"I've been waiting for you." The child spoke.
There was an odd silence. I couldn't hear the tree leaves rustling and the water lapping against the shore anymore. As the child slowly removed his hands around me, the scenery cracked and shattered to the ground. I turned around.
I was in the sky, or a screen of the sky, since I stood on an invisible solid ground. The child smiled amusingly at me like I was a cute dog.
"Where am I? A-And who are you?" I stuttered. My vision kept going out of focus because the sky was so bright against my now dark-accustomed eyes.
"I'm showing you the place you miss the most. And I'm just a child helping you."
Somehow, I knew he was lying. He seemed too powerful. And what kind of kid refers to himself as "a child"? His appearance was hard to grasp. He had blonde hair for one moment, then that changed to a dark brown. He wore a t-shirt, then a long sleeve shirt when I blinked. His smile was the only thing that didn't change.
"Are you a deity?" I asked.
The boy regarded me carefully. "I'm not sure what I am. But I will tell you this. I'm only trying to help you. However, some things are meant to be hidden. Whether you want to know the truth or not, I'm not going to stop you. Go on your way, seek the truth, but I did warn you."
"I'm not just seeking the truth. I want to escape. With all of my friends." I said softly.
"So did everybody else."
His words stuck into me like a blade. Did he mean the inhabitants of this cave, like Priscilla? My lips quivered but I managed to spit out, "Then why are you even helping me, if you're telling me I can't escape?"
"I never told you couldn't escape. Many have attempted. None has succeeded so far."
"What… Is… Is this your doing?" I asked a dangerous question.
The smile on his face wiped clean off. I bit my lip. What scared me the most was that the boy didn't look angry, but curious. Curious that I asked him such question.
"It could be. Do you blame me? Do you blame me for taking away some of your memory? Do you blame me for separating you from your dear friends? Do you blame me for making you battle vicious monsters? Do you blame me for trapping you in an endless purgatory and giving you the hope of finding out the truth and escaping all together, safe and sound?"
My eyes wandered around. If I said anything more to provoke him, he might do something worse than the situation I'm in. But what is he doing to us? If he is the one that trapped all of us here, why is he helping me? What kind of sick, sadistic deity is he?
"You, disgusting, cruel bastard!" A man's voice made me come to my senses. He came from behind and shoved me away. The man struck the child so hard he stumbled to the ground.
I was speechless on how brutal the man was to the deity. He was kicking, scratching, grabbing at the deity's hair and screaming into his ear. I tried to understand the screams he made and I caught a few words: daughter, escape, hell, forgotten…
But then, the man disappeared with remnants of light. There were no bruises or blood on any part of the deity's body.
He turned to me, a fraction of a smile playing on his lips. "Are you going to turn into that man in the future?"
"I-I would rather not…" I muttered.
"He was a seeker of the truth also. But during his journey, he made the realization I told to you and he went ballistic. He did not try to escape. He simply gave up, leaving his daughter, the hope, behind for a strange cult even I can't comprehend."
"By 'daughter', do you mean…?"
The deity nodded. "Priscilla. She was one of the few believers. The white light she, and now you also possess is simply hope in a physical form. The light gives the hopeless hope, and heals their tainted state. If Priscilla shared her hope with her father, he may have kept his sanity."
"Why didn't he let her?"
"The man was obsessed with the mysteries of this cave. And Priscilla's hope drove people away from him. The people were scared, and they wanted hope. When Priscilla shared her hope with others, they started believing in escape and were unmotivated to seek the truth. It saddened me to see Priscilla being left behind by her family when she has done all of the good things."
My heart sank. Priscilla has given hope to the people; she was the motivation for the people to escape from here. And now her "hope" inherited to me, because I want to escape more than seeking the truth.
"A white phantom, is what Priscilla's father referred to her."
"I'm… a white phantom?"
"Your friend Roy was doused in dark… 'ink', you said? If white light is hope, then black ink means despair. At some point in time, Roy was overflowing with despair. And despair took control of him. Same goes for all of the other phantoms that came to exist."
"Even for Lucario when he touched those symbols?" I spoke up feverishly. The deity may be the reason we're held in this cave against our will, but his words were the only true information I'm getting.
"Ah, seeking the truth now, I see."
I frowned. I was really interested on what this cave is, but I don't want to lose my mind trying to seek the truth. Nevertheless my friends were the ones that kept me in line whenever I start to worry or become scared. There were countless numbers of times where my friends saved me from the monsters that inhabit this cave. And I can give my hope back to them in a physical form. What was there to worry about?
"I will find out the truth. And I will escape from here."
The boy smiled wide. "Remember that I warned you."
I woke up floating in the middle of the lake, looking up to the gargantuan tree. My thoughts raced through my head.
The deity, or whatever the boy was that summoned me, called me a white phantom. I need to keep myself together if I want to know. I have to believe in myself if I want to escape. And at some time, I may need to gather the courage to go against him. If I have to.
My friends were nowhere in sight. Instead, some fish nipped at my leg and I noticed they were the same milky white fish we saw earlier.
My bag, notebook, and watch were placed nicely on the shore away from the water. There was a small envelope on top of the pile. Inside was two pieces of paper. On the first paper, parts of it were singed off but I could still read the typing:
"The answer is not always told.
