I don't own anything associated with Kingdom Hearts or Silent Hill. They belong to Square Enix/Disney and Konami respectively

Chapter 20

The nurse shrieked as he slammed it against the wall. Terra arched his back, still feeling the pain of having a jagged knife forced into his shoulder. He just hoped that it didn't carry any diseases.

Then again, considering the sheer amount of corpses and blood he had been exposed to lately, it didn't really matter anymore.

Not wanting to summon Earthshaker and attract more, he cast Fire at the nurse's head instead. It got the job done; the skull exploded and grey clumps flew everywhere – including all over him. Grimacing, he wiped his face off with the back of his hand; he clearly hadn't thought that through.

Leaving the nurse on the floor, he staggered down the hall, still wiping his face. There was absolutely no way he was going to let any of it get into his mouth; he'd been through enough today. The knife clattered to the floor as he pulled it out, cringing, and he cast Cura to mend the wound. He rolled his shoulders; yep, still working.

He played with one of the frayed rips in his shirt. At this rate, he was going to need new clothes.

He laughed hollowly. At this rate, he was going to have to reserve himself a coffin.

Don't think about that, he chided himself, just think about your friends. Flicking a last bit of grey matter from his cheek, he continued onwards.

If the lighting was anything to go by, he was either walking deeper into the jail or deeper underground. Both were the opposite of where he wanted to go, but it was the only path available. The town didn't want him to go another way. He was starting to learn that navigating the town was like being caught in a torrent of rushing water: fighting against the current only made you drown. So he followed the path it laid out, hoping to drift close enough to shore to pull himself out.

There were steps behind him, too normal to a nurse. He saw the hooded man again, walking with the aid of a cane.

"Do you need help?" he asked.

The man didn't answer, and Terra reached out to tap his shoulder. However, his hand was intercepted with a quick rap of the cane, the force of which vibrated up his arms and down his spine. Terra rubbed it with a whimper.

"I'll take that as a no," he said.

He slowed and let the man pass, figuring that he knew where he was going. The man led him through twisting halls and winding passages, with no pattern that Terra could pick up on. Finally, he stopped, but it wasn't because they had reached the end. There was something blocking their way.

No, not a something. A someone.

"Xaldin," he growled.

"Where are you going, Terra?" Xaldin asked. "Have you decided that jail isn't worth your time?"

Terra tried to walk past him, but Xaldin pulled a lance out of nowhere and used it to block the hall.

"You killed a man, Terra," Xaldin said. Terra could hear an animal's snarl behind the words. "Did you truly believe you could get away scot-free?"

"I know I deserve to be punished," Terra said quietly, "I always have. But my friends haven't done anything, and I need to make sure they're safe, first."

Xaldin sneered. "What a noble sentiment," Xaldin said, walking closer. "I suppose that is why the Bogeyman is more interested in your little friend."

"Ven," he said hoarsely. So that thing was after his friend. Caution forgotten, Earthshaker appeared in his hand, and he trudged forwards.

Xaldin spun the lance so that the tip rested against Terra's chin. "Now, don't be hasty. The Bogeyman may be content to allow you wallow in your own despair, but I," the lance fell back, the blunt end clanking on the floor, "I am not!"

Wind blasted Terra's face as Xaldin swung at him. He moved backwards, stumbling into the hooded man who moved quicker than Terra thought possible. In less than a second, the hooded man was behind him, far out of the way of the ensuring fight.

A second lance slipped out from beneath the folds of Xaldin's cloak, and impaled the rock just an inch away from Terra's nose. The lance quivered there, dividing them, but the space offered was more than enough for Xaldin's first lance, which made a diagonal tear through Terra's shirt. Terra, guilt-ridden, shocked, was sluggish to raise Earthshaker in his own defense. Even so, his weapon was less effective in the tight halls than the thin, stabbing ones that Xaldin used.

