academics, because I thought getting the best grades is what will make me succeed in life. I don't think I'll ever be able to shake that feeling because of the rhetoric that's been spoonfed to me since birth."

Silas didn't quite understand, but he grinned. He was always jealous of people with vocabularies like Nico's.

"I'm thirteen years old," he said, looking at the crowd through that stupid-looking overgrown bowl cut of his. "I'm always being told that these are my golden years. This is my childhood. Once it's spent, I will never get this back. I will spend the next sixty to seventy years of my life reminiscing about a time I never really had because I spent it all drowning in school assignments for some esoteric 'better life' that I can't even enjoy because I'll be spending a thirty-three percent of it behind a computer, working myself to death to get to the next promotion and spend thirty-three percent of my time behind a different computer. And I'll be spending another thirty-three percent of it sleeping."

Silas chuckled. Nico was really going for it.

"I'll never get out of this vicious cycle of trying to succeed in something I don't really want to succeed in. I've almost accepted that. And because I've relinquished my childhood away for a set of straight-As on my report card at a school level that doesn't even really matter when I apply for college, I'm the one up here, getting praised, giving the speech. I'm the one parents are looking at with envy, wondering why their kid couldn't try as hard as I did. I'll tell you why: it's because your kid is fucking smart."

Silas nearly howled with laughter. He did it. The little shit actually did it. Now he owed him fifty bucks. Now he had to find fifty bucks.

"Your kid is so much smarter than me. Your kid spent their afternoons playing video games, playing basketball, exploring the forests, learning to cook, creating art, reading something amazing not because it was on a syllabus, but because they genuinely wanted to read it. Your kid sucked the marrow out of life, and they're only thirteen or fourteen years old. And if your kid didn't, they have a lot of catching up to do."

He could hear it in his best friend's voice: remorse. Silas felt his heart sink into his stomach.

"Moving onto high school, I'm making a promise to myself: I will experience something new, at least once a day. I will break the cycle of loss: loss of my time, loss of my childhood, loss of my curiosity, and loss of my innocence. I will rediscover life. Maybe I'll go hiking. Maybe I'll try gymnastics. I don't know. And that's amazing.

"And all you parents out there, afraid your child won't get into the advanced classes in high school, afraid they won't get into the best university, afraid they won't get behind the best computer at work, know this: you are part of the problem. Don't fear for your son or daughter. Be excited for them. Be excited for that insatiable lust for life buried deep in their cores. Be excited for all of life they still have to discover. And the next time they get a C, ask yourself if it will really matter when they're lying on the bed in the hospital, surrounded by flowers and the people they love and only the memories of their childhood. Thank you."

He stepped away from the podium, and the superintendent, hesitantly, stepped forward and offered him his rolled-up diploma. After a brief moment of pure quiet, with the only noise being Nico's dress shoes clopping against the wood as he walked off the stage, applause erupted through the crowd, though the kids surrounding Silas shouted over it to each other.

Silas looked over again. Nico's mom was standing in applause, her boyfriend smiling sheepishly up at her. He thought he saw the glimmer of tears in her eyes under the fluorescent auditorium lighting.

"You're friend's insane," said Elliot to Silas, with a huge smile on his face as a way to ensure Silas knew that was a good thing. "He swore!"

Silas laughed. He couldn't help it.

xxx

They touched down on a bright world containing trees so tall they broke into the atmosphere. Silas could see nothing beneath the tips of these trees, through the orange clouds out of which they grew. There was, however, a small island, floating, it seemed, in midair, just above the tips of these trees. It was covered in pale green grass and brown dirt, and bordered by a few evergreens of its own. The sole feature of this island was a tall, impossible castle; at least seven bluish, pointed roofs craned out from sections of the gray-bricked tower, all piled atop each other in a way that couldn't possibly allow it to exist without falling.

Windows were placed haphazardly around the building, and a set of stairs led up to an arched doorway, where he expected they would enter. The largest rooftop was patterned with a single, light blue crescent moon and similarly-colored stars. It looked like a place a wizard would live.

It wasn't until they landed gently on the green grass that Silas noticed a bright light in the distance; from this shimmering light emerged what looked like blue train tracks. There was no train there.