Some truth is meant to be hidden
You may not want to know about the Heaven's Door."
The "Heaven's Door", I've heard of that phrase before. I flipped through my documents and found the sketch of me holding a black feather. On the bottom of that paper read: "you're the heaven's door", but I didn't really think into it for now.
The second paper was a rough map of a house. I guessed it was the tree house since the cross section was shaped circular like a stump of a tree. A red X was labeled in a corner of the basement. The idea of going down into the basement sounded badly itself, but I really had no choice.
I was blanketed in a thick cloud of hot, dry air as I opened the front door. The smarting smell of ash tingled my nose. Nothing was on fire but the whole floor tinged an orange-red. As I searched for the basement door, I found a goldfish tank with several fish starting to melt with the bubbling water.
At last, I found a door on the side of the stairs that lead down to the basement. I had to be tolerant with the hot doorknob, but once I went down into the dark room, I didn't have to hold my nose anymore.
A piece of paper was taped to an intricate panel with many wires and switches. In a rough man's writing the paper read: "AC OUT OF ORDER DO NOT TOUCH".
Now, I have no idea how to operate specific electricity-related machines like this. But seeing that the map lead me here and there was a paper that says "don't touch" over it, I guessed it was my duty to touch something.
I flipped the biggest, most obvious switch. The panel activated and whirred violently. Cold air shuddered and spit from odd corners of the room as if the air conditioning was seeping through the cracks in the wall. My work here was probably done.
Things on the first floor were beginning to change. The vents started to spit water and very, very cold air blasted out so hard, I could see the wind ripping through the hot air.
I raced up the stairs. Each floor was hotter as I ascended, but the malfunctioned air conditioning still whipped through the vents. Sometimes, I swear I could've seen ice spitting out from them.
Then, a horrible wail made me stop dead at my tracks. I couldn't even identify whose it was. But following that was the smell of smoke and burning, which I've begun to remember.
The stairs to the attic was open. I scrambled up the stairs flapping my wings crazily even if it didn't help me reach flight. The attic was scorching with energy. Wall paint was crumbling off, the floor cracked and seared through. Patches of flames danced. A blood-curdling cackle seemed to come from everywhere.
My eyes wandered through the hellish landscape, but the painful cry I heard earlier helped me identify the phantom.
Roy was suspended roughly ten feet in the air from a very long arm. I saw black smoke spew from his neck and I shuddered. But the smoke I saw wasn't from the lava. It was ink that started to paint his body.
"Roy!" I screamed. My friend turned to me slowly.
"No, no, s-stay back! Stay back!" He cried.
The phantom cocked his head towards me and smirked from ear to ear. Bright yellow, viscous liquid dribbled down his chin as he spoke. "Well well, we finally come into battle. A little late, I see. But I suppose you might be even early, if you wanted a one-on-one with me. Just sit in the corner and I'll be done soon."
"Let him go!" I charged blindly, not recognizing which parts of the ground were on fire or which parts were cracked with lava.
"Hahahahahahahahahaha! Fine! You can have him!" The phantom's arm shrunk back into normal size as he hurled Roy's limp body as if he were a baseball. We both crashed and skidded across the floor. His body was hot and the ink was starting to infect his face.
"Th-The ink… it's spreading. I-I-I can't control myself! Hel-help me." He stuttered. It surprised me to see him like this. Indeed his hands were now covered in the black color of despair and it was reaching to his whole body.
"Hold on to me. I'll give you the white light." I tried to speak articulately. Roy nodded and placed his forehead to my chest, like how he's seen it when I gave Ike my white light.
A gentle glow quickly charged into powerful beams of light as Roy's ink peeled off and disintegrated. The phantom cackled. "Ahh, I should have known. No wonder I couldn't douse the other swordsman with despair! You shared your useless hope with him! How very touching."
Ike kneeled beside me. Three long scratches across his chest dripped fresh blood but other than that, he looked okay. He placed his hand on the remaining ink lingering on Roy's arm and that evaporated off. I met eyes with him and he smiled.
"Your light is very powerful. It made me immune to the ink."
The light died down and Roy gasped. His eyes took in a brilliant shade of blue and his skin radiated a warm glow. He stared at me, and then to Ike.
"This is great. Why haven't you done this to me earlier?"
"I'm sorry."
"Never mind that." Roy sidestepped up to face the phantom, "Tend to Captain Falcon and join us later. We'll keep him busy."
I looked around the room but I found no sign of Captain Falcon. "Where is he?"
"He became a phantom. I'm so sorry." Roy blurted out. Ike nodded with him.
"Wait, what?"
"He's not as dangerous as little Link! At least not yet. Yell if you need help!" Roy and Ike both darted off towards kid Link's phantom. Their swords brought up high and the smaller phantom laughed as if to enjoy the game.
In the mean time, back here, I was left alone in the center of the room, waiting for another phantom to manifest from the darkness. I sighed.
Author's Note: The chat with the deity was longer than I intended it to be. I'll miss the lava-spitting phantom but we'll finally be over with him in the next chapter. On the other note, thank you for the reviews! I think I will start answering questions from the ones that don't have an account in here.
Pandamonium- Yes, there will be Sonic and Fox in the future. Everyone will make an appearance.