A third lance appeared, and Terra was wondered how in the worlds Xaldin had managed to hide them. The duel-wielding man ducked under his other impaled lance, and swept forwards with a swipe, his cloak fanning out at his feet. Terra tried to dodge, but one of the tips caught him, carving out a cut that ran over the right side of his chest, disappeared for a moment, then reappeared on his left arm. Following the direction of his own momentum, Xaldin thrust his other lance forwards at Terra's head, something he did manage to dodge.

He pinned the lance's shaft with Earthshaker and when Xaldin tried to wrench it back, punched the man in the nose. Xaldin fell back, losing his hold on the trapped lance, only to reveal a fourth. Eyes blazing, he lunged at Terra, as fast and furious as a hurricane.

Terra grabbed the abandoned lance, and drove it into the ground. There, it created a diagonal barrier. It wouldn't stop Xaldin, he was sure of it, but it gave the man pause.

"Stop!" Terra said. "I don't want to fight you!"

Xaldin smirked. "Is that so? Well, do you know what I want, Terra?"

Out of nowhere, a fell wind grew, whipping Xaldin's dreadlocks so that they partly covered his face.

"I want to see you bleed!"

The wind howled, and the embedded lance was dislodged from its place. In its wake, Xaldin rushed forwards and pointed not one, but both lances at Terra's chest.

Terra held his ground. Don't fail me now, he thought to Earthshaker.

The keyblade hummed.

He brought it down, straight across the shafts of the two lances. Xaldin stopped short, nearly toppling over his beloved weapons as Terra forced them into the ground. Xaldin didn't even waste time with them, pulling out a fifth, and sixth lance. He tried to stab Terra over the other two, but there was just enough time for the apprentice to slip out of the way.

"Xaldin, please, this isn't going to help anyone."

"It will help me!" the man countered. He stood tall, eyes narrowed in hate. "Only one of us is walking away today, and I promise it will be me."

Xaldin slipped between the fallen lances, and attacked once more. This time, Terra was stricken on his waist and across his upper leg. The wounds burned as if something had placed a match to them.

He made the mistake of flinching, and then howled as Xaldin stabbed him.

He felt the lance grate against the bones in his chest. Xaldin smiled coldly. He forced the lance in deeper, smirking as Terra's face contorted in agony. But in playing that game, Xaldin had lost. As the pain reached a fevered pitch, a massive surge of energy and adrenaline took over Terra's body. He pressed a palm against Xaldin's ribs, teeth bared, and let the power escape him.

Xaldin lost hold of the lances as an eruption of darkness propelled him down the length of the hall and smacked into the wall. In a dark, deep voice that was not his own, Terra pointed Earthshaker at the man and snarled, "Magnera."

The lances shook and shot into the air, straight at their master.

One by one, the lances stopped with a clang, but the sound of them impaling flesh was curiously absent.

Xaldin opened his eyes to see a magical barrier in front of him. The lances had struck that instead.

Panting, Terra lowered his keyblade, images of what could have been flashing through his mind. He had . . . he had almost . . .

But I didn't, a part of his mind said. Terra stared at his hand, flexing his fingers as darkness coloured them. I stopped it.

On his whim, the darkness rose from his hand and swirled around him, cloaking his wounds and healing them. Afterwards, it orbited him like a moon. This power, it wasn't controlling him; he could control it. Maybe, just maybe, Eraqus had been wrong.

"You should have finished me while you had the chance, boy." The barrier was gone, and Xaldin had scooped up his lances. "You don't fool me; leopards never change their spots."

What did it take to make the man see reason? To the dark power around him, Terra said, "You helped me once, help me again."

He laid his palms against the wall, staring at it even as Xaldin charged. The darkness was absorbed into the rock and as he watched, broke it down. The stone dissolved, sucked up by the black portal that grew in its center, and beyond that, Terra saw traces of another place.

He stepped through the wall, into an adjacent hallway, and shut the portal behind him.

He waited to see if Xaldin would come rushing around a corner. He didn't. Terra blinked, looking around cautiously; this didn't look like the hell the darkness had sent him to last time. It seemed like a perfectly normal, albeit broken-down and incredibly creepy, prison.