Dylan awoke organically. He blinked back sleep, gave a big yawn, and stretched his arms in front of him. "Here already?" he asked.

"You slept for half the trip," Silas told him.

"Oh. Again?"

"Again," Araceli said, but there was no resentment in her voice. She performed more nonsensical actions on the dashboard, and the ship silenced itself, the lights flickering back to life.

"Any Heartless ships?" he asked, but Araceli only shook her head as though it were some great tragedy. Maybe she was right.

When they stepped outside, Silas could immediately tell there was something different about this place. The air smelled different than both home and Traverse Town, and the sky was a different being altogether. Araceli and Dylan didn't stop to smell the roses (and why would they, when they had visited this world not one day before?) and instead headed straight for the doors.

Together, they opened the large double-doors, and Silas slipped in behind them.

"You'll hate this place," Dylan assured him as his eyes searched around the large, round room, finding the only thing of interest to be a large, spiral staircase leading to a patch of light similar to what the train tracks were coming from outside. "You just keep going through portals and ending up at different parts of the tower until the stairs decide to let you to the top."

"The stairs decide?"

"It's magic," Araceli said. "Useless, annoying magic, but magic."

It must have been like what she did with her staff, and what Silas apparently accidentally did to fend off the Heartless back in Traverse Town. Magic, wizards, other worlds, hearts, keys… he was growing more and more convinced by the minute, but a small part of him still couldn't quite believe it was all real.

They trekked up the stairs, and the other two stepped into the light and disappeared without a second thought. Silas held his breath before stepping through, but felt nothing; it was as though he had walked through a door, and ended up in a different room (which, he supposed, was exactly what happened, except with a portal).

Stairs.

"Typical," said Araceli, shaking her head. These stairs simply go upward. Silas followed the other two towards yet another portal, realizing only halfway through his ascent that the staircase was, indeed, floating in nothingness. It felt stable. This world just wasn't right.

Next, they ended up in another round room, this one decorated with crescent moons.

The ascent did take at least ten more minutes. With every portal, they were transported to another set of stairs, and another wide, empty room. It wasn't until Silas's legs were really starting to kill that they finally reached a huge room.

It was surprisingly bare, and just as bizarre as the world outside of it. A large, empty brown table, save for a melting white candle beside what looked like a skull, sat in the very middle of the room, with a wood-framed green chair sporting an impossibly tall backrest (how tall was this wizard?) just behind it. It leaned slightly to the right.

Similarly wooden bookshelves lined the rooms in sporadic patterns, wide enough for only a single, bi-colored hardcover book each. The windows atop the tower were, in Mysterious Tower fashion, in the shape of a large moon and star. This guy really took the whole "wizard" thing seriously.

Where was this guy?

One quick glance to his travel companions told Silas that Araceli and Dylan were thinking the same thing. "Lemme check the other room," Dylan suggested, jogging over to the only other door in the study, on the righthand side of the room. He pulled the door open, peered his head inside, and shouted, "Yen Sid?"

They heard no answer.

Araceli meandered, slowly and deliberately as a cat, over to the wizard's desk. Silas could only stand, uselessly, at the entrance of the room where they left him.

Her small eyes widened. "Guys," she half-shouted.

Both Dylan and Silas walked over to stand where she was, looking down at the chair. The entire seat of the chair and first quarter of the backrest was crimson with blood. Drip-marks of red darkened the wood legs, leading to small puddles on the ground.

Araceli was the only one brave enough to make the next move. She pressed her index and middle finger of her right hand to the wood. When she pulled it away, it came off on her fingers. The blood wasn't dry yet; whatever happened to him was recent.

"No fucking way," Dylan said, his voice shaking.

Silas caught something white under the back left leg of the chair he nearly dismissed as a straightener for the seat, until remembering it was slightly crooked.

"What's that?" he asked, reaching down and grabbing the paper out from under the chair. It thumped as it straightened itself out in absence of the folded note. Feeling nosy opening it, he refused to, and handed it to Araceli instead.

Gingerly, she unfolded the blood-splattered note.

It read only a single word in large, curly letters in the center of the page: Sheridan.