The darkness drifted out of the wall and back into him, like a knife sliding into its sheath. Xemnas had told him darkness was only a tool, and now, he was starting to believe it.

"Thank you," he said, even though there was no one to thank.

"Terra?"

The hooded man stared at him from a doorway at one end of the hall. Terra coloured, suddenly feeling guilty.

That was soon replaced by suspicion. "You know my name?"

The hooded man shook his head, disappearing into the area behind the door, and Terra followed.

It opened up into a large, circular room. From somewhere high above, a single ray of sunshine shone down on the center. That's where the hooded man stood, his white cloak almost ethereal in the light. In the distance behind him, Terra saw the huge head of a stone dragon. Teeth as long as his arm protruded from its jaws and ever bigger were the twin horns that curved backwards upon its head; the dragon's body curled and slithered up the wall, so long that it extended to the ground where a rolling slope marked the dragon's tail. It was similar to statues he'd seen in The Land of Dragons.

"What madness is this, Terra?" the hooded man rumbled.

Terra frowned. "I'm sorry?"

"I believed in you," the man said. "I looked at you and I saw a child whose fate was not yet made. I believed," he shook his head, "that you could be redeemed."

"I see now that I was wrong." The man grabbed the handle of his cane, pulled, and out came a long, gleaming sword. "No good can ever come from darkness. You have gone astray, Terra, and I will stop you before you bring more harm to the worlds."

With his last words, the man levelled his sword at Terra who stood some distance away.

"Look, I don't even know you!" Terra protested. "I don 't know where all of this is coming from."

"You have given into darkness."

Seriously? This was worse than trying to convince Aqua that he didn't steal any of her cookies. Terra groaned. "I'm not giving into anything," he said. "I just want to grab my friends and get out of here."

Squaring his jaw, Terra puffed out his chest and firmly stated, "If I have to use darkness to do that, then I will."

"And bring ruin upon them."

He clenched his fists and held them tight at his side. "I would never do that!"

"No? Then what was it when you strangled Ventus?"

Many emotions ran through him at once: guilt, humiliation, and rage that this man even dared to bring that up. "How do you know that?" Terra spat.

"I've been watching you, Terra, hoping that you would choose the right path. But you have failed."

"Just tell me who you are!" Darkness began to extend from him, creating an eerie doppelganger that stood at his shoulder. "Show me!"

Terra closed the distance between them, fuming. The tip of this sword resting on the floor, the hooded man watched with no reaction. Even when Terra was practically breathing into his face, the other man did nothing. It pissed Terra off, that's what it did, and he had half a mind to reach up and tear the hood off.

It bothered him that he cared so much.

"Who are you?" Terra demanded. The darkness rose behind him.

"You know who I am."

"No, I really don't. But if you want to fight me," he summoned Earthshaker and got into a battle stance, "you won't win."

Terra didn't expect the man to do anything, and that was why the sword got him. He shouted, clutching his forearm that had gotten between the sword and his neck. The man had tried to kill him!

His blood dripped from the man's blade. The man held it steady, the way a warrior would before sparring with an imaginary opponent. But this was no show, and the next strike was as quick and lethal as a viper, seeming to sever the very fabric of the air itself.

When he blocked, Terra's keyblade vibrated oddly, like a gong that had just been stricken. It rattled him, causing his teeth to chatter.

The hooded man spun, bringing his sword around with him, and brought it towards Terra's head. He blocked that too, and then parried a thrust as the man slide forwards and past. There, the man made to stab his unprotected back, but Terra twisted and the blade of the sword scraped against his keyblade a few inches away from his fingers. Summoning his strength, Terra purposely locked their weapons, and tore the man's sword away from him.

The man leapt back, and the air grew charged with the conjuring of a spell. Terra acted first. He willed the darkness into action and watched, satisfied, as the black and purple stream collided with the man. He didn't go flying as Xaldin had, but the power forced him to his knees. Before the man could stand, Terra blasted him with a shockwave that knocked his feet out from under him. Palm up, Terra closed his fist, and ropes of darkness wrapped around the man's wrists and secured him to the ground. The man struggled against his restraints, but to no avail.

"Now, who are you?"

Terra reached down, and pulled the hood back.

The shock he received was so great that the darkness vanished with a pop.

Freed from his bonds, Master Eraqus leapt deftly to his feet and shot a light spell at Terra's feet.

The energy exploded against the rock, leaving behind a cloud of smoke as Terra was thrown backwards. He landed hard, the back of his head bouncing off the ground and threatening to render him unconscious. Weakly, he murmured a healing spell, gasping as the magic washed over him. Meanwhile, Master Eraqus had summoned his sword – no wait. The weapon was glimmering, glowing as it transformed into Master Keeper.

Terra shook his head in denial. "You can't be the Master."

"Terra," Eraqus moaned, "where did I go wrong?"

"No, who are you really? Why are you pretending to be my Master?" Terra's hand shook as he pointed his keyblade at the person wearing his Master's face. "Tell me the truth!"

"It was a test, Terra. One final hurdle before the Mark of Mastery Exam, to see whether or not you had the ability to resist the darkness."

"The Exam?" he said weakly. How many times had he dreamed of that day? To have it dangled now in front of his face, in the midst of this absolute nightmare, it was, for lack of a better word, horribly cruel.

He didn't have the strength to lift his keyblade anymore. "Prove it," he said, the back of his eyes burning with what suspiciously felt like tears, "prove that you're my Master!"

"What do you want me to tell you?" the man said. "How resistant you were, at first, to Aqua training with us, or later, how angry you were when Aqua ignored you in favour of Ventus? Did you want to relive your past, and revisit the filthy, starved boy that I found tucked away into a cell? We know all your secrets," he lowered his arm in a swipe, "do not patronize me."

Kingdom Hearts, it was his Master. Terra couldn't speak without stuttering, and Earthshaker slipped from his fingers. "Master, please . . ."

"I'm sorry, Terra. I will take Aqua and Ventus out of here now, but you will have to find your own way."

Master Eraqus turned, walking towards the great stone dragon, and Terra shouted after him, "Wait, you know where they are?"

"Of course I do, Terra. I've been watching all of you."

"Master, please!" He ran up to Eraqus, grabbing his sleeve. "Just let me come with you and say goodbye."

"I'm afraid that is not possible, Terra." Eraqus yanked his sleeve away, and the cold gesture ripped Terra's heart apart.

"No," he whispered, "no, this can't be happening." He reached weakly after his Master. "Please, just let me see them."

"They are no longer your concern."

"Not my . . . not my concern!" It was amazing how quickly all emotions could be transformed into rage. Gone was the begging apprentice from before; now, Terra was a man that had been kicked one too many times.

"Do you have any idea how scared I've been for them?" He was shouting into the Master's face, revelling in the shock. "Where you've been sitting back and 'watching'," he spat the word out like poison, "I've had to tear my way through monsters, psychopaths, and all the other shit this town decides to throw at me! I broke into hell for them!"

Never had Terra expected to feel such hate for the man who had virtually raised him. However, in the heat of the moment, it felt long overdue. All that rage he had made peace with, emotions from when he was a child and Eraqus had ripped him away from the only home he knew, returned in full force. This time though, Terra wasn't a child. He was grown, strong, and capable of causing real harm.

His biceps trembled as he grabbed his Master by the collar. He pulled him close, making certain that the Master would hear the rest of his grim, venom-laced words.

"You don't deserve them."

He reached down to his waist and grabbed the golden badge Eraqus had given him. Even then, giving him gold instead of the silver his friends donned, had Eraqus already doubted him?

"I will protect them."

He tore the badge off, nearly crushing it in his hand, and threw it to the floor.

"Even if I have to go through you